Assasinate!!!

I played a game of Malifaux last night against RPA and his Pandora band. It had been a while, so I was a bit shaky on the rules, but he has been playing a little recently, and helped me out. To be fair though, both of us are still learning our factions, so we played for fun and had a nice time but neither of us probably played optimal with our crew.

we played a 25 SS game on RPA's beautiful Wild West town terrain. To spice things up, we had a train rolling through the middle of the board that caused damage if people were hit by it, or thrown into it. It moved a random card length each turn. It was very cinematic and fun. We each deployed on table halves (3x3) with the train running down the middle. Our factions were:

His Crew:
Pandora

Baby Kade

Candy

3x Sorrows

My Crew

Perdita

Santiago

Nino

Excecutioner

I love Perdita, but have found she is much better with soulstones, so I have been leaving one extra character at home to pump those up. I took Santiago b/c he is always a beast in my games, and b/c I love, love, love the model. Nino is a great, long range threat, and with buildings he's very good to post on a roof. Finally, I don't think the Excecutionar was the best choice for this game, but he's my newest model, and has some paint on him, so I wanted to try him out.

We both drew the Assasinate Strategy, meaing we got 4 VP for wiping out the opposing crew, and 2 VP for leaving only Master's alive. For my schemes, I took body guard (+1 VP if alive at end, +2 if you declare it) on Perdita since I knew I'd want to keep her alive and she's so fast, she can boogy out of danger. I felt confident enough with her to declare this scheme. I also took bodyguard on Santiago b/c he can heal damage and b/c he's such a beast when he get's wounded, I thought maybe RPA would ignore him. In retrospect, I should have taken one of my bodyguards on Nino, since he hid on the roof all game. I didn't find out RPA's other scheme, but he did declare break through, which meant he had to get more of his models in my deployment zone than I had. He had me outnumber 6 models to 4, I knew he was counting on that to help him.

- to start the game, we both advanced towards each other. I got Nino forward on a roof, and put Perdita by the Exec while Santiago came up by himself. I opted to spread out a little, as he could dump his guys anywhere he wanted in my deployment zone and win. He linked his sorrows and crew, and advanced. Below you can see santiago pushing up, the neverborn on on the otherside of the tracks.

- next turn the train got in our way. I contemplated rushing perdita across the tracks, but I knew it would make her very vunerable, and so help back. I did try to "obey" candy in to the train, which worked, but failed to cause any damage. Nino could get a bead on a sorrow, and blew it to hell. Pandora saw throught he gap in the train to Santiago, and caused him to blast himself, and run away. Candy failed to cause the Excecutionar to "self Loath" himself. Below, you can see the crews moving towards each other. Santiago is about to run, and Candy has not yet emmerged from the General Store.

- Next turn saw major action. RPA probably got a bit too anxious, and used Candy's ability to "phase" through the train. When she failed to make people run, this opened her and her Sorrow up to a combined barrage from Nino, the Exec, and Perdita. It didnt' go well for her.

- In round four, the train passed far enough for Pandora to come around the back. The highlight of the game was her attempt to get the Executionar to run and panic 3 times, and to fail them all. This was absolute luck from me, as I drew high cards and RPA drew low ones. The Exectionar even charged her, but failed to do any damage. Later in the round, I popped Baby Kade and Perdita's sorrow, and RPA conceeded.

It was a fun game. I got some lucky cards at critical times, and that swung things. We both could have played better, but we are still learning. It also took to long, but that was 100% my fault, I am rereading the rules again this weekend. Great time though.