My Experience with the World Series (Part 5- Round 4: Peals of continuous Thunder)

Greetings friends! Come in, come in I have wares! Yes, many wares; wares in the way of WORDS!

Here I am once again, waffling on about my experience as a new entrant into the MWS. In case the title of this blog was somehow missed, this is not the beginning. Oh no, it's quite close to the end even I might hope. The beginning can be found precisely here: https://beardfaux.blogspot.com/2025/01/my-experience-with-malifaux-world.html and all things considered I would suggest starting there, as starting in the middle of something can oft-times be confusing and at the very least unsatisfying. 

After my narrow victory last round, my tournament standing was elevated to the lofty height of 52nd place. I know, I know hold the applause. 

I was delighted to find that my opponent for round 4 was a New Zealander which meant I could finally hope to slot in a game at a reasonable time! I was less delighted to find that once again, I was playing against thunders. 

Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most popular faction of all?

Even worse than playing into a mirror, the pool we were looking at for round 4 basically begged to have Asami dropped into it. Don't believe me? See for yourself!

Do you see?! YOU SEE IT DON'T YOU?!

Cloak and Dagger is already the strategy most loved by summoners everywhere thanks to summons being able to bushwhack intel tokens, but also Asami can score and deny outflank and information overload trivially. 

To make it even more frustrating the combination of wedge deployment and that Map with such a dense centre was causing arguments in my head. 

My chaos gremlin lizard brain was telling me that wedge deployment = straight up killy game, whilst the rest of me was looking at the extremely dense central board and wondering if there was even a reasonable spot for the lines to meet in such a game. Cloak and dagger also rewards efficient interacts, as do outflank and information overload (the two schemes I probably shouldn't declare if my opponent goes with Asami) and Misaki, my preferred punchy master doesn't really bring a whole heap of efficient interacts. 

With Misaki kinda ruled out, my next best bet was Linh Ly, but her crew's resilience (whilst exceptional) is reliant on synergistic overlapping auras and once again the centre of this board makes getting the perfect Linh bubble highly unlikely, so if my opponent wants to fight, my defensive tech will be at a disadvantage. 

Thirdly I could declare Lynch. The movement tech, incorporeal and obeys probably meant I could get where I needed to get to and then survive once there. The big problem being that I really didn't want to be playing Lynch again so soon. There are way too many moving parts to make that crew sing and I just didn't know if I had the skill in me to perform an opera. 

Last round I was able to look at my opponent's previous games to try nut out what he might declare, however my round 4 opponent could very well be aiming for scorpius seeing as he hadn't declared the same master twice, and as I mentioned previously I suspect of all the pools this tournament, it is this pool on which Asami who is already very strong will be the strongest. 

I talked to some of my friends about the difficulty I was having figuring out which master I was going to drop, and I got convinced that Misaki could kill her way through this strategy. Apparently the general consensus is that scoring 4 points on strat in cloak and dagger was generally unlikely, so it's better to focus on schemes and attrition. Seeing as I was once again playing against Thunders the threat of Shen or Asami loomed large. I was confident that I could build a Misaki list that could out-attrition Asami, but there was no way I could crack Shen. Nevertheless I got my first practice game in and it did not do well at all, however I did deduce that I could tech Yasunori in for his "no place" bubble and once he was planted in between the two trains, he would severely hamper my opponents ability to get into the central board. 

Obviously without master selection being locked in, it was difficult to really formulate a plan, but the initial idea is to take the enormous risk of ignoring strat early game and praying that I can kill enough models turn 1-2 without losing any in return to severely hamper my opponents AP options for scoring throughout the rest of the game. This didn't feel like a solid plan going into a GG4 game that doesn't actively reward attrition but I was still entirely befuddled by the pool. I was also concerned about taking a crew with virtually zero card draw into a meta that has really started being defined by the power of card draw. Regardless of what my opponent dropped I was confident that he would be bringing the pieces required to draw at 2-4 cards a turn whilst I was just planning on trying to muscle through with high value attacks. I would probably come to regret this very loose strategy. 

Before Saturday I managed to get three whole practice games in with the very kill-y version of Misaki I was planning on bringing, 2 of which were even in Vassal on the map in question! I performed poorly every single time! Here's the list:

Biggus Stickus because there are three big sticks, and Monty Python is still a relevant pop culture reference. I'm not old, you're old. 

Taking Bill out of keyword was pretty unusual for me, and my thoughts were entirely around denying outflank/information overload through spamming debt of gratitude. Also he was ruthless and I ws expecting to see that saucy minx, Ama No Zako when getting my models away and ignoring terrifying was going to be strong. Yasunori was primarily in there for his "no place" aura on the composure upgrade seeing as the central map was difficult to access without place effects and might be effective enough to lock my opponent out of a portion of the board. 

My opponent brought this:

Full list title is "well designed models from 2023"- Droll, sir. Very droll

I was surprised and not unhappy to see that my opponent opted to leave Ama No Zako at home, instead opting for a more scheme marker-centric crew with Sun Wukong. Looking at the list I was expecting that it was designed with outflank and information overload in mind, however my opponent was likely to change tack to hold up their forces considering how easy it would be for him to score it when looking at how elite my crew was in comparison. 

My opponent placed me on the top wedge. 

So game has been played and I can safely say that was the most thorough drubbing I've received all tournament. Lost 1/7. 

I think this was the last hurrah for me bringing Kunoichi into a list for focus stacking. The way that the meta has shifted towards card draw means that stat 5 with cards is stronger than stat 7 with focus unless I get lucky. Probably the most disheartening thing that happened all game was when I was trying to cement an AP advantage early game by killling models, I put Misaki into a terracotta warrior with 2 health. All she had to do that turn was hit twice and I was happy to dedicate 3x AP in order to do so. Because my hand were all high moderates, and my opponent had mondo card draw, Misaki only hit once at a stat advantage. To add insult to injury the terracotta warrior then activated and hit Yasunori (stat 5 vs stat 7 once more) whilst also having the tomes trigger to give Yasunori slow, and then drew itself another card. 

Post-game my opponent and I were discussing Jorogumo and how they aren't okay. I think every time the summoned jorogumo swung, they got puncture. 2x summoned jorogumo held up my entire left flank turn 1 and 2 (second one summoned turn 2 of course) and between the two of them they handily wiped out 20 stones worth of my models (Bill and Ototo) whilst also eating 4 of my 6 damage reduction stones. These jorogumo are free models (they cost a 12 out of hand oh no). 

Anyway, there ends round 4. Obviously all games this round have not yet been played but I've so far sunk to 65th in the rankings. I'm not going to be top half. I'm not going to be even close. 

One more round to go. 

Lance, out

Last round and closing thoughts found here: https://beardfaux.blogspot.com/2025/02/my-experience-with-malifaux-world_16.html