Malifaux: Nightmare Edition Teddy

I've been a bit lax with blog posts as I've been prepping for Vappafaux this weekend, but I have got my entry for this months Tyrants of Painting contest which is being run by the Malibros.  Basically it's a themed motivational challenge each month with this months theme being "Heavy Hitters".

I got my Nightmare Teddy in the Black Friday sale so I thought I'd build him and get him done for this contest as he not a hugely detailed model so I knew I could get him done quite quickly.

I pinned the head and arm (arm required some gap filling after I cocked up the pinning), but the claws were a right pain.  Every claw on his feet and left hand is a separate piece and so some judicious use of Zipkicker was required to get them in place.  After filling and priming he was ready for the base coat:

The panda theme I stole from Mike3838 like all my best ideas.  Base coat was a a light khaki for the white and dark blue for the black parts.  This is the stage that actually took longest in the end.

Next up the white got a wash of sepia ink, then brown ink in the darkest parts.  All the fur was then highlighted with lighter versions of the base coat.  I decided to hand paint the highlights rather than drybrushing (my usual go to method for painting fur) to give a better finish which I think it has.  Here's the finished entry:

The newspaper was fun to do.  I outlined the method for doing it in a previous blog post only this time I managed to find a customizable newspaper template online, in fact it was a PowerPoint slide that I just changed the text on:

Just adds a cool little detail to the model.

The #MFXTOP voting starts tomorrow (28th) so why not head over to twitter to vote and check out the entries on the Malibros blog.

Terrain Kit Review: Walled Farm By Commission Figurines

As I've been doing for the past many months, I'm still building terrain for Vappafaux in February.  This week I've completed a walled farm from Commission Figurines which I purchased via the Kickstarter they did earlier this year.  I got the kit on KS for £25 but I'm not sure what the retail will be yet as it's a new product.

It's made from laser cut MDF and arrives looking like this:

There are no build instructions provided with the kit, however the leaflet points you to the website which shows you how to put the thing together.  Move of the pieces fit together pretty easily, though I usually found that filing them a little bit help them fit together more easily.  I glued mine together to make it a bit stronger though possibly you could away without doing that.  It probably took me an hour or so to build and it looks like this when done:

The medium building on the left is a house, the big building is a barn and the small one is a stable.  All three have removable roofs and the house and barn have a removable internal floor so it's on two levels.  The cart tracks lead out of the gate at the front but I knew they would get covered once I textured the base so it's not big deal if they don't.  There's a small gate on the back wall as well which has no detail on the internal side.  Overall it was easy though I would quite liked to have an option not to include the gates.  If you're handy with a jigsaw you could cut them out I suppose, I however am not.  The whole base measures 13" x 14" so it's a pretty substantial piece.

Next up, I added some texture to the base by gap filling round all the walls where they met the base so they looked more natural.  I then added a layer of sand to the base both inside and outside the walls and also inside the barn and stable.  The whole thing was then primed brown using car spray paint.

Painting wise I tried something a bit different.  I wanted an uneven tone which would be easy to achieve with an airbrush, however I don't own an airbrush so an alternative was needed.  What I finally used was a sponge to sponge paint all the walls.  I ended up doing several coats of khaki, pale grey, rotting flesh from GW to get the final look.  It's not quite the colour I had in mind but it's OK.  The exposed bricks and roof tiles were quickly painted with Vallejo Scrofulous Brown/Charred brown mixture.  I then added additional weathering to represent repair plaster work, water damage and dirty using weathering powder mixed with water.  I painted a bit on then dragged it downwards with my sponge so it looked like water damage.  I probably went a bit overboard on it to be honest but the effect looks OK in place.

The building interiors I left blank for now to save time.

Here's the final model with some minis on it:

 Main farm buildings

 Barn on the left, house on the right.

From the shadows...

Overall I enjoyed building and painting the kit.  It's available at 15mm and 20mm scale as well if those scales take your gaming fancy.

There's talk of Commission Figurines doing a Malifaux terrain kickstarter.  On the strength of this model I will definitely be backing that.  The scale is a shade small for Malifaux but it still works well as a terrain piece.

Basing: Newspaper

This is something I've tried out yesterday on my new Mr Graves:

Looks pretty good I think and it couldn't have taken me less time.

Like all my good ideas, I nicked it from someone else, namely an entry in Wyrd's recent Rotten Harvest contest of a Zombicide Female Walker by Wren (you can see it here in fact).  I thought it would add a bit of extra interest to the street basing.

This was really easy to do:
1 - I did a google image search for old newspaper headlines and picked a suitable looking one.  Obviously avoid the ones that look too modern or say something like "Elvis is Dead" on them.  Mine says "Giant warehouse fire ravages city street" on it.
2 - Copied the image and pasted it into Word, then reduce it in size down to something suitable.  I wasn't sure on the exact size so I did three or four copies of it at different sizes.  Then I printed it out on the cheap printer paper we have at home.  This means the final result is not too thick.
3 - Cut out the one you want a position it on the base which I had already painted.  Crinkle it up as required, but be careful not to show the non-printed side.  I used super glue to attach it.
4 - I gave it a light coat of PVA here to strengthen it but I'm not sure that is really required.
5 - Finally a light wash of Gryphonne Sepia, particularly in the folds and you're done.

Really easy, took me about 5 minutes and it looks pretty good.

Here's a rubbish photo of the final Mr Graves that I took on my phone:

Terrain: X-Wing boards

I've been building several boards recently for the club and for use at Vappafaux (tickets on sale now by the way).  So the club isn't stuck with a lot more Malifaux boards than we really need, Ben asked me if I could make the other side of the boards into boards for X-Wing.  That's a game that has really taken off in the past few weeks at the club.  Here they are:

These probably took half an hour each to do.  With an airbrush you could make these look amazing pretty easily, however I don't own and airbrush to I had to do the best I could.

Here's what I did:
-Sprayed the whole board black using cheap car primer I got from Poundland.  You need two cans per board.  It's not mega even but it gives it a bit of interest not be too flat.  Let this dry.
-Using white paint (I used household emulsion) and a 2" brush flick paint onto the board to be stars.  I try two methods for this.  The bottom board is flicked the brush at the board which resulted in large blobs.  The top board I flicked the brush across the palm of my hand which results in smaller, finer blobs.  Both methods work but the top one looks better to me.
-I next cut out a circle from a piece of thin card (a cereal box) then used that as a template to paint the planets which I did in either green (household emulsion again) and brown (some brown spray paint I had left over).  A tip would be to use something heavy to weigh down the edges of your template to get a crisp edge to the circle.  Mine was a big ragged and I had to touch it up with black paint and a small brush.
-Once the planets were dry I stipple on a light shade of colour (ratskin flesh for the brown planet and camo green for the green one) and touch up the edges to sharpen it up.

Pretty easy and they look fairly decent.  With an airbrush or a can of purple spray paint I would have added a nebula or gas cloud type of thing across the centre diagonally and then put the stars on top of that.

Malifaux: Tournament tie-breakers

As I've been working on the rules pack for Vappafaux recently, I've been giving some thought to tournament tie-breakers.  In most cases a Malifaux tournament is decided on the following scores:

-Tournament points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw)
-VP differential (I.e. Rewarding you for the big wins)
-VP scored

In a three game tournament like Vappa there's a good chance there will be plenty of people on the same tournament points, meaning that most places come down to VP diff.  But what happens if two players are exactly even on all three stats? This is an edge case but one I need to prepare for as it more likely in a 3 game event than a longer event.  I don't actually have an answer to this yet.

It could just go down as a tied result, but that then may introduce problems with the rankings points and prizes.  At the other end of the scale, a flip off is a totally arbitrary way of doing it and leaves one player feeling robbed.

I'm not sure what else to include here.  There's nothing much else in Malifaux which could serve as a count back since something like how many soulstones you've killed isn't a reflection on how the game works, neither is masters killed.  Time permitting a 20 SS hardcore game could do it since they're decided in 20 minutes but again not ideal.

Any ideas from other systems or Malifaux tournaments?  Let me know in the comments or on twitter @tigerstyle40k.

Malifaux: Lynch Crew Completed

This one has been quite quick in getting done, about 10 days from starting painting the first model:

I'm fairly happy with them.  The Beckoners have come out well, they were nice models to paint.  Jakob and Huggy are not Wyrd's finest hour in terms of the sculpt.  It was pretty much beyond my skill to make Huggy look good.

The Beckoner on the right had to get a new Green Stuff hairstyle in the end as I inadvertently snapped her head off and had to re-pin it and re-build her neck.  It's come out pretty well in the end though.

Terrain: First two terrain sets completed

Vappafaux terrain building continues.  I've finished my graveyard board completely:

As you can see from the picture above, the board itself is based on 9 1'x1' floor tiles.  While this doesn't look quite as nice as a single sheet of wood, this board and setup is for me to use personally at home so it needs to pack up small.  Space is at a premium in our house due to vast amount of crap we have, so this board packs into a space of 1'x1' and less than 3" in depth.

Terrain-wise I've run several test games with the above setup and it works OK.  The hedges and church help to bisect LoS across the board and prevent it being dominated by shooting.

I've also got my ruined village terrain set done.  This one is still slightly in a state of flux as I've not had chance to try this layout in game as yet:

The board in picture is my tile board again, but I have since completed a dedicated 3'x3' board for this (which will live at the club).  It's nothing special just green grass.

Next on the table is my badlands/desert board.

Malifaux: Learning Lessons

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants - Sir Issac Newton

Let me preface this post by saying much of what I am talking about here has been said in one form or another by others, particularly the gaming legend Joel Henry on his blog and on twitter hence the quote at the top of the post.  

I wanted to talk about a game I played on Wednesday night this week against my friend and clubmate Sam and some things I took from that game on both sides which I'd like to apply to more of my Malifaux gaming.

The game was 50SS Squatters Rights with a scheme pool of Line in the Sand, Breakthrough, Bodyguard, Cursed Object and Murder Protege generated by everyone's favourite lazyfaux panda @malifauxschemes.

Me:
Jakob Lynch (Rising Sun, Expert Cheater, Woke Up With a Hand)
Hungering Darkness (Fears Given Form)
2 Illuminated
1 Beckoner
Doppelganger
Mature Nephilim
Schemes:  Bodyguard (Huggy, unannounced), Breakthrough (unannounced)

The Doppelganger I took as she can Interact when engaged, the Mature was there to fly about Wing Buffeting people away from markers and going for Breakthrough.

Sam:
Rasputina (Arcane Reservoir, Black Joker is Red Joker, Super Ice Mirror)
Ice Golem
Wendigo
3 Ice Gamin
2 December Acolytes
Schemes:  Line in the Sand (unannounced), Murder Protege (Mature Neph, unannounced)


I got off to a really bad start when I lost the Mature and Huggy on turn 1 due to some bad positioning which Sam punished me for, quite rightly.  This then developed into one of the closest games of Malifaux I've had for a long time.

I wanted to pick up on some things from the game in the way we both played and how they relate to things that Joel has talked about in the past on his blog and on twitter about being a better Malifaux player.

The best laid plans
My plan for the Mature Nephilim went out of the window by the end of the first turn (it was probably a half arsed plan anyway).  That meant I needed to re-focus and re-plan what it was I was doing.  The Doppelganger had to switch away from the Squat markers and on to getting Breakthrough leaving Lynch, Beckoner and the Illuminated to get my Squat markers and guard them.

Mr Henry's Lesson:  Have a plan but be prepared to change it.


Don't ease up
After the first turn, Sam was destroying me.  He'd killed Huggy (who buried) and his Murder Protege target.  My crew was reeling, on the ropes.  What did he not do?  Let up on me.  I was battered but he didn't stop pressing his advantage.  His crew moved up to the Squat Markers and started to lay his Line in the Sand markers.  He pressed home his advantage, eventually leading to Lynch getting killed by a December Acolyte and most of my crew being mopped up.

Mr Henry's Lesson:  Don't ease up off the gas.
My Extra Lesson:  December Acolytes are awesome.


Play to the last flip
Related to the point above, both of us played hard to the last flip of the game.  Turn 5 I was down to Huggy, Doppelganger and 1 Illuminated.  Huggy was alive but on less than half wounds, denying me a VP.  So last turn Huggy spent hitting the Doppelganger and trying to heal himself up to get VP.  Sam spent the last turn trying to get my Squat markers flipped and throwing an Ice Gamin at Huggy to try and getting him either dead or more wounded (which he did).  Both of us played hard down to the wire.

Mr Henry's Lesson:  Want it.  Push yourself to win.
My Extra Lesson:  Remember Huggy has a trigger to heal 2 wounds...


Focus
I had Bodyguard on Huggy who I foolishly got killed on the first turn.  With some effort on turn 2 I managed to Lure over the Wendigo and Lynch made it Brilliant and killed it bringing Huggy back.  Hooray!  Just needed to keep him alive now for the VP.  With that in mind, what was the first thing I did?  Charged him back into Sam's crew to attack a December Acolyte.  I iz dumb.

I didn't focus on what was important:  scoring VP by keeping Huggy alive.  I realized this quite quickly and was lucky enough to win Initiative on the next turn (yay for Doppelgangers) and get Huggy to safety.

Mr Henry's Lesson:  Focus.

The conclusion of the game was a surprise, neither of us genuinely knew who had won.  It shook out as:

Me:  Squatters Rights: 3VP, Breakthrough: 3VP, Bodyguard: 2VP
Sam:  Squatters Rights:  3VP, Line in the Sand:  2VP, Murder Protege: 2VP

8-7 win to me.  A close finish and a result that was very much against the run of play in the game.

Malifaux: Jakob Lynch's Upgrades Part II

An angry tadpole

Following on from my previous post about Lynch's upgrades, let's look at the last three of Jakob's upgrades:  Expert Cheater, Woke Up With A Hand and Wanna See A Trick.

Expert Cheater (2SS)
This does two things:  Friendly models with LoS to Lynch can cheat face down and gives Lynch the Squeal trigger (push 4" after taking damage).  Both great abilities and both worth taking.  Cheat face down means you can play mind games with your opponent, potentially drawing high cards out of their hand even if you've only cheated a low card or a moderate card.  The Squeal trigger I have used once as generally speaking Lynch is trying to avoid getting himself hit in the first place.  He's usually towards the back of his crew anyway and he already has a Df/Wp trigger you can use to discourage people from trying to hit him.  So while it's handy to have Squeal it's by no means an auto-take.

Woke Up With A Hand (2SS)
I love this upgrade.  If you activate last you draw two cards which is cool and well worth doing especially in early turns.  I generally find I want Lynch to activate late anyway as by that point my other models (Huggy and the Beckoners) have hopefully spread some Brilliance round he can take advantage of and wreck some face.  Drawing two cards helps power the second ability on the card:  Final Debt.

Final Debt is Ca7, Rg 10, target model with Brilliance takes damage equally to the number of cards in the Lynch players hand.  Now, combine that with activating last and drawing two cards, plus Lynch's Ace in the Hole ability, plus his (0) Pay Up and it's not unusual to have 6-8 cards in your hand.  You can really, really hurt something with this Attack Action.  It's also his longest ranged ability, and it also lack the Gun icon so it can be cast into melee with impunity.


Wanna See A Trick (1 SS)
Lynch's cheapest upgrade.  At the end of his activation, you can discard any number of Aces.  For each one discarded an enemy model with Brillance takes 2 Dg per Ace.  I've had games where this has been very useful and others where it's been useless.  It does give a couple of things:  A way of dealing with something you've dropped to it's Hard to Kill value with your other abilities or something you don't just have the AP to finish off; and a way of getting an extra bit of range or need some extra movement to get LoS against a non-Briliance target i.e. (1) Walk, (1) Walk, (now within 6" of the non-Brilliance target), (1) Play for Blood (target take 2 Dg and gain Brilliance from auto-trigger).  Activation ends, discard Aces as required.  Quite handy in the right circumstances.  The drawback is that it drains your hand of Aces which are insanely useful to you in this crew (I'll probably blog in the future about Lynch's Ace In the Hole)


General Upgrades
As I mentioned in my previous post, I've only used Lynch as Neverborn so I don't have any direct experience with the 10T upgrades.  For Neverborn, Fears Given Form is good on Huggy to draw out additional cards and potentially cause some damage.  Post-errata, I wouldn't bother with Nexus of Power on either Huggy or Lynch.  Pact, Stone of Tyrant Echoes and Aether Connection I can't see myself taking either.  Two are Leader only and Lynch's own upgrades are much better, and Pact is only there is you really hate the Black Joker.

Malifaux: Jakob Lynch's Upgrades Part I

My newly painted Jakob Lynch

Jakob Lynch is my new favourite Malifaux master.  Yes, I know I said I was going to stick with Pandora, but I've wanted to get a Lynch crew for ages and when the opportunity arose to pick up one at a good price on Twitter I went for it.  You can see him painted in the picture above.

I played quite a few games with him now and I can say this:  he is really good.  Really, really good in fact.  What I wanted to talk about in this post was his upgrades as I think they are all pretty viable choices for Lynch.  I've been playing him as Neverborn exclusively, so I'm mainly writing from that perspective.

Let's start with the first big choice you're probably going to have to make:  Rising Sun or Endless Hunger.  These are both limited upgrades so you're only going to get to take one, and unless you're doing something way off the beaten Lynch track you will want one of these.  Both of them affect the Hungering Darkness (hereafter known as Huggy).

Rising Sun
The infinite Huggy upgrade.  When Huggy is killed, he's buried and can be brought back to life again (unburied) if an enemy model with Brilliance is killed within 6" of Lynch.  I've been using this one a fair bit recently, especially since the 1st November nerf of Nexus of Power.  It goes well with schemes like Bodyguard or Entourage where you may want Huggy alive at the end of the game.  I've found combining this with Fears Given Form on Huggy and then using him as a nuisance model can also be quite effective.  Huggy is only Df3 but he is Wp6, 7 Wd and Incorporeal so it takes a bit of effort to put him down.  Throwing the resurrecting Huggy into the enemy crew and bogging down models with him can be effective.

Rising Sun is an upgrade you want to auto-take if you know you're facing masters who can ignore Incorporeal.  Heavy casting masters like Rasputina, Sonnia and Pandora will wreck Huggy, as will things like Viktoria of Blood with the Mark of Shez'uul.


Endless Hunger
This upgrade makes Huggy Terrifying (All) as opposed to just (Living) and gives him Casting Expert.  Both his attack actions are Ca actions.  This upgrade really beefs up Huggy into more of a damage dealer and more importantly gives him an extra action where he can use his attack to spread Brilliance to more models.  However, once he's gone, he's gone and you can bet your opponent is going to be putting some effort into sinking Huggy.  That additional AP does means that he's got an extra chance to hit and get his Drain trigger (built in) to heal 2 Wds.

With the recent change to Nexus of Power, Endless Hunger is less attractive to me than Rising Sun, but it has it's place.  For example, if the scheme pool has Frame for Murder in it I might take this upgrade and put my FfM on Huggy and then throw him into the enemy master.  He's got more AP to do some damage and spread Brilliance and if he dies, then I've scored some VP.

So that's our choices for Limited upgrades.  I would definitely take one of these unless for some reason you've elected not to take the Hungering Darkness.  The final upgrade I want to talk about in this post is Addict.

Addict
This upgrade must take on Lynch or Huggy and gives friendly minions within LoS a + on Attack and Damage flips against models with the Brilliance characteristic.  In wave 1, this covers Illuminated and Beckoners.  Both of these have decent Ml/Ca stats (6 generally) so don't particularly need the buff but for the Illuminated it does make them even more deadly against Brilliance'd target.  That's nice, but they're already pretty deadly against Brilliance'd targets so you may not really need this buff.  The other problem is that this takes an upgrade slot of Lynch so you're likely to put this on Huggy who may well not be around for the whole game anyway.  Not a bad choice, but there are better ones I think.  In a Lynch mirror match, I'd want this though :)

In part 2, I'll cover off the remaining 3 upgrades and talk a little about general upgrades.

Terrain: Renedra American Church Kit Review

Following on from my previous post about my graveyard terrain set, the main piece on that board is going to be a church.  The building I will be using is by Renedra:

It suitable for all times periods from 1750 onwards it says on the box so it fits in well with Malifaux (which is set in 1902).  The cost of the item is around £18.  The box contains the sprues only, with the build instructions on the back of the box:

Inside we get 5 sprues.  The first three are the church itself:

The top and left sprues in the picture are identical, being the two sides of the church.  The sprue at the bottom is the front part of the building.  The details on the outside is nice.  The reverse of the pieces in smooth so don't expect a hugely detailed interior section.  There's also a couple of gravestones included on the sprue.

Also in the box are two sprues of picket fencing (100cm worth according to the box):

That's a nice added bonus and can easily be used to make a enclosed space next to the church or mounted separately.

Building the church was very simple, I managed to put it together in about 45 minutes.  There's very minimal mould lines throughout so the cleanup was simple.  The only part you need to pay attention to is putting the bell into place before spire floor.  This is clearly shown on the box.

The crow is taken from the Renedra Graveyard kit I talked about in a previous post.

I based the model on a couple of 5mm foam core pieces, the bottom one larger than the upper one then stuck them on a hardboard base which gives the model a little bit more height.  Groundwork was built up with DAS modelling clay, gravel and sand:

The paint job was pretty easy, the weatherboarding was just drybrushed khaki and then a lighter blend of khaki and then any wood picked out in brown:

Overall I like this kit very much.  It makes an excellent centre piece for the table and it was easy to build and paint.  The scale is a tiny bit off for Malifaux, maybe a couple of millimetres too small but it still works fine for what I want.

Terrain: Renedra Grave Stones Kit Review

I'm going to be running the Malifaux tournament at Vapnartak this year (the one that I fluked my way to winning last year) and so I'm building terrain.  Lots of terrain...

One of the boards I'm doing is going to be a graveyard board.  The centre piece will be a church which I will talk about in a future post.  Naturally, there will also be alot of gravestones required for this.  I toyed around with making some but I wanted them look decent so I went for buying some.

I settled on the gravestones set from Renedra which set me back a total of £9.50 shipped off eBay.  You can pick up the same set from elsewhere as well including Wayland Games.

They arrived pretty fast.  The packaging for these from Renedra was nothing special so I didn't bother photographing it:  it was a plastic bag with a piece of card at the top.  Inside you get two identical sprues:

I've flipped them over so the back of the sprue is on the left in the picture here.  There's a total of around 40 gravestones of various types on here and a couple of crows which are a nice finishing touch.

The detail on the front of the stones is nice, they have inscriptions, RIP that kind of thing.  The back of them is a little disappointing though.  A couple of them have some detail on the reverse (just a stone texture and a crack) but the rest of totally flat.  The backs need some work to get them to look decent.

Clean up and build-wise they were easy to do with minimal mould lines, just a few marks where they are attached to the sprue.  I took a knife and file to the back of mine to add some texture to the reverse of them and also added some patches of sand which I painted up to look like lichen.

I've based mine in small groups on MDF board and built up the groundwork around them with air drying modelling clay:

The bases were then textured with some basic sand and gravel to add some interest to them.  I glued some small patches of rocks (a mixture of model railway ballast and fine gravel) in patches and then added sand to the rest of the bases.

Paint jobs were very easy:  Primed with brown spray paint (Maple for Rover cars from Halfords), painted various greys for the stones mostly Vallejo's Heavy Gray with some brown/black washes applies then drybrushed:

The bases were finished off with some green flock and tufts.

Here's the graveyard master himself surveying his domain:

Overall, I really liked this kit.  They've painted up really nicely and I think they'll look good on my graveyard board.

Terrain: Cheap and easy hedges

I'm going to be running the Malifaux tournament at Vapnartak this year (the one that I fluked my way to winning last year) and so I'm building terrain.  Lots of terrain...

I'm doing a few different boards, and just a bunch of general terrain that we can spread over other tables.  I need to build stuff relatively quickly and also cheaply.  First up: some hedges.

These are easy.  You will need the following:

-Pan scourers, the flat cheap ones without any foam on them.  99p for 8.
-Something to mount them on.  I used wide (about 1") lolly sticks I got on eBay as they're quick and easy.  Plasitcard, MDF etc will also work.
-Sand and gravel for basing
-Green flock (not static grass)
-PVA glue
-Hot glue gun (optional but makes it easier).
-Spray primer.  I used Army Painter Leather Brown primer for mine.

Method:

-Cut the scourers in half length wise.
-Fold them over so you've got about a 1" high piece of hedge (which will be about 0.5" thick)
-Using the hot glue gun glue the folded halves together.  The glue gun helps a lot here as you get loads of glue for not much money, it holds well and more importantly it dries within a minute or so.  You could also use PVA but you'd need to weight the folded hedge down with some books while it dried.  Superglue would also work I guess.
-Cut the lolly stick to the length you want.  It's basically taking the rounded ends off.  I actually cut mine with scissors.
-Hot glue gun the hedges to the lolly stick.
-PVA glue sand, gravel etc to the base to add texture.  I also found adding some glue and sand to the ends on the hedge helped close up and cover any gaps in the fold.  Let this dry before moving on to the next stage.
-Spray prime the whole lot.  I used brown to prime mine to save me some time.
-Paint the base whatever colour you want.  Mine is just drybrushed with GW Snakebite Leather + Vallejo Light Sand.
-Give the hedge a generous coat of PVA then dip it in the green flock.  Let this dry.  It takes ages so leave it overnight.
-(Optional) Give the flock a coat of thinned PVA just to seal it all on.  You might not need this part really.  The PVA I've got is pretty thin anyway so I just slapped some on neat.

And there we have it:

This is about a 6" section made.  You can just see a Hanged poking his ghostly head over the top to give you an idea of scale.  I'd probably call these Ht2, blocking, soft cover, climbable (so it costs 2" of movement to cross one) when characterising the terrain.

You can see in the above picture I split one and added a little fence to it (made from coffee stirrers).  To make the hedges more ragged on top and attacked them with a pair of scissors.  You could do this with all the hedge sections for a rougher look but I would say if you're going to do that, rather than folding the scourers in half, cut it half and glue the two halves together.  It will be easier to cut the top of them that way.

16 x 6" sections all done.  Total build time for all of it was probably a couple of hours at most.  Per section they probably cost about 10p each and look fairly decent.

Malifaux: Odds of drawing a certain card

I've been playing Magic a bit recently and one of the things that I've been looking through is the odds of the drawing a certain card from your deck.  Magic is bit different from Malifaux in that you don't re-shuffle your hand every turn, but the general principal is the same.

On the surface it seems quite simple.  I've got 12 face cards in my deck (11-13 of each suit), plus the red joker meaning I have a 13/54 chance of getting one on a single card draw.  That's true but, once you draw a single card the odds tilt slightly in one direction or another so it turn's out that working out these odds was more complicated than I thought.

Turns out this is something called a hypogeometric distribution and involves factorials and other stuff I distantly remember from A-level maths.

For those lazy people like me, you can get Excel (other spreadsheet software is available) to work out for you using this formula.  I think this is right, feel free to correct me if not and note I'm using Excel 2010 here.  Earlier versions just had HYPOGEOMDIST function which is more or less the same:

=HYPOGEOM.DIST(number_cards_we_want, hand size, successes in population, total population, FALSE)

The FALSE bit here is to calculate the probability density function which gives us the result of exactly 1 severe.  Changing that to TRUE would give us up the number of severe cards which could also include 0.

For example, the chance of drawing exactly 1 severe in an hand of 6 cards from a deck of 54 is 0.377 or 37% which we can find using the function in Excel =HYPOGEOM.DIST(1,6,13,54,FALSE).  Never feels like that though does it?

This number is going to be skewed in turns after the first given you're drawing less cards usually if you have some in your hand, plus the population size is then going to be slightly less.  In an extreme case you might have 5 severe cards already in your hand and only be drawing one in the draw phase in which case your odds of of drawing a severe are going to go to about 16% (=HYPOGEOMIST(1,1,8,49,FALSE).

Here's some odds you might be interested in:

Chance of drawing no severes on the first turn (=HYPOGEOM.DIST(0,6,13,54,FALSE)):  17%
Chance of drawing a joker first turn (=HYPOGEOM.DIST(1,6,2,54,FALSE)):  20%
Chance of drawing 1 of a specific rank card first turn (=HYPOGEOM.DIST(1,6,4,54,FALSE)):  32%
Chance of drawing 1 card of a specific suit first turn  (=HYPOGEOM.DIST(1,6,13,54,FALSE)):  37%
Chance of drawing 1 card of a specific suit of 8 of higher first turn (=HYPOGEOM.DIST(1,6,6,54,FALSE)):  39%

Some of these numbers seem a bit counter intuitive but the stats don't lie (or I'm doing it wrong in which case they might well be lying).

Here's our likelihood of drawing those face cards in our opening turn:

0 face cards:  17%
1 face card: 37%
2 face cards:  31%
3 face cards:  12%
4 face cards:  2%
5 face cards:  0.2%
6 face cards:  0.006%

Interesting.  You can see the most likely draw in your opening hand it to get 1 face card.

Let look then at a couple of card draw mechanics I'm been using recently:  Primordial Magic's Rush of Magic Ability and spending soulstones to draw 2 more cards.

Rush of Magic
This ability lets us draw and additional card and then discard down to our maximum hand size.  Let's see what difference this makes to the table above:

0 face cards:  13%
1 face card:  33%
2 face cards:  33%
3 face cards:  16%
4 face cards:  4%
5 face cards:  0.5%
6 face cards:  0.003%

This has improved our odds by a few percentage points.

Soulstones
So what happens when we use a SS to draw two more cards (so our sample size is 8):

0 face cards:  9%
1 face card:  28%
2 face cards:  33%
3 face cards:  20%
4 face cards:  6%
5 face cards:  1%
6 face cards:  0.001%

This was a bit unexpected.  We actually less likely to get just 1 face card than we were before but more likely to get multiples.

Rush of Magic and Soulstones
Let's combine them for a sample size of 9:

0 face cards:  6%
1 face card:  24%
2 face cards:  33%
3 face cards:  24%
4 face cards:  10%
5 face cards:  2%
6 face cards:  0.003%

So with the two combined we're 12% more likely to get exactly 3 face cards than with neither of them.

If you can't bothered with Excel, then stattrek.com has a handy online calculator for you.  One thing is clear:  card draw abilities are powerful in M2E.

Malifaux 2nd Edition Part II

Following on from my last post where I wittered about the book and cards, I'm going to talk a bit in this one about my experiences playing the game since the rulebook came out.  I played in both the closed and open betas as well but since they're not the released rules I'm not counting those.  This is a clean slate.

I've had a couple of games using Pandora as my master and I plan on using her for the first dozen or so games, and at least until the run up to my next tournament in October (Halifaux).

Pandora is good.  Really good.  She's pretty tough to put down being an effective Df7 (she defends on Wp) and slippery as she'll just push away from you if you miss.  In my first two games, she's only taken 2 Wds in total and those were from Black Blood from my own models.

Her offensive power is directly proportional to whatever she is fighting as her melee Attack spell Self Loathing does damage with the target's own weapon which is good and bad.  It'd take her less AP to kill something big and beefy like Teddy than it would to take something less powerful like a Rotten Belle.  She has a ranged version of Self Loathing called Self Harm (new in M2E) which is pretty much the same but only Ca6 and makes them shoot themselves (nice against Seamus).  Movement-wise, she's only Wk4 but getting a 4" push when she wins an opposed Wp duel means she is deceptively fast.

Is Pandora any more fun to play against in M2E?  One of the complaints you heard all the time about Pandora in M1E was that she was a negative play experience.  I played with her in M1E and there were times where it felt like that even being on Pandora's side of the table.  The good news is she's been toned down in M2E.  In my opinion, she's lost two of the major things that made her a pain:

-Auto blast marker on Project Emotions.  I could bump that up with a soulstone and drop - flips for Wp on every model under that blast.  Project Emotions is now an upgrade, the blast requires a trigger and the models under the blast only have to get to TN14 Wp duel.  Not as bad.

-Mental Anguish is now not as bad.  Mental Anguish in M1E was one of the most powerful triggers in the game.  On a crow any of Pandora's spells would cause the target to count as having failed a Morale Duel (and so things which normally ignored Morale Duels like Constructs could still be affected).  They'd then run away and waste at least one activation rallying and then another getting back in the fight.  Combine that with the ability to soulstone up to massive totals (I'd drop a high crow and then a soulstone if I really wanted it to go off), and drop a blast from Project Emotions this was absolutely horrible.  In M2E, the ability to soulstone unbeatable totals has largely gone, the trigger "only" gives Paralyzed and does no damage, is a Limited upgrade and is only on Self Loathing and Self Harm.  Better, but still good.

I don't want to go into too much detail on Pandora as I've not had enough experience to speak with any great authority (for that go and listen to Joel on Malifools Episode 58, there is a man that can play Malifaux).  I can say I like playing her and I like what I've used with her crew so far.  Kade and Teddy especially make for a really nasty tag team combo.  What I did want to talk about was a few general areas where I feel things are very different between the two editions.

Model complexity and upgrade

A major complaint about M2E was that is had dumbed down all the models.  Having played the game I don't think this is the case.  Some models are more straightforward on the card, but the upgrade system really adds to that complexity.  Having had a couple of games, I've still had those agonizing tactical choices to make when deciding which of my 5 or 6 abilities and spells to use on my master (Pandora with 3 upgrades) but with less of the brain burn with some M1E masters.  Having played Hamelin a fair bit I can say there was brain burn involved with that.  In short, in still feels like Malifaux.

The cards are the thing

The changes to the soulstone mechanic have had made a big difference.  In M1E, a master with soulstones was largely untouchable unless by another soulstone users.  Killing a master with a non-soulstone user required some degree of luck either good or bad on either side, or running them out of soulstones first.  In M2E this is not the case.  A strong hand of cards is, in my opinion, more important than a large cache of soulstones.

In M2E, soulstones can be used for:

-Re-flipping initiative (same as M1E)

-Damage prevention flips for SS users (same as M1E)

-Adding a + flip to an attack (new in M2E)

-Adding a +flip to defensive and a - flip to any damage result (new in M2E)

-Adding a suit to an attack (new in M2E)

-Drawing 2 additional cards in the draw phase (new in M2E)

In my games with Pandora, that last one is the one that has been absolutely crucial to me.  She only has one trigger that I'd want to guarantee going off:  the aforementioned Mental Anguish which is one of her upgrades and needs a crow.  I've been using her other limited upgrade so I've not required this one yet.  Drawing 2 extra cards has been vital for me though.  The Primordial Magic giving me an extra card, then adding 2 more means I'm drawing up to 9 cards before discarding down to the best 6.  This enables me to craft a strong hand for that turn when I know I'm going to need to do something epic.  For example, Teddy faces off with Tara.  My hand was 2 x 13, 2 x 11 and 2 x 10 with Teddy at Ml7 that combination of cards was really horrible.  Tara did die in Teddy's activation but in fact it was Kade that killed her after Teddy pushed her 12" into him and he pounced on her.

Anyway, drawing 2 more card has been gold for me.  In my opinion this is better than using the stones for the positive on attacks as you're getting 2 cards for 1 stone that anyone in your crew can use rather than 1 extra card.  Time will tell if this proves to be the case with other crews.

Strategies and Schemes

M1E had 13 strategies, M2E has 5.  M2E has a 4 point VP cap for strategies from a possible 10 meaning 60% of your points are from schemes.  The strategies also all (with the possible exception of Reckoning) seem relatively easy to get points from.  Schemes are king and the pool system means you can't be guaranteed to be able to match up certain schemes with certain strats.  For example, in M1E's Beatdown strategy generally speaking you took schemes which required you to kill stuff such as Kill Protege, Grudge or Assassinate which you were doing anyway for the strategy.  In tournament play, I'd save those type of schemes to go with Beatdown.  In M2E, the scheme pool system means you can't do that.  You might be playing a kill type strat like Reckoning, but all your scheme choice require models to drop scheme markers or get to locations on the board.  It makes for a major change in the way crews are built and played.  Being able to handle the schemes seems to be the way to win games, with the strategies coming a second place to that.