The Path to Nythera

Howdy howdy folks!  Thanks for reading again!  This was another great week for hobbying (even if I stretched out into another couple systems.).  I managed to paint a few minis, make a few boards (experimenting with different texturing techniques) and I even got a Nythera game in!  I have really gotten an extra level of enjoyment out of my hobby since I've started blogging about it, and I want to thank you guys for that.  I'm surprised by how regular I've managed to keep the posts, and here's hoping I can keep that regularity up!

Hobby

As far as hobby activities go I've assembled my coryphee from GenCon (I'm working on being able to swap their bases between 2 on a 50mm or individually on 40mms), I've started painting my mechanical rider (she is a MONSTER on the table, who knew?), and I've painted up 2 demo boards.  One is specifically for Guild Ball, a 2x2 pitch for demo games, and one is for Malifaux demo games (although, it wouldn't be a bad display board for a certain cult of martian mechanics).  I'm looking forward to picking up the Malifaux starter set from one of my FLGS's this week (Drawbridge Games!  check it out if you're in Pittsburgh!), so I'll probably spend some time this week building up different pieces of terrain that you need to run the demo scenarios.  I still haven't gotten around to setting up a nice photo booth, so i'll have to describe some of the painting on mech rider.  I used a progression of blue to purple to pink for her flames, base coated and washed all the metals, and use a brass color to accent around the steel colors.  The coryphee are on flagstones that are slightly larger than the cobblestones I typically base my Arcanists on, but this will help with the magnetizing.

The TARDIS conveniently showed up for the Coryphee to lean on.

Try to guess which one is the Guild Ball pitch!  I hope my wife doesn't turn the fireplace on...

Gaming

In the slightly modified words of Nux from Mad Max (just go see it already) What a week, what a lovely week!  I played a Nythera Global campaign game with my local rezzer player and he took the dreaded Nicodem!  We flipped for all the campaign bits, and he wound up being the attacker and set his sights on Slate Ridge.  Here is the Strats and Schemes pool we flipped.

Hmmm, Turf War you say?  Arcanists you say?  Who should I bring?

After little to no deliberation, I decided on Ironsides.  Half because I want to get more games in with her, half because she's painted, and wholly because it was turf war.  The hard part was figuring out who else to bring?  I brought al little bit of shooty support with the mages and the gunsmith (who had a real tough time slowly descending from their vantage point), 2 Miners came along as hybrid scheme runners/counter scheme runners,  Johanna and Mouse came along to heal, and Willie brought his wheelbarrow.  Johanna had the extra usefulness of being able to remove conditions in a pinch (but her ability is REALLY hard to get off without the ability to use soulstones!) in case he dropped McMourning, and Willie was there to manipulate scheme markers or blast if he went heavy summoning.

Let me know if I made any dumb choices!

The game started off with a bang!  We each deployed in our corners and declared Plant Evidence.  He had breakthrough unrevealed and I had Vendetta unrevealed  naming my gunsmith and his punk zombie.  I'm really liking the trick of using Mouse to damage a friendly model for Ironsides' ability (and the fast trigger on the gunsmith), reposition the model, and then have the opportunity for a heal.  I don't like bottlenecking my own models on a flight of stairs.  Everyone generally meandered towards the middle.

My Deployment

His deployment

The first summon was rough, a Hanged right at the turf marker.  That hanged stuck around for a crazy amount of the game.  Next the punk zombie got hopped up on some sort of meds from the nurse and came right for my Gunsmith.  I got initiative on the next turn and use a lot of resources to have the Gunsmith put the punk back into the ground, earning me full points for one of the schemes.

End of turn 1

End of turn 1

Center scrum!

The game was a rough fight and there was a lot of back and forth in the Turf Marker scrum.  At the end of the day my fringe guys managed to stop his scheme running canine remains before they could run away with the game, I earned full scheme points and 3 strat points.  He earned full points for plant evidence, but none for breakthrough and 2 for turf war.  Slate Ridge was successfully defended, but at great cost in Arcanist lives.

Where'd all those extra bodies come from?  How did Mortimer's spleen turn into a zombie lady of the night?  Where'd the clothes come from!?!?!

Some of the highlights from the game include two Hanged keeping everyone afraid of everything, Ironsides making 5 or 6 attacks in one activation to knock out a punk zombie and most of his buddy, and the sheer amount of damage Nico put out with his attack spell (decay? despoil?  delovely?)

This was another excellent week for the hobby, and I look forward to another one this week.  You guys have all kept me on track and I just want to thank you for that again.  If you want to get in contact with me you can leave a comment, email me at ToBeAnArcanist@gmail.com, or tweet me @KFinchster.  Thanks again and I'll see y'inz next week!

The Rotten Flowers of Malifaux City

Howdy folks!  This was an amazing week for the hobby!  We had the announcement of the new Nythera global campaign, I managed to get a fair amount of hobby and painting in, I even got a great game in at one of my FLGS's!  That was a lot of exclamation points, but stream of consciousness writing demands it.  There are some great things on the horizon for my meta.  The Nythera global campaign is going to set a sense of urgency to most of my general pick up games, the regular Shifting Loyalties campaign options are opening a lot of cool things for some tied in games, and one of my local stores is planning a tournament soon(TM).

Hobby

I assembled a bunch of miniatures and set them straight into my "to prime" box.  The weather was super friendly, so I got a chance to spray prime a large number of models.  I spent a little more time painting Howard Langston, and really enjoyed putting paint on this mini.  The body portion really leant itself to being painted, the texture was great, there weren't too many spots that were hard to reach, and it was pretty clear what parts should be painted in what colors.  Once I painted Howard I had an itch to keep the spider train rolling, so i cranked out six more steampunk arachnids.  If I ever go down the sneaky path that is Summoner Ramos, I intend to be prepared.

Arachnophobia much?

Stay Away, I'm covered in BEEEEEEES

Gaming

I got another game in this week!  I had an absolute blast playing my local Rezzer.  We were both signed up for the Nythera Event, so we decided to make the game count for that.  He was the defender, and I was the attacker for (drumroll please) Nythera itself!  We set up terrain, he declared Rezzers, and I declared Arcanists.  Our strats and schemes were Stake a Claim, Line in the Sand, Power Ritual, Plant Explosives, Protect Territory, and Breakthrough.  We had standard deployment and I immediately went to my binder to figure out a list.

I was afraid of what kind of conditions a Rezzer could throw at me, so I knew I would need some sort of condition removal.  Rezzers hate burning, so I knew I would need access to that condition.  I intended to play fairly scheme heavy, so I needed some scheme marker shenanigans.  Mech Rider and and declared power ritual seemed pretty strong.  I tried to bluff plant explosives with Willie and one undeclared scheme, which I wound up choosing breakthrough for.  Here was the final list.

The first turn went pretty straightforward.  We both dropped scheme markers in corners and moved some guys forward.  Seamus jumped to chase some of my scheme runners on the right, and some Rotten Belles attempted to tempt my miners.  A bystander mentioned "That's what you get for tempting a Miner" to which another witty bystander noted "No, 10-20 is what you get for tempting a Minor!"  insert Statler and Waldorf laugh.

Run all over the place!

Firestarter places a scheme marker for a Moleman, who proceeds to jam into Seamus's face.

The game got really close after that fun interaction (spoiler alert moles hate hedgeclippers) and I neglected to keep accurate photos throughout the match.  I got too carried away with little things like thinking about the game, and trying to win.  we had some awesome interactions and Seamus did what Seamus does.  Lots of close range shots to kill stuff, followed by summoned Belles and Doxies.  Eventually Seamus went for the assassination run on Ironsides from the third floor of a building in the middle of the board, but didn't quite finish the job.  As a result the Copycat Killer teleported to the third floor to try to finish the job.  He shot and missed, but that gun had one heck of a kick.  three stories later a tiny corpse with a smoking gun was all that was left of the Rezzer totem.

I REGRET NOTHING!

The game progressed and we wound up with a 3-5 loss for the Arcanists.  I'm still learning the flow of the game and the interactions, but I truly had a blast getting my butt handed to me.  Seamus really is a nasty customer, fortunately Ironsides is tough enough to take a shot or two and keep on punching.  I liked playing Ironsides, but was a little timid with her.  She would have been the perfect target for a Belle Bomb.  Belle pounces for 1, Ironsides punches back etc...  Overall the game was a great learning experience and I can't wait to progress the Arcanist cause with my next game!

His backfield

MVP Doxy

The center scrum.

Final Standing on his side.

Thanks again for reading folks!  I really appreciate all the feedback and support I've been getting for the blog.  This has been a great tool to keep me focused on the hobby, motivate me to play games, and expose me to the awesome community that plays Malifaux.  If you have any questions or just want to say hi, feel free to contact me in the comments here on the blog, at ToBeAnArcanist@Gmail.com, or on twitter @KFinchster.  Thanks again for reading, and I will see you all next week!

Kevin and the Grind Stone!

Ok, maybe today's title is a little bit of a reach, oh well.  Howdy folks!  I hope everyone had a super productive hobby week!  I'm excited because I got some models put together, I got some models painted, and I made a neat trade on Bartertown for some limited edition models (Dead Justice!).  Not a bad week.  Unfortunately I didn't get any games in, but it was for a good reason.  I spent the weekend camping with my wife for our second wedding anniversary!  As a result, no battle report, but maybe we'll work a little theory-faux in to make up for it.

Hobby

This week I put together a bunch of models for game systems that shall not be named on this blog (only because it is roughly 40,000 years in the future) and a Malifaux faction that shall not be named on this blog (it ain't easy being green).  As far as painting goes I painted up my Metal Gamin and Mei Feng, I'm still going to focus on using Ironsides until I get her down though.  I had a lot of fun experimenting with skin tones and the orange that I wound up using for her fabric.  Wonderful model to paint.  The Metal Gamin provided me with a lot of hard questions to answer.  Mostly "How do I not just drybrush this with metallics 400 times?".  In the end I hope I painted up a solid looking model my opponents won't begrudge me for putting on the tabletop.

Still haven't gotten the hang of this "Photography" thing

Effin' metal...Gamin

Gaming

Like I said earlier, no game this week, but there are some neat things on the horizon and we have a little space for some theory-faux.

On the horizon, one of my local stores has a big tournament planned for the nebulous "future" (maybe mid-October), and another of my local stores is trying to plan a campaign/achievement league to drum up interest in the game.  I'd love it if we could get enough people on board to really work on this new campaign system.  I have been reading the new book and I've got to be honest with you, It looks awesome.  The classic example that the Mistakes Were Made guys keep referring to is probably my favorite.  You can have an Ice Golem with a jetpack!

Theory-faux : You have declared Arcanists and your opponent has declared Guild.  Terrain has been set up and identified, and the following scheme pool has been revealed.  How do you choose your crew for a 50 SS game?

I Like the idea of Ironsides in Turf War.  She gets in the scrum, and she punishes your opponent for being in there.  Unfortunately, assassinate is also in the pool.  This means I either need to leave Ironsides on the shelf (she's pretty good at dying on turn 4-5) or I need to devote crew to protecting her.  For this exercise, I'm choosing more protection because it lends to the turf zone, and my opponent can't drop Molly across from me.  This means a Metal Gamin or two and at least Mouse, maybe even Johana.

Now that I am devoted to some sort of protection I feel the strong urge to keep protecting.  This way I can double down on each point I spend on keeping something alive.  Bodyguard seems like a logical choice, but who do I choose?  This is where things get a little dicey.  Murder Protoge is in the pool, so I need to keep costs in mind, I'm already bringing Johana, so she is a solid target with her condition removal and healing.  Another solid strategy is to bring Oxfordian mages and use them to manipulate the scene and keep my opponent guessing for my Bodyguard target.  Flooding the board with defensive enforcers and Henchman seems like a good call.  If flooding is the plan 2 Mages and The Captain seem to achieve this plan pretty well.

So, our list currently looks like :

Please, disregard the email and low Wi Fi

We have plenty of support for our middle scrum, ways to keep our intended targets alive, and ways to move targets in or out of the middle to our liking.  Unfortunately we don't have a deliberate second scheme, and winning on 7 points is not a great proposition.  The Mage/Captain package could probably put my opponents most expensive model into the ground, but with Guild being declared I don't like my odds against a Peacekeeper or Francisco (though with enough relic hammers any construct is in trouble).  This strategy does lend itself to keeping my Bodyguard target alive, because the most expensive model tends to be the most killy, and if it is dead, it isn't killing my Bodyguard target, or achieving Assassinate.  The danger of running under this assumption is that I leave myself vulnerable to a tanky expensive model soaking up the hits while I try to earn Protoge.  That's a risk I'm willing to take though.

Overall I'm happy with the list and the thought process, but let me know what you think.  Would you take a different master?  With no Deliver the Message or Cursed Object is Mei clearly the superior choice?  Am I crazy for not taking Mechanical Rider and declaring Power Ritual?  You tell me!

Can these plucky Union men (and women, and...robots?) Achieve their goals in the face of the oppressive Guild?

I hope you guys liked today's blog and remember you need to keep me painting!  The more people that read this the more responsible I feel for getting stuff painted for you to admire, and the more responsible I feel to get games in so I can chit chat about the game with you.  Feel free to contact me through the comments on the Blog, Via Email at ToBeAnArcanist@Gmail.com or on Twitter @KFinchster.  Thanks for reading and I'll have more up for next week!

Showdown in Pittsburgh City!

Hey everyone!  It has been an amazing week, and I really feel like I've been able to get a ton of time in with everyone's favorite hobby!  I got some Hobby time, a little bit of reading with the new book, and a Game!  I have been keeping an eye on the Wyrd trade forums for new minis (thanks to all the folks that I have been trading with!) and I also made a purchase from Mats By Mars.

Hobby
I've managed to sneak in a lot of painting, model construction, and I even built some of the unsung heroes of tabletop wargaming TERRAIN!

I have some extra insulation foam laying around my house, so I decided to start building a collection of terrain to give me the option of playing some games at home.  I whipped up a couple hills in an hour or so, nothing too fancy but certainly useful.  A little later in the week I tried my hand at building a burnt out house and am fairly happy with how it turned out.  I can't wait to try all of this stuff out on my own table!

It seems like I either get minis put together or painted in a given week, and this was a models put together week.  I managed to get a bunch of GenCon and local shop models assembled.  If you notice the metal Arcane Effigy I missed my chance to pick up the plastic while I was at GenCon.  I had one in my hand the first day, and decided to buy it later to push a purchase up to the limit for another bonus model.  When I showed up later to buy him, they were out.  A word of warning ALWAYS GO FOR THE BIRD IN THE HAND!  Fortunately a local shop had a metal one in stock, so I don't have to wait until December for the excellent condition removal this little puppet provides.

Gaming
This week was amazing because I actually got a game in!  I went to one of my FLGS's and watched a couple people play before a new player popped up, and then we started a game!  It was a 30 stone game, I declared Arcanists and he declared Guild.  The strategy was Turf War and the schemes were Bodyguard, Power Ritual, Assassinate, Murder Protoge, and of course Line in the Sand.  I took Power Ritual revealed and Bodyguard unrevealed.  He took Assassinate and Murder Protoge both unrevealed.  My list was Ironsides with Arcane Resevoir and Challenge the Crowd, Mouse, Joss with Recharge Soulstone, and 2 Union Miners.  He took the Sonia Crew box (which was beautifully painted!).  This first shot gives you a good image of the board.

This shot provides a shot of my crew.

And a shot of his crew early in the game.

We had a great game, and tied 4-4.  I scored 1 from Turf war (Goofed by trying to score with Mouse) and 3 from Power Ritual (gogo huffing and panting miner).  I failed to keep Joss alive, I figured he was going to take assassinate and waste all of his time on Ironsides.  Mouse definitely did a lot of work healing up Ironsides and pulling miners around the field (to turn on hand picked men) and I think I will be taking him in future games.  My opponent scored 2 from turf war and 2 from murder protoge.  The burning overtook Joss and those 2 points were an effective 5 because he denied me 3 all at once.

Misc
With the revamp to the Henchman program underway, I'm considering applying to be one in October.  That being said, I don't have a ton of experience under my belt with the game, but I have enthusiasm dripping out my ears.  I'd love to hear from any current Henchman about what they think about the program, and if they think I can get away with being one with less experience actually playing the game than your average Malifaux player.

Thats it for this week let me know what you think about things and if you have any questions feel free to contact me at ToBeAnArcanist@Gmail.com or on Twitter @KFinchster

Challenge of the Arcanist!

Howdy folks and welcome to another exciting installment of To Be An Arcanist!  Last week things were a little slim because of the fantastic time I had at GenCon,  and this week things start to ramp back up.  No games to talk about,  but I do get to show off some pretty pictures of members of the M&SU and some of my environment while I paint!

Hobby
This week's hobby time was a little limited,  but certainly fruitful.  Based on the suggestions of the guys over at the Breach Boys podcast I've started using brush soap.  This has changed my painting routine dramatically!  I know it sounds dumb,  but having a little ritual at the end of a session where I clean my brushes and set them back has done wonders for my organization.

As far as painting goes,  I spent the majority of my time painting members of the M&SU.  Namely miners, Johana, and a gunsmith.  All of these minis were a joy to paint.  I come from a hobby background that includes painting ranks upon ranks of very similar models,  so to be in an environment where I have to paint 3 to 4 of a type of model (excluding spiders,  looking at you Ramos!) is a breath of fresh air.

Misc!

Due to a lack of an actual game to report on,  I'll show off some of the great things I get to deal with while I paint!  First off on the list is my paint rack.  2 8 foot 1 by 3's and some molding and I've got this wonderful shelf that manages to keep me organized by keeping things on the wall instead of the floor.

Next up we have one of my cats,  Luna (no relation to McCabe's totem).  This is the Internet,  so I'm hoping the including a picture of my painting buddy will earn me some brownie points.

Luna doing her Dr. Horrible impression

That's it for this week.  Stay tuned for next week and hopefully I'll actually have a game or two with Ironsides under my belt.  Thanks for checking in folks,  and remember I need you to keep me on top of getting my stuff painted!