Malifaux Thursday Throwdown @ Dueling Grounds
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.