Extended Gaming Group - Northern Virginia

Huzzah Hobbies - Ashburn, VA

For those that do not know me, my job frequently necessitates traveling up and down the East Coast of the United States. The stars seemed to align last week as I was going to northern Virginia for work. I contacted Bill from The Gamers Lounge in hope of meeting up with him and some other locals to play some Malifaux. Everything came together nicely and I was able to get some games in two out of the four nights I was in town.

I actually stopped into the local gaming shop in Ashburn, VA called Huzzah Hobbies on Monday night when I got into town. This gave me the chance to make sure I could find the location with my outdated GPS which is about 6 years old on the map side of things. The area is relatively new by the looks of the roads and the buildings. Of course my GPS unit wasn't very accurate because of these two factors. Luckily I had Google searched the store a couple of days prior and found an image of the storefront which helped me find it on the back end (highway side) of the shopping center.

My first impression of the store was that it was kept very neat, clean and organized. There appeared to be some card games going on that night in the back half of the shop. I believe I was greeted by the store owner when I entered and offered any help if I would need it. The front half of the store had a good selection of merchandise ranging from hobby supplies (basing, paints, glues, tools, etc.) to table top games (Flames of War, Warmachine, Malifaux, etc.) to a good selection of card and board games. I decided to pick up some Micro Art Studio bases to put my new Lilith Box Set on for another project. I also grabbed some Gale Force 9 Hobby Glue and their Rapid Cure product. The last item I purchased was something I had been meaning to get for a couple of months, which was some Games Workshop brush on Gloss Varnish. I had been wanting this for gems and other such things I wanted to stand out after I typically matte finish my models.

I returned to the shop Tuesday night which Bill informed me was their usual Malifaux gaming night. I believe there were 6 to 8 Malifaux players there at any given time from about 6:00pm to 10:00pm. I watched a couple of games that were already in progress when I arrived. As I still only had four games under my belt, three of which were with another brand new player, I felt there was plenty I could still learn just watching.

My first game was with eChris and we decided to keep it small at 25 soulstones. eChris was using Ramos and the Arcanists (The other guys said he wasn't allowed to play Neverborn against me) versus my Kirai crew. I think his list consisted of Ramos, Kaeris, Fire Gamin, Gunsmith, Mobile Toolkit and Student of Conflict. I was fielding Kirai, 3 Seishin, Shikome, Lost Love and Onryo. This left him 2 soulstones and me 7. I didn't do much in this game other than listen to eChris as he gave me some pointers on my crew as I kept doing stupid stuff. We finished our game with eChris having a 4-0 win in victory points. We then watched the weeks main event which happened to be Bill Vs. eChris. eChris won this game 4-2 and then six of us went out for a late (according to my usual standard) dinner where we continued to discuss models, tournaments, rules, tactics and future plans. All in all, it was a great night of gaming and good company. I honestly didn't feel like I was out of town with strangers. It seemed like a local shop that I had been going to for months if not years.

Thursday night was a return to Huzzah Hobbies for a 35 soulstone game between me and Bill. Mike ended up joining us and taught me a tremendous amount about Kirai from his own experiences. Bill was testing some things out with a Dreamer crew consisting also of Lelu, Lilitu, 2 Daydreams, Coppelius and a Stitched Together. I fielded Kirai, Lost Love, Seishin, Shikome, 2 Onryo, Datsue-Ba and a Canine Remains. I only own 3 Seishin models so I started with one as I wanted to try the trick of killing the Canine remains with Datsue-Ba getting another Seishin and Gaki. Ultimately, the trick worked and her trigger went off giving me the Seishin and an Onryo. So I turned a 2 soulstone model into another 2 soulstone model and ended up with a free 5 soulstone model. For what it is worth the game remained close and ended in a 6-2 win for the Resurrectionists. I chalk this more up to a massive training session as both Bill and Mike fed me a ton of info on the game and my crew.

I had a great time gaming down in northern Virginia and I definitely plan on getting back down there from time to time. The drive is only about 5.5 hours from my home to Huzzah Hobbies which for most people would be quite the commute but as much as I travel already that isn't bad at all. I could very easily work Friday and drive down that night, get some sleep and game all weekend driving back Sunday night. I know they do hold some weekend tournaments so I plan on making as many as I can work into my crazy schedule.

I left with a better understand both of my crew and the game. I also got some ideas for some new YouTube video segments to work on. I also bounced some ideas back and forth with Bill about some video recording capabilities so looking forward to that project down the road. We also discussed some Adepticon trip details which I am really looking forward to. Lastly, Bill gave me a couple of Black Library books to read and review. Once read I will hopefully be able to do some review segments on the Gamers Lounge No Gamer Left Behind.

Great times and some great stuff coming down the pipe...

Seamus Vs. Ramos 35 Soulstone Scrap

This was my first game using a master other than Nicodem. I decided to give Seamus and his Avatar a shot. It was certainly different than the undead factory that Nico typically produces. Here is the run down as best I can recall:

Seamus Crew:
Seamus + Avatar
Copycat Killer
Bete Noir
Canine Remains
Convict Gunslinger
Rotten Belle x2
8 Soulstone Pool

vs.

Ramos Crew:
Ramos
Mobile Toolkit
Joss
Steamborg Executioner
Steampunk Arachnids x3
6 Soulstone Pool

Core Strategy: Reconnoiter

Seamus: Claim Jump & My Little Friend
Ramos: Sabotage & Kill Protege (Bete Noir)
I may have some of the strategies and schemes mixed up. I have them written down but not with me.

The first round initiative was won by Ramos and I was not in sync at all trying to find the synergy of this crew. Not much happened in the first round other than moving up, jockeying for position and Ramos gathering scrap and summoning an Electrical Creation. My initial plan was to concentrate on the two quarters of my side of the board as well as the one where my claim jump marker was located. I figured this would give me a good start on Victory Points.

At this point Ramos had two Electrical Creations on the board (one proxy with token) and the 3 original arachnids had joined into a swarm heading toward the side with Seamus and the claim jump marker. He also had moved his Executioner over to sit on the claim jump marker and kept popping his steam fog ability. I had tossed the canine remains into the list as fodder. I figured it could be used to either help summon another belle or a spot to pop Bete up at. You can also see a belle and the convict gunslinger stretched out on the left side here. Lastly, you can just barely make out the base of Joss at the top of the image in the center. Joss was sent to help against Seamus, his totem and a Belle. Both of my belles were mostly used to help drag models into range for attacks on the left and right side of the table. I didn't notice the first round that the true synergy of Seamus and the belles actually worked better with Seamus going first and then activating the belle immediately after. Live and learn!

At this point there had been another arachnid swarm moving up the right side of the picture trying to get to my side for the sabotage scheme. My belle pushed him into range for my convict gunslinger who actually got trigger happy off and killed him in a single activation.

Not much new in this shot. More creations from Ramos and my canine remains is about to go poof from one exploding next to him.

By this point Joss had been taken out by Seamus. I attempted a slit jugular once and my timing was way off. It seemed I was almost always activating him while my opponent had a hand full of cards. I finally just said to hell with it and simply kept attacking him until he was dead. I then popped Bete out at this point to either help me with the Executioner or to head for Ramos.

It turned out things really started going bad for Ramos in round four. I was able to manifest Avatar Seamus who went over and smacked around the Executioner for a couple of rounds before killing him off. Bete made her way toward Ramos and his little creations. I got lucky with Bete's 7 Defense and was able to take down a Swarm with her. By the 6th round Ramos didn't have any significant models on the table other than himself. I moved a couple of models around to give me 3 of the quarters uncontested and the 4th being shared with 1 significant model each.

The final score was 6 - 0 Seamus. I have a lot to learn with this crew but it really was a lot of fun and a nice change of pace.

Things learned running this Seamus Crew:

• Slit Jugular can be vicious if played later in a turn after an opponent has used up their control hand. This is especially true with Seamus and Bete Noir both having the ability.
• Seamus's synergy with the belles seems to work better when he activates earlier.
• The belle and convict gunslinger was a very nice combo on one side of the table.
• The copycat killer wasn't as useful as I had thought. I thought he would be able to do more damage since he had the same gun as Seamus. I didn't notice the 3 Cb on it until the first time I tried to use it.
• Avatar Seamus is fairly easy to manifest by turn 4.
• Focus on strategies and schemes! This is a difficult one for me coming from games where tabling your opponent meant a big win. In this case I didn't focus on killing much until things got near me or in my way to accomplish my own strategies and schemes.

I should be starting to assemble, paint and play my Kirai crew this week though in preparations for my first Malifaux Tournament on December 17th at my local gaming store Gaming Grounds in Kent, OH.

First Semi-Official Game

If you have been following this blog you probably know that I have been building a collection of both Arcanists and Resurrectionists. I have been modeling and painting these over the last few weeks and am making slow progress but progress is being made none-the-less.

I have been itching to get some gaming in and talked a life long friend of mine into giving Malifaux a shot and we got together this past Sunday and had a lot of fun. Since neither of us had any experience we didn't even go with an actual box set and simply picked out 9 points each to accompany his master Ramos and mine Nicodem. We added 3 soulstones each against just to practice using them in the game as well. He ended up pushing 3 Steampunk Arachnids and Ramos to begin versus my 2 Canine remains and a Samurai Zombie with Nicodem.

Ramos and 3 proxy single steampunk arachnids

Nico, Punk Zombie and 2 Canine Remains

Things went slow and stead at first. We simply lined up approximately 15 inches from each other on the table. Again this wasn't an official game. We just wanted to go through the motions of the stages and see how things worked. Models were quickly dropped creating scrap counters and corpse counters. Things went fairly well as we got familiar with movement, melee and spells. There were a couple of things we came across that we couldn't find a clear interpretation of the rule so we made a house rule agreement and moved forward to revisit later.

Canine Remains gone and 2 Arachnids gone.

We played for a total of 3 hours and various models were brought back into play time and time again and we had a lot of fun. We wrapped things up as a draw due to prior engagements.

Mindless Zombies already came and went. This is actually Ramos
and a single arachnid. Nico and a Flesh Construct proxy.

I then tossed out a couple of questions to the online Malifaux community, Twitter specifically and of course got almost immediate responses. From my experience the Malifaux Twitter community is still fairly small. If you use Twitter and play Malifaux don't forget to use the #malifaux hashtag from time to time to show your support for that community. I follow that hashtag and am regularly keeping tabs on those discussions and find new gamers to follow as well.

The main thing I learned was make sure you are using the v2 cards. That would have answered some of our questions from our game. We had the v2 cards printed out but I didn't notice they printed wrong and several of the text areas were messed up and eligible.

I want to give a couple of thanks to those that did respond to my questions:

Damian @LordShaper
CerealKiller @CerealK195
Rand @RandEaton

Some of the things I wasn't certain of were the following:

We weren't sure if Ramos' Counterspell ability only worked when he was the initial target or if he could use it when affected by a blast. It turns out we over thought the wording of the ability and it clearly states that it can be used when he is "targeted".

I also had some confusion regarding Nico's Reanimator spell in regards of which models he could summon using it as well as I used too many corpse counters for the Flesh Construct that I reanimated.

The last thing I researched was I found out we were forgetting to pay attention to the difference of duel end results to apply the bonus damage when available.

It was a great learning processes for both of us. Though I read a lot of blogs and listen to a lot of podcasts to pick up information, it doesn't compare to actually playing to get a good feel for things.

Miners and Steamfitters Union Established

The first set that I have begun working on for my Malifaux crews is the Arcanists - Ramos box set. This is the set that comes with Ramos, 1 Steamborg Executioner Class and 6 individual Steampunk Arachnids which I believe are typically built as two Steampunk Arachnid Swarms. This was one of two box sets that I originally purchased back in January and have only just recently dug into with a strong desire to get some games in.

I actually began working on the arachnids last week and the sheer size of the pieces were honestly difficult for me to deal with. I think I ended up with more glue on my fingers than the model on the first try. Once I got to the second and third it became much easier. I wanted to do something a bit different with the bases. I debated ordered some of the base inserts which are really nice looking. However, I decided against it simply because I assume there would be lots of people with those bases built on the tables and I didn't want to wait for the items to arrive.

What I ended up doing (if you can't already tell) was raid my Warhammer 40K bits boxes and found a couple of Rhino doors. I added that and some basic cork to the bases to hopefully end up with a slightly more original and less seen base once on the table. I may still add some battle damage to the doors as well. I haven't decided just yet.

Once I was happy with the models and bases for the arachnid swarms I move onto Ramos. This one was very easy to assemble which only included two pieces (minus the base). I had to straighten the flame slightly after the glue had dried but was happy with the end positioning. To follow similar suite with the arachnid swarms I cut off another piece of Rhino door and planted this one so that it looks like it is coming out of the ground. There will of course be more basing materials such as stones and flock that will cover it more.

The last item in the set is the rather large Steamborg Executioner Class which is housed on a 50mm base. I have ordered a custom base for this fella which is why he is simply resting on the stock one pictured here. I also have not attached his arms until his new base arrives and I see just exactly what his positioning will be.

All in all I am quite pleased with the quality and detail found in the Malifaux miniatures line. I honestly can't wait to get some of these crews assembled and painted so I can begin playing some games!