Hoffman and Stake a Claim

When it comes to Stake a Claim, there are few Masters in the Guild that can do it as well as Hoffman. Stake a Claim is one of the hardest strategies in the game, and it's one of the only strategies where only one player can score on it a turn. In order to win Stake a Claim you have to have some movement shenanigans and tricks, which Hoffman brings in spades.

The core of a strong Stake a Claim crew for Hoffman should look something like this:

Hoffman

-Field Mechanic (2)

-Arcanist Assets (1)

2 Watchers (8)

2-3 Soulstone Miners (12-18)

If you have Hoffman and don't have any Watchers or Soulstone Miners, make sure you get at least two of each as soon as you can. Watchers and Miners are great scheme runners, and are instrumental in winning Stake a Claim. Your goal in Stake a Claim is to put down as many Claim Markers as possible to ensure you get the Victory Points for the Strategy instead of your opponent. Soulstone Miners are great for this because you can unbury them on the opponent's side of the table (as long as it's 6 inches away from an enemy model or the enemy deployment zone), so if you unbury them at the end of Turn 1, you can start using them to drop Claim Markers on Turn 2. After they drop their first Claim Marker you want to get your Miners moving in Turn 3 so they can either start dropping Scheme Markers or getting in position to drop more Claim Markers in Turn 4.

What you want to do with Hoffman in the first turn is use the Update Hardware action off his Field Mechanic upgrade to give one Watcher Hydraulics, and the other Programmed Directive. To maximize AP efficiency make sure you either crack a Soulstone or cheat in a Tome so you can hit the trigger to take the action again, so you can upgrade both Watchers for one Ap instead of two. You'll also want to make sure you use Hoffman's (0) action Shakedown to put a scrap marker in base contact with the Watcher that's going to get the Hydraulics. The Watcher with Programmed Directive takes Interact Actions for one less AP than usual (so a (2) interact action becomes a (1) interact action), and Hydraulics makes the other Watcher Nimble. At Wk 6 with Flight, these two become Scheming and Claiming machines. If you can try to alternate dropping Claim Markers between your Miners and Watchers, you can drop Claim Markers every turn. If your Watchers are Claiming your Miners should be moving, and then vice versa.

After you give the Watchers their Modifications, you want to use the rest of Hoffman's AP on Machine Puppet and healing, in that order. I've had a lot of success having Hoffman using his Magnetic ability to hitch a ride from the Watcher with Programmed Directive. This way you can use his Machine Puppet to make it Walk and Claim outside of its activation. You'll want to shoot for the Mask trigger on Machine Puppet to push the Watcher 2 inches before it takes the (1) action you choose, so you can use Hoffman's 3 AP to drop 2 Claim Markers (1 Machine Puppet to Claim, 1 more with the Mask trigger to push 2 inches & walk 6 inches, and then finally 1 more to claim again) before the Watcher itself even activates. Try not to spread out the Watchers too far, if one goes down you'll need the other one to come over and save Hoffman. He really relies on his constructs to get around and prevent damage, and any AP spent walking is AP taken away from Machine Puppeting.

You can add whatever other models you want into the crew to help achieve the specific schemes of your game, but adding something big and distracting like a Peacekeeper can help take your opponent's attention away from the Watchers and Miners. You'll need something to protect your Schemers/Claimers and draw ranged fire away from them. Using a crew of nothing but Hoffman, Watchers, & Miners can be effective at accomplishing a Scheme Marker heavy game, but can be very difficult to use and limits your options when selecting Schemes. Adding in models like a Peacekeeper, Ryle, Austringers, etc can help open up your options Scheme and game play wise.

My Favourite Two Minions

The Guild has some excellent Minions. Death Marshalls and Hunters are great for controlling bits of the board, Watchers make awesome scheme runners, and the Guardian is brilliant in its own right. But out of all the Minions we have to choose from, there's two that stand out to me as must-owns for any Guild player: the Guild Austringer and the Guild Lawyer. Both of these Minions offer good board control, utility, and scheming abilities.

Every Guild player should endeavor to own at least one Austringer, if not two. There aren't many times when you won't see at least one Austringer hunkered down at the back of a Guild crew. What makes them so useful is that their two most useful actions, Raptor & Delliver Orders, don't require Line of Sight and have an enormous range. The Raptor is the Austringer's primary shooting attack, and it's one of the better ones in the game because it doesn't require LOS to the target and it completely ignores cover. Given that the range jumps up to 18 inches when you focus, and that the Raptor can trigger either Critical Strike or Distract (which causes the attack to deal no damage but forces your opponent to discard two cards from their hand), this really is a beauty. But the thing I love most about Austringers is the out-of-activation scheming they can make other models do. Deliver Orders allows you to push a friendly model within 18 inches (which you don't need Line of Sight to either) 2 inches in any direction and take a (1) interact action. This is useful for getting down Scheme Markers quickly, getting models out of combats you don't want them in, and can make Marker-based strategies like Squatter's Rights and Headhunter much easier. There really isn't much an Austringer can't do, just make sure you deploy them in terrain and out of your opponent's Line of Sight, and they'll work an absolute treat. Seriously, if you play Guild get yourself at least one of these.

There's been a lot of discussion on the Wyrd forums and in other places about how to use Austringers, so I'm going to switch over and talk about the Guild Lawyer now. These fine fellows are my favourite Wave 2 Minion, and work surprisingly well in a number of different crews. They have an average walk of 5, but an above average Defense and Willpower of 6. Toss in Finish the Job and Highest Authority and the Lawyer can actually be a pretty nifty little Schemer. But the Lawyer's real strengths come in crew support. Reminder of a Worse Fate gives friendly models within a 6 inch aura a Plus Flip to Horror Duels, which can be a godsend against certain crews. This makes it a lot easier to deal with Resurrectionist or Neverborn crews, which tend to have one or two Terrifying models (like the Hanged or Coppelius for example). Just about every faction has ways of making you take Horror Duels, so even though this ability was obviously intended to synergize with Lucius, it can help any crew. 

All that being said, let's talk about the back of the Lawyer's card. Their first attack action, OBJECTION!!!, is a melee based Casting action, resisted by Willpower, that will always do 2 damage regardless of what you flip (barring Jokers of course). This attack doesn't do a lot of damage, but if you flip or cheat Moderate damage your target gains Slow, or if you flip or cheat Severe damage the target gains Paralyzed. There's also a trigger to hand out Poison +2, which makes McMourning very happy. You probably won't be using this action too often, but for its weak damage it can do some lovely things to an unsuspecting opponent. The Lawyer's other attack action is the ranged Special Damages, which is also a Casting action resisted by Willpower, and can target non-Leader models. It's got a nice range of 12 inches, but it deals no damage. Instead the target gains a stackable condition called Fees +1, which they retain for the rest of the game. Whenever a model with the Fees condition completes an attack action that dealt damage, the model suffers +1 damage. Basically, the enemy model takes damage every time they do damage to you. This can serve as a deterrent to most of the big killy models in the opposing crew if you can get the Fees total up to 4 or 5 on a single target. And since it lasts for the rest of the game (unless they have a way to remove Conditions) your opponent will really have to think twice about killing your models, lest they lose their own. Prime targets for Special Damages should be models like Howard Langston, Killjoy, Vik of Blood, Lord Chompy Bits, Nekima, or any of the other big scary model killers.

The last thing on the Lawyer's card is the (0) action Impassioned Defense. This is cast on a 6 of any suit because the required Tome is built in, and has a trigger on a double Tome to take the action again. It has a 10 inch range and gives the target Hard to Wound +1 until the end of the turn. And once again, it's a stackable condition. You can make a couple of models Hard to Wound, or if you really want to give your opponent a headache you can cast it on the same target. If you can hit the trigger two Lawyers working together can cover 4 models with Hard to Wound +1, 2 models Hard to Wound +2, or one model Hard to Wound +4. Target models like Death Marshalls or the Peacekeeper that already have Hard to Wound and it only gets more fun. And since it doesn't say "Target non-Leader model" you can use it to make Masters like Lady Justice, Perdita, and McMourning more survivable. Of course enemy models that ignore Hard to Wound aren't going to care how many times you use this action, but if they can't ignore it a Peacekeeper with Hard to Wound +5 can be brilliant for tilling cards out of your opponents' decks and tanking entire crews. 

Guild McMourning and Squatter's Rights

Rather than going and building a general template crew, breaking down what its strengths are and what Schemes it can accomplish; in this post I'm going to tell you how you can use Guild McMourning and 9 SS worth of models/upgrades to lock down Squatter's Rights, and how you can add some other models to make it an outright domination. Check this out:

Guild McMourning

-On the Clock (1)

4 Clockwork Traps (2ss/Trap x 4 traps = 8ss)

Total: 9 SS

That's it. That's all you need. I'm not the first Guild player to figure out that Clockwork Traps are great for Squatter's Rights, but here's why they're even more awesome when running with McMourning.

Because Clockwork Traps deploy From The Shadows, you can use them to lock down 4 out of the 5 Squat Markers. Make sure when you deploy them that you deploy them in base contact with a Squat Marker, and definitely make sure to keep them on your side of the centerline. This way the entire Squat Marker is covered by the Trap's 2 inch melee range. If you put them on the opponent's side of the table or on top of the Marker they'll either get engaged or removed too quickly. Starting on Turn 2 forwards, McMourning can use the (1) action "On Order of the Governor's Secretary...I Love SayingThat" off of his On the Clock Upgrade to make a friendly model within 10 inches (in this case the Clockwork Trap) take an immediate (1) Interact Action (there's no point in trying this on Turn 1 because models that deploy From The Shadows can't take Interact Actions on the first turn). And since the Traps aren't Insignificant, as long as they're unengaged you can use this to immediately start claiming Squat Markers. If you're clever with your placement of McMourning at the end of the first turn and make sure he's within 10 inches of 2 or more Traps you can activate him early in the turn to secure your point from the Strategy; while simultaneously hampering your opponent's ability to get theirs. You can also use this combo to pass out things like Cursed Objects or Distract if they're in the scheme pool.

Since your opponent has to kill at least 1 Clockwork Trap to start getting points for the strategy, this can delay them getting points for a while as long as you can keep the Traps alive. Try bringing a pair of Guild Lawyers and using their (0) action "Impassioned Defense" to give your Traps Hard to Wound +1 early in the turn. If you can hit the Tome trigger on both Lawyers you can potentially make all 4 Traps Hard To Wound, which should give your opponent a mild headache. You could also bring Nino Ortega and a pair of Pistolero de Latigos and make use of his Spotter ability, which prevents enemy models in Nino's line of sight from taking Interact Actions if the enemy model is within 8 inches of a friendly Family model. Pistoleros work great with Spotter because they're dirt cheap Family models (you can get 2 of them for roughly the same cost as Francisco with Wade In), and because their "Look Out!" ability can give friendly models within a 3 inch aura Plus Flips to defense as long as the Pistolero hasn't activated. 2 Pistoleros increase the coverage you can get with Nino's Spotter ability, and can also increase the number of models (aka Clockwork Traps) you can give Plus Flips to defense. Because having a Clockwork Trap that has Hard to Wound +1 and Plus Flips to Defense duels covering and claiming a Squat Marker is a beautiful and filthy thing.

So there you have it, Thanks for Reading!

A Quick Trick with Perdita

I know I said in a previous post I wouldn't be doing many Perdita entries, but in that same post I mentioned a nasty little combo that deserves a quick write up. So without further introductory eloquence: 

You'll Never Take Me Alive Bastardo!!

Perdita Ortega - 7 Cache

-Trick Shooting (2)

-Vengeance Bullet (1)

Francisco Ortega (8)

-Wade In (1)

Papa Loco (7)

Death Marshall (6)

Death Marshall (6)

Guild Austringer (6)

Watcher (4)

Watcher (4)

Total: 45 SS

The way this trick works is pretty straight forward. You deploy Papa Loco & Francisco within 2 inches of Perdita so they can buff her up with Hold This (plus flips to damage) and El Mayor (+2 to Df & Wp), and as soon as they've done that you use the Death Marshalls to slap them in a coffin and Bury them. Once Francisco and Papa Loco are buried Perdita will retain those buffs until they become unburied and activate (the buffs go away once Francisco and Papa activate, or are killed/sacrificed). As long as they remain buried they don't activate, so you can keep Perdita at Df/Wp 9 with built in Plus Flips to damage for several turns in a row! Just make sure at the start of the Death Marshalls' activation you make the Death Marshall win the Wp duel to keep them in the box, you don't want Francisco and Papa unburying prematurely. Now that the Death Marshalls have buried Papa & Francisco they can run around with the Watchers acting as scheme runners. You won't really need them to do much killing, as Perdita and the Austringer will take care of that.

One of Perdita's strongest tricks comes from her (1) tactical action Finger on the Trigger, which allows her to take a (1) AP Sh action at any model within a 12 inch aura and line of sight that declares either a charge or a projectile attack action. This is HUGE. If you place Perdita right she can use this ability to lock down a massive section of the board; between the Plus Flips to damage she has from Papa Loco (which aren't going away because he's been buried) and the (0) actions on her Trick Shooting upgrade that let her ignore Cover or Armour/Incorporeal this can shut down a lot of crews. Once you put up Finger on the Trigger a clever opponent will either stick to cover if they have models with Armour (since Perdita can't ignore Armour and cover at the same time), or they will try to hide them where you can't see them. After all, if Perdita can't draw Line of Sight to a model, she can't shoot it.

This is where the Watchers come in! In addition to being great scheme runners, Watchers have a fantastic (2) action called View From Up High. This allows your Leader to draw Line of Sight (but not Range) from the Watcher. As long as your Watcher can see an enemy model and Perdita has range to it, she can shoot it. Hiding behind buildings and larger-based models is no longer a reliable defense, and since the Watcher only has to be able to draw Line of Sight to the model the Watcher itself doesn't have to be anywhere near the target. A Watcher on the other side of the table can help Perdita shoot things, and since there are 2 of them in this crew there shouldn't be a single safe place on the board. Add in the Austringer which doesn't need Line of Sight to shoot somebody and you'll be giving your opponent fits, even on the most terrain heavy Malifaux table.

You can if you want swap one Watcher and 2 soulstones from your starting cache to bring a second Austringer, but I don't really recommend it. Since Perdita's going to be right up in the action you're going to need as many soulstones as possible to keep her alive. Once she starts taking hits she'll drop pretty quick, she only has 10 wounds and no Armour to keep her safe, so you'll be using stones a lot for damamge prevention. 

Schemes this trick is good at include Assassinate, Make Them Suffer, Murder Protege, Breakthrough (the Marshalls and Watchers can do this no problem), Protect Territory (you'll get this automatically once the Marshalls die and Papa Loco/Francisco unbury because of Finish the Job). This crew works pretty well in Reckoning, but it is a bit of a one trick pony. Once your opponent has played against it once they'll skip trying to kill Perdita and just go after the other models in the crew, so make sure you keep them as safe as possible.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post, give it a try and let me know how it works for you! Thanks for reading, may your flips be positive and your Jokers only Red.

Guild McCabe and Reckoning

One of my favourite Masters for Reckoning is McCabe; between his ability to move models outside of their activation and keep them topped up on wounds, McCabe is a great Master for Reckoning

The Five 50 mms of Doom

Asssuming Make them Suffer is not in the scheme pool, here's what I usually like to take with McCabe:

Lucas McCabe - 6 cache

-Glowing Sabre (2)

-Elixer of Life (2)

-Strangemetal Shirt (1)

Pale Rider (12)

Peacekeeper (11)

Ama No Zako (10)

The Lone Marshall (8)

Total: 46ss, 6 cache

The thing I like about this crew is that it has a very low model count, which means that most of the time your opponent won't be able to score any points from the strategy off of you. All of these models can be very difficult to kill and are quite killy themselves, which when coupled with McCabe's Upgrades and his ability to toss them around makes them even stronger. 

The first real strength of this crew is McCabe's ability to heal damage through the Elixer of Life. If one of your big hitters like the Peacekeeper gets brought down to a low number of wounds you can use the (1) action Elixer of Living a Few Seconds Longer to help bring him back up. Granted it does have a very short range (6 inches), but in this crew McCabe should be pretty close to your other models anyways. After you use the Elixer to help heal up a model you can also use Take This! as a (0) action to give the model Regeneration +2, so they can heal up even more as soon as they activate. Being able to heal one of the 8+ wound models in this crew back up to full wounds in Reckoning is absolutely HUGE and should not be overlooked.

The second strength of the crew is how killy it is. The Peacekeeper is an absolute champ at killing things, and if you give the Pale Rider the Glowing Sabre there isn't much he can't go through. The Glowing Sabre ignores Armour, Hard to Wound, Incorporeal, and Hard to Kill. Short of Damage Prevention through Soulstones there's no defence it can't get through, and the Pale Rider's ability to add a number of Rams equal to the Turn Number - 1 makes for one holy hell of a Critical Strike trigger (that being said, avoid models like the Freikorps Librarian or Somer Teeth Jones that either make you ignore suits or unable to declare triggers). Ama No Zako works quite well with McCabe's ability to Paralyze models (by using the Crow trigger on his netgun when targeting a model that is already slow), and can use the Peacekeeper to help her Paralyze living models through the combo of her Promising Whisper and the Peacekeeper's Terrifying Living (12). Once a model is Paralyzed (or Ht1, which makes her extra awesome against Gremlins) she can use her Swallow You Whole to Sacrifice the target unless it discards two cards or two soulstones (this can also grant her a healing flip, which is always useful in Reckoning). She's also a Henchman, which is quite nice. The Lone Marshall acts as a heavy scheme runner/clean up hitter for the crew. He can throw down some very mobile ranged damage with his (2) action Trick Shooting, and since you don't want him too close to enemy models he works quite well as a scheme runner. With his Bullet Proof +2 and Hard To Wound +1 it won't be easy to kill him at range, especially if you stick to cover.

McCabe should be running fairly close to the pack of the Peacekeeper, Pale Rider, and Ama No Zako. Use his (0) action Take This! to get models into position or out of unfavourable combats. I suggest tossing around the Elixer of Life when using Take This! because it gives the model it's attatched to Regeneration +2, and that heal can be game changing in Reckoning. Also be sure to make use of his heal off of the Elixer of Life to keep your crew topped up on wounds. You can use his netgun to pass out Slow to enemy models, and if you target a model with Slow make sure to hit the Crow trigger to Paralyze them so Ama No Zako can come up and Swallow them Whole. Two shots on the same target (one to slow them, and one follow up for the Crow trigger) should be able to Paralyze most models. McCabe has a low number of wounds, so be careful not to get him too close to the enemy. Once he's Dismounted he loses a lot of mobility, which can be key in accomplishing your Schemes.

Some of the schemes you'll want to take with this crew are Schemes like Breakthrough/Protect Territory (both of which can be accomplished by the Lone Marshall if you're clever), Assassinate, Make Them Suffer, Murder Protege, Pant Evidence (which can also be done by the Lone Marshall), Vendetta, Entourage (due to McCabe's extreme mobility), Outflank (the Lone Marshall/Pale Rider/McCabe are all extremely quick, so you should be able to pull this off quite easily in the later game turns), and Bodyguard (if you're not playing in a timed tournament game).

If you do come across a Reckoning game and want to use this crew but Make Them Suffer is in the scheme pool simply swap Ama No Zako for either 2 Austringers (dropping you to a 4 cache), or an Austringer and a Watcher (which keeps you at a 6 cache). If you do bring an Austringer make sure place it behind a piece of terrain that hides it from enemy models so they can't target it (Austringers don't care about Line of Sight when they shoot with their Raptors anyways, so hiding them behind buildings or rocky outcrops won't bother them in the least).

Hopefully you guys enjoyed this write up, let me know what you think about this crew and the ideas I've presented here by leaving a comment! Thanks for reading, may all your flips be positive and your Jokers only Red!

The Perdita Disclaimer, Confession, & Resolution

This post may strike a nerve with some of the players out there because it does touch on a subject of some mild dispute between players of different Factions. So to help break things down I've organized it into 3 different parts: the Disclaimer, the Confession, and the Resolution.

THE DISCLAIMER

By no means should this be seen as a Master-bashing post, or as a criticism of those who enjoy playing Perdita. It has always been my strong personal belief that you should play the game that personally makes you happy, because you play the game for you and you alone. If Perdita is your absolute favourite Master and the Master that you feel most comfortable with, then play on! Don't let some guy on the internet that you may never meet take that away from you, stick to your Modified Peacebringers and bring the hurt! Now, that being said.....

THE CONFESSION

I personally do not like playing Perdita. Yes, she's one of the strongest Masters in the Faction (if not the entire game). Yes, there are a ton of things she can do, and do very well. And Yes, she brings some strong counters to several very strong crews. But I just don't like playing her. It feels way too easy sometimes; and the soul-crushed look on your opponents' face when they're on the other side of the table from a Df/Wp 9 Perdita with plus flips to damage rocking Finger On the Trigger while ignoring Armour/Incorporeal or Cover, with a couple of Watchers using their View From Up High to make sure she can see everything just isn't fun to me. The Guild has so much more to offer as a Faction in my eyes; and I find a great deal more personal satisfaction in figuring out the tricks of the other Guild Masters because I feel it deepens my understanding of how to play Malifaux. (At this point I sincerely urge you to re-read the above disclaimer: these are merely my thoughts, don't let them impact your enjoyment of the game)

THE RESOLUTION

With all that out of the way, my personal resolution from this post forward until the end of the year is not to play Perdita for a single game: friendly, tournament, or otherwise. As I go into the tactics posts of the different Masters I won't be doing a Perdita Tactica unless I really get asked to do one. I'd rather share the tricks and traps I've learned with other Masters, and take the time to break down some of the sneakier, filthy things we can do in the Guild

The Pilot Post

Welcome one and all to the humble musings of a Malifaux maniac! In this blog I'm gonna be sharing my thoughts and ideas about a game and faction I love, some stories and tricks, and mostly any random Guild thought that comes into my head.

Before we get started on Masters, Crews, Schemes, & Strategies; I thought I'd share a little bit about myself and my history in miniature war gaming and in Malifaux. I started in the hobby about 8 years ago with Warhammer 40K, and branched out from there into several different systems. I've played 40K, Warhammer Fantasy, Warmachine/Hordes, Flames of War, and most recently Malifaux. Out of every game system I've played over the years Malifaux is the one I've enjoyed the most and had the most success with.

I've played Malifaux for roughly a year and a half now, starting right when M2E first hit. What started with buying one crew box quickly turned into an obsession, and as I got more and more comfortable with the game mechanics I started to go to more and more tournaments. I've won a handful of Local Tournaments, but my biggest achievement was placing 3rd in the Malifaux Singles Tournament at the 2014 NOVA Open (which is an event I highly recommend to anyone who plays any sort of miniature war games).

So now that all that's out of the way we can get this party started! Hopefully I can share and learn some cool tricks for all the Guild players out there, and maybe help a couple of people out. Thanks for reading; may all your flips be positive and your Jokers always Red!

-Will "Filthy Guild" Farthing