Journey to Malifaux UK Nationals 2024

So times been tight the past couple of weeks for one thing or another so not much hobby time. However my wife once again volunteered some time to play some short small games to allow me to get some games in. Usually I would go over round by round and give a breakdown of what happened but as my wifes crew was exactly the same both times it has kind of blended into the same game tbh.

Here are our crews for the games we played at a reduced 40 soulstones, we got standard  deployment in Plant explosives as well as raid the vaults and deliver a message and Outflank first game and Outflank and power ritual in the second game for my schemes;

Von Schill

Steam Trunk

Freikorpsmen

Freikorps Librarian

Freikorps Engineer

Metallurgist

Fumigator

Lazarus

Second game the Fumigator and Lazarus were swapped out for the following;

Freikorps Scout

Hannah Lovelace

0 Soulstones

My opponents list was;

Dr Frank N Steen

Eyegor

3 x Misfit

The Bride 

The Creature

0 Soulstones

A brief note on the above crew is that it is a rotten harvest version of a Von Schtook crew which is themed around Young Frankenstein and as one of my favourite comedies I could not resist picking it up. As such I thought it would be a great opportunity to give it some table time as it may not get much opportunity otherwise.

The main aim of these games was to test out some of the keyword I hadn’t had a chance to run in my previous games, mainly the Fumigator, Metallurgist,Engineer, Librarian and Scout. So instead of going round by round I will try and focus on them a little bit at a time.

Fumigator – unfortunately I did not get much use out of him as I did aim him at someone who hands out poison, but sadly didn’t get the opportunity to heal him up as he ran into the Monster (counts as a Valedictorian) who made short work of him. So I think pushing him forward too quickly was a poor decision, but not a mistake I will make again.

Metallurgist – so from the use I got out of her she is definitely a hire I will take against certain crews like the Viks or Nekima to stop splash damage and armour piercing taking some of my bigger hires down too quickly. The concealing steam is also incredibly useful from what I found as well,  giving minuses to long ranged weapons and trying to force melee is great especially could mean taking damage doing that as well.

Engineer – another really useful miniature for a construct heavy crew and not a slouch in combat either. I didn’t take full advantage of the tools for the job ability which could have helped with getting triggers off when I really needed them, but again first time out so I need to jest keep that in my brain.

Librarian – really great models for 7 points with some movement actions, some healing and an attack that can be used at range and whilst engaged. With armour and arcane shield the 7 health doesn’t feel too punishing but keeping them at the edge of the fray is the wise move here. In both games she was among the last to go down and was great with a grenade belt or rocket boots attached.

Scout – in the words of Sam Beckett Oh Boy, did I fluff the use of this guy. Firstly I deployed him where he could not see a single target on the first turn. Then when I re-positioned him to shoot first turn I drew the black joker for the opposed duel. Shortly after he was taken down to 2 health and shoved aside by The Monster into his original position so he couldn’t see any targets in turn 2 and had a misfit hilariously come out of nowhere and not only getting a + on the flip but getting severe damage ensuring his swift and disappointing demise. He was also supposed to retreat to score my Power Ritual Scheme, but I totally forgot about that until he died.

Here are the main takeaways from the 2 games overall. First of all and most importantly I managed to not lose a game for the first time and got a 2-2 draw for plant explosives managing to blow something up and deliver a message, but wasn’t able to keep a strategy marker near Frank N Steen to score the second scheme point. Game 2 wasn’t as close at a 2-4 loss, but I botched my schemes and was only able to score twice from the Strategy and didn’t have enough models in turn 5 to score anymore from that. If I am going to take things like Outflank and Power ritual I need to take full advantage of rocket boots and maybe not push for it in turn 2 but maybe turn 4 or 5. So lots of lessons learnt and I also got to try some of those new minis out as well.

Whilst not massively key to the game as she managed to stay in the game another couple of rounds, but very funny to watch Hannah smash one of the misfits into the ground only surviving thanks to hard to kill. Then in the next round it had 2 really great flurries in melee almost killing Hannah in return. The narrative we came up with was that she smashed the Misfit with her giant robot fists, but when she lifted the giant mechanical hands up there was nothing there, because it had crawled up into her armour and was attacking her whilst crawling around inside it.

Oh yeah and this hand in game 1 was nothing short of miraculous!