GottaCon 2015

I think just the one post this year, hoping to keep this relatively short. I don’t really do short though…

I flew over to the island early Saturday morning as I had other commitments Friday night. It was nice to just have the one night at the con, I think, as it kept me from getting absolutely zonked like usual.

I was playing the Malifaux “Masters” event on Saturday and the “Story” event on Sunday, and had planned to play Through the Breach with the guys Saturday night, but ended up doing other things.

Saturday

Game 1

I had a dream that I played Clark Hartnett first, and then I did. Prophetic! Clark is an amazing Malifaux player, and whenever I play him I really feel like I’m on the back foot the entire game. I said this to him, and said I didn’t like it, but really what I should have said was “I need to learn to get over this”. I’m as good as Clark, I can beat him if I don’t let him beat me before we get started. 🙂

He’s an awesome dude, despite beating me, we had a hilarious game. He played Marcus. Turn 2 or 3 he said he was going to throw my Rail Golem into the lake, and then turn 4 he did. Then the Rail Golem took 4 damage from hazardous terrain, and then another few and…died. I had Frame for Murder on him, expecting he’d die, but at no point did I expect he’d die to terrain…

Another moment, Cojo was super far up and dangling in the wind. Bodyguard was an option, as was Frame for Murder, and I thought about it for a while and decided that Clark was no fool and wouldn’t have put Cojo that far up without a plan, so I turned and headed towards from Hoarcats. I killed the shit out of those out-of-the-way, flanking Hoarcats with Joss…and then Clark flipped Frame. I kicked the kitten and lost the game 8-5 because of it! Never kick the kittens!

Game 2

I played Nico from the island. I’ve played him a number of times, usually against his Lynch but this time he declared Outcasts and I had no idea what to expect. He pulled out the Viks for Reckoning, and it was a roller coaster of a game.

Turn 2 he moved to far forward to early and I charged and killed Blood. Killjoy popped and did some damage, but then I killed him too. A surprise Reckoning point and a lot of stones gone from the game, I was feeling good.

Turn 3 he killed Joss and the Rail Golem. >.>

In the end I won this one because of Breakthrough and Plant Evidence, with Mei and the December Acolyte tag-teaming the scheme marker drop.

Game 3

I think the fellows name was Steve. I have been corrected by the internet – I played Josh. Sorry Josh! He only had the one crew, Von Schill. We played Turf War and I decided to take the all-Gamin crew for an achievement. This was ok, until Steve started moving his crew in a ball of Schilly death and I had nothing that could break it open. I slowly tried to maneuver around a piece of terrain until I could kill something, but I screwed up positioning at one point and didn’t outnumber him in a quarter. This game ended in a 5-5 draw.

 

Night

We were supposed to play 4 games, but it was late by the time game 3 ended so we stopped. We had some dinner and drinks and then the guys went to go drink some more and I went back to the con to play some games with Jer, a good friend of mine whom I haven’t seen recently! He gathered 2 other people, and we played Boss Monster (one of my new favourite games), Small World Underworld, and Lords of Waterdeep. Then we went to the Empress Tea Room, now redubbed the “Bourbon Room” to find my drunk ass friends yelling and playing King of Tokyo. We swapped to Coup, which I love, but which has some complications.

A friend taught everyone the game one day, but then Jamie bought a copy and didn’t read the rules. Months pass and everyone is drunkenly playing the game very differently from the rules. I kind of hate this and have been campaigning to play the actual rules. This night Mark suggested it, and I backed him up, but I got in a bit of shit from some folks who didn’t appreciate me trying to railroad the game. We finished the one game and then all of the really drunk folks moved to another table to go back to Tokyo. I should have felt snubbed, but then and still now, I’m too tired to bring as much caring as I usually would.

We had game of Kittens in a Blender, which is a great game despite my moral objections to the subject matter. 😛

I went to bed around 1:30am.

Sunday

I woke up at 7 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I had a relaxing shower, did some juggling, packed my stuff and went for breakfast.

When I had booked the room, I had written that I wasn’t picky about what room I got. I usually share a room to cut costs, but since it was only the one night I figured I was happy to pay the money to have the silence I desire. And because of the con, it was a very reasonable rate. Well, they moved me to a room that technically didn’t have a bed. 😛 It was the “living room” of a joined 2-bedroom parlour suit! It had a pull-out couch and a bathroom, so whatever. But the lady thought I looked annoyed when I checked in, so she gave me a voucher for breakfast. Which was amazing, because the waffle is $18 at the Empress! I had the kind of breakfast where you want to say “Lovely.” to everything that happens, because it’s just so fucking classy.

I got to the gaming hall so early that I started setting up a 35ss game with Clark. We got 3 turns in before the actual tournament started. 😛

Game 1

I played Tao. Tao is a fantastic man, but he’s another dude that I’m afraid of and I realized why, while in the washroom after our game. His goal is to remove all of my models from the table. It doesn’t matter to him that Malifaux can and usually should be played differently. Usually, when my other friends play this way, they lose because I’m getting points while they are killing models. Tao doesn’t play that way. He’s so efficient at killing that he can both table you by turn 4, and win the game 6-5.

It doesn’t hurt that I screwed this game up hardcore. I thought it was Standard deployment, but it was Corner. This didn’t matter hugely for deployment, but it really mattered when I flew Kaeris with Imbued Energies to one corner of the table to start scoring Breakthrough markers, and the next turn when I started measuring Tao tells me I’m no where near his deployment zone! I quickly flew her across the table, but it was too late, his “remove models” strategy killed her before I could drop a single marker. It’s too bad, because I got greedy. I could have moved 6″ less and ended with a tie game 6-6, but wanted the 8-6 (I’d revealed Breakthrough) so I moved a bit further so “he couldn’t kill me” so turn 4 I’d be able to drop, move, drop. His crew was so ridiculously fast that he managed to get me anyway. Fuuuuuuck.

I think I need to study a different way of playing Taoifaux. He plays wildly different from anyone else I know, and it’s important to be able to learn how to deal with that. I’m not as good with the game-crushing combos as he is though.

Oh yeah, he played Perdita with Hopkins, Fransisco and Santiago in 35ss.

Game 2

After lunch, Tao was burnt out and didn’t want to run the tournament anymore. You can do this when you go to lunch with the entire turn out of the tournament. 😛 So we played a random game each, I played Jamie in the second tournament scenario against his Tara crew. I think the scenario screwed him a little here, as we both had VP-gaining-goals very close to our deployment zones, and I cleared mine a turn before he cleared his, giving me a turn to get into position to get him. I won this game, but don’t remember by how much.

The End

We raffled off all the prizes and I ended up with a Lady Justice crew box…for the Death Marshals! And a Lady Justice Avatar…for…I don’t know! The Brutal Emissary for my Hoffman crew? I don’t even know, there wasn’t another prize in the pool that I wanted at that point in picking. 😛

We missed the 5pm ferry home because one of my club mates won the Warhammer tournament, which is badass and we stayed for the Warhammer awards ceremony. We played a ton of Boss Monster in the ferry terminal and the ferry which made the time pass super quick.

And that’s GottaCon 2015 for me! I think it’s one of my favourite events, I love love love that it’s more of a nerdfest than PAX. The fencers come, and the robotics guys, and the vendor hall is so much fun, and it’s big enough to be awesome but not so big you have to worry about hotels and tickets and crushing population. I still love the shit out of PAX, but GottaCon is a super solid event.