I tried a Lynch, and I liked it.

So I am, as ever, searching through the keywords trying to find something I truly vibe with as the yoot say.

 

I’m trying to find a keyword that I can solo for a bit.  Now the ridiculousness of that statement is 3 fold.

• That’s not really how the game is designed to be played. I firmly believe it’s part of Wyrd’s business model to make you want to play and therefore ultimately buy multiple keywords.  Cross keyword and cross faction models throughly support my opinion on this. But anyway.
• Soloing a keyword doesn’t require anything more that just playing that keyword over and over again… 
• I am notoriously bad at this sort of thing, but I’m going to give a whirl anyway.

Additionally I currently own six keywords that I’ve never put on the table, which is (I am sure you’ll agree) is completely ridiculous.

So after approaching Gentleman Jim Diceman for a game on stream we settled on…

I had some lovely conversations with Grogdog from Pack Mentality about list composition and piloting Syndicate. Not only did I come up with a solid list for this game I also started developing other lists playing around with geode hazardous spam which very much appeals to my play style. So not only was I excited about playing a brand new keyword I’d had some very useful chats with a respected competitive player and gained a new appreciation of list writing.

Buuuuuut

I really should try out the keywords I own first, and if I don’t like them sell them on. That would be the responsible nerds approach. So instead of Syndicate Vs Wizz bang we went with…

The first faction mirror match on the channel, which normally would be anathema to me but the magic of Gentleman Jim made this a fun narrative game as the respective leaders of Malifaux’s foremost casino and bath house fought for territory and influence within the 3 kingdoms.

Our scheme pool was: Cloak & Dagger in standard with Deliver a message, Sweating Bullets, Outflank, Power ritual and In You Face.

I’m not a big fan of interacting schemes in strategies that also require interactions, only so much ap to go around after all.  I’m also not a big fan of Outflank at all as it has both positional and scheme marker requirements, lastly I don’t like Power ritual unless it’s in corner or flank deployment as I don’t tend to play those super fast, interact crews so realistically that meant taking In Your Face and Sweating Bullets as I lack a don’t mind me or scheme marker projection that I prefer to utilise for Deliver a Message.

With that in mind, as much as I wanted to try out the new Yasunori, at 10ss they would have to be the model I got into Jim’s deployment for the 2nd vp of In Your Face. Instead I wanted to make sure that I had multiple models at the same cost as my highest cost model to build in some redundancy and I neither wanted to or had the stones to take another 10ss model as well. Knowing I was probably going to be taking Gweneth and Kitty (because Honeypot) I decided they were going to have to be my two most expensive models so couldn’t take anything more expensive than that.

With my opponent declaring Qi & Gong it seemed a pretty safe bet that I’d be seeing both Bill and Hinamatsu (because why wouldn’t you) and that I wasn’t going to have access to armour pen or irreducible damage that meant I needed sheer weight of Ap to bring these two down to be able to score In Your Face.  Illuminated are stat 6 min 3 beaters with terrifying and two ways of healing themselves. If we’re going to get in a fight I wanted lots of options for punching so I put two of them into my list. Hilariously neither of my illuminated took a single melee action against my opponent all game I think, but they did take a few swings at Huggy thanks to Youko “owning them” in fact they both ended up with huge amounts of distracted.  Thankfully scintillating cloud is a shockwave and caused absolute havoc as those clouds of brilliance hit 2-5 enemy models each time meaning a lot of card flips, and a lot of cheating which meant lots of brilliance and ping damage thanks to the Honeypot auras.

Looking at the map and our deployment;

I had the rare opportunity at being the aggressor.  I deployed my first grouping of models on the right hand side in such a way that I hoped Jim would deploy in the central section between the walls and the hazardous lava which is exactly what happened.  I wanted this for two reasons, so that Kitty could go be a floaty ghost down the bottom chasing after strat markers unmolested behind a large impassible wall and so that his crew would have to approach through a narrow avenue being slowed by the severe terrain and dangerously close to the lava.

I rounded out my crew with the Lone Swordsmen as my crew could curate “god hands” to funnel through him for more model-murder (oh the irony) and a terracotta warrior as a cheap model to assist as much distracted away as possible and draw me some cards too making my crew:

Dealers Choice (Ten Thunders)

Size: 50 - Pool: 6

Leader:

  Jakob Lynch

Totem(s):

  Hungering Darkness

Hires:

  Gwyneth Maddox

  Kitty Dumont

  The Lone Swordsman

  Illuminated

  Illuminated 2

  Terracotta Warrior

You can see the game here:

Needless to say I had a blast and not just because I was playing Jim (Malifaux’s very own Pixar Dad) but because things went to plan (for once) so a big thanks to Grog again for the chat on crew composition.

Some thoughts on the models I used:

Lynch: passively he did masses his various auras were hugely impactful on the centre scrum and his rare attacks pushed Bill into the lava. His bonus caused lots of flipped cards, lots of aces and lots of cheating all of which I wanted to see. Nothing super flashy, but passively very impactful. Lynch2 is probably still the better Master in my mind but I have a new found respect for original Jacob.

The Hungering Darkness: Huggy is a beast. So much of Lynch’s individual models power budget is in his phenomenal totem. Huggy ate a significant amount of Jim’s control and spent a lot of the game distracted and slow and yet he still had a huge impact on the game. He ate a model and obeyed Bill (already in the lava) to charge Sen (negating her serene countenance) doing 4 dmg and dunking her in the lava as well which felt like a huge turning point in the game.

Kitty: unpacked lynch and Huggy, put Hinamatsu in the lava and scored a bunch of vp. What more could you want? 

Gwyneth: scored Vp, drew cards and handed out a bunch of brilliance. Another model that did exactly what I wanted. I never did the Deja Vu on Huggy card draw tricks but honestly I don’t think I needed it. 

Lone Swordsmen: Met an early end thanks to Hinamatsu red jokering dmg and having a million sword attacks against him but he was still able to thankfully still able to kill Chiyo and gain a soulstone for his troubles before Hinamatsu finished the job next turn. 

Illuminated: honestly felt like my MVPs thanks to the huge amount of simple duels they forced meaning aces and cheats. 

Terracotta warrior: I used him pretty poorly and forgot take the hit at every opportunity but he drew me cards and cleared distracted.

Jim had taken Koto and Sen who I was impressed with and of course are available to me as well.  Sen drew a bunch of cards for fueling tns and ensuring particular suits whilst Koto turned Brilliance into shield which was a lovely bit of counter spice vs the Honeypot. Both contributed heavily to his unpack and the favour tokens gave allowed for some timely pos flips 

All in all I very much enjoyed my first run out with Honeypot and I look forward to giving them another try.  I do envy Arcanists and Explorers Society for their cheap 5ss scheme runners in Botanists and Gearlings as one of the first questions I ask myself when assessing a new keyword is “how do I scheme in the corners” and being able to spend 10ss on two cheap fast scheme runners is massively appealing in this Gain Ground. There maybe some ook Tengu in my future?