We haven’t been playing much Malifaux since we got back from Malifaux. Kasul’s been painting up his Guild Hoffman crew, and I’ve been working on finishing up the Frosthaven minis, as mentioned in the previous post.
But it was all leading to today, when we would be trying to lure new Malifaux players into a store, bar and lock the doors, and refuse to let them out again until they agreed that their lives were just a little emptier before they were introduced to the deep lore of the Malifaux universe.
My daughter came and played and seemed to enjoy herself so, you know, people might like Malifaux if they had the opportunity to try it. And that was the goal today.
I will probably let her inherit my Foundry keywork models, since I don’t play them since they moved to Ten Thunders. Grr.
But for me, I played against my old nemesis, Dave. I have played Dave many times. I’m not sure if I have ever won against him. I dimly remember winning a game against him in 3rd edition, when he played Seamus 1 and I was playing Mei Feng 2.
This time, he was playing a largely unpainted Maxine Agassiz of the Explorer’s Society. She’s one of the few Americans in Malifaux, but her investigations into the means and operation of the portals between Earth and Malifaux catapulted her into the highest echelons of the Explorer’s Society, and now she scours the oceans of Malifaux raising the mysteries of the briny deeps.
I played Colette du Bois, Smuggler. I don’t have the smuggler version assembled and painted, yet, so I proxied her with Colette du Bois, Star of the Show. They have the same size base, so it’s fine. It was the first time I played Colette 2.
I played pretty much the same crew as at CaptainCon, except for swapping out Colette 1’s mechanical doves for Colette 2’s totem, Angelica Durand.
Colette du Bois, Smuggler — Colette 2 — smuggles the only thing worth anything in the world of Malifaux. Soulstones. As such, she can create and spend soulstones like nobody else. She can spend them for healing; she can spend them for more movement; she can use opponent soulstones to cause them damage; if she interacts on the enemy side of the board, she can make more soulstones. Playing Colette 2 means never running out of soulstones. I felt very comfortable starting the game with only three, confident I could get more.
My team:
- Colette du Bois, Smuggler
- Angelica Durand, her totem. She makes decoys, mostly.
- Arcane Emissary. Although versatile, he takes on the keyword of the master.
- Envy, one of the Crossroads crew. He rides around on a huge mobile pipe organ.
- Carlos Vasquez. Lost his fire while playing; need to glue it back on.
- Shadowlark. Known for getting herself in tight spots.
- Three Showgirls. I hadn’t played them before and probably won’t play them again.
Maxine does this thing with numbers. Whenever I cheat a card, he can mark it down, and then if I try to cheat using a card of the same value, he can spend a soulstone to have the value of that card be zero. So that was annoying.
Deployment was standard. Strategy was Informants — control points. One’s in your own deployment zone, which ties up one of your models claiming it. Thankfully, Maxine sent Calypso/Dr. Beebe to take it from me. Killed my showgirl and I could not kill him in return as I would kill Calypso. Out would pop Dr. Beebe. Then he would use materials stolen from my markers to make a new Calypso and would jump back in. Most of my beaters were tied up in the center so I couldn’t kill both Calypso and Dr. Beebe before he could reconstruct the suit.
I had a couple of high points. Colette could use Maxine’s soulstone pool — 6 soulstones — to do extreme damage. I attacked twice to kill a Harpooner on turn 1. I later used her Double Whammy to kill the Tidecaller.
Unfortunately, those were the only high points, as he swiftly killed my Showgirls, followed up with most of the rest of my models, due to his insane number of attacks. He could activate Maxine at least twice, and a lot of her attacks had splash damage that could trigger further attacks. It wasn’t the best match for Colette.
I’d realized later that decoy markers could ameliorate a lot of the damage, and Emissary would be a mobile outlet for magic spells like Colette’s laser eyes.
I think I ended with three points. I don’t know how many he made. I didn’t make strategy on any of the four turns; made schemes on three of them. He ruined my scheme on the fourth move.
Still, you know, it was a fun time. I’ll keep working on learning the keyword, and one day, I will win.
Maybe not against Dave.
