It’s autumn here in the northeast, and so with the turning leaves comes the new Malifaux league. Three matches held over six weeks, followed by a tournament to crown the best Malifaux-er of the Northern Connecticut/Western Massachusetts area.
Which is oddly specific, but that’s just how it works out.
The Fourth Edition is still new for everyone; the official models are only just now coming out, and it will likely take them the rest of this year and all the next to get the new boxes for everything in stores. Cards and lore books are still to come, so right now, all we have are downloaded cards on printer paper and a lot of speculation.
One model I’m still waiting on is Mara, the new totem for Rasputina, Abominable. We know from the art that she is a December cultist who wears a mask and has glowing blue talons for hands. Kasul found a model that looks somewhat similar. I painted it up and she joined my crew for last night’s game.
I’m not going to go over what Malifaux is; my previous posts about the skirmish miniatures game will get you up to speed. I’ll just say it’s the kind of game you see people playing with little painted miniatures on dioramas in game stores, and they seem to be super serious about it. But with the twist that they’re playing a game nobody has ever heard of.
That’s Malifaux.
First game of the league matched me with someone who had just recovered from a grave illness, so yay — we’re glad he’s better, but boo — he didn’t have the chance to play Malifaux 4e in beta like I did.
Nonetheless, I came to the table to chew bubblegum and bring the full force of the titan December against my hapless foes as I laughed maniacally, drunk with power and wishing only to bury the world beneath five kilometers of ice as my minions danced over the lost and forgotten grave of civilization, and I was all out of bubblegum.
I’ve written about Rasputina many, many times, but her opponent, Maxine Agassiz, captain of the good ship EV Superior (keyword EVS) of the Explorer’s Society, I knew nothing about. I haven’t really played many matches against the Explorers; maybe Lord Cooper once? They are not a splashy faction like many of the others.
I played against Max2, Maxine Agassiz, Monomaniacal, and in that she’s a good mirror to Rasputina, both of them focused purely on the accumulation and use of power; Raspy magical, Maxine electrical. Maxine brings a couple of new powers to her crew:
- Deep Discovers: This model may use any card to empower a duel. In normal 4e, you can play a card with value 1-5 and any suit in order to get a positive flip to your dual and be able to add the suit of that card to your duel total. Maxine can use any card to empower. Empowerment is one of the key rule changes from third edition to ensure no card is useless, and is the basis for most 4e gameplay.
- Audit Reality: Once per activation. After this model cheats fate or empowers a duel with a card in its fieldwork objectives, mark the objective with the value of the card used to cheat or empower as complete. Maxine keeps a log of card values that she has used to cheat, from 9-13 (King). When she cheats with a card of that value, she marks it off in her log of fieldwork objectives.
- Contaminated Theories: Once per activation. When an enemy model cheats fate in a duel with this model, with a card in this model’s completed fieldwork objectives, this model may drain a s and mark the objective with the value of the cheated card as uncompleted. If it does so, the cheated card’s value is set to 0. This makes it hard for me to cheat duels. Fortunately, I have other tools in my toolbox.
My team:
- Rasputina, Abominable — Master
- Mara — Totem
- Snow Storm — empowers when near a friendly ice pillar
- Blessed of December — empowers when near a friendly ice pillar
- December Acolyte — empowers when at a higher elevation that target
- Bashe — disempowers models targeting him
- Ceddra — shapeshifter that swaps between human and stag forms strategically
- Silent One — a cultist
I put those notes to show that even though I couldn’t cheat fate as much as I’d like to, I was going to have the advantage nonetheless in most duels, and this did turn out to be key.
Their team:
- Maxine Agassiz, Monomaniacal — Master
- Beau Fishbocker — Totem, manipulates fieldwork and adds card draw
- Tidecaller — moves opponent models
- Calypso Mk II — removes enemy markers
- Kiya Manimi — DPS
- Machinist — heals
- Intrepid Emissary — Protects nearby allied models
- Probably another model I am forgetting
First turn
Our deployment was standard, strategy was Informants (point control), scheme pool was Frame Job, Runic Binding and Ensnare. We both took Frame Job as our first scheme. Maxine starts.
She pushed immediately to control the informants, with Calypso on the left, Tidecaller and Maxine in the middle, and Emissary on the right. I responded by pulling Emissary into my half of the board with my Acolyte, and then focused it down and killed it. Maxine declared Frame Job, but they were down a powerful unit on the very first turn.
I sent Blessed to contest left flank, Snow Storm for center, and Bashe and Ceddra to take right, since it was clear that’s where the bulk of the EVS forces would gather. Mara stayed in back to guard the informant in my deployment zone and made ice pillars and attacked through them. Raspy advanced to meet Maxine in the center and to support Snow Storm, but her attacks failed more often than not — she was entirely unable to land her iconic Entombed in Ice attack all night.
We ended the first move tied in strategy and I did not make my scheme, so Maxine was ahead 2-1.
Second turn
I chose Scout the Rooftops as my second scheme; Maxine chose Harness the Leylines. I shapechanged Ceddra to her stag form to put her on top of a piece of terrain she was in base contact with, and dropped a scheme marker. Blessed used her leap to get on top of a building and drop two more, and so I would score two points for the scheme at the end of the turn. Maxine made the leylines but did not get the extra point. The combination of Bashe, Ceddra and being able to attack through the carefully placed ice pillars meant I took down another model on the second turn.
Bashe’s terrifying aura and Snow Storm’s ice pillar empowerment made it difficult for the enemy to make any real headway against my tanks; they also apparently didn’t realize they could destroy my ice pillars, and so my models remained powered up the entire game. With a combination of killing models and attacks that moved enemies, I was able to inch ahead in control points and made the strategy and the extra point on the scheme, putting me ahead 4-3.
Third Turn
I thought I would have a good chance to kill at least one more enemy model, and so I took Grave Robbing, which scores when I kill an enemy model within range of a friendly marker (ice pillar) and a friendly scheme marker. It then scores an additional point if I kill another model and eat its corpse. Since Maxine still had low health individuals having a grand old time in my Bashe/Ceddra grinder, I quickly took out Kiya for the point, and followed it up by killing Tidecaller in the center with Snow Storm for the Grave Robbing extra point. At this time, I had a commanding lead both in points and models, and so we decided to end it with me ahead, 7-3.
Epilogue
Not being able to cheat fate effectively really put a hamper on my duels, but being able to stay empowered whether through cards, being near ice pillars, or both, let me stay effective. Raspy did not do much this game, unfortunately, but it seemed Maxine was having the same issues. My opponent extended too far, too fast — this they acknowledged. My being able to kill their main tank, the Intrepid Emissary, first turn was a huge blow. The intended to stand on top of a control point and use their aura to ensure I couldn’t take it back, but they did not contend with my Acolyte yanking them across the table.
Opponents typically focus on killing my Acolyte and focusing down Bashe, who is always the main threat from my side. Instead, they spread out their attacks and I was able to heal some. They also had low damage attacks. They did yank my units frequently off control points, but moving units around is also a trick I have, so I’d do the same to them, or just move my units back. Blessed’s ability to move at the end of the turn let her stay out of range of attacks but move in at the end to contest a control point without fear of retaliation.
If Maxine had focused on destroying my ice pillars and moving units as a group, this would have had a different ending.
