Malifaux – Prison Riot

In lieu of photos of painted models, I present a moderate battle report.

This group of friends is pretty close – we play D&D and Shadowrun together, we played a ton of 40k, we go to weddings and hold their children when we visit. There are people I game with, and then there are these guys. I got Derrick into Malifaux by wafting the rulebook near him – he has a disease whereby he is instantly addicted to any rulesets left lying nearby. He also has 2 children of a young age. I got Duke into Malifaux by giving him the Seamus plastic box that I won at Kipper’s Melee in 2013. He has a newborn. And Jordan…I didn’t get Jordan into it, but he and Duke and I had an attempt at a game one drunken night early this year, so he’s in, despite never having played a model-based game before. Jordan has no children yet.

We used to get together every few months roll some dice and move some plastic, but now we’re flipping cards and moving plastic instead. It takes the same amount of time over all, but we get to have a 4 player game instead of one 2 player game while someone else watches.

Prison Riot is a Strategy from the new Scheme and Strategy deck from Wyrd. In it, players take turns placing 4 Prisoners each no more than 9″ from the table center and at least 4″ from each other. 2 Prisoners are marked as Crows and the other 2 marked as Tomes. Players draw aces, with the victory conditions being:

• 2VP for each Crow Prisoner in your deployment zone (Derrick)
• 2VP for each Tome Prisoner in your deployment zone (Jordan)
• 1VP for each Prisoner not in a deployment zone (Duke)
• 1VP for each Prisoner not alive (Craig)

I played with Mei Feng (Vapormancy [unused…], Imbued Energies and Seismic Claws), Emberling, 2 Fire Gamin, 2 Gunsmiths, Johanna (Imbued Energies) and a Performer. Duke played Seamus and friends, Derrick played his new Colette and friends crew (with a Mech Rider…) and Jordan took McMourning with Sebastian and Mortimer, a Nurse, 3 Punk Zombies and a Huahua.

The Schemes available were Power Ritual (brutal in a 4 player corner!), Spring the Trap (just brutal, and you have to pick the player before deploying), Bodyguard (4 player is a kill fest), Line (centerline is well occupied…) and Protect Territory. I partially took my “gun line” crew because I wanted to see how it performed, and partially because I felt like Protect Territory was my only chance of guaranteeing VPs (and even then, Duke had a chance to remove all 3 of mine in the last turn!)

 

Derrick deployed first arraying his models to head towards Jordan. It later turned out that he had Spring the Trap, against Jordan’s McMourning is half of why, and the other half was because the second of Derrick’s 2 Crow Prisoners was near Jordan’s deployment zone.

I deployed second, hedging my bets. I had and had revealed Power Ritual and needed another corner to drop a marker in. Derrick was to my left and Duke to my right. I deployed Emberling and Firestarter to my left and Mei and some Fire Gamin to my right for maximum range and flexibility in both directions. Duke setup Seamus and friends, Jordan McMourning and friends.

 

The game started and Duke headed towards Jordan, and Derrick headed towards Jordan. Derrick I knew why, but Duke said that he took one look at my gun-line and decided his best chance of success lay in the other direction.

My first plan was to kill the Prisoner near me. 1 Fire Gamin to light him up, and 2 Gunsmiths to do 10+ Wds. He died real quick. I planted a Scheme Marker in my corner for Power Ritual, and then set up to maintain flexibility to go in either direction, while still moving forward.

For some reason, Jordan decided to kill one of the Prisoners. His reasoning was that it lost Derrick 2VPs and lost Duke 1VP. Except that it gained me 1VP, with no effort expended on my part! Worse, looking at the game at the end, there was little chance that I’d have been able to kill that prisoner. He was much to far away, and much to entangled in 3 different crews. Bette Noir popped early in the middle of the early tumble between Derrick and Jordan, and with her Flurry and Unnerving Aura she did a lot of damage before “dying”.

Turn 2, much of the same . Jordan got wrecked. Derrick decided to continue pushing towards Jordan, leaving his back field empty. Duke decided to continue pushing towards Jordan as well. I moved towards Derrick, committing to his side. Duke has a lot of pushes (Rotten Belles) and range (Seamus/CCK), whereas Derrick had fully stuck into Jordan’s crew, and I figured my chances were better if I pushed to take Derrick’s corner.

I stacked a bunch of Burning on Johan in Derrick’s crew. Smugly, he Rebel Yelled it all off. Until I looked at the card and noticed that Rebel Yell is an Attack Action and you can’t target yourself with Attack Actions! A forum-goer pointed out that you can Understudy Johan to do it to himself, but Derrick didn’t know that at the time, and neither did I. Yay ignorance!

Duke made a great push with a necropunk to put a Scheme Marker in my corner for Power Ritual. I devoted a gamin and a gunsmith to making it dead quick, but unfortunately the timing was such that Bette popped in that corner when he died, so I still had another thing to deal with.

Turns 4 and 5, Derrick realized that he was letting me win and pulled back a bit. I had most of my crew still alive and with full wounds, but a lot of them were in bad positions, such as behind a big forest or dealing with Duke’s stuff.

I managed to drop a Scheme Marker for PR, but Derrick killed my Emberling and picked it up. I had a back-up plan with Firestarter to drop it again, and kept it down for a turn but she died and Derrick Prompted Cassandra to pick it up. I tried to do some geometry to get another down, but the area was to full of models and my Performer was holding Protect Territory for 3VPs for me.

I had a plan to send Johanna into the corner and shoot to kill her for Finish the Job, but I was out by about 2″. The sad part is that in the last turn after Bette looked to be going down, Duke sent Seamus to try to hold the corner and on his way through he got engaged with Johanna. She tried to pull away to get her shit done, but I wasted 2 of her 3 (Fast) AP and couldn’t get far enough.

In the end, I won with 7VPs (3 Protect Territory, 3 for the Strategy of 1 for Power Ritual). Duke had a plan to Lure my Protect Territory models away, so I’m glad that I doubled back after Johanna was determined to be out of range, ensuring that I had enough to hold the Markers. Derrick got second with 6VPs (3 Spring the Trap, 3 Line in the Sand, that fucker and his Mechanical Doves). Duke got 4VPs (3 for Power Ritual, 1 for Line. Derrick picked up 1 of his Scheme Markers in the last turn as well…). And poor Jordan got 3VPs, partially because Derrick thought Duke was closer to second than he was. Last turn Derrick pushed one of the Prisoners further into Jordan’s deployment zone for 2VPs and he got 1VP for Power Ritual.

 

In the end, this was an excellent game. I think that the Prisoner setup deserved more thought than we gave it, considered we started with 2 Crow on one side and 2 Tomes on the other. It could have been easy for Derrick to grab both Crow Prisoners and laughed his way to 4VPs.

4 player games with 3 people who don’t play often can be difficult to justify, given that we took about 7-8 hours for this one game. I’ve been telling people that the point is to hang out with my buds, rather than the point being the game. I started wondering, though, if I should pull out the Warhammer table and lay down 2 3x3s on it so we can have 2 games of 2 instead of 1 of 4. Something to consider for next time.

Derrick has added his own version of events, and his notes on his first game with Colette and friends here.

 

(Johanna wasn’t finished, but I played entirely with painted models. That took effort! :))