Demo Games of Malifaux and Dystopian Wars

Took a run up to Ben's yesterday. The idea was for me to demo Malifaux for him and for him to demo Dystopian Wars for me.

I got there about lunchtime and proceeded to unload three trays of Malifaux figures on to the table to let Ben see what they looked like in the flesh (or should that be metal) and also to activate his Ohh! Shiny gene so he got hooked on Malifaux as well. After a quick peruse Ben decided to give Von Schill a try so I choose the Ortegas to keep things fairly simple. We both used just the starter boxes so it was a 25SS game..

After a quick shoot-out between Von Schill & Perdita to show Ben how the various mechanisms worked we got down to our first game. I was so busy explaining things to Ben that I forgot all about taking pictures for the first game. So this will have to be a quick text only batrep.

We flipped for strategies I got Treasure Hunt and Ben got Slaughter. For schemes I went with Bodyguard (Perdita) and Holdout as they were a good combination with Treasure Hunt and Ben went with Bodyguard (Von Schill) and Holdout.

Turn one saw us both advancing and trying to get into good positions. But I did get lucky when Nino flipped the Red Joker for damage on a Freikorpsman doing a total of nine damage which killed him. Turn two saw a more cautious Ben and Perdita used her speed to grab the treasure and move back to safety. Turn three saw Ben hit back doing lots of damage to Santiago, Francisco and Papa Loco. While I was concentrating on keeping Perdita safe. For turn four I decided to try and thin out Ben's forces to make it harder for him to get Slaughter and also because I wanted to do some damage with my wounded models before they died. I had some nice flips and managed to kill the other Freikorpsman and the Librarian but I lost Nino and Francisco. Turn five saw Ben's Trapper killed while the Specialist continued to chase Papa Loco through the woods (his blasts being ineffective against the Freikorps due to their armor). Turn six saw Von Schill unable to do enough damage on Perdita to kill her and a rather bloody game came to an end. I got 6 VPs while Ben managed 4 VPs.

We had time for another game so for a change of pace I went with Collodi's box set plus Zoraida and the Voodoo Doll while Ben stuck with Von Schill. This time I remembered to take photos and they can be seen below.

We flipped for strategies and I got Plant Evidence while Ben got Distract. Ben went with Bodyguard (Von Schill) and Holdout for his schemes while I took Bodyguard (Perdita) and Breakthrough.

I'm not going to give a detailed breakdown of game two mostly because I'm not sure I can remember it all! I used Collodi's speed with his doll shenanigans to plant three of the four pieces of evidence I needed in turn one, with a model ready to place the last one at the start of turn two. While I was racing about Ben was using his firepower to kill three of my dolls in the first turn. Turn two saw me plant the last evidence giving me four VP's. I spent the rest of the game running from Ben and trying to slow him down with my remaining models. It ended up in turn seven with me failing to successfully cast Repulsive which would have allowed me to get into Ben's deployment zone for the win. So we ended up with a 6-6 draw an excellent performance from Ben in only his second game.


Starting positions



Collodi races forwards with his marionettes



The trail of counters marks the passage of Collodi
and the deaths of his marionettes

Collodi runs and hides while the Wicked Dolls form a rearguard

Zoraida heads for Ben's deployment zone

We then cleared the table to set up for our Dystopian Wars game. Ben went with FSA while I had my EotBS. Ben suggested keeping things small and simple and we went with a battleship, three cruisers, and six frigates each. I was so busy trying to learn the game that I again forgot to take photos.

There was so much going on that I'm not going to even try to report what happened. Suffice it to say that early on we both rolled masses of sixes and lots of ships sank. As things evened out on the dice front I managed to eek out a lead in number of ships sunk and when we called the game Ben only had his BS and one cruiser left to my BS, 2 cruisers and four frigates.

So how did the day go? Well I think Ben got a feel for what Malifaux is like to play and how good some of the scuplts are and i think he enjoyed himself. As for me I enjoyed DW but started to see how much of a pain the fixed channel weapons are on my ships. I'm looking forward to my next game of DW on Monday, but that will be a more serious affair at 1200pts against an experienced player down at the Wyverns.