The Houston GT: A Recap by an (exceptionally) invasive Aussie

I did it ma! I'm an invasive species!

Ahem. Let me rewind a little. As those who follow this blog would know, I attended the New Zealand Nationals back in August. And in the aftermath of that event, feeling fired up and a bit trigger happy, I was listening to an episode of the Rage Quit Wire podcast that mentioned the biggest event in North America was coming up. I'd heard of the Houston GT in years past, and been really jealous of some of the cool loot attendees scored (particularly last year's custom fate deck), so one lunch break I idly checked to see how expensive the flights were to Houston that time of year and the results were unexpectedly affordable.

I didn't end up getting those flights, which was a mistake since they turned out to be a better sale than the one I actually bought, but it did plant the idea and before long I had my tickets booked and was shipping out with my Outcast collection in tow.

After battling my way across several connections and doing my best to convince US immigration that, no really, I actually did spend a silly amount of money to fly to their country to play a game for a few days, I landed in Houston on the Thursday before the tournament. The Friday was lovely, together with other early arrivals I played a relaxed series of three games including a big Mexican dinner with a bunch of folks attending the event. This whole day felt worth the trip on its own, putting faces to names I'd been talking to online for years and picking up a bunch of cool swag for the tournament. Including, for that matter, this cool mosaic-style fate deck that I'd been so envious of the year before! The TO, Doug, gave me a leftover one from the previous year as a thank you for travelling so far.

And the next morning, Saturday the 12th of October for those keeping score, the tournament kicked off.

Game 1

Unfortunately, I failed to take as many pictures as I did of the New Zealand event, so these recaps will be a little bit shorter than my previous tournament report. I'm going to blame jet lag for that one, as well as all the errors I made in play throughout this event. Starting with this game, which was probably my toughest game of the tournament right off the bat. I won't lie, when I saw I was matched into Ten Thunders as my first opponent I did groan, I'd had a bad night's sleep and it was a bit of an odd pool so I knew I was in for a tough time right off the bat.

The pool in question was Corner Deployment, Plant Explosives with a scheme pool of Hold Up Their Forces, Sweating Bullets, Protected Territory, In Your Face, and Let Them Bleed, which I felt really encouraged a crew of cheap, mobile models. That pushed me away from Tara (too easy for the opponent to score In Your Face), and I was considering Leveticus originally but Ten Thunders have too much tech for him. So I opted for Von Schill, figuring my models would be too tough to easily give up In Your Face and I could use I've Got Your Back and other movement tricks to deny Hold Up Their Forces and Sweating Bullets.

Unfortunately, I made my big mistake pretty early when I gave two explosives to the Tunnel Rats. I never normally do that, they're good at dropping bombs but they also die if anything touches them so it's a risky play only worth doing if you understand your opponent's threat ranges. And my opponent was playing Asami1, who I had never faced before. My practice has all been into Asami2, and Oni generally are still very new for me.

Long story short, the Tunnel Rats died early on while I was dithering and trying to find somewhere safe on the table for them to go, and cost me two of my bombs. That, combined with Asami having ways to move my models to get at the markers they're guarding and even Interact while engaged, meant I ended up capped at just 2 strategy points. All of my planning around the scheme pool paid off though, where my opponent got just a single scheme point all game (the end point of Protected Territory), and I almost got all of mine (failing to get the reveal point of Protected Territory, turns out Asami has some pretty awesome access to marker removal). That left us at a 5-5 tie (with my opponent having access to 7 or so bombs, getting all the strategy points wasn't too demanding for him).

Starting off the event with a tie was a bit of a bummer, but at least the table was gorgeous. 

Pictured: My opponent and I losing our dreams of first place in Dreamer's nightmare realm.

And the game itself was great, super tight with my brain on overdrive the whole time trying to deny every single possible scheme point every single turn knowing that doing so was the only way to stay in the game.

Game 2

For this round I was facing Dixon from Rage Quit Wire, one of the folks I'd been happy to meet in person for the first time. He was running Titania, which is a Master I have faced many times so it was a bit of a comfort zone game. This round was a Standard Deployment Stuff the Ballots game with a lot of scheme marker schemes. I opted for Tara, because the Scion is a real meanie on Stuff the Ballots with his ability to vote from the Void, and I figured he could also get me Deliver a Message easily enough while Tara went and scored Espionage.

And that was essentially what happened. The tempo of the game slipped away from me a little Turn 1 when Killjoy tossed his silly little chain at Aionus, hit with the 13 of Crows (stunning Aionus) and then getting the Red Joker on damage. That forced Aionus to spend basically the entire game cowering in the bottom-right corner of the table. He only really came out a bit on Turn 5. Luckily, I was able to wrest a bit of control back by having Tara go after the Mysterious Effigy with the Effigy of Fate upgrade. I find Tara (and the models she unburies) to be exceptionally effective at dealing with upgraded effigies before they become a problem. The big hinge point of the game where was when Tara had run past Titania to get behind her and her crew, and Titania had a choice. She could either go back to her own deployment to fight Tara, or stay where she was and try to kill 33. She opted for the latter, scoring her Death Beds and generally cementing control of the lower-left hand side of the table for her in the process, but it was a decision that made me breathe a sigh of relief. Any Interact heavy game where Tara remains unchallenged is one I can be pretty confident of winning.

And indeed, that was what planned out. I do think I played this game a little bit too conservatively, I think my brain was smoked a bit from the first game and I didn't put much pressure on Dixon or try to challenge him much around the table, but I was faster and had more scoring actions and eventually pulled together a 7-6 win (it could, perhaps, have been 8-6 with a bit more time, but this was the only round where I was getting close to clocking out).

She may sell sea shells by the sea shore, but no one mentioned the dinosaur bodyguard

Game 3

After two tight games with a high mental load, I was looking forward to this game. Wedge Deployment Raid the Vaults, a nice, braindead murder game. The scheme pool was absolutely packed with scheme marker schemes so my original plan was Parker2 and just having Mad Dog shoot everything in my opponent's deployment zone first activation of Turn 1, but the terrain didn't really facilitate that. I opted for Von Schill instead, and immediately winced in sympathy when I saw that my opponent had declared Pandora. Time to run the Ruthless, immune-to-Stunned Master into the Keyword that loves Terrifying, Manipulative, and Stunned...

It felt a little like this game was a foregone conclusion from the start, but it got worse. My opponent had hired two Mature Nephilim to get his crew up the table faster, and had made the mistake of deploying his models within 1" of the Matures. That led to a sequence where Von Schill (with Focus from an Engineer I believe) was able to walk up, give Arik Focus and himself a Rocket Launcher, and Blast the entire Pandora deployment zone... only to Black Joker. Which at least meant it was a game, though not much of one since the activation immediately after that involved Arik using the Focus and the same Rocket Launcher to do exactly the same thing, and with no Black Joker in my deck the result was that most of the Pandora crew was on half health a couple of activations into Turn 1.

It all went quite smoothly from there. I did struggle a little bit to kill some models as fast as I'd assumed I would after that opening, but we got there in the end.

The Pandora crew was mostly dead by the end of Turn 3, just leaving Delirium alive to Take Prisoner and I think Pandora herself was still rattling around somewhere. Still, the score was a decisive 7-1 this round, putting me at a 2-0-1 result for day one.

Interlude

There's a lot of awesome ancillary activities happening around the Houston Tournament, including a Henchman Hardcore tournament the night before and a Karaoke and Bonanza Brawl event the Saturday night. So after three hard-fought games of Malifaux, I decided to play some more! By this point in the day it was about 10am back home so I think I was waking up for the first time, and I had an absolute blast playing Bonanza Brawl for the first time.

For those not in the know, Bonanza Brawl has you pick a model of Cost 10 or less and pilot just that model in a 4, 5, or 6 player free for all. You get points for killing (and lose points for dying, but on the plus side your model respawns so dying doesn't put you out of the game), points for hurting undamaged models, points for getting loot, points for making scheme markers, and the loot... oh, the loot is cool. You can pull loot out of some strategy markers on the table and that loot makes your one model better and better. I played with Barbaros, and he kept picking up all these wild magical abilities before drawing the Hooded Rider's Great Sword and going to town. I won my first game, but I decided not to stick around for the rest of the event and go and get some sleep.

Barbaros bravely running to a corner of the table to secure his victory.

Game 4

Ten Thunders for the first game of the day again! I was a bit better rested this time around, but this time I was playing Tara on Flank Stuff the Ballots. That was a bit of a last minute decision, I'd originally planned to play Hamelin and I can't decide if I regret that last minute switch or not. Part of the problem is that this pool, while broadly good for Tara, did have In Your Face and that was a big part of the reason not to play her back in Game 1. My opponent, interestingly, opted to play an Ototo-led crew with just a ton of killing power from Samurai and Fuhatsu to the Lone Swordsmen and Yasunori. This game felt like it was defined a bit by my Black Joker on my side at least, as a Turn 2 attempt to kill his upgraded Effigy became really difficult when 33 Black Jokered a Focused shot on the Effigy, while Void Wretches ganging up on the Wp 3 Fuhatsu really struggled to land any hits. Ototo got into Talos early on and killed him for the reveal of In Your Face, but Yasunori changed tact and instead of going to the left flank to secure it, he came back to fight Tara. I was mostly able to avoid Tara taking too much damage, and having control of the left flank meant I didn't have a problem scoring, but I wasn't able to put much pressure on the Ototo crew in turn and they kept equal pace in scoring. 

It did feel like my game to lose though, I was dictating the pace of the game and before long had firm control of basically the whole board bar the centre. At the end of the game I needed to get Ototo out of my deployment zone to deny In Your Face, and had the 13 of Tomes for 33's Hole in the World trigger, but I needed to bury her with Aionus and unbury her closer (and with Fast) to make it all work and I hit the Black Joker on the bury attempt. With that option off the table, the game closed out to a 7-7 tie.

No pictures of this game at all I'm afraid, I completely forgot.

Game 5

At last, a round where I put Hamelin on the table. We were looking at Cloak and Dagger on Wedge deployment, which in my opinion is one of Hamelin's favouritest pools in this Gaining Grounds. I did start to think I had missed a memo though when I found myself up against a Hinamatsu led crew. Was Day 2 of Houston meant to be Henchmen-led crews only? I believe my opponent was trying to get the Iron Scorpius, which is what was driving that decision, but it was funny to get two such crews back-to-back.

This game was mostly a big, ugly brawl in the centre. I started to panic a little bit when Hinamatsu dove into Benny early on and a Red Joker top of Turn 2 meant that she was able to kill him. Ordinarily, not the end of the world, but it meant she revealed In Your Face and Benny had been my Deliver a Message model (figuring he was mobile enough and difficult enough to kill) so the early multiple point swing made me decide I had to put the entire opposing crew in the ground to be safe. Thankfully, I now had a ton of rats and the crew I was up against was lacking in AOEs, so the swarm did what the swarm did best.

Pride taking a bit of a breather after a hard couple of turns putting out sin

By the end of Turn 4 I think only Widow Weaver and the Hodgepodge Effigy were alive, and the latter was crowded by rats and drowning in scheme markers for Ensnare.

In solidarity for another Outcast, the decision was made to not kill the Effigy

In the end, this game came to a 6-2 win for Hamelin.

Game 6

Ok, four days, multiple flights, nine games of Malifaux and one Bonanza Brawl, all coming down to this. Looking at the rankings I could see that as long as the only undefeated player won his last game, I had a shot at the podium. The pool was Plant Explosives on Standard Deployment, and my opponent was Guild. I went with Tara, but made a concession for the pool (which required a fair few scheme markers) and the fact that Guild can hire models that can attack buried models and cut the Scion from my list in place of Hard Stop Herbert.

With the Guild's superior hitting power and the Dashel crew having a lot of table presence and mobility between multiple Mounted Guard and the Nightcrawler Network, I began to get really quite worried that this game would shape up to a draw. The first two turns developed in a way that broadly gave me control of the flanks (with some skirmishing) while Dashel was the undisputed master of the centre. That changed very rapidly though as I flipped a sequence of cards including most of my Severes and the Red Joker all in a row. With a carefully timed Time Warp I was able to have Tara get the Nothing Beast into the thick of things just in time for those cards to start coming out. The resulting carnage killed the Nightcrawler Network and an Executioner and gave me several bombs that hadn't yet been planted, and then Tara and 33 were able to pick up the bombs that were planted.

By the end of the game I had 9 of the 10 bombs either on my opponent's table side or on my models (many on models safely buried and tucked away). Aionus and Hard Stop Herbert on the left were able to secure my schemes fairly neatly, and my opponent had gone for Sweating Bullets which I was able to deny both points on quite comfortably with Tara. The result was an 8-3 win to the forces of Obliteration, a margin of victory that pushed me just above my round one opponent to claim the third spot on the podium!

Final Thoughts

While an exhausting whirlwind of a trip, I have absolutely no regrets about the money and time that went into this trip. I have never played so many games of Malifaux in so short a time frame. The energy of the Houston GT is incredible, with players of all skill levels coming together to have a good time. I felt truly welcomed and a huge shout out to Doug for running the event and for all the free goodies he showered on me. I hope to be able to go again in the future (though obviously with that requiring flights from Australia that is no guarantee, but I will try). The boards were awesome, the people were incredible, and the game, as always, is my favourite game to play. Thank you to all my opponents, you were a delight and it was lovely meeting all of you. 

Thanks for sticking with my journey this far, for anyone still reading. If you get the chance to play at the Houston GT, or at any similar big Malifaux event, I can't recommend it enough. Hope to see you across the table!