Big blog update

It’s 12:30 am, it’s a hot night during a scorching Australian Summer and I can’t sleep, so let’s do this.

I haven’t written any blog posts in a while because life became busy for a multitude of reasons which aren’t really blog topics at all, and then I became pretty burnt out on the game shortly after. The problem I tend to have with hobbies is that I become somewhat obsessed and attempt to consume all of the information and produce all of the things – the star that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

In roughly chronological order, since my last post I have…

Painted a Rasputina crew for a “Crew box + 1 extra box only” Tournament as an excuse to start a new crew when broken promises came out. I chose Raspy + December Acolytes, won 1/3 games because the scheme pools were very marker heavy and my crew wasn’t super capable of running schemes. It was a good time though and Rasputina is a very enjoyable master, I liked her straightforward playstyle and blowing shit up with blasts is rad. Radsputina. Summoning Ice Golem’s is also quite fun when timed right.

Played a little Yan Lo, his new upgrades make him a lot better and in my opinion he’s probably one of the stronger masters in the game currently due to a super high skill ceiling. He’s a Swiss army knife now, he can fully utilize just about everything he has.

I continued to run Molly and Reva as a pair for tournaments as they seem capable of covering each other’s weaknesses and both work well for me. To be fair though, Reva isn’t very hard to play at all, yet she has enough tricks that make for some advanced play.

I’ve been running Killjoy with Reva though, I find it works well because I’m putting the 2 most knee-jerk feared models on the table, at the same time, dealing with both at the same time is stressful and that’s when mistakes are made. I’ve tried the Carrion Emissary + Yin fuckery just like everyone else, but I don’t rate it. Big bird is too squishy and MLH + Shards of Kythera is a one trick pony (says the man running Killjoy). I’ve been meaning to run McTavish with Reva too but am yet to get around to it.

I built an old west style table, it was a great project and I learnt a lot about working with MDF terrain. I was originally planning a city table or snow table but ultimately went with old west because the terrain was cheap on ebay and Malifaux has a overarching west theme anyway.

I ran an introductory event for new players, there has been a lot of new player interest in the game recently so I took the initiative and ran something for them. It was good TO experience for the future.

I picked up, painted and played some of GW’s new game, Shadespire. It feels dirty to buy something from GW (I will never not be salty about the death of WHFB) but I think it’s a solid product overall – the gameplay is solid, good fun and the models and board game elements are quality, the price was also pretty reasonable too. I’ve played a handful of games so far and it was great fun. 30 minute games are a breath of fresh air and the game doesn’t require too much thought, even though it has good tactical depth. The only downside is that the online community for the game consists of elite rules lawyers, welcome to the supreme court of Shadespire. The worst thing GW did was call the game competitive, it truly draws the worst out in people.

And most recently I picked up Infinity. I’m pretty excited about it so I started a second blog to record my progress as I get in to the game, learning a new game is always exciting when everything is new and shiny. I was going to write about it on this blog, but I wanted to keep this blog primarily Malifaux based and I know that I’m going to be producing enough Infinity content that it really warrants its own blog. It’s really got me back in to blogging again. Check it out here if you want.

I’m pretty much on break for Malifaux while I delve in to Infinity. I’m burnt out on Malifaux at the moment. I’m not actively seeking games of Malifaux but if anyone asks for a game I will play them, and I will still go to tournaments if the opportunity arises.

I really needed to play a few extra games to stop myself getting burnt out, it helps immensely to mix it up.

I never got around to finishing the Hamelin crew because it’s fucking boring to paint. I’m not even particularly interested in his playstyle anymore, I’ve faced him now and he’s pretty boring to play against. If I do end up even playing him I’m going to run him as an obey master, 100%.  I’ll probably finish painting him and sell him at some point.

I’m considering selling a lot of my other crews too, I just don’t have the time to play them all. I have masters that I haven’t played since this time last year and they don’t look like they are going to see play any time soon. Marcus. Brewmaster. I really like Raspy but I’m not sure I’ll get back to playing her any time soon… I got her out for a single tournament before going back to playing Ressers. If I was super pragmatic I would sell everything except for Molly, Reva and Mah Tucket. I want to keep just the Ressers and 2 other masters, but I need to put a lot of thought in to this before I decide. I have something like 13 masters currently and it’s just way too many.

I also ended up with a Lilith crew box from a tournament too and I already have too many masters… I was going to give it to a family member but they weren’t that interested in Malifaux after a few demos, so I have to figure out a use for Lilith at some point too. I’m going to try and trade her for something useful most likely.

When I get back in to the game I’m going to pick 2 masters I haven’t played a whole lot of so it will be like the game is kind of new again.

Not a super exciting post, but I was compelled to write it. Next post should be due in 6 months or so…

Mah thoughts + Hamelin crew

The crew so far

It’s been a while since I posted anything, I’ve been playing Mah, painting a new crew and some other stuff…

I’ve played a bunch of games with Mah now and I feel like I have a decent understanding of how her crew works now, I don’t think she’s as horrible as the internet proclaims, but Somer, Wong and Zipp easily outshine her. She’s a resource intensive master who just doesn’t get the same value for her cards that other masters do, although she is versatile and can switch playstyles at the mid point of the game, which is how I have been playing her.

In my games I’ve had Mah push her crew around for turns 1-3 while she manouvres herself to hold areas of the board, either a quarter or a stash marker, etc… On turn 4-5 when the rest of the crew has usually died or ran out of steam, as Gremlins usually do, Mah then cleans up what remains, usually killing anything that is contesting my schemes or the strategy. I have to play her this way because there just aren’t enough cards to go around for her to effectively attack the other crew while my other models are doing so, there aren’t enough cards to go around for Burt and his iron skeeter, two rooster riders and Mah at the same time, Mah’s abilities that require her to discard a card are a real kick in the teeth especially when it’s a mid card that could be better used to hit or damage something. Discarding a card for Get off my land is also a right pain in the arse on turn 1, especially if you’re intending to cheat the initiative with Trixiebelle in games when the crew is going to attack on turn 1, which is most games as Mah easily has the ability to catapult her crew in to a melee on turn 1.

The last thing that bothers me extensively is how resource ntensive it is to get Aim for the sore spots up and running, she needs a card and a stone to get the charge from using it or a suit to get an attack, if you don’t have either of those things Mah’s effectiveness drops to a level way below where a master should be.  Hopefully in book 5 Mah will get a way to draw cards, if not a small rework. Lucius had the same issue before his changes, he suffered from how resource intensive it was for him to perform his primary function, I think Mah is a candidate for an adjustment. I would remove the card discard for her (0) actions, remove aim for the sore spots and bake the +1 ML and +2″ Range in to her attack action and give her Melee expert, I don’t think this would make her too strong, but I think it would bump her efficiency a little and let her use her cards to attack rather than set herself up for an attack. The worst part of playing Mah is when you decide not to attack something because you just don’t have the resources to do the set up required first with Let Mah handle this + Aim for the sore spots.

Most of my lists so far have included the holy trinity of Burt, Trixiebelle and Fingers and 2 Rooster Riders. I can’t say anything about these models that anyone else hasn’t, they are all absurdly powerful and versatile. I feel like in some games my master is actually Fingers and Mah is the henchman. I will say that I think Gremlins have an internal balance issue, there’s a lot of fantastically efficient models that vastly outshine everything else by too big of a margin. When I play Ressers I have a lot of equally useful choices and each models tends to fill a specific niche. When I play Gremlins 80% of my crew is the same each game, I really can’t see any reason to ever hire a bushwhacker, moon shinobi because Burt and Slop haulers exist, for example.

I totally understand that Rooster riders had to be nerfed to balance the faction as a whole but I would have loved to use them pre-nerf with Mah. Mah’s ability to push them up the board on turn 1 almost makes them as good as they were pre-nerf I guess and Mah’s ability to make them ML 7 is rad, bayou two-card is a godsend for Mah’s crew as well. I think Rooster riders definitely have a place in Mah’s crew, even if they don’t get the same consideration they once did with the other Gremlin masters.

I picked up Hamelin because I wanted to paint his crew, so I’ve been chipping away it it since the middle of June, I’m back at uni, so progress has grinded almost to a halt over the last few weeks.

Due to playing Skaven for a long time in WHFB I just like rats, so I figured I was going to paint this crew eventually. I’m not sure how much I will enjoy Hamelin’s playstyle, but I’m excited to try.

I’ve more or less painted the crew like the box art, I’ve also named my rats after diseases because it’s more fun than numbering them 1-12. I decided to make the base for each model from plasticard because I’m an overly ambitious fucking idiot, it takes longer to do the bases than it does to paint the models, it’s torture and I regret this decision.

Lots of Gremlins got painted this fortnight.

I have 1 last month to get as much hobby done as possible before I have to go back to university, so here’s what I’ve done and what I plan to do.

Last week I painted a rooster rider and an iron skeeter.

I’ve also been lucky enough to get my hands on Wong’s lovely assistant in a trade; I’m going to use her as a performer with Brewmaster, the idea of a human performer in a gremlin crew was killing MUH IMMERSION. I have no real interest in playing Wong, so it was better to hunt her down on her own. I also photoshopped the performer card to have the lovevly assistant’s picture on it, so I’m going to print that off at some point so I can be extra fancy. I gave her blonde hair and a beauty spot so she could be a little green Marilyn Munroe.

I painted a slop hauler as well, these little bastards should be perfect with Mah. I Painted the slop bright pink because I’m trying to push myself to use more bright colours when painting gremlins.

As for what else, I’ve got another slop hauler and rooster rider half done and I’m going to enter a model in to Wyrd’s total testosterone painting competition this month if I can find time. I’m also going to try and get some of my Reva models done as well.

How to make Bayou bases

Ever since I started my venture in to the bayou late last year I’ve been asked one thing frequently: “How do you make your bases?”. They say a magician never reveals his secrets – well I’m no magician, so here’s a guide.

I chose not to edit the photos for this tutorial as brightening them too much would have made the plasticard difficult to see properly.

What you need

• Spare sprue
• Plasticard sheet – thickness of your choosing
• Plastic glue
• Hobby sand
• Green stuff
• butter knife

Let’s begin!

Take some spare sprue and cut some small pieces off to use as the ‘legs’ of the walkway and glue them to the base.

Next mix up some green stuff and use it to make the some land for the walkway to connect to.

Cut some thin strips of plasticard and glue them to the ‘legs’, connect the other end to the land.

Cut a thicker piece of plasticard and scrape it with a butter knife to make a wood texture, this will be the planks.

Cut this piece in to small planks. I cut triangles out ot the end to make it look like it’s falling apart. Do whatever you like.

Glue some sand on to the green stuff for some texture.

Glue bayou denizen to your fancy new base.

The bare base is painted to look like murky water, I paint a layer or gloss varnish over it to complete the effect.

Of course, this is just one example of a base; using these simple techniques all sorts of different bases can be made.

Mah Tucket initial impressions

Over the weekend I got my first two games in with Mah Tucket, got smashed but learnt a lot!

Mah faced off against long time opponent John’s Jack Daw and Titania crews. Mah herself spent most of both games trying to bash the opposing master, in hindsight Jack Daw and Titania are pretty hard to kill, I’ve never faced either before so it was a learning experience. In the future I want to try and use her to kill opposing minions, Mah is a flat damage master, she doesn’t have positive flips in spades, ignore defensive abilities like hard to wound or anything, Mah isn’t going to be killing tough targets. I was often getting Mah up to ML 8 and she can go as high as 9, this is her biggest strength in combat, models with DF 5 or 6 aren’t going to like that. The second huge reason for hunting minions is because Mah is incredibly mobile, if she can see you, she can probably charge you.

As for upgrades I used out for blood in my second game after my first, during the first game I had a lot of opportunities to use it but didn’t have it. The extra mobility from the charge is super important. Aim for the sore spots is annoying if all it’s going to do is buff Mah. Sure it can net you a free attack, but sometimes Mah isn’t close enough to get the free attack after casting it and sometimes Mah needs to use aim for the sore spots before she charges, to have enough ML range to make the charge legal. This upgrade is definitely one that I’d rather take and not need, rather than need and not take. I also used Dirty cheater, but because I had Mah attacking tough masters I never got a heal from it once. My last upgrade was know the terrain, it gives Mah diving charge – this should be stapled to her card, end of story. I’m going to swap Dirty Cheater out for Do Over for some card draw in the future.

Quick thoughts on other models I used…

Burt Jebsen – didn’t live past turn 2 in either game, I can’t really judge him yet. So far he is a black joker magnet.

Moon Shinobi – I think these guys need to stay in the brewmaster crew, the poison synergies aren’t great with Mah. I did poison one with Trixiebelle so that the second one (Yes, I was feeling adventurous enough to use two!)  could push towards him and so that it could benefit from That’s the stuff for a free push of his own. Buffing their ML with Mah was alright, but nothing to write home about. I had one punch Jack Daw for positive flips, which was nice. I think these guys are just a niche model.

Bushwhacker – I used one of them once and wasn’t particularly impressed. My biggest problem is that they need to focus to make their gun min 2 damage, I think this is pretty awful on a 6 SS model. Their melee attack seems quite reasonable with a 2/4/6 potential critical strike damage track. Discarding a card for cover is terrible in Mah’s crew, considering how card intensive she is. Their ability to take an out of action shoot when another model misses for the price of 2 damage isn’t good. All I’m going to say is that Lightning bugs have reckless and also have an ability to make an out of activation for 1 damage when damaged by a pulse or blast. Oh and they are 5ss. I’m probably going to be proxying these guys as Bayou gremlins in the future.

Trixiebelle –  Fantastic model overall. Cheating initiative is pretty rude, I like it. Her ability to pick up and move scheme marker is great, going reckless, double walking then dropping a scheme marker on turn 1 is great because she can pick it up on turn 2 and move it in to position in the corner of the board (if playing diagonal centre line) for claim jump. I used her and Fingers, one on each flank to run claim jump in a game and it was effective, it may have been overkill for running schemes though.

Little Lass – The Lass never died in any of my games so Mah never got the benefit of her free upgrade. No issues with her though, she does what she is supposed to, runs around and hits people with the spoon. Not a lot to say about her to be honest.

So to add to her crew I have picked up a set of rooster riders, some slop haulers and traded 1 rooster rider for an iron skeeter.

Rooster riders because they are super fast, hit hard and Mah can buff them and manouvre them. Slop haulers for debuffing models in the other crew and because they are CG 8! The Iron skeeter is going to carry Burt around and attempt to give him fast.

Mah Tucket crew progress + themed carry case

This weekend I painted some more of Mah’s crew and built a themed carry case to transport my crew.

Continuting to paint like a madman I have painted Trixiebelle and the Little Lass, both of these models are absolutely tiny!

Next up I’m going to paint a single Bushwhacker, just one for now because I’m not sure I will ever actually use more than that.

Dat ass – I know this what you all came here for.

I have been planning to build a carry case for my gremlins for a while, so today I went out and found a wooden box to make it a reality. I found the wooden box for $10 at Spotlight ( craft and fabric shop in Australia). I glued some magnetic sheeting to the bottom of the inner box that slides out, sprayed the entire box black and then drybrushed some colours on. I glued a piece of plasticard in to the box to work as a divider for my fate deck and cards, Bob’s your uncle. After all of that was complete I painted a moonshine jug and XXX markings on it to give it a Gremlin theme and then got carried away and painted a free-hand portrait of Raphael on the back.

That’s all folks, keeping it short and sweet this time, pictures say more than words and I can’t be bothered writing today. Thanks for reading!

Mah Tucket + Reva progress = rambling.

So I now have two Gremlin masters; Malifaux is a slippery slope and I think I’ve gone past the point of no return. When I got in to Malifaux I swore I wouldn’t touch Gremlins because they were similar enough to 40k Orks, which I played back when I was new to wargaming. So much for that.

It’s feels great to be new to a faction again, I have limited models to choose from so I wont be able to pick the perfect tool for the job like I can with Ressers, this will force me to get the best use out of the models I have.

I painted Mah the day after I got her because I absolutely love the model, she’s HUGE, imposing and full of character. I really think that the Gremlins have some of the best looking models in the range. I love the whole set, this crew is going to get painted fast. Gremlins are my favourite thing to paint at the moment because I really like painting bright colours at the moment. Most of the painting I’ve done in my 14 years in the hobby has been drab, grimy stuff like Skaven and more Skaven so bright colours are amazing for me and a great way for me to expand my skills and acquire new colour recipes.

The Mah Tucket set has really great looking models in it! Mah is fucking huge, she makes Brewmaster look tiny, the spoon is huge too, it’s taller than Reva sitting on her horse. Speaking of tiny, the little lass and Trixiebelle are some of the smallest Gremlins I’ve seen so far. The Bushwhackers are great little models that consist of way too many parts – one of them consisted of 14 pieces! As per usual I’m continuing the masochism that is building my bases by hand from plasticard and green stuff.

Over the next week the goal is to paint the Little Lass and Trixiebelle between commission work; I’m hoping to get a game in soon and can’t stand playing with unpainted models.

Reva is painted up in black and white to look a bit like a nun, because Reva reminds me of sister Mary Eunice in American horror story: Asylum (A trashy and amazing show, all at once). I went against common painting wisdom and painted most of the model black, the highlights are different for Reva and her pony horse so they are easy enough to distinguish at a glance; I chose to paint the entire model almost completely black because Reva clearly is inspired by Death.

Finally! at last I own every Ressurectionist master and all of the alt masters so a group photo was definitely warranted! I still have about 25 or so models left to acquire/paint and I will have finished the Ressurectionist faction completely, until wave 5 drops…

It feels really good to have a variety of models to paint again, Reva’s crew box is turning out to be a pleasure to paint as it contains such a variety of models, a good split of male and female models, living and undead, dynamic and placid poses. Not to mention Mah Tucket’s crew, I LOVE painting Gremlins (building them is another story though..).

So that’s enough blog post, expect more rambling soon because I’m painting like a man posessed this week.

Team Underdog – Brewmaster and Muh Tucket – The road to victory – Mah Tucket initial thoughts

I’ve got a new goal – to take first place at a tournament using Brewmaster and Mah Tucket. Aim high right? 😉 As per usual I’m going to document the hobby side as I build the crew but this time I’m going to try and put more a little more effort in to reflecting on my game play as I feel like I’m decent enough at Malifaux these days that my gameplay opinions wont sound like absolute rubbish.

Touted as the weakest of the Gremlin masters, Mah Tucket and Brewmaster cop a lot of flak for not being as great as the other Gremlin masters.  I’m a glutton for punishment and love a challenge, difficult games are a big thing for me (I love Dark souls, Darkest Dungeon and Monster Hunter)… very few things compare with overcoming a strong opponent with limited resources – this is why I picked up Mah Tucket. I’m totally expecting to get my arse handed to me while I figure her out but that’s ok.

I picked up Brewmaster a while ago because I love his theme and playstyle, I’ve been a little hesitant to play him so far because I know he can’t cover all scheme pools effectively, if the game requires his crew to spread out they lose effectiveness. So I decided to pick a second Gremlin master. I could have picked Wong or Somer and called it a day but I picked Mah instead because I’ve never seen her played and she has a rep for being pretty average, I also think her crew can cover scheme pools that require the crew to spread out because of the mobility in the crew. I’ve also had her foil card since Christmas so that may have swayed me a little…

GET OFF MY LAND – initial thoughts on the Bushwhackers.

I’ve heard some other players describe Mah Tucket as a Gremlin Misaki, I think this is a fair assessment. Under the right circumstances Mah can become ML 8 with a 5/6/7 damage track (2 rams for critical strike).Her Horrible hollering ability can push models up to 5″ which is a huge for a push, I think this will be excellent for positioning her crew on turn 1. Mahs ability to sacrifice her own models when they fail an attack action seems really shitty at first, but I think it’s best use will be to remove models that have been given the accusation condition before your opponent can score points. Mah is DF and WP 6, so she’s pretty tough overall, this is backed up by 12 wounds. Mah has a 2ss upgrade to gain Armour +1, but I think that’s a rip off and I wont use it, although it might be an alright choice for the little lass. Mah’s chores ability seems ok overall, the best choices are clearly the +1 ML bonus or the card draw when a friendly Gremlin dies. Having dying gremlins pulse for 1 damage is crap and ignoring severe terrain is too situational. Get off my land is great, pitch a card at the start of the game to push 8″? Solid. The upgrade for diving charge will be stapled to Mah’s card. Out for blood looks ok as well, but it seems too resource intensive, needing a suit and a soulstone to get a charge looks good in theory but I think the soulstone would get a lot more value by being used as damage prevention.

The Little Lass is to Mah Tucket what the Copycat Killer is to Seamus – a mini me. She is almost identical in function except she hits for 1 point of damage less and she can carry an upgrade of Mah Tucket’s without paying the soulstone cost for it, that will be given to Mah when the Little Lass leaves play, she’s also insignificant so in my eyes the Little Lass is a distraction piece, she’s meant to kill something and then die. There’s not much to think about with her, she just needs to charge in and bludgeon someone.

Trixiebelle is solid, she allows you to cheat the initiative flip which is vital for alpha striking crew. Cheating the initive flip allows you to effectively pick the suit for Mah’s Chores ability.  Trixibelle is a gremlin white-knight magnet, so she can make the other gremlins nearby take hits on her behalf and hit people on her behalf. She can pick up and move scheme markers, lure Gremlins and push everyone else away and has an upgrade for a sweet gun. People buy the Mah set just to get Trixiebelle because she does so much, being able to cheat initiative in a Brewmaster crew is one of her best uses, so that Brewmaster can use drinking contest before the other crew can run away from him.

Bayou Bushwhackers seem like a reasonable mid range model, they can do a little bit of everything but aren’t particularly impressive. I think they will be best used holding table quarters or just skirting the edge of the table taking opportunity shots at opposing scheme runners.

As for expanding on the crew I’m going to pick up Bayou Gremlins because they are the real workhorse of the Gremlin faction, versatile 3ss minions. They will also make for a model I wont miss when Mah needs to sacrifice a gremlin for bonuses. After that Rooster riders are my next pick because making them ML 7 with Mah is a scary thought.

The crew has a lots of abilities to discard cards so I am going to look in to Gremlin card draw, if there is any.

So that’s my initial thoughts, the crew box gets here some time next week so I’m going to keep on theoryfauxing until then.

 

Skulls tournament report

Another ramble-report – I attended the first Skulls tournament of 2017, I took Molly for all 3 games because every time I take Ressers to a tournament and play a game with any master that isn’t Molly I usually feel pretty dissappointed. My goal for this event was to win 2/3 games, I’ve been consistantly trying to improve my play this year and I’m starting to feel like I’m not absolutely terrible at Malifaux anymore.

As always, I have a hazy memory at best so my game reports are just things that stood out to me.

Molly vs John’s Tara

Another game against long time opponent John’s Tara,  The game was extraction and I took frame for murder on a nurse and claim jump. John has seen my frame for murder tricks with a nurse enough times that he refused to kill her – I was hoping he would think that I’ve done it so many times that I wouldn’t do it again… John scored hunting party a few times with the nothing beast and scored the strategy a few times. I managed to score claim jump once and the strategy 3 times, claim jump was denied on turn 5 otherwise the game would have been a draw, this game was super close and I lost 4-5. I don’t remember a lot of the details of this game as it was the first game of the day and 3 games in a day tends to fry my brain a little. A well played, close game! Again, I have a shit memory so this report is the least detailed.

Molly vs Josh’s Reva

This was the first time I have played against Reva and the first time I have faced Josh, this was my favourite game of the day because Josh was a fun opponent with a good sense of humour, the jokes and banter really made the game. Josh chose to deploy first and put Reva on the roof of a building. I’ve heard that roof Reva is pretty scary, so I deployed a Belle across from her and lured her off the roof for a cheeky 4 damage. Meanwhile Reva’s carrion emissary used shards of Kythera twice to block the majority of my of my crew off from doing anything impressive, I spent the majority of turn 1 getting around the shards and positioning my crew. at the end of turn 1 I used Molly’s (0) to move my Rogue Necromancy in to combat with Reva, at the start of turn 2 Reva swatted the Rogue Necromancy like a fly, scoring me 3 VP for frame for murder. Afterwards Molly summoned some Punk zombies around Reva and her friends.I thought Molly was safe behind a wall of punk zombies – I was wrong. Reva managed to get her attack trigger to charge Molly and killed her very quickly. Reva does not fuck around.  I scored accusation throughout the game to gain more points. I believe the score was 5-8 in my favour this game. After the game ended I Josh told me his carrion emissary was his frame for murder target but he had refused to let it die early in the game when Sybelle had attempted to insta-kill it with her whip trigger, assuming I would try again later in the game, I chose not to try to kill it later in the game as I was using it as a target for accusation, I think it was sheer luck that I stopped trying to kill it.

Molly vs James’ Misaki

This game was intense, Misaki rolled up and killed two of my belles on turn 1. Oh shit. Misaki and 2 Jorogumo were in the middle of my crew at the start of turn 2. I managed to Paralyze Misaki and a Jorogumo so the rest of my crew could scramble around trying to damage control, it was very difficult to get models near the stash markers because most of my models spent the majority of the game engaged by Jorogumo. Misaki scares the shit out of me.At the end of turn 3 Misaki had very nearly killed Molly, I was surprised that she managed to survive a full round against Misaki, 2 wounds left to her name. I managed to win the initiative on turn 4 and Molly responded in kind and attacked her, I flipped a red joker for my attack on the last attack and thought I would easily paralyze Misaki so that Molly would live to see turn 5 and go about her business. I was confident, yes, it’s a straight flip, I’m going to cheat in this 12 and paralyze her. Then I had a second of premonition – I’m going to black joker this flip, I fucking know it. And then I did. I flipped the black joker. This is when Molly copped a bisento to the face and died. Bad things happen.  Meanwhile Philip and the Nanny and my Dead doxy managed to score claim jump for me a few times and they eventually got close enough the stash markers to net me some points. Sybelle also tried to get near the stash markers on turn 5 but got cut in half by Misaki for her troubles. I won this game 4-7 if I remember correctly.

Thanks to all of my opponents for the games, you were all a pleasure to face.

I displayed my Brewmaster crew for the painting competition and managed to win best painted for this event, I recieved a mystery box which contained an alt Kaeris model, I’ve been considering Kaeris as second Arcanist master to compliment Marcus for quite some time, so I feel like this is the universe making the decision for me – I will be playing Kaeris in the future.

As far as other masters go I finally ordered Reva, the shop I order my models from says they have her in stock so I ordered her. Whether or not it was actually meant to be a pre-order and had been listed wrong I can’t be sure. Whether I get Reva next week or in 4 weeks doesn’t really matter, I’m super keen. After getting a good look at Reva’s model (as she was beating up Molly) I’ve decided that her scale isn’t really an issue, she’s a small girl on a small horse. The horse is also a zombie/supernatural, I can suspend my disbelief enough to believe that it can carry her and Vincent.

I’m also writing a guide on Molly, I’ve been playing her for a litle over a year now and I’m sure I can write a decent guide on how to play her. I might turn it in to a video or a podcast of some sort because I think it’s a much better medium than text for guides. I already have a spirit Molly guide all ready to go, it’s been complete for 6 months, but I think spirit Molly is rubbish compared to horror, so I don’t even want to publish it.

The inevitable burn out + everything else

Truth be told, I’ve been a little burnt out with Malifaux lately so I took a bit of a step back and went easy on the hobby over the last month. I still did stuff though..

Between commission work and my own collection I have painted ~80 models so far this year and I have played 22 games of Malifaux. I have read countless blogs, watched battle reports, listened to countless podcasts and talked to other people about the game pretty nonstop for the last 18 months. It’s excellent, there is a lot of quality content being created by the Malifaux community and it’s truly endless.

Too much of anything can be overwhelming.

In the last 30 days I have painted 3 of my own models and played 0 games! and I’m cool with that, it was a much needed change of pace and I feel refreshed and ready to get back in to the game.

As for painting, I’ve painted Karina, Amelia Bathory and a plastic rogue necromancy.

I painted up Karina because she’s a model I just didn’t want to paint, I got sick of seeing her on my painting table, so I painted her so I don’t have to look at her anymore. She’s done now, not my best work but it will do.

I’ve been eyeing the plastic rogue necromancy for a while, I really like the plastic version so I caved in and bought it. I’ve had the metal version for a long time but rarely used it because I think it’s ugly and I don’t enjoy using models I think are ugly. I painted it with bright greens and yellows, because I like the artwork and because I wanted to paint something bright.

Bathory was a lot of fun to paint and was the model that got me back in to the groove of painting. I put a fair amount of thought in to her colour scheme; her dress is red because I couldn’t let a model with the name Bathory NOT have the colour of blood on her somewhere. I went with a warm skin tone instead of the pale colour depicted in the artwork because her sultry appearance suits it. All of these ideas combined, I hope she will look like a bastion of youth and health in a sea of undead.

I’ve had my Brewmaster crew completed for a while, yet just forgot to post about it. I also magnetised all of their bases and have the whole crew and their cards in box the size of a small lunchbox, it’s so easy to transport this crew now.

Taking it easy also gave me plenty of time to reflect on what I want out of the game, namely how many masters I really need.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that I just have more masters than I have time to actually play, I’ve decided that I would rather just have a few to play rather than too many. I’m trying to limit it to just the Resser faction and Marcus. Marcus is definitely here to stay because he is one of my favourite crews to play and offers a great change of pace from Ressers when I get sick of playing them. Brewmaster will stick around too, unless I find that I don’t enjoy him.

I have played my Dreamer crew twice in the past 9 months and it dawned on me that I just don’t enjoy his game play. Thematically his crew is fantastic but I already have 3 other summoners that I enjoy playing much more. So I sold him, I’ve been considering it for 6 months so it wasn’t a rash decision. The funds from his crew will probably be used to get Reva when she actually releases.

I’m organising my own tournament, MollyFaux. Progress has been pretty slow but I’m a the point where I just need to find a venue and set a date. I’ve never ran a tournament before but it should be fun, my motivation is to run an event as a way to give back to the great community I am a part of.

Speaking of tournament’s I have one coming up on the 30th of this month, I’ll probably do a write up on it because tournament reports are one of my favourite things to blog about.

And now I will ramble about a bunch of other things I have been up to, because this is my blog and I’ll write about whatever I want.

I saw this fantastic piece of art in a local pub near where I live, the shit eating grin on the jester’s face is pretty great so I thought I would share it with the world.

I’m back to university in a couple of months after putting it on hold for a year while I got my shit together, it’s starting to become a reality that I’m going to have very little time to work on the hobby and that I really want to finish off the last of my ressers soon. I have very little space where I’m living and I’m going to need the space on my desk for books and computers so it’s looking like the hobby stuff is going to have to get put away for a while. The blog will probably get put on hiatus as well for a while because I wont really have much to write about. The dream is to have all of my ressers painted so that when I do have free time, I can use them to play games of Malifaux. Previously when I was studying I used to play Malifaux once per week with some friends and it was the perfect escape and way to wind down after a brutal week of programming classes (and life in general). Speaking of which, I should really write some code so I’m not so rusty when my lecturers actually expect me to create functional software…

I’ve played some Magic the Gathering this month for the first time in about 5 years, I’ve been itching to play again for a while so I just did. What do you do when you have an itch? You scratch it. As much as I love Malifaux the rules could definitely be a little tighter, MTG offers a more concise ruleset and is game I can play that doesn’t require as much of a time commitment as Malifaux to actually play a game. I’m not sure as to what capacity I will get back in to MTG at this stage but at the moment EDH is looking like a lot of fun and I’ll probably adjust my last standard deck and give it a run in modern this time around. If anyone’s curious I play mostly black and green – take from that what you will.

So at the rate I’ve been going the next blog post should appear sometime between July and Feb 2018.

Cheers.