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.
Tuesday 14 October 2014
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...
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...
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