Saturday, July 17, 2010

Malifaux at GenCon

The other day, Wyrd announced their GenCon plans, including preview pictures of the new crew boxed sets, individual models, GenCon exclusives, and the first expansion book. It's obvious that my controlled GenCon budget, been built after carefully considering which GenCon releases I'd be unable to resist, has now been obliterated. These new releases, the Colette du Bois crew set in particular, have absolutely blown me away and I'm more excited for this round of releases than I have been in many, many years for any game.

I'll admit, I originally bemoaned the release of Malifaux. I'd always been a fan of Wyrd's style of miniatures, and pessimistically was sure that, in an attempt to produce figures necessary for their game, a lot of the novelty in their range would disappear. It appears those concerns were completely unwarranted as they've produced even more figures that I want for no other reason than to paint. The fact that I can use them in a game is just icing. Good job Wyrd. I'm not one to gush unabashedly, but you've definitely earned my praise.

Victory!

Just over a week ago, I finally broke my winless streak in games against my bi-weekly group, that has extended for nearly a year now. In games of Uncharted Seas, Malifaux, 40K, and AT-43 I've managed a single draw for my best result.

Well that finally changed last week when my Uncharted Seas fleet, the Iron Dwarves, finally bested their Shroud Mages rivals. What looked like a pretty overwhelming victory for me deep into the game, quickly became much more dicey when his battleship rammed my undamaged battleship and, in two turns of boarding combat, wiped out the crew. While I'm perfectly aware that Uncharted Seas is definitely more of a "fun" game, and doesn't seem to aim for the level of parity amongst factions that more "competitive" games do, I was nonetheless grumbling about the fact that such a quick turnabout could even occur.

So I soon found myself with nothing but a handful of frigates and a badly dinged up cruiser facing off against his ravaged, but still deadly, battleship. The game turned on a final set of dice rolls and the cruiser for which I made a series of improbable rolls, thereby putting the last point of damage on the Shroud Mage capital ship to sink it, will no doubt be sporting a personalized banner when I finally get around to painting them.

Now, with the winless streak finally broken, let's see if that luck will rub off on any of my other games. ;)