GottaCon 2014 – Day 2

Duke mentioned looking forward to reading my next few days of convention report, so I’ve moved my schedule around to put this one sooner. I have a few more model posts coming after this one!

Day 2 I woke up around 8 and went back to the Deli again for breakfast – good food there, and reasonably priced.

The Malifaux today was all random Story Encounters, with random deployments and Schemes. It was again 50ss and we played 3 games.

Game 1

Reconnoiter Story vs Troy McKnight. I’ve seen his name around the Malifaux BC Facebook group a bunch, but have never spoken with him. I was super glad I did, because Troy is a really friendly and fun guy. He was even friendly as I removed his Master and an entire flank – an impressive feat to stay friendly afterwards, as the gamers amongst us know. He was playing Lady Justice and his goal was to hold table quarters for 1VP a turn, where my goal was to hold a single quarter, specified by me and known to us both, at the end of the game. I sent my Emberling out again to work on Line in the Sand in a table quarter where he couldn’t easily get to. He sent Lady J, a Death Marshall and Fransisc(a/o) after the Emberling, but because of the table layout ended up over extending that flank and allowed me to charge with the Rail Golem and Mei. The Rail Golem got an amazing 5 attacks here, and soaked up most of Lady J’s soulstones while Troy tried to save her! Mei Railwalked in and did a bunch of good work here to end it. Troy had Plant Explosives, and I used the Steam Arachnid Swarm to charge, attack some models and then (0) to remove his PE Scheme Markers – I felt a little bad about clearing his Master and then clearing his best chance of VPs…but my objective was to win, so that’s what I did. I ended this game 10-5, as he got full points for Bodyguard on The Judge and 2 points from Turf War. I had taken Bodyguard on Kang, Line in the Sand and held the table quarter at the end of the game. As Troy said – Reconnoiter isn’t about killing models, but it’s certainly much harder to win if you don’t have bodies on the table!

Game 2

I drew Niko and his Lynch crew again, to play Theft. In this encounter, he had to grab Gem Markers and take them back to his deployment zone and I had to have a non-Peon model within 6″ of his deployment zone for 1VP a turn. To make my game easier, we drew the Close deployment, so getting to his zone was a simple skip across the center line. Early on in this game I had a solid string of flips of Sue vs Teddy and even though Sue only had a single wound left, he managed to remove Teddy. Sue plus Imbued Energies for Fast is beastly. On another side of the board, 2 Metal Gamin, a Rail Worker and Mei took out Huggy. Niko got Brilliance on Kang and then killed him and Sue in a turn and brought back Huggy, but it was too late. At that point I’d broken free to stop him getting Line in the Sand, had a single model claiming my own Theft points that he couldn’t get to, had easily gotten 3VPs for Plant Explosives and he hadn’t stopped me from getting Distract and he was to far away from his deployment zone to bring the Gems back. He gave up. I convinced him to keep playing, because some VPs are better than none. He played another activation and gave up. I talked him into continuing, and after 1 or 2 more activations he gave up for a third time and this time I let it go. I won 10-0 here, but I think it was properly 10-2 or 4 if he’d kept playing and counted it up. You can always have some effect on the game, even if you’re losing! And at that point he’d already gotten 10VPs for his first game, so 4 from this one and 10 for the next one…he could have been in the running for first still!

Game 3

The best game of Malifaux ever. I played Mark again, in Search. You place 4 Markers on the table and flip a card for a suit. The suit determines which Marker you’re looking for, but you have no idea which one it is! (It was the one in his far corner deployment zone…). This encounter needs a restriction like “can’t place markers in your deployment zone” or similar, because it’s busted as-is. Mark had to pick up Markers for 1VP each, I think. He was playing Pandora still, with all those Sorrows. He destroyed my models so badly, by running towards where I was going to get the Markers and making my models Insignificant and making me fail Wp duels and…death and destruction.

At the end of the game, I had 4 models still – Firestarter was way off in a corner getting me 3VPs for Power Ritual, my only points for the game. I had a December Acolyte and 2 Metal Gamin still in the thick of it. He killed the Acolyte. I picked up the Scheme Cards  and sorted through them. I discarded 2 that he couldn’t have, then Distract which he’d already revealed and held Take Prisoner and Bodyguard in my hand. I couldn’t affect Bodyguard – I had nothing on the table I could kill with. But I could do something about Take Prisoner. I activated one Gamin and Magnetismed the other to kill it. I had a single Gamin left with 2 wounds remaining and 1AP – how to kill it? I targeted his Doppleganger and took a Manipulative test, passing it. I cheated in a 5…failing it. Manipulative is a Wp duel. I failed a Wp duel with all of his Sorrows around me. Killed the Metal Gamin. Losing Mark 4VPs. Not only did he lose Distract for that turn (because I had no models left), but he also had Take Prisoner, and had lost the very model he’d been trying to take! We both laughed our asses off for a good 5 minutes after this!

 

I won Best Overall at this event, and also Best Painted! You’ll see some of the models I finished for this event in a few days – they are super nice looking! I grabbed the M&SU Ramos box, which I’m pretty excited to play, and a Pigapult. I felt bad taking two prizes, so I grabbed a model I didn’t think anyone would want and gave it to Jamie. I look forward to having pigs tossed at me soon. 😛

I quickly packed up my models and ran out the door – my Warhammer friends had been hanging around, and we had a ferry to catch!

Overall, I had a great weekend of gaming and friends! Malifaux is a fantastic game, that doesn’t get boring even after playing 10 games in a row, and I’m super excited to be playing it at AdeptiCon in a few weeks. So excited, that I’m thinking of switching my Dreadball League to the Malifaux Costume event…(if possible). I came back from the event exhausted from lack of sleep, but happy from gaming.

 

Finally, here’s the 3 photos I took all weekend.