Malifaux Battle Report – Pandora and McMourning vs Ramos and Viktorias

On Saturday we had an awesome game of Malifaux.

James and I introduced Steve and Ian to the game and wanted to try out a four master brawl, so we opted for a 35 soulstone showdown.

We couldn’t find any official rules for playing Malifaux with more than two players so decided to play a mixed faction team brawl with each team sharing a single fate deck and hand. We opted to exclude the faction specific schemes for balance reasons and it all seemed to work perfectly well.

James had been working hard putting together some excellent papercraft terrain, representing a Malifaux dockside. It was a superb setup, as you can see:

Crew Lists and Deployment

Here’s how the crews lined up. First, the “good” guys, played by James and Ian:

Ramos, Arcanist Master (+2 cache, annotated “Ra” in turn maps below)

Brass Arachnid (2ss, “BA”)

Joss (9ss, “Jo”)

3 x Steampunk Arachnids (9 ss, “SA”)

Viktorias, Outcast Masters (+0 cache, “V1” and “V2”)

Taelor (8ss, “Ta”)

Ronin (5ss, “Ro”)

Leaving a 6 soulstone cache (including +2 for taking one less scheme).

Strategy = Turf War
Schemes = Breakthrough (announced); Grudge (Rotten Belle, hidden)

Then the baddies, marshalled by Steve and me:

Dr Douglas McMourning, Resurrectionist Master (+6 cache, “Mc”)

Rotten Belle (4ss, “RB”)

3 x Canine Remains (6ss, “CR”)

Nurse (5ss, “Nu”)

Pandora, Neverborn Master (+5 cache, “Pa”)

Baby Kade (6ss, “BK”)

Candy (8ss, “Ca”)

2 x Sorrows (6ss, “So”)

Leaving 7 soulstone cache (after McMourning converted three to body parts)

Strategy = Deliver a message
Schemes = Framed for Murder (Rotten Belle, hidden); Kill Protegee (Taelor*, hidden); Stake a Claim (announced)

We flipped for a corners deployment, with Pandora and McMourning in bottom left corner; Ramos and Viktorias top left.

Game on.

Turn 1 – Crews Maneouver into Position

As usual, the early turns involved the various crews maneouvering into position.

Ramos sent his Steampunk Arachnids scuttling through the centre of town, with Joss scouting ahead.

The Viktorias and their Outcasts swept around by the clocktower to the north.

Pandora and her Neverborn stalked along the water’s edge to the south, while McMourning’s Resurrectionists walked toward the centre, the nurse instructing the zombie dog pack to sniff out any usable fresh corpses for the Doctor.

Each of the rotting pooches was able to fetch a corpse for their master.

Turns 2 & 3 – First Contact

By turn three things had really started to kick off.

The Outcasts, led by Bounty Hunter Viktoria, had continued their flanking advance across the northern edge of the town. The Rotten Belle used her seductive ways to lure Viktoria close enough for McMourning to strike.

The good doctor realised this was his opportunity to take first blood. He began by using his Resurrectionist magic to summon up a Flesh Construct (“FC”), before scalpel slinging his way into melee range and delivering the message he had prepared for the opposing master.

Ramos, seeing the doctor out in the open, commanded his arachnids to swarm together and scuttle menacingly toward the enemy.

Meanwhile, by the docks, Pandora abandoned her advance and opted instead to defend the south western edge of town from the encroaching Outcasts; realising there was something there they seemed to have their sights on.

The creepy Neverborn children – Baby Kade and Candy – continued to toddle and skip their way respectively along the dockside.

Having delivered his message, McMourning added a bloody punctuation by spitefully dissecting Bounty Hunter Viktoria before the rest of her Outcast crew could reach her.

This left the doctor exposed to the Arachnid Swarm though and the Outcast mercenary Taelor exacted swift and brutal revenge with her massive hammer.

Stood atop the steps to the clocktower, she proceeded to lay the smackdown on both the wounded McMourning and his Flesh Construct, in short order.

Ouch.

Turn 4 – Neverborn Show their Teeth

Over in the Eastern side of town, the two Neverborn woes decided to show themselves – Candy mysteriously apearing through a solid wall to catch Joss unaware. Her piercing wail did little real damage to him though.

Baby Kade waddled out of the alleyway toward Ramos, appearing harmless, though the seasoned Arcanist master knew better than to trust the Neverborn tricks.

Pandora opened the box to Joss’s fears and caused him to butcher himself with his own axes by inducing Self Loathing. Smiling cruelly, she faded from memory back into the shadows of the alleyway.

Back on the western side of the town square, the Resurrectionist nurse began administering dangerous cocktails of drugs to the zombie dog pack – lethally increasing their ferocity ready to attack the Outcasts.

Meanwile, Pandora’s manifestations of sorrow drifted eerily toward the action.

Turn 5 – Outcasts Clean House

Unbeknownst to the hapless Rotten Belle she had been framed for murder and was to be sacrificed to one of the opposing masters. All she knew was that she must advance on Viktoria and proceeded to head around the westernmost alleyway – assuming the master would sweep around that way.

Instead, the Outcast Sword Mistress and her remaining mercenaries, assisted by Ramos’s Arachnid Swarm, set about butchering the dogs before the nurse’s administrations could take effect. Before long the canine remains were dealt with; all too easily.

Ramos, directing operations from the east, focussed his attentions on Candy – bathing her in electrical fire and sending out Electrical Creations to self destruct in lethal arcs of lightning.

Kade showed his true colours and charged at the Brass Arachnid with his butcher’s knife gleaming visciously. His surprise strike was surprisingly ineffectual however.

It would appear that Lady Fate had turned her back on the Resurrectionists.

Not entirely, however. Neverborn Master Pandora proved why she is so feared by the denizens of Malifaux, sweeping out from her hiding spot and causing Taelor to die screaming in fear – the effects of her emotional trauma multiplied by the nearby Sorrows.

Again, Pandora faded back into the shadows after her handiwork was completed – the Outcast protegee killed.

Turn 6 – Trying to Stake a Claim

Kade, sensing he was no match for the experienced Arcanist master, attempted to retreat to a position where he could stake a claim on the building which was so important to the Neverborn plans.

Ramos would not allow this and swiftly constructed another electrical creation to detonate itself against the scary infant, destroying him.

The nurse, her dog pack butchered before her, opted to run north away from trouble but also perhaps to stake the claim Kade had failed to do earlier. The Outcast Ronin was in a position to intercept though and the nurse was gunned down as she ran.

The Ronin was soon to fall victim herself to a Pandora assassination strike and the Neverborn Master yet again shot out from cover to deal her traumatic death, fading from memory back to the safety of the alley.

The Belle, having shambled back around to face Viktoria, lured the Outcast master away from the deployment zone and, using a seductive striptease, attempted to distract her away from moving on the objective. The Master, burning a soulstone, was able to resist the Belle’s wiles and repaid her with a brutal beheading (inflicting a massive 14 damage with her paired katanas).

The Belle, though, had been successfully framed for murder.

The end of this brutal encounter was near and Ramos strode across the town square, summoning up another Steampunk Arachnid to secure the advance position in this Turf War.

Time was up. The encounter was not to run another turn.

The Dust Settles

Ramos, with the help of the Viktorias, had managed to evict the Neverborn and Resurrectionist allies from Arcanist territory. But Pandora had been able to slip away, content that most of their objectives had been achieved and her enemies were kept away from their destination.

Final score tally worked out as follows:

Resurrectionsist & Neverborn – 6VP
Deliver a Message (within first 4 turns, 4VP)
Kill Protegee (1VP)
Framed for Murder (1VP)
Stake a Claim (failed, 0VP)

Arcanists & Outcasts – 3VP
Turf War (partial, 2VP)
Grudge (1VP)
Breakthrough (failed, 0VP)

*oops, this should have been Joss

~ by Max Von Deadlock on February 7, 2011.