The second game of the fall league introduces us to Gaining Grounds 1 and the complete failure of iOS.
I’m gonna have to define all these things. But instead, I’m going to start with the AI-generated heading. I’ve been generating them fighting, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Malifaux is a cozy game, as cozy as a skirmish miniatures game can be. So I just like thinking that these factions really don’t hate each other. They all have a common enemy, after all — the Guild.
In the lore, Rasputina is psychotic, driven mad by what the Guild did to her and in a spiritual battle with the tyrant December, whose power she commands. Shenlong’s alliance with the tyrant Dragon is on friendlier terms, but both these avatars of tyrant spirits share a common goal: rise to pre-eminence among all the other Tyrants. And so, even though they are not really enemies to one another, they still must fight.
Now, Malifaux can be played with minis and a deck of normal playing cards, along with measuring sticks and tokens. But unlike many miniatures skirmish games, you don’t win by destroying the enemy; you win by scoring strategies and schemes. It all gets to be a little too much to keep track of, and so there are phone apps to keep everything straight.
The list of current strategies and schemes are collected under the heading of “Gaining Grounds”, and usually are tied to the continuing plot that drives the lore of the game. Fourth edition brought a new set, “GG0”, and they just released an update, “GG1”, which bricked the app on the iPhone and it is still not fixed. And so I printed out all the new schemes to bring along, and just the one strategy that had been pre-chosen for the second game of the league, “Map the Area”.
Strategy: MAP THE AREA
SETUP: After deployment, each non-peon model in play gains a friendly Flag token.
RULES: A crew is considered to control a terrain piece if it has the most friendly Strategy markers on or in it. A Strategy marker that is on or in more than one piece of terrain is considered to be on or in none of them. Models may move on top of Strategy markers. A model with a Flag token may declare the Interact action to remove a Flag token and make a Strategy marker within 1″. A model may target a Strategy marker with the Interact action to remove it; if the model does not have a Flag token, it gains one. After a model with a Flag token is killed (or the token is removed by an enemy), the model’s crew makes a neutral Strategy marker within 1″ of the model, if able.
SCORING: At the end of every turn, each crew counts up all the terrain pieces they control which are not in their deployment zone. Terrain pieces completely on the enemy half of the board count double. The crew that controls the most terrain pieces gains 1 VP. In the case of a tie, both crews gain 1 VP. Then the crew that has scored the least total VP from this strategy this game may select a friendly model without a Flag token to gain a Flag token.
Basically, every1 model has a flag which they need to plant on a terrain. Whichever side has the most flags on that piece of terrain wins a point for it, and you can totally pick up enemy flags. I felt at the start that both sides would just stick to safe terrain and never actually contest anything, but we contested almost everything and battled a lot.
Deployment: Flank
Strategy: Map the Area
Scheme Pool: Get the Drop on ‘Em, Frame Job, Leave Your Mark
My Team: Rasputina, Abominable; Mara; Snow Storm; Bashe; Blessed of December; Ceddra/Sightless Snow; December Acolyte; Silent One
Their Team: Shenlong, the Teacher; Mu Long; Sensei Yu; Banying; River Monk x2; Thunder Archer; Shadow Emissary
I chose “Get the Drop on ‘Em” as my first scheme; this one scores a point when your model charges from a higher elevation to a lower elevation. I’d meant to do this with my Acolyte, when I realized he didn’t have the “Run and Gun” ability that lets him do a charge action ending in a gun attack. I eventually managed it with Snow Storm who made it while on their way to the center terrain.
Shenlong’s insane mobility and his ability to command his crew to perform the Interact action meant I was never really able to get ahead on the strategy, though I was able to break through a lot of his defenses and flip terrain pieces we were contesting; but I just couldn’t get far enough, fast enough.
He killed my Acolyte fairly early; I took out the Emissary and I think both of his River Monks, which impeded the terrain taking but not so much that I was able to get ahead with it.
My second scheme was “Awaken the Power”, another new-to-GG1 scheme that requires performing the interact action to drop a scheme marker at the center of one of the battlefield’s four quadrants, with models at at least two of the other quadrant centers. Double points if there’s two or more friendly scheme markers at these centers. Shenlong prevented me from getting the second point by denying Bashe the interact action.
My third (and final, for this game) scheme was yet another new scheme, “Undercover Agent”. Winning this point just means not being in the line of sight of any enemy model; double points for hiding in their deployment zone. Ceddra managed this, all the while my opponent kept telling me, “you know that because she was engaged in combat at the start of her activation, she can’t drop a marker, right?” Yeah yeah yeah, I know. I just had to hide. And I did, and got the point.
The store we played at was about to have an event, so we wrapped things up after the third turn. I made four points from schemes and none from strategies; my opponent made three from strategies and four from schemes, so the final score was 4-7, Shenlong.
It was fun, but I think, of the crews I have available, Colette’s Performer with her mobility and ability to interact even while engaged might have been the better choice for this particular strategy.
The fight for Malifaux continues! I’m 1-1 in the league right now. I have one more chance to win.
- As my December Acolyte does not deploy in the deployment phase, he didn’t get a flag. If I’d had any peons, they also would not have gotten flags, as they can’t perform the Interact action. ↩︎
