A lot of people come up to me and ask how it feels to be a ranked Malifaux player. Not bad, I reply. Not bad at all. I feel humbled by all the fame and respect, to be honest. It’s taken a very long time to get to this point, and the journey is not over.
At this very moment I am at the bottom of the league, but that is just because nobody else’s games have been recorded in Longshanks, the website that tracks such things. It’s just the first game, so I may actually move ahead on victory points. I gained six to my opponent’s seven. We’ll see tomorrow if I’m still at the bottom of the rankings.
Saturday’s tournament was at The Haven in Enfield, Connecticut. The league is at another tabletop game store not that far away — the Battle Standard in East Windsor. Both are new stores dedicated to the art of tabletop gaming. I first wandered into one of these stores well over a decade ago, alone, and absolutely had no idea what was happening. I was looking for some D&D stuff for an online game I was part of, and they denied knowing anything about the game.
D&D is a lot more popular now, and there’s stuff for that game all over both stores. The Battle Standard has life-sized kobolds, quasits and baby dragons lurking around. Even has an owlbear head on a wall.
My opponent this time played the Guild faction, keyword Guard with Dashel Barker 2 as his master. His crew hit hard. I tanked it for awhile, but as I began to lose models, I began focusing entirely on the schemes and strategies, using Ride the Rails to keep out of reach. I’m beginning to get used to Mei Feng, Foreman’s power set, and she can make a good accounting of herself. The Guild is a pretty deadly crew, but Mei Feng and Kang’s shielding abilities kept my team up a surprisingly long time. My opponent was pretty unhappy at how I kept shrugging off damage.
Eventually, though, as my crew began to die, I fell back and let him move where he wanted. I did get a few of his models down, though.
Strategy: Plant Explosives
I was able to score points for this one each of my turns, though was a little frustrated that my opponent kept killing my bomb carriers.
Scheme: Espionage
This triggers by having one friendly scheme marker on the map’s center line, and one in the opponent territory. I scored on this twice.
Scheme: Sweating Bullets
I chose Kang as my unit to engage an enemy master or henchman, but I never got close to one before he was killed, so I didn’t get that point.
One more point and I would have tied. Oh well. I did okay.
I don’t think we do league again until after we come back from California.
I love these posts. I’m getting huge Cones of Dunshire vibes…
I would play that. If that were a game one could play, and there were enough people to make it interesting, I would play it in a heartbeat.
I am relatively new to tabletop gaming; when I started dating my BF who got me into it, I asked what he thought about the Cones of Dunshire. He just grumbled.
Here are the rules to the Cones of Dunshire BTW — Cones of Dunshire rules