Journey to Malifaux UK Nationals 2024

So as a jump off point I have picked 3 fairly straightforward crews which I will start out with and move on from that point. I have decided on either a Hoffman, Nekima or Von Schill crew. They all have fairly straightforward premises and as I tend to forget rules they don’t have too many moving parts that I need to remember. I hope to have my first game very soon in which I will run a a starting Hoffman crew that consists of the following;

Charles Hoffman

Mechanical Attendant

Melissa Kore

3 x Hunter

This will just be to re-familiarise myself with the rules and see what in the crew works well and what needs adding or removing. I will report on my findings when the game is over.

So as mentioned before in my previous entry my list was essentially Hoffman’s core box which consists of ;

Hoffman

Mechanical assistant

Melissa KORE

3x Hunters

This was to re-familiarise myself with the rules of the game and see any strengths and weaknesses in the crew to build off of.

My opponent bought a Viktorias crew which consisted of;

2 x Viktoria Chambers

Taelor

Vanessa Chambers

Student of conflict

2 x Ronin

He used to play M2E so some of the models were proxies or older models, but it was very clear what was what so it wasn’t an issue. He was gracious enough to go  through the crews and gave me a run down of what to expect and what to look out for. My main concern was the Students of conflict and 2 ronin as they ignored armour which is one of the main benefits I saw in my crew.

For the Strategy we chose to use the Reckoning as it was fairly simple to do. You just had to kill more models than you had scored VP from the previous round. For our schemes the pool was drawn from GG 4 as it is something I would need to be used to for the Nationals so best to start of understanding them now. They were Let them bleed, death beds Sweating bullets, information overload and Protected territory. I chose sweating bullets and information overload and Melissa as my nominated model for sweating bullets.

I gained the attacking priority so got to deploy first. For the set up I was aware that the crew is best used when all grouped together so I bunched up and put the Hunters at the front as a shield with Melissa and the attendant at the side to give some ranged support. My opponent set the 2 Ronin either side of the main buildings and Vanessa behind one of the large buildings with the Viktorias, Taelor and the SoC in the centre.

The first turn wasn’t particularly eventful it was mainly me reading my cards seeing what was useful in the beginning and trying out different bits to see where things would be beneficial. I mostly opted to move forward my crew and focus and that was it really. My opponent rushed down either side of the board out of line of sight with the help of battle tempo and on the move then dropped some scheme markers. He then moved up a little with his main aggressive models but managed to stay just outside of my attack ranges. The main thing I learnt from this turn was that activation order was particularly important as Hoffman handing out power and the mechanical attendants magnetic push happened within a very small bubble.

Turn 2 saw the first mistake I made which was splitting out from the bubble. I was curious to see what would happen as I took on a Ronin with one of my Hunters. I moved around the building with both actions and used my Bonus action called pounce to jump onto one of the ronin injuring it. This was my second mistake as a bonus action this caused no damage at all so this left my hunter open to attack. Whilst my hunter was cut down I had realised my third mistake which was that my Hunters have an ability called Deadly pursuit which allows them to push up to 4″ in the end phase. This meant I could have potentially at least damaged the Ronin I had pounced on if nothing else in my activation. I did not make the same mistake twice with my 2 other hunters I pounced on the SoC and managed to take her down as well as move into conflict with Taelor and do a little damage there as well.  Melissa, Hoffman and the attendant slowly moved up the board and looked to back up the hunters. However the Viktorias and Taelor managed to do enough damage to keep the Hunters holding on by a thread. I did remember to use the previously mentioned Deadly pursuit so I could threaten all 3 Viktorias for the start of the next turn. We both scored a VP for the Strategy this turn so it was currently tied 1-1.

Turn 3 would be the final turn as the club was going to close shortly so I decided to use Melissa’s clockwork grenade rather than charge in the Hunters. This may have been a tactical mistake but for a learning game I just wanted to see if it was an ability that was worth using in the future. I managed to damage 2 points of damage to one of the Chambers sisters of the 3 hit by the blast. Unsurprisingly during their turn the 2 Viktorias tore through the Hunters like paper. Melissa then took a hit from Vaneesa which was followed up on by Taelor later to finish her off denying me a victory point from my sweating bullets scheme. Hoffman managed to score a big hit on Taelor but not enough to kill her. My mechanical attendant then took a pot shot at one of the Ronin scratching her slightly. With the Ronin dropping 2 more scheme markers and with me losing three models my opponent scored 3 more VP meaning it was 4-1 for the final score.

So in summation I enjoyed the game on the whole. The main lessons I learned from the game are firstly I really need to know my crew and the rules within it for instance I had multiple power tokens on most members of my crew but never utilised them until it was pointless, the same goes for conditions some of my Hunters were double focused but I had totally forgotten about it. Going out of the crews bubble is also not advisable as I lose certain benefits such as extra power, transfer of power and movement abilities. My crew also massively suffered from a lack of speed for dropping off schemes and getting around the board a little quicker. I also didn’t utilise the Hunters harpoon guns which would have dragged people into a death zone rather than me going completely to them. My next game will be a full sized game of 50 Soulstones and I will use Hoffman again but the list should be a little bit more versatile in theory. It will also be a GG4 Strategy rather than an older one so I can start to understand those a little more.

So whilst building a rough crew for one of my potential lists I realised how lacking I was in the Nephilim. So I ordered some reinforcements for my Nekima crew. I will hopefully be able to prime and paint them up soon and get the crew to a table soon.

So by now I was hoping to have at least two games under my belt, however as we all know life happens and plans change. Luckily for me my Wife said that she would do her best to play a game with me. So I decided to pit the two core boxes for the crews I chose against each other. So it is Hoffman Vs. Nekima here are the lists.

Hoffman

Mechanical Attendant

Melissa K.O.R.E

3 x Hunters

Nekima

Blood Hunter

2 Young Nephilim

2 Mature Nephilim

Turn 1 I won priority and had a rough idea of my plan. In the same manner as last time I wanted to stay bubbled up and hand out power tokens as much as possible. However as the old saying goes, plans never survive contact with the enemy. Within the first Neverborn activation I had a Young Nephilim in my face and I thought maybe if I tried to match that aggression I might stand a chance of surviving. That was pretty much the entire of Turn 1 I would move and a Nephilim would fly over to greet me. My Scheme runner was stopped dead in his tracks by Nekima herself.

So at the start of Turn 2 I had an uphill battle everyone was hurting and although no slouches in combat they definitely weren’t quite on the level of the Nephilim. We traded blows back and forth and I lost 2 hunters to a single Young Nephilim. The Neverborn’s first scheme was hatched and they scored a point. We also both scored a point for the Strategy so the game was sitting at 2-1 Neverborn.

Things looked bleak at the start of turn 3. Fortunately my Hunter held out against Nekima better than I had hoped in the previous turn so she had used all her actions to finish him off. I had to kill off a Mature Nephilim to score a scheme point and I had managed to pull the Red joker into my hand so I used that to ensure his demise and scored a point. I lost Melissa and my final Hunter but I also managed to kill the Blood Hunter so at the end of Turn with both scored a Strategy Point the game sat tied at 3-3.

Turn 4 would be the final turn and a pretty quick one at that. I flipped the Black Joker for priority ensuring that the Neverborn activated first. Nekima did what she does best and cut down Hoffman with a single action and charged into the Mechanical attendant, cutting him down swiftly as well. With their final activations the Nephilim dropped Scheme markers and scored another point as well as one for the Strategy leaving the game as 5-3 victory for the Neverborn.

Final thoughts.

I was left pretty impressed with Nekima’s crew. They are massively mobile and the Black Blood ability is great for chipping away at armour if you don’t have anything to stop it. Hoffman is definitely a crew that is definitely going to benefit from being at 50 Soul stones for hiring. I remembered to bubble up and hand out power, but was still forgetting to change suits and add plus damage flips out. It did manage to help me when I did remember to do it. I have to play a bigger game next time to see if Hoffman is a lost cause or if I can figure him out in time for November.

So here we are at game 3 another game against the Viks. For this game I had two very clear goals in mind for this game. Firstly I needed to remember to use my power tokens, even if I remember to do it just once, that will be enough for me. Secondly I needed to utilise my fate hand much more, I was holding onto cards far longer than I should have. We got raid the vaults for the strategy with Flank deployment(I’ll come back to that in a second) and I picked Outflank and Information Overload for my schemes. So we spent far too long trying to figure out the table Quarters for Flank deployment and I thought the club closed an hour earlier than it did so unfortunately we only got to play two turns. Luckily I got a lot from those turns so lets dive into it.

Here are our lists for the game we played full 50 soulstone crews, Mine was;

Hoffman

Mechanical assistant

Peacekeeper

2 Riotbreaker

2 Hunters

2 Watchers

My opponents list was;

Viktoria chambers

Vanessa Chambers

Bishop

Student of conflict

Taelor

3 x Ronin

So turn 1 was pretty much moving into place for turn 2 scoring. I push my 2 Watchers and Hunters out to the corners to make sure I scored outflank quickly. Crucially my Peacekeeper was pulled out of position with Taelor’s bring it action, leaving it out all by itself. at the end of the turn I felt  mostly confident that it would be fine until one of the Viks teleported in and started smashing it up. The first two hits only scratched the paint and then the third action flipped the red joker. This left him engaged with a master with only 2 health left going into turn 2.

Turn 2 I managed to secure first activation and decided that I had 2 choices either move up my mechanical assistant and heal the peacekeeper for 3 or activate the Peacekeeper and try and take out the Vik I was in contact with. Using flurry I got 3 hits in the first turn I remembered to use the power token to give me a plus flip on the duel. I flipped the Red Joker straight off but had to flip another card anyway which was a 12. I flipped medium damage then for the second attack I had to cheat in a 13 to get the duel to go off  and got weak damage. The final attack didn’t go off at which point I realized if I had gone for the rams suit to get critical damage instead of the plus flip I would have killed one of the Viktorias…

Things didn’t get better I lost a hunter and a watcher the other 2 were already on very low health. In the centre I managed to get a good amount of damage on the other Vik, Vanessa and Taelor. Unfortunately Vanessa healed every body pretty much back to full health and going into turn 3 I was down 2-0.

At this point I thought we were almost out of time so I said call the game at that I would have scored a point for a scheme in turn 3, but with my other 2 scheme runners certain to die next turn and my Riot breakers facing of against all 3 Chambers sisters and Taelor they were not long for this world either most likely. As Ron Perlman has said many times “War,war never changes” and neither has my losing streak. I haven’t found my groove with Hoffman yet, but I think I keep making the same mistake. The bubble cannot be popped, not until I am able to get the upper hand and power transfer on death is a big deal. I did say next game I might run a full Nekima crew instead but I may run Hoffman one more time and stick to the bubble plan no matter what.

Something I wanted to cover I wanted to cover is that for the last game I forgot my unit cards for the game so I instead relied upon the App for unit and game management. So I am more of a physical asset person I prefer something I can hold in my hand and look at which is unusual because I am fully onboard with digital rule books etc. However I was really impressed with the app overall it feels simple and easy to use, but also comprehensive and informative.

The app allows you to do all the game set up quickly and simply with the randomised schemes, strats and set up all done in an instant. However if you want to have something in particular for practice or narrative reasons you can change this as well. Then you add in your crews which can either be a pre-built crew you have done previously or build one there and then for what you think is needed. From there you can track health, conditions and tokens for your miniatures. You track the round and points you have scored from strats and schemes, as well as view your opponents crew as well.

So to sum up even as someone who prefers having the cards and tokens always visible I could very easily use the app if needed. It is by far the best digital companion I have ever used for any tabletop game out there, the only thing that even comes close is the Mansions of Madness app and that has a few flaws, the only flaw I found with this was my own personal issue and nothing to do with the app at all.

Here we are at game 4 and I am slowly learning to remember things. I played a different player this time however I faced off against my old nemesis the Viktorias. How did I do this time? Let’s dive into it shall we.

Here are our lists for the game we played full 50 soulstone crews, Mine was;

Hoffman

Mechanical assistant

Clipper

2 Riotbreaker

2 Hunters

2 Watchers

3 Soulstones

My opponents list was;

Viktoria chambers

Vanessa Chambers

Johan Creedy

Student of conflict

Taelor

2 x Ronin

10 Soul stones

Turn 1 as always was pretty much moving into place for turn 2 scoring. I remember to activate Hoffman and the mechanical attendant. I used Clipper to drag a Riotbreaker along with it and put me in a prime position to score in turn 2. Everyone moved up quickly and was around the centre thanks to movement shenanigans. Crucially I totally forgot to use the Hunters Deadly pursuit ability which would have made things a little different next turn.

On to Turn 2, which was disastrous I lost Clipper 2 Riotbreakers and a watcher. The only mild success was I broke through to my opponents back line with my remaining Watcher. I did manage to get to a couple of models with my Hunters and cause some damage in the hopes of finishing them off in Turn 3. Also remembering to use my power tokens for Plus flips really helped me with dealing some damage however it was easily stoned away with my opponent’s large soulstone pool.

Turn 3 was more of the same. I did manage to kill a single model and take out Johan. Only to be cut down by a Ronin moments later. I also lost my other Hunter to the Viks piling in on it after healing back up to full health shortly beforehand. I pushed Hoffman up to one of the Strat markers in the hopes of scoring it next turn.

Turn 4, all hope is gone. My Mechanical Attendant got into a firefight with a Ronin and loses. Everyone piles into Hoffman and I spend all my Soulstone cache on trying to keep him alive but the sheer weight of attacks means he does not weather the storm and at that I am tabled.

The final score is 5-0, I am at a loss here. I think some key moves would have postponed my loss, but the Viktorias seem insurmountable to me at this point. Maybe Inventor Hoffman is the way to go against them and try for max damage rather than trying to out scheme them, but with armour piercing, high manoeuvrability and teleporting around they feel like they have Hoffman’s number every single time.

Game 5 is done and in the bag and things have changed. I organised a meet up of Malifaux players in the East Midlands just so I could get to know some faces and also so we could play a couple of friendly games amongst ourselves. Not only was this a great meet up I had a fantastic game against someone of my skill level. So let’s get into a breakdown of everything.

Here are our lists for the game we played full 50 soulstone crews, we got wedge deployment in raid the vaults and I picked in your face and let them bleed for my schemes;

Von Schill

Steam Trunk

3x Freikorpsmen

Tunnel Rats

Arik Schottemer

Lazarus

Hannah Lovelace

0 Soulstones

My opponents list was;

Parker Barrows

Doc Mitchell

Sue

Pride

Convict Gunslinger

2 x Bandido

Mad dog Brackett

3 Soul stones

Turn 1 as always was pretty much moving into place for turn 2 scoring. I had positioned the tunnel rats specifically to grab an upgrade in prep for turn 2 where I had a very specific plan for them. Hannah and Arik were pushed right forward to ensure they could get stuck into combat together to really cause some damage quickly. I positioned my Freikorpsmen to look as if I was going for a scheme I hadn’t taken but allowed them to surround my opponents crew for an attempt at actually scoring my schemes.

Turn 2, for better or worse I was in position to score and decided to try and use my 2 big henchmen as distractions whilst I repositioned the Tunnel rats just out of line of sight of a lot of the opposing crew. Hannah and Arik both took a beating but stayed in the fight thankfully and handed out a little damage of their own. Lazarus fired off his grenade launcher, plinking away some damage from a couple of models but not making much of an impact. I scored a point for the scheme here so I was leading 1 – 0. 

Turn 3 first blood went to Parker taking out Hannah in a hail of gunfire. In response Lazarus took out the doctor to get rid of the crew’s healing. This turn saw a lot of death on both sides. I also lost Arik shortly after. At this point I used my Tunnels Rats to secret tunnel to get to the 2 point strat marker. At the end of the turn and hand out more damage with their weapon as well I scored a second point here for the scheme.

Turn 4 was a bloodbath on both sides; he lost Sue, Pride, a Bandido and I lost Von Schill and 2 Freikorpsmen. A live grenade could have changed this turn, but instead a black joker stopped it dead in its tracks and my Freikorpsmen accidently threw a dud instead. At this point I realised I had killed things in the wrong order and over estimated the cost of Pride and missed out on 2 scheme points for the game. However my opponent scored for the strat this time and I did not. He also scored a point for his ensnare scheme putting us neck and neck going into turn 5.

The fifth and final turn I had no chance of getting the scheme points now or having enough people to score the strat and all I had to do to keep the draw was to kill a convict, but the only chance I had to do this was moving Lazarus forward giving a single shot. The shot hit, but after that the convict had an unbeatable defence flip of 19. We traded blows but Parker was unkillable and all of my models had so much health and armour, so they were also untouchable although my Freikorpsmen did also cling to life by the skin of his teeth.

So in conclusion I had a couple of instances of not declaring triggers and bad planning lost me 2 points, but man what a great game. Freikorps may be the way forward for me as the crew felt more like they could handle things out on their own and I never felt a character was out of their depth. Even a lowly Freikorpsmen can put out 5 damage at severe, 6 with the right trigger. It’s a real swiss army crew that I think may be the way I go for nationals. I do need to paint the rest of the keyword so I have more options in the future. In summary I think I have my crew, for now.