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Students of Conflict #12A - Houston November Tourney: Jonathan (The Dreamer vs Barbaros)
491 Plays1 year ago
This episode we talk to Jonathan about a game in his journey to a 2nd place podium at the Houston November Monthly Malifaux Tourney, what his initial impressions are of the new Gaining Grounds Season 4 strats and schemes after playing them for the first time in a tournament setting, and why Doug should listen to his guests and stop putting Coppelius in his Dreamer crews.
Hosts: Doug
Primary Guest: Jonathan
Other Guest: Andre and Bryan
Tournament:
November Malifaux Monthly Tournament - Houston, Texas - 11 Nov 2023
Tournament on Longshanks: https://www.longshanks.org/event/11684/
Encounter:
Round 3 -Flank Deployment - Stuff the Ballots
Let Them Bleed, Death Beds, Espionage, Information Overload, Take Prisoner
Map:
Dead Wood Hollow - Jonathan top left flank, Elijah bottom right (page 26 from https://tinyurl.com/FauxdownTables2023)
Schemes selected:
Espionage, Information Overload
Crews:
Mine: The Dreamer, Lord Chompy Bits, Stitched, Serena Bowman, Bandersnatch, Widow Weaver, Coppelius, Wicked Doll, 9 Stones
Elijah: Barbaros, Hodgepodge Effigy, Noxious Nephilim, Young Nephilim, Terror Tot, Terror Tot, Mature Nephilim, Hayreddin, 7 stones
Mentioned in the Podcast:
Malifaux at Las Vegas Open: https://www.lasvegasopen.net/
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/
Heroic Scale Gamers: https://www.youtube.com/@HeroicScaleGamers
Wyrd Miniatures: https://www.wyrd-games.net/malifaux
Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy Houston: https://www.facebook.com/dlairhouston
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Transcript
00:00:10
Speaker
Straight
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
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 the students of conflict.
Hosts Introduction and Format Explanation
00:00:35
Speaker
We're Clay, Nick, and Doug, or I guess just Doug, cause life happens. But anyway, we're trying to become better Malifaux players, leveling up ourselves and hopefully helping others level up as well. We do that by interviewing top third players from the Lone Star Conference playing Malifaux tournaments across the United States and the world sometimes.
00:00:59
Speaker
not trying to capture their entire tournament journey we want to take an in-depth look at a single game from each of our guests what were key decisions they made before the game during the game and now looking back at the game what were things they learned and can pass on to others so our basic format is we're going to interview the guests all at once as soon as possible after the tournament that way it's all fresh in their minds and we can get some good cross flow between the guests
00:01:24
Speaker
but 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 Introductions and Focus
00:01:35
Speaker
Today, we're talking to Jonathan. Hello. Andre. Hello, everyone. And Brian. Hello.
00:01:45
Speaker
They came in second, first, and third place respectively at the November Malifaux Monthly Tournament held in Houston on November 11th, 2023, and will be releasing our discussions with them as episodes 12A-C. Okay, I didn't screw that up too badly.
00:02:07
Speaker
Felt good. Felt real good. And you know what? I can make it sound as good as I want because I edit this shit. You'll notice things are a little bit weird today because Clay has family stuff and Nick had to cancel last minute because, well, he flipped the black joker IRL. So we're going to kick things off with Jonathan. How are you doing today, Jonathan?
00:02:32
Speaker
Doing awesome, Doug. Thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. Always a good time talking with you guys. Yeah, I always have a fun time when you're here. Always good times. So yeah, so we're recording this episode a little bit later than normal due to, you know, Thanksgiving. Sure. And so it's officially the holiday season now. And I really, really like food. And also Clay's not here to entirely keep me on task.
Holiday Season and Personal Jokes
00:02:57
Speaker
Oh, excellent. So the icebreaker question today, I wanted to ask,
00:03:02
Speaker
is what is your favorite holiday dish? Now, that doesn't have to be Thanksgiving or Christmas. It can be literally any holiday, but it can be Thanksgiving or Christmas. The one I'm always forced to make is a sweet potato souffle. A lot of butter and brown sugar in my hands and stuff. It's good. Nice comfort food there. So always a crowd pleasure. Yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
I love sweet potatoes. I love souffles. Can I get that recipe? I would send it to you right now. Ooh. One moment. Yes, do that, do that. OK. Feeding the world. In the show notes, we'll post the link to it. I know. I'm writing this. See, I have show notes. Rules of conflict first. All their recipes. You know, we're just going to make this a food. We're going to look back in five years like, man, how did we start here?
00:03:56
Speaker
Didn't this show used to be about Malifaux? And now it's, you know, a travel cooking show, apparently.
Tournament Highlights and Strategies
00:04:05
Speaker
But yeah, so which round are you talking about today, Jonathan? I'm gonna talk about round three. I actually got to play my son, Elijah, in this round, which is really cool. Before I get into the game, though, can we just have a moment of silence for round two, which is the most brutal round of Malifaux that was ever played? 20% of the...
00:04:27
Speaker
20% of the participants in the tourney quit just so they wouldn't have to play this round. And then 75% of the games that were actually played ended in a concession. It was just a severe bloodbath. It was just, it was a total game changer. I'm not quite sure what happened in that round, but it's definitely one to write down. It was never do again. Yeah. Definitely one for the history books. Was it a really bad pool or something?
00:04:55
Speaker
It seems pretty innocuous at the start, but again, I mean, like flies. Yeah, it was, it was pretty, pretty dangerous wedge plant explosives. Well, you know, I,
00:05:11
Speaker
I like, you know, that we've got plan explosive in the scheme, in the strategy pool again. That's, it's fun. That was good. I think also, you know, the tournament was so relaxed because GG4 was so brand new. Everyone was just kind of chilling. And then you throw in a wedge deployment and all of a sudden, like it gets way more dangerous than you were expecting. Like, yeah, the crew might as well. And then, Oh, we're still playing Malibu. Start that intensity. Yeah.
00:05:40
Speaker
Anyway, but yeah, so round three was much more normal. Um, but yeah, so it was, uh, I can go through the whole scheme pool. All right. So we were playing, uh, flank deployment, which is much safer than wedge, uh, stuff the ballots, which is a little bit slower moving than plan explosives. And the scheme pool was let them bleed death beds, espionage information overload and take prisoner.
00:06:05
Speaker
We were playing on the Deadwood Hollow map, which is, I think, one of your newer maps, Doug. It's really awesome. That's one I made for the photo. It's a really cool town center with a nice... I lost my word. There's a jibbit. Jibbit. Yeah, jibbit. Yeah, the... Gallows. The gallows. Thank you. Lost all my words there. Okay. You heard it here first, folks. Anyway, yes, a nice gallows in the middle, a nice thematic map.
00:06:30
Speaker
And, um, yeah, so anyway, so, uh, I got to play Elijah. Uh, we don't actually get to play as much now. He, his, uh, school stuff is, uh, getting busier. He's doing a lot more extracurriculars and I think he kind of avoids playing me if at all possible. So it was really nice that you cornered him and made him play his father. Um, and so we got, we, we, we got a nice relaxing round three against each other. Um, I asked him which of the masters he wanted to play. I only brought, uh, two, I only brought dreamer and Zoraida.
00:06:57
Speaker
Just because both of those two masters seem like they had the speed to tackle all the kind of long range scheming stuff in GG4.
Strategic Discussions on Master and Crew Choices
00:07:04
Speaker
I also brought a puppets crew just in case things went really sideways. I didn't have to pull that one out, but he chose to play against streamer because he had just played against Sarita. And then he returned the favor and he let me pick his master. So I picked his Barbros list because I haven't had a chance to play against Barbros since all the return models got released. So I wanted to see how that all worked out.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't seen that yet either. I want to try playing against it at some point. Well, he tricked me and he played all Nephilim models, which I already played into around one against Andre, so looks on me. All Nephilim, all Nephilim. New meta. New meta. It's a pretty good meta. It is all Nephilim. I'm here for it. And I could definitely talk more about that during Andre's episode, or maybe I could just talk about it now, but like there's
00:07:53
Speaker
There's a couple of crews that rapidly changed the game state and like, reduce any sense of safety that you might have. And, and, and like, Nephilim is one of those, they're so fast and killing, like you can't hang around and do what you want to do without getting a big, you know, sword or claws in your face. So it's, um, it's definitely an interesting matchup. Um, so he, he had not tried the new gaining grounds yet. I'd had, I'd actually had two practice games.
00:08:19
Speaker
Uh, thankfully I practiced this scheme pool, so I kind of knew what I wanted to do and what I didn't want to do. Um, he had not, uh, tried GG four just cause it wasn't an app yet. So he, at this point round three, he was kind of having a little bit of new scheme fatigue. Uh, so he decided to go for a, uh, strats plus kilophobe strategy, which w which is really quite effective with Nephilim. Um, if I, if I didn't have a summoner, he probably would have taken the game from me, but I was just able to produce enough models throughout the game to, to, to stay.
00:08:49
Speaker
Stay on the board and eventually I was just I got I got away from him and was able to score my point cool So speaking of gaining grounds for I figure we're not doing a full gaining grounds for episode because that's not really our format where you know more of the hey game at a time sure and I before you really Before I really want to put in my full opinions on gaining grounds for actually want to play everything And I have not had a chance to play all okay the game all the new strategies yet so
00:09:19
Speaker
question for you, what do you do whenever new strategies and schemes or rules come out? You know, a new book, new gaining grounds, and you know, how do you prepare for an event when you probably haven't had a chance to play all of the new strategies or schemes yet? So for this one, it was really hard to get to wrap my brain around all the new strategies and schemes. A lot of them are fairly
00:09:42
Speaker
I don't know if they're complicated, but they're similar enough or strange enough that it was hard to keep them, you know, memorized. So I took the documents and I cut and paste the stress and schemes and made each round its own page so I could look at all the stress and schemes together while I was building my cruise. And that way I can make sure that I could at least legitimately score all my points with my base crew and then try to tweak it later. You know, if I ran into a matchup, then I didn't get to change stuff out for
00:10:11
Speaker
And then in the true spirit of competitive Malifaux, this absolute Chad sent out the PDFs of those reviews of snoops and strats for the rest of us peasants to be able to read, for which I am deeply appreciative. Oh, my pleasure.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like a great way to just kind of organize it. Heck, that's almost a great way to, even if you're familiar with them, just kind of see it all right there in front of you. Right. Even if it's, you know, six months in to a gaining ground. Yeah, you know, and it's always good to measure stuff out like, okay, if I'm in flank deployment, like, how far is it to get my power ritual off? Or, you know, like, if I'm
00:10:45
Speaker
If it's stuff to balance, like how many movements do I need to get over to the other ballot boxes? Just trying to look at that stuff and just make sure that your guys actually have the tools to accomplish their jobs is really important.
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that, you're figuring out the, okay, exact measurements of the, oh, there is literally no way to get this model to that corner there. It's good to know, I remember when the one with the load stone came out and people were doing all of the load stone math of the, okay, so here's how we do this. Right, right, exactly. You know, chucking the football and getting the measurements down there to do it as efficiently as possible. I can see that being,
00:11:26
Speaker
big and important, especially in a stuffed about box? No, yeah, totally. And yeah, and I think this GG, I think makes you build your crews a little bit differently because I think defense plays a bigger part in your
00:11:41
Speaker
um, strategy, because you know, a lot of times you're needing, you're needing to stuff your own ballots, or you're having to defend or drop scheme markers just to defend against their scheme strategy, their scheme schemes. So I think it definitely changes the, the mix up of people's crews. Cool. Yeah. So what do you think about gaining grounds for so far?
00:12:04
Speaker
It's tough, man. There's a lot going on in all the games I've played. We pretty much have used the whole map or at least the majority of the map. It's hard to keep track of what exactly your opponent's trying to do because so many of the schemes are similar.
00:12:21
Speaker
So you're basically fighting against everything all the time while trying really hard to get your own stuff done. Like I've only been able to play one game of, is it cloak and dagger? Is that the, the one where the moot, they teleport when they, when you interact with them. Yeah, that's tough. Like, like trying to get those last strap points take a lot of effort. And so there's a lot of other stuff that could kind of sneak by if you're trying to get that, you know, going. So I think this is one that's going to keep people stumped for a while and it's definitely going to get people more creative with how they, how they build their crews.
00:12:52
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't had a chance to get that one to the table yet. It starts fine, and then it ends weird. Until the end of turn two, you only need to make it to the center line and interact once. You're like, oh, this is fine.
00:13:04
Speaker
And then you get to like turn four, half your crew's dead. You're not sure if you should stab the other guy or just interact with them or interact with the ballots. Like turn two is a dream. Turn four is a nightmare. So it's definitely one of those warping strategies. Yeah. Like I have to do 15 things and I can only do five things.
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah, I've played, I think I've only played ballot box and the raid the vaults. Okay, because read the vault, you know, it's like guard the stash, but I totally ended up playing it like guard the stash. And then I realized partway through the game, like,
00:13:41
Speaker
Oh shit, why am I, you know, mapping out, you know, having to hold down all of these points? I just need those two deep ones. Right. And the rest of my crew can continue just murdering the heck of him off the board. Because that's what we had done. We just murdered the fuck off of him off the board. Yeah. The the titanium Marcus and dinosaur list actually has got some juice in that one.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, having basically being able to reward going into your opponent's deployment zone, I think is a, is a nice feature over regard the stash because the stash was basically like, I'm going to forget that this isn't just kill a foe for three rounds.
00:14:20
Speaker
And then when we get to turn four, we'll be like, oh, right, I should leave the center line. Whereas I think, I think, uh, raid the vaults definitely rewards those mobility crews where it's like, well, you know, I am kicking your ass, but that random, you know, Silurid made it to my back line and now you're scoring still. Right. Yeah. You're, you're able to do strats and schemes at the same time as opposed to feeling like you're, you're throwing models away, trying to get a scheme, you know, and they're back to it when there's no other reason to be there.
00:14:50
Speaker
OK, so I figure, you know, we can touch on gaining grounds for more in depth as you know, things come up during the course of it here. But so before the start of the game, so obviously you did your prep work in advance with the making the pools, having them all set out there and coming up with your possible crews for these things. What decisions did you end up making when it was OK, this is the game, this is the matchup?
00:15:17
Speaker
So yeah, I've made some some crews for each of the rounds and I was I wanted to try out some new models. So for this round, I added Capellius to my dreamer crew who I think looks pretty cool. I just never seem to be able to fit him in the crew. So that was it was my goalie trying to try to try some models that I haven't tried out before. And so he was the
00:15:39
Speaker
He was the spoiler for round three and he did okay Shockingly average So yeah, but anyway, so that that was the goal but I ended up taking of course dreamer and chompy I took
00:15:59
Speaker
One stitched, I took Serena Bowman, Banner Snatch, Widow Weaver, and a wicked doll. And I took nine stones because in round one, I only took seven stones and got super murdered by Andres Nephilim. So I thought maybe two more stones, I could stay alive, like one more round and score some points. So it worked, it worked. And so you feel like you, with the dreamer, not just because of summoning, but because of squishiness, you need to bring a few extra stones?
00:16:29
Speaker
Uh, yeah. So especially because for the strats, you have to, you have to have your original crew alive and they have to be able to interact. I felt like, yeah, uh, you know, just in case I needed to make sure that my original models were still alive by the time they got across the board to try to take out his ballots. And so I thought, you know, I had several stone users and that would be a way to keep them, um, you know, alive enough to, to, to score some points. Now the last couple of rounds. Cool.
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah, do you tend to bring more stones with a summoner or is it just more stones for survivability? Kind of what's your thoughts behind the right amount of stones to bring for this kind of stuff? I think you definitely need more for Dreamer and I was also assuming that my stitch together would get murdered and I'd probably want to try to bring him back with Widowweaver if I had the chance. So I wanted a couple of stones to play with for both summoners in that regard.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, my stupid pick that I took, I think twice this tournament was Bandersnatch and Widowweaver, which are incredibly fast together.
00:17:35
Speaker
Bandersnatch is awesome if he is always on the side of the board. Anytime that he thinks that he can fight, he is immediately killed. As long as he never tries to engage, he's pretty good. If they're sending anything after him to try to kill him, then that is kind of a win for me because he's pretty elusive. But if he gets a little too big for his britches, then anything will take that model down.
00:17:58
Speaker
That was kind of a danger pick. And then I took a wicked doll because I wanted him to just hang out in my deployment zone and tag my ballot box twice in round two to make sure that I had a nice healthy lead there to make it more challenging for my opponent to get those points from me. Gotcha. So what schemes did you end up taking?
00:18:23
Speaker
I took espionage and I also took information overload. With the maneuverability of the Nephilim crew, I didn't want to try to deal with take prisoner. I can never get death beds and then again, you know, let them bleed. I knew that I was probably going to be running away from him as opposed to trying to kill him. So I didn't even
00:18:45
Speaker
try to mess with that one. Also, I had enough to deal with just trying to master the strategy and make sure I was getting to appropriate points. I didn't want to have to also be trying to get to points where I could take out as models. So just doing the scheming ones seemed like it was an easy one to do while I was trying to get the strap points.
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah, information overload. Honestly, I read that one. And the first time I read it through, I'm like, too much information. I'm never going to take this one. Yeah, right. It is an overload for my brain.
00:19:20
Speaker
Well, it's one of the ones kind of like leave your mark, where if both people take it, it's miserable. But if only one person takes it, it's kind of no big deal. So it just depends if your opponent wants to default on their strategy to try to drop a lot of ski markers as well, or if they're just going to let you run out of the board using up your AP. Cool. So now.
00:19:46
Speaker
when Elijah went and revealed his crew there. Were you a little bit, so you knew he was bringing Barbaros. Were you a little bit surprised that he was bringing all Nephilim as opposed to bringing some of the returns or were you kind of ready for that there?
00:20:01
Speaker
I was, I guess I was just more disappointed and he was like, yeah, I took all, all, all return models last round. Like, okay, well, I guess I should have played you last round. But yeah, he took, um, he took the noxious Nephilim, which I don't know if it's good or not, but it's definitely fun. He took, uh, he took a, it's not, he took a young, he took two teratots, a mature and hay red. So I don't, I don't know what the quintessential barbrost list is, but he had a bunch of Nephilim toys.
00:20:29
Speaker
He did a really good job. He took Barbros, a mature, I think a young and a taught on to one of my flanks of my flank and basically kept the majority of my crew in my deployment zone and it really took like all that I could to just try to escape all of his
00:20:46
Speaker
I'll just shove aside. Barbros has shove aside baked into his attack. Oh, nice. So he was really annoying. Just like pushing my, anytime I thought I was going to escape and score some points, he's like, no, you go back, you know, four inches in, I'm going to shove in and engage you and, you know, deal with it. So I spent a lot of AP just trying to like push my own guys, trying to use an insidious madness to push people around, use dreamers bonus to push people around, you know, tricks like that, just to try to escape and score points.
00:21:14
Speaker
On the other flank, it was a much bloodier battle with Hayden and Young and the noxious versus the two spiders and and my stitch together And it's one of those things where you know, they were fighting over the points. He killed some stuff. I killed some stuff He had a really cheeky Heel where he just kind of waddled his hodgepodge effigy up and like severe healed the noxious Nephilim You know right for is gonna kill him off. So he was doing a good job over there and
00:21:39
Speaker
But the barber screw was it definitely had a lot more control than I was expecting Just being able to lock people down with your with your big two-inch engagement range and you know with the with the combat finesse of the matures It makes it really challenging to try to you know, break that just try to break out of that and do what you want to do So it was definitely a challenging match
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, but you know round three I'd already dealt with it once I'm like cool I'm not even gonna try to fight this guy I'm just gonna try to shove him away and then try to run and that I think it worked out better It definitely felt better
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those important lessons to learn of the, can I take this down easily or do I just not have the tech to deal with that crap? And it's like, oh, I don't. Sweet. I'm just not going to deal with this. Yeah. I mean, is there even tech to deal with combat finesse? Because that ability, I hate it so much. Shoot them in the face. Yeah. I mean, that's true. Just don't stab them. Yeah. I don't really have guns.
00:22:47
Speaker
Well, I think dreamer is probably one of the only, uh, never-born crews that has enough shooting that can, that can maybe do it without worrying about the combat finesse. But if I was worrying about killing a mature Nephilim with, what is it, 10 wounds, you know, region two, whatever, um, then I'm not able to get my movement off and try to get across the board because with the flank deployment, it's just, it's such a wide field that I just, I really couldn't spend the AP trying to take them out and still make sure I could get my points off.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and they've got those guns and those ignore friendly fires. So that's actually one of the shootier, never born crease out there. Come to think of it. And you're still just chipping them down a two, three, four at a time. Like it's just not worth. Right. No. Yeah.
00:23:33
Speaker
So much investment for sure. Yeah. So now during the game, what were some, you know, interesting lines of play that happened and some key decision points for both you and for your opponent that really were big turning points in the game?
00:23:50
Speaker
Well, again, I think Elijah did a good job of trapping most of my crew in my deployment zone, and he was being really aggro. And again, if I didn't have the summons, and especially being able to summon Insidious Manicists who were able to push people without having to flip for it, if I didn't have that ability, it would have been
00:24:08
Speaker
It would've been really dangerous for me. Now on the other side with my spiders, I was able to attack the strat earlier and that gave me a really big advantage there because I had my votes in before he did so I had a point advantage on him on one side of the board. So even if I wasn't going to get max points, I still
00:24:27
Speaker
Was starting off faster than he was so he was kind of at a disadvantage, you know there just based on You know activating early making sure I got those votes in before he did, you know as opposed to Trying to kill stuff to just make sure you get that that strat taken care of I think I think was a really Big big play in my favor at least for this matchup
00:24:48
Speaker
Now, with the the new the stuffed about box strategy, something that I noticed when I was reading this through the first time is a whole if you get more than five votes in there, it, you know, clicks over and starts again. But when I've played it, none of the ballot boxes even got close to that, you know, hitting the reset button on that. Did that did you see that at all in your game?
00:25:13
Speaker
Yeah, we had a cool little fight in the corner with the spiders and, uh, Hey Redden and, and I think it was a young Nephilim, um, where I had gotten in two votes. Then Elijah came in with a couple models. I had to run away with my web, uh, teleport thing, whatever it's called.
00:25:31
Speaker
Seize prey. Thank you, sir. Yeah, I just seize prey away from my prey, which did not exist to try to not get killed. And then I was able to jump back in and get enough votes on there to flip it back over and take the point back. So it did actually happen, but it took a lot of seize praying on my part to accomplish that.
00:25:54
Speaker
When I can see with the whole, there being what, it's seven? There's seven of them, yeah. Seven strategy markers means that you can just play right past your problems, like, hey, I'm gonna take these ones, you're gonna take those ones, we cool, we good now. I can see that happening a lot of games.
00:26:12
Speaker
I mean, theoretically, if you just agree to not touch each other, one player will score four points, the other will score three. Oh, that's nice. So like, you know, there is some motivation to shove the other guy away, you know, to intimidate the voters, as it were.
00:26:33
Speaker
I mean, I think we'll see. I think right now we're still coming from GG three, where you're running typically smaller crews. Yeah. And so you're not going to see a lot of people excessively dumping votes on those ballot boxes. But if you'll start bringing less models to start bringing more models to the game, you're going to see those AP heavy crews overwhelm those ballot boxes. And I think that's when you start seeing this flip a lot more.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah, it was good. And again, you know, taking a little three point model that's significant, like a wicked doll was really helpful for this stressful because he could, you know, do his job and get a couple of boats and then just go harass people and try to, you know, keep, keep the opponent from, from getting their schemes done or, you know, trying to, trying to go vote on a, on a box that they had abandoned stuff like that. So it was, it was pretty nice.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yeah, you know, he can get his votes in and then do, you know, some good old fashioned voter intimidation. Do you do some voter fraud by voting multiple times? I don't think that dog brought voter ID. So wicked. If you just like stack your two at home with three votes each, then they have to spend four EP to flip it to themselves. Like it just
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, but who sits around like, you know, I got three extra AP line around, like, I'd say it's a thought with your trash little wicked doll model. Like, I feel like two is the magic number. Like if they can get in my deployment zone and have three AP to spare to hit that ballot box, then, you know, congrats. I'm somewhere else doing something that I need to be doing. So, you know, good for you making it all the way over there.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds like, I mean, a good way to do it. It's like, Hey, you know what? They can't, you can't win by tie on it there. You gotta beat them out and you only spent two AP on it. They've got to spend three AP on it. So ultimately that puts you one AP up on taking that, uh, strat marker. Yeah, exactly. So other interesting things that kind of went down during the game there.
00:28:36
Speaker
It was really difficult, and again, it was just trying to get away from, with so many scheme marker related schemes, trying to get away from his models was kind of the biggest task here. I know that there's other crews that are better at just throwing scheme markers everywhere. I just didn't have them with me in my bag. I think maybe Lucius has some more play in GG4.
00:29:01
Speaker
know speak too quickly but um you know at least for never born um and you know Marcus with his leaping cast I'm sure that'll be oh wait oh oh oh never mind anyway sorry Marcus yeah uh but anyway I think that's why better
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah, and if you want to leap him around, drop in ski markers, I definitely appreciate that. But yeah, so I think different crews are going to be better at this, but in this particular matchup, it was a lot of work trying to get free and get in a position where I could put the ski markers where I needed them to be. So who was the MVP model of the game for you? Definitely Dreamer, and that was just because he was able to summon a couple Insidious Madnesses. I think if I didn't have those extra models, it would have been Game Over for me.
00:29:51
Speaker
Okay, yeah, because I mean, the score ended up being, what was it? You went seven to two on it there, but it sounds like it was a lot closer game than this score would indicate.
00:30:01
Speaker
Yeah, it was, again, I was able to get a couple of strap points real early and I was able to get the banner snatch away from his guys. And once the banner snatch is free in your, in your backline, he can score you a couple of points. So that was good. And then, but on the other end, he, it took me several, probably at least three rounds to try to get a couple of models out of my, you know, deployment zone area. So I could actually score some points, uh, uh, for, you know, for my scheme. So it was, if I didn't have those extra models to push people around, I don't think I would have been able to do it.
00:30:32
Speaker
Gotcha. Cool. So now we're going to go into our after the game talk here. Sure. So what advice would you have for bottom third player, someone who's, you know, facing the dreamer for the first time, or even, you know, a newer player who this is the first time they've had a new gaining grounds get dropped in their lap. Don't play Kellefoe.
00:30:59
Speaker
Um, always, uh, always keep the points in mind. You know, if, if you're just waiting around to do something cool the next round, sure. You know, you can attack somebody or, or somebody who's really threatening a point, or if, if they have a linchpin model, that's going to, you know, ruin their day, you know, definitely try to kill that, but don't just attack stuff. Cause you have attacks, make sure that your attack is, is working towards getting you, you know, victory points. Okay. And what's some, you know, advice for the bottom third player with, uh, dreamer specifically?
00:31:28
Speaker
You should probably try to kill dreamer if you if you if you focus fire if you can get him away from his protected healing has seven wounds and and that way you don't have any new models coming out and so You know most of his models can die pretty quickly You know once they stop producing more I have to point it out. It was it was a hey guys You know don't play kill a foe earn your points, but also yeah body my master immediately
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah. Well, again, the caveat is that if it's the linchpin model of their crew, if you can see that their whole strategy crumbles if you take the model out, then I guess it's more like kill the summoner instead of the summoned. Because if I'm spending one AP to summon something and you're spending three to kill it, then I have you at a disadvantage. So if you take it to the summoner instead, I think that's a better use of your resources. Kill the monster generator. That's good.
00:32:24
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I guess if you want better advice, Andre, maybe take some ruthless models. It's the dreamer. I feel like it's not for the bottom level player, but the question was towards Andre, right? So now what are some gotcha mechanics that a dreamer crew might have in it that someone might not be aware of if they haven't run into them before?
00:32:48
Speaker
Does Dreamer have gacha mechanics? I don't know. I feel like I need to take advantage of them. I haven't put Dreamer on the table in a while. Dreamer can summon models. The insidious madnesses can attack through other models while buried, right? I mean, they can just keep you distracted. Oh, it's still... Okay, I'm sorry. They can keep you distracted. It's still very annoying. It is annoying. But it kills your focus and then gives you distraction. Yeah, it's a tactical action, needs a five seduction attack.
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty nice. Yeah, I guess like never fail a willpower duel when you're facing Dreamer because something's probably gonna pop out or models are gonna heal and you'll just be embarrassed and have a bad time. So you have to try to, I guess, hire some high, you know, willpower models or save your defense cards for that.
00:33:39
Speaker
So what advice would you give to a middle third player? You know, someone who's got some experience under their belt looking to give you a little bit more of a challenging game and hopefully win if they play the game right.
00:33:53
Speaker
I feel like I already gave away the advice that I had planned. So, man, middle tier player against streamer. Again, make sure that you're taking models that can deal with their defensive tech. If you have stuff that's ruthless or if you have stuff with plus flips to get through the serene, just make sure that you're playing to your strengths and not running into a trap where you can't actually do what you want to do.
00:34:18
Speaker
Oh yeah. That's the serene continents. Uh, so, so for players who don't know what that is, it, if you target the dreamer with attack actions, you're on a negative flip, which is nasty. If you're not expecting that. Right. And there's also, oh, I thought of a gotcha with him. There is the whole, his, uh, bubble of no, I can't remember what it's called. I'm pulling diversion diversion. Yeah. That's like, oops.
00:34:44
Speaker
That one does suck. Cause he's got that four inch bubble around him of no bonus actions. Yeah. I mean, it definitely takes some spiciness for the, for the dreamer to be like aggressively, you know, diversioning you because that, that kind of gets him into harm harm's way. But if you try to come into his layer, uh, yeah, that can definitely be a gotcha moment. If you're, if you're counting on those, uh, those bonus actions for sure. Okay. So now advice for a top third player.
00:35:12
Speaker
Don't take Capellius. The big brain of that model that everyone says is trash to mid. Yeah, it really is. Or at least don't take him into Nephilim like take somebody with some bigger arms so they're not getting black blooded. You know, like, Stephen King has this famous advice to kill your darlings and I think really like, you know,
00:35:39
Speaker
make sure you're putting that stuff that you'd love for no good reason or that you know is bad but play anyway. Just stop playing it and play stuff that actually works in that particular scene. I am sad here because Capellius is a staple in most of my dreamer careers. I mean on paper he looks real good but he's also like real expensive so.
00:36:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sad now. He's a cool sculpt too. Both of the sculpts are cool. Yeah. And he eats eyeballs and he's got, you know, he's fast as heck. Right. Yeah. When you look on paper, you're like, wow, that's an Akima damage track with a Takima stat. He should be incredible. What's your defensive lineup there, champ? And he's like, terrifying.
00:36:25
Speaker
But I'm only nine stones. What a bargain. You should use one fourth of your spinning power on me. If you were a henchman, I'd say maybe he'd be worth the nine stones. That's still a hard sell.
00:36:45
Speaker
Well, because then I have, you know, stones is defense. Oh, tight. I get to dump more money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the it's like, OK, Doug, listen to the advice of your guests and stop playing putting your pelleas on the table with your best life. But yeah, just just not without compelling. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't work anymore. Sorry, Doug. I'm sorry, because I hated that model.
00:37:12
Speaker
the
00:37:19
Speaker
Being on Dreaming Wings. I remember that. Yeah, it was wonderful. Cause he was like, movement like eight or nine then. And he was like, wee, I'm everywhere. You cannot escape me. Give me your eyes. Yeah, he did have some cool mechanics. But yeah, okay. So don't, for, for me and all my top third homies, don't take a pelius. Don't take a pelius. Whatever you do, especially out of keyword.
00:37:45
Speaker
I mean, cause nine, he's kind of like right on the line there for 10. Okay. Even I'm not that good. I feel like you're just, you know, Andre's like really bored with. No, I'm looking at his card right now. I'm like, could I make him good? No. Yeah.
00:38:05
Speaker
At what cost, sir? Yeah. You can't even pull my shenanigans of the, well, this model's mediocre, but if I bring Marcus again, it's not a beast. Nope. So, uh, we've got a question from a discord here. So Nathan on discord, uh, and not that Nathan, the other Nathan, but not, no, not, not, not that one, the other one.
00:38:31
Speaker
Mmm, okay. No, no, no, no, no, not that one. The other one. Mmm, my bad. Do you know how many Athens we have in Alfa this one? Because we got way too many. It's at least a percentage point. I know, it's ridiculous. Anyway, so where are the guild podiums? Uh, he was told that the nerfs weren't a big deal and guild was still good and then they never podiumed again. So I think the only guild player we had at the tournament was Brandon. Does that sound right?
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah, and he was playing tall Yep post nerf and guess what that the nerf on tall is not bad, but the nerf on the rest of his crew Feels real bad Well, it varies like I feel like what's what's your name? I feel like Luisa got into a spot where I'm like, okay This isn't insufferable to play against right Watson being nine cost for his kit Just seems like a little rude
00:39:26
Speaker
It just like, for each of those three models, Kingswall, Watson, and Louisa, it's like they weren't even thinking about what makes them them, like what's their thing. They changed a bunch of stuff that didn't really matter as far as like the narrative of that card to try to balance the game. Like, does Louisa still have, don't mind me? Like, I don't know if she needs, don't mind me, if she can jump out of engagement with her little tractor thing and drop a ski marker. Like, you could have,
00:39:55
Speaker
taken that off and kept all terrain and she still would have felt more like that model should. I think the biggest nerf was the King's Wall though, like giving up the negs to hit and damage for my friends to end a charge within three, take two, like that's, it's a bad stand and fire and that's already a terrible ability.
00:40:11
Speaker
No, and that's the thing. All they had to do was take, um, warning grouse off of John Watson. And that would have totally neutered that whole like death bubble thing. And it would have been, it would have been fine. Like everyone would have kept their, their normal, um, you know, card flavor and you would have taken out that, that one really bad feel, you know, in the crew, but they just did everything like too much, you know, the wrong way. Well, there was like,
00:40:36
Speaker
You know, six different ways we could nerf this crew in order to bring it into reasonability. And then we're like, let's do all of them. Okay. Speaking of the factions that are hitting the top of the podium, we've got, you know, one and two, we've got Neverborne, which let's be honest for a while, Neverborne has not been in a great spot. Neverburn the new hotness question mark.
00:41:04
Speaker
Uh, I don't know about all of that. I think we have a lot of Neverborn loyalists in Texas specifically. True. Um, and I think that, uh, our Neverborn loyalists are also coincidentally good players. Um, I don't think it's because of the divine power of Neverborn and GG4 that we ascended to the top. No, not at all. No. Um, the,
00:41:29
Speaker
basically never born, in my opinion, other than like initiative control, are the losers in the anything you can do, I can do better. Yeah, like
00:41:39
Speaker
Zaretta, you could argue is like a really great obey master, but she's even still better in Bayou. And then like, there's just other better obey masters and like condition, Nancy's Pandora's thing. But like, who really cares that that like, that's a couple of match ups that are bad. But for the most part, like never born as a faction identity love to spread out and take uneven fights where they can. And so I think that Gigi for to the Guild V never born question.
00:42:06
Speaker
It is more of Neverborn's game than Guild's at this point, just because of what the GG is asking us to do. That being said, at Nathan, if I must, I will bring Guild and win with it, just so that you can believe in Guild and thusly yourself. Can you make a crew of only Aradid models to prove this point?
00:42:35
Speaker
Okay. Well, I can't do only errata models. I mean, if I was going to do toll, you know, I would hire the three, but I can't like, well, they didn't errata the saboteurs or whatever they called you. All right. 50% errata models. 50% errata models. I'll have to, I'll have to do some hard thinking on that. You got to bring only errata models and the rest have to be, you know, add a keyword errata model.
00:42:55
Speaker
I don't think any of the totems have been eroded. I'm screwed. Guild's true strength, totems. Totems. No, I think that Guild thematically is just like, to me, not quite as interesting as some of the other factions. Because they are the space marines of the Malibu world.
00:43:18
Speaker
where it's like, what am I going to say? It's like, you know, it's dudes with guns. They're dudes. They have guns. Like 80% of the faction is I'm a dude and I probably have a gun. And I could probably use it in melee. Right. I might have a switch hitter vibe. And it's like, yeah, so space Marines.
00:43:36
Speaker
And they have real jobs, like how, how lame is that? Like it just hasn't thematically called to me, but like mechanically, I think guilds fine. But it's just that we, like I said, have a bunch of Neverborn loyalists in Texas. And so I think Neverborn hits the podium more often here. And it's not necessarily a factor of whether or not guild sucks or Neverborn is new God, but it's just, especially for the number of players we have player preference.
00:43:59
Speaker
Yeah, agreed. I think Neverborn is fun to play. And I think this was definitely like a fun Z tournament. Everyone's kind of trying out new stuff. And so, you know, might as well, you know, play the stuff that's, you know, the most fun to play. And so that's why there's a bunch of Neverborn there. So, uh, Jonathan, are you planning on sticking with Neverborn for a little while there or diving back into Arcanists once, you know, people have got a little bit more GG four under their belt?
00:44:23
Speaker
So one of the reasons I wanted to jump back into Neverborn is because I have a bunch of like half paid in models. And I really wanted some like, you know, reason to actually finish them off. And so my savage crew is almost done. I can't wait to get those guys back on the table and get stomped. I think Zoraida too looks really fun. I want to play around with her. So there's some stuff I want to try out. There's some experimentation I want to do. So I'll definitely be sticking with these guys for a couple months.
00:44:50
Speaker
All right, so I guess before we wrap things up here with that, do you have any plugs or parting thoughts?
00:44:58
Speaker
I would just always, for your trainings, always jump to top dog designs first. You're coming up with some really cool stuff. It just keeps getting better and more diverse. So I'm not sure how much. Or if you want to just come down to Houston for a monthly tournament, then you can see it all painted up all nice and neat. And you can probably place your order then and there and give your cash money to Doug's hot little hands. Very hot hands. Hand model.
00:45:26
Speaker
I've been really impressed with the amount of maps that you've been able to create and it's cool to be able to play it in that kind of environment.
00:45:33
Speaker
I'm glad you enjoy them. Cool. Oh, and speaking of seeing awesome boards, now's the point where I'm gonna, hey, tell y'all about Las Vegas Open is coming up. And as always, I go out to Las Vegas. I take the nice 22 hour long drive out there to bring all of my lovely top dog designs terrain out to Las Vegas and have, you know, I'll say it, the best looking tables at a Las Vegas Open.
00:46:02
Speaker
And so that's happening. Malifaux events are going to be January 19th through the 21st going on on Friday. We've got the Friday Fun Pass where we've got the Double Rush tournament going on and then the Bonanza Brawl in the evening. Don't get there quite in time for playing in the Double Rush. You know, hey, plenty of room on the tables for open play.
00:46:23
Speaker
And then Saturday and Sunday, we've got the Fiendish Gamble GT happening. It'll be the first GT in North America using the gaining grounds for it. So very nice. Yeah. So tickets available now. You should all come to Las Vegas open. Very, very cool.
00:46:39
Speaker
But yeah, hey, everybody, thank you all so much for coming and dealing with me as being the sole host today. I know it was a little more scattered than normal without the cat wrangler that is Clay. Well, thankfully, we had Andre here to keep us on point. I was glad to be of service. Thank you guys for coming. Thank you. Thanks, thanks. Pleasure.
00:47:07
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 Weird Miniatures LLC. 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
00:47:37
Speaker
any group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything. Whoo!
00:48:03
Speaker
I got to do the intro thing today because Clay's not here to do it. I know, right? This is so weird. You have up to three takes before I give up.