Journey to Malifaux UK Nationals 2024

The time is nigh my first Malifaux tournament looms large on the horizon. So I decided to get a practice game in before 3 games in one day. So once again I run up against my old nemesis the Viktorias, the super fast death machines.

Here are our crews for the games we played at a standard 50 soulstones game, we got corner deployment in stuff the ballets and power ritual and ensnare for my schemes;

Von Schill

Steam Trunk

Freikorps scout 

Drachen trooper

Metallurgist

Hannah Lovelace 

Arik Schottemer

Hans

3 soulstones

My opponents list was;

The Viktorias 

Taelor

Student of Conflict 

Vanessa Chambers 

3 Ronin

Ella Mae Chesterfield 

3 Soulstones

Turn 1 was a major reminder of how aggressive the Viks play. I had one of the twins on my Scout in turn and he was down to two health at the end of the turn. Also Taelor pulled my Drachen trooper to the centre and allowed everyone to get hits on him as well, killing him in turn 1. Everything else was moving up towards the Strat markers

Turn 2 and I lost my scout before he had a chance to activate. Luckily or unluckily unbeknownst to me I managed to kill a Viktoria however I was unaware that this boosted the remaining Twin up, small victories I guess. I managed to get a bit of damage to the central group of miniatures which was great. This did mean that I felt in a decent position going into turn 3.

I had a solid plan going into turn 3, to remove Vanessa so that the centre models couldn’t heal up. However that plan was short lived as Von Schill was gone in the blink of an eye and I was down again. Then I failed a crucial flip to move Arik up and I had burnt all my good cards trying to keep Von Schill alive. My entire right flank was gone and there was nothing I could do about it. I had also lost my ability to score one of my schemes entirely. Then I lost Hannah as well with some poor flips and no hand to speak of even stones couldn’t save her from the onslaught. My opponent scored one point for the strategy and revealed information overload as his scheme, scoring for that as well.

Turn 4 would be the last as I had one possible turnaround that could save my game. Kill Vanessa! Arik did not comply, again I had one good card compared with my opponent’s hand. He was able to cheat way above what I could in the first attempt and the second attempt fell a fowl of the dreaded black joker. I tried to get the trunk to Hnas but it was gunned down on its way.

In conclusion I lost 5-0 I had 2 of my crew left, one who was limping and one at full health. But crucially I killed a twin which I have never done before so I will take that, because it’s all I had. I also wanted to try out a couple of the models I had painted up in time for the tournament in Hans, the Freikorps scout and the Drachen Trooper. Unfortunately for me they did not survive long enough for me to test them out fully, but lesson learned about not allowing the enemy to get into them at all because they will not survive. I really need to be thinking much more about the schemes my crew can achieve and focusing on that rather than trying to kill things off because that is where my points to tip a game could come from. Strategies are fairly similar with mild variation: get to a marker and hold on to it. I know I can acheive this, but it’s holding them where I fall down most of the time. I have some thoughts and we’ll see how they play out at the tournament over the weekend.