Something new.... Swamp things

Yes, I know I should be finishing one of my many, many work in progress warbands but... well the muse made me do it.

Group shot of the family of swamp things

Thse two are Wyrd miniatures Waldergeits (forest spirits) 

This guy is converted from a wyrd miniatures metal bad JuJu mire golem 

Keep forgetting to paint that bottle.... :(

 And this is the old GW Albion fenbeast, I was hoping to get another one of these to convert but... well i'm REALLY not made of money and I missed the one that went for a reasonable price on eBay (sad face). I bought this one about 10 years ago in an LGS closing down sale in Horsham when I used to live there,.

Malifaux at my "local" club last night

So we took Malifaux (http://www.malifaux.com/) out for a spin at my "local" club up in Crawley (UK) for only the second time.

The First time I tried a demo game of it at the club (we got a Wyrd Henchman down from to show us how to play) I was frankly quite confused with all the little icons for the damage types (man with arms in the air, exploding man with arms in the air, man in brackets) etc. I have a quick play card, but it was all a bit much for me at the time.

Last night I used the Outcast LaCroix boxed set which I think is a little simpler in play style than Soomer tooth and allowed me to get my head around the core mechanics of the game more easily.

I personally think the card mechanic for the game is extremely well thought out, and allows for a more balanced game that is potentially less reliant on luck (or at least you know that if you've already used most of your high cards, you might want to play it safe for a while until you get to a re-shuffle!!, plus being able to cheat fate (swap a card in your hand for the one you just drew) is very handy.

Much like Warmachine, Malifaux runs with simple mechanics and a plethora of special rules (but unlike Warmachine in Malifaux you pretty much will have 5-8 models tops (unless you run gremlin or vermin spam)).

All the models have a 4 faced card, one side is a nice picture of a painted model, then you have one with all the stats on it and 2 others listing all the special rules. On top of that models have triggers that are triggered by some of the suits on the cards, and or the suits that the model has on its stat profile.

We have a couple of the wyrd streets of Malifaux terrain boxes at the club (www.crawleymtg.co.uk). so we had some excellent looking terrain to play on (though the Mordheim buildings on top could have been in better condition lol).

To start with I’ll state that we got armour all wrong, and that kind of ruined the "fun" of the game for me (we didn't realise that 1 damage always happens no matter the armour level) which is a shame, but I believe I now have a pretty good grasp of the core mechanics, which should allow me now to try and get to grips with all of the model's special rules!

I won’t go into much detail on the game itself except to say that armour is a pain in the bottom, especially when your opponent keeps getting the card suit they need to buff it up! (I was playing against hoffman (pictured below)).

The Guardian is a pain in the bottom and the hunter's ability to drag things is also nasty. However, coming out of the game I believe I now understand how to use my Gremlin special forces and I belive I know what I should have done differently to "do a win" in the game last night.

So I've lived and learnt and the Lacroix will be looking for payback next time (hopefully with some paint on them!).

Cheers for reading :), if you have any comments or advice, please drop me a note below

Cheers