As I've mentioned over a number of previous posts I had actually purchased the Rasputina models with the intent of using them for another game but when Friday rolled around and I was planning on actually playing some Malifaux 2E somehow it turned out that The Arcanists with Rasputina as their leader was actually the faction I had the most Soul Stones (Malifaux's points system) for.
What was really interesting was that never having planed on using these figures for Malifaux I hadn't actually looked at any of the model's stats until I was setting up for my first game. I managed to play 3 games yesterday; 2 traditional games and then a 4-way Enforcer brawl.
Game 1 - Vs. Stan's Lucius Crew
My first game was against a Lucius crew run by my regular Chaos Marine (and space pony enthusiast) opponent Stan. The Lucius crew is one of those forces that really scares me when people put it on the table because it has a lot of weird abilities that aren't readily apparent when you look at the models. My two big learnings in this game were (remember I had never looked at the stats before) that Rasputina can cast her spells through a lot of her minions (similar to Arc Nodes in Warmahordes) and that the Wendigo can devour paralysed models whole! The star of the game for me was the Wendigo who swallowed Mr Graves whole, followed by the Sabretooth Cerberus who ran around chewing on lesser models at will until Lucius took it out. I ended up with a narrow 4-3 victory in a game that was both fun and challenging.
Game 2 - Vs. Kevin's Ten Thunders Crew
Big disclaimer here, this was Kevin's second game of Malifaux and he was playing with a starter box so he hadn\t really had a chance to work out or select his force to create optimum synergy. My game against Kevin highlighted one of the great truths of Malifaux; bad things happen. The game started off with both of us racing towards the objective in the centre of the table while using some other models to sneak around grabbing and establishing other objectives. Unfortunately for Kevin at 40SS his crew only consisted of 6 models. This created multiple challenges for Kevin; first up I was activating multiple models after he finished his half of the turn which gave me the opportunity to gang up on weakened models and finish them off before the end of the turn, the other big issue is that a low model count made it very difficult for him to secure victory points. In spite of this the 2 models I listed as my stars from game 1 were not only the first models Kevin took out but he got them out early. In this game the Ice Golem really showed his strengths, I was able to lumber him up onto the shared objective which forced Kevin to come to me and let me use the Golem's devastating smash attack without having to run around chasing faster models. I was able to win my second game by a score of (if I'm remembering correctly) 7-4.
Game 3 - Enforcer Brawl Vs. Kevin, Chris & Stan.
My third and final game was an enforcer brawl against 3 other players. As strong as my crew was together and with their synergistic spell casting my Ice Golem was super-weak on it's own with no support. Much like the previous game highlighted my Ice Golem's strengths this game really called out it's weaknesses. It's slow movement coupled with no ranged attacks meant it would close in on faster models and then get charged and slapped around by them. It was a super fun game and a great way to play a multi player game of Malifaux. I don't remember the final score but Stan won with Kevin a close second and I was all alone in last place by a huge margin.
One thing I definitely re-learned playing these games was that if you buy and paint models because you like the figures themselves the rules don't really matter and regardless you're going to have fun and enjoy your stuff.
-Jay
