My Experience with the Malifaux World Series (Part 3- Round 2: Second Verse same as the first)
Hello! It's me again! If you were wondering why I'm here and what all this is about, maybe start at the beginning! Found here: ( https://beardfaux.blogspot.com/2025/01/my-experience-with-malifaux-world.html )
After round 1 I spent the next few days watching the rankings to try suss out who my next opponent was going to be.
I was overjoyed to see when all the dust settled that
according to the current rankings, I had a fellow Australian who was closest to
me in the rankings and would likely be my next opponent.
Could it be? Would round 2 not be plagued by time zone
issues? Might I just be able to get a nice relaxing early evening game after
work?
 |
| Computer says noooo |
Turns out, my excitement was premature. My opponent is instead in Washington State in the US which is 16 hours behind Brisbane. We were going to have another curly one to try negotiate time frames, much to my dismay.
With that bad news out of the way, let’s discuss the pool:
 |
| Thankfully I was once again Attacker which meant I got to choose the left hand side and put my opponent in the building |
I have had the opportunity to practice this pool six times (twice in meat-space, 4 times on vassal) as of writing which eased my
anxiety somewhat. That said, I math’d it out the other day and if I wanted to
reach my goal of top 30 out of 73 players, I was going to need to win 3 out of
5 games, which actually seemed pretty unlikely. If I lost this game then I
needed 3 wins in a row to reach my goal and unless I got really lucky with my
opponents, then that didn’t feel like something a player with my skill level
had the capacity for. So whilst I was comfortable playing into the pool there
was still a skerrick of self imposed pressure there to perform well. The
pressure was increased seeing as my performance in practice games was not
great. I tied once, won once, and lost the other four games.
Now I have to disappoint you all and myself because despite
saying I wanted to play Misaki through this tournament I took one look at the
pool and shied away from declaring best girl. My reasoning? Misaki is a great skirmish and scalpel crew but this
strategy rewards resilience more than spike damage which lead me to crutch back
on Linh Ly. I had 2x lists in the tank, one for if my opponent declared Guild
or Lucius in Neverborn and one for everything else.
“Luckily” I ended up with another faction mirror so once
again I felt fairly comfortable playing in to anything. Thanks to the ability
for Linh Ly to cancel cheated triggers, I didn’t even care too much if my
opponent declared Shenlong (but I still didn’t want to see him), however if the dreaded Asami was declared it would mean Linh Ly Bibliothecary instead of Librarian. Whilst I
waited for my opponent to respond to my DM I engaged in some Longshanks
stalking. This was his first event recorded in Longshanks though, so the only
data I had was that in round 1 he played Jacob Lynch2 and I was secretly hoping
he was choosing to main him all round. Lynch2 is definitely a difficult crew to
play into, but coming fresh off the back of four-ish months solo-ing him, I was
confident in what to expect in those circumstances.
Once my opponent responded to my DM I was overjoyed to find out that he was a night-owl and was happy to finish games as late as 3am which meant I could theoretically get an evening game in, but then my hopes were expertly dashed as unlike me, he hadn't yet had the bandwidth to get some practice games in and wanted an opportunity to do so before we played. We ended up organising for my midday Saturday his 6pm Friday which, whilst reasonable for both of us, was a bit disappointing as I really wanted the opportunity to get practice games for round 3 in after playing round 2 but before pairings were announced Monday, and this schedule created a very tight window for that.
I spoke to my opponent at length during a work lunch break and he seemed like a very nice person. He'd only been playing 2 months and I was shocked that with such relatively small experience not only was he competing in the World Series, but also that he had demonstrated an ability to play the game within the timer, which is an especially impressive feat considering Round 1 he played Lynch (as I mentioned earlier) and Honeypot has a whole host of small micro-decisions every activation that can really slow down a player who isn't intimately familiar with target numbers, suits and the ways in which the crew can perform general card cycling/deck fixing.
Because my opponent had not yet had the practice games into the pool he felt necessary he had not yet decided which master he was going to declare so we were waiting until later in the week before putting crews into the app. Once again, I was left in waiting mode with no idea what I was going to be facing, with my only consolation being that my opponent had indicated that he was equally concerned as I about potentially facing Asami.
I woke up Saturday, 5 hours until game time and we finally locked our master into the app. I crossed my fingers, desperately hoping that I could play what I wanted and not have to create an anti-Asami list on the fly.
I mean, he had expressed a similar disdain towards Asami as I in our conversations, even asking if I would be amenable to a "No Asami" gentelman's covenant to which I was not comfortable agreeing to as doing so would mean my opponent was more likely to nut out what I was planning on bringing. I was comfortable that he probably wouldn't declare Asami.
Please not Asami, Please not Asami.
 |
| My heart = broken |
I was sad. I put together a Bibliothecary list on the fly with zero anti-summon tech and hoped my opponent would declare Asami Shintaku. By declaring Bibliothecary I was resigning myself to a defensive style of play relying on activation control, start phase actions, card draw and the occasional distracted to try slow my opponent down. Not to mention the fact that I've had maybe one Bibliothecary game in 12 months. All my practice games were for the Linh I'd rather be playing, and as such the time I had put into them felt a little wasted and irrelevant.
 |
| I really wasn't too sure about this, but it's what I locked in |
I took Minako Rei as "tech" seeing as she has laugh off and condition removal both of which felt like relevant anti-Suzaku tech in all my dojo's, however I had not had the opportunity yet to test her efficacy in the matchup so taking her was a gamble.
With my track record facing Asami gambles were my only hope for success.
Suzaku feels especially important in Bibliothecary for Linh to get her start phase actions for "free" seeing as suzaku can remove slow. That said the only red librabry models in this list were Map Map and the Jade Rabbit. I was plaaning on double activating Jade Rabbit turn 1 before it goes off on it's own to help with activation control round 1, and then the rest of the game crutching on Map Map handing out slow in the start phase. A lot of my play is going to be entirely dictated by which version of Asami my opponent declared, and once again I was waiting.
 |
| should have called it the "Malifaux Waiting Series" |
 |
| My Opponent's list (posted with permission) |
On the bright side, it's a public holiday here Monday when pairings for round 3 go out so if I'm really lucky I might get to play sooner rather than later instead of waiting all week to get the game in.
Comments
Post a Comment