I reckon some scheming

First game of Malifaux for the year of 2020. Don't know how mentioning that bears any importance, but you got to begin a write-up somehow.

Lists involved were:

Molly Squidpiddge + Necrotic Construct
Philip & Nanny
Mortimer
Bete Noire + The Whisper
Mourner + Grave Spirit's Touch
2x Crooligan

Schemes: Harness the Ley Lines, Dig Their Graves


Rasputina + Wendigo

Snowstorm
Ice Golem + Soulstone Cache
2x Ice Gamin
2x Ice Dancer + Magical Training

Schemes: Assassinate, Dig Their Graves

I played my first game with Molly, whom I wanted to try anyway even if Seamus might have been a tad better choice for Reckoning strategy.

Turn 1

First turn Rasputina made a grand opening move, where she killed a Crooligan and brought both Bete Noire and Mourner down to two health remaining. Also, Mortimer took a couple of damage. Well, next time I know not to bunch up my models in the middle like that against her. Whole bunching up happened because of my terrible deployment - I had forgotten about my plan of using Blasphemous Ritual on Mourner to stack some Focused on my models. With their activations I had to bring them into that formation. Which is a nice little bottle neck.

First time playing Molly was a mess. I mean, golems and whatnot would have been prime targets for 2x3 irreducible damage per turn, but I wasn't paying enough attention to the difference between hand sizes.

Turn 2

Next turn I had the choice of opening Reckoning strategy and leaving Bete Noire in vulnerable position, or damage Ice Dancer and leave Bete buried in safety. I chose to attack. After all she did have chance of burying herself anyway.

Nope.

Not against Ice Golem with pillars around, no. This was devastating. Ice Golem charged Bete Noire and was within melee range of Mourner, too. Golem was dealing a minimum of 4 damage thanks to ice pillar nearby, and even with reducing two, Bete died. And Mourner had regenerated a little, but was still only at four health remaining. Lethe's Caress tickled the Golem for sure as it butchered two of my priciest models. It wasn't much of a consolation.

Necrotic Machine and Crooligan had planted enough scheme markers to turn in Harness the Ley Line, and both players scored reckoning.

Turn 3

So... when you got a gigantic snow beast eating bodies of the fallen right next to an enormous magical construct of animated ice that's all but impervious to damage? Why... isn't the obvious thing here to charge them with a baby carriage and start asking the monstrosities some questions! I don't know, but that's what I did with Philip and Nanny.

Molly had made good use of her ability to remove markers and draw cards, because ice pillars are, in fact, markers. Necrotic Machine scored Dig their Graves on Ice Gamin. Rasputina was throwing endless barrage of stuff made of ice over Molly and Mortimer, and ice tornadoes from Snow Storm attempted the same.


Turn 4

Philip and Nanny had been tying up the Arcanist monsters rather well, but that was about to end. Snow Storm got over it's confusion, and dim-witted Ice Golem slowly categorized the pram as a threat. Time to find new nanny for Philip.

With excruciating toil and trouble I had managed to bring the Ice Golem down to one hit point remaining. Suddenly three ice pillars shattered and the golem was back at seven. I think something shattered inside of me, too. Looked like I had to abandon any hope for a second victory point from strategy.

An Ice Dancer had skated deep into my lines. Here I so much wanted to activate Necrotic Machine and with accomplice activate Molly. And with Molly activate Necrotic Machine again, and with accomplice activate something else. But I considered dead Ice Dancer to be more important. Also I'm not sure if I had any models within 6" of Necrotic Machine anyway after it had charged Ice Dancer.


Turn 5

Ice Golem had got tired of Molly's disturbing stories and charged her. It started asking questions of its own with icy fists. Despite Hard to Wound and Serene Countenance, Molly died to just two hits.

There were so many corpses and schemes on board that we ran out of tokens. But I scored Dig Their Graves and Harness Ley Line again. Opponent scored assassinate, and had kind of forgotten all about Dig Their Graves. Game ended with 5 points for Resurrectionists and 4 for Arcanists.