More Malifaux

“Dusk arrives over a frontier town in Malifaux….. the town looks abandoned, but something has drawn adventure seekers near….”

We rocked out some more games of Malifaux today. As I had recently ordered the Shadows of Red Chapel boxed set (along with the Hired Swords box)…. I proxied up a gang lead by Seamus (using McMourning’s crew as the models).

My force was:

Resurrectionists Crew - 30 – Dustup

Seamus -- 3 Pool
   +Bag o' Tools [1]
   +Red Chapel Killer [1]
   +Unnerving Aura [1]

Copycat Killer [3]
Madame Sybelle [8]
   +Bleeding Tongue [1]
Nurse [5]
Rotten Belle [5]
Rotten Belle [5]

First up was a game against Mark’s Arcanists lead by Rasputina. I built the force list for Mark after he reckoned upgrades weren’t worth it…. someone soon changed their tune on that! :)

Arcanists Crew - 30 – Dustup

Rasputina -- 3 Pool
   +Child of December [1]
   +December's Pawn [2]

Wendigo [3]
Hoarcat Pride [5]
Ice Gamin [4]
Ice Gamin [4]
Ice Golem [10]
   +Imbued Energies [1]

As we were both playing these gangs for the first time under M2E (not that I ever played M1E…), there were no schemes etc. We just went for kill ‘em all to just play around with the gangs and see what they could do.

Both gangs just made a beeline straight towards each other. I realised pretty quickly that I’d deployed the Nurse too far to the side of one flank for her to be useful. Oh well.

The Hoarcat raced ahead determined to deal with some Rotten Belle’s, but Madam Sybelle stepped up to attend to the Hoarcat personally…. The bleeder lash put some hurt on.

Mark quickly discovers December’s Curse. My gang soon starts taking a fair bit of damage from this!

I foolishly moved Seamus up way too close thinking he’ll be right, but ummm, yeah too close. December’s Curse. December’s curse again. Aaarrgghhh… frustrating… :) I ended up using a lot of cards to try and mitigate the damage on Seamus and the rest of the crew. I was very glad most of my force is hard to wound, but the damage was still adding up!

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse…. a rather large and lumbering Ice Golem charged Seamus. A couple of swipes and Seamus is almost, almost dead. The Copycat Killer appears next to Seamus to help out, but just chips off a bit of ice with some hedge trimmers.

December’s Curse, the Wendigo and Ice Gamins pretty much clear out my Belle’s and Madam Sybelle.

 
Next turn Seamus realises the gig is up and decides to just deal to the Ice Golem who explodes taking out Seamus and the Copycat Killer. I pretty much call it at that point since the remaining Belle and Nurse had no chance of dealing to Rasputina. Damn December’s Curse!


After that Mark wanted to play with Robs RC Tiger Tank…. so Rob and I played a game. Rob was curious about Pandora so proxied up a crew lead by her (they were disguised as Rasputina and her crew…. except for Candy).

I think this is what Rob took…. he must of used up some of Pandora’s pool of soulstones to buy the extra Sorrows. I don’t think there were any upgrades.

Neverborn Crew – 30 – Dustup

Pandora -- 1 Pool

Poltergeist [5]
Baby Kade [7]
Candy [9]
Sorrow [5]
Sorrow [5]
Sorrow [5]  

 

Same as the first game…. no schemes or anything. Just kill ‘em all. This meant the first turn was the same as the first game. Just heading straight for each other.

 

The Poltergeist moves in advance of the remainder of the force and it takes some time for the Nurse, Copycat Killer and Madam Sybelle to knock it off. In the time it takes to deal to the Poltergeist Pandora charges forward, but suddenly finds herself left exposed. Madam Sybelle eye’s up Pandora and charges. She does a little bit of damage, but doesn’t last long. Next up is the Nurse, who does no damage, but poisons the crap out of Pandora. Right… 4 more turns and Pandora will be dead I think… I’ve got this (this is turn 3 of 5). Whilst this is happening Belles are being resurrected with all the death (much to Rob’s annoyance) and one of the original Belle’s takes great delight in undressing (what an image) for the Sorrow’s on the flank slowing them down.

   

Realising that I didn’t have 4 more turns…. Seamus popped round the corner and fired his flintlock (.50 no less!). What a time to get some good cards. End result is severe damage and no more Pandora.
 

The Belle’s and the Nurse start ganging up on Candy and Baby Kade. Seamus then charges Baby Kade and deals with him quite easily. Rob pretty much calls it at that point as there’s not much else he can do. I must admit though the number of Wp tests I was having to pass was annoying, as was the damage from just being around Pandora’s crew. They’ll be tricky for non-shooty armies to deal with.


So… thoughts on Seamus? Not many really. The force is interesting and being able to summon Belle’s is good, although hard to pull off. I got lucky in that second game! I never really got to use Seamus’s back alley ability with the terrain and my deployment, but I can see how that will be very effective (particularly with schemes). I’d misread the Belles lure ability so never tried it, but their other abilities are fun. Madam Sybelle is awesome and I reckon her specific upgrade (Bleeder Tongue) is a must have. But….. in all honesty, I didn’t buy the crew for its tricks… I bought it for the models (I was going to type something very inappropriate here, but decided I better not)…. am looking forward to their arrival.

We’d finished gaming quite early, so I got out my new lens and headed down to Ardmore to try it out. Here’s a few shots using it (nothing of real interest was flying in the short time I was there):

 

I’ve made absolutely no adjustments to these photos in Photoshop, they are just as I shot them (apart from reducing them in size for uploading to the web that is). I tried a number of settings between shooting on Tv mode or Manual along with adjusting the Iso. A number of shots were overexposed, so found I had to drop the Iso a bit (especially with I tried using Manual with Tv @ 1/200 and f11). I also tried 400mm vs. 500m as a lot of reviews reckoned 500mm started to get a bit grainy. Looks okay to me so far :)

 

I’m also quite happy as this chap decided to fly across the airfield (luckily no aircraft were around!)..

 

So first thoughts on the Sigma lens…. well I definitely like the zoom -

  

 

The optical stabiliser is good. You can really notice the hand shake at the higher zoom distances and it was hard to stay locked on to my target. Turn the OS on (to the correct setting!) and it settles right down. This was particularly noticeable when trying to track the hawk as it was such a small target. Staying focused on it with everything else around was tough, but not helped by it being so low to the ground. Tracking the aircraft was fine, but again the lens weight meant I couldn’t stay on the aircraft as well as I’d like.

 

I think now it’s just going to be time to get used to it. Will spend some more time using it next weekend since I better get the hang of it by the 14th Dec…. :)

 

But, I suspect I will end getting a monopod as my wrist was sore even after the short time I did use it today. I will try connecting it to my carry speed shoulder strap next weekend to see how much that helps first.

 

Anyway, that’s enough for today. Who can believe its already December!?