Wapcaplets

Tonight was our second ever Malifaux Thursday Throwdown at Dueling Grounds. For the second time in 48 hours, Som’er Teeth Jones and his band of Bayou Gremlins took to the field. I was using the exact same Scrap force that I did at Meeplemart on Tuesday. This time I was facing Rob and his twin Viktorias. I drew Reconnoiter as my objective which meant that I needed to have models in three quadrants of the board to claim minor victory and in all four quadrants for major victory. Although this is only the first time I’ve played that scenario I have to say that I strongly dislike it. But, part of being a skilled player is adjusting to victory conditions so, like they say, suck it up, buttercup. Rob drew Treasure Hunt for his objective and named Bodyguard and Thwart as his schemes; I disclosed Hold Out and Thwart for mine.

Image © Wyrd Miniatures, LLC

This game actually went pretty fast despite my persistent analysis/paralysis. Rob sprinted Bishop to the treasure token and scooped it up on the first turn and cranked his defense up to 8 which I wasted one Gremlin’s activation trying to pierce. Much like the game I played against Ash on Tuesday, Rob clustered his models together around the treasure. I was able to score Severe damage with Som’er Teeth’s Boomer Strike and get around Bishop’s high defense by damaging him several times with blast tokens. My piglets came through on the right flank and chowed down on one of the Viktorias. I completely (and aptly) brain-farted again and sat back and shot at one of the Viktorias with his Boomer with a control hand that couldn’t cheat up to any great extent when I should have just ran up and used Pull My Finger to do 2 wounds on a successful casting flip. The piglets did a good job on their pig charges and wound up killing the other Viktoria. In the final analysis neither of us achieved our objective (so we both got 2 VP for Thwart) and I got 2 VP for Hold Out so it was a 4-2 win for the Gremlins.

What was odd about this game was that I barely used the Hog Whisperer at all but, at the end of the day, I didn’t really need to. I still need to study my models and remember what they do but the more I play this game the more I like it. I’ve only played a handful of games of Hordes which I’m told is largely analogous in many aspects. What I like about Malifaux is that the game isn’t over in a “caster kill” scenario when all your masters are dead. I also like that every game is a scenario-based game and that your scenario is random. This really forces you to make tough choices with your force. If you only plan for fighting you can really get left out in the cold in this game. I’m really going to try and get my Warpig and Mosquito Totem painted up for next time so I can try out some more options with the Bayou Gremlins.

At the first Malifaux Thursday at Dueling Grounds I heard some of the guys talking about Meeplemart. I checked out their website and, essentially, it’s a one-man operation that does business primarily over web but they do have an actual location on Carlaw Avenue in Toronto. Essentially, it’s a big industrial loft with shelves lined with a surprisingly vast and well-priced array of board and miniature games. It’s not really a store, per se, as it’s only open to the public on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 5PM to 11PM. To buy games from Meeplemart you can pay via PayPal off of the website or you can specify pick-up and pay in cash in person on the nights he’s open.

When the store is open on those evenings there are games going on the whole time. On Tuesdays miniatures games are played and on Thursdays it’s board game night. Steve (the sole proprietor) has a pretty unique and somewhat off-beat vision for his business. Apparently he only took control of Meeplemart approximately a year ago from its former owner so I can’t comment on what it was like before versus now. Steve’s intent is to be a supplier of strictly specialty games for niche gamers; he has no present intent to tap into any of the mainstream market. He essentially wants Meeplemart to be a hobby that pays for itself, not a full-time business.

The gaming area at Meeplemart is great. He has more than enough table space to have four miniatures games going on at once on surfaces at least four feet by four feet. For board games, depending on the game, he could easily double or triple the amount of games going on at once with the space and tables he has. As of today, this is only the second week or so he’s had these gaming nights but even so early on in the format he has an impressive amount of table surfaces and terrain that are free for people to use.

Tonight was one of a series of nights for Malifaux. We had four games going on at once with spectators so the turnout really surprised me. I played a “Scrap” (25-point game) using Som’er Teeth Jones, a Hog Whisperer, 3 Bayou Gremlins, 4 Piglets, and two Soulstones. This is only my second full game of Malifaux so I’m still really learning the rules and getting to know how my faction works. My opponent (a nice guy named Ash) was playing Guild with Sonnia Criid, Samael Hopkins, an Executioner, and 2 Witchling Stalkers. We were playing each other with the Treasure Hunt scenario.

Image © Wyrd Miniatures, LLC

I took some losses early on in the game after some less than impressive attacks with stampeding Piglets. I came close to taking out one of his Witchling Stalkers with two Piglet attacks but it didn’t pan out. He then was able to summon another Witchling Stalker which made me nervous. I didn’t do a very good job of managing my control hand early on in the game and wound up having to take some pretty heavy damage and some unlucky flips by my Bayou Gremlins had them shooting each other more than their enemies. By making good use of Flame Wall, Ash was able to get his Executioner, Sonnia, and his summoned Witchling Stalker in a cluster around the treasure and it looked pretty grim for the Bayou Gremlins. That’s when we both witnessed The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Som’er Teeth Jones! Near the end of turn four, Ash had killed everything of mine except Som’er Teeth and he had Samael Hopkins, Sonnia, and a Witchling Stalker all bunched together. I moved in Jones an, with Reckless Fast, got two back-to-back hits with his Boomer Strike at Severe damage. With the blast tokens that generates it wound up killing the Witchling Stalker and Hopkins and left Sonnia with only two wounds. I won the next initiative and capped Sonnia but had a complete and utter brain fart. I used Jones’ trigger that allows me to deal double damage while taking regular damage. I scored a Severe hit and, stupidly, assigned the double damage to myself, as well, and told Ash that I’d killed Jones. So the game ended up in a draw in terms of models left on the table but I won because I had announced the “Thwart” scheme which meant that I got 2 VPs if I kept my opponent from achieving their schemes which I did. In terms of scoring it would have made a difference because I could have used another action to move to the treasure token and cut myself for a third action to pick it up and would have achieved the lesser objective but, honestly, I like the mental image of Som’er Teeth loading up his Boomer with way more gunpowder than he should have and it blows him up as well as Sonnia.

The one aspect of the Bayou Gremlins that I really need to get my head around is making better use of their proximity-based abilities and using combos that allow me to summon. I didn’t summon or reap a great benefit from my models that were killed in either of the games I’ve played but I think I’ll need to in order to meet with success once people start figuring out their own factions, too. Overall, though, I had a great time at Meeplemart and I’ll definitely be going back in two weeks for their next Malifaux night.