Experience experiments

Hi folks,

Just a mini post today. I thought I’d take a brief look at how I select which models to take to a tournament.

I own 2 cases, one can hold approx 40, 30mm base models, or approx 10-15, 30-50mm base models, the other can handle about twice that. In total, I could take my full collection, and pick and choose models for each game. However this got me to thinking, which models might I actually use, and why?

As I’ve said in previous posts, I think Malifaux second edition has done a fine job of balancing out models, so everything I own is now truly a viable option. Logic dictates therefore, that if I take everything (Marcus, Ramos, Mei, and Kaeris, and their supporting crews) I should always have the right tool for the job. However there are a number of filters which I subconsciously (or not) apply to come to a final decision about what I’ll use.

Painting
Let’s kick off with the facts. Most of my stuff is really badly painted. This isn’t (entirely) because I’m a terrible painter, but simply that I don’t dedicate much time to painting, so vague “tabletop standard” is sufficient for me. Despite this, I like to play with models which (from a distance) look like they haven’t just been cut off the sprue and slapped on the base. Therefore generally, unpainted models will be filtered out at this stage.

NOTE: I’ll happily use unpainted stuff in friendly games, but at tournaments where people have put tons of effort into painting, I feel like they deserve to play against a crew which is at least vaguely colourful.

Usefulness
If I know the strategies, and (for instance) know that between them, Marcus and Mei are better suited to them than Ramos and Kaeris, I may well filter out the redundant models. Of course this is generally easier for masters (which heavily dictate how a crew plays) than henchmen/enforcers/minions/peons (I’ll collectively term them “pawns”), which might be useful with anyone.

Experience
This bracket is really the focus of this post. At this stage I’m down to a few masters, and a bunch of other models which I think will be useful for the strategies. Again, here I can filter at the master level pretty easily: I’ve never used Mei in second edition, she’ll stay at home. However, the pawns are more difficult to separate, as they don’t need quite so much knowledge to use effectively.

Specifically, I’m going to focus on 2 models: Miss Step, and the Canine Remains. Both of these feel like useful additions to my crew, however I’ve only got 1 game of experience with each of them.

Miss Step seems pretty obvious for uses (pretty much charge her in, kill stuff, then kill more stuff) so it feels like I could justify taking her despite my lack of experience with her. However she also costs around quarter of my points, which seems to be a lot for a model I haven’t used much.

In contrast, the canine is less obvious in what it does. It’s fast, vaguely resilient, has a debuffing aura, and is cheap (a third the cost of Miss Step). So it seems less justified in terms of knowing what to use it for straight off the bat, but then is it sufficiently cheap that I can spend stones on it? If it really doesn’t work, does it matter? Its only a tiny portion of my overall crew after all.

Subconsciously, my mind seems to be telling me to leave Miss Step at home, and take the canine, but I can’t quite figure out why. Therefore I’m interested to know what you would do in this (or a similar) situation.

Just for reference, the rest of the models I’ll be taking (all of which I have at least 5 games experience with, most I have 10-15 games experience with) are:
Marcus
Jackalope
Myranda
Cerberus
Cojo
Moleman
2 RSRs
2 Waldgeists

As this is just a mini post, there’ll be something more proper up in the next few days.

Until next time

Dave/sssk