Warmonger Malifaux tournament

Last weekend I jumped in the car and headed up to NYC for a Warmongers tournament. I enjoy catching games with the Warmonger crew when I am in town and try to make it to a couple tournaments up there through the year. Despite a nightmare of traffic problems in the morning, Rochester Henchman Dave and I made it to the Complete Strategist an hour late and jumped straight into our first game.

The tournament was a 30ss, fixed faction tournament. The TO, Weakland, set up the event with a couple changes. First, the strategies for the 3 round were shared fixed strategies as follows:

• Round 1 - Shared Treasure Hunt
• Round 2 - Shared Supply Wagon
• Round 3 - Shared Reconnoiter

Then he made another change I found interesting. He restricted the schemes to only the basic schemes, not allowing Faction specific or Master specific schemes. This put everyone on a fairly even footing, as many people believe that the faction related schemes are too easy in many cases.

Heading up to the event, I had decided to bring my Neverborn with me. This is my third (I think, third or fourth) event with the Warmongers and I had always ended up playing Guild in the past. Weakland, who is also thier henchman, had given me a bit of harassment in the past because it is rumored I am a decent Neverborn player. I have also experienced the lack of Neverborn in their community before, and that guild was a pretty heavy turn-out with their players. 

Round 1 - Shared Treasure Hunt vs Luke

 Round 1 I was matched up vs Luke, who had declared Neverborn. We had a terraclips style table set-up with a couple houses on both sides of the board. Knowing the strategy was shared Treasure Hunt, I was already pretty much fixed on what I was bringing. It was the perfect mission for the old lady and Collodi's puppet show. My list was as follows:

Zoraida
Collodi
4x Marrionettes
Stitched Together
Mysterious Effigy
Wicked Doll

Luke ended up tossing out Zoraida as well, with the following crew:

Zoraida
Lelu
Lilitu
Stitched
2x Slurids

This was the first round of the tournament, so I figured I would be able to knock out some of the tougher schemes in the game. I grabbed Exterminate Nightmares, figuring Collodi could take out the Twins and a stitched. I also grabbed Breakthrough, as Zoraida is good as swooping to the other side of the board when necessary. With those grabbed, we were on our way.

The start of the game went pretty much to plan. Luke activated his slurids and shifted them around a bit. Collodi made his dolls fast and swooped to the middle of the board to grab the treasure. His marionettes then handed it off and headed back to my deployment zone. By the end of turn 2 things were moving up the table, Zoraida was at mid-board, and my Stitched was holding the treasure in my deployment zone. Not a bad start to the game. The mid-turns of the game turned against me, as Collodi was not able to pull through the kills on the twins before Lelu and the Stitched tore Collodi apart. After that it became a race with Zoraida running for the deployment zone and trying to obey the twins to kill each-other. At the end of the game, I had broken his hold-out but we were tied on the number of models in his deployment zone. That left me with 4 points for Treasure Hunt, and nothing for my schemes. On the other side, I had broken his schemes, so was still ahead overall. That first win moved me into round 2 on a moderate differential but a win overall.

Round 2 - Shared Supply Wagon vs Weakland

Due to an off number of players in the tournament, Weakland had to jump in and play. I was actually happy about this, as I had missed my chance to face him at Adepticon and this was a great chance for us to play a game. Weakland was playing Outcasts and I saw him drop Taelor on the table with other models, so I expected I would be facing the Viktorias, which is one of his go-to crews. I dug out Lilith to start with, planning on putting together a Lilith/Nekima grow list to take down the Supply Wagon. I had a moment of second guessing and put Lilith away to replace her with Zoraida for the second game in a row. I looked at his list and grabbed Steal Relic and Kill Grudge no the Convict Gunslinger. My list ended up being:

Zoraida
Nekima
2x Desperate Mercenaries
3x Terror Tots
Wicked Doll

To my surprise, Weakland did not take the Vik's and rolled out with Von Schill leading his crew. His list was:

Von Schill
Taelor
Convict Gunslinger
Freikorps Librarian
Freikorpmann
Freikorps Trapper

This game went my way from turn 1. The board was set-up with lots of area terrain and Hight 4 objects (clumps of bushes/etc) and a couple flat topped steep hills. The Trapper went first and took 2 shots at one of my desperate Mercenaries, aiming to slow down my grow cycle in turn 1. He missed one shot and the other only did weak damage, failing to kill the Merc. The trapper then repositioned to be hidden from sight. This started the dance, which ended turn 1 with 2 Young and a Mature on the table and ready to go. Weaklands crew had repositioned forward to brace for the incoming onslaught. The next couple turns saw my crew systematically tear apart his crew, then Nekima unleashed her anger on his supply wagon. Come turn 5, only Von Schill was left on his side. Schill had been playing keep-away with Zoraida and her wicked doll all game, running then taking a pot-shot at her, then resisting the attempts by the doll to steal his relic. After 10 attempts to steal the relic, that little wicked doll ended up ripping Schill's mustache right off his face. In return, Schill thwumped the doll and held me at 1 point on that scheme. When the dust cleared, I ended up with 7 points to his 0. This put me at the top table for the final round of the event.

Round 3 - Shared Reconnoiter vs George

Remember when I said that there were very few Neverborn playing in the Warmongers club? Apparently they have become much more popular, as I found myself facing another Neverborn player for the second time during the day. Shared Reconnoiter is one of my least liked strategies, as it typically comes down to trying to kill off my opponent and keep a couple things on the board. I had been playing Zoraida all day, but she is typically a good choice vs other Neverborn crews. With that said, I had wanted to get Pandora out at some point during the day and this was my last chance. With that in mind, I grabbed Pandora and found I was facing a Dreamer crew. George told me he had only been playing about 2 months, which impressed me since he was on the top table. Knowing that I scaled back my Pandora crew a bit, putting the Arcane Effigy away and bringing out the puking snake instead. I ggeabbed Kill Protege on Teddy and Bodyguard for Pandora and was ready to go to town. The board was a load of multi-story 40K building terrain, and our lists were as follows:

Pandora
Puking Snake
Insidious Madness
Lelu
Lilitu
Doppelganger

and his list was

Dreamer
Day Dream
Stitched Together
Lelu
Lilitu
Teddy

George was not familiar with the Doppelganger, Pandora, or the snake so I explained what they do and how they worked real quick then we got down to playing. The first couple turns worked out well, with me being able to kill off Lelu and get him to pull out all his nightmares onto the table. He eliminated my insidious madness early, but was having trouble breaking through Pandora and her crew. Come turn 3 and 4 I made a mistake and got comfortable and cocky that I was playing a new player and had the game "in the bag". Take some advice from me, don't ever do this. During turn 4 Chompy hit the board and George held some important cards to break through Pandora's defenses and ended up killing her off. This left me in a precarious position of having Lelu, Lilitu, and a Doppelganger on the board facing Teddy and LCB. The poor Doppelganger was stuck in melee with both Teddy and LCB, I got initiative and threw Lelu into a charge to try and take out Teddy (who was on 4 wounds remaining). Lelu missed all his attacks. With the bond activation, Lilitu repositioned a bit and black-jokered her lure to pull Lelu out of combat. LCB activated and proceeded to tear apart Lelu, leaving me with the Doppelganger. I flipped well and passed both her terrifying flips then contemplated how to pull the game out. I smiled as I realized I could still do this. First I had the doppelganger mimic LCB's claws then his Flay trigger.  This put me in reach of Teddy, which she attacked twice. On the second attack I was able to cheat in a mask and get the flay off, dealing 4 wounds to Teddy and grabbing my Kill Protege. This left me with 2 points and it came down to an initiative flip. Thanks to the Doppelganger, I got initiative and had pulled 5 masks into my hand on the draw. I started with Lilitu getting safely up onto a higher level of a building then lured the doppelganger to me using a series of double-take lures, pulling the doppelganger out of danger. Chompy moved across the board but could not get close enough to kill off the doppelganger. In return, the Doppelganger healed up her earlier damage and ran for his side of the board, hiding behind a lot of terrain. Turn 6 ended with LCB killing off Lilitu and grabbing 1 table quarter, while I grabbed a different quarter with the unreachable Doppelganger. The game ended in a 3/1 win to me.

That netted me 1st place at the tournament and I grabbed the last of the Warmongers Fate Decks from their last print run. Overall a very fun day!