The Big Bayou Bash

 

 

Browsing the Wyrd forums for the first time in a while following the errata announcement, I noticed that there was an event coming up in my old stomping grounds this weekend! The Big Bayou Bash. Well, I’ve been playing Bayou, so it felt like fate. Time to participate in my first Malifaux tournament face to face!

It was great to return to return to a place where I used to regularly compete in wargaming events. That was five years, three game systems, two cities and one whole gender ago, so a lot had changed.

I’d finished up my final MWS game the previous evening (more on that soon) and excited to play more Ophelia. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to take many (or any) wins – Malifaux is a very complex game and even after a dozen or so games I’m still very much finding my feet – but I went in with the goal of having three fun games and at least making my opponents work for their points, which for the most part I think I managed.

I was also the only Bayou player at the Big Bayou Bash so instant moral victory there.

I will admit, the more I looked at these pools and strategies the less I thought Ophelia was a great choice into any of them, but I’m stubborn. I have a fun time with Ophelia – especially Ophelia2 – I really enjoy her upgrade minigame and handing out guns to an army of horrible little gremlins. As I know her mechanics the best out of any of my crews, I went in thinking I would play her unless I ran into a Bayou mirror match (the potential loss of The Bigger They Are on a lot of targets is painful) in which case I would play Mah. Probably Mah2 because I just finished getting her to tabletop ready standard so why not?

As mentioned above though, I was the only Bayou player so three more games of Ophelia!

Game 1, plant explosives. I went back and forth on whether to bring Uncle Bogg into this, as the last hurrah of Old Bogg, and in the end I decided he was too good not to. I was up against Viktorias2, so I expected this to be very killy. I was not disappointed.

My opponent brought:

Viks2 + Servant of Dark Powers
Student of Conflict (Totem Edition)
Bishop
Ella Mae Chesterfield
Ronin
Scavenger
Barbaros + Wanted Criminal

I brought

Ophelia2 + Inferiority Complex
Young Lacroix x3
Lacroix Raider x2
Bo Peep
Beau Fishbocker
Sammy LaCroix
Uncle Bogg + 12 Cups

Viks moved up early with their battle tempo and servant move. With bulletproof I was worried about wasting AP shooting them directly but Ella Mae was also nearby so after Bo Peep did the usual open (run through Sammy to give her glowy, fast, draw a card and give most of the team a three inch push) we dropped a Clean-up Duty on Ella which gave both injured and put hazardous markers on both of them.

Then Viks killed the two LaCroix raiders with severe 6 damage I figured they might be able to claim one but losing both was painful. She ended engaged with Ophelia and Sammy with her hazardous aura up having proven that when it comes to turn 1 murder, flank mercenary can definitely deliver the goods.

Bogg moved up towards Bishop and the Student of Conflict laden down with two bombs and cheerfully trailing scheme markers. And then Barbaros dove halfway across the table and red jokered a damage flip into Sammy to kill her.

Oh.

At this point the name of the game was damage mitigation. Beau diverted from backing up Bogg to get Ophelia out of engagement with Lead the Way, and Ophelia began advancing with her own bomb and set Barbaros on fire with the Hooch Igniter, catching Viks in the blast to set them both on fire and hurt her with Barbaros’ black blood too.

There wasn’t honestly much I could do at that point to stop the explosives going down. I simply lacked bodies who could stand and fight other than Ophelia herself. Bogg was committed to scoring my points. I had also taken Hold Up Their Forces thinking that Sammy, the Raiders and Bo Peep could work together to get that – losing three out of four of those models turn one hurt. In the end, though, after a lot of very tactical play, a lot of staggering and stunning the Viks, a LOT of fire and a largely unopposed Uncle Bogg, I was able to score 2 points of Plant Explosive and 2 of Protected Territory.

My opponent scored all 4 strategy points, also scored 2 Protected Territory, and was able to keep the centre clear for Sweating Bullets’ end point, though a charging Bo Peep was able to sweep Ophelia back out of the middle to deny the first point. Hogwash Slosh is for everyone, not just enemies!

The point of learning here was that despite the strategy, I should’ve deployed well back and tried to buy time to kill everything around the Viks. Moving up as I did let her claim a lot of skulls that needn’t have been presented for her. However, after that mistake had been made, I was pretty happy with my comeback play even if it wasn’t ultimately enough to turn things around.

Game two was vs Greg Packman’s McCabe2. He brought:

McCabe2
Luna
Corpse Curator
Desper LaRaux
Host Ducat
Botanist + Flush With Cash
Huckster + Flush With Cash
Winston Finnegan

I brought:

Ophelia2 + Inferiority Complex
Young LaCroix x3
LaCroix Raider x3
Sammy LaCroix
Bo Peep
Beau Fishbocker
Sly “Six Shots”

This game was heavily influenced by the terrain. A large river bisected the entire table with only a couple of bridges to traverse it. My thinking was that if I could just hold them up for the first couple of turns I could try and have my guns put in some work and then run around and past to start scoring points.

Turn one I was able to draw a bead onto Luna and kill her early with a Sammy + Glowy Token + Crit Strike Trash Cannon, which I felt good about! McCabe wound up in the middle of the river so I was able to pressure him a little with Ophelia, but turns 2 onward the necessity to body block meant I wound up with a lot of models in the -1 auras anyway and the usual advantage of everyone being able to be stat 6 was neutered.

The Timeworn Blade was less worrisome than I feared – probably because I managed to kill Luna early which slowed down the upgrade game – but even without that, the McCabe crew was able to land a lot more hits and by the middle of turn 4 I was out of stones, 2/3 raiders were dead, Sammy was dead, Bo and Beau were dead and I hadn’t sealed the deal on anything, my damage was a lot more diffuse.

I had managed to deny the strategy to my opponent on turn 2 and burn enough scheme markers he couldn’t score Ensnare (Firecracker Flingshot and Ophelia’s Target Practice were key). We talked through the final round and agreed that it would be difficult for him to score the final point of Let Them Bleed but he probably would score Ensnare. Unfortunately, the only thing I was able to secure myself was the first point of Ensnare, so the final score was 5-1.

 

Game Three!

I remained on the same board and was very tempted to crack and bring Mah who I felt could deal with that and the strategy much better. But, that wasn’t the deal I’d made with myself. I was here to try out three more games of Ophelia so that was what I was going to do!

This was against Charlie Polley on Tiri1. He brought:

Tiri
Oro Boro
The Iron Matron
The First Light
Kett
Ancient Construct
Intrepid Effigy + Effigy of Fate
Parson + Flush With Cash

I brought:

Ophelia2 + Inferiority Complex
Young LaCroix x3
LaCroix Raiders x3
Merris LaCroix
Sammy LaCroix
Bo Peep
Beau Fishbocker

I had Bo Peep run across the bridge and get in position to take a strategy point the next round, Merris and a Raider advanced on a flank more or less unopposed to do the same to two more, and the rest of the team poured long range fire into Oro Boro to try and take out the little scheme runner turn 1. We were able to kill it once but couldn’t quite land enough hits to go through the demise too.

What I was not expecting was the Iron Matron to be moved into position and then thrown into engagement with Bo Peep! At that point I panicked and used Ophelia’s turn 1 activation to try and trick shot her out of engagement, but that was never going to work because of the river they were both in. I then doubled down on the mistake by burning a lot of stones to keep her alive, not realising that Charlie hadn’t used any pass tokens so easily took initiative turn 2 and killed her anyway.

From there, The Iron Matron tore things up with the Ancient Construct as backup. Merris and her Raider friend were able to score me 2 strat points and we were able to hold on for one turn, but at the top of turn 3 the Iron Matron killed Beau, Sammy and a Raider before they could activate, and Ophelia just had to run off unsupported onto scheming duty. Charlie had unchallenged dominance over the strategy markers at that stage and we talked out the final turns to an agreed 6-5.

Tiri really impressed me.I admit, I was too tired by this point to follow everything that was happening, but it felt like the Matron and the Construct made for a very durable front line and the rest of the crew was able to feed in support whilst scoring points. The lack of armour piercing in my list may have contributed to my difficulty dealing with the pair of constructs and I think in retrospect Rami would've been a good call here not just for that but also to drop some 18" hooch igniter shots into the whole crew where it felt like they were bubbling up a lot for added effects as they rolled forward in the early turns. Definitely something I'll keep in mind in future.

Overall, the event was a fantastic time. Going into it, I was concerned that at 2 hours 15 minutes per game I would have trouble getting through them – most of my MWS games have run longer than that and whilst I haven’t timed myself in IRL play I thought physically moving the tokens around would slow things significantly. In fact, whilst we didn’t play out to the very last activation in any of my games, we did reach a point in late round 4-5 where the outcomes seemed clear regardless of cards.

My opponents were all great. We had a lot of laughs, and I learned a lot about my crew – which I’ll be talking through in another blog post soon!

I’d like to thank the tournament organiser Alex Walsh for pulling all this together. Trying to organise 16 players across a relatively small space wasn’t easy, but the terrain looked good to me and we were kept to schedule pretty well!

Alas, the photos I took from the event didn’t come out very well so I’ll have to work on that in future, and also recording the games better because a lot of game 3 is a bit of a blur – 3 games of Malifaux back to back is a lot right now! – but hopefully all of that will improve in time.

I do think that I’m ready for a break from Kin, and possibly from the Bayou in general for a little while. I was originally going to learn on Resurrectionists after all! My Schtook crew is almost fully painted, just a few more Students to go, and I have the rest of Redchapel turning up to join the Miss Feasance I got my hands on at the start of the year.

The next event I’m likely to go to is Tea and Clampetts on the 19^th October as that’s quite local. I’ll have to confirm nearer the time. Here’s hoping though!

In summary final scores were:

Plant Explosives: 7-4 Loss
Raid the Vaults: 5-1 Loss
Cloak and Dagger: 6-5 Loss

Final ranking: 15th out of 16 players.

HONK!