Peace Was Never an Option

In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading to Salute 2025, and as is tradition this is when I stop and reconsider what my hobby goals for the year are going to be. At the start of the year I said to myself that I was going to commit to Bayou and finish up the crews I don’t yet own. But! Malifaux is a game with more variety between factions (and even crews within factions) than any other game I’ve played. On a long enough timeline, I suspect I’m going to wind up with everything sooner or later. That is, unfortunately, how my brain works. Way back in August 2024, before I had started in the MWS at all, I noted that I thought it was weird there was so little Arcanist representation, because every time I hear people talk about Arcanists they talk about how solid they are. That has remained true ever since, both in the MWS and according to the Bag of Tools data across the UK as well. People just aren’t playing Arcanists and I don’t get it! Witness has had a few nerfs, but I still think that...

  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. Playing around with Ophelia in advance I found I preferred the title version (Overloaded) to the standard. Ophelia1 is extremely good at putting out a lot of damage in a small area, but the totems become a bit of a liability threatening to give up activation control without much in return. In Ophelia2...