Just plain silly...

Malifaux – This week I decided to break out my Kirai crew, rather than run my standard list I decided to try something silly. I took part in a three player game on my "Hell" table facing both a 35-stone Sonnia and a 35-stone Vonschill list. We deployed in 8"x6" rectangles equally spaced in a triangle.

Here's the list I ran:

Kirai (6 Stone Pool)
Killjoy
Spirit of Lost Love
5 Seishin
Necropunk
Nurse

My idea was to turn Killjoy into a spirit and heal him up with the nurse, than do the same to the nurse and have that nightmare running around the table. I drew the cards to pull it off in my opening hand, however I got overzealous with trying to scare Von Schill back down the water fall, with the necropunk that was in his face turn one. Rather than run away from the thing like I anticipated my opponent doing, he stood his ground and killed it. With Slow to Die I summoned Killjoy, and attempted to run through his crew. Some bad flips on my part limited the destruction and the Nurse and SoLL were to far away to save the big guy.

On the other side of the table I sent Kirai and the Seishin to deal with Sonnia. An amazing turn one saw a Shikome and Ikiryo summoned right in the middle of his crew. The Shikome forced Sonnia to burn through all her stones preventing damage and then the last to not run away when she activated the next turn.  The Shikome died in the following turn, and Sonnia put up Inferno. A healed up Kirai burned through her final Seishin to summon a Shikome which proceeded to kill Sonnia and her explosion wiped out her crew.

The list has some potential to be pretty ridiculous, but I think I burned through my spirits far to quickly and didn't get Kirai anywhere near the action to gain more Seishin. We called the game turn four as it was getting late and I only had the Lost Love, Nurse and Kirai with 1 wound left, on the opposite side of the table from Vonschill, 2 Librarians, and some wounded Friekorps. I think I could have potentially come back given the right draw, but I didn't see a single crow in that last turn and was unable to pull off any of the spells I needed.

OOOOh Scarier

Malifaux – I've been experimenting with some different Seamus lists as of late trying to nail down what's most effective with my favorite serial killer.

I've been pairing him with some of the Spirits lately and have had mixed success. Terrifying checks aren't nearly as effective as Lure to force a model to move so he can charge them. However spamming the most terrifying models you can seems to be a good way to force your opponent to burn through cards. 

Here's the 35SS list I've been working with:

Seamus
Shikome
Onryo
Onryo
Hanged
Crooked Man
7 SS pool

Ranged lists tend to cause this a fair amount of problems, as the spirits don't block LOS so Seamus is missing his army of dead whores to hide behind. Hence he tends to take more damage than with other lists. He also doesn't benefit from Necrotic Ministrations when they die nor does he gain a corpse. 

What this list does good is scare the crap out of your opponent as the Shikome can be in their face Turn 2. The Onryos can give the other spirits a bit of protection with Immediate Revenge and the Hanged can potentially give negative twists to Wp duels (which means the spirits can attack and the opposing model can have a negative twist when defending).

Depending on activation order you might get lucky enough to empty your opponents hand and pull off Slit Juggular (a trigger that's rarely worth using otherwise).

My Favorite List

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Malifaux – I've been playing this list for a few months now and have found it to be very consistent and quite a b1t of fun to play. For competitive Malifaux the sweet spot seems to 35 Soul Stone games, this gives just enough time to get in at least 4-5 turns (for slow players, experienced players will get the full 6-7) in an hour and a half or so. There is also a trend to using the shared strategies and having them be predetermined by the event organizer. Thankfully, most events retain the ability to change your list each round which is far to important an aspect of the game to abandon.

The list I've been playing is as follows:

Seamus

2 – Rotten Belles

1 – Crooked Man

2 – Necropunks

Killjoy

(7) Stones in Pool

The Basics
Your game plan remains basically the same regardless of the strategy you pull. Deploy the Necropunks as far forward as possible, when they activate move twice and cast leap. Depending on the table set up this should put them about 21" from your board edge. If they can't lock a model into melee, they should be positioned as a juicy target. (Note: avoid anything that has a "sacrifice" ability, it prevents slow to die and ruins the plan) Ideally your opponent will have to spend a minimum of 2 AP to kill the Necropunk. With your Slow to Die action you summon Killjoy. Who should be right in the middle of your opponents crew. The odds are he will die, but in the process he should be able to kill one model and put a serious hurt on another. You should get a minimum of 2 turns forcing your opponent to deal with the rampaging beast in their backfield.

Every model in this list has Slow to Die, you should only summon Killjoy on your own turn if it is the end of turn 3 and your opponent hasn't killed anything yet.

The rest of the list is about board control. The Crooked Man should be moving toward objectives and casting Shafted as many times as he is able. The Belles should be used to screen Seamus and protect him from getting engaged in melee. Each turn the Belles should be moving and only casting Lure to set up a shot for Seamus or Distract to limit the AP of threats.

The Other Stuff
If I'm playing this list competitively I'll ALWAYS take Bodyguard and Hold-Out as my schemes. The reason being these are the easiest to accomplish and if things aren't going your way it's easy to run Seamus back towards his deployment zone to protect it. As long as you're able to prevent your opponent from getting their strategy or denying their schemes you'll at least tie.

Seamus is pretty terrible in melee and should avoid it at all costs. I've found that his (3) AP are best spent maneuvering around to protect himself and/or take a shot when he can. Most of the time taking a shot results in a corpse which you should then attempt to cast Arise My Sweet on. His other spells are tempting but situational at best. It's far more important to keep him safe so that .50 cal can do it's job.

As I said I've been playing this same list for a few months against a variety of opponents, and even when they know EXACTLY what you're going to do they will still react similarly to your plays. If they don't deal with the Necropunks they'll tie up a model and slowly grind it away until it becomes necessary to sacrifice and summon Killjoy. The Shafted Markers the Crooked Man can pump out will dictate where your opponent will move as the 2/54 chance of losing a model is a pretty scary proposition.