#ToMB2 Tale of Malifaux Bloggers - Month 0

So here’s the secret project that I’m going to be running this year. I’m going to be taking part in a “Tale of” series for a brand new game I’m jumping into Malifaux! I used to love as a kid reading the Tale of Gamers series in the old White Dwarfs, reading about the team slowly but surely building and buying their armies month by month and watching them grow was a really good way of keeping your spending down while also making a fully playable army in due course.

Now I’m completely new to Malifaux and towards the end of the year I was getting an itch to play it. The game is rather cheap to get into, the crews are slowly getting some stunning looking plastic crews and best of all for me there’s no dice involved so I can’t be failing on dice-rolling that much! The game uses a normal deck of cards including two jokers. 

 I’ve already got the rulebook and expansion book and bought the Children of December plastic crew box with the Rasputina master. I’ve never played a game with her and more wanted her to paint up which I’ve almost finished. I think with this ToMB2 it’ll be the ideal to learn the game with a small crew to start off with and then build upwards from there as I get confident. Being a complete newbie I’ll also be able to give my thoughts on the rules as well as revealing what I’ve been learning as I play more games. It may sound ambitious but my main goal for this year is to go to a Malifaux tournament towards the end of the year with my new crew and feel confident enough with the rules that I should be able to play without having to worry too much.

So what are the rules of this then? Well it’s going to be ran by Ben at the Malibros Blog, everyone starts with £40 in month one to buy their crew box set and then £15 every subsequent month to build up your crew, obviously if you want to save some left over money from month to month to purchase more than your monthly allowance then that’s fine. At the end of every month you need to have your minis purchased that month built and painted or face a forfeit, and you’ve got to show your progress throughout (games, tactics, painting, etc). It’ll run initially for four months but if there’s enough interest it’ll be extended to six months.

So now the important bit….Which crew will I pick?

Well being completely new to this I’ve got a plethora of choice, as mentioned the new plastic crews feature some stunning models and my weak wargamer self has switched between so many different ones in the last week trying to find the right one. Here are the options I’m toying between; I’ve given my initial impressions of each master from reading the books. If I’ve got anything wrong about them apologies!

Pandora - Neverborn

We all know bad stuff happens when you open Pandora’s box and no that isn’t a euphemism.  She controls the enemy and manipulates them rather than going out and out damage dealer. In her crew box you get the two creepiest models to find in a skirmish game, Candy and Baby Kade. These two models easily optimise the vast styles of factions that are available in Malifaux. You also get the rather impressive looking Poltergeist and three Sorrows to fill out the crew. Seven models to start isn’t too bad. The lure of getting the much loved Teddy model included in the crew is definitely a pull for this crew but for a complete newbie to the game I think all of Pandora’s tricks and skills might be a little overwhelming to learn with.

Sheamus – Resurrectionists

How much cooler can you get than a master that’s a mix of Jack the Ripper and The Mad Hatter and is backed up by Zombie Hookers and a copycat midget? It looks like Sheamus has one of the most deadly ranged weapons in the game managing to cause 8 damage on a severe damage flip before disappearing the other side of the table as long as he’s out of sight. The fact his Rotten Belles can use a skill called Lure to move an opponent’s model towards them so Sheamus doesn’t even need to get up close and in harm’s way is an awesome skill to have. I could see a lot of synergy with this crew and not many skills/rules to learn the game with; but until the additions in month two the first month I can see the crew being very one dimensional. It’s a possibility and I know for a fact if I don’t do Sheamus for #ToMB2 I’ll be picking him up in the future. 

Perdita Ortega – Guild

The Latigo Posse, a very much ranged based crew to start with but with Perdita meaning to be very forgiving for new players to learn. I love the mix of Mexican and Cowboy attire and this box features my personal favourite model in Nino, who seems to be carrying a gatling gun but sets up as a sniper anywhere on the table! The rest of the family is just as potent and have little clever skills to utilise with each other. A lot of synergy possible with this crew and I think I’d be much more comfortable learning the game with ranged guys first before having a predominantly focussed melee army.

Von Schill – Outcasts

Another ranged themed crew full of mercenaries of the Freikorps. Von Schill himself is pretty adapt at both ranged and melee combat, he has decent movement and buffs his surrounding Freikorps with the A Legend to Live Up To ability. Included in the box are two normal Freikorpsmann troops, a Freikorps Librarian who is tasked at healing his comrades in battle, a Freikorps Trapper who is a traditional sniper model and finally my favourite model in the box set the Freikorps Specialist who wields a big beefy flamethrower! Like the Perdita crew box, this is more of a ranged box set and has potential additions in the following months of either ranged or melee focussed mercenaries. Compared to the other crews though the Freikorps are not really the most interesting models in the game. When you compare all the weird and wonderful creations for the Arcanists, Ressurectionists and the like; having normal mercenary troops seems a bit meh.

Time to deliberate until Sunday when I’m going to be putting in my order for my crew. I have a feeling who I’m going to be choosing but you never know I might go completely different. Tale of Malifaux Bloggers Month 1 begins on Sunday!

The full rules for Tale of Malifaux Bloggers 2 #ToMB2 can be found here.

Bolt Action AAR – Point Defence – Soviets vs British 1,000pts

I finally made it down the club for the first time in ages in the New Year, December saw me have plans every single weekend so it was a no-go. I played Jim again at 1,000pts of Bolt Action. I used my tried and tested Soviet list and Jim ran his Brits. We played Point Defence and like normal I was defending (every time we’ve played this mission I’ve played defender and HATE preliminary bombardments!). I used my two Zis-3 guns to defend either corner of the board; the best thing about these is while they’re medium AT guns they can also be utilised as light howitzers so are effective on both armour and infantry. I packed two objectives filled with troops and left my T34, another squad and some of the team weapons to come on in reserve.

Jim’s Sherman entered the battle and immediately took out one of the Zis-3s looking across the board from him. Thankfully though I retaliated with the T34 and managed to immobilise and then destroy the vehicle. Jim had a SAS truck that he had been banging on about all week filled with a huge SAS squad. Unfortunately for him he outflanked onto the road on the left, the truck was blown up and pinned the squad in position and my flamethrower team came on the same edge and burnt the poor Brit specialists into a crisp. 

My Green squad was dug into some rocks on the left hand side and stayed there all game holding the objective.  For a free inexperienced squad they have been my MVP every game I’ve played with them. They’re expendable men who seem to refuse to die no matter how many shots they take, and for inexperienced guys they’re shooting is pretty top notch. For once my dice rolls for everything were coming up trumps; even my mortar was ranging in quickly and wiping squads out left, right and centre.

As Jim was using his force to try and get the two objectives I was defending, I ran my third squad onto the non-defended objective and kept them in cover to hold all three objectives without much threat. By turn 6 we rolled and there would be no turn 7, to be fair I think Jim’s minimal remaining men wouldn’t have made it across the table anyway. Was a well fought match and pleased I picked up the victory. Will have to try a different Soviet list at some point and maybe pick up some different models, really wanting to try the Soviet Engineer Squad with Body armour, can only be killed on a 6+ and veterans with a flamethrower…yes please!

New Year New Post, Part 2

So what else have I done in the past three months? Well The End Times has kicked in full swing in the Warhammer world and for some reason the idea of a Chaos Legions army really sounded like a good idea, finding a decent deal on Wargaming Trading page on Facebook I found myself with quite a rather large collection of unmade current edition Chaos and Beastmen figures!

Just some of the Chaos that I Got!

I don’t have a clue what came over me, most of the models are still unbuilt, I did make an attempt of a Beastmen BSB and Beastlord and the unit of Chaos Warriors I built and started to paint as Khorne Warriors I’ve been a little underwhelmed with. I know Chaos Warrior armies can be low numbers and really competitive but I’m honestly not sure whether I can see myself to build, paint and play another Fantasy army at the moment. I’ve got so many Beastmen models to build it’s a daunting task, I’ve gone from one horde army of the Vampire Counts to another Horde army of Beastmen. I think realistically thinking I’ll probably resell all of this and hopefully someone else will have more luck than I did!

One of my resolutions for 2015 is not to impulse buy, last year I had a rather bad habit of jumping from army to army, something which I think a lot of wargamers do, but I’d buy enough for way over the normal points limit and then struggle to complete it and sell it on. This year I want to make a concentrated effort on the armies I own and get them finished and fully painted/based.

The armies are as followed;

Warhammer Fantasy

Ogre Kingdoms – Finish painting my first Fantasy army when I got back into the army. I’d say I’m about 75% of the way through this army but still need to paint a few of the bigger things. I do have an unbuilt Thundertusk which needs building at some point too.

Vampire Counts – As mentioned I’ve made a good start but still have a lot to do for these. Obviously being a horde-style army each unit is 40 strong so it’s a big task for each unit. Though if they’re as simple as the Zombies to paint, I feel I could get through the army quite quickly.

Empire - I’m not too sure what to do with my Empire. I’ve got a pretty big force built and mainly primed but whenever I pick them up I cannot for the life of me get motivated to paint them up. It also doesn’t help whenever I play them on the table they’re boring to play. It may well be the case that I sell these rather than trying to paint them up.

Bolt Action

German Waffen SS – This was a Christmas present and spent the Christmas week building it all. Now with the weather being it’s normal British weather I’m finding it pretty hard to get anything primed. I unfortunately don’t have a garage or anything so have to go outside in the shed so I really need a decent mild temperature. As mentioned in Part 1 this is more of a modelling and painting project so I’m not too fussed if this takes me longer to get these painted and sorted.

Warhammer 40K

Necrons – I’ve got about 90% of everything painted. I’ve got one unit primed and halfway painted and then a couple of units still to build. I’ve not really played much 40K recently so it’s not a major rush to get these finished but with the new Necron Codex coming out I’d like to get these finished so I can properly learn 40K in the near-distant future.

Space Marines – This was actually meant to be my winter project and wanted to get everything built and primed over the Christmas period. That obviously didn’t happen with so many other things happening! I really want to make a effort to get these done as they’re going to be pretty simple to paint and build. I know I’ve got a weekend in March where the fiancé is going away with work friends all weekend so I might very well just spend the whole weekend building and priming it all.

Infinity

PanO – Everything is primed and I just need to paint the Military Orders up. Unfortunately not many people are playing the game at the club and that’s after the Version 3 rules which came out recently. These shouldn’t take too long to get done so I might just need a weekend or two to focus and get them done.

Morats – Again these are all primed and half painted but need finishing off. I think my motivation for them have really died down now no one plays at the club but I think I need to make a focused pledge soon to get them done and relearn Infinity. But it’s not a major rush to get them done at the moment.

So yeah quite a few projects, and I’ve also got one bigger one that I’ll be mentioning in a blog post this week. Something that I’m looking forward to being a part of and it’s for a brand new system that I’ve not learnt yet. It’ll probably get me visiting a couple of different North East clubs to play the game but I’m already really looking forward to jumping into this and learning to play it.

New Year New Post, Part 1

A very Happy New Year! Can't believe it's been October the last time I posted an update in here. Though to be fair the past three months has been crazily busy. Work went mental for the Christmas period, I went on holiday to Paris, I got engaged over Christmas. And we're in the process of selling the house to move onto a bigger place. Yeah pretty busy end to 2014!

Hobby-wise though it's been hit and miss. For Christmas my fiance (still feels wierd saying it), got me a brand new German Waffen SS army for Bolt Action. I added to the box set and picked up some Artizan Design winter Germans. My aim for this army is to create a Battle of the Bulge Winter themed army, a bit like my failed Flames of War army. I want to create woodland style basing for these including a MMG lying up against dead cattle and the Nebelwerfer to be based in a bunker with trees on the back. This is more going to be a painting and modelling army first with the aim of playing with these second. I want to take my time on the camo patterns and basing rather than rushing them through like my Russians and Japanese just to get them tabletop ready.

The Vampire Counts have been progressing nicely but have stalled over the Christmas period. I’ve got the base for the Terrorgheist done and I’m so pleased with it. The 40 Zombies we’re actually pretty simple to do. With the basecoat spray of the Army Painter Necrotic Flesh it was a case of giving the skin a wash of green, adding some different colours for the pieces of clothing and then adding Blood for the Blood God to the mouths and hands. Basing was also pretty simple and overall the 40 Zombies in one movement tray look pretty impressive.

The Terrorgheist itself is coming along, with the winter themed army (what is it with Winter themed armies that I like?) I thought the best bet for the wings was to do it in an icy blue/green colour and then have a warm bone colour for the skeleton to offset the colours. It’s still a work in progress but I’m happy with how it’s looking at the moment. I’m really pleased with my Vampire Lord conversion though. He was a finecast Empire Warrior Priest who I got as a double for Christmas last year, quick snip of the head and a ghoul head and a new sword arm makes him a unique looking Vampire Lord. Still need to base him but overall really pleased with how he came out.

I did get one game of Fantasy in with the Vampire Counts at a new wargame shop in Ashington called War and Piece. I faced off against Jim’s High Elves but unfortunately lost. The Vampire Lord on foot was an absolute beast though and chopped through a whole unit of horses including the BSB and High Elf Lord. Though my deployment failed me again, as my Ghouls were almost cut off due to the houses in the middle and took a turn too much to get into the battle. I think with it being so long since my last Fantasy game it was a bit of rust.