No fair I, choose violence too!

 A 50ss game of Malifaux.

Strategy: Standard Guard the Stash

Schemes: Load 'Em Up, Breakthrough, Vendetta, Hidden Martyrs, Spread Them Out

My list:

Hamelin & 3x Stolen
Nix
Benny Wolcomb
Yannic Waller
Johan Creedy
Prospector
Catalan Rifleman
Winged Plague

Pool: 5
Schemes: Spread Them Out, Vendetta (Johan Creedy on Elijah)

Opponent had:

Kaeris & Eternal Flame
Elijah Borgman
Carlos Vasquez
Fire Golem
2x Firebranded
Fire Gamin

Pool: 0
Schemes: Load 'Em Up (Pyre), Hidden Martyrs (Firebranded)

Turn 1:

I put Nix and Yannic near my right strategy marker, and Winged PLague flew hugging the rightmost board edge. Nix took a double walk and I must say - even with his resilience I was a bit hesitant when it looked like he'd have to face Fire Golem, Carlos, Eternal Flame and a Firebranded.

Everything else I got was were on the left powering up Benny Wolcomb. I somewhat messed up my initial positioning, but in the end everything went fine and a Rat King was summoned just fine. Although Benny wasn't able to take even one step, when Firestarter lit fire under Catalan Rifleman's feet and moved him so that Benny's way was blocked by Hamelin, Rifleman, Stolen, Prospector and even Johan Creedy to a degree. 

After a walk Hamelin failed to lure Firestarter closer, so the outcast master just ended up concentrating.

Kaeris and Carlos both succeeded in landing a pyre marker. Kaeris, Elijah and Firebranded were behind destructible boxes near center-left marker with Firestarter even further ahead. 

Turn 2:

I forgot to take a picture at the end of turn, so Firestarter has already started round three in the picture.

Kaeris sure enough sets the world burning when she starts the turn, charges to conflagrate Rat King a bit, plants two pyre markers in the middle of my tightly packed crew and fans a marker through Stolen, Johan Creedy and Rat King. 

Kaeris was pondering if she should have escaped instead of fanning the flames, but she chose violence. Alrighty, then. Hamelin chooses that, too! He uses bonus action to charge Rat King to Kaeris, then walks to take two attacks against her. Only one hits, but deals severe damage. 

Nix goes to engage Carlos, Firebranded and Eternal Flame. All of them fail Drink Spirit checks, and Winged Plague had placed a scheme marker and continued to fly towards enemy deployment zone.

Carlos disengages from Nix and walks to breathe fire on Winged Plague, not doing anything. He also managed to make a pyre marker near mid-left strategy marker, which was used by a Firebranded to set itself burning.

In the meantime, Stolen had given mean time for Kaeris by vomiting disease over her mechanical wings, dealing more damage together than Hamelin did. Johan Creedy had also charged Kaeris and all of them together had brought Kaeris down to one health remaining.

Fire Golem had leaped to the Firebranded's flames, entering the melee in the mid-left marker. It walked to slap Carlos' pyre marker on Rat King, Hamelin and Johan Creedy, and took a little swing at Rat King. 

Yannic Waller had tried to come to shoot Firebranded and hopefully spill some blast damage over Kaeris, but that never happened. What did happen, though, was a severe greatsword to Yannic's face. Firestarter tried to set fire under Rat King's feet to push it away from Kaeris, and succeeded at that. That took away one action point to be spent on killing the Arcanist master, but as it happened - that lone action point was enough. Rat King managed to charge Kaeris dead, and voracious rats from Hamelin even transformed her into a Malifaux Rat. 

Benny Wolcomb takes a double walk so that he'd be in position to perhaps place some scheme markers next turn. I completely forgot that Benny needed to assist a Stolen who had Burning +4, so one kid went down to that. Another had died earlier after vomiting on Kaeris - he had been on fire and one health remaining, so two rats sounded better than one rat since it was inevitable fate, anyway. 

Opponent had middle-left marker, and to score a strategy point Prospector had to walk and charge Elijah, thus getting points to 1-1.

Turn 3:

Again I forgot to take a picture at the end of round, so some activations have already happened. 

Firestarter walks and charges to last Stolen who had been hanging near bottom-left marker. 

Carlos and top-right Firebranded fail to kill Winged Plague, so it had time to leave one more scheme marker on board. Nix went to place a scheme near mid-right marker and spammed some blight tokens around. 

I had tried to save Yannic Waller by activating her first, doing some democracy and trying to disengage. However, disengage failed with -6 movement reduction. Miraculously Elijah didn't succeed in killing anyone.

Fire Golem wasn't as inept. It killed Rat King and charged Johan Creedy below hard-to-kill threshold. Johan was also at, like, Burning +8 or so. And he was my Vendetta model. It wasn't looking good.

At least he managed to deal some damage to Fire Golem with Relic Hammer, remove Hamelin's burning and heal himself and Hamelin for one with Final Rest. 

Hamelin kills Fire Golem, hooray for that. But now there was way open for Firebranded to charge Johan Creedy, and does indeed score that required one hit to bring him back below hard-to-kill threshold. So yeah... Hamelin killed a ten point model, but I lost a two victory point model. C'est la vie. 

For some reason I didn't consider placing a scheme with Benny and climbing on top of the reservoir terrain to contest middle-left strategy marker. Instead I went to deny a point from Firestarter when, in fact, even if he'd been alone at my marker opponent wouldn't have got a strategy point. But that's hindsight, maybe it wasn't so apparent at the time if opponent had unactivated models around. 

So, Johan Creedy burns to crisp and scores go 2-2 when Outcasts reveal Spread Them Out and Arcanists get Load 'Em Up on pyre markers.

Turn 4:

Firebranded top-right finally kills Winged Plague before it is able to drop even more scheme markers. Nix interacts a scheme and charges Elijah so that he is entirely on top of it. I don't think the attack hit, as Nix had been distracted by Carlos many times over. 

Hamelin blasts a rat with Pustulent Tumors, killing Firestarter. Firebranded isn't as easy kill, and Benny needs to come and finish the hidden martyr. 

Yannic Waller is done with democracy and shoot Elijah with a severe blast from her shotgun. 

Prospector appraises Johan's corpse and estimates it to worth around two victory points. So he saw no reason why his corpse wouldn't be worth as much, and dies to Elijah, Carlos and Fire Gamin.

Arcanists reveal their Hidden Martyrs, taking the lead in points with 2-3.

Turn 5:

Yannic gives democracy another chance, healing herself, Nix and Eternal Flame and damaging Elijah, Fire Gamin and Carlos. She takes a bonus concentrate and shoots Elijah, but unsurprisingly doesn't kill.

Elijah heals for a bit and finally kills Yannic. By now Elijah had juicy five blight tokens, so Nix tried a distracted Bleeding Disease twice, failing both.

Fire Gamin runs to secure bottom-right marker. Hamelin takes a walk and a charge at Elijah, barely missing the attack. His Bleeding Disease hits, but that wasn't enough - Elijah was left at one health remaining. And then last remaining Firebranded took a double walk , got engaged by Nix and healed Elijah so even Benny's Swarm Them was of no use. However, at that point removing Elijah wouldn't have mattered anyway since Carlos was able to get to bottom-left marker, and Benny needed to walk away from mid-left marker to place a scheme marker for Spread Them Out.

It was a tough 3-5 game, and Arcanists won. So, fortunately my blunder with Benny did not cost the game as it would have been 4-5. What did cost me the game was choosing Vendetta and then getting jammed in high-profile melee. 

I should have probably taken Hidden Martyrs anyway, though I was afraid that my martyrs would die to burning. Breakthrough and Load 'Em Up on the other hand weren't options for me.