How to win at Malifaux
A friend and good gaming buddy of mine Pete Wright (@temeraire)
recently posted on the wyrd forum about his current malaise as a Malifaux
player, seemingly easily sussed out as a player by his club mates he wants
advice how to stop this, if you are reading this and have an opinion the please
go and post on the thread
http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/103618-malifaux-malaise/
Top UK played Joel Henry hit the nail on the head with his
advice and (psychology aside) I thought I would post on the way that I win
games.
Now before I start, me giving advice on winning games
feels a bit alien to me. I am currently ranked mid 20’s in the rankings table
(although I do have a ‘game in hand’) and do not class myself as a top player
due to many reasons. I would class myself in the upper second tier of UK
players.
And I lose, alot, of games.
But I win, quite alot, of tournament games.
I lose most games where I don’t play properly. In fact I
generally only ‘play properly’ now at tournaments, or when I am in a bad mood,
or when I play Spooner ‘cos it pisses him off.
Not playing properly can mean many things. I don’t pick
the right schemes, I don’t pick the right crew, I make mistakes by not paying
attention, or I simply do silly things. When not ‘playing properly’ I do these
things on purpose for 2 reasons.
1. To
learn, models, schemes, combos, etc.
2. Not
to dent my confidence.
Number 2 is interesting. In a non competitive setting I
will often set myself up to lose (or make it very difficult to win) simply
because when I lose, I consider to myself that I haven’t really lost, because I
could have won if I wasn’t being so silly. If I win then I’m obviously
fantastic.
I have also tried to rein myself in a bit on absolutely
trying to obliterate people in every game I play so as not to put people off
the game. Lee and Mike seem to carry this into tournaments too and Lee in
particular has a habit of telling people how to beat him when playing at
tournaments. I don’t. At tournaments I try to play as hard as I can (without
being a dick, jury might be out on that!)
Now don’t get me wrong, I do play some casual games to
win and really go for it. If I lose these games I try to learn from them. What
could have I done better / different and sometimes, after analysis, it’s just
down to luck, and that’s OK.
The reason I don’t class myself as a top player is not
down to my lack of skill, it’s down to my lack of games and lack of knowledge
of opposing masters / players. But that also works in my favour to a certain
extent as most opponents don’t have an intensive knowledge of how I play, and
those that do may not have faced me ‘playing properly’
So, how does this translate into how I play when playing properly?
How do I win if I have no idea what the hell the opposition’s crew does? Or how
the opponent thinks?
Well I go into every game with a plan. I work out the
plan before hand alot of the time. I will look at a tournament pack, the
strategies and I will quite often pick a crew in advance to accomplish that strategy.
I will think about what schemes that could be available and I will put together
an element of the crew that could accomplish those schemes.
In army speak I have ‘fire teams’. I have elements of the
crew build that do different jobs. I make sure I know the models that do those
jobs well and I stick to those models.
In essence I am saying to my opponent I don’t care what
your crew does (mainly because I probably don’t know) but I certainly know what
my crew does and if you want to stop me doing it then come and have a go. I
have an unwavering belief that my crew can accomplish what I want and if my
opponent wants to stop it then they will need to fight for it.
I try to have a contingency plan for each element. So if
fire team a gets obliterated then fire team b or c can cover its job.
I switch between playing aggressively and defensively as
the situation dictates (when I lose its usually because I am playing hyper
aggressive, which packs one large punch that either wipes out the opponent or
leaves me in a position where I lose the game, sound familiar Pete?)
Now this strategy is aiming to give me maximum VP’s. If I
get 10 VP’s I won’t lose the game.
The second element, and to me where the game gets more complicated,
is disruption.
In Pete’s opening post he mentioned the fact that he does
things to the opponent because if the opponent did them to him he would find it
annoying. This is completely the wrong strategy.
I don’t care what happens to my crew as long as it does
not affect my game plan, well it would have to affect two elements of my game
plan as fire team c is on its way to sort out the mess left by fire team a
being obliterated.
However disrupt something enough and cracks will appear.
I usually find the strategy is where I find it easier to disrupt people.
In a recent game with Pete (where I was playing properly)
he lost control of the game in turn 3 and subsequently lost the game (he tried
to assassinate Tara just after losing control of the turf war area to a barrage
from Lazarus, Tara jumped away and any chance he had of winning was essentially
lost)
In this game I had disrupted Pete’s control of the
strategy enough for cracks to appear and then made him lose complete control of
the game by moving Tara.
In another recent game with Pete (where I wasn’t 'playing
properly') I lost control of the game on turn 2 where I was being far too aggressive
with Tara and she got taken out by Howard. I still made Pete work for the win
but I had essentially lost the game there and then. The strategy was turf war
and against Ramos Tara was my only way of re-deploying models, I had lost
control of the strategy.
What did Pete learn from this? Did he learn Tara was easy
to kill? Well in the following game that I won he took assassinate on Tara and
lost the game because of it. Tara was easy to kill in the first game because I didn’t
care if she died. Assassinate was not in the scheme pool. It didn’t annoy me
that Tara died, it didn’t annoy me that I lost the game by being stupid with
Tara. I was expecting it.
In the second game as well I messed up with not keeping
an eye on the round numbers and forgot to move something in for take prisoner, luckily
Pete did the job for me by leaping his blessed of December into combat with me
on its last activation! So the key, as other people have said, is also know
what VP’s are available to both players and what to do to score / prevent them.
Leaping into melee in the last turn with no benefit to killing the model and
with take prisoner on the table is not the most sensible move.
Another couple of examples of this are two tournament
games, one against Joel and one against Martin Wodehouse (I also remember most nuances of every game of Malifaux I've played, an advantage to analysing them after and also what helps me become a better player)
Against Martin I was using Belles that I had got to his
side of the table to lure his models back out of the turf war area. I was
putting pressure on Martin to keep hold of the strategy. I lost Tara to an
ability that I didn’t even know Rasputina had (2 damage per upgrade) but that didn’t
matter. Martin has complete control of a scheme (breakthrough) and so did I
(also breakthrough as I recall). Martin was applying pressure by blowing my
models out of the turf war area with blasts so I have to move fire team b in
(Johan). This put me in a tricky position because he was the murder protigee
target but by applying enough pressure on disrupting the strategy (and I think
as I recall a lucky card flip) I won the game by a couple of points.
Against Joel you could almost call it a draw before we
began. I was using Jack Daw and the strategy was Squatters rights, we both took
breakthrough and plant evidence (I think), I made mistakes (first one being I didn’t
have the confidence in Jack Daw for squatters that I have in Tara) and
essentially Joel put alot of pressure on the strategy. I made a fundamental
error in not accomplacing a Nurse, (even though I had it in my head that that’s
what I was going to do) and Joel used a Walderguist to take a squat marker away
from me.
This cracked my entire crew and I completely lost focus,
Ama No Zako had failed in her job by being killed (and therefore not being able
to place any breakthrough markers) and my ‘fire team b’ for breakthrough went
to try and regain the squat marker, which was a huge error. At that point,
against Joel, I had probably lost the game anyway but a rational thing to do
would be to re-evaluate and see if I could have still won without the squat
marker for that turn.
I didn’t, I focussed on the wrong thing and ended up
losing quite heavily, which in turn meant Joel won the tournament on VP diff.
So while I probably couldn’t have beat Joel after that I could have stopped him
from winning the tournament (not that I wanted to do that) and conversely this
could have had an effect on my tournament placing due to dropping silly VP’s
(in the end I don’t think it did)
My last example is complacency.
Complacently can lose you games. In my third round game
at Canterfaux I went hyper aggressive in reckoning. By turn 3 I had a 5-1 lead
and had complete control of the game and instead of reassessing I went all out
for max VP which was a terrible error. I had underestimated my opponent and he
pulled a few neat tricks with Yan Lo and assassinated Tara as I pushed for
breakthrough. I could have prevented this easily but I thought I had the game
won, in the end I just about held on for a 6-5 win.
My very (honestly) last example is never giving in
Game 4 this time at Canterfaux, I was facing Perdita
& co on what you could call a very ‘guild friendly’ table in reconnoitre.
In turn 1 I lost 2 or 3 models to shooting. turn 2 wasn’t much better. At this
stage I could have completely given in and thought there is now no way I can
win this with this many models off the table. I refocused my attentions to
schemes and piled pressure onto Perdita with Bette Noire to stop him achieving
entourage, and used everything else I had very carefully and defensively to
achieve my schemes. I lost the strategy but won the game.
So in summary here is what I think helps you get to the
next level.
Plan your lists – know which models do what jobs and know
which models you are going to use for each job. People tell me that punk
zombies and hanged are awesome. I don’t use them, I have never had a need to
use them as I have other models that do their jobs. I know what these models
are and know how to use them.
Lock down your VP – obviously, but if you do it well
enough or fast enough you are putting pressure on your opponent to try and stop
you.
Only fools rush in – Evaluate the merits of the moves you
are making, plan ahead and if its not going to gain you anything don’t do it.
Defensive stance or focus is a good as use of that ‘spare’ AP as anything. Is
it really a good idea to leap a Blessed into combat just because you can?
Learn how to apply pressure – look for your opponents
stress points and try to exploit them. Have they taken breakthrough with only 2
fast models on the table? Well instead of using Howard to kill a larger target
use him to take out the two scheme runners and the first crack will begin to
appear.
DONT PANIC! – If you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose. If
the game has slipped beyond critical mass then see how you can make the most of
it. Put yourself in a position where you still play for every VP, something
might slip for your opponent. If not play your best and trace the game back to
where you lost it then work out what to do not to lose it there next time.
Have self belief – You are as good as other people, you
just make mistakes. Other people make mistakes too. The top players don’t make
many mistakes but they still make them. When you make a mistake try not to
telegraph it, people might not have noticed you have made one. In fact top
players might make loads of mistakes, it’s just that no one notices!
You are playing against people, not machines (machines
would be easier to beat). You are as good a player as any of those people,
apart from me obviously.
Should you change Masters, change factions?
No, if you like the faction and master you are playing
then keep it, if you want to change then change. Changing won’t make you a
better player (unless you’re changing to Gremlins or McMourning which are obviously
bent) it will actually make you worse for a while as you learn them.
A good player is a good player because of how they play, not the tools they use.
