Malifaux Seamus, Pertida and custom objectives

I have not played Malifaux for a few months, mainly due to school being in the way for both me and my main Malifaux opponent.  We decided to throw together a 35 Soulstone battle with custom victory conditions for two reasons.

One being both of us having become rusty in the rules department  and preferred to focus on our units than the various scenario rules. And the other reasons is quite frankly the various schemes and encounters (Malifaux scenarios/victory condition) often provided us with very bad matchups based upon the choice of Masters and crews involved. While I like the idea of the original schemes, I think both me and my friend want to take the objectives in another direction.
It would for instance be fun to run something resembling a storyline scenario tied to one of the masters rather than the mix and match objectives offered in the books.

So what we did was simple but proved to be a welcome change of pace. 3 Soul Stone crates were placed on the table. Each being worth 5 Victory points each. You had to grab and haul them back to your deployment, points were awarded for having crates in your deployment at the end of turn 6.

The second thing was that victory points were awarded for kills equal to the value of units. Masters were worth 10 victory points. This made for a slightly different pace and playing style as you wanted to preserve units else the opponent would cash in victory points for kills. This made the game completely different from the usual throw everything at each other in the middle and see who survives.

My Resurrectionist crew looked like this:

Seamus with 7 Soulstones
Copycat Killer
Sybelle
2x Rotten Belles
Canine Remains
Necropunk
Bete Noir

My opponent ran the Guild:

Pertida Ortega 3 Soulstones
Abuella Ortega
Santiago Ortega
Francesco Ortega
3x Witchling Stalkers
Watcher

It was a very fun and tense game, I deployed my whole “Seamus entourage” on the left flank and the canine remains and the necropunk on my right flank. The idea was to grab one objective with my fast moving necropunk on the right, while moving up with Seamus and his buddies on the left – seizing both objectives and move towards friendly deployment and try to avoid unnecessary combat. The right flank was weak on purpose so I could bring in Bete Noire  if the dog or necropunk were killed.

Game started promising, my guys did exactly what I had planned. Seamus grabbed one objective and my Necropunk moved up to the other and started moving back. The Guild mainly focused on the centre. Pertida and a Witchling stalker started firing at my weak right flank, barely got over the wall towards my own deployment when both my weak units were killed. So I brough on Bete Noir – grabbed the objective and kept moving towards my deployment (had a card so I could escape off table with her if I had to).

My left flank worked perfectly. It was pretty awesome in turn 3 when Seamus moved back just enough to get one Withcling stalker in his LoS and instantkilled him with his big pistol before he resumed the trek down towards my deployment. At the same time I moved up my Copycat killed and took aim on Abuella which had tried to fire at me in the previous turn – and instant killed her too!

Then Pertida started hounding Bete Noir on the right flank, I hauled the objective into my deployment and escaped off table – thinking I would re-appear in the following turn when someone got killed (then forgetting I had Bete Noir up until the last turn!).
With the help of Seamus by Rotten Belles dashed between cover and ran down to protect the dropped objective while Seamus and the Copycat killer were caught in a gunfight with the Ortega family. Copycat Killer was shot, I brought down Santiago to 2 wounds with one retaliating shot from Seamus before moving south. I also raised a new Rotten Belle to block my pursuers. Pertida used her ability to fire around terrain and messed Seamus up badly. Santiago came around the building and finished the job dropping Seamus dead and leaving the second objective outside my deployment.

Having only a bunch of Rotten Belles left, I charged and killed Santiago with Sybelle, and grabbed the objective and brought it home, securing 2 out of 3 boxes. It was at this time I realized Bete Noir was still off table and would count as killed if I wasn’t able to bring her onto the table. My opponent realized this as well and took a much more defensive posture , doing his best not to kill anyone in my crew as the time was running out. I was also unable to kill any of the two remaining Witchling stalkers which I had attacked with Rotten Belles.

The game was extremely close.

Score for the Guild = 31points

10 points for killing Seamus
2 points for killing Copycat killer
3 points for killing Necropunk
2 points for killing Canine Remains
9 points for Bete Noir being off table
5 points for getting 1 out of the soulstone crates

Score for the Resurrectionists = 28points

10 points for securing 2 crates of soulstones.
18 points total for killing Abuella, Santiago and a Witchling Stalker
Had I been able to bring in Bete Noire I would have pulled off a victory. Nevertheless, a fun game and good alternative victory conditions to the standard one’s.