Awakening Dead - 50SS Malifaux Tournament

Master and Faction locked in, Samuel our Henchman organized a 50 soulstone tournament for us at Card Geeks. Designed to help the newer players who had smaller hiring pools, the locked Master and Faction leveled the playing field. With a showing of 12 players, this is the best turnout yet and we are really pumped that the group is growing steadily. The following are pictures and my account of how the games went from my angle. 

I locked in Leveticus (Outcasts) but I am allowed to tweak my crew from game to game. To be fair, 80% of my Crew remained constant. 

1st Game - Patrick playing Jack Daw of Outcasts

For this game I brought the following crew:

• Leveticus + Desolate Soul
• Rusty Alyce + Desolate Soul
• 2 Waifs
• Friekorps Sapper
• Friekorps Librarian
• Ashes & Dust
• Johan

Strategy: Extraction

Schemes:

1. Claim Jump
2. Accusation
3. Leave Your Mark (selected)
4. Search the Ruins (selected)
5. Mark for Death

Arriving at Malifaux Central, the Outcasts take the field

Jack Daw under Patrick's guidance was going to be the hardest pick for the day for me. I have had a few games with him prior to this and I couldn't quite figure out how to pick apart his crew. The first mistake was probably my deployment. Putting Ashes & Dust on the left most behind the building was probably the thing that sealed the game for me.

Defeng plays off against Eugene

Turn 2

Sacrificing Ashes and Dust, I used it to move Levi up the mid field only to have him die to Jack Daw. While I could revive Levi using the Waif, Patrick's close play forced my hand and I made a few silly moves so to keep the Strategy from going down stream. The other misplay was dropping an early scheme marker with Johan which gave Patrick the heads up that I was probably doing Search the Ruins.

Turn 3

At the 2.5 hour mark, I came in losing 3-8. I had lost Levi twice in this game and between my big mistakes and good plays by Pat, it was a good game.

Game 2 - Sam Kan and Shenlong of Ten Thunders

For this game I switched out my crew to include Hans and a Winged Plague.

Leveticus + Desolate Soul

Rusty Alyce + Desolate Soul

2 Waifs

Friekorps Sapper

Hans

Winged Plague

Ashes & Dust

Again, my Crew was fairly similar to the previous one except I wanted to try something a little different.

Strategy: Interference
Schemes:

1. Claim Jump
2. Accusation (selected)
3. Frame for Murder
4. Set Up
5. A Quick Murder (selected)

Turn 1

From the get-go I knew that Sam didn't really understand Shenlong (he kinda told me that). While Shenlong is one of the most versatile Masters in Ten Thunders, he is also not an easy Master to learn. You need to invest time and learn by reading up on his timings and upgrades. Throughout this game, I spent a bit of time coaching Sam on the finer print on Shenlong's card. I do hope that he enjoyed the game and learned a bit more about his Master.

Did I also mention he has a really beautiful Crew painted up.

Turn 1

Deploying the Sapper on elevated terrain overseeing half the table sure gave me an advantage. While I had originally picked Sensei Yu from his list to be my Quick Murder target (9SS), Sam didn't bring his Izamu card (10SS) which meant that I was under the wrong impression that I had to kill off Sensei Yu instead of Izamu.

Turn 2

I was plinking off a number of wounds from his crew, letting Levi come in the finish them up so I can proc Desolate Warping and create an Abomination from his units.

Turn 3

Amazingly enough, the High River Monks Managed to take out my Ashes & Dust but not before I scored 2 points off of them for Accusation (Turn 2 and 3).

End game - 7-0 win to me. 

Game 3 - XY with Tara of Outcasts
Looks like the Outcasts were out enmasse!

I took the following:

Leveticus + Desolate Soul

Rusty Alyce + Desolate Soul

2 Waifs

Friekorps Sapper

2 Winged Plague

Ashes & Dust

Johan

Strategy: Guard the Stash

Schemes:

1. Claim Jump
2. Dig Their Graves
3. Leave Your Mark
4. Hidden Trap
5. Tail Em

This game was rather interesting as we had a lot of elevation due to the new terrain that Eugene got in time for the tournament. They are also very beautiful out of the box! Having split the board into 2, the guys actually mentioned that I could deploy from the side of the table rather than opposite of XY. Since I had a fair few shooters, I took the change.

Turn 1

Split the force into two groups since Tara and her Void crew would be able to just dance around the walls, allowing me to redeploy Levi where he was needed. Much to my chagrin however, I came to realise that he can be attacked while he is Buried, allowing XY to take between 5-7 buried strikes at me, ensuring that Levi will die! This forced me to play totally differently. I ended up placing him on the wall, giving me good LOS to majority of the board.

With Channel and Desolate Soul, I was able to snipe off a few of his Void Wretches giving me Abominations in return. However that turned out to be pretty lousy as it gave him Scheme Points from Dig Their Graves.

Turn 2

However, since I could not Bury this entire game (or risk being eaten to death by his multitude of buried units), I played Levi quite defensive. Alyce and the Sapper both supported my CA and between both, I managed to weaken majority of his smaller Wretches to low enough wounds before capping them off with Ashes & Dust. Props also go to XY for taking over my Ashes forcing it to attack Johan. Thankfully though, Johan managed to survive the attack and kept me in the game.

Turn 3

Once I got control back, I managed to send my Winged Plague to go score Leave Your Mark. I was rather surprised that XY didn't send his Wretch to take care of my Winged Plague on the flank. However, I did hold back by letting Alyce go last. If XY sent a Wretch up the flank, I would make short work if it.

End game - 6-2, victory to me

By the time the day finished, most of us were tired but content. These were the results:

First place - Eugene Ng
Second place - Keith Maki Lee
Third place - Patrick Poh
Painting raffle - Defu
Lucky draws - Austin Leong, Foo XiangYing

Next up will be another Henchman Hardcore in August organised by Table & Dice!