Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Students of Conflict #11C - Lonestar Fauxdown 2023: Carlo (Von Schill, Iron-Heart vs Youko Hamasaki, Unseen)
454 Plays1 year ago
This episode we talk to Carlo about a tough loss against Landon in his journey to third place overall at the Lonestar Fauxdown Malifaux GT and the Iron Scorpius. Along the way we chat about how he plays into tough matchups, what he learned from this loss, and to always check to make sure all of your cards are in your deck.
Hosts: Clay, Doug, and Nick
Primary Guest: Carlo
Other Guests: Landon and Angel
Tournament: Lonestar Fauxdown Malifaux GT - Houston, Texas - 14-15 Oct 2023 - Tournament on Longshanks: https://www.longshanks.org/event/10354/
Heroic Scale Gamers tournament live streams:
- Day 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJpHfJAfjag
- Day 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__H-JAD80EQ
- This game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__H-JAD80EQ&t=3h49m51s
Encounter:
Round 5
Deployment: Standard
Strategy: Covert Operation
Scheme Pool:
3: Assassinate
7: Catch and Release
9: Load 'Em Up
10: Public Demonstration
12: In Your Face
Schemes selected: Carlo: Catch and Release, Assassinate
Landon: Catch and Release, Assassinate
Crews:
Carlo’s Von Schill, Iron-Heart (Outcasts)
Size: 50 - Pool: 6
Leader: Von Schill, Iron-Heart
Servant of Dark Powers
Totem(s):
Steam Trunk
Hires:
Hannah Lovelace
Freikorps Engineer
Freikorps Engineer 2
Freikorps Scout
Freikorps Librarian
Drachen Trooper
Landon’s Youko Hamasaki, Unseen (Ten Thunders)
Size: 50 - Pool: 7
Leader: Youko Hamasaki, Unseen
Totem(s):
Chiyo Hamasaki
Hires:
Lucas McCabe, Tomb Delver
Luna
Bill Algren
Terracotta Warrior
Kunoichi
Low River Monk
Mentioned in the Podcast:
Lonestar Fauxdown: The date is set for the Lonestar Fauxdown Malifaux GT 2024 - taking place in Houston, TX October 11-13, 2024, mark your calendars!: https://lonestarfauxdown.com/events
Plugs from Guest: HOT, the latest EP from Carlo’s Band, Big Story: https://orcd.co/hotep
Thank-Yous: HUGE thanks to Top Doug Design for all the terrain we play on here in Texas and for sponsoring this podcast, to Heroic Scale Gamers for streaming Lonestar Conference matches, to Wyrd Miniatures for allowing us to use their artwork from the 2nd Edition Student of Conflict, and to Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy Houston for providing such an amazing space for the community.
Top Doug Design: https://www.topdougdesign.com/
Wyrd Miniatures: https://www.wyrd-games.net/malifaux
Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy Houston: https://www.facebook.com/dlairhouston
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Goals of the Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Straight out of the heart of Texas, here come the students of conflict, helping you become a better Malifaux player and reach the top of the podium, one game at a time.
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome to Students of Conflict. We are Clay, Nick, and Doug. Hello. Hello. Hello. And we are trying to become better Malifaux players, leveling up ourselves and hopefully leveling others up as well. We normally do that by interviewing top third players from the Lone Star Conference playing in tournaments across the US, though tonight we've got guests from all over. We're not trying to capture our guests' entire tournament journey. We just want to take an in-depth look at one game. What were the key decisions that these players made before the game, during the game, and now that they're looking back at the game,
00:01:02
Speaker
What were the things that they learned and that they can pass on to others? Our format is to interview guests all at once, just as soon as possible after the tournament when it's all fresh in their minds. We get some good cross flow between the guests. Rather than publishing one long marathon podcast, we break it up, releasing one individual podcast per guest, helping people level up one game at a time.
Guest Performances at Lone Star Fodown
00:01:21
Speaker
Today, we are speaking with Landon, Angel, and Carlo. It's the Pope here. How are you? Hi, guys. And it's your favorite Mexican. Mexican, not Mexican.
00:01:32
Speaker
Whoa! These guys came in first, second, and third, respectively. And Carlo took home Iron Scorpius at the Lone Star Fodown Malifo GT.
00:01:42
Speaker
held in Houston on 14 through 15 October. We're gonna be releasing our discussions with them as episodes 11A through C. So all right, Carla, welcome back. So it is so great to be here. Yeah, no, it is always great to have you on the podcast and I'm super excited that I get to actually be the lead interview for you this time. So this is great. Congratulations, third place at the Fodown, Top Texan, which is a pretty big deal. And obviously you got Iron Scorpius, so not God.
00:02:12
Speaker
you friggin earned iron scorpius some people would argue that i that i cheated because i gotta buy on round one but whatever that was not your fault though you are correct take the w man wait how do i earn top texan i need to come down and win that award
00:02:33
Speaker
So anyways, so welcome back. I am not going to give you the first time guest kind of questions, but I do ask our icebreaker question for this episode is what was your favorite non-gaming moment from the tournament? Okay. So unlike if you've listened, I'm the last one. So if you've listened to Landon's episode and Angel's episode, then now we're with me. And though I must say I don't have a title like Pope or captain,
00:03:02
Speaker
Señor. You can call me Señor if you want. That's fine. Hefei. Hefei. That's fine. But what I would like to say is I haven't been playing. So Angel, I think, said he was 1.5 and Landon said he started playing at second edition or maybe I'm wrong, whatever. But either way, I started playing in third edition. So me being the nerd that I am, I like
00:03:29
Speaker
painting while listening to stuff. And so if I'm painting Malifaux models, I will watch content creators stuff in the background, or listen to it at least. And the coolest non-Malifaux moment of the tournament for me was, I mean, Land and I had met at Gen Con randomly, but meeting all the Danger Planet guys, meeting Angel, I met
00:03:57
Speaker
Pete from rage quit wire at the last Foe down actually played him in henchman hardcore shout out to Pete great, dude So I'd have to say that the coolest non-malefoe moment was actually meeting Everybody that I've been subconsciously listening to for years and I even had a really good talk with Jim Dyson Which by the way nice is human on the planet. Oh I love Jim Dyson shout out to him and
00:04:25
Speaker
I already miss him, super cool dude. So the first Outcast box that I bought, I started, it's funny that Angel said that he bought the Lady Justice box and started with Lady Justice because that was my first, technically second, but I bought the Perdida box first because I'm Mexican. And if there's Mexicans in the game, of course I have to play them, right? It's required. Of course. But I bought Lady Justice as well. I bought them both at the same time, but then I switched over to Outcast and I bought Hamlin.
00:04:55
Speaker
And Jim Dyson was the only person that I saw that had any Hamlin content.
Strategies and Challenges in Malifaux
00:04:59
Speaker
So I was watching Jim Dyson's content. And I was like, I learned how to play Hamlin from watching you, except I didn't. But I also did at the same time. So A, it was meeting all of these personalities that I had kind of learned the game watching through. And B was, randomly enough,
00:05:19
Speaker
All of the, I mean, like I said, I'm a very proud Latino. And knowing that there's so many Latino, Latin people playing this game is really cool. There is? I also met Dixon. I didn't get to spend a lot of time with Dixon. I'm sorry. Dixon is great. I love Dixon. I've heard a lot of him during Rage Quit Wire and stuff. He does play. Jesus, take the wheel.
00:05:45
Speaker
it's it's it's he plays never born though which is as an outcast player like I hate him for because I think it's I've said before I think never born is that class where it's matchup because if you play Pandora I'm just kind of hosed but no just so man yeah play Pandora and outcast if you're a never bored player because they they don't have a great answer for her
00:06:09
Speaker
Note to stealth, actually learn how to play Pandora. I'm going to say not many people have good answers to Pandora, really. That's fair. At least from my perspective. But to summarize it all, was literally just hanging out with all these people that I have been watching for a year and a half now.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's awesome. Thank you. And just for everybody that came, Lone Star Fodown was amazing. And yeah, we had a ton of people coming from all over the country. And so thanks, Doug, for putting it on. Thanks, everyone, for coming. And a great put there. I think 16 states and our provinces were represented. It was 16 or 17. Great job, Doug, as usual. I don't know where the Texas Malifaux community would be without you.
00:06:57
Speaker
appreciate you doing what you do. And people at least from three or four nationalities. Seriously? Four. You had at least one Spaniard, one Canadian, one Mexican. Carl, what's your purpose? What do they tell you when you cross the border? Mexican and Italian. I'm a spaghetti and chorizo. Perfect. Well, that makes sense with the ten paninis then. Of course. Yeah.
00:07:24
Speaker
All right. So no, seriously, thank you very much. That is a great, great answers. The, uh, so what round are we talking about today? And, and why is that? Uh, I think it's around five. I'm not mistaken. Is that correct? Yeah. Uh, well, that's what I, that's what I wrote down. So, okay. And actually it's round one, uh, round one, the bye that I actually lost. Uh, no, it's, it's round five, uh, against the Pope himself, which turned out to be the only game I lost.
00:07:54
Speaker
this weekend, that weekend. And a shout out to Landon, he knows that Yoko crew very, very well.
00:08:05
Speaker
No, that is cool. So in shout out to you for like taking one of the games that you lost, like that is not necessarily an easy thing to do. And so to talk about that. And so we appreciate that very, very much. Because yeah, there should be some good learnings from that. You always learn more from a loss than from a win. Yeah, so that's just my opinion in general. Yeah, so I certainly agree. I have learned a lot in this game.
00:08:31
Speaker
Oh, yeah. But that does kind of go into what was the biggest lesson that you did learn from this or that you think our listeners could learn? Ban Wastrel. In my particular game, Ban Wastrel, because Lucas McCabe as a second master, ignoring all of Von Schill's armor and shielded, really, really helped Landon win that game. And the other lesson is count your cards before the game because I didn't have a red joker and that is a big deal.
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah, definitely, definitely a big deal there. And that is that the count your cards thing, making sure you have 52, because yeah, you'll shuffle them, you'll drop one, it'll slide under a mat or something. It's 54, it's 52 plus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 52 plus the jokers, but yeah, is, is a good put.
00:09:21
Speaker
So, no, great lessons and we will be diving into that a little bit. So obviously you played Outkast. You're an Outkast. Have you ever played anything beyond Outkast? Competitively, no. Not competitively. Except you mentioned Perdita. You mentioned Perdita. I started as a guild player. So I've played Perdita, Sonya, Lady Justice, and Nelly from guild. Oh, and Dashal. So I played those masters. As I stated before, when I got into the game,
00:09:51
Speaker
The list building for Guild was kind of locked at the time. And I kind of hated being limited on what the good choices were to bring. But I dove into Outcast because I was like super into Malifaux at the time. And I went to a store and they had a bunch of sales going on. And I've always liked Hamlin. So I bought Hamlin. And then after I saw what else Outcast had to offer, I was just like Outcast for life. So I don't want to play anything else.
00:10:19
Speaker
Just all the time, all day, every day. And what I love the most about outcasts is that they're never OP. They're just like right in the middle and a little bit strong. Angel's face right now in the recording is like, they're not OP. I mean, have you given theory a try yet? I have. Actually, I have not lost a game with theory yet, but not anymore. And that was that was necessary. The matron was a bit over tuned.
00:10:49
Speaker
Not anymore, but the Yannick times were dark times in my opinion. Hey, let me tell you something. In the errata, when you only have one model nerfed that says a lot about your faction, that's all I got to say. But that model was like, especially with one shield. Yeah, I agree with you. Agree. And we're going to talk about, hey, we're going to talk about that because I hadn't played Malifaux in two months. No, way longer. So this tournament was October. I stopped playing in May.
00:11:18
Speaker
So I hadn't played Malifaux. Yeah. From May to October, I hadn't played Malifaux. I played maybe three games before the tournament. And so I hadn't played Von Schill. I played Von Schill against Hans, which was also at the tournament. Hans and Rob are the two doubtless guys that got me into Malifaux. And I played against Rob.
00:11:36
Speaker
And I remember I thought that the only thing that they nerfed about Yannick was that it being once per turn. But I was like, oh wait, you don't draw cards from this anymore. I was like, that's a big deal. So I had to rework my Von Schill strats just right before Landon's game.
00:11:56
Speaker
Ouch. But that's, so coming in third and having not played in months that listeners listened to the last couple episodes that we've had, you know, we've talked a lot about the importance of fundamentals. And if that doesn't scream, know your fundamentals that I don't know what does because I was not expecting this at all. I got to the tournament and I saw that there was a Scorpius and I was like, if I only win Scorpius, I'll be super happy.
00:12:24
Speaker
And I ended up doing better than what I thought I was going to do. Making the podium, yeah. Yeah, because you're like Scorpius, or maybe I can get like best infection outcast. I didn't even know that was a thing, to be honest. Okay. But yeah, so this pool, so you were going for Scorpius kind of more than you were going for the win.
00:12:46
Speaker
So he did plan when you were looking at the pools early on. And let me just, for the listeners, it's all in the show notes, but round five was standard covert. Uh, and the skin pool was assassinate, catch and release, load them up, public demonstration in your face. So did you go into this knowing that like, I'm taking Von Schill two for this, or was it like, okay, I'm down to, you know, I've got, you know, could you play the entire faction? You've got a few more left and then you meet up with Landon and he declares 10 thunders and you're going, okay, it's gotta be Van Von Schill.
00:13:16
Speaker
I do play every master in outcasts. I've got enough reps with all of them, except maybe Vix two. I haven't played them enough just because I love Vix one so much. But I've got enough reps with all of them to be comfortable running any master at any given game day, you know? But I got lucky. I'm not going to suit. I think anybody that wins Scorpius has to be at least a little bit lucky in who they're playing against.
00:13:45
Speaker
You know, because I got, how many resers players were there at the tournament? There was like three of us was all. I mean, that's the only three. Yeah. It was weird. Five resers. Okay. So five that's enough. Um, so we don't, we don't want more than five resers anyway. Uh, so I didn't run into any resers before round six. So I didn't have to play levy, which is obviously like my best matchup into resers.
00:14:12
Speaker
Um, how many 10 thunders players were there? Was it like something like 11? There were 11 10 thunders. Yeah. So I hadn't run into any 10 thunders. So my best bet as, as I've stated in the podcast before into 10 thunders is Von Schill. So I had to play, I couldn't, I hadn't played Von Schill either. I think to this point, round one, I declared whatever because it was a buy a round two into guild, which I would normally expect Hoffman. And I wanted to play levy. I played Tara and that was a really fun game, but we're not here to talk about that.
00:14:43
Speaker
Uh, round three, I played against outcast, but it was corner Carva path. And my favorite Carva pass master is Vicks. So I played Vicks. Uh, round four was a legendary game on stream against Mr. Angel who is here. Um, and guard, it was guard the stash. I didn't even, I can guard the stash. I don't even care what you're playing. I'm playing Jackdaw. So I played Jackdaw there. And then I read.
00:15:08
Speaker
my first 10 thunders player just happened. So to be the best one. So I had to play Von Schill in this game. Um, the reason I chose Von Schill two over Von Schill one was because it was covert and barring that, you know, you can stop your opponent, opponent from scoring with engaging them. Von Schill two has a two inch reach. Got it. So I kind of leaned toward that.
00:15:35
Speaker
And I know that Yoko gives out a lot of a distracted and Von Schill 2 stops distracted by engaging models. So certainly as we're going through, first a couple of comments is that you mentioned the on stream and that heroic skill gamers streams pretty dang regular almost all of the tournaments in Houston. And then certainly stream this one. So for listeners, we've got links to
00:16:03
Speaker
the overall stream for all six games are available. We got those in the show notes. And then we also have a link to, we'll put a link to both the game that Carlo just talked about against the, you know, specifically we'll take you right to the time hack for his game against Angel that he mentioned.
00:16:19
Speaker
And then certainly this game was on stream, the game that we're going to be talking about here in just a moment and against Landon. And so please check that out and give the subscribes and likes and all the good stuff. Please help him out. He's a fantastic man. And I don't know if I've seen a better.
00:16:36
Speaker
streaming gaming platform. I think his, his work is, is very, very, very good. Yeah. And he's always working on improving it. Yeah. So, and then the other thing is I would say just to land and please jump in. If you got anything, like it's kind of rare that we have somebody from the other side of the table. Yeah. So please, please jump in. I have to say those were probably my two favorite games from the tournament was the game I played against angel and the game I played against landed.
00:17:04
Speaker
It's not often that you get to play against two world champions, right? And good on you for being there. Boy, I wish I was a world champion. I just keep getting new and new statuses, but give me a month. We'll see if I can actually live up to that one.
00:17:21
Speaker
Well, I mean, you definitely had a very strong strength of schedule. I put that as the third tiebreaker because it helps, you know, get everything all nice and sorted and people like it. And you had a, one of the higher strengths of schedules that was there. So, playing against both Landon and Angel, that is a tough schedule. So that's, that's also like something I didn't expect. So like you said earlier, I placed third, right? Mm-hmm.
00:17:46
Speaker
So the only person that beat me was the person that won the whole tournament. And the person that was in second place, I beat. So I don't think that's too bad of a showing.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah, not bad at all, brother. Well done. Well done. So all right. So we got Vonshield2 cruising in. How about the schemes and just kind of your overall game plan as you're going into this and you're facing land and maybe
00:18:16
Speaker
You know, it's Yoku. You don't know McCabe. You talked about a lesson learned of like massive lesson. Yeah. So lesson. Yeah. For those who don't know that this tournament was, was bands, we had, it was bands one. So you could ban one keyword. Um, what did you ban? I banned honeypot. I, like I said, I, my favorite moment of this was meeting everybody I've been watching. So learning how.
00:18:41
Speaker
Landon likes to play, I know he loves Kitty, and I know he loves Bill. So I thought if I could take away one of his two weapons, maybe I would have a leg up.
00:18:51
Speaker
I wanted to hire Kitty this game, I want you to know that. Well, you know what, I would have rather you hired Kitty than ignore my only strength as a faction there, or as a master I would say, which is my tankiness. I'm gonna say like five seconds of Carlo show, I'm gonna say like all my opponents accept Carlo.
00:19:11
Speaker
ban angler against me and i don't have angular assembl yet what did i what did i ban i don't remember which bank was i was like yeah i did i did i did like i didn't want to see swine cursed in there bro fucking swine cursed anyway sorry go ahead
00:19:32
Speaker
So yeah, so that was the biggest lesson. I mean, I think I asked him beforehand. I was like, do you have any out of keyword hires that ignore armor? And he said no, but I don't think he was thinking masters when he said no. I didn't say no. I think I rattled off a couple of options, then forgot about precise on McCabe. I talked to you about samurai, but you can't ban samurai. Correct.
00:19:59
Speaker
At the master level, I've got Jan low and then I listed off everything I could remember that says ignores armor. Not about precise, because I was just rattling off ignores armor. I can't bet them all either way. No, don't feel don't feel bad. Don't feel bad, because listen, like when I I mean, I talked to Landon like not a lot, but I had talked to Landon before and I had hoped to play him at this tournament. I mean, Rob,
00:20:28
Speaker
Rob hates being on stream, or he would have done it at some point. Or sorry, on stream and on podcast. But Rob has actually told me in private, I mean, I'm going to air his dirty laundry out here, that Landon is probably the best player he's ever played. And Rob is a perennial top table player. He's very competitive at any game he plays.
00:20:55
Speaker
But I was excited to play against Landon. I wasn't like intimidated or anything. I was just excited. And playing him when he has a leg up is kind of like a cool challenge for me. You know? That's great. And him being able, like I said, the thing about Von Schill that makes him good is the fact that he has armor and shielded to deal with. Because other than that, all of his models are stat five across the board.
00:21:24
Speaker
which is not good because as you most, if you don't know, most attacks are at stat six. So you're at a stat advantage to hit Von Schill's models. And so let me go ahead and lay out the crew lists for- Sure, go right ahead. Yeah, and so you had taken Von Schill two, Ironheart, Steam trunk of course, Hannah, two engineers, a scout, a librarian and a Draken trooper.
00:21:53
Speaker
And so, and you were facing Landon, you knew that he declared Yoku. He ended up bringing Unseen, Yoku 2, which of course, McCabe, who we've already talked about, it was McCabe 2, the Tomb Delver, Luna, McCabe's totem, Bill, Terracotta Warrior,
00:22:18
Speaker
the Kunoichi and a low river monk. Is that the right list, Landon? Yeah, that's the right list. I got to say I was quite thankful to have the extra time when we were locking in a list because I remember at least twice I locked in a list that didn't have Luna in it or some other model. That would have sucked. Wait a second. I'm missing something. I got to change something real quick. Hold on.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah. Cause not being able to dig up that scrap would have been tough. And a lot of times when you see someone bring a secondary master, they don't often spring that extra cost for the totem. Cause you know, you're used to like, Oh, if I get it for free, yeah, this is awesome. But do I really want to pay for it? Well, in this case you do, because he wouldn't have gotten that sword, which has allowed him to ignore all of my armor. Yeah. Three stones for the upgrade is, is worth. And then, you know, you get a few more.
Gameplay Reflections and Lessons Learned
00:23:10
Speaker
of course for sure but when you saw that were you instantly like oh my gosh you know your game plan changed dramatically when you saw the list or or yeah talk to me about your game plan please the biggest mistake i made which i told landon at the end of the game was taking assassinate as a scheme i if if i put it to you this way i talked to landon about it after the game but uh he stopped me from scoring the second point of catch and release
00:23:39
Speaker
somewhat illegally because he used gather until on the same model twice. It wouldn't have changed the outcome. I would have lost by two instead of by three. Not big deal. Um, but the other thing was if I had taken in your face, uh, I would have lost five to four because Vonshell ended up killing bill in that game. Uh, and I was in between in your face and assassinate and I took assassinate kind of forgetting that Yoko has slippery.
00:24:09
Speaker
which is a big deal. She has stealth and slippery. So like you have to get in there or you're not going to kill her. And me forgetting that she has slippery was a detriment to me picking assassinate. So my biggest mistake in that game was scheme selection in general, because I didn't score a single point on assassinate. And another big lesson learned here is holy crap. Yoko is probably the best master in the game at covert operations.
00:24:41
Speaker
Thankfully, we don't have to deal with that anymore. GG5 maybe, but yeah, I'll miss COVID ops. The reason why I say that is because she has several two inch reach models. I mean, 10th Thunders to me is like the toolbox faction. If you need something in 10th Thunders, you can find it somewhere else. And chances are it has versatile. Yeah.
00:25:08
Speaker
If you need, if you need guns, you have guns. If you need ruthless, you got ruthless. If you need ignore demise, you got to ignore demise. So there's like, from my experience against 10 thunders is they have the most answers to like problems than any other faction. But they are accounted for in their models because as Landon stated in his first, in his episode today, none of their models, quote unquote, break any of the rules as like, let's say Levy does with his irreducible
00:25:38
Speaker
or something of the sort, right? They're just really good models. Like in this case, he needed to ignore armor and shield it and he had an answer to it, right? But Yoko too has 10 thunders as a faction has an access to reach and two inch reach. Two inch reach will absolutely destroy you in covert, especially when you don't have a choice of who's going last. Now makes sense, absolutely makes sense.
00:26:06
Speaker
Have you ever, Landon, not gone last while playing Yoko too? Maybe a couple of times when it didn't matter, but that would be like mid turns I spent my past soaking in other things. Honestly, I'm not certain on that. It would be rare. Because I actually think that, I don't think there's a better master in the game for Covert. I mean, that might be a hot take, I don't know, but it's a take I'm making regardless.
00:26:33
Speaker
But yeah, just cause there's no way that you're not going to be able to last activation, get a. Maybe not even last two activations. Yeah. You can, you can get a model to a strategy marker if you need. It's more important actually, not that I can get one to the marker, but that I can just make sure that all of the four markers on the table, you don't have a valid place to score because I have.
00:26:59
Speaker
tools to reposition models such that I'll be engaging you everywhere where you are, and then I'll have my point. And to Landon's credit, he did that every turn. The reason I only have two points is because he went last and engaged my scoring models every turn.
00:27:16
Speaker
So, I mean, credit where credit's due, he played the crew exceptionally well. I had, I even, I think we both talked about it before the game. I was like, I'm putting together this janky ass list. And oh, by the way, Landon, I remember you saying like, I think it's a good list. I'll tell you after the game why, but you never told me why.
00:27:35
Speaker
Oh crap, what did I have to say about that? It's been a hot minute. I know, it's been at least a couple weeks. Think about it. And then if you remember, get back to me on it. Part of that is, yeah, going for the jank because you're kind of fighting uphill. So you're going to be like, we're going to try this.
00:27:57
Speaker
A lot of the reason why the jank was brought into this game particularly was because he ignores armor and shielded with a model that can actually destroy me. I didn't bring Eric. Okay. Yeah, makes sense. Eric being a 10 stone model with only eight health. If you don't have armor or shielded on that model, it is paper because its stats are so garbage.
00:28:22
Speaker
Right. So him pressuring me not to bring one of my best models was a, was a big thing. And so I had to make do with other things. So I remember now, by the way, tell me, no, that was the thought. Okay. You brought trapper and the trapper I actually really, really liked for reasons that you didn't execute on because the trapper is one of those models that can actually just.
00:28:47
Speaker
deploy aggressively and just snipe Luna off the board before I actually get to dig up any relics. And sure, I can use Luna's corpse as a parting wish as one relic is going to give out the entire game.
00:29:05
Speaker
But taking the Trapper to actually start the action early on Yoko and force me to think extra hard about how I'm deploying so as to not get the full advantage of my past tokens is definitely a good choice, I feel like. I don't think I had a good shot on Luna. And even if I did, as I'll get to later in this podcast, my flips were god-awful this game. Well, you flip better when you put the Joker in.
00:29:35
Speaker
Well, that's also true. But I mean, Von Schill lives and dies on sixes. And if you watch the stream, I don't think I think I hit maybe three out of like the 20 that I got.
00:29:53
Speaker
So I do wanna ask, so first of all, you were saying Trapper landed and that's free. That's a scout. Of course, scout nowadays now. All right, sorry. We're just totally fine, but I was like, let me just make sure that I'm assuming that it's the scout, but I wanted to make sure. The scout is a very underrated model that you don't get to bring a lot because you have Eric and Hannah, which are such fantastic models, but that's 20 stones.
00:30:21
Speaker
So that's half your list. So in my case where I didn't bring Eric, I was able to improvise with more stuff, one of which being a range 14 gun called the Trapper Slash Scout.
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah. And then I'd also want to do, and you mentioned it before, but could you go ahead and talk about the, the, the missing red joker thing that you mentioned at the top of the show, but I want to go ahead and hit it just, just like what had happened on that. And then also like, how did you deal with that from almost like a, Hey, this is strictly speaking, you know, obviously that's, that's the best card to not having your deck from an opponent standpoint.
00:30:58
Speaker
agreed. I wish it had been to any other card. Well, yeah. I'm kind of wondering, like, how did you deal with that with Doug or both of you guys? How did you deal with that from like a TO standpoint with a real deck? So the thing is this, is I didn't realize it wasn't in my deck until after that game.
00:31:18
Speaker
Okay, there's that. And what ended up happening was it was the, I mean, I don't know,
Managing Gameplay Under Pressure
00:31:26
Speaker
what is that called? Like the seriously twisted deck or whatever? It's a legal deck, it's fine, but it comes in a deck box. Like one with like a magnetic flap. It's like a cardboard box with like a magnetic flap that closes over. Well, mine has been through some games.
00:31:46
Speaker
and the flap itself still closes, but there's a gap in the deck. So when I pulled the deck out of my bag, that card slid out the top. And I didn't realize that.
00:32:03
Speaker
And I remember telling Landon, dude, I haven't seen my red joker all game, which happens sometimes. It's just a normal thing. And then after the game, I counted all of my cards and realized it wasn't in there. And I checked under the table. I checked everywhere. And it wasn't there because I had just played Angel on that same area because it was on stream. And I couldn't find it. And then I looked in the bag where my deck was and I found it.
00:32:31
Speaker
put two and two together, and I realized that it wasn't in the deck for neither Angel's game nor Landon's game. Which is brutal, but I mean, that's proof that you don't need the red joker to win games, right? Or lose them in that case. Yeah. But yeah, 50-50, so that's all right. Yeah. So that's what happened. And at that point, I mean, I found the joker. It was back in the deck, so it didn't really matter at that point. But I can't really do anything about what's been
00:32:59
Speaker
like happened in the past at that point, you know? So my favorite thing was when, so Rob and I drove down there together, rode back together. So Rob is probably like my Malifaux buddy. Everybody's got one buddy that they play games with, right? And mine is Rob. Cause he lives a mile away from me.
00:33:17
Speaker
And so I go to his house to play, but my favorite was when I found out that I didn't have the red joker and I said that, the look on Rod's face, because I don't think his jaw could have been glued more to the floor, because he felt so bad for me, but I didn't have it. But it was just, I think it was the coolest moment of the tournament for me. I was watching from the sidelines there as you're like, certain through your deck, and then you find it, I'm like,
00:33:45
Speaker
Oh fuck. Oh, whatever, man. It happens. I got the Scorpius, which is what I wanted, and I'm happy with that. And doing it without a red joker, that's a pretty good flex. Well, like I said in previous episode, when I played against Angel, I played with two hanged, and my black joker counted as a red joker, so I technically had it in that game, you know? I mean, you had only half of the potential red joker. Yeah, exactly.
00:34:11
Speaker
But so look out so all right the other other list building thing I wanted to ask about the Draken trooper that I don't see a lot of Draken troopers. Yeah Well load them up was in the scheme pool, correct? Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah round five that makes total sense I said there was two reasonings behind this number one Nobody likes burning, right?
00:34:34
Speaker
Okay. So burning is a big deal. And even if the dragon trooper does nothing in a game, he at least blows up, does two damage and burning. There you go. Okay. So, and I think that two damage and burning was what allowed me to kill Bill in that game. I'm not positive on that. Don't quote me on it, but I think that that actually contributed to that. But the reason why I brought him was number one, the burning.
00:35:01
Speaker
And number two, uh, it targets movement. So now I had a, I had the engineers, Hannah von Schill and the scout, the target defense, uh, the librarian that targets willpower. And I have the drag and trooper that targets movement. So if I can find a weak stat somewhere, I can exploit it with one of my models at least. So that was the reasoning. It's that it's be the fact that it destroys markers. Yeah.
00:35:30
Speaker
So if he was trying to score load him up, I had an answer to that. He ended up not. I don't know if Yoko's even good at that three scheme, but even I wanted an answer for it regardless. And then thirdly, he provides burning. And now that he's not eight stones and now seven stones, I actually end up using the dragon trooper for a lot of things. I actually really liked the dragon trooper at seven stones.
00:35:57
Speaker
No, it's cool. That makes good sense. I think it's a pretty good model, actually. And even at nine stones, you put wanted criminal on them, even in disguise. Yeah, of course. And the extra movement doesn't help when you got a long range gun. Exactly. I don't think I've ever tried load them up with Yoko. I don't know what marker you would use. But I do remember how Bill died. And that's that he got soloed pretty much by this
00:36:24
Speaker
freak engineer that just like built in armor piercing and just kept punching him with armor piercing. He just kept flipping the straights. And I'm just like, I don't have the cards to spare to cheat on this. I mean, I guess you're just punching Bill for five over and over again. I don't even think it was with focus. It was just like what it was with focus because I got it from the engineer's bonus action. Yeah.
00:36:49
Speaker
And then Von Schill finished him off with two distracted being like, okay, well, I'm gonna hit you. And I remember talking to you about it before I did it. I was like, I should either focus and bypass one of the distractions, right? Or I should just take two negative flips. And on the first negative flip, I think I flipped like 10-8 and I ended up hitting him.
00:37:14
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, that's funny. That's great. It happens. You mentioned upgrades there at one point that, cause you didn't take any upgrades and you took eight soul stones. Is that about right for this crew? No, I think I took servant of the dark powers with Von Shill. Ah, okay. Got it.
00:37:30
Speaker
Okay, which I mean, I might not have written that down. That's probably my bad. No worries. But I did take that. I like putting it on my master when assassinates in the pool, because if I so happen to kill something, I can stop you from scoring assassinate. Yeah, makes the extra movement helps a lot. Yeah, it's not it's certainly not terrible. So okay, agreed.
00:37:53
Speaker
So all right. Um, during the game that, uh, and we've talked about some of the, some of the, some of the fun moments that, uh, any other key moments that are worth. Worth talking about key decision points that you had to make during the game. Yes. Uh, so to stop Ron show from dying, cause I think Landon had him at like.
00:38:11
Speaker
something like three health. I had to go, I had to jump, cheat my seven because I didn't have good flips. And I went and I killed Luna to trigger servant of the dark powers and get Von Show back to a healthy state. But it did cost him scoring the strat, but at the same time,
00:38:33
Speaker
I stopped him from scoring a second point of assassinate. And I think we discussed after the game, he, uh, is Kunoichi died before scoring him any points in that game. Um, man, that, that game was so, it was just like, I literally was doing mental gymnastics, that whole game, just figuring out how I can score one point on strats. Now, you know how I felt play against you. Well, yeah, I mean, it was, it was what, like, uh, zero points until turn five on your part. Yeah.
00:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, I got no points until turn five. So he did great on that. And what did you say, Angel? That now you know how I felt playing against you when you killed my band-aid, my guy. First activation turn two, I was like, oh, well. Well, looking at Motuk at giving everybody immunity to stagger against the jackdaw crew is tough in general. Yeah. For sure. But I digress.
00:39:30
Speaker
Yeah, no worries at all. So how about MVP model? Who ended up taking the MVP out of this? For me? Yeah. Ooh. It's either that engineer. Yeah, it has to be that engineer. What am I even talking about? It's that engineer. It has to be that engineer. 100%. In which engineer was this? You took one and two. So we really need to know which sculpt was it. If you asked me both what? There you go. It was the one with the two ponytails.
00:40:00
Speaker
the two ponytails, because that's the one that was fighting Bill for life, the entire game on the flank there. Has to be. So some big lessons out of the game, and it kind of goes to the key decision points, but you were like, yeah, it was a loss, but that you learned a lot. And so yeah, what was your personal biggest lesson out of this game?
00:40:25
Speaker
Um, man, dude. Uh, so I, I think that one of the contributing factors to why I picked assassinate was the fact that I was pressured into clock. Not that like it's like a, a, a.
00:40:36
Speaker
jerk move or anything, but the round timer had started and I still hadn't picked my schemes. So Landon was like, Hey, you can take your time, but I'm going to give you the clock right now. So you can, which is, which is a good call. No, Hey, it's completely acceptable. I'm not saying it's like poor play or anything. What I'm saying is, is like, I was in between assassinate and in your face and I picked the wrong one.
00:40:58
Speaker
And I'm not blaming it on the clock by any means. So that was a lesson is take your time. I don't even care. I mean, and even in our game angel, the clock obviously ended up influencing your decisions as well.
00:41:12
Speaker
I mean, I play six activation in one minute and 50 seconds. And that is actually facts. It was very impressive. But like, my point is, is like, don't let, I mean, in that case, you have to let the clock influence you. You have no choice. But at the beginning of the game, number one, don't let the clock influence your decisions. Number two, banwastrel.
00:41:36
Speaker
I mean, we finished with what, like 20 minutes left between both of our clocks. So yeah, for sure. Like take the time you need to make the right decisions. Agreed. A hundred percent. And number two, if you can not play Landon in a GT, that would probably be the best, the best bet. That is good advice. That's a good, yeah. Top tier advice from us here at Students of Conflict. That's how Sam still score for me at Captain Con this year. I got, I got a win against Landon the one time I've played him.
00:42:05
Speaker
That's facts undefeated. There you go. That's, that's amazing. A hundred percent win rate, a hundred percent versus Landon. Yeah. Can I bring up like a few random things from the game though, that we skipped over that I actually think that was really clever. Please. Um, so
00:42:22
Speaker
I think the very first thing you did was you did a good job of actually splitting your units across the board. You didn't keep them all in one spot. And, you know, I on the first turn, I decide that I got to send became after someone to get some kills. Right. That's what you do when you hire this big mega beat stick. Right. And so I send them after this engineer. And this is why I said both engineers were MVP, that Carlos given me access to take two attacks to on the right half of the map from my perspective.
00:42:51
Speaker
Naturally, I black joker one of them because I've been black joker and damage flips all day on the third one. Yeah, and the funny part was I called it before he flipped it. Yeah, it was great. I was like black joker and it came out so that was like really fun and it's on stream so check it out. Yeah, it was only like the third time it happened to me today so I was ready for it either. You called it and I'm like yeah it is.
00:43:19
Speaker
I had to spend a lot of time walking McCabe all the way over to that side of the board, and at that point in time, he's there, he's fighting that model, he's fighting Hannah, and he's not fighting crucially your master. Squishies. Everyone's squishy, I got precise, right? Of course, yeah, fair enough. He's not there trying to get me those assassinate points, and I realized that I ended up, after that Black Joker, I just had to spend too much time on the right half of the board with McCabe to get the kills that I wanted to.
00:43:49
Speaker
because Hannah was not the ideal opponent for McCabe I don't think and he's spent a lot of time with her of course I with counterspell and and stones it's it's tough and I did kind of like play keep away from the game I was like give this unit rocket boots jump them away from the cave
00:44:10
Speaker
Yes, I felt like you did a good job using trying to use the whole board because if I have to hire a second master, right? Like so much of my ability to influence the board is centered around that piece. So if you can like create distance between that piece and what it wants to do, that's a really effective way that, you know, maybe isn't talked about enough of how you deal with master hires or just like immensely powerful pieces on the board.
00:44:39
Speaker
I appreciate that. I made a decision. I made a decision that game as soon as I saw off McCabe. I was like, wherever McCabe goes, I'm going to run away from him the whole game. And to that detriment, I really stuck to that game plan. I was like, I don't want to bear anywhere near this guy, especially with my catch and release model.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah, your catch and release model, you did a good job of just keeping the game real close to you until the end of the game where it was like, oh, that's the catch and release model, right? So I didn't even know if that was on my bingo list of schemes you might have taken. I mean, I've probably tried to play around it at some point in time, but it was not early enough for when it needed to be. So you did a good job of keeping those cards close to your chest. But mostly I just wanted to talk about the
00:45:34
Speaker
You know, the black Joker salt and the, uh, about, uh, about keeping, uh, keeping your crew, not all in one place, but to be fair, the, uh, he didn't have a red Joker there. So that kind of balance out the black Joker. Well, there's that. And then all it did was by me, I cheated initiative, one initiative, and then it got to get me the card back because I cheated.
00:46:00
Speaker
and then it died immediately after that. No, that's great. You've got to finish your food. Of course. All right. So kind of moving to our looking back at the game segment, we love asking advice for bottom third player, advice for me, someone facing, you know, so I've faced Von Schill a couple times, even Von Schill too, but like, what kind of advice would you give me or somebody like me facing Von Schill and
00:46:30
Speaker
Kevin, just not a great player. You'd be better against your crew, man. Like I stated at the beginning of the thing. Well, number one, Yannick's gone. I would have said kill Yannick, but Yannick's gone. It's not tech. It's not tech anymore. Um, so don't worry about that. My biggest piece of advice if you're fighting against Von Schill is bring something that ignores armor or that ignores shielded.
00:46:57
Speaker
because that crew lives or dies on its tankiness. Like literally every minion in that faction or that keyword is five, five, five, five, five. You know what I mean? Five movement, five defense, five willpower, five everything. So you were probably gonna have attacks that hit harder than what they can take if you ignore their armor and their shielded.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah, now how about like, and Landon kind of faced this in that, you know, one model that was really, really good about that and obviously could hand out swords, but like, yeah, one model or two models that you bring in as a tech pick, how do you use those most effectively against someone like you where it's like, yeah,
00:47:41
Speaker
Do you end up trying to feed them targets? How does that look from your standpoint if here I am with, or another new player brings in two guys who are really good at armor killing and you can just avoid them? How does that play out in practice for you? I had to deal with something similar to this in a previous game, which I played against, I think his name is Cat King.
00:48:06
Speaker
Um, where he was playing Jackdaw and I know at me as a Jackdaw player, I know what Jackdaw's weaknesses are, which is ruthless because they live or die on terrifying. So I ended up playing the Vicks, which number one has an in keyword ruthless model being Taylor and a versatile ruthless model being Hans. Um, so like I said, knowing what your opponent strengths and weaknesses are, are massive in this game. Um, and as a pilot of a scalpel bottle.
00:48:37
Speaker
I feel like I think that's a right term. I always like to start somewhere where I can hit you, but you can't hit me back. So flanks are great for scalpel models, right? So if you deploy them on sides and then you start taking out the model that's weakest to you and then kind of start working your way in towards the models that are strongest towards you,
00:49:04
Speaker
that, that model that you hired to be a scalpel has done its job. Therefore, if it dies, you're not upset about it. But on the receiving end, where you see that your opponent has a scalpel model, have rocket boots and jump away from it.
00:49:21
Speaker
Cheat it if you have to, like I did. Just leave. Don't let it hit you. More than once. Even if it has to be a pee. That's what Maliforn needs, you know? Rocket boots for the Tanookis. So they can stay alive.
00:49:36
Speaker
Hey, hey, if we all would play a 2v2, I'll bring Von Schill and I'll give you two new rocket boots, okay, buddy? That would mean that I got, we gotta do that, gotta do that. So, all right, I'm also curious, just gotcha moments, or gotcha characteristics, mechanics that exist within Von Schill, in general, Von Schill 2 in specific. What should new players watch out for if they're facing Von Schill
00:50:04
Speaker
Okay, so the thing that, me personally, I misplay a lot, and I think I did it in this game, is, so there's three things that make Vonshield 2 better than Vonshield 1, and there's infinite things that make Vonshield 1 better than Vonshield 2. I actually still think that Vonshield 1 is better than Vonshield 2, but in Covert Ops, where the reach matters and me needing to kill his models, Min3 is better than Min2,
00:50:34
Speaker
regardless of range, I would say that you need to watch out for the fact that when they use, cause Vonshield 2 can use two bonus actions, right? But they have to be two different bonus actions. And I think Landon caught me accidentally almost cheating, you know, because I tried to foul mouth motivation twice and you can't do that. You can only do each action once, but you can use two bonus actions.
Exploring Master Strategies
00:51:03
Speaker
Um, so there's that. And then the other thing is, is the fact you cannot forget that anything engaged by Von Schill 2 ignores any negatives whatsoever.
00:51:15
Speaker
It didn't come into play this game, but if, for example, you distract one of my models, cool. I'll just run Von Schill up to the model, but I want to shoot or hit with it. And then it ignores the distracted, or if you have manipulative or serene countenance or one of those defensive texts, if I get Von Schill in position to engage them and then rocket launcher that model in the face, that model is probably gone. Yeah. You know, does that interact with luck?
00:51:45
Speaker
It ignores all negatives. But I don't know if it's an opposed duels and damage duels. I have to lift that up. Only opposed duels. I think I want to say the damage duels still would be negative. Correct. To hit duels would be straight. Yes. But I mean at that point you're doing damage so it's kind of worth. Yeah, always. That's a good question. I guess first you have to determine how many positives or negatives you have and then you just choose to ignore them with the ability.
00:52:15
Speaker
Yeah. So that's, that's how I assume it will work. Yeah. You just ignore it all with the sold their cup. So no captain or whatever it's called. So yeah, I would say that those are a couple of moments that you need to look out for Vonshell. That's kind of Vonshell strength in general is having an, like, okay. So I said earlier that 10 thunders is the toolbox faction. Vonshell is the toolbox master for outcasts.
00:52:44
Speaker
I can play von show in any matchup and kind of just be okay because I have so many options to like deal with certain things. I mean, he does have a toolbox that rolls around with him. Agreed. Which for some reason doesn't have all terrain and I'm going to be salty about it forever. It's got tank trends. It should be able to move through like terrain. Fight me anyway.
00:53:06
Speaker
No, what I'm saying is that if I'm playing against explorers, well, I'll bring Hannah and librarians, because they attack willpower, and that's explorers' weakness. If I'm playing against resers, well, I will bring dragon troopers, because they attack movement, which resers have less of, and they apply burning, which their armor and their harder wound won't stop them from healing. So like I said, Vonsha is kind of like a toolbox model.
00:53:35
Speaker
keyword because I can figure out ways to gain advantages just from his model selection in general. That makes great sense. That shift into middle third players, experienced players who are maybe, you know, they're looking to beat you if they play tight, at least looking to keep the differential down. So what kind of advice would you give to middle third players?
00:53:58
Speaker
to beat me. Yeah. Heck yeah. I mean, Von Schill is my, like, I have a really low win rate with, uh, as despite him being a toolbox master, I like tend to like mess up something when I pilot him, uh, which probably tells me I should play him more. Um, but, um,
00:54:23
Speaker
Uh, to beat me, if I'm piloting Von Schill, which probably will only be if you're a 10 punters player, um, is, uh, stop me from putting out upgrades. Uh, Von Schill lives and dies on upgrades. Um, if I didn't have rocket boots, I couldn't run away from McCabe. If I didn't have, uh, uh, the shields, I couldn't survive the onslaught that bill gives me.
00:54:51
Speaker
You know, if Vonshell can't put out upgrades, and Vonshell 2 is way worse at putting out upgrades than Vonshell 1 is. So stop me from putting out upgrades. If that means killing my steam trunk, do it. It has three health. If you can blink it three times, it dies. And it blows up and hurts my models. So do it. Kill my steam trunk.
00:55:13
Speaker
I've got a question on that. So you said that you tend to play Von Schill into Ten Thunders. Now, Ten Thunders is one of the two factions that there is a model with academic superiority in it. So Shenlong too, and that just ignores your upgrades. Have you run into that? Is that something you worry about? I have. Luckily when I did, I had a lot of guns, so they didn't
00:55:40
Speaker
Get to get to me before I shot them off the board because that's another thing Shenlong doesn't have his guns well actually If you're really getting controversial here 10 Thunder archers, yeah, of course Number one not a lot of people run them and number two. They really don't like Eric in their face No, I'd agree
00:56:08
Speaker
to be fair I don't think anyone likes Eric in their face unless you ignore armor which they do but they can't shoot while they're engaged so
00:56:18
Speaker
Yeah, what an interesting matchup because yeah, it's and everybody who plays 10 thunders that's listening to this is now like, huh? What do I do if I ever face Carlo? Because he's bringing Von Schill. Probably. I actually thought about retroactively when I played against this when I brought Von Schill into this. I had
00:56:38
Speaker
I had Von Schill, Leviticus, Parker left in my Scorpius rotation. I was like, should I have brought Parker? I don't know. I don't think so. I think I would have lost harder if I had brought Parker. I think Parker can have a lot of game into Yoko too. I mean, they have a lot of stealth, man. So like, it's tough. I don't know if I agree with that, that take that Parker would be good into Yoko too.
00:57:04
Speaker
I mean, stagger at 18 inches range, will pushing you backwards. If they don't have stealth. Yeah, but you want to stagger Hinamatsu. That's a... Well, he didn't bring Hinamatsu. Or you want to stagger Bill, so he cannot push Bill across the board. I probably would have brought Hinamatsu if you played. Maybe I wouldn't have. Now that I think about it, you got me a dog. Yeah, I've done it before. That's super interesting. Yeah.
00:57:26
Speaker
So I thought, oh, I also had Hamlin, and I also thought about maybe playing Hamlin, because Hamlin's a wild card, like not a lot of people expect Hamlin to be dropped. Charmanders, I will never play Hamlin into Ten Thunders based on experience. Yeah, Hamlin's not great there.
00:57:43
Speaker
Yeah. You just need the other opponent to have a Charmander on the right spot at some point, which he can easily get. Oh, Charmander, you mean, uh, uh, what do they call the, the lions? Charmwater. Oh, Charmwater. Charmwater. Yeah. Oh God, I hate those fuckers. Yeah, they're, I, well, I mean, I mean, I couldn't ban them in this case cause they're in keyword, but I, me as an outcast player, a lot of people don't know this, but we live or die by demise. There are a couple of very important ones.
00:58:10
Speaker
As a Marcus Main and lover of my Jackalope, I hate anything that denies my Demises. Well, yeah, no, trust me. I got Hamlin with a Demise. I've got Hamlin with a Demise. I've had Jackdaw and mainly Montracer on that keyword. I've got Leviticus. There's so many masters that live or die on Demise triggers in Outcast.
00:58:32
Speaker
Also good to know. No, that's great. So some great stuff in there for middle thirds. So how about top third player? Yeah, what do you wish maybe that you'd done differently? And what did you learn as a top third player, brother? Again, congratulations. But yeah, what did you learn from this game?
00:58:47
Speaker
band waste roll. Yeah, heck yeah. Band waste roll, number one. Number two, don't play against Yoko in Coford Ops. So I actually wanted to dig in a little bit onto the band waste roll. And this is just because we got you, Landon, that you'd said that you were planning on bringing Kitty originally, right? So
00:59:07
Speaker
Would you have banned waste roll? Would you put that out as generic? No, no, waste roll was definitely the correct ban. I think I rattled it off during my listing, but it was because Sadeer had analyzed weakness when I was talking about, like, oh, what can ignore armor? Oh, waste roll can ignore armor. I've got Sadeer for analyzed weakness, but it's analyzed weakness, I think, is how I glazed over it. That's one model. That's one model.
00:59:31
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. If you ask me what to ban, I'll rattle off every keyword in my faction for one reason or the other. Because they're the toolbox faction. Exactly. But the reason I actually wanted to hire Kitty was because I had hired McCabe. It wasn't that, you know, I needed
00:59:49
Speaker
Kitty and not McCabe, uh, because McCabe, as I mentioned earlier, one of the things when you're hiring this really expensive piece that you're going to throw your whole game plan around is that you want to move it around for free. And if I had story in my bag, uh, I would have probably just put the paper tiger in instead. Um, but I don't think Nick had given me story for the weekend, which was fine. Cause everyone else banned story. Why do you think that is?
01:00:17
Speaker
Uh, I don't know. I honestly don't rate them all that highly, but, uh, I mean, Wukong's annoying, buddy. It's mostly for Than. I think Than is a really annoying piece to play into, um, having done it this week. I always ban a story against 10 Thunders and for me, it's Dan and Regine. Yeah. Regine also is a pretty decent choice, especially when you're playing out, you have all the guns. That Stan shockwave is really rough and like invalidating guns so hard.
01:00:46
Speaker
So if there's a lot of good choices for tech, you can dive into that keyword to go like grab. So I think that's why it was a common van. Yeah, that makes sense. That's cool. Anyone who listens to my content who's played with me knows that I don't really hire those models because, you know, Burns is just like not, not Burn, sorry. Madness. Madness and Malifaux is just this giant gaping void in my head as far as play options are concerned. Good to know. Good to know.
01:01:14
Speaker
I didn't have Thierry. Maybe Thierry might have been fun in this matchup, but I didn't have her put together. I didn't have her. I do now, because that's what I took home in price support.
01:01:23
Speaker
Nice. So I brought Koji to like two events when he was unnerved. And I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. There you go. So, Carl, I got a question for you that kind of goes towards the, you know, top tier player that you won Iron Scorpius playing, you know, a different master every single time.
01:01:47
Speaker
and anyone can, you know, go and try that. But to do that and do it successfully, that tends to be a top tier thing. What advice would you give to a player who's like, you know what? I'm going for Scorpius. Number one, get the bye. Especially in a six round tournament, get the bye.
01:02:08
Speaker
I'm not gonna say that didn't help but I mean the buy only gives you a plus two so I don't know who I would have played round one but I easily could have won maybe that game by two who knows I might have lost I don't want to be cocky but who knows number one get to buy number two number two is no life a faction like I have without casts okay and what I mean by no life is just play one faction and one faction only I mean
01:02:37
Speaker
Landon obviously has the most reps under 10 thunders and Angel, as you said, your comfort pick is Bayou. So, uh, if you know a faction inside and out, you know, tech picks, you know, match ups, you know, everything about the faction. So I literally got lucky in the fact that I didn't have to bring out my counters until the last two rounds.
01:03:02
Speaker
I literally just played what I thought was the most effective. I played Tarah when Breakthrough was in the pool against Guild. So, duh. Tarah can score Breakthrough by herself in almost every game. I picked Victoria's and Carvapath because Ronin are really good camp kickers, especially in corner.
01:03:25
Speaker
I picked Jackdaw and Guard the Stash. I've talked about that in your podcast before. I think he's our best option in Guard the Stash. And since I got the buy, I didn't have to play Guard the Stash round one. So that also helped because I might have played Jackdaw in round one and then I would have had to be hosed against Angel. So. Well, hammering in a standard Guard the Stash is pretty good as well.
01:03:50
Speaker
But the problem with hammerling, you really need the reps to play it on a clock and one hour or seven minutes. Number one. Number two is models are paper thin. So if you can kill his models, even in general, it's tough. Like I tend to, if I need my models to survive, I tend to bring Barbaros and hammerling. So to stop you from actually hitting my models.
01:04:12
Speaker
So I was going to just, you know, add on a little bit. Yeah, I agree that having a whole knowledge of your faction is really important, but also I think just not playing anything that's conceptually too difficult if you're not super familiar with how they work on a detailed level, making sure you can establish a baseline fundamentals oriented game plan of like,
01:04:34
Speaker
I have these objectives and I know I can use these models to do them. Even if you're not getting 100% out of a model because maybe you've played the crew two or three times, knowing that you can execute on some sort of game plan and fall back on what you do know about the game I think is important when you're trying to play a bunch of different keywords in the same day that you have varying levels of familiarity with.
01:04:58
Speaker
Yes. Keep it simple, stupid, I think we said earlier. Yes, exactly. The kiss rule, yes. I think that's great. All right. We had a bunch of questions in Discord, and I have been talking to you for a long time, so I'm not going to ask all of them. I'm going to ask one, and I'm going to use this as an opportunity to also kind of ask you about plugs. So Personal Glitch had asked, and that's Brian, a frequent guest,
01:05:23
Speaker
And one of his questions was, who was the best singer at karaoke night? And, uh, and pretty much like dang near unanimously in the discord. It was like, it's you brother. And that's because like being in a band is OP. I'm not going to ask who's the best singer besides you. I'm just like going to acknowledge that you were the best singer at karaoke night. Well, Landon, Landon was the best singer besides me is if I had to say.
01:05:47
Speaker
because I mean, here's the thing is not only am I in a band, but I was also a vocal coach for over 10 years. So like, yes, that's okay.
Carlo's Musical Endeavors
01:05:58
Speaker
Anyway, but my thing is, is the thing I might, on my very first lesson with every one of my vocal students, I asked them what makes a good singer and I get a variety of answers and they're all wrong. The one answer is what makes a good singer is confidence. That's all you need.
01:06:13
Speaker
And Landon, Landon has that by the droves. Oh, yeah. So now that's great. And that's a great put. But yeah, tell us about your band and tell us about any other plugs that you want to say. Well, I don't like you. We talked about a little bit earlier in private. I have a music video for the song called Stare coming out at some point in the near future. It is a song about social media and how much I hate it.
01:06:43
Speaker
Like the chorus in the song says, stare until you die. You're living in a lie. So stare until you die, which is the truth. I mean, we are all glued to media, phones, whatever. That's neither here nor there. That's just art is art. And I wanted to talk about something that makes me mad, especially when the song is aggressive and angry. There you go. Awesome. So there's a music video coming out for that song. We have two diversions of the video coming out. One is an actual edit, and the other one is just a one take.
01:07:13
Speaker
Okay. Cool. Cool. Um, so that's coming out. I am almost done writing a new album. I'll be starting to record it. I'm on song eight of 10. So that's also cool. I guess those are the only plugs I have also listened to every bit of content from students of conflict, danger planet, rage, quit wire.
01:07:36
Speaker
Steam powered scoundrels, sorry. What am I missing? Defective dice, what am I missing? Boring conversation. We had the other coast, Jim was from the other coast. The other coast. And Noble is starting up, oh, don't mind us. Don't mind us coming out of the Pacific Northwest. So Noble was there with some more content creation.
01:07:57
Speaker
go listen to all of them. If you want to learn more about this game, that's where I started. And I'm doing pretty well, I would say. Go check them out and keep this community what it is, which is fantastic.
01:08:12
Speaker
That's awesome. I'll drop the extra plug if you're interested in meeting content creators because we're cool people. A lot of us will be at Captain Con out in February this coming year. Do that. Go to that event. Do that all. I'm aiming to go again. And Jesse's running that, right? Yep, Jesse runs that. Oh yeah, and Jesse was there. We didn't mention boring conversations. I said boring conversations. OK, you can tell it's late and I am. I think that's my cue that it's time to sign us off. It's time to go.
01:08:40
Speaker
Oh, so I have a couple of things I'd like to promote real fast. Yes. Top dog design. Top dog design. We plug that every episode. First of all, some of you listeners out there may have noticed we took a little hiatus from releasing episodes of Students of Conflict.
01:08:59
Speaker
A big factor in that was I got super busy because a small terrain studio, Phoenix Foundry, had reached out to me to do a bunch of printable terrain design work for a Kickstarter they were gearing up for. Well that Kickstarter will have launched shortly before we will be releasing this episode.
01:09:18
Speaker
We'll have a link to it in the show notes. Some quick info on it, it's called Gailwyn, and it's a 3D printable fantasy village made up of seven core buildings and a sweet airship, all with fully playable interiors. They're really sweet.
01:09:34
Speaker
I personally sculpted three buildings for this project, the Sunwind Tavern, Windmere Manor, and Windward Cottage, and I'm really proud of how they all turned out, so you should check it out. The guys from Phoenix Foundry, Judd and Peter, have been an absolute joy to work with, and we're hoping to do more cool stuff together in the future, so keep an eye on that.
Upcoming Malifaux Events
01:09:58
Speaker
But yeah, you should go and check out this Kickstarter and show them some love. That's excellent. Secondly, so Lone Star Fodown, Malifo GT this year. I mean, that's what we're talking about today, but it was the largest event in North America this year.
01:10:15
Speaker
Absolutely staggered than just many players in just our second year doing it. And we have the date already scheduled for next year. We are, you know, have the calendar slot blocked out at Dragon's Lair again. So October 11th through the 13th is going to be Lone Star Fodown Malefoe GT number three. Let's go.
01:10:42
Speaker
We were the largest this year, you know, we're aiming to get even bigger next year. And yeah, so tickets aren't on sale yet, but I will be screaming it from the mountain tops as soon as they are. But, you know, save the day. There was a big surprise and that duck made a fate deck for everybody, which is fantastic, by the way, for this year. And there might be some surprises for next year's one as well.
01:11:09
Speaker
I'm working on another Fate Deck for next year. Just gotta get enough done on it to get approval from Weird, so. Nice. Excellent. Future Doug here with one important, timely plug that came up after we recorded, but before we released this episode.
01:11:28
Speaker
I'm running the Malifaux events at Las Vegas Open again, and the Malifaux events are happening at the Ria Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas Friday, January 19th through Sunday, January 21st, 2024. Info and links are in the show notes.
01:11:44
Speaker
The time sensitive thing that I wanted to share with you all is that the Rio has a crazy good deal on rooms right now. Like 35% off. Now I have no clue how long this deal will last. This deal is saving me big on my room for LVL.
01:12:01
Speaker
And I wanted to get this info out to you all out there in the world. To get the deal, you need to book NOT through the LVO block, but either directly through the Rio Hotel, or your favorite travel booking site, you know, hotels.com, Expedia, etc. I hope to see you all at LVO! I wanted to say, like, one of the other moments, other than getting wasted, this way, don't drink it, it affects your memory,
01:12:28
Speaker
He's like, I met a great kid from Texas. I think his name was Christian. Yeah.
01:12:35
Speaker
that he was like, oh, I saw you winning last year, the NWS, it was great. You inspire me a lot to play by you. Then I got tired of losing and I switched to resurrectionist. I was like, and that actually, I was completely hungover destroyed after six fucking games and I didn't get to spend as much time talking with him. So I would like to, but if he hears, if he listens to this, he does. It was amazing meeting you and I hope to meet you again soon.
01:13:04
Speaker
He's an awesome dude. He's one of the guys who, did he? I don't remember if he played in the Fodown last year.
01:13:10
Speaker
But he, you know, has been really pushing to improve as a player and started out, you know, new player like everyone else. And now he's he's solid. When I run into him on the table, honestly, he beats me most of the time at this point. He is a saw he's become a very solid player. He's a very solid player. And awesome dudes. Shout out to Chris. He's also a lot of a lot of fun to play against as well.
01:13:37
Speaker
Best community in tabletop gaming. Heck yeah. Hands down. All right. Well, listen, thank you guys so much for being here. Carlo, thank you so much. Congratulations again. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for having us. And y'all take care. Farewell.
01:13:56
Speaker
Students of Conflict is brought to you by Top Dog Design. Check out topdogdesign.com for all of your Malifotrain needs. Top Dog Design, 3D printable designs to enhance your tabletop. Students of Conflict is not an official product of Nuke Miniatures LLC.
01:14:11
Speaker
All intellectual property belonging to weird miniatures is used with permission. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of entities they represent. Any content provided by our guests and or hosts are their opinion and not intended to align any group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything. Whoo!
01:14:54
Speaker
Stop whining. I love you, but stop. And go. All right. And here we go.