One week in the Swamp
Hello there, Beard here.
So for various reasons that don't matter, I had a lot more spare time this week than usual and naturally I decided to play a lot more Malifaux than I normally do.
Which is lovely and whilst I had originally planned to pour all of these games into Outcast, I very predictably changed my mind and reached for an old friend in Zoraida instead. Why Mama Z, well I pretty much covered that in this blog but essentially it can be summed up by (fanfare noises)...The Beard-Gartner graph of model selection in wargaming!
Which looks like this.
This is by and large how I play wargames. I get in, I get very excited and I run around and I push all the buttons to see what they do. Then everyone else gets better than me, then I get sad about it, then I play Obey Masters and settle down for a bit until and worry people before I go off and press some more buttons which I will loosely justify as research. This was Zoraida in M2E, Obulus in Guild Ball and now we've come full circle back to Zoraida in M3E. This is how I am justifying it to myself. Yes I know.
So I got in 8 games this week (I had more planned but work and exhaustion had other ideas) against a variety of opponents and my results look like this:
In terms of my biggest take away from this week is, that I know nothing. This may seem at first a strange conclusion to draw but I think it is a really healthy one. Many times in my flip floppery I will play a keyword and go "Yup, that's what that does" and then I'll put it down over there and that will be the end of it and that is nowhere near the case with Swampfiend. I have not even begun to scratch the surface of what is available. Some of these games have been recorded and could well get uploaded to youtube on weeks I can't stream, some of them wont because we got rules interactions wrong and are therefore diminished in value. But without wanting to give an enormous game by game retelling here are some key takeaways from each game.
Game 1
We got a very key rule (Siphon Power) wrong that had a very significant impact on the game. 2nd activation of the game Zoraida obeyed McTavish to shoot Izamu with armour pen trigger doing mod 4, Zoraida then ensorcel obeyed Manos to charge and attack Izamu and between min 2s and what we thought were siphon power pings killed an unactivated Izamu 2nd activation of the game which as you can imagine had a massive impact when it shouldn't of done. My biggest take away from this game was that McTavish is cool and First Mate is a great option to carry two bombs in Plant explosives if you're prepared to give him the resources. Syzsgy Sisters good but fragile, these gals scored me a lot of points this game and I look forward to to using them more.
Game 2
This is the game I realised you can do 3x1 damage to a cursed model with the doll by running off sz 2 rocks and then failing to climb back up again. Avalanching Youko into hazardous terrain is big and clever, so is Obeying Hinamatsu to charge after her. Should've stoned for the Onslaught for more funnies. This was my first time trying Angel Eyes. Good lord.
Game 3
This one I streamed and can be seen here.
My biggest take aways from this game is how much I love the condition spam voodoo doll/Wisp combo against aggressive beaters, the Wanga Mojo Curse can go on Masters and that Photon is a delightful human being.
Game 4
Unyielding made me a giant salty mess and I still need to work on my emotions dragging me down in games. I wanted to try a Vasilisa puppet engine in this game and Black jokered the summon despite having the card in hand to summon a Stitched together which boiled my piss something chronic. I know the puppet engine is better facilitated by Widow Weaver as she's a henchman but I wanted to make it work with Vasilisa as the aesthetic fits better. I may try this again, maybe with the angry Broccoli/Licky Tree/Carnivorous Wyrdwood for extra dirt. I would be loathed to upload this game due to my attitude in it but at the same time it was an absolute Master class in positioning by Pete from RQW and probably should be uploaded at some point because of how beneficial it would be for people to see, even if I will have to swallow my ego a bit to make that happen. Self Awareness! Also I hate wedge with Swampfiend it turns out, everything is just too close. Wedge may require Fae or Woe or another 3 letter keyword.
Game 5
Good lord Tri-Chi can heal! I just couldn't keep up. I tried out the Leech King in this game because I want to like that model and also the condition removal was very handy here to stop keymodels getting slow. I did summon two leeches but never got to activate either one of them as they were insta-gibbed, probably out of fear of them self summoning more, which is fair enough. I need to reserve the Leech King testing for games vs keywords with victim stats.
Game 6
More Unyielding makes me a giant salty mess! I went too elite in this game, should've just slapped down 3 Silurids, first mate and run the hell away. I also should've brought in Hildegard to give all my relevant models cover and stop my opponent benefiting from focus which against Family would've been funny given how much focus they have access to. Never try and do the thing your opponent is trying to do as they could well just be better at it than you. Family is better at being Elite that Swampfiend or at least was in this game. This game was also Wedge. I hate Wedge. 2/3 of my losses were wedge.
Game 7
Despite remembering it loads for all previous games, for whatever reason I just stopped remembering Reading the Cards and started remember Penetrating Stench. I need to work on remembering both. I had the cards in hard turn 1 to obey Iron matron to attack Parson and leave him on 1 health. I focused, I swung, I cheated a high card to hit, I flipped the black joker on damage. Zoraida has Avoid Doom from Ancient Pact, Iron matron does not. I "may" have tilted at this point. That said I think I recovered and sent the Iron Matron all over the board so her attacks were not super impactful this game. I totally forgot bad Juju was a henchmen and could stone damage which would've kept him alive but this was my first time taking him. Waldgheists were absolute heros. I took two and they were amazing. One Killed Parson and the First light in a single acivation. The other heaved Iron Matron off a raid marker to claim a strat point.
Game 8
I took Klaus in this game mainly for the Memes of being immune to Sandeeps shockwaves and terrain but largely this was a just a greatest hits of the week. I obeyed enemy models to do annoying things and put them out of position, I kidnapped opponent models and locked them out of many turns with the Voodoo Doll and Wisp. I lost Zoraida in this game for the first time this edition but by that point my frogs with jobs had done their frog jobs and scored me points. Second Juju game, he beat the face off of Banasuva and was pretty happy with himself over this.
Conclusions?
I'm pretty happy with the Swamp witch and the tools that she gives me. A friend asked me what beaters I was using and my immediate answer was "theirs" and that largely does sum it up and also amuse me no end. I wanted to play something schemier after looking at my stats over the past couple of years and seeing that I tend to do better there, but equally I like control and Zoraida gives that to me. There's life in the old girl yet and I've not even looked at the title yet.
Further reading:
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