Journey to Malifaux UK Nationals 2024

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.