Malifaux Henchman Hardcore Tournament April 2017

In preparation of our local Henchman Hardcore, I got in 2 games with Patrick on one of the weeknights. Put together a list I thought would hit hard. Comprised the following:

Rusty Alyce, Johan, Bishop and the Hodgepodge Effigy.

Aonious just slowed my entire list down

Unfortunately, they did not perform particularly well and I lost both games to Patrick. I felt that Alyce just didn't cut the mustard. I did however fall into the trap of trying to kill Aonious and ignored the threat which was Bishop to my chagrin.

Going home, I then mustered a new list. One that was based around an old favourite of mine.

Hannah, Johan, Bishop and Desperate Merc.

These 4 would now form a new team for the coming tournament.

Started putting paint to the models before swapping out the Hodgepodge Effigy for the Merc

Pre-shade work really well to creat the highlight and shade

I was then teed up with our local Henchman and was prepared to give up

Until a Red Joker called his Red Joker and I managed to give Nekima Visions of the Void, forcing her to be Paralysed thus winning me the game. It was a 6-3 victory at the end of 45 mins.

Sam vs YC on the table next to mine

Today marks a great day as YC, Sam and Defeng first made their appearance! I have been cajoling them to play for the longest time and am so glad to see them make it in this 10 player event. All 3 unfortunately are not too familiar with the rules so we had to help them every couple of minutes but I didn't mind, as long as they were enjoying the game.

In my second game, I was matched up with Derek. Funnily enough it was like my list was built to counter his list. He brought Baby Kade, Candy and 2 other Minions that I can't remember.

Unfortunately for Derek I tabled him

My card draws were really in my favour and my initial hand was unbelievable, basically it was a Royal Flush - allowing me to win nearly every duel. Also, it's funny because he insists on cutting my deck every game. LOL!

Won this 6-3 as well.

I was then paired up with Eugene, a regular and adept player. He was also very familiar with my list making this a tougher game.

Eugene's list was more tanky and disruptive, forcing me off the point a couple of times but I managed to draw 3-3

My final game was with Keith, a regular player known for his good lists, good play but SLOW play. Not that he does it deliberately but he does deliberate sometimes too long.

I know now never to talk into a list like this

Toshiro and Necropunks was able to hammer the hell out of Hannah and losing her on the last turn meant the point swung to Keith. I ended losing 3-6.

With 2 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss, I ended up finishing no. 3. I was poised to take number one too! Ahh well, Welcome to Malifaux. LOL!

Total loot for the 10 man event

My haul-I love that new certificate

I managed to pull Johanna, a model that I have been hunting for a long time now for my all female crew. I ended up being a happy camper and managed to add two more Scripts to my collection. Still waiting for Wyrd to release better models than the current collection of plastic 1st sculpts. 

Tourney Prep - 1000 Point 2v2

So after preparing my army for the 2v2, I arranged for a game with Marshall, Lum and Melvin to give my army a good spin. I have never used the Skyhammer before and this would be my maiden game. Lum however is an experienced Skyhammer player and I learned quite a lot from the game with them. 

While Marshall wasn't in the true sense my partner for the tourney, he designed a list that he felt comfortable with that was balanced. It allowed me to see what worked for me too.

Marshall would capture the points while I was in their face

One quick lesson was that you always combat squad the Assault Marines when deep striking them into Intercept. That intercept template will easily wipe them out.

Another was that I should not have only 4 Grav Cannons in one unit of Devastators. 35 points per model, they were way too easily killed.

Interestingly enough, the Eviscerator actually worked in this game, killing the Stormsurge.

It became a bloody race to kill by mid game

With Lum eventually outnumbering me

We managed to win this game mainly because we got an early lead from the cards that we drew. However, I was more concerned over the viability of my list as the initial concept of it was to hit hard and draw the enemy into hammering down on my Marines. It did not have enough bodies and the upgraded Eviscerators soaked up too many points.

Came back and continued preparing more Marines

With only a week left, I really had to push out more Marines and fast

At this point, I was pushing out 3 to 6 Marines an evening as that was the only way I could finish in time. Note to self: do not wait till the last week

More hitting the table

I put those finished facing me to keep me motivated

And remagnetized all of the Eviscerator arms with Bolt Pistol and Chainsword

I also had to swap out the Plasma Guns and swap in a Power Sword for both my Assault Marine Sergeants. More work at the last hour. LOL!

Worst part was that I realised I was running short of my 2.5mm x 2.5mm magnets! Rummaging my magnet case, I found a stack of 2.5mm x 3mm magnets and I went to work with them, drilling deeper into the minis and hopefully not break the arms.

After finding the right parts, I magnetized them

While the arms were being primed, I started working on their bodies

This time working on more than 3 so I can finish in time

Always amazed how much a deadline can help push modelling progress

Focussed on the Devastators knowing that these models were complete

Airbrushed them arms

Only the arms left! 

Boom arms done! 

On Friday evening I took out my PVA glue and flocked the heck out of these Marines. All 40 of them! Packed them into the bag and I was ready to go. 

Tournament Report - AusComp 1850

I recently went to an 1850pt tournament with my Harlequins army, and brought the following list.

Masque Detachment

3 x Lvl 2 Shadowseers

3 x Harlequins troupes with one Dedicated Starweaver

2 x FA starweavers

1 x Voidweaver

Faolchu's Blade Formation

2 x 4 Skyweavers with glaives

1 x Voidweaver 

Heroes Path

Solitaire with Rose

Level 2 Shadowseer with Mask of Secrets

Death Jester

The Masque of The Third Act

As it was a Comped tournament, I went with the spirit of the game and tried to bring a list with as low a comp score as possible. The list ended up with 2 comp points.

My first game was against a reputed Khorne Daemonkin player in the local scene. He deployed by screening off his bloodthirsters with his 30 flesh hounds, and I had to kill off his assault monsters before his Heldrakes came in to standstand a chance in this game.

As the mission was also scored on Kill Points, I had to choose between killing his units and giving him blood tithe or giving up the Kill Points. I made a big mistake here as I elected to stop his blood tithe instead of gaining the Kill Points. His Heldrakes predictably slaughtered everything that was in their line of fire, but I gave as good as I got. When the final total was tallied, my opponent ended up winning 24-20, showing how I probably should have gone for the Kill Points. Killing off the last few units of hounds would have been really helpful.

Look at that pile of dead units.

The next match saw me face off against a battle company, all in drop pods. Spam AV12 with Obsec is a rock to the Harlequins scissors, unless you tailor for it by bring loads of haywire in place of shuriken cannons. The mission rules meant that we could only draw cards for the number of objectives we held at the start of our turn, definitely skewing this in favour of my opponent.

I deployed by hiding my troupes in transports to protect them from dropped bolters, but made a HUGE mistake by leaving my shadowseers in the open instead of putting them in reserve. This mean I lost a lot of psychic firepower early to his drop marines, which hurt because I had a lot of leadership based witchfires to kill off marines in cover.

The AV12 came to hurt me in the long run, as one heroic drop pod tanked 6 rounds of haywire grenades from the Solitaire in shooting and assault, helped by my forgetting that immobilised vehicles are auto hit. Major mistake. I would have been able to claim more objectives and possibly even up the score. Assault and superior firepower helped me narrow the gap towards the end of the game, but I ended up losing 22-16.

And that's only those that came in Turn 1...

My last game was against arguably the top race at the moment, Tau, against a general who was smarting from being hit with a Macro-cannon salvo.

Same as the second game, we drew a number of maelstrom objectives equal to that which we already controlled. My opponent's warlord trait let him auto regroup and shoot at full BS after going to ground, and it helped him immensely as he weathered a round of my shooting by going to ground for a 2+ cover save.

I charged everything forward to try and get into close combat, but perhaps that was too aggressive. It did mean that I could also grab midfield objectives while he couldn't. Despite managing to kill a riptide, some suits, and a bunch of marker drones, some poor rolling meant I couldn't get into combat with his stormsurge. The sad clowns were predictably tabled thereafter.

Under tournament rules, a tabling was worth an additional 10 VP, but he didn't score any of his objectives! The end result was that I lost 12-7. If I had played to the mission, either trying to grab the relic, or holding my backfield objectives with veil of tears up, I might have just sneaked in a draw with a bit of luck.

Lots of firepower arrayed against the clowns

Anyway, 0-3 for the tournament. Not what I was hoping for, but I was hopeful that my low comp would work in my favour. As it turned out, I finished 7/13, which wasn't too bad, considering I went 0-3.

The only Harlies player in the field.

The reason I didn't finish higher was because the TO adjusted how much comp was worth in terms of overall score. If he had applied the 50% approach, I'd have finished 4/13 on battle points and 5/13 on overall score, which is a LOT better. Still, I had known this just before the tournament. The big drop in my points came against what could have been a fair chance at winning Game 2, and maybe Game 1, if I didn't make the mistakes I did.

Winning game 2 would have helped me a fair bit here...

Learning Lessons

1) REMEMBER YOUR RULES. Forgetting that immobilised vehicles are auto hit was unforgiveable.

2) PLAY TO THE MISSION. Not something I should be forgetting, but in all 3 missions I forgot to make scoring points my overriding priority. Not scoring KPs in Game 1, not keeping units safe in Game 2, and not grabbing objectives to generate new ones in Game 3 all harmed my overall score.

3) Objective placement is key. For example, I placed the objectives far apart in order to try and nullify the drop in my second game. But given my small number of units, I could have clustered the objectives together so as to allow me to kill off his obsec units faster.

4) Don't discount objective secured when looking at detachment bonuses. Battle company lists were a pain, and it was really because non obsec lists just didn't have the firepower to take them down in a comp environment.
5) Comp only works if it takes up a large portion of the score. When players are not as penalised for bringing higher comp lists, then the effectiveness in ensuring people bring more balanced lists is greatly reduced. This isn't me whining about not placing better; my place in the final running wouldn't have changed much. However, some people have complained that battle companies were under-comped, which is true to a certain extent. My response is that they seem even more under comped in this tournament because the TO adjusted how comp was applied without adjusting the comp cost.

Many thanks to Gamersaurus Rex for organising the tournament, and looking forward to the next one, a 2v2 in April!