25SS Malifaux on Vassal

I don't know about you but there are many things that I like about living in the country, but when the snow decides to come down you are pretty much trapped in the house until a nice plough comes along.  This is especially true when you have a rear wheel drive car thats about as much use in the snow as a pair of rollerskates. On the plus side though, it does mean that your significant other doesn't make you go shopping or clear out the garage, which meant that I was able to get a couple of games of Malifaux in over Vassal this weekend.

I have a tournament coming up next month at Tabletop Nation so thought I would get a couple of practice games in.  As this event is aimed at new players it has some interesting crew creation rules.  Basically you get a starter box, a totem, a blister and if you can summon, an extra summoning blister.  Games will be 25SS

For reasons that I'm not entirely sure of, I've decided to take Rasputina with the Essence of Power, but haven't nailed down my blister choice, so I used these games to try out a couple of things.

First game was against @leebattrick and his Dreamer Crew.  Strategy was Shared Reconnoiter and I took the straight boxed set (so 3 Gamin and an Ice Golem)  Rasputina proved to be an absolute beast, lobbing Decembers Curse out with abandon and pretty much destroying Lees crew singled handed.  However Chompy survived on one wound and did what Chompy does killing Raspy and denying me Bodyguard.  Game ended up 3-2 to Lee.

The Golem didn't do very much other than get killed, though I did learn about his excellent defensive trigger, well worth cheating a tome in for.

Second game was against @gorillawizard and his Pandora crew.  This time we played destroy evidence.  Now in this game I broke the crew hiring rules as I didn't realise that you were constrained by the physical models you get in the box - I assumed that they were just defining the models you could take - and took 4 Ice Gamin with a Silent One.  Sorry Mark.  It turned into a very tough game that ended 1-0 to Mark (he got the neutral evidence marker)  Silent one was pretty decent, but I was hampered badly in this game with speed.  The Raspy crew is just so slow :(

So that leaves me with trying a Blessed or going outside the Cult of December meme and taking something like a Mechanical Rider.  Need some more practice I guess, got plenty of time to decide.

Now I previously talked about playing Maifaux on Vassel and I have to say that with practice it does become a lot more intuative - especially once you learn the control keys.  Movement was a lot easier this time and now I know how to kill models and leave counters automatically etc. the games flowed a lot better.  I still find estimating ranges exceptionally difficult, in fact in both games we sort of came to the decision to effectively play with pre measuring, using the handy auras as the measures.  Perhaps some sort of scale measure down the sides of the map would help with that?

Niggles aside though, it was a much better experience and I'm looking forward to getting some more games in - but its not as good as playing a real game :)