Journey to Malifaux UK Nationals 2024

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.