Malsqueek

TTS is super slick, but it definitely lacks as a precise tabletop engine versus VASSAL. I'd definitely be interested in another reason to have TTS, though. As far as TTB, we were playing a TTB campaign using Tabletop Simulator, and it is pretty good, so long as your players are more interested in the game than screwing around with the models.

This is pretty much exactly how I run stones in my game (although, I never worked out the pricing like you have here), and it has worked very well for my games.

Those are some pretty slick templates. Gonna just put those right over here in my toolkit next to the exploding pig cart race.

I had good successes with my players doing several different things. Fights that aren't "fights" - Some experimental mining construct with Armor 5 goes rampant and starts attacking miners. There's a crane and a grinder and the encounter started off with the construct putting a girder through a group of 6 miners for maximum impact. The fated aren't going to be able to duke this one out. Do they rescue the remaining miners and kick down the ramp, or use the crane to try to disable the construct? Gremlin ambush during a caravan using literally dozens of exploding pigs. You're already on a cart, and there's more than you can shoot. RUN! (Begin frogger-like tactical encounter with some shooting from pigback and avoiding obstacles in the road to keep the exploding pigs from blowing you up). This one was fun enough that they never really even considered hopping off the cart to fight. Plus, it opened with "in between flashes of lightning, you see some faint glittering off in the trees. Moments later eight sparkling streaks race towards the carts" They will shoot the ones coming for them, detonate the second piggy when the first one dies, and when the other three carts evaporate in forty foot pillars of fire, they get the hint. Queue awesome encounter. Fights that are actually just skill challenges with a damage track - I had a giant pre-breach artefact which was birthing pods full of soulstone infused mud golems two dozen at a time. These groups only had 8 wounds per, but I treated them as a single entity which suffered a single wound per hit, plus one per blast. The artefact would continue birthing these pods until the fated found a way to disable it using several controls (or an axe to a main feed). Use Doppelgangers to frame the players for being too trigger happy, put them in a position where people that they want pleased with them are unhappy and they have to get back in good graces using something other than combat. Mystery! Nothing to fight at all. People they know just up and vanish and they have to skill test all over the building to determine that someone was experimenting with an aether projector and they have to undo the science to get them back. I agree that combat in general is a troublesome thing in this system, but what you need to do is set the stage so that it is not the fighting that is the star of an encounter, but the scene.

All right, Folks! Here's the raw data and the top level breakdown https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GsfUgzWLEgCnRjq9S5FKAf0m5ux81gA619VdAByCuCU/edit?usp=sharing A few caveats: Some people had added masters as "least favorite" or "wish I knew what to do with", but the intention of this survey was to find models that you didn't like using with a given Master. Since you can't take masters as crew additions for masters, I turned those responses into "NA" as if the biggest complaint you have on a faction is another master, you're clearly pretty fond of all the models. The Gremlin Taxidermist appears to be getting a pretty nasty rap, but most of those are from one respondent so the number is a little inflated. Broad Brush Breakdown Faction Responses Arcanists 18 Gremlins 17 Guild 24 Neverborn 28 Outcasts 19 Ressurectionists 22 Ten Thunders 9 Total Reponses 137 Arcanists: Joss is a clear favorite at 4 "best" picks of 18 total, and apparently, Arcanist players are pretty happy with their model selection, as the most frequently disliked model was Essence of Power at 2/19. Seems like mostly it's a matter of playstyle and master preference. Gremlins: Everybody loves Lenny at 3/17 best picks (not surprising with 5/17 favorite masters being Somer). Accounting for particularly fervent dislike for the Taxidermist, it looks like he and Pere Ravage are the two least favorite models in the faction with all others gaining only a single mention. Guild: Guild had 24 responses, and surprisingly broad scope of favorites with Death Marshals and Francisco coming in tied for first at 3 "best of" each. Executioners are a clear sore point with 7 votes against, though this seems to be the only point of consistency, as the next highest was Guild Guard with 3 votes against, and the bulk of the remainder at 1 each. Neverborn: Neverborn was interesting in that with 28 responses, 4 of the masters had significant support. This was the widest spread of the current data pool. Similarly, the "best of" model was a pretty broad category with Waldgeists, Doppelgangers, Teddy, and Illuminated all getting 3 responses, and the remainder spread out over 13 other models. Worst was similarly spread, with Alps, Tuco, and Lelu each getting 3 responses, and most of the remainder at 1. Interestingly enough, despite being the best represented master of Neverborn with 7 responses, the highest "wish I liked the model more" responses were Sorrows, Kade, and Candy. Rezzers: Rezzers are the opposite from the Neverborn in Masters in that two of them (McMourning and Seamus) make up about 2/3 of all the responses. Not surprisingly, then, the best liked model of the faction (and indeed of this dataset) was the Rotten Belle with 11/22 responses indicating a preference for the Belles. Worst was slightly consistent with Night Terrors, but that was only 4 responses. Bette Noir got 3 responses for "wish I liked her more". Ten Thunders: TT had the fewest responses overall (9), making this information less than telling. However, 10 Thunders Brothers are clearly liked with 3 of the responses in favor, and Oiran/Monks of High River being the least favorite of this admittedly low pool. Chikai and Samurai were both mentioned twice as models that "wished they were liked better". I'd be curious to see what happens with about 500 responses, and to do a master-by-master breakdown of preferences, as well as see about getting the highest scoring "worst" models a couple writeups from people who really like them (such as myself with Sorrows). Anyhow, this was pretty fun to put together, so I hope you all enjoy it!

There's about 110 responses at the moment. I'll get the existing stuff cleaned and transferred to another page to share this week along with done base analysis.

Hey all, Over on A Wyrd Place we got to talking about what "the worst model in the game is" and it very quickly became apparent that a lot of the "worst models" are also adored by others. I put together a survey to collect favorite faction/master/model information to see if there are any "worst models" that are just "not real good with a certain master". I'd like to get a couple hundred responses if possible, and am going to parse and post the information I find to see if anything interesting pops up. Feel free to take it several times, just please only respond once per faction per master. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1q7RTQAzslsIN6DOA1Lk_7dIFQvmoicAVH1fuBnX-7rk/viewform?usp=send_form Thanks!

I'd like to be considered for the next round of play testing.

I've got a friend that ran Beckoner, Lilitu, Doppenganger and a couple sorrows, and used the 5-6 lures a turn to pull things through a conga-line of hell into Pandora's Fears Given Form. It was like most Seamus crews do, but WAY nastier. Only worked because the opponent really didn't anticipate it until they lost their henchman and enforcer second turn.

I think it's gorgeous.

So, the critter I used was an abomination which was made of animated amalgams of meat and metal who lashed themselves together into a building-tall beastie. It was an answer to having a couple non-combat folks in a group with someone who can one-shot a Mature Nephilim (yes, that's right. One-shot) Hit locations: Head x1 Torso x1 Arms x2 Legs x4 Df: 9 Wp: 12 Mv: 5 Chg: 10 Armor 1 all locations. Immune to Critical Hit Effects, Immune to Horror Duels. When a limb is killed, creature continues to live. If head is killed, creature gains reactivate, takes full next turn with [-] on all flips, and then dies. Torso killed kills creature. The players choose a location to attack, and then toss a card. All locations have triggers off this card, this card is NOT part of their attack flip. Head: Rams, Masks, Black Joker = Miss; Crows = Hit Torso instead, Tomes, Red Joker = Hit Head as normal. Torso: 1-5: +3 Armor, 6-10: +2 Armor, 11-14: +1 Armor, Black Joker: +4 Perfect Armor Arms: Rams, BJ = Miss, Other Suits = Hit as normal Legs: Rams, BJ = Miss, Other suits = Hit as normal. Each hit location has 2 entirely separate health tracks. The "Shell" and the "Meat". These damage tracks are entirely separate, and work kinda like hard to kill. do 45 points of damage to the Shell when it has 3 left? 42 of those are lost. Next hit damages the Meat. Shell has about 20 wounds per limb and head, torso has 30. Meat has about 15 wounds per limb, 30 for torso, 30 for head. Creature does not suffer disengage strikes. Creature has the following attacks (roughly): (0) Roar: Wp 12 , 10 (pulse). succeed or be knocked prone - used when surrounded. (0) Slap: Df 12, 2/3/4. 5 Melee. Used against a single target. (1) Bash: Df 14, 3/3Blast/3DblBlast Melee 5. Hits lotsa things when it hits hard. This is used to bypass hard to hit players by hitting softer ones, and blasting over. The "Blast" is actually more of a sweep. (1) Dismissed: Df 16, 2/4/6. Melee 5. Target is knocked back 1 yard for every point of damage they suffer. Used to force hard hitters to disengage. (1) Spit: Df 10, 2/3/4. 20 Yard Rng. Used when not in range. You can do a lot with this framework, but mostly, keep the overall damage output lowish but hard to avoid, and make sure the abilities are causing tactical movement as well as just being attacks. It makes the fight more interesting and forces the players to use AP moving instead of attacking. I tried randomizing the "where critter was hit" but the players actively disliked that, so I recommend the suit system indicated above.

I just ran an adventure with a giant multi-hit location beastie that worked pretty well. Did a great job of evening out the social-focused players with the combat monsters in terms of contribution to a fight.

Another thing to think about with Ressers is that the summoning ones generally want to curate a good hand for summoning, and will let most other things slide in order to do so. Having abilities which force the resser to either lose agency over their models or cards from their hand is one good way to undermine their summoning. AoE (Such as Pandora's (1) tactical burst) or very high damage output (Nekima, Teddy, Chompy, etc) or "discard to die" (Hans, etc) are all good ways to try to flush cards from their hand "Hey, remember, I've got the trigger on this one which lets me spend YOUR AP during YOUR TURN" It is good for you either way because you are removing flexibility. Once you have pared their hand down, it makes everything in their game less reliable, and generally takes about two turns to correct.

Pandora was my first master and I've been playing her since 1.0. Sorrows are FAR more awesome than they have been since the initial cuddle which prevented them from skating along with Pandy (which was broken and wrong). Even with as good as they are, I only ever run 2-3 of them depending upon the scheme. They are REALLY squishy, and are relatively one-dimensional. Sorrows shine when they act late-turn to dogpile a model or two which Pandora can follow up on first thing the next turn. In those conditions, Pandora can burn down nearly any model in the game with next to no effort. However, she can only be in one place at a time. Outside of their Misery aura, and Misery Loves Company to deliver it, pretty much any model in the Neverborn Line is a stronger pick. As has been said earlier. Stick with the 3 that come with the set, proxy in 2 Insidious Madnesses, a pair of Stitched Together (or a pair of Waldgeists) and you will be doing yourself a far bigger favor than even a 4th Sorrow will do. You might peridoically find a good use for a 4th sorrow, but 5 and 6 will most likely gather dust after one or two go rounds.

It's better that way. If the Guild wants Austringers, let them convert or proxy! Make them EARN those auto-includes!