Tuesday 18 November 2014

I'm back!

Okay, I realise it's been a while since I wrote a post.

It's not that I haven't been playing Malifaux, I have, but I've been playing other games a lot too, and then stuff gets all jumbled in my head and I forget to post.

So, recently I've played the following:
Fury of Dracula
Pandemic
Pandemic: Contagion
Dead of Winter
Black Fleet
Letters from Whitechapel

The first and last are surprisingly similar to one another, but different enough that they are very distinct games.

Fury of Dracula is set a number of years after Bram Stoker's novel finishes. Dracula is once more abroad, but this time people are ready for him and are chasing him across Europe to try and kill him once and for all. It's a fraught game where each turn it gets harder to track him down and during the night turns Dracula is at his strongest. Some stand out moments were when one of the players (using Van Helsing) was beaten to death by a duo of Greek women in a port, when we had Dracula pinned down on two separate occasions but the devil managed to escape, and alas we didn't get to finish the game due to time restrictions.

Letters from Whitechapel is based on Jack the Ripper. Each player plays either Jack or one of the investigating officers and they need to track down and arrest Jack before he returns home after each killing. The game is brilliant, simple in its basic form with added elements that can be used to make it more complex. I have proven to be far too efficient as Jack the Ripper in this game, and continually make it home.

Pandemic is a co-operative game where each player takes on a specialist role within the CDC in a race against time to find a cure for four deadly diseases that threaten to wipe out the population of the world. Each role has its own special ability, like the contigency planner who can place an event card on the table for anyone to use at any time (the card is then removed from the game) or the medic who can treat all diseases within a city for a single action (removing up to three cubes for 1 action instead of a 1:1 ration) and just needs to pass through a city with a cure to remove them for free. There are three ways to lose the game but only one way to win, find a cure for all four diseases. All too often I find we get caught up in trying to eradicate a disease instead of finding the cure for those remaining.

Pandemic: Contagion sees each player take on the role of a disease and work towards destroying the population of the world. It's a simple game that is fun and relatively quick with events each turn to help or hinder the players.

Dead of Winter is a zombie horror survival game that I feel deserves its own write up, so next time I play I shall make detailed notes and write it up.

Finally, Black Fleet is a pirate game where 3-4 players ply their trade across the seas of the Caribbean to trade, loot and out-pirate their opponents. Each player has upgrade cards that are purchased throughout the game to improve their pirating before buying the hand of the governor's daughter. The production quality of this game is excellent, you get 10 plastic ships of 3 different sizes, 4 pirate ships (the smallest), 4 Merchant ships (the middle sized ones) and two naval ships (the largest ones). The artwork is very reminiscent of Monkey Island, a computer game I loved when I was younger and the plastic box insert is in the shape of a skull and crossbones (an excellent level of detail to add more flavour to the game). And finally, the game comes with metal doubloons for use during the game!

Hope you enjoyed reading this. As always, comments, etc. welcome.

Tuesday 14 October 2014

A nice bit of hardcore...

So, last night saw an attempt at a mini hardcore tournament of Malifaux at my games club.

The players were, in no particular order:
Connor (Proximocoal) with his pig filth
Lucasz with Ototo and 3 torakage
Col with Huggy, a beckoner, and illuminated and a young nephilim
Paj with Hannah and some other models (I didn't see what he was using)
Ben with Taelor and 3 ronin
Me with Valedictorian, Student of viscera and two rotten belles.

We drew suits to see who was paired up, both Connor and I had masks, Lucasz ended up facing Col and Ben faced Paj. The common scheme for the first round was Frame for Murder (I took it on the Student, Connor either had it on Old Major or the stuffed piglet. This is entirely conjecture as he didn't score for it and Old Major survived whereas the stuffed piglet blew itself up)

Connor and I played the quickest game of Malifaux I have ever experienced (well, apart from that one game against Jordan where I destroyed him by the end of the first turn...). With only four models each I knew the turns would be relatively quick. The student went down in the first turn to a red joker of damage from a warpig. One of the Belles pulled the stuffed piglet out of the way to try and keep it from doing too much harm, and the Valedictorian started to beat up some pigs.
Turn two ended rather quickly, leaving me ill equipped to score for Turf War, but Connor got a point out of it. Turn three was over equally as quickly as I was reduced down to just the Valedictorian who had suffered 3 wounds from an exploding piglet and Black Jokered on the damage prevention... Connor scored his second point for Turf War.
Turn four saw the Valedictorian wipe out the remaining Warpig with a cheated in Red Joker for damage, but she was unable to do any serious damage to Old Major before he mashed her into the ground. We called it here as a) I had nothing left, and b) neither of us were able to score anything in the last turn.

The second game of the night saw me face Lucasz. The common scheme was spring the trap.
I thought I was clever by dropping a couple of scheme markers with my first two activations (the student, who lecture noted a torakage to prevent it from from declaring triggers (these guys really need triggers to pull off a lot of their shenanigans) and the Valedictorian who did lecture notes on Ototo. My plan was then to lure Ototo over to spring the trap first turn, but it turns out he is immune to moves or pushes from enemy models, so I that plan didn't work...
Lucasz cleverly managed to position two scheme markers near the Valedictorian so he could score three for the scheme, plus 1 for the strategy, netting him a 4-1 lead in turn two.
Turn three saw me reduce Ototo to one or two wounds remaining and then the student (who was going to die at the end of turn to poison) and one of the belles dropped scheme markers to score me 3 for spring the trap thanks to the sad (but predictable) death of the student which made it so that our crews were of equal size, and we both scored for the strategy, making it a 5-all tie.
Turn four and I managed to kill Ototo, but he still had two torakage in the centre area to score a 6th point. I had two models there to score me my 6th point, as one of the Belles had been picked off by the torakage and their hideous "I'm on my own so I'm proper lethal!" rule...
Turn five and we were both down to just one model each (the torakage are immune to disengaging strikes too!). Overall it was a 6-all draw.

Sadly, people had left and we ran out of time, so I didn't get to have a third game, but since Lucasz has only played like five games, then I can't really complain that it took longer than the 20 minute time limit normally on hardcore games.

As always, comments, etc. are welcome.

Friday 3 October 2014

I'll knock the stuffing out of you!

So, last night saw Connor (Proximocoal), Ben and myself play Puppet Wars: Unstitched and despite both Ben and I losing we all had a good time (although I was starting to get a bit stressed out at the end).

Ben took to the board with Lady J, I had Seamus and Connor had Pokey Vik.

The mechanics of the game are almost, but not entirely, dissimilar to Malifaux. This is due mainly to the fact you use a fate deck (the Puppet Wars decks, of which you get two in the box) has the most adorable artwork on the cards.

Each game turn has five rounds, or to put it in Malifaux speak five activations. To activate a model (or summon one) you need to have played the right card for initiative to match the action value in the top right corner of the puppet you want to use. Each master has their own ability with activating puppets, Seamus ignores Crows on activations, Lady J ignores Rams and Pokey Vik lowers the value by 2 if they don't have a suit on their card.


The numbers across the middle of the cards are as follows: Movement (the number of hexes they can move), Defense (the card number needed to hit them if they don't dodge), attack (the number of cards you flip when attacking) and Upgrades (the number of upgrades that can be attached to the puppet). The buttons indicate the number of wounds each puppet has.

Dodging works by playing a card to replace the defense of the puppet you're attacking, so you need a certain number and a certain suit (Bette Noir has a suit built into her defense, so dropping in a card makes it need two suits and a number). When you attack you pick one of the cards you have flipped and can then cheat any number of cards from your hand to meet the requirements. So for example, if you needed a 9 with Masks and crows (assuming you're trying to hit Bette and your opponent has dodged with a 9 of Masks) you can take any one of the suits and/or number from what you have flipped as long as it's on the same card (if you've flipped a 9 Crows you can take that and just add in a crows from hand). If you haven't flipped the requirements you could flip in a card for crows, a card for masks and a card for 9 if you needed to.

You lose the game in one of two ways: You either have no workbenches on the board (other players can steal them off you) or your master has the stuffing ripped out of them.

Each non master card has an upgrade printed on the back of them that adds abilities to anyone who attaches it (you can rip up your own puppets to attach their upgrades for free).

The game was really fun, and Ben was the first to fall after Lady J had the stuffing ripped out of her.

The rest of the game after that was a little more fraught and saw Pokey Vik running around the outside of the board while my puppets slowly tried to corner her (she was one hex faster than anything I had on the board). And it eventually came down to Pokey Vik with one wound left facing Seamus (with his high heels, bad attitude and Rad sword upgrades). Seamus relies on the puppets he is attacking to be exhausted (there's a joke in there somewhere about the rotten belles in their cathouse) to be able to hit them as they can't dodge the attack, but Pokey had a free attack at the start of her activation which didn't exhaust her. My hand was quite good, but not good enough as Connor had at least one of each suit plus a load of high numbers, which meant that Pokey Vik was dodging all over the place, and then Seamus got hit and lost his last wound.

All in all this is a great game with absolutely adorable models and a total bargain as for your £50 (or less if you get discount on it) you get two puppet fate decks, all of the tokens and counters you need plus 44 adorable plastic models of the puppets. This is definitely going on my birthday list...


Tuesday 30 September 2014

Prison Riot in Cell Block H

So, last night Connor (Proximocoal), Col, Pajy and I played the four player Prison Riot scenario for Malifaux. Thankfully we all had separate factions (although to be fair with my collection I could field almost any faction anyway). We went for Henchman led, 30 Stone crews and each with our own faction specific schemes.

Connor brought out the madness that is pig filth with Gremlins, Colin brought out Huggy and his fabulous illuminated, Paj whipped out his Friekorps led by Hannah and I took the fat lass herself, Madam Sybelle with resurrectionists.

My list consisted of:
Madam Sybelle, Not too banged up, bleeder lash and maniacal laughter
Rotten Belle x3
Guild Autopsies x3

I was planning on the autopsies leaking necromantic fluid to summon mindless zombies but my new arcane fate deck hates the idea of me having crows in my hand (or any card higher than a 9 unless it absolutely has no choice) so that didn't happen. Sybelle didn't get a chance to laugh, maniacally or otherwise, so there was no mindless zombies there either.

Connor had:
Old Major (plus some upgrades of some kind I assume)
Gracie (My nemesis in pig form)
Many, many piglets.

Colin had:
Huggy (with some upgrades I assume)
3 Illuminated
A beckoner

Paj had:
Hannah (upgrades?)
Librarian
Friekorpsman x2
Trapper
Specialist

I had to kill the prisoners (who were surprisingly hardy little buggers!) and occupy all four table quarters with corpse markers or undead models. Connor had to gather the women up (they had truffles in their bras I think) and have 4 or more gremlins unharmed at the end, Paj had to gather the men folk and started with 4 extra stones (hence the massive list he had) and Col had to keep them in the middle and kill Sybelle.

Turn 1 was a crazy event which saw Paj advance towards me and walk one of the lovely gentlemen prisoners into his own deployment zone, Connor had piglets on speed causing them to charge all over the board to lead the first truffle smuggling prisoner into his deployment zone and I barely managed to scratch Steampunk Joe, the prisoner I'd marked for execution.

Turn 2 saw more charging shenanigans from Connor, maneuvering the second truffle snaffler towards his safe area while engaging the forces of Huggy with pigs and threatening me with Gracie (well, no actual threats were issued, but she wandered into my table quarter and loomed like only a giant pig can). Col messed about a bit, luring a friekorpsman towards his deployment zone then moving away because the beckoner isn't that kind of girl. Paj didn't take to kindly to that, and murderised the beckoner with the trapper, dropping a corpse marker into that quarter to help me with my scheme. Meanwhile, I managed to kill Steampunk Joe with a full out attack from Sybelle, two belles and a guild autopsy (who failed to leak fluids onto SJ's dead corpse).

Turn 3 and 4 saw Paj focus on trying to kill me for some reason, so I had to put a lot of resources into attacking Hannah, which saw Sybelle flourish against the giant steam suit wearing wifey and making Paj drop two cards to save her. I eventually got her down to one wound (which poison would have finished her off, but Gracie is a kill stealing swine (no pun intended) and gorged the poor woman to death. The Specialist destroyed my two corpse markers (I forgot to laugh with the fat lass to turn the two markers right next to her into mindless zombies) and spoiled all of my fun. One of my guild autopsies died in Paj's table quarter and a belle wandered in there to secure the two models I needed there. Connor wiped out all of Col's stuff apart from Huggy, meaning there were definitely two markers in Col's quarter, a cluster of undead things in my quarter and what looked like two markers in connors quarter (which would have scored me 3 points for my scheme), however, upon final reckoning Connor had 4 points for having the two female prisoners in his deployment zone and 0 points from his scheme (Old major was the only thing stopping him from having 4 unhurt models), Paj had 2 for the bloke in his deployment zone, Col had no points for anything and when I measured the centre line for the quarters one of the corpse markers in Connor's quarter was over the line by a matter of millimeters, meaning it straddled two quarters and counted for neither, denying me three points for my faction scheme (you score all or nothing) and having only killed Steampunk Joe I scored 1 for him...

Final score was Connor 4, Paj and me 1 point each, Col a zero almost as fat as Sybelle.

I had a great time, connor was laughing for most of the game, Col seemed to be having a good time, and I hope Paj was too.

Hope you enjoyed the read, and if I got anything wrong then feel free to correct me (I'll probably not listen, but correct me anyway!)

Vince.

Monday 29 September 2014

General Introductions...

Hello, and thank you for stopping by...

My name's Vince, and I'm a wargamer. I predominantly play Malifaux these days, although I cut my teeth on Games Workshop games, but their crazy pricing, poor quality and release a new edition every couple of years attitude has seen me put down my dice in favour of something new and Wyrd (see what I did there?)

I started out playing Malifaux early this year thanks to Wyrd forums' Big Ned (Nate Z) who is my local Henchman (Wyrd's term for someone who runs demos and promotes the games). One look at the models he had with him, beautifully painted and expertly based, along with listening to him practically gush about the game for a mere 5 minutes and I was hooked.

Within the hour I had ordered my first crew (zombie hookers for the win!).

Within the week I had gone out and bought a crew box, rule book and fate deck to play with as I couldn't wait any longer for my stuff to arrive, having had two intro games against ProximoCoal (Connor B) using his also excellently painted models.

And so my addiction was raised (I would have said born, but since my faction of choice is resurrectionist, I thought this was more appropriate).

Long story short, I now have at least one crew for each faction (there are seven in total) and an ever growing collection of models that are just that little bit different from your average wargame.