A very quick post-event update from my last blog post; Frozen Pool.

I had a great time at the Troubleshooters event; winning Best Painted, and finishing top as Arcanist in sixth place, out of twenty-four players. Not bad considering 'Tina really doesn't like small games and pools.

All my opponents were great fun to play, and I don't think I've ever laughed as much during a game as did in my final round against Karl.

The venue, Battlefield Hobbies, has only been open a few weeks and is already comfortably the best I've been to in England.  If you get a chance to attend and event there I'd highly recommend it.

On the table the only game I lost was fairly unfavorable to begin with; Pandora in Turf War, with terrain, schemes, and corner deployment basically funneling my whole crew into her auras and pulses. That being said I did make a few errors and my opponent, newcomer Marcus, played very well. He's actually one of the most promising new players I've played in a long time.

Officially though I'm blaming that loss on some fiend stealing my tea before the round and replacing it with coffee, bleh. In other words I was basically poisoned.

Pool wise; The Soulstone Miner and a couple of upgrades probably should be replaced with two mole-men in future otherwise I'm fairly happy with it.

One key piece of feedback I did got on my pool ahead of the event was on the lack of December Acolytes. So I thought I'd address that quickly;

The Acolyte is a great model, significantly ahead of the power curve at it's cost.  The issue I had including it in my pool was firstly that Raspy is enough shooting for a 45ss list, adding much more is almost certainly too much. Secondly 7ss was a difficult amount to fit around the other models I wanted in the list.  Finally in all the situations where I felt I'd want the Acolyte for advanced deployment the Soulstone Miner does the same job for 1ss less.

Note here that I'm only talking about this list/pool.  Acolytes are generally speaking great. My point is this; it's not enough to be great, you must also fit into and serve a purpose in the pool/crew to make the cut. Cassandra is great, but she didn't make it into the list either.

I also wanted to say thanks to the several people came up to me at the event to tell me they enjoyed this blog, and my recent appearance on the Schemes and Stones podcast. Which was really nice of them.  It's great to know some of the things I give my time to the community for are appreciated.

I mentioned in a previous post that I favour announcing schemes in advance of an event, and following recent discussions on social media I thought I'd expand on why.

The current default for events in the UK is to only provide strategy and deployment in advance and scheme pool on the day of the event.  I'd like to see this change, so that the default is to announce the entire scenario in advance (barring terrain and opposing faction for obvious reasons).

To my mind there are three advantages to doing this;

Time Saving
Tournaments are often pushed for time and fitting enough rounds of Malifaux into a day is a tricky thing.  Providing; strategy, schemes and deployment ahead of time would allow players to be better prepared, and shave some time off crew selection each round. It will help more games get to turn five.

Fewer non-Games
Malifaux is at times a game of mistakes. I've lost count of the number of games my opponents have lost during scheme selection. I always think this is a bit of a shame, and it's certainly not fun for either player. By giving players the opportunity to think about games in advance and avoid auto-lose pitfalls it means we'll have more games where one player hasn't lost before the deployment flip.

More interesting crews
Discussing the tactics with friends and tinkering with lists is fun in itself. Right now thinking on the fly players more often than not play it safe and stick to the same options every time. Giving objective sets in advance gives players more opportunity to play with ideas and come up with more interesting builds.  This will make games more diverse and raise the standard of play.


So what're the arguments against announcing schemes in advance? Two are commonly deployed;

Crew selection 'on the fly' is an important skill
Tournament games are time limited as a practicality, not because the game itself demands they be timed. Where possible the game should be about players making the best decisions they can, not testing their reaction times.

That said even with this proposal in place players will still need to react to the terrain and opposing faction. So even if this is a skill we want in the game, it's not invalidated by this change. Skilled players can still use their experience to react and build to take advantage of terrain and opposition.

Time to prepare makes it too easy for experienced players
The truth is with ten minutes or ten days to prepare experienced players are far more likely to build a better crew and pick the right schemes than a new player.  I suspect any advantage veterans did gain will be more than offset by the games they won't auto-win in early rounds because a new player didn't see how a particular scheme interaction would work given five minutes prep time.


TLDR:  I think this change would enable more tournament games to play the full five turns, raise the standard of play at all levels of the game, and lead to more interesting and fun games overall.


I'm aware a number of prominent people disagree with me on this. I want to be clear that I very much respect these people and their opinions. I'm perfectly capable of getting along with people I disagree with.

The M&SU approach Pandora with care.

Last Saturday I got to my first tournament in a few months. Having been out of the game for a while I expected to be rusty and so made the trek north to the 'So it is Written' event in Sunderland with mindset that this was essentially three practice games.

To be honest I was a little apprehensive the night before the event, would I still enjoy the tournament game after so long away?

By the morning this had evaporated though and I was genuinely excited to catch up with people and push my toys around again.

On the table I avoided major blunders, but I didn't manage my time as well as I needed to. Time management in tournament games is a critical skill, and one I clearly need to work on, as it cost me at least 5 VP diff during the day.

With that in mind here are my top tournament time management tips;

The timer I use at events

Know what time it is:  Most TO's don't make regular enough time calls. Get a app on your phone, wristwatch, or a countdown timer for your tournament bag. Set it at the start of each round and check it regularly, That way you'll always know how you're doing for time.

Practice Timed Games:  The week before a big event it's worth getting one or two games in using the timing rules on the day, so you get the feel for them.

Plan for four turns:  You can't rely on getting all five turns into a tournament game, even if you play quickly enough you may have a slow opponent. Plan to be winning at the end of turn four and five.

Think about lists in advance:  Most events give the strategy and deployment for each round in advance, It's often helpful to make 'dummy' lists in advance of the event to use as starting points once you see; terrain, opponent, and schemes. This speeds up crew selection and helps you think about how you want to approach the game in advance. 

This is also the main reason I'm keen for more events to publish scheme pools in advance, but that's a topic for another time.

I've had a bit of a flurry of hobby activity in the last week or so and thought I'd post a quick round up.

Firstly I had the pleasure of playing at the Elementary tournament last weekend. Long time Malifaux player, and Guybrush Threepwood impersonator, Aidan Kirk did an admirable job of TO'ing the 26 player event and acting as spare player at the same time.

Round four in full swing

I'm typing this as I'm still coming down from an incredible weekend at the largest ever Malifaux tournament.  Mike, Matt, Lee and the rest of the guys put on a fantastic weekend of 'Faux for sixty-six players and I enjoyed every minute. Having the venue under forty drive minutes from my house was also a bonus.

This post is going to be a very quick high level of the event from my perspective.  I may drill into some specifics in later posts.

First I should congratulate the overall winner Ben Crowe with Outcasts, as well as John Wharton in second, and Graham Bursnell in third with Arcanists. It's good to see the podiums going to a range of different places in UK, another sign of the health of the game across the country.

The whole event was a blast and it was great to catch up with so many folks from around the UK for two days of great games and better banter.  The community took to the event in great spirit. With my first round opponent arriving late following some overindulgence I had to be re-paired.

On Saturday night most of us headed over to a local brewery for a private function in their bar. This gave some of us a chance to catch up with a special guest and living Malifaux legend Neverata (aka Jo). For those who don't know her, Jo can claim a significant part of the credit for popularizing the game in the UK.  Back in the day we attended many events together and I had a great time chatting and reminiscing about battles past.

Sunday morning dawned and after a night at the local brewery a number of players looked as green as a gremlin, literally and figuratively.

My opponents across the weekend, most of who I'd never played before, were all great guys which seemed representative of the experiences throughout.

On the table I had a lackluster time, ending up 16th of 66 players with 11 TP and +3 Diff, from; three wins, two draws, and a loss. Hardly a stellar performance but not something I'm ashamed of, despite being repeatedly told I'm 'washed up' by a few players.

Naturally my thoughts run to all the twists of luck against me over the weekend but the truth is my play overall simply wasn't good enough. A pair of stupid errors turned my fifth round game from a win to draw. I chose one scheme incorrectly which cost me a victory point, and made a basic activation order error which cost me another.  Getting my game rate up again will smooth these errors over in the longer term.

My crew selection was also a little all over the place. I need to do more list building in advance so I've better 'default' options to tailor on the day rather than building complete lists on the fly.

In the end My only loss came to overall event winner and all round great guy Ben Crowe with Levi in Stake a Claim, and was always going to be a poor match up for me and I need to think about that in more detail.

The growing tournament scene is a testament not only to the brilliance of M2e but also to the welcoming nature of the UK Malifaux community, and long may that continue.

My new Kaeris

I've had a hectic month of work and running the Team GT have limited progress on my own crews.  Likewise my #ToMB slow grow efforts have been well, slow. I did get a couple of games in using that month's purchases; Malifaux Child and The Captain.

The former has proved very useful and is now a default choice. At this point I'm thinking that The Captain looks better on paper than he actually is, more testing will tell.

I did manage to finally finish painting Kaeris, and I'm quite pleased with the result. Switching out the basic wings for some larger resin ones coupled with an elevated basing position really give the model more impact, she now stands at almost 10cm table to wing-tip.


With my newly finished master in case I headed to a small one day event at Games of War in Seaham. The event was a ton of fun, everyone was a great laugh. I managed to take first place on TP, and scored best painted to boot. A very positive result for what I was planning to simply treat as a test run for Kaeris.

I want to make this post the beginnings of my thoughts on how to play Kaeris. I'm far from having all the answers yet but I'm at the stage where I feel I have something to contribute with her.  I'm finding the M&SU's mechanical angel much more subtle than the flame-thrower wielding menace I'd presumed. She seems to be a skirmisher, at her best on the edge of the action. Swooping in to take out lone enemy and then darting back into cover.

This is partly because her defenses are somewhat weak for an Arcanist, her common resist stats are both sixes and other than Armor 1 there's nothing between the enemy and her twelve wounds.  This means being careful with her placement, subject to the ministrations of  major damage dealers Kaeris will fold fast.

Fortunately speed isn't a problem. Flight combined with Wk6 gives her impressive speed over the board. The Grab and Drop upgrade also gives her the potential to move another eight inches with an enemy in tow.  Using this positioning power is going to be key to getting the most out of her.

This has led me to a general core which is;

Kaeris
+ Upgrades [4]
+ 6ss Cache [2]

Malifaux Child [3]

Joss [10]
+ Imbued Energies [1] 

Mechanical Rider / Howard Langston [12] 

Soulstone Miner [6]

This gives a 38ss block gives me solid options to build up forty-five and fifty stone crews. I'll run through this core quickly below. I'm going to skip over Kaeris' upgrades as there's an article worth of materiel on those alone.

The Malifaux Child is the cheapest way to hand out burning to your own stuff. I can ping two models with Flaming Halo by throwing any tome to trigger 'Turn it Up'. This then lets Kaeris activate and draw cards via 'Truth In Flame' or lets the models take advantage of the burning, depending on her upgrade selection.  At a pinch it can also cast Immolate or Accelerant from Kaeris' card and has a mediocre healing spell of its own.

Joss makes it into my core as Kaeris' skirmishing nature means she will frequently need a solid combat blocker to hold the centre and prevent your crew being shattered by combat monsters. The customer facing roll of getting charged by Hungering Darkness and Rogue Necromancies is a thankless task, but someone has to do it.

There's been a lot of recent debate about the Mechanical Rider, I'm finding it potent but not overwhelming at the moment, that being said it offers a solid range of support and objective running options and so mostly makes the cut.  I swap her out for Miss Step (Howard) when I need a much more aggressive choice.

Finally the Soulstone Miner adds some additional objective running capacity. I've a separate article planned for this one in the not too distant future so I'll not dwell on this hear. 

Those are my initial thoughts on Kaeris and crew options. There's plenty I haven't tried yet and I'll add more thoughts as I go.

Quick post following last week's Rumble Under the Gaslight II tournament (aka JimmyFaux2). This was held at a great local store an hour south of me in Sheffield; The Outpost.  For a local event the venue was certainly packed, 32 players played shoulder to shoulder over three rounds.

At three rounds a 32 player 40ss event will always have a higher level of randomness in the final standings than normal. Top players may not clash due to the breadth of the field, and smaller games make it hard to build a crew against adverse scheme pools and masters at the same time.

My hopes of the podium were dented with the round one pairings. I was matched up against UK Masters runner up Greg Piskosz, which is the game I want to quickly touch on. My Ramos was facing his had Jack Daw, playing Turf War with; Distract, Assassinate, Vendetta, and Deliver the Message.

Round one in progress

Early on turn three I delivered the message (unannounced) for 2VP, and Greg was limited to 2VP on Vendetta, both our crews were engaged in the Turf War zone and highly distracted. We looked at each other and shook hands for a 9-9 draw, four activations into turn three.

I like the fact we've reached a point in Malifaux where players can read a situation and know the outcome of the game. This speaks of a maturity in the game and a positive state for competitive play.

I managed to win my next two games, and ended the event in fourth, behind a podium of players on three of three wins. Congratulations to them.

Final Standings included another Gremlin podium, in this case for newcomer JP Stubbings. It's good to see we're starting to see a mix of factions doing well at events which points to a good level of balance in the meta at the moment.

Fourth still nets me just over ninety rankings points, which as the year progresses is a result well worth having. For those who haven't seen the UK's Malifaux rankings have moved from RHQ to a new site; www.malifauxrankings.com

My thanks to the guys who made that possible.

I'm back from SmogCon, alive. It's been a great weekend and I wanted to start by thanking all the people who made it possible, especially; Mike, Conrad, Lee and Matt. Without there guys the event wouldn't have been half the success it was.  I also wanted to thank my opponents and everyone who stopped by to say hello over the weekend, it was really great to meet you all.

For those who don't know SmogCon is a mini convention run over three days, and this year it hosted a significant number of Malifaux events including; story encounter, ranked tournament, random doubles, and a starter box tournament. 

There are a number of important (and not so important) things to cover from the weekend. So I'm going to skip the blow-by-blow from my perspective and focus on the key points I want to cover.

Guild Ball

There were demos of the new medieval fantasy football (soccer) miniatures game Guildball. Its Kickstarter launched on Friday and was funded in under twenty-four hours.

I got a demo of the game with it's creators at the Con and was very impressed with it.  It flowed brilliantly and had a real depth of play. There of lots of key action and resource management decisions built in.  I can really see this making a great tourney game in the future. 

Also I can't stress enough that it's NOT a Bloodbowl clone, unlike so many fantasy sports games we see. GB is it's own entity and even playing with card cutouts in the demo the world it was set in felt rich and deep. I can only imagine how cool it will be once it's played with painted teams and terrain. I can see this game surpassing Bloodbowl, and that's not something I say lightly.

So if you love Malifaux I'd recommend taking a look at Guild Ball. The game gripped me so much I've backed the KS, which is a first for me. I've never found a game I was willing to pay for before it's release but this is exceptional start to a promising new game..

New hotness aside it's time to dig back into my true gaming love, Malifaux...

non-Standard Deployment

The main event of the weekend was a 50ss, five round, fixed faction tournament. It's prominent as it's first major event in the UK to use non-Standard deployment types, as per the new Gaining Grounds.

These present some really interesting new tactical challenges; for example Power Ritual becomes quite a different scheme in corner deployment. This provides even more depth and re-playability to event play. So I'm glad to see these being adopted into the scene and hope we see them become the norm going forward. 

As Justin outed me on a recent Malifools episode I should declare an interest here. I was privileged to be close to the development of the new version of Gaining Grounds. Something my fellow players abused me for mercilessly whilst cutting my deck.

VP Before Diff

Another thing that marked the main event out was it was scored using; Tournament Points, Total VP and finally VP Differential. The use of total VP scored ahead of VP Differential in the scoring is the reverse of the UK (and GG) norm, where events are scored; TP, Diff, then VP.

While this in no way compromised the event it did reinforce for me that the way we normally do it is better. There were several instances where I could easily have given my opponents extra VP in game with no detriment to myself. This created opportunities to let players gain unnatural advantages.

The best example was in a game I lost to my club-mate Ant Hoult. It would have been easy for us to have the game end 9-10 and we would have both been better off for it.  Obviously we played properly and I lost 4-8, but the risk of this system remains.

The 7th Faction and Wave Two

Speaking of my club mate Ant, he won the main event, so congratulations to him. One of the main stories of the event however was the third place finish for Rob Smith with Gremlins. This marked a significant podium for the 7th faction.  Gremlin players have taken some lighthearted abuse for 'not being a proper faction'.  This podium may mark the tide turning. I'll be keeping an eye on the bayou.

The weekend also marked the start of Wave Two in competitive play. I encountered Kirai, Dreamer and Lucius during the weekend, as well as other W2 choices here and there.  Molly, Collette, and Wong also saw play so it's safe to say the full selection of models have now landed.  It's to soon to make meta and power level call but I'm looking forward to seeing how these shape up.

SmogCon

The Con itself is a primarily a Hordes Warmachine event and at times this was very evident. There were no Malifaux appropriate tables in the SmogPit (open play area) and the staff there seemed to have little idea what a Malifaux was. I heard tell an event I didn't attend had to be run by one of the players as the pit-staff didn't know what was happening.

This was a little disappointing and I'm hoping when I go to SmogCon next year that Malifaux feels more integrated and less tacked on. That being said I am planning to go back so it isn't a deal breaker.

So that's a very condensed write up of three days at SmogCon. I'm already looking forward to next year. Onward and upward!

The state of my wristband after the weekend.

Quick post from the hotel room the night before SmogCon. I've arrived to a warm welcome at the venue. The tournament regulars are all on fine form and there's been some great banter in the bar. 

The UK Masters was this weekend, there's already a lot of great coverage of the weekend on twitter (see my last post) and on the new show from the Malifools; Fools Daily so I'm going to keep this short. Masters is at once the end of the previous year's season and the first of the new year. 

My weekend began by driving a car I'd owned for less than an hour on a 125 mile road trip to Craig 'ukrocky' Johnson's house to rest up the night before the event. I awoke on his sofa the following morning to tipple threat of; winning a signed rules manual on facebook, the forum demanding I do some moderation and a hamster trying to kill me.  Needless to say this led to some confused early responses.

Once awake and after my tournament companions had quickly undercoated some models required for the day's play, we set off. This was my third masters and as always the atmosphere was phenomenal. It was great to see a number of new faces experiencing the event for the first time. To players who've never experienced the level of play at a masters event it's hard to describe.  These were some of the toughest and most enjoyable games of Malifaux I've ever played, and judging by conversation with new players and old hands alike I was far from alone.

I made it through the group stage on Saturday before succumbing to Luke Cocksedge by a point in extra time of the quarter finals on Sunday. I was thrilled with the weekend and it only remained for me to watch Craig be crowned UK master, beating Greg Piskosz into second place.  Greg is a newcomer to the scene and a great player, and also the only other player to beat me over the weekend.

Craig's Secret Weapon

Some comment is being made of the fact all four finalists had Lynch with them, if not necessarily using him for every game. While I'll admit he is clearly very strong I think this may have been helped by the knockout quarter final game of Turf War being played with the scheme pool; Vendetta, Make them Suffer, Bodyguard, and Assassinate. This pool is a nightmare for a number of crews but works well for Lynch and this may well have contributed somewhat to the results over the weekend.

For my own part the event exposed some key weaknesses in my game I'll need to plug if I'm to remain at the top tables much longer.  I've been relying on Ramos too heavily and need to branch out more to cover those few games he's ill equipped for. I also need to broaden my crew selection before SmogCon, and want to experiment with a more aggressive version of Ramos.

I should also say a big thanks to Dave Brown for running the event, everyone who played in the open event on the Sunday, and the event sponsors;


I use products from all three of these companies and have never had anything but a great experience with them.  So that's me signing off for some much needed sleep and hobby time.

A quick post to say the UK Malifaux masters is this weekend. For those who don't know the masters is a an invitational event for the top ranked players in the country.
Tweets about "#MXmasters"

The groups have just been drawn for the UK masters taking place in a few weeks time;
 
Group 1
Joel Henry
Anthony Hoult
Rob Smith
Mike Taylor

Group 2 
James Doxey
Jakab Sennett
Matt Ledgewood
Gregory Piskosz

Group 3 
Jimmy Balderstone
Tim Brown
Martin Wodehouse
Craig Johnson

Group 4 
Luke Cocksedge
Robert Balmforth
Nathan Chenery
Maria Wieland

The first player in each group were seeded.

It's been a couple of weeks since I put pen to paper, or more like stubby fingers to grimy key board. It's been a busy few weekends; I've moved offices with work, had my central heating breakdown, played in a couple of events, and had my central heating fixed.

The first event was a one day event at The Outpost down in Sheffield. It's a good local venue, picture a GW store that has plenty of gaming space, sells non-GW products and doesn't constantly try and sell you glue like a creepy guy at the school gates.  I managed to break our TO Jimmy's winning streak at his own tournaments by coming in first, beating tournament travel buddy Ant Hoult in the final round.  The event was a lot of fun and I'm glad I made the effort to attend, especially as I was staring down the barrel of a full weekend event the following weekend.

This takes me to Scotland. For an English nerd to write about traveling to the frozen north beyond Hadrian's Wall at this time of year and NOT reference Game of Thrones will be challenging, but I'll try.

The weekend just past was the Scottish Grand Tournament, held at the Common Grounds venue in scenic Stirling.  The SGT is at once the first two day M2e event and the last two day event of the 2013 season.

I'd heard very positive things about the venue prior to attending and I have to say that when Ant and I arrived from a long car journey on Friday night it was all justified.  It's a great gaming space with a well stocked shop and the staff even got how I like my tea down to an art. Win.

Gaming proper began on the Saturday with three rounds of forty soulstone games. I played three fun games against three new opponents, playing; Lady J, Seamus, and Outcast Misaki. The latter of which is terrifying when she's out of soulstones.  I managed to get ahead in all my games and ended up on three wins with a +7 VPD.  Play of the day was sending a spider through the 6" no-score zone in Recon, forcing my opponent to choose between letting it pass or taking it on with Taelor, but in doing so losing control of a quarter of the board.  All my games were fun and my opponents great people.

More photos from the event here

Between this event and practice I've played probably half a dozen 40ss games now and it's an interesting format. I think perhaps the melee and summoning masters get an easier ride at this level than perhaps they should. I'll be playing in at least one 40ss event (Vapnartak) early next year so it'll be interesting to see how that thesis holds.

With the main event over I helped out adjudicating in the hardcore which saw Malifool's Mike Marshall triumph in this silly turbo format. At some point after the event it was announced the hardcore was ranked, which I though personally may have been uncalled for but maybe that's me.

A group of us from the event set off up a hill looking for a pub which served food. Soon we came across a pub which didn't do food but saw another one further up the hill which looked more promising. Several more promising pubs and much altitude later we abandoned that idea as to continue onward to the next pub atop Unknown Kadath we'd surely need Sherpas and oxygen. On the trek back to the lowlands, ever wary of Night Gaunts, we found a Chinese.

Some of the best trophies I've ever seen.

I'm not really sure why no one has held a Malifaux tournament in Halifax before, the names are so similar it's practically halfway through the breach already.  So this Sunday that sorry state of affairs was rectified by local henchman Mike3838, who ran; Halifaux.

After three rounds of fun play Joel Henry bested the other twenty-one of us and added another win to his record.  I played like a noob most of the day and came in fifth, which I'm comfortable with. I learned a lot and have tons more to mull over between now and my next event in two weeks time.

As I talked about in my previous post in most events you need to win big. This was the case on the day. I ended the event 2-1 and on a +7VPD. The size of my VPD put me top of the six players on 6TP, hence I finish 5th and not 10th. This sort of difference matters in the rankings points marathon the top UK players are running in.

Spurred on by something in my second round at Halifaux I want to talk about ending rounds and timing in competitive play.

I lost my second round match when the final activation was called. One more activation and I could have walked a Steam Arachnid once and won the game instead of losing it, no flips required. Now fair enough I; chose the wrong schemes, deployed badly, played badly, black jokered a critical flip, placed my summoned models incorrectly, and played badly. Never mind all of that, the round ending one activation early definitely cost me the game.*

This travesty aside it did get me thinking about event timing and when and how to end a round. Before I start I want to be clear that I'm not criticizing any tournament organizers here, there is no right answer, someone will always win or lose by whatever margin you allow. I just want to talk options and general approach.

I've seen many players complain, and even get angry about exactly when a game ends. Another turn more or less and I would have won, another activation... Thanks to variable game length this even happens when there is no time limit, the dreaded 10+ for a turn six.

In tournaments however there is a time limit, for practical reasons if nothing else.

So how to handle drawing games to a close?  I have a few thoughts;

Clear Timings  -  Our perception of time changes depending on what we're doing, this is very true in tournament situations.  TOs need to be very clear with their players about how long remains in the round. Warnings after a quarter, half, and three quarters time elapsed are really important, but often overlooked.  There should also be warnings as players approach any deadlines.

Full Turns - Generally it's better to play a complete turn than a part turn. It leaves players feeling less hard done by than if the game ends between crucial activations.  It isn't always practical to let players play a complete final turn though. I remember having a venue packed up around me and Craig at a doubles event once. It think what's key here is calling final turn with long enough for players to play a full final turn, probably around the twenty minutes remaining mark. This will minimize the need to have games end between activations.

Player Honesty - In my experience players will often try and sneak in an extra turn after last turn has been called, or continue playing after last activation is called to try and complete the turn. Whatever the rule is I think it should be respected by the players and enforced by the TO. As someone always loses out.

Practice - Players should play more timed games at their local clubs, even if only intermittently. Just so they can get the hang of how long they'll have, and how to think quickly. This will help the avoid falling down due to time limits.

And controversially;

Penalties - It is up to players to get through their games in the time limit allocated to them.  It's worth considering applying an automatic penalty to players who haven't completed their last turn (be that turn one or turn six) and handed in their score by the end of the time limit. That way players are actively encouraged not to start turns they cannot finish, and to get through their turns.

Now this last option should only be applied once the other four are in place, or at least the first two.

So those are my musings on calling time at events. As always I'm keen to hear thoughts from people; here, by PM on the Wyrd boards or on Twitter.

I also wanted to say well done to Adam Boyes for winning the painting on the day with his amazing crew. Adam is truly a miniature painting artist. Check out the gallery of his work here; miniature-painting-tuition.co.uk.


*To be clear, yes I'm joking, I deserved to lose the game the timing had little to do with it.
 Photos in this post were looted from Mike3838's twitter feed. 

This weekend was the Malifolk tournament down in Norwich so me and tournament travel buddy Ant Hoult rented a car and headed south through torrential rain and dire warnings about the risks of not paying for overpriced excess protection.

After four hours on the road we landed at the obligatory travelodge with obligatory frightening night desk guy. Tonight's special guest had this uncanny valley joy about him, like he was feigning human emotion until it was time to kill again. Fortunately the hotel room was comfortable and with all the spare furniture stacked against the door I got something resembling sleep.

Next morning we arrived at the venue to discover the place was a quaint old stone building, which turns out to have been an nine-hundred year old leper hospital. Surely good news for the Resurrectionists among us. Inside the Malifools and other regulars who'd made the trip were gathering and we got caught up ahead of a frantic days Malifaux.

The day was fixed master, so I'd opted for my main man Ramos. I actually wound up using the same models in my lists all day with slightly different upgrades and soulstone pools; Ramos, Electric Creation, Joss, Miss Step, Johan, and two Molemen.