My Experience with the Malifaux World Series (Part 4- Round 3: Belly of The Beast)

Round 3. This is deep as it gets, folk.

If anyone is wondering what I'm waffling about, I am indulging in an egotistical dissertation of my first foray into the world of competitive online Malifaux via the Malifaux world series. (start here perhaps?: https://beardfaux.blogspot.com/2025/01/my-experience-with-malifaux-world.html )

And it is NOT GOING WELL. 

The title of this blog "belly of the beast" is a reference to one of the steps of Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" (belly of the whale) because of course someone who boasts the arrogance to vomit forth a blog about his mediocre performance in a competitive event would also cast himself as the eponymous "hero" of said journey. 

Anyway. As far as my performance and expectations so far, I was pretty low. I wasn't quite "Gary from Team America vomiting in an alley" low, but I wasn't far off it, with two defeats and two matches plagued by time zone issues and the exact matchups that were hardest for me to overcome in my opponents (my) factions. 

 

Greatest Scene in Cinema history. Fight me

At this time, there were two ways to go. Up or Down. Either way, this next round was the beginning of the end for this tournament because after round 3, we were on the way out with only two rounds left to go. 

If I left round 3 on a victory, I was still in with a shot to get in the top 50% of players, but a loss would cement a disappointing final placement for me, regardless of the results of the final 2 rounds. After the round 2 loss, I was under the misconception that surely I'd have at least one round where scheduling wasn't a big issue, and I was delighted to find that pairings would be getting announced on a public holiday here in Australia, daring to believe I might even get to play with my opponent the same day as pairings were announced even if I was going to face another 15 hour time difference (spoiler: I was).

I dutifully messaged my opponent as soon as I could reasonably do so. 

My opponent took 18 hours to respond, unfortunately as he had prior commitments that weekend. Public holiday window missed! What a shock! Something didn't go my way! At least my experience has been consistent.

This entire journey has been an exercise in the futility of hopeful expectations. On the bright side, I had already gotten 3 practice games in by the time my opponent responded, although my performance had not been great. I was consistently scoring 5-6 points, but I was losing or at very best tying my games. 

Thankfully, the string of disappointment, frustration and loss had finally beaten the excitement out of me, so when my opponent let me know the only times he could play was "afternoon Saturday" (my Sunday morning) or "all day Sunday" (when I'm at work Monday) I took it in stride and for the first time this tournament, I lost the all encompassing obsession I had been holding with this tournament. Which was a two edged sword. 

I've documented my anxiety and my inability to focus on other tasks during this journey, but whilst those are difficult to deal with, they were symptoms of my excitement and engagement. Without that excitement and engagement there was nothing left but apathy which as we all know is the enemy to all things good and right. 

With that navel-gazing out the way, lets discuss the pools. 

Bottom Right hand side was such a doozy that the committee had to rule the barbed wire as destructible

Again, I managed to please the RNG gods and got attacker and with that barbed wire and buildings on the bottom Right hand corner, it felt like the right spot to put my opponent but I second guessed myself, as unpacking from the top left did not feel good the one game I tried it. Ironically, the best unpack I had tried was from the top right hand side (after an attacking opponent put me there) seeing as there was plenty of room to maneuver whilst also providing significant blocking terrain protecting my crew from opponent's sight lines. 

The crew that I had been practicing with so far had been established on the assumption that I was going to be defender and be relegated to the barbed wire corner so I had been practicing with a fast crew with a lot of flying. With Sweating bullets in the pool once more I was determined to play a wide game, and the top Right hand side was looking better and better as I felt I could stretch out to the flanks mostly unmolested very safely turn 1 and 2. I needed to practice some unpacks before making my final decision and so I did after work one night. I ended up going with my gut and choosing the top right hand corner. 

Going back to preamble and round 1 I really wanted to play best girl Misaki in most of these rounds so that's what I was planning on for this round. This decision was especially egged on by two different people saying in passing that "Misaki is bad" over the past week, and that annoyed me no end; more frustrating is that I don't have the skills to pilot her in ways to consistently prove these folk wrong. 

My practice games had been run with espionage and death beds (strategy) but I was considering swapping into let them bleed as I was finding the AP requirement for death beds to be a real strain with such a small, elite crew. I aimed to get more practice games in with different scheme selections. 

My round 3 opponent was an Explorers player (not a thunders mirror, YAY!), which is the faction that I have the least amount of reps into (OH NO). He had so far declared Anya Rail Magnate for both round 1 and 2. I didn't know much about Anya but I found the needs of round 1 and 2 significantly different enough that I would have expected a different master selection between the rounds unless my opponent was planning on playing her all tournament which was the only guess I could go on until we had declared masters. I downloaded some old podcasts about Anya (thanks RQW) and reached out to some friends to ask the question "What 'dat Anya do?", but I didn't spend too long agonising over it. After all, my opponent could very well declare Nexus, Tiri or something else as equally alien to me and I didn't want to dedicate too much bandwidth on a "maybe" no matter how "likely" that "maybe" was (that was a hell of a sentence).

Luckily, my instincts were correct and my opponent declared Anya, so the time I'd spent trying to understand her crew wasn't wasted. I locked in the crew I'd been practicing with whilst I waited for him to do the same. 

My list, such as it was

So what does the list do? To be honest it's very similar to my round 1 list. The only difference is swapping Zheng out for Emissary. Time will tell if this was the correct choice. Emissary felt better this game due to the amount of blocking terrain where Spd6 flight felt more relevant than Spd7 Unimpeded. My plan was again to run the flanks and avoid the centre brawl, using Oyabun's command to really push those fast models out further turn 1. Emissary has some interesting synergy in a list with mondo card draw from sensei Yu and deck fixing from abandon honour. The ability to draw an entire new hand with prohecies in thunder and place the god-hand Yu curated on top of the deck just to burn through it and then Abandon honour it back into the deck really felt like an efficient use of cards. 

Come Sunday morning, we had somehow managed to mix up our time zones and my opponent was ready to go 2 hours before me (stupid maths). I was able to get caffeinated and ready faster than usual and we got to playing. 

My opponent brought this list. 

As always, I asked my opponent for permission before posting

I was very happy to not have to deal with the Emissary. I deviated from the schemes I had been practicing when I saw hand of Janus as I thought he'd be difficult to score "let them bleed on" and instead selected take prisoner targeting said Giant Robot Hammer Guy. Considering Giant Robot Hammer Guy looks like a Giant Robot Hammer Guy I assumed he'd be getting thrust fairly deep into my lines and my opponent started the game with a bomb on him so I knew he had to be coming to my half of the board at one point. Turn 1, Giant Robot Hammer Guy dropped his strategy marker on his side of the table for Winston to pick up. He didn't once cross the centre line for the rest of the game meaning I was playing 2 points down. Frustratingly, with the way the game turned out, board state was such that I would absolutely have scored let them bleed turn 4 if I had taken it, and I had two full activations at the end of the game that I just conceded because they didn't score points so likely could have ensure the end point also. 

Nevertheless I was able to deny my opponent strat turn 2 and I scored max on strat and both espionage points, ending the game on a 6/5 victory and my first win of the tournament, however thanks to my poor scheme selection it was exceedingly close. My opponent was under clock pressure with only 30 seconds left on his clock at game end and due to clock pressure he had misplaced a scheme marker earlier on with Yannic which caused him to not score a point of espionage. 

This was a super tight game but was by far the most enjoyable one so far. PLUS my goal of top 50% was back in sight.  Renewed and re-invigourated I prepared myself for round 4. 

Lance, out