Elemental my Dear Arun – Round 1 – Raid the Vaults
So here it is! My first tournament game of Malifaux.
I was matched up against Cadmus Breakfast, a name I’ve seen around the discords
for a little while, playing Arcanists. As mentioned, I’m playing Bayou. The
strategy was Raid the Vaults (one I’ve played in person, hooray!) on flank
deployment and the scheme pool was:
Let them Bleed, Take Prisoner, Protected Territory, Ensnare, Information
Overload.
My pre-game thought process was as follows.
I wanted to play Ophelia. She’s my favourite master and if there’s any strategy
she can perform on it is Raid the Vaults. She’s probably the sturdiest crew in
Bayou and this map is relatively open, lots of good sightlines for the guns.
Ophelia2 can also shore up one of the big weaknesses in the standard crew – using Raiding Operation to potentially turn an 8 in your hand into draw 3 (if you’ve completed the necessary setup). Or drop scheme markers. Or do a bit of healing. I like all those things a lot and the flexibility helps respond to the situation as the game unfolds rather than putting all my eggs in the ‘shoot them and hope that’s enough’ basket.
With that in mind I started thinking about what I would actually want in the crew and what schemes I could go for.
Let them Bleed – It’s possible, Kin have a lot of options for reaching out and touching people and it isn’t hard for Ophelia to put out a lot of ping damage on anyone standing near her.
Take Prisoner – This one seems really complicated if you’re trying to score both points. The first is easy but I don’t like the idea of trying to keep something on my table half. Then again the theme of the list is moving things.
Protected Territory – Since we’re advancing along two flanks anyway this one seems reasonable if I have enough board coverage.
Ensnare – If I take Sly Six Shots with his False Claim ability (drop two scheme markers, remove a scheme marker in the end phase) this might be a good call. Ophelia can also set up to drop a lot of scheme markers at range.
Information Overload – This needs a lot of scheme markers, feels like it could be difficult with Kin.
In terms of the crew, I know that Arcanists get an upgrade which lets their models use soulstones (Soulstone Cache). That and relatively easy and good armour access when Bayou doesn’t have great anti-armour options made it feel like relying on killing everyone and sorting out scoring later was a risky proposition. Instead, I decided to look at models that can move the opposing crew around so I can hopefully bully them off the vaults, score my points and deny theirs.
What I came up with was:
Joyriding (Bayou)
Size: 50 - Pool: 5
Leader:
Ophelia LaCroix, Overloaded
Totem(s):
Young LaCroix
Young LaCroix 2
Young LaCroix 3
Hires:
Squish and Squash
Rami LaCroix
Sammy LaCroix
Bo Peep
Lucky Emissary
Beau Fishbocker
My plan here was to split up the force into three teams. Ophelia, 2 Young
Lacroix, Sammy and Squish and Squash would head to the left and down towards
the centre. Bo Peep, the Lucky Emissary and Beau would head down the right-hand
flank and curve towards the centre. Rami and the remaining Young could stay
near home base to protect my home point and shower the opponent with Clean-Up
Duty. If I have a juicy crow in hand, I might even get lucky and be able to
drop a bunch of hazardous markers and injured over their crew turn 1 – Sniper +
attacks that don’t require LoS are wild.
There are also some other considerations here.
Squish and Squash has gotten some pretty harsh judgement
from the internet but in this case I really like that she can charge and heal
my own models whilst pushing them back into position. The push attack may also
be useful for bumping the opponent off points but she can also hold another
upgrade to fling out burning or similar and use her bonus to jump back to
safety if I position things right. 7 health, incidental shielded and
potentially useful attacks or additional damage reduction from the upgrades seems
okay on paper for 6 points.
With Ophelia and Squish doing healing for that team and Bo and Beau providing
healing for the other, that felt like a pretty good set of heals to keep
everyone standing.
The other choice I had to make was between the Lucky Emissary and Uncle Bogg.
Bogg does a hell of a lot and Laugh Off does seem valuable in this scenario,
but the Emissary is a lot more mobile – the long and uninterrupted stretches on
the map made it look very possible to use Steamroller to get onto the opponent’s
back point quickly, with a 9 health armour 2 defense 6 min3 piece. Also, whilst
Bogg can move opponents, he doesn’t deal any damage at all whilst doing so. The
Bowled Over trigger on the Emissary is less reliable, but I suspect if I focus
too heavily on just moving everything around, they are going to be able to
out-attrition me. Especially as Bo Peep’s healing is based on doing at least a
little damage.
Still, before my opponent had declared their crew that was the main question I
was asking myself – do I need Bogg or the Emissary more. If they bring a marker
crew, that’ll be an easy question to answer, otherwise…
Confirming my leader, my opponent had locked in Sandeep. That changes things a
bit!
Assuming Sandeep2, I know he puts out a lot of ping damage, markers (especially
pyre markers) and shielded for his crew, and his totem means he can probably be
where he wants to be to start doing that right away. This poses a few
challenges. Aetheric Control gets around Flinch. I’m also not going to be able
to keep the Young LaCroix alive if he wants them dead – most likely they are
going to help with the unpack and little else, if even that. If he kills the
one giving Rami upgrades, Rami’s plan falls apart completely. Troublesome!
I spent a lot of time pondering whether to keep Bo Peep or whether to take her
out too and try to find a way to fit in Brin to help with card quality for the expected shockwaves. I don’t love Brin without minions
to get the most out of his options, though, and Kin do not have great minions.
Originally, I was going to take Pere on the thought that he could use Blow it
to Hell to remove the markers and Blast Resistance would help him survive.
However, asking for thoughts on the Rage Quit Wire discord (thanks Edek and
Quickitt!) pointed out that 1) Pyre markers are not destructible so Blow it to
Hell won’t work and 2) It is trivially easy for the Four Winds Golem to drop
Pere in the middle of my crew and blow him up. So, bullet dodged.
Instead, I decided to take Raphael to play into the ‘run them off the points’ plan, take Squish and Squash out completely and try to run with 5 hired models, an 8 soulstone cache, and 12 Cups of Coffee on Ophelia1 rather than taking Ophelia2.
My thinking here was that the Young LaCroix are likely to die very quickly to shockwaves and Raiding Operation is one of the main reasons I like Ophelia2 but it feels much less impressive when you’re using it to summon back Young LaCroix rather than draw cards, heal up or drop scheme markers. Vanilla Ophelia, though, can operate much more independently and focus down most single targets through sheer weight of attacks and ping damage. She also has condition removal which might be relevant.
I do lose some of the ‘move people around’ theme, but… they also can’t score if they are dead, so. Maybe that’ll work out? 12 Cups of Coffee also grants a way to get focus if she winds up near scheme markers and, importantly, a way to turn off Sandeep or the Four Wind Golem’s bonus actions if she can get close to them. In an ideal world I’d have Sly to help Ophelia get double focused turn 1, but I just don’t trust Sly not to die too fast here.
Ultimately the final list wound up looking like this:
Move! Move! Move! (Bayou)
Size: 50 - Pool: 8
Leader:
Ophelia LaCroix
Twelve Cups of Coffee
Totem(s):
Young LaCroix
Young LaCroix 2
Young LaCroix 3
Hires:
Sammy LaCroix
Lucky Emissary
Bo Peep
Beau Fishbocker
Raphael LaCroix
Cadmus Breakfast brought:
Say the Line Bart (Arcanists)
Size: 50 - Pool: 5
Leader:
Sandeep Desai, Font Of Magic
Totem(s):
Banasuva
Hires:
Kandara
Arun Rajput
Four Winds Golem
Soulstone Cache
Ice Gamin
Ice Gamin 2
Cassandra Felton
That was all the theory anyway, and as an inexperienced player I will say I
really appreciated that I had a good, long time to consider what I wanted to do
with my crew. I probably built a half dozen options before settling on this –
not a luxury I would have had in a real-world scenario. It felt cheeky asking
for feedback on my plan, but equally the fact that I would completely have
misplayed Pere and how the Emissary interacts with Pyre markers shows I needed
the help! They also didn’t just straight up tell me what to take; just pointed
out where my list was an active liability and wasn’t going to do what I thought
it would.
Scheme-wise, Let Them Bleed felt like a good pick. Really
none of the remaining options seemed super easy, but Take Prisoner on the
(assumed) Four Winds Golem was brought up as a possible option as it'd probably try and push into my side of the board anyway so... sure, why not!
How it actually played out…?
It uh. Did not go entirely according to plan. Partly because I almost immediately forgot the plan.
The first few moves were the Young LaCroix – one successfully brought Ophelia to the edge of the deployment zone, the other two failed to make themselves heard and knowing the shockwaves were coming I didn’t want to cheat cards to bring Sammy and Raphael forward. Then the shockwaves did indeed come – three dropped on Ophelia and her escort. That lil’ kid managed to pass two duels against pyre markers and only failed against the scrap, living to fight another day. Ophelia failed against one pyre marker, succeeded against the other and I cheated to keep her from being stunned.
At which point I activated her, went forward and – messed up my attacks. She should’ve had the trash cannon, she had the tar bomb and the hooch igniter, and those were both out of range. Whoops. So, the high mask I cheated in didn’t help, and the second shot flipped the black joker meaning that Sandeep ended up with only two damage on him, which he then immediately healed.
I do want to say my opponent very kindly said I could take back the cheat when we realised that the upgrades were out of range but really the mistake had already been made by that point, more cards had been flipped and as frustrating as it was, it was also entirely my mistake.
The second team did as I planned, moving down the right-hand side of the board and positioning to come in and help. Sandeep’s entire crew ended up in the lower middle, the Ice Gamin became Wind Gamin, and at the end of the round the Four Winds Golem put a bit of damage into Beau and Bo with pouncing strike and up we go but nothing had died. The big issue I was left with was that the entire crew had bubbled up around the FWG and Sammy/Raphael were now far from the fight.
Turn two was where I made a critical error that probably secured me the points I did make.
With Ophelia having bounced I was rattled and rather than run her in and keep going after Sandeep I decided to have her move on to threaten his home point in the hopes of forcing him to split the bubble up a bit to deal with her. She dropped a With My Eyes Closed on the way out (an action I had never really thought about using before, but which did help keep the Young Lacroix around her alive a turn longer) but that was it.
However, this essentially gave Sandeep free rein to do his thing, and I did not appreciate just how much that was going to hurt. Ophelia had Twelve Cups specifically to try and turn off his bonus action and potentially trade. I still had most of my stones, she’s still very tough to take out, I should’ve been bold and gone all-in on killing him.
I did not and wow, it turns out Sandeep2 is a lot more than just three to five shockwaves a turn. Beau was overextended and got taken out easily, Kandara and Arun kept a good flow of tomes and rams going into his hand, a wind gamin made it all the way over to my home point and when the dust settled, we had a badly hurt Bo Peep, a somewhat damaged Lucky Emissary, and any damage I had inflicted was healed up. Whew. I did score my strat point but Let Them Bleed was starting to look less and less likely and I couldn’t even get anything in to engage the Four Winds Golem let alone do it away from the crew it was providing an aura for. In retrospect, I probably should have thought about that. Cadmus Breakfast got strat, revealed Protected Territory and Let Them Bleed as poor Raphael and the Emissary burned.
Turn three the losses started to stack up. Bo joined Beau in death, the Young LaCroix shuffled off this mortal coil, and I still couldn’t put any meaningful damage through that wasn’t getting healed up right away. Again, I misplayed Ophelia; she should’ve been trying to focus down the Four Winds Golem and spread some injured around with Clean-Up Duty and in the end, I think I’d left it too late by this point. We both scored strategy, but it was looking clear to me at this point that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it back. I wasn’t stopping the crew from getting the Student of All actions off at all, the amount of extra value that Sandeep brought in was just wild.
Turn four I conceded, and we talked things through. Let Them Bleed was certainly not going to happen, but it was likely I’d get my third strategy point as my opponent had no real desire to shift Ophelia off that home point and Sammy could run back to another. He also thought it was likely that the Four Winds Golem would end the game in my deployment, so he kindly agreed to give me that point – I’m not convinced I could have forced that to be the case, but I wasn’t going to argue. I also agreed that at this point, there really wasn’t a way for me to deny anything.
Final Score: 8-4 (Loss)
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. My opponent was excellent, very patient as I fumbled my way through some rules interactions at a couple of points and had some little fights with Vassal, and it was a joy to watch Sandeep2 do his thing. I learned a lot, and I think I’d approach the matchup in a very different way if I were playing it again.
One of the suggestions my opponent had was that his deployment indicated he was going to bubble up tight, and I could likely have traded Let Them Bleed for Protected Territory and threatened that much more easily. As mentioned, I also think I should’ve been more willing to risk losing Ophelia in exchange for Sandeep. Because of the way the game played out, I was largely operating without Ophelia’s support anyway, and whilst she was the reason I secured two of my points it would’ve been a very different game if Sandeep wasn’t able to do everything he wanted for three full turns. Would that have been enough to cinch a win? I don’t know! But it would’ve been less one-sided.
So that’s round one down! Let’s see if I can do any better in round two…
HONK!
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