Cancon - Scoping out the opposition - Malifaux Tournament Report Part 2

There's still a few minutes before our burgeoning flight of gaming geeks hurtles into the air and whilst the misses cleans her camera lenses for probably the dozenth time, I sit slurping my coffee, finishing my Breakfast of Champions (Full English Fry up) and going over my sources of intelligence on the opposition at Cancon.

As someone, probably famous, and almost certainly a pessimist once put it, preparation and planning, prevents piss poor performance. The 6 P's. As I mop up the last of that breakfast with my slice of fried bread (anyone hungry yet) and equally glutton on the free wifi, I thought I'd share with you the sources of this intelligence. For you see nestled in the painting blogs and the inevitable tournament trash talk threads, certain truths can be glistened, like a prospector in the riverbed, panning the mud to find the pure gold.

Ok, enough of the breakfast talk and analogies.

So what do I know of the competition? Well I know at least eight of the crews out there, getting on for forty percent of the field of play, and I know a lot about the composition of those crews, despite this being a fixed faction, open master tournament.

From the painting threads I've been able to glisten that this rather beautifully painted Jacob crew will be in attendance and the painter was kind enough to even show his second master and say this was the total of his pool for the tourny. I have mixed feelings about going up against this crew. The painting is spectacular and it would be a joy to play against, but I wouldn't stand a chance against this one in a brawl and I'm still struggling against Jacob and Co in general.

in the pics below the painter has substituted Avatar Collette for Beckoners, making his second master Pandora, click on the images for a close up.








It turns out they'll likely be more than one in the team Jacob camp, with the painter behind this second variant dubbing him Colonel Sanders. You can see the resemblance and I wonder if he'll go as far as docking Huggy up to be a chicken or rooster.












Also on the painting threads was this Hoffman crew, which I have to say I love the blue scheme for. Again nothing there I want to face though, especially with Kirai, who lost 20ss of spirits in one activation to the Hoff in my last game.

I also know of at least one, probably two Mei Feng crews and a Misaki crew












Then comes the less tangible intelligence from the trash talk threads that tells me that I'm almost certainly facing.

There's a Collodi crew, which I'd love to play against, as I think I know exactly how to combat him. There's also a Marcus crew and possibly a Lucas crew.

Whether knowing any of this helps me remains to be seen, I suspect not, but it'll give me some areas to reread on the six hour flight and hopefully its given you some eye candy pics and maybe some inspiration for your crews.