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Students of Conflict #9B- Railroad Avenue Rampage: Nate (Von Schill, Iron-Heart vs Viktoria Chambers, Twin Blades)
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This episode we talk to Nate about a game in their journey to a first place finish at the Railroad Avenue Rampage, a 23-person 2-day Malifaux tournament held in Bellingham, Washington in April and how Nate leveraged the tools of their crew in different ways than normal to counteract an unexpectedly intriguing crew.
Hosts: Clay and Nick (and Doug)
Primary Guest: Nate
Other Guest: Doug
Tournament:
Railroad Avenue Rampage - Bellingham, Washington - 29-30 Apr 2023
Tournament on Longshanks: https://www.longshanks.org/event/6378/
Player pack: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qvywwR1aIJC741eWgYJwQHaM9pDZcdTSuIz_kOJmL9c/
Encounter:
Round 4
Deployment: Standard
Strategy: Carve a Path
2: Vendetta
3: Assassinate
11: Set the Trap
12: In Your Face
13: Secret Meetup
Schemes selected:
Nate: Assassinate, Vendetta (Metallurgist vs Yanic)
Corey: Assassinate, Vendetta (Big Jake vs Metallurgist)
Crews:
Nate’s Von Schill, Iron-Heart (Outcasts)
Iron-Heart Core (Outcasts)
Size: 50 - Pool: 7
Leader:
Von Schill, Iron-Heart
Totem(s):
Steam Trunk
Hires:
Freikorps Engineer
Hannah Lovelace
Freikorpsmann
Wanted Criminal
Freikorps Librarian
Yannic Waller
Metallurgist
Corey’s Viktoria Chambers, Twin Blades (Outcasts)
Size: 50 - Pool: 2
Leader:
Viktoria Chambers, Twin Blades
Soldier for Hire
Totem(s):
Student of Conflict
Hires:
Big Jake
Vanessa Chambers
Desperate Mercenary
Desperate Mercenary 2
Ronin
-Wanted Criminal
Yannic Waller
Catalan Rifleman
Catalan Rifleman 2
Mentioned in the Podcast:
Invite to our Discord: https://discord.gg/fJxx7aNCSt
(Look for the ep9-rar channel and ask for @Bathysphere or @Doug)
Malifaux World Series Discord: https://discord.gg/CG6mtZCEMG
Plugs:
Game Kastle Kent
https://gamekastle.com/stores/kent/?m=contact_us
Pacific Northwest Discord Community
https://discord.gg/JGcSZnkCpW
Lonestar Fauxdown: Tickets now available for the Lonestar Fauxdown Malifaux GT, taking place in Houston, TX October 13-15, 2023: https://lonestarfauxdown.com/events
Register by August 25, 2023 to get the special Fauxdown Fate Deck!
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, and to Wyrd Miniatures for allowing us to use their artwork from the 2nd Edition Student of Conflict.
Top Doug Design: https://www.topdougdesign.com/
Heroic Scale Gamers: https://www.youtube.com/@HeroicScaleGamers
Wyrd Miniatures: https://www.wyrd-games.net/malifaux
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
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 there! And we are trying to become better Malifaux players, leveling up ourselves and hopefully leveling others up as well.
Podcast Format Overview
00:00:48
Speaker
We normally do that by interviewing top third players from the Lone Star Conference, playing in Malifaux tournaments across the US. But sometimes we pull in other players from those tournaments too.
00:00:56
Speaker
tonight. We are not trying to capture these folks' entire tournament journey. We just want to take an in-depth look at a single game from each of our guests. What were the key decisions they made before the game, during the game, and now that they're looking back at the game, what were the things that they learned that they can pass on to others?
00:01:13
Speaker
Our basic format is to interview the guests all at once, just as soon as possible after the tournament, where it's still relatively fresh in their minds, and then we can get some good cross flow between the guests. And then 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. Today we're speaking with Doug and Nate. Hello. Hello again.
00:01:35
Speaker
Again, yeah, this is Doug's first time in the guest chair as opposed to the host chair, so that's super cool.
Guest Introduction: Tournament Winners Doug and Nate
00:01:41
Speaker
Anyways, these guys came in fourth and first at the Railroad Avenue Rampage, which was held in Bellingham, Washington on the 29th and 30th of April, 2023. And we're gonna be releasing our discussions with them as episodes 9A and 9B.
00:01:56
Speaker
All right, Nate, thank you so much for joining us here at Students of Conflict. Completely appreciate you coming on with us this evening. I'm really happy to be here.
Nate's Journey into Malifaux
00:02:06
Speaker
No, it's awesome. So first of all, congrats. You went undefeated at this tournament. And so congrats on that. Number one out of 23. This was not a small tournament by any means. And so just huge congrats to you. And thanks in advance for sharing some of the lessons learned with our listeners here and with me. Yeah.
00:02:30
Speaker
No problem at all. I really like doing with first time guests is just kind of, could you tell us a little bit about your gaming background and how you got into Malifaux and what factions you played and your first master, just any of that. Tell us about yourself, would you please? Yeah, definitely. I've been playing tabletop RPGs for like 15 years, almost, since like mid-teenage years. And that led into
00:02:59
Speaker
Just kind of a lot of the tabletop communities in general and eventually one of my friends, Dot, just fell head first down the Malachoo rabbit hole in second edition and kind of grabbed me along and just pulled me down with him. And that was the start. My first, I believe my first core box, my first crew back in Tui was Leviticus.
00:03:27
Speaker
Um, but the first crew that I really like played and stuck with and really enjoyed was, uh, Hamlin back in two weeks. Oh really? Oh my gosh. Okay. Still a favorite. Um, I'm actually working on digging into the crew a little bit more and trying to make it work at a competitive level in third vision.
00:03:46
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. Very, very different doing. What is it that you like best about Hamlin? What is it that drew you, I guess? I love the vibe. I love the character of Hamlin the Plague as a villain. He's just a really fun, almost cartoonish villain for me. Yeah, mustache twirl. Yeah, exactly. He's out here causing the apocalypse because he wants everything to rot, I guess.
00:04:14
Speaker
But also, I've always been very much a fan of the more macabre and my players in the D&D game I run would call my aesthetic goopy. And so I've always been very drawn to the vibe of stuff like Hamlin, like Leviticus, Von Stuck, that kind of thing.
00:04:39
Speaker
But also I just really like the gameplay loop of in second edition creating these rat swarms and leveraging the obey mechanics of second edition. And it's changed massively since then, but I do really enjoy slapping things for injured six. That can be really fun.
00:05:02
Speaker
Uh, no, that's great. Well, we're super glad that, uh, that you got into Malifaux originally and that you came back for third edition and that, uh, again, like I mentioned earlier, that you're on the show tonight. So, so thanks again.
00:05:14
Speaker
that for kind of our formal, and I put air quotes around formal, our icebreaker question for this episode. So we kind of base this on a question from Personal Glitch. And Brian is a frequent guest of the show and did our card management special. So his question, I'm not asking this question tonight, OK?
00:05:34
Speaker
Personal Glitch's question was, did you vote for each other for best sportsmanship, and if not, why? And he's asking you, but it's also to Doug, because Doug, you had both had a chance to play at the same tournament. So we're not asking that question. Instead, we do want to ask, though, what qualities do you most appreciate in an opponent? Not who did you vote for for best sportsmanship, but what kind of qualities were you looking for there?
00:06:00
Speaker
I voted for every single one of my opponents. Hell yeah. No, I didn't have a bad game. I loved everyone I played against myself. Yeah, same. I had a great time in the tournament. But I think that I think I have two answers because I personally try to draw a really strong line between a competitive game and a more casual kind of just playing for fun game. And that's partly because our meta is very split in that way. We have a lot of players who are
00:06:30
Speaker
either very new or not really interested in playing hyper competitively and are more on the, on the playing cool models and doing keyword stuff for fun and a bunch of players that are very competitive. So on the competitive end, I really like when I can tell that my opponent is really giving everything they can to the game and to sort of the respect of the, of the competition.
00:06:57
Speaker
the idea that we're showing each other everything that we can do in this moment with the game that we're both here to play. And then on a more casual level, I really respect and enjoy the ability in an opponent to work with your opponent to create a game where you're both having fun and are able to talk to your opponent in a
00:07:27
Speaker
on a out-of-game level about kind of what's going on and what, you know, before the game, what you're looking for in the game, what you're here to do tonight type of thing. And then in the game, you know, making sure that everything is jovial and is, because sometimes people can fall into that trap of like, I just got totally blown out by this thing. This is really getting, they can get in their own heads and start having a bad time.
00:07:57
Speaker
Um, and so as an opponent, I find it's, uh, I think it's really, really good to be able to pull people out of that, out of that head space a little bit and
Competitive vs Casual Play: Making Games Fun
00:08:05
Speaker
remind them that we're here to have fun. Yeah. No, that is great. So super. Thank you very, very much. Appreciate that answer. I spent a lot of time teaching new players at our, uh, meta. So a lot of my opinions are shaped by that.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, but it's, it's also cool. Cause yeah, you can go from the teaching new players all the way to, you know, winning undefeated out at 23, you know, that's pretty hula. So it is, no, that's great. Four zero and one, four and one. I won't take, I won't say I won't. Undefeated. Undefeated. Yeah. So certainly having a lot of new players in a community is yay. That's, that's a wonderful thing to have when you got a lot of new players.
00:08:47
Speaker
but being that person who is teaching new players a lot of time, it does shape the way you look at the game. Absolutely. And that knowing the, hey, new players don't want you to, you know, full on pull your punches all the way, but also knowing how to
00:09:08
Speaker
not stomp them hard and make them not wanna come back. That's a fine art between giving them a game that they feel, yes, this is a competitive game, but not to the full point of the, hey, I'm gonna grind you into the pavement. That's a fine line to walk.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I, I personally really, really dislike sandbag myself or intentionally misplaying or doing that to facilitate someone winning. And so I usually very often approach the new player games with a
00:09:46
Speaker
with an intent of giving them the best setup I can to win, giving them the most information that I can to perform well and have a good time kind of based on how they react to my process of explaining the rules of the game to them. I can often pick out like, you're going to have more fun with this henchman hardcore crew than this one right now.
00:10:08
Speaker
So I've got a question for you there. I am currently... I have not won a henchman hardcore game against a new player in the last four months. So I'm doing well on that. So you tend to put... For new player games, you start them out with a henchman hardcore. Yeah, usually I'll start new players on a henchman hardcore. Most players I find will play that one henchman hardcore game and then will almost immediately graduate into a full-scale game.
00:10:38
Speaker
But I find that Henshwin Hardcore, just because it's a smaller scale of models, provides a... You have less models to worry about, less power level with masters to worry about, and a little bit easier to get a better grasp on the fundamentals of the game. And I think people outright that, you know, this is a...
00:11:00
Speaker
This is a format that is kind of designed for, in my mind, learning, and coming into understanding of the game. And your next game can be a full-scale game, because the matches are really what people get excited about. But, you know. Do you tend to, for the henchman hardcore, do you tend to pick out what crew they're going to be giving them, or wait for them to bring something to the table, or it's like, hey, these are the henchman crews I've got ready to go that make for a good beginner henchman hardcore game?
00:11:29
Speaker
The last one is usually what I do. I have a set of like, I think, five Henchman hardcore crews that I will kind of rotate between and present. I usually present a new player with two or three that I think will operate on sort of the speed that they're running with. Usually, I offer almost everyone Bandit. I'm an outcast player, and so I have most of the crews I have are outcast stuff.
00:11:59
Speaker
there's some players are very obviously more interested in the interplay between mechanics. And so I'll give them a more complex option to play with if they seem like they are able to handle it. That's the fun note looking for in the game. That's great. The last question I got since, you know, hey, it's not often I'm talking to someone who's got the other person who happens to be a teaching the intro stuff. And I always love to know how other people do intros.
00:12:29
Speaker
So you said you hate sand bagging it against a new player. When it comes to that you're playing against a new player, full size game, what crew do you like to bring for yourself? Where you don't have to sand bag it, but it's not, you know, you're going to stomp their teeth in. My default is usually Parker one. I think that that Parker one has a lot of options and is really interesting to play with it against.
00:12:58
Speaker
Um, but also isn't, has a lot of things that you just can't really easily power through without hiring out a keyword. Um, and that's the other thing I'll often do is I'll hire mostly in keyword, um, that first game with people.
00:13:14
Speaker
Makes sense. But honestly, a lot of the new players, after their hardcore game, they'll play somebody else in the meta for their first game. And I haven't had, nobody's come back to me reporting about experience with that yet, which I think is a testament to the folks in our meta. That's a well built meta then.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well done. And kudos to you for bringing that up and whatever. I always appreciate everybody who's doing teaching games because none of us would be here if it wasn't for somebody gave us a teaching game. 100%. And so you get the whole pay it forward thing. And again, thank you very, very much. So on behalf of everyone you've taught. Yes.
00:13:56
Speaker
Excellent. All right. I would like to talk about a game of Malifaux though. And I mean, this has been a great discussion, but let's shift to what game are you talking about here? Which round? And why?
00:14:07
Speaker
I'm talking about round four, which was an outcast mirror match, which I thought was fun. Sweet. But why this round? What's the big lesson or theme that our listeners are going to get out of talking about this round here? In this round, I was able to leverage
00:14:29
Speaker
game knowledge really hard in this specific game because I was playing into a crew I know fairly well and they were playing a bunch of models I know really well. Oh, okay. And was able to just kind of play
Discussion on Frycore's Versatility
00:14:41
Speaker
my own game around what I exactly knew my opponent's tools were. But it still managed to surprise me with some really interesting picks and some really interesting
00:14:52
Speaker
plays that I had not seen, and that I wanted to try on the table. So. Oh, that's so cool. Because you're like, I know this. But then you're like, but you don't know it like I play it. And yeah, it was really fascinating.
00:15:05
Speaker
Okay, no, I'm totally looking forward to hearing about that. It's already, so before the tournament that you chose OutKast obviously, is that, and clearly an OutKast player, but was that just a no-brainer? Have you been dabbling with other factions or? I've been dabbling. I am definitely an OutKast player primarily, but I've been dabbling a little bit in Rezzers and a little bit in Arcanists. Okay. I've been kind of,
00:15:35
Speaker
I have a problem with models and buying them. I don't think there's anybody listening to this that does not. For sure. But I actually at this event, I picked up from someone else in the community who was liquidating some models, like two and a half Arcanist keywords. Wow. So I have all of Tony and most of Collette and like the
00:15:56
Speaker
I think just the core box for Mei Fang. Okay. And technically Ramos because they're second edition models, but I'm not gonna subject anybody to Ramos. I miss Ramos. But yeah, I've been branching out and exploring and really enjoying doing that. But Outcast was definitely my home base. And Von Schill especially is
00:16:19
Speaker
my most confident and most played master. Okay, so as you were looking at this round before, you know, you're kind of prepping for the tournament and Ambrose gets the pools out and you're looking at this, were you thinking Von Schill for this one? Were you thinking, you ended up soloing Von Schill for the whole tournament, right? Was that kind of the plan? Almost. My plan going in was I was playing the mainline Von Schill the entire tournament and I had Tara in my back pocket.
00:16:47
Speaker
Okay, I ended up playing tar around five. Okay, which obviously worked out though. Yeah, that game was very scuffed. But yeah, Von Schill is definitely one of my most where I'm with the most comfortable in a competitive setting. And I knew I was gonna be going into a bunch of stuff I didn't know.
00:17:05
Speaker
what I'd be dealing with, like Marcus. Like a bunch of Marcuses, yeah. Yeah, there were like four Marcuses at the table. It was crazy. It was a free fest. It was so funny to me. But yeah, so Von Schill was looking at the pools ahead of time. Von Schill was my easy pick for this round. Okay.
00:17:30
Speaker
I'm able to control the center of the board pretty effectively. And Frycore into Carvapath is very much a space control game. You want to control as much space as possible because what you have, basically any model in the keyword can kick-leap-kick. It's just a matter of who's going to do that because you have the leap on an upgrade. Oh, got it. Yeah. And you can turn them around. Yeah. Yeah. And you can pass those around to anybody in the keyword. It's any keyword model. And in Vongshil 1, any minion. But that's very, very relevant.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah. So no, that's great. And you mentioned, you mentioned Carve that I just realized that I had not talked about the encounter yet. So yeah, so round four, standard in Carve and Vendetta, assassinate, set the trap in your face in secret meetup. So yeah, you're looking at this going Carve. And I love the fact that Von Schill is kind of deceptively good at Carve, just like you said. Like I'm looking at the cards and I don't see any leaves. So I'm like, I wouldn't necessarily think of Von Schill for Carve. Like, oh yeah, this is easy.
00:18:30
Speaker
It's one of those things where the crew is deceptively fast and deceptively good at scheming in certain situations and depending on the tools you bring. My favorite thing about the crew is that literally everything with the Ficor name on it is relevant and playable in certain situations. I'm not going to hire Lazarus in most situations, but sometimes when you have terrain, it becomes relevant.
00:19:01
Speaker
And so yeah. And yeah, and that actually I wanted to ask about Lazarus, but I'll save that for the crew building thing. So I love the Lazarus sculpt. And so that's one of those things that I'm always like looking for an opportunity to play them. But I don't play Bunchill, but it's always interesting to me when I see that.
00:19:22
Speaker
But anyways, but yeah, so shifting to right before the game hasn't started, but you now know that your matchup for round four is gonna be outcasts. And so I'd kind of like to start this section with a question from Diceman. Diceman87, who's Jim Dyson, who'd asked on Discord about your selection on Master. And so you're facing an outcast matchup and you were kind of thinking Vonshell anyways, but what are you expecting to see from the other place?
00:19:49
Speaker
From the other side of the table are you are you thinking that they're probably thinking bunch ill and you're like Oh, this is gonna be a bunch ill mirror and then how does that play out? And so yeah, could you talk to us about what happened is through your brain as you saw that it was an outcast Versus outcast thing for round four
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I maintain that Vongshil in Outcasts is probably the most flexible master to declare because I can pivot from spreading out and covering the entire board to hyper-focus killing individual models, all based on how I build the crew and what version tiles I take and stuff like that. So beyond just the opinion that
00:20:29
Speaker
Vanishill is the safest choice into most pools. I think that is Outcast specifically. Certain Outcast crews are very good at counteracting other specific Outcast crews. I think that like, like, because I was thinking about Tara as my other my other option and Tara does not like seeing anything with a lot of hand pressure like Jackdaw or
00:20:53
Speaker
or Von Schill or doesn't hate seeing Leviticus as well. I mean, everybody hates seeing Leviticus. True, yes. Tara also doesn't particularly like the Vicks because the Vicks are one of the few masters in Outcast, at least they can keep up with her.
00:21:10
Speaker
And so my other option that I was seriously considering playing in the tournament as a whole, I pretty quickly just kind of set aside. So yeah, so you're like, it's going to be Von Chills. And also round four is always so fascinating to me because did Ambrose release the matchups before the evening? Did you have to think about it all night is what I'm wondering. Did you find yourself second guessing or whatever?
00:21:39
Speaker
No, I believe Ambrose didn't release the pairings until the next morning. I had, just based on placement and on rankings, I had kind of a guess between two or three people I would be going into. But that didn't really give me very much information because I think it was Corey who was playing Outcast, I think it was somebody else playing Neverborn.
00:22:02
Speaker
And I don't remember who the third option was. I have probably 10 thunders, I think. Anyway, I didn't really have much of a way to prepare for the matchup, though I definitely did spend some time thinking about the pool a little bit more and what my options were going into it.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, because you're in the same position as Doug was now. You're two and oh and one, I guess. Yeah. You're like, I've got a shot at this. Let's see how it goes. And so there's a little pressure. And yeah, but so it's actually refreshing to me to hear that you didn't spend all night second guessing your choice of masters because you weren't necessarily sure what it was going to be.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. No, that's cool. So, all right. Another question, kind of a follow-on from Diceman87 was, have you ever practiced the Von Schill Mirror? And really the question he has here is not so much.
00:22:58
Speaker
just about von Schill versus von Schill, but just when you're possibly playing a mirror, you know that he's super flexible and is a good choice into this pool. Your opponent obviously knows that too. How do you play a mirror? Or how do you think about a mirror? I have not yet been able to enjoy playing a mirror. So I would love to do that. It sounds super fascinating to me. Because at that point, you have the same toolbox. It's a matter of what tools you pick and how do you use them.
00:23:26
Speaker
And so, like, for Longshill specifically, I think that it comes down to a lot of...
00:23:33
Speaker
what your core game plan is with your, with models like, what is Hanon doing in a game against another Von Shill? Are you bringing Arik in a game against Von Shill? I think the answer is yes. What version titles are you bringing? My thought going into playing against Von Shill, either one honestly, would be to,
00:23:57
Speaker
Bringing because I don't know many higher arc. He isn't the default for me He is a constant option. And so I think it's definitely be an art game I think it's also a Catalan brawler game for me. Okay, because that's cool I'm a huge fan of the brawler just the fact that one model can the single activation Give something stunned staggered and move it five inches. Yeah, um Is can be crippling
00:24:24
Speaker
And there's a lot of, there's a lot of, uh, fry core that does not like stunt or particularly like staggered either. Yeah. The, uh, I do have to say you mentioned, you mentioned Hamlin earlier and I had, uh, uh, somebody use the Catalan brawler against me in a Hamlin crew and it was the most insane. I have done that as well. I like the brawler and Hamlin. Yeah. Disease containment unit plus.
00:24:53
Speaker
But anyways, but this is obviously not a Hamlin podcast. So I will circle it back. Okay. The next tournament I win with Hamlin, we'll talk about Hamlin. Okay. I am looking forward to that. So anyways, so you ended up declaring Bonshell. You saw Vicks on the other side and you weren't sure whether it was one or two, but you saw Vicks. And so can you talk through your crew and why you picked what you did against Vicks? And then I'm specifically interested just personally in Lazarus and why you didn't play Lazarus in this. I think I.
00:25:22
Speaker
But but I wanted to hear your thoughts on the crew. Yeah, PS Lazarus Yeah, going into the VIX I knew that one of the biggest problems that the VIX run into is that the Victoria's themselves either either version Don't really have any way to get through damage reduction tech like armor and shielded. Um, but the Ronin Naturally ignore armor on their melee and you were always gonna see at least one Ronin and VIX it
00:25:45
Speaker
Sometimes more just depending on what's happening. And so I knew that we need to be mitigating a lot of damage coming in Because running your mercenary agents a high damage keyword period I also knew that there's only so much I could do to slow them down because they're really fast
00:26:03
Speaker
Ronin are almost always going to have one criminal on them, so they're not being able to be charged. They're moving like seven inches before they activate over the course of the turn. They're insanely fast. There's nothing I can really do about that. And so I pivoted my focus on they're going to have the run of the outside edges of the board.
00:26:25
Speaker
And so I really, really want to control the middle. Okay. I want to set myself up for the most reliable push through the center of the board that I can.
00:26:39
Speaker
Um, because really the, the, the offensive threats that they have to put out are the Vicks and to a lesser extent models like Vanessa. But outside of that, their offensive potential is mostly minions. And a lot of those are min two, which I can mitigate, um, by having a lot of shielded, which is why I went with Vontial two, because when Vontial two passes an upgrade to someone else, he gives that, that model shielded. And so.
00:27:07
Speaker
By creating that sort of shielded battery around the center of the board, my goal was to essentially shut him out of the middle of the board as best I could and force him to run those carve markers as far to the edges as he could. And I was hoping to catch one of them in the middle of my crew and just hold on to it. And I managed to do that kind of.
00:27:31
Speaker
Okay. But I have had a lot of success in the past with just, I've just camped Hannah on top of my enemy card marker before. And you're just like, come and get it. If you'd like to engage. Because you don't need line of sight to kick the marker, technically, you can still get into her and kick it.
00:27:51
Speaker
But then you're engaged with Hannah, which is not a good place to go. Yeah. So yeah, you get to do that once, but it's not a... You're just feeding a model to Hannah every time you want to kick that marker. Yeah. The other thing I would have in mind was that one trick that I... One line of play in Vodshil that I keep wanting to try, and that actually managed to work out fairly well in this game, is I thought that the metallurgist has vent steam.
00:28:20
Speaker
to create a three-inch aura of concealing and hazardous. And then Hannah, with her bonus action, copied that. And so you create a three-inch bubble off of a 50 millimeter model that is then going to be doing her best to be in your face. Why do you hate people so much? That's just hateful in me.
00:28:45
Speaker
Oh my god. To be fair, in this situation they dived into my hazardous bubble.
00:28:51
Speaker
But they have one on their own as well. Yeah, oh, I hate that hazardous bubble with the Vicks. Yeah. But no, that's great. So yeah, so you had a pretty good feel for your game plan. What was your thoughts on, oh, and what schemes did you end up picking out of? So we actually both took, let me double check. Looks like Assassinate and Vendetta. We both took Assassinate and Vendetta. OK. And do you recall what models you took and what Corey took?
Strategic Use of Lazarus
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah, so for Vendetta, I believe was... Yeah, so I had the metallurgists targeting Yannick. And Corey had... Yeah, very Yannick. And then Corey had Big Jake targeting my metallurgist. And that triangle came into play later. That was a very decaying triangle.
00:29:45
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. The only thing more funny than having the triangle with Vendetta is having two models, having Vendetta against each other. That's my favorite thing to happen. Yeah, it's very fun to have that happen. hilarious. Yeah. Also just to touch on Lazarus very briefly. I like Lazarus against in any pool where I feel like my opponent is going to be bunching up.
00:30:10
Speaker
And because that Shockwave 2 did damage 3, I'm not really looking for damage out of Lazarus. I'm looking for cards. I'm looking to drain my opponent's hand as much as possible. And if Doug had bunched up more in our game, there would have been not only Lazarus shots, but also the grenade belt grenades going into that bubble. And that's been
00:30:34
Speaker
It's really effective when it's effective, but when it doesn't work out, Lazarus doesn't do too much, which is the downside.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's the whatever. I played Bayou as a general rule and had plenty of Wong activations that were amazing and plenty of Wong activations where you're like, well, that was three Fazabs and I didn't do Jack, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, exactly. So, okay. No, but thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, I mean, one important thing to note on that is that if you're playing into a crew that you know is not going to have good card draw,
00:31:10
Speaker
doing a lot of simple duels. Yep. Just drains their hand down and then, you know, they're playing with the top of their deck instead of a good hand. I've also found that incredibly useful into crews that do have good card draw because it mitigates their card draw. If I know that an opponent has a bubble that generates card draw lately, I play against Syndicate.
00:31:34
Speaker
Um, uh, semi-regularly and, uh, they draw plenty of cards up because they have Yannick in keyword. Um, but they also tend to bubble up. And so shockwaves really drain that hand and mitigate the card draw, which syndicate ready to realize on.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, now that makes sense. One other crew question that I wanted to ask about was just the Yannick card draw engine and bringing a free-core engineer. I've seen Vonshell players bring two free-core engineers. You brought one in this. Do you ever play with two? Is one about the sweet spawn on stones invested in card draw versus
00:32:12
Speaker
versus Stones invested in actually gaining points, you know? Yeah. Where's the right point? And some of our listeners may not even be familiar with kind of what I'm calling the Yannick card draw engine. So yeah, could you just kind of talk through some of your thoughts on Yannick? Gladly. I have a lot of thoughts about Yannick. You have to make me stop talking at some point. I can go forever. All right. We will do that.
00:32:33
Speaker
No, no, you're good. But yeah, so Yannick has an ability on the front-end for card coin ingenuity, which is a six-inch aura that says that never finding the model within that bubble would discard a card if they're within two inches of a friendly scheme marker. They can discard the scheme marker to draw a card instead. So it replaces the discard effect with a draw.
00:32:51
Speaker
at the cost of a ski marker. Yeah. That's a two-card swing. It is. It is exactly a two-card swing, which is part of the reason why it's so disgusting. Anything with a lot of discard engines, it functions a lot like a aristocrat stack in Magic. If you're familiar with that, you're using a cost to generate a benefit, which is kind of silly because there isn't a whole lot that does that in this game.
00:33:17
Speaker
in Malifaux, but when it happens, it works pretty well. And so, Frivor is notorious for manipulating Ionic because the Engineer has an ability, has a cost of discarding a card, and when the ability resolves, you draw a card as a part of the effect. And so normally, that's card neutral, or like half a card positive, because you're cycling a bad card, theoretically. But with Ionic, you're instead drawing two cards.
00:33:45
Speaker
And because that's a bonus action, the Strength and Armor, you are able to, with the Engineer, interact, use the ability, draw two cards, and have one AP left. Which gets really silly. Combine that with Vonshield 1 and the ability to have Shouting Orders Freikor on Vonshield 1, you have your entire crew being able to take an action and a bonus to focus and draw a card.
00:34:10
Speaker
Things get really out of hand. I personally am not a big fan of running the double engineer setup. I find that it's almost too many cards to make good use out of. It also requires a lot of... That's three models sitting in your back line, not really doing very much. Right, just a card engine. Even if they are able to kind of slowly scoot up the board and kind of go for like... They can go sit on like a...
00:34:35
Speaker
a Guard the Stashmark or something like that on like turn three, turn four, maybe. For the most part, there's not doing very much. And that's what, 19 stones, I think. Yeah, 19 stones, which is almost accurate. So I'm not a big fan of the two engineers, but one engineer is something I very much enjoy. And even without Yannick, I'd probably be bringing an engineer just because they're independently really, really strong. Yeah. They love holding rocket launchers.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yes, everybody loves holding rocket launchers. There's just, that's like one of those laws. And I was not usually the big fan of the rocket launchers. She has better things to do with her actions. Okay, so that makes sense. Yeah, there's this upgrade player already something else I could go on forever about.
00:35:21
Speaker
No, that's awesome. And I do throw that out in that anybody who wants to talk in as much depth as you can imagine, please, our Discord community is in the show notes, as always, and come on in and look for Bathysphere, and they will be happy to talk to you for longer than we have for this show about pros and cons on just about anything OutKast, but certainly Vonshell. Yeah, primarily Frycore. I'm expanding into other OutKast stuff more.
00:35:51
Speaker
No, that is great. You know, I'd like to ask, do you have you found a spot for fry corpsman? Absolutely. Constantly. Fire corpsman are incredible. Um, they are, I really, really like the fire corpsman. Um, they are, I find that they, they last far above their weight class. Um, as a five stone model, they have armor one and they have, um, uh, survivalist healing additional whenever you're healing them. Um, I.
00:36:19
Speaker
They're, they're almost a default in some, in some setups. If I'm bringing certain models, if I'm bringing certain models and my list is like. Just a little bit squeezed in one way or another. Our five core is a great default, five chroma is a great default. Um, I've had great success slapping a, uh, pair of rocket boots on them and a, uh, assault shield, which gives them, uh, arcane shielded too.
00:36:44
Speaker
Um, so now they have a leap with a built-in suit and, or can you show the two and armor one and an ability on their card, less than say, whenever they would discard a equipment upgrade, they can take a damage to not discard it, which is not irreducible. Which means it comes out of the, out of the shielded first. Right. And so I've had a, I've had five corpsmen single handedly score spread them out or break through because they can just run down, down, down a flank on turn two and just sit in the back corner of the map and score points.
00:37:14
Speaker
Fantastic. And they're ruthless. They are ruthless, yes. That is the other important thing. Oh, they are. A five stone model with ruthless?
00:37:25
Speaker
That's huge for those crews that really rely on terrifying because suddenly, because most of the time they're like, all right, well, maybe you're, you know, your big boys are going to have either the stuff to the willpower to mitigate it or various other stuff. You tend to see ruthless on a big scary model. This is a ruthless on, you know, oh, a five cost minion. You don't expect that. I was literally just looking at this here going, no.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah, they're one of, I believe, five, four or five models in outcast total that have ruthless. Yeah. It's like Johann who nobody wants to take. No, it's, it's, it's Freikarman von Schill to tailor, um, the new, uh, ancient constructs and possibly one more. I'm not a hundred percent sure.
00:38:14
Speaker
Those are the main ones. Hans. Hans Hares. Hans, yes. That's the other one. Okay. Who some people like. I've never taken Hans. But yeah, I'm a huge fan of Frank Korman. They are still 5-7 models and they die, but you know.
00:38:32
Speaker
Because you had taken Frank Horman in this pool, right? I did. Yeah, you took one with one criminal. And so could you talk through the adding two? So now that young man or woman is a seven stone model. And so yeah, what was your thought on wanted criminal in particular, just for running down the flanks? But you were running this in her. So yeah, could you talk to your thought process there?
00:38:57
Speaker
Um, a big part of what I'm criminal for me with, um, with the fry corpsman specifically is that two inch movement.
Creative Game Tactics and Opponent Strategies
00:39:05
Speaker
Okay. Um, and the ability to not be charged. Like we're less worried about trying to like in this pool, I was less worried about trying to scheme up the side of the board because we're not looking at, at spread them out or breakthrough. Um.
00:39:21
Speaker
But in this case, I'm looking for someone that can stand in between, like physically body block for my back line against the Vex. Because you can't productively charge because they have disguise. Yeah, okay. And they're like physically in the way of you getting to my back line that you can charge theoretically.
00:39:48
Speaker
And so that was a huge part of that lineup. Also, I wasn't sure if they would be trying to do either Secret Meetup or set the trap, I believe. Yeah, one of the schemey ones. Yeah, the ability to pick up scheme markers as a bonus action can be invaluable in that situation.
00:40:09
Speaker
Okay, so no, that's super useful. So yeah, Fry-Corman may be part of your normal loadout. Sounds like you bring them often, but that Wanted Criminal sounds like very simple. Wanted Criminal is an outlier. For this pool. Okay, no, that's great, thank you. Thank you very much for talking through that. So cool. So let's go ahead and move to the game. And yeah, I would love to hear about, just kind of broadly open it up for interesting lines of play, some of the key moments in this game.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'd like to talk about my opponent's crew. This is ingenious. Oh yeah, please do. I'm sorry. Yeah, thank you. It's ingenious. I think it had a couple of flaws, but it was very, very clever and kind of blew me away when I first saw it. I was like, what? Who hires two desperate mercenaries?
00:40:58
Speaker
What? Crazy people. Yeah, so my opponent's crew was, they had Big Jake and Vanessa in Victoria Tambor's twin blade, so Vix two, with Soldier for Hire to give her hard to kill, mainly. And then Vanessa Big Jake, a Ronin with one in criminal, and that Ronin ended up just running down literally the edge of the board, scoring the strategy.
00:41:25
Speaker
That was the entirety of what that model did. Yep, doing rodent things. Heck yeah. Heck yeah. But then they had a Yannick, two Padman riflemen, and two disparate mercenaries, which blew my mind when I was first looking at it like, what?
00:41:42
Speaker
What is this? What are you doing? And then I saw it in action and it was kind of insane. Yeah. It's like the sword ladies and the gun line. Yeah. Yeah. It was a fascinating little gun line because, so as we explained, Yannick turned the discard into card draw, but the cost of a scheme marker.
00:42:01
Speaker
Distant mercenaries, like the rest of the mercenary keyword, have the ability to scoot, I believe, two inches during the start phase. So Battle Tempo. So they had a little bit of movement on their own. They were able to turn one, they walked up the board and interacted to drop a steam marker, and then turn two, they stood there.
00:42:27
Speaker
He ate those scheme markers turn one for card draw. And then turn two, they sat there with rapid fire. And they interacted, rapid fired to draw a card and make two attacks. And it was fascinating. And then backing it up, the Kailin riflemen, using Yonex shouting orders syndicate, were able to interact, draw a card and focus, take a focus shot,
00:42:54
Speaker
Okay, yeah. At 14 inches on a stat 5. Which was surprisingly effective. Yeah, and it's like, yeah, it's only, they're what? 135 damage track, I think? But it's- Yeah, the desperate mercenaries are, they have broken down rifles, so they have
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, 1-3-5. 1-3-5. But yeah, you're... And it was really focused. You're gonna be leaning towards the 3-5. Even if you get one, at least you get rid of one of your dang Shieldeds. And so, you know, that's actually very cool. It was really interesting. They... You managed to put a significant dent into Vonshell 2, like, on top of Turn 2. They managed to put, like, I think five wounds onto him.
00:43:38
Speaker
okay um true armor and shield it no but it was significant it was enough that i had to dedicate time to healing it back up you know but he also drew like i think like drew easily four cards every turn with doing that and you're like vix vix don't have any card draw like didn't you get the memo yeah which fuels the vix engine
00:44:01
Speaker
That's some craziness, right? That is some crazy crew building right there. I love it. Yeah, it was super, super interesting. I think that there was... I was able to exploit that a little bit by blasting into the defense for desktop mercenaries with the rocket launcher.
00:44:22
Speaker
I think it's kind of inherently the downside of using them that way, but it was still really interesting to watch and so fun to think about. I started taking Yannick and a Kylan rifleman as a side-core in other crews after seeing it, because they get to walk around and draw cards and just hang out.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah. Um, for every day when they use two things for a 12 stuff at a five. Yeah. You're doing five damage every day. And then what the heck? It was impressive. Plus you just get the flex, you know, of bringing desperate mercenaries and cattle and riflemen. And then, and then when I killed them, they drew two cards off of it because they had the demise expendable. Like it was great. Wow. Um, it was very, very fun to watch.
00:45:11
Speaker
That's cool. So you mentioned kind of at the top of the show about how you were able to use knowledge of this against them, that this was really just game knowledge really helped out on this. So facing that, and you're like, I'm fascinated by this, but how are you able to turn this kind of the academic, oh my gosh, this is the most interesting crew I've ever seen, maybe not the most, but up there, very, very interesting crew into shit.
00:45:37
Speaker
beat this crew now. How did you go through that transition? A significant part of it was, whenever I'm in a position where I don't know what to do to counteract a thing, I will default to looking at what my tools that I have actually do and how I can leverage those in the situation. And a huge thing that helped here was the Metal Ninja Zven Steam, providing a concealment aura against those guns.
00:46:05
Speaker
Yes. That was huge. Yeah. You're like, thank you for your gun line. I've got concealment. Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, I was able to, um, the other thing that, the other problem that I found, that I found that, uh, vix2 present, I didn't, I didn't really recognize, uh, until I was staring, staring at it, looking at the card, but vix2 has bulletproof too.
00:46:30
Speaker
and has combat finesse, you can't cheat against them in melee, when you attack them in melee, which makes them deceptively difficult to take down. Because you can't, mainly they're productively, because you can't cheat, so your opponent, because he was drawing so many cards, was able to, oh, you flip the seven, here's an eight. Yeah, exactly. And it just was a really tough nut to crack. So I was looking at it and I realized that
00:46:55
Speaker
I had two non-gun range attacks on Hannah and the Barbarian in Ancient Wars. And I was able to use that to really leverage into pinning the... I pinned the Vicks down in melee, I believe, with the Fryhorman. Like, they ended up engaging the Fryhorman.
00:47:24
Speaker
after an activation and I just put two moderates off of focus shots with ancient words and it's a monitor for. And so that was way more damage than they were expecting. And so I was able to secure points that way by mainly being traditionally with what my options are and being able to quickly examine my toolbox
00:47:49
Speaker
go, here's my problem, here's my tool, and it's not quite the right shape, but it's close. Yeah, that is great. The other situation I was able to do that in was, again, because the flight corpsmen don't have to discard their upgrades, this flight corpsman was toting around a rocket launcher the whole game. Well, until he died. He did die. But he got a rocket launcher shot every turn.
00:48:12
Speaker
And that was a huge part of what like Von Schill, Von Schill 2, gave himself the rocket launcher, shot into the desperate mercenaries, chunked them significantly, tossed the rocket launcher to the fire corpsman, and the fire corpsman finished them off, I believe.
00:48:28
Speaker
Oh, this is like, and it's so just like, I want to see this movie. I want to watch the movie of this game. Yeah. It's the most synthetic thing, you know? And it's just, I can just totally see Bonchil ordering this poor Frank Emmermann. Dude, you get to go like hold off the Vicks. Have a nice day. Yeah, it was very fun. I show you how to do it. Now you do it too. Yeah. There was a really, really interesting point where, um,
00:48:53
Speaker
The Vicks have an ability where they can chuck a model. The Vicks too, and I think they have a trigger on it. It deals damage that ignores armor. Yeah, combat maneuver. It's a target number 13 defense, dual or suffer three damage, ignoring armor. And they were able to get in and use that on the steam trunk. Oh my gosh. Which is three health armor too. With a big explosion thing. Toss it into like three of my models. Oh my God.
00:49:23
Speaker
And that was a significant part of how they scored part of, I believe, Indiana. Okay. Er, no, uh, assassinate. It was part of how they scored an assassinate, because they... By throwing the steam trunk. Okay. Von Schulze got caught in that blast and took two damage. Oh, that's so foamy.
00:49:46
Speaker
I'm like, this is just, again, this needs to be a movie. Like, I wish you guys had streamed the game, but even better would be watching the movie. Watching the movie. Yeah, it was really, really good. So no, that's great. The, uh, any other, so kind of other key moments in the game that, uh, I love the cinematography of it, but yeah, what was the toughest move that you had? The toughest move that I had, um, was on turn five trying to get, um, I had,
00:50:16
Speaker
Over the course of the game, I basically punted both of my carve markers kind of to the center right of the board and moved them up kind of together that way. But I got into a position where I had one of my markers in the opponent's deployment zone and the other one just outside of it. I did a bunch of stuff to try to get that marker into the deployment zone. I just couldn't get there with everybody else's activations. And so I had to take Von Schill
00:50:46
Speaker
and who I believe was engaged by at least one model. He was definitely engaged by Vanessa, maybe that's someone else as well. But definitely Vanessa was able to bulldoze out of engagement.
00:51:00
Speaker
foul him up motivation, something to give himself a rocket boots, leap with the rocket boots, walk, and then interact with the marker, which I was like, like in a real space, it was like 14 inches as the bird flies, but it was like around buildings and stuff to score that fourth point on
Von Schill's Maneuver for Scoring
00:51:19
Speaker
carve. And that was the kind of thing where, because I knew what I was working with, I felt confident in doing that. And it was very much a like,
00:51:30
Speaker
The score was really, really close until, I believe, like end of turn four. Oh, that sucks. And then the end points, that last point of assassinate and the fourth point on car really swung things. The other thing that was really entertaining to me was the triangle of Vendetta because I didn't score the first point of Vendetta until turn four. OK. Because things just conspired against me.
00:51:59
Speaker
Yannick was way far away from everything. The metallurgist was not able to get to move into position. It was a whole thing. And so eventually, I think bottom of turn four, I was able to score the first point of vendetta. And then at which point my opponent had not scored vendetta at all. And so going into turn five, partly because the metallurgist was in the back of my crew, miles away from Big J.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah. And so positioning just conspired against both of us in that in that moment. But in the end, I was able to my the metallurgist survived.
00:52:38
Speaker
because they couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't kill Big Jake on turn five. Okay, if he like popped up. Because, yeah, because how Big Jake's demise works, if he gets down, if he goes down, if he dies, he buries. And then he can unbury at the start of a turn. But it was turn five, so you can't unbury. And if at the end of the game a model is buried, it dies.
00:53:05
Speaker
So you couldn't guarantee that you'd get that second point for killing the metallurgists, and gave me enough space to, after he dropped the metallurgists to half the score that first point, he actually cheated down on damage to not kill the metallurgists with Big Jake, and left the metallurgists at like one.
00:53:25
Speaker
And then I was able to turn around, heal the metallurgist with the librarian to prevent the next activation of the game from killing her.
00:53:38
Speaker
which ended up denying that second point of vendetta and scoring me the second point of vendetta, because my vendetta model was alive. Was alive. And so that was such an awkward situation, because at that point, Yannick was dead. I had killed her at the beginning of that turn. So it was a very interesting scoring interaction. Yeah. I love running into those weird corner cases like that. Yeah. No, that's great. And where you're like, oh, if this goes this. Yeah. So we talked.
00:54:07
Speaker
So you were playing with clocks through this and that this is this turn five. Did you end up with a ton of time or were you having to make all of these kinds of decisions with like, you know, seconds left kind of thing? I want to say this game, we each had close, like a little under 10 minutes each on the clock. This one didn't run super tight.
00:54:28
Speaker
Most of my other games did. Most of my other games were either extremely close or one of the other of us clocked out like mid-late turn five. Yeah. I remember, yeah, we had a lot of... The clock never really got to the point where it was... It was hurried on a couple of those turn five activations, but it never really felt like clocking out.
00:54:57
Speaker
change scoring. Okay, particularly much. Okay, which is just so I love playing with clocks personally. And I love the turn four and turn five interactions, particularly if we are when you are running out of time, especially because you're like, turn five is so important, there can be so swingy, and you really have to think through it, but you don't always have the time to think through it. Sounds like you had the time to think through it. In this case, anyway, a little bit, okay.
00:55:25
Speaker
No, that's great. Because yeah, that's a very complex situation that you described going on with the kind of the little three way vendetta thing. And so I can only imagine
00:55:39
Speaker
making the right decisions under time pressure. It was the hate triangle. Yes, the hate triangle. And those weird corner case interactions are a huge part of why I love this game so much. I described the game to new players as all the corners. There's no default. Everything was a corner case. Everything is weird in some way.
00:55:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great way to describe it. I love it. Love it. So alrighty the MVP model. What was what was the MVP model for this game? I Think it would probably have to be the metallurgist Because one of the things that I find with I always take the metallurgist with vaunchil too because being able to pass out more upgrades through her is extremely useful and
00:56:27
Speaker
Um, but in this case, she was able to just be manipulative enough. And between handing out extra upgrades, um, and extra movement, because that ability that gives out upgrades also gives, I think three or four inches of movement, um, toward a scrap marker or friendly construct is in line of sight, I believe. Um, but yeah, three inches sort of front construct or scrap marker in line of sight. Anyway. Um, and then combine that with her option of command and conflict as well.
00:56:55
Speaker
which has temper steel, which prevents armor from being ignored, built in on it. Really just swung a lot of things. Had a lot of options. She really denies your opponents a lot of avenues of approach.
00:57:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's cool that it's whenever you see the denial style model showing up as an MVP that's that's that's always it makes for an interesting game as well. Yeah, and so no, that's great. So already shift into the after the game and looking back something that we always like asking is just advice.
00:57:31
Speaker
that you would give to other folks kind of based on this game. So for a bottom third player, someone who is facing Vonshield 2 for the first time ever, what kind of things, what kind of advice would you give them? What kind of gotchas do they need to watch out for? Vonshield 2 is going to do a lot more than you expect him to at face value. Just looking at his card, like reading his card for the first time, you're not going to expect how many effective actions he's going to generate.
00:58:00
Speaker
on his turn and how far his reach is. He has an eight inch aura of passing out these upgrades. It's a lot broader and a lot more impactful than you expect.
00:58:17
Speaker
Frycore as a whole is just a lot more resilient than Armor 1 and everything would initially suggest. Right. And it's way faster than things initially suggest because, like you said, nothing has Leap printed on the card, but everything has Leap as an option. Everything has Arcane Shielded 2 as an option. Everything has a 12-inch gun if I needed to.
00:58:40
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, having so much of that armor out there, plus then the option to get shielded either from that shield or from the, hey, have a rocket launcher, get some shielded, that suddenly means that you have to do Min 3 to touch them. Yeah. And so that's a huge thing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:59:05
Speaker
For a bottom third player, for anyone trying to learn and increase their skill, Ficor is really good at teaching target priority. Because if you deal two damage to every model in my crew, I don't care.
00:59:22
Speaker
But if you deal six damage to one model, that's suddenly a much bigger problem. So focusing down individual models, don't give them the chance to recover is one of the only way to take things down reliably in Viscor.
00:59:35
Speaker
Okay, no, that's great. Great advice. Thank you. How about for that middle third player, the folks who they're experienced and they're trying to give you a challenging game. But yeah, what kind of things would you think for the majority of players, tournament players? I think that a big part of is how I tend to approach Von Schill is a lot of crews want to play their own game.
00:59:57
Speaker
and want their opponent to play their game. And while Vanishing doesn't necessarily have a game that he wants his opponents to play, he's very, very good at not playing his opponent's game. And so if you can pick a part and examine where you can afford to fold your game plan and absorb the momentum that I'm putting into you.
01:00:18
Speaker
If you can pick sacrificial models, if you can get something in the way of what I'm trying to do to disrupt how you're playing the game, you're gonna have a lot better time because if I can't get Hannah into your back line, if I can't get that rocket launcher shot on that critical model that you need to score points because you have something else blocking line of sight because you move me out of out of position, disruption is a huge
01:00:43
Speaker
a huge tool against Fricor, but they're only susceptible to certain types, really. Things like concealment, things like distracted, they don't like distracted effects, or just impose negatives as a whole. That's great. So yeah, pile on some of the conditions kind of stuff that you have a hard time dealing with. Fricor is good at removing conditions by outcast standards, which means they have one keyword model that can remove conditions.
01:01:13
Speaker
reliably. Okay, nice. So how about for the top third? What kind of advice would you give maybe yourself? You know, what do you wish that you had done differently in this game? Um, honestly, I wish that I had taken a little bit more time to examine what my opponent was bringing. Okay, before kind of questioning like, what are you
01:01:39
Speaker
I waited for him to show me what his plan was. It cost me a bunch of activations and several stones to try to tank through a volley of eight shots. Yeah.
01:02:05
Speaker
I think that paying rateless attention to your opponent and their positioning, keeping your toolbox open, because I wish that I had understood a little bit better that the correct choice into Vex II was the librarians.
Respecting Unusual Strategies in Tournaments
01:02:22
Speaker
If I had understood that, I probably would have bought a second one.
01:02:25
Speaker
because it's an uncommon thing for me to do. Keep that steam trunk open. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I feel like I scored quite well in this game, but I feel like I definitely could have prevented a lot more points from being scored. What was the final score on this game? It was seven to five.
01:02:46
Speaker
I wanted to go a little on that because it definitely is a different list. You see Desperate Mercenaries and I don't want to poke Cory at all if they're listening to this. I am 100%. It was a very clever list. I see Desperate Mercenaries and I'm instantly going like,
01:03:07
Speaker
What is this guy doing in round four facing me? Like, how could this guy possibly be undefeated, right? And he was two and one at that point. Okay, got it. His record was drawn at that point. Yeah, and so it would be easy to dismiss that.
01:03:25
Speaker
And like you have to not and so haven't, I think that that's a really good lesson that you mentioned for top tier players is you see something that's kind of off the wall and you're like, Oh, this, this, this list must suck, you know, and then it's like, yeah, five stones later or whatever it was, you're like, maybe it doesn't suck as bad as I thought it did. Yeah, like maybe I.
01:03:44
Speaker
Before the tournament, I would have argued for classifying Death from Mercenaries as the worst model in the game. For their cost. I would have argued that. I don't think I can really argue that anymore. They have a role. You can find a place. I think they're definitely still significantly below the curve.
01:04:11
Speaker
Um, give them respect. You need to respect even the oddball models. You have to respect what your opponent is bringing because you have to always expect that your opponent is bringing it for a reason. Yeah. That's a good point right there. I mean, and if you're, you're, and you're in the mix on round four of a five round tournament and they put this oddball thing on the table as
01:04:36
Speaker
It's kind of that, okay, they've got a very specific idea that they're going to use this for. What am I missing here? Is there gotta be that feeling? Yeah. And especially like, when I was talking to Corey, like as we were setting up for the game, after we had confirmed our crews and stuff, he was saying that he was, he was soloing this list, this fixed list for the entire, which I thought was really impressive.
01:05:03
Speaker
Like that was immediately like, oh, you got something going on here. Yeah. And he was, he was, he downplayed it a little bit. He was like, I'm not sure how good it is yet necessarily. We're here stress testing and type of thing. And it was, it was really impressive. Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah. And no, and I, I just love that as a tip for even top tier players, like, yeah, respect the oddball models, you know, they may be there for a reason is I think that that's really, really great.
01:05:31
Speaker
So sweet. Um, we have hit a bunch of stuff that, uh, for, for folks, if, uh, again, if you got any questions, uh, we obviously Nate here would, would love to talk, uh, about one chill, uh, talk your ear off. So please drop by our discord if you'd like, but, uh, have we got any other questions or comments from, from Doug or Nick?
01:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I've got something, Nate, I don't know if you've seen some of the balance foe discussions online with the Malifaux World Series. Yeah, I've been tracking that. Yeah, so Yannick is on that list. Yes. If you were to play a tournament with Yannick in that state where you weren't able to use her to that degree, would Von Schill be,
01:06:19
Speaker
still be as viable for all of the pools that you were up against for this tournament? I think so, yes. I've been giving this some thought recently. I've been getting ready to play in Maliho World Series stuff going forward. Oh, nice. Well, good luck. I'm going to need it. I'm going to need it. Well, good luck and good skills. There's a bunch of killers out there, yeah.
01:06:44
Speaker
Yeah. There's somewhat intimidating just in terms of how much high quality players are in that meta.
Adapting to Tournament Scene Changes
01:06:53
Speaker
Anyway, I think that Von Schill is still competitive. I think without Janik at all takes him down a notable peg. I think that losing that card draw is really significant. I think that he's still definitely very playable and
01:07:10
Speaker
My plan that I've been working with so far and has worked for me, what little I've been able to test it, is to just swap her one-to-one for a second librarian. Because something that I think a lot of people forget about with librarians is they have safe and power. So they can deal one damage to a friendly model to add a suit. And on their attack, they have search as a trigger.
01:07:39
Speaker
And while one librarian for most of the game is spending most of her time healing, a second librarian can very easily take every activation to go, I'm going to shoot you twice with tones built in on everything. And you can even shoot your own models if you really want to. You can shoot, especially in Von Schill 1, you can shoot Von Schill 1 twice
01:08:06
Speaker
deal two damage off of weeks after armor, draw two cards, and then whenever, when something else heals him, he has survival, so he's gonna heal two off of a heal one. And just, you've just drawn two cards for an activation, and haven't made lots of anything else. Fantastic. That's a solid combo right there. It is. It feels really bad when you flip three severes,
01:08:36
Speaker
Which has happened to me. Oh, what happened? Yeah. But the odds are against that, ultimately. The odds are against that, yes.
01:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. One thing I wanted to circle back just real quick, because you did mention Malifaux World Series. Certainly the actual tournaments that they play within the MWS are super competitive, some of literally the best players in the world. And so again, good luck and good skill as you do some of that tournament play. But I also wanted to mention, and I'm going to stick it into the, make sure that we get it into the podcast notes for listeners.
01:09:10
Speaker
Many of you, I suspect, are familiar with MWS, but if not, we'll put the discord in the show notes. It's also a very good place for people who are familiar with Basel to play fun and casual games.
01:09:25
Speaker
There are some brutally competitive people, but there are a ton of very, very friendly people willing to show you how to play on Vassal, the online version of Malefoe. It's nothing like playing in real life, but it's pretty cool. And so for those listeners that may not have a meta nearby and regular players or whatever, you want to play a few more games than you're currently getting,
01:09:50
Speaker
MWS is a great place to start in a casual and fun manner as well as a unbelievably competitive manner. So anyways, we'll stick that discord in the show notes. Just make sure that you're specifying you want to play a casual game. Oh, yes. Heck yeah. You'll get casual people.
01:10:06
Speaker
Something else to note, the MWS Discord is really great, very well managed, but it's become my go-to place that if I can't get a hold of my normal people who know the rules better than I do, if I'm like, hey, how does this rule work?
01:10:24
Speaker
There's a great channel in there. There's like, uh, like no dumb questions channel or something like that. It's like, Hey, how does this interaction work? Usually I can find someone to answer that within just a couple of minutes. If I can't get ahold of, you know, Andrea or Brian. Yeah.
01:10:40
Speaker
General rules questions and no dumb questions aren't absolutely the most populous channels on that server. Useful for new players or a TO when you got that weird, crazy, corner case scenario like, well how does this work in the, oh this is a ha, big head scratcher.
01:11:01
Speaker
Yep, no doubt. So, all right.
Promotion of Upcoming Malifaux Events
01:11:04
Speaker
Well, again, congratulations. Fantastic completion, I guess. Fantastic. Coming in number one out of 23 is great. Thanks for talking to us about Fonshell 2 and everything else on that. Do you have any plugs before we go, Nate? Yeah, I'll plug my local meta. We play out of Kent, Washington, just south of Seattle at Game Castle Kent.
01:11:30
Speaker
If you're in the Seattle area, you're in the greater PNW area for any reason, come on down on a Sunday evening and get some games in. We're also, we have a Pacific Northwest Discord community that is incredibly active. And there's a lot of people there that are really passionate about the game. And there's also plenty of basketball games that happen there too.
01:11:52
Speaker
Get in, get talking, and get games out. I mean, it's a really great community up there. You all were so welcoming to me coming up there. And I had a blast just chatting with and playing games with everyone up there. So it was great to get away for the weekend and have so much fun up in the Pacific Northwest with you all.
01:12:18
Speaker
Definitely. Just don't be fooled by a summer weather. It only lasts like three months. The rest of it is not this pretty. I love shitty weather though. Well then, maybe you should move here. That's not up to me. Texas can't do without you, Doug. We're sorry. Can't do that. Any final comments or plugs from Doug or Nick?
01:12:42
Speaker
As far as plugs go, hey, I'm going to do the plug that I always do. We got the Lone Star Fodown Malifaux GT coming up here in Houston, Texas, October 13th through the 15th. We're aiming to make this the largest event in Malifaux, not attached to a convention. As of recording this, we have
01:13:05
Speaker
Ooh, I don't even know how many states represented. We've got guys from Washington. We got people from California, Kansas, Massachusetts. We are international now. We have a ticket sold from Calgary. All right. We got territory. Don't forget Dixon coming up from Puerto Rico. Oh, oh, that's right. I didn't realize Dixon was in Puerto Rico. Why did I know this?
01:13:29
Speaker
He didn't used to be, but he is now, yeah. He was in the Carolinas. We've got great people coming to play from all over the country in a great game store. And if you register before August 25th, we have a custom Fate Deck that you get for free if you register before August 25th. So come to the Lone Star Fodown and see if you have the biggest hat. Excellent.
01:13:57
Speaker
There you go. Sweet. All right. Thanks so very much. Again, appreciate it. And I got nothing else, so let's wrap this up. Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming, Nate. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Nate, this was great. This was great. Very much looking forward to continuing to engage the Malefic community as a whole. And that's definitely one of the most positive places in gaming. Oh, seriously.
01:14:21
Speaker
totally 100% agree. Well, and thank you for being part of our show. And again, do take care. Thank you so much. You too. Thank you very much. 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 new administrators LLC.
01:14:48
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 malign any group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything. Whoo!
01:15:30
Speaker
I show you how to do it, now you do it too, eh?