They had lost Lynch’s trail just north of Malifaux. The pursuit had been tiring and somehow he had managed to outpace the Latigos and their mounts. The horses were exhausted now. Perdita had made the call to quit the pursuit and make their way back to the Latigo Ranch. It was time to regroup, resupply and head out on another hunt. She’d dispatch word of Lynch’s escape when she got home.
They passed down the western side of the city, only the dim glow of lights in the night sky betraying its existence. The Knotwood was to their west, this stretch of land between the city and the forest being surprisingly verdant. They walked to give the horses some respite, but despite the general tiredness all were alert.
Perdita was the first to spot the change… strange scratchings at the bases of the trees they passed. She gave a low whistle signalling a pistolero to gather the horses, while she and others from the family pressed forward, guns in hand.
Gavin and I got back into the Malifaux groove following my break for holidays with a 35SS game of Perdita against Hamelin, using the Carve a Path Strategy. We played without Schemes, in the interest of time. This eases things, but makes differentiating the scoring difficult. The Strategies in Malifaux are well designed: getting a couple of points is quite straightforward, but scoring a couple more is hard! Here are the two crews. I love Gavin’s Alt Hamelin (Catelin Abernathy) and her feline inspired crew.
The game was a tight affair, with both crews making good use of the blocking effect of the trees. Initially Perdita and Francisco moved a strategy marker along my right. Similarly Catelin and the Ailuromaniacs (Stolen) moved a marker up Gavin’s right. Things were cagey. Schrödinger’s Cat (Nix) and Papa Loco had a good scrap in the model, with some minor supporting models. Where possible I took out rats, er cats I mean, to try to prevent a Rat King from emerging.
I was ahead on points having used a Reckless Pistolero to slow Catelin’s efforts on Gavin’s right, but I hadn’t been focussed enough on my own left. The way to push the scoring in this strategy is to move the marker into your opponent’s deployment zone, but I had allowed Perdita to join the fray in the middle (getting a bit bogged down trying to deal with Nix). This left Francisco alone to move it and he wasn’t quire quick enough to get it where it needed to be.
Santiago needed to rescue Perdita and Gavin managed to clear the stalling Pistolero. It was clear the game was going to end in a draw… Gavin also managed to get a Rat King summoned and it went to play with Perdita, narrowly failing to finish her off. I had 4 soulstones for this game and I spent all of them performing damage prevention flips for Perdita!
This was a great game, as always, with loads of cool moments. Malifaux remains one of the great storytelling games. The abilities are so evocative. Looking forward to our next game.
Scratches. Lots of scratches all over her, all over all of them! Perdita dragged Santiago. She wasn’t at all happy with his colour. He was deathly pale, some kind of pox having taken him over. Papa, too, was in a bad way, but mostly induced by his careless disregard for the dangers of explosives. Francisco carried him. She’d seen him recover from worse. She was looking forward to getting home. This hunt had not gone well…
Until next time,
Owen