Malifaux Monday, or Why Leviticus Should be Nerfed!

Joe came round on Monday for a couple of 25 SS games of Malifaux. He'd been buying a ton of crews from eBay recently and decided to have a break from playing his usual Ressers and try his new Leviticus crew. I hadn't played Perdita in ages so I thought I'd give her a run out in the first game. I took:

Perdita Ortega and 3 SS

Francisco Ortega

Nino Ortega

& 3 Death Marshals

While Joe took:

Leviticus & 5 SS

Rusty Alice

Canine Remains

& 2 Punk Zombies

I hadn't played with the Death Marshals before (in fact I had to paint up two of them about an hour before the game to get them ready!) and looked forward to trying them out as they seem to have some nice abilities.

My Ortegas crew in their Starting positions.

We rolled for strategies and Joe got 'Claim Jump' while I got 'Destroy the Evidence'.

The terrain was set out as shown below. We both announced schemes. Joe took 'Bodyguard' on Leviticus and 'Soulless Life' (which it turns out is illegal when taken with Bodyguard, but it didn't matter in the end). I took 'Bodyguard' on Perdita and 'Breakthrough' as I was already going to have to get into his deployment area anyway to destroy the evidence. The various objective markers can be seen below. We set up our crews on the same sides as our objectives with the exception that I had Nino near Joe's Objective to try and thin out the herd as he tried to claim it. We both decided then that the most likely outcome was going to be an 8-8 draw as we could achieve both our strategies & schemes without coming into contact. But that's not how it turned out!

Joe went first and brought on his free Hollow Waif and then slaughtered the Canine Remains to get a corpse counter that he could use to bring on a second waif. (I must just say here that Joe's poor Canine Remains must have severe psychological problems. In every game Joe plays he takes his faithful Canine Remains only to slaughter it in increasingly horrible ways to get whatever counters he needs. Poor doggy.) He also did various things to ensure he died at the end of the turn. (Leviticus has some weird mechanics!) The rest of his crew did a general advance.
Perdita ran forward to the first evidence marker while the rest of the crew also advanced. The situation at the end of turn one is shown below.

End of turn 1

Turn two saw Levi move round the wood and attack Nino. This was a big surprise for me as I knew little about Levi and his offensive abilities. He successfully cast Unnatural Wasting on Nino, which does half the models remaining wounds plus one. Very nasty! So Nino got the hell out of dodge as there was no point killing Levi as he always comes back anyway. Joe's models moved up as did mine except I ran Perdita across to threaten the Hollow Waifs. (This is the move that would cost me the game.) Rusty Alice tried to kill Perdita but her high defence and SS's prevented this. Francisco then destroyed the first evidence marker.
 

End of Turn 2

Turn 3 saw Perdita attack Rusty Alice but her cover and bad flips saved her. I grabbed the remaining evidence counters and repositioned the rest of my crew. Levi moved forward to attack Perdita with that damn 'Unnatural Wasting'. I was just lucky that Joe was poor at estimating distances otherwise he could have hit me three times for certain death.
 

End of turn 3

Turn 4 saw Levi get iniative and a couple of casts of 'Unnatural Wasting ' saw Perdita dead. We called the game then as the most points I could get now would be 6 and we agreed that Levi could easily get all his. So an 8-6 win to Joe.


The Final Showdown

So onto game 2. We both changed crews but left the terrain the same. I went with Von Schill this time taking:

Von Schill & 3 SS

Freikorps Librarian
Freikorps Specialist
Freikorps Trapper
and 2 Freikorpsman

My starting positions

While Joe stayed with Levi but with a different crew. He took:

Leviticus & 4 SS
Canine Remains
Dead Rider
& 3 Steampunk Arachnids


Joe's starting postions

Joe rolled Slaughter for his strategy, while I got Claim Jump. The marker can be seen below. For schemes Joe took Soulless Life again but this time with Holdout. I took Holdout and Thwart. We set up facing each other as shown below.
Levi did his usual antics killing the Canine remains and summoning waifs. His crew moving up behind the saloon. He also moved his SPA's up out of the wood which was a surprise as they would now be in range of Von Schill. I'd moved most of my crew slightly foward for a rush to the objective near the end of the game and to keep them safe. But I now moved Von Schill forward and shot the lead SPA. But a bad flip and 'Armor 1' saw it survive. I use a trigger to move Von Schill back slightly and moved up the Librarian for support & healing if needed.



End of turn 1

Turn 2 saw me win the initiative for the only turn in either game. Wanting to finish off the SPA's before they could form up I moved Von Schill forward and blew apart two of them. Joe then moved up the Dead Rider into melee range with Von Schill, looking to take him apart next turn. Joe moved up the rest of his models a bit while I fired into the melee. I managed to put a few points of damage on the Dead Rider and when I did hit VS I cheated low to avoid hurting him. 

End of turn 2

 Turn 3 saw Joe win initiative so he Flurried with the Dead Rider and took VS down to 1 health. To try and make sure VS didn't die I activated the Librarian first and made three healing flips on VS but the cards were against me and I only healed 3 wounds. On my next activation I had to take a Terryfying test with VS first which I passed. VS then used his first zero action to Slow the Dead Rider for next turn in case he survived and then his second zero ability to 'Leap' out of melee range and allow him to attack with his pistol. Luckily VS has abilities which give him a positive flip against undead as well as being able to ignore 'Hard to Wound'. As the Dead Rider is Undead  this was not good for him as his Hard to Wound 2 was wasted. Sure enough two shots later the Dead Rider was dead or destroyed or whatever happens to undead dead things. Levi then moved over to the scrap counters from the SPA's to collect them for later use.


End of turn 3

Turn 4 saw Joe win iniative again! So Levi came forward and cast Unnatural Wasting on VS killing him. Time to move my crew into cover from Levi's awesome killing power (and Joe's epic flips). I did move the Specialist near to one of the waifs and did 'Detonate Tanks' hoping to kill it but a poor flip let it escape damage. At this point we decided that Levi wasn't going to be able to prevent me from getting 4 points from Claim Jump as he only had one non-insignificant model and his Slaughter wasn't going to happen so we call it a win for me. I hadn't got Thwart but I did get Holdout as did Joe. He also got Soulless Life so the final score was 6-4 to me.

 End of turn 4

So final thoughts. Honours even but Leviticus is a monster to play against. His free move and Casting Expert mean his threat range is huge and Unnatural Wasting deals massive damage. You really  have to try & kill both Waifs in one turn to stand a chance. Which means some of your models are going to die trying to do it. Not easy. But as usual fun and challenging games against Joe. Time to read up on tactics vs Levi I think.