Elephant Gun Indeed

 A 50ss game of Malifaux 4th edition on vassal.

Strategy: Corner Recover Evidence

Schemes: Take the Highground, Graverobbing, Runic Binding

My list:

Molly, Chaotic Conductor & Noxious Nephilim
Strange Lady
Archie
Grave Golem
Philip & the Nanny
Night Terror
Gravedigger

Cache: 2

Opponent had:

Lucas McCabe, Dismounted Hunter & Luna
Sidir
Alleyway Echo
Desper LaRaux
2x Rough Rider
Ruffian
Hopeful Prospect

Cache: 3

Turn 1: Both pick Take the Highground, because what else are you going to pick?

Molly takes three walk actions. What an effective use of master action points! Well, she was dropping corpses left and right. I wanted to test if Gravedigger was any good with conductor Molly, and I suppose the first turn was alright. The digger was able to onward, walk and interact the strategy marker I had placed to bottom-right quarter far from everything.

Molly and Night Terror climbed on top of a rock, while Philip & Nanny journeyed up, preparing a shielded on top of a hill. 

Large building next to my deployment had a well-built roof since it was able to hold Archie, Grave Golem, Noxious Nephilim and even Strange Lady. Archie had been pushed around so it could take a couple of swings at nearest Rough Rider, dealing weak damage before leaping on top of the building.

Wastrels had spread out in a similar fashion. Alleyway Echo was slithering towards enemy strategy marker on top, and one Rough Rider was keeping a building to the right... and the rest were at or near the center. Lucas, Sidir and Ruffian were holding a rock near center. Sidir even managed to shave off some four or so points from Archie.

Both scored two easy points from Take the Highground

Forgotten took the lead with 3-2.

Turn 2: Both pick Make It Look Like an Accident.

What a mess.

Out of my 21 action points, I counted that at least THIRTEEN went directly into removing Sidir Alchibal from board, and I'm not even counting action points that went into positioning towards that end goal! And that count included two attacks from Archie (one via Strange Lady's soulstone trigger since Archie had been slowed), and three attacks from Grave Golem.

And Sidir didn't even die.

Well, at least Noxious Nephilim was able to drag him off the rock to score a point from Take the Highground, and the slew of action points thrown at the henchman gave Forgotten the second point as well.

But sheesh. The center was so crowded that I lost Noxious Nephilim and Archie - and just as an added insult the one who did the killing shot against Archie was Hopeful Prospect.

Just about all Resurrectionist models were at the center, sans Gravedigger, and Strange Lady who was involved in the center game. So were the Wastrels, even Desper LaRaux who stubbornly wanted to remove Noxious Nephilim from board instead of doing schemes or whatever Desper enjoys doing.

Since Wastrels had also the same scheme as Forgotten, Luna, Rough Rider, Lucas and Hopeful Prospect at least had to spend an assortment of action points, but not THIRTEEN! 

Anyway, opponent had easy time scoring strategy, since I hadn't been able to drop any  strategies. 

Scores tied at 5-5.

Turn 3: Forgotten takes Reshape the Land, Wastrel takes Ensnare

Grave Golem activated and took three swings at Sidir who was at three, and the henchman died in the perfect world. But one has only to open up the news feed to notice this is not the perfect world. Golem missed every attack.

At least Philip and the Nanny trampled over Sidir with prams? Well... kind of. They did hit their attack, but Sidir was able to discard Timeworn Blade to reduce that damage. Deadly Banter was able to damage him somewhat, but he had been healed for a bit in-between. Sidir activated, used an artifact to teleport to rock formation. He started blasting with machinegun, but Philip & Nanny pushed him to melee with Molly. This scared Sidir, who was at two or three, enough that he just walked away from melee.

Molly paraded Philip & Nanny on top of the rock, and thankfully Sidir failed the damage check. Sidir was now at one health remaining, and Molly had prepared Adaptable at some point in the game. I figured out a hilarious way to end this miserable affair. Molly laughed maniacally, which was enough to push Sidir over the edge. Literally. Mask trigger gave him a point of falling damage. 

Throughout the game Desper had taken quite the trampling from Molly's parades and abandoned token, and Night Terror was able to randomly snipe Desper off from the board. I guess that kept me in the game.

Luna was tearing Grave Golem, and Hopeful Prospect shot it off the board - not! That would've been a bit too much, really. Hopeful Prospect to kill both Archie and Grave Golem.

Instead it just procced Golem's demise, and gave it a tick of poison.

Eventually Alleyway Echo used secret passage to charge Grave Golem. It hit and carved Golem down to one. Opponent had no cards in hand when the Echo tried to use Timeworn Blade to trigger Terror of some kind of lane. He flipped too low to succeed... so in the end it was Hopeful Prospect who indeed caused both Archie and Grave Golem to go down. Bleh.

Ruffian had easy time scoring two point Ensnare from Philip and the Nanny. Fortunately Gravedigger had equally easy time planting ga



zillion scheme markers (two, plus two from previous round) 

Ground was littered with strategy markers for Wastrels, so I didn't even bother contesting the strategy.

Explorer Society took the lead with 8-7

Turn 4:

It feels like rather rare that both players have fully scored their schemes by the last turn. Fortunately neither player had yet scored extra point from strategy, so there was some other objective around when Forgotten were so far behind in attrition.

Philip & Nanny picked up one of the strategy markers, and went to drop a scheme into forest that was just within 6" of enemy deployment. 

Eventually Molly was able to deliver the remaining three, and although we initially played the extra point tad wrong, Explorer Society had no trouble getting a ton of schemes to the big building near Resurrectionists deployment. Unfortunately strategy was tied as well, which lead to 10-9 victory for Lucas McCabe.