A Tidbit of M3E

As I mentioned in the last post, I have been getting in games of the Malifaux M3E closed beta. Up until recently, I have been under a NDA to keep quiet, but recently Wyrd lifted it, so I can now blabber all I want. My opponent through the beta was Dane. That was it. Try as we might, we couldn't get any other testers in our group to come get some. But a game is a game. And Dane is a great opponent to be saddled with. I'm not going to go into any rules details, those are elsewhere, about to be opened, and may have already changed. Anyway, on to the battle.

This game was a couple of weeks ago, before the announcement of the open, I believe. We were both playing Outcasts. I set up a board we hadn't used before, and I really liked it. It was very different to Dane's board which are all hard cover, small blocks. The strategy with Turf War, with Detonate Traps, Breakthrough, Dig Their Graves, Power Ritual, and Outflank. I seem to be following my M2E habit of choosing my schemes a little poorly.
My list:
Leveticus
2 Waifs
Rusty Alyce
Desolation Engine with Servant of the Dark Powers
2 Necropunks
Scavenger
Void Hunter
5ss

He took:
Von Schill
Steam Trunk
Hannah
Lazarus
FK Librarian
FK Scout with Servant of the Dark Powers
Korpsmann
Hodgepodge Effigy with Fate grow upgrade
4ss

Flank Deployment

I flipped Attacker.

Turn one, my Necropunk charges his Scout, which deployed forward, wiffs, gets wrecked in return. Lazarus drops some shockwaves on DE and Rusty. Rusty flips the Turf marker in my zone and places a Trap Marker behind it to try and limit any sneaky circling shenanigans. Wasn't needed.

Turn two, Von Schill opens up by using some equipment nonsense, rockets Lazarus away from the Desolation Engine, then manages to Red Joker the Engine, who dies. Effigy snags a Turf Marker for Dane. Lazarus drops his shockwave to kill my Necropunk, after several tries, which frees up the scout to push in an remove my marker for Ritual on that side. Turn ends, one each for Turf War.
 Turn three, Leveticus opens up to kill Hannah, but I miscounted how many wounds he had left, only does 1, and goes to move wounds off of Rusty, lives with 1. Awesome. Void Hunter continues to be a nuisance, but eventually dies to a scout who removes my scheme from that corner. This also means I have no way to take that corner. I assume my schemes are done, but forgot Power Ritual only takes a single corner to get first point now. However, before I realize this, my Necropunk jumps in and drops his Freekorpsmann to 1 wound. When the Steam Trunk and Freekorpsmann activate, they both died to the aura Leveticus's crew puts out.

Turn four had a interesting go back that cost me greatly. Wasn't stoked about it then, or now. Hannah ran to the corner to get the Necropunk, but Dane "forgot" armor and so would have left the Necropunk at 1. Instead he went back, took the damage to get a ram for crit strike, basically negating armor, killing the punk. I wonder if we would have gone back if he flipped moderate. Anyhoo. I moved my Abomination from the DE up, having killed the trunk, to get Ritual in his zone, but forgot a Librarian behind a building(guess I should have taken my activation back) who jumped out and killed him, which flipped the middle Turf Marker, denying me the point.

Turn 5, opened up by killing the Emissary(emerged from Effigy on turn 3), who straddled two quarters, so I could flip his zone's Turf Marker to neutral, basically shutting down his chance of getting a second point. After my Scavenger flips the center back to me, and jumps behind a building, Von Schill circles and manages to flip a Red Joker to my Black, killing the Scavenger and returning the center to neutral. Von Schill also give Rocket Boots to Hannah who jumps a building to get in the corner. A quick smudge shows Lazarus is actually in position to get the other corner and Dane gets Outflank. I'm left with not much useful to do, so the game ends.

Final: Me: 1 - Turf War
          Dane: 2 - Turf War and Outflank

I made a couple mistakes, one of which was using a stone to negate the negative flip from cover, which is no longer a thing. I should have taken that stone back, as I didn't actually flip an extra card, and take backs seemed to be the theme. I'm not sure the Necropunk killing the Freekorpsmann instead of going for the scheme was a bad choice, but it may have gotten me another point. I keep sending the DE up all old school, but I think that is a bad choice. He isn't as powerful as he was, and the Abominations are less useful dropped in the center of my opponent's crew, and I only get 1. As to schemes, I could have aced Breakthrough, but Outflank was super tough. I really need to learn which schemes to take. Our maybe it was just luck how the game went. Dane's second scheme turned out to be Breakthrough.

I should be playing another game this Saturday, with open beta rules. We will see how/if anything changed.