Magno

Well, that must be a new thing, because in tournies you can't redesign your crews and for most pick-up games and leagues your crew is already built by the time you find out scenarios, etc.. Now schemes can help mitigate poor match-ups, I don't think anyone here will argue that this game is satisfyingly balanced. If you're ok with that, then the game itself is rockin'.

So, I played Malifaux heavily for the first few months it was out, then throttled back for awhile and after reading the new book, I'm excited to make it a tier 1 game for myself again. One of the biggest problems I had after the initial whirlwind of awesomeness subsided, was I found there to be a definite paper-scissors-rock element to the game, depending which crews faced off against each other. I don't have a tremendous playtime familiarity with crews outside the Ressurections, but what I found was the following. Seamus (especially Terrifying) crews did very well against crews that had low WP and who couldn't ignore WP penalties or duels. Same goes for Kirai and Colette. Nicodem, Seamus and Kirai do terribly against Lady Justice Crews in general or any crews that ignore WP duels or penalities. Its a terrible taste to go against these crews (although I can appreciate the fluff angle) as Lady Justice with Death Marshals pack most of the Undead bonuses all while ignoring their debuffs. Doesn't seem appropriate, but so be it. I'm asking the rest of the forums their opinions on crew match-ups (their general crews, starter boxes and most common crew builds) in general stand-up fights and/or with particular scenarios. I want to know because I'm gonna fire up demos at my new LGS and want to design a home-brew campaign/story line. Knowing the inherent miss-matches will help steer me away from poor demo match-ups and also augment a campaign to have lots of flavor.

lady Justice is superb against all Res masters save for maybe MccMourning, because he is the only one that doesn't really rely on corpse counters and his crews don't force a lot of WP duels. Blind Justice from Lady Justice cuddles Kirai and Seamus (also Colette) crews when angling with WP checks. Her crews' abilities to prevent corpse counters cuddles Nicodem and Seamus. So yeah, that's one of my biggest reservations of the game in tournament formats. Some crews are in a serious uphill battle vs certain crews and made even worse with some of the scenarios. Now this same issue can be entertainingly exploited for story based or campaign formats.

Well, like I said, I play Infinity so the amount of terrain for this game feels barren. And terrain isn't too hard to make for a rock or forrest table and you only need enough for a 3x3. Plus, WorldWorks is coming out with terrain sets for $50 that we all saw at GenCon. Very cool stuff.

So after reading Kirai and all the spirits in Rising Powers, I envision Kirai crews running like so: Kirai first turn: suffer 4 wounds and summon Ikiryo. Sacrifice a Seishin heal 2 wounds, get a free (1) action and two control cards. Having not played a game with her yet, this is the first thing I would try with her. So Kirai is pretty fragile, but can be very slippery, unless going against models that ignore WP->Wp duels (friggin' Lady Justice stays powerful against all the crews I run). I think they did a pretty decent job designing this crew. A seemingly fragile chick walking around all sad and pitiful but swarming with deadly ghosts that pop in and out of existence. Nice.

Pros: 1. Character, Character, Character. You crews are always going to be very thematic. Even if you try to build the most affective lists, they aren't gonna feel sterile and clockwork, they're still going to employ a fabulous feel. 2. low investment cost 3. Lots of single cast pieces, easy to assemble 4. The new book affords what feels like unlimited possibilities for scenarios, back stories, strategies 5. Unique universe 6. Fun system for determination. Your "good" and "bad" luck are in set quantities with a card deck. But there is still plenty of ways to adjust your fate. 7. Plenty of crews to build. 8. Tons of synergy between models if you're into that. 9. One of biggest pros: Alternate Unit activation. More of an interconnected and engaged gameplay. Cons: 1. The game does have a paper-scissors-rock format. Less so with the new scenarios. 2. Crews building is a little restricted. Some models in your faction just won't work or feel right with some masters. 3. Tactics are gonna feel like they're pushed to the back with all the triggers and synergy in the game. 4. Some triggers, spells, buffs/defuffs can stack up to make some lopsided or unbalanced gameplay. Nothing different from Warmachine, but not nearly as over the top. 5. Massive amount of errata and misprints in the books. 6. Poor casting quality. I spend the most amount of time cleaning these figs compared to most other games. Often time the cast looks as if the mold slipped. But I spend a lot of time on the hobby aspect. Possible Con: I'm an avid Infinity player, so that game sets the bar for tactics. If you're looking for solid tactics, this game will fall short, but still a bit above most other fantasy skirmish games, simply because the model count is low so you're not packing a bunch of models into a small area to benefit from each others' buffs and you're definitely not restricted to keep all your models centered around a caster. Possible subjective Pro (and the initial reason I got into the game): ......zombie hookers. 'Nuff said.

The concentration of spirits is the Ressurectionists, mostly for a Kirai build. Outside of the Ressurectionists, there are only 2-3 spirits. I think the theme is still very much there for each faction. Guild got a lot more Steampunky, OUtcasts with the Freikorps is also real steampunky. I think its cute that Ressurs are getting a zombie Guildsman, but I would wish it was as nice as the Guild borrowing undead models, aka Death Marshals.

Looks like Ramos is a big winner from this book. Their are so many constructs from which to choose from. Lots of new keywords and traits, but not a tremendous amount of cross book synergy. Nicodem can hire a bunch of new troops, but Kirai has two additional spirits outside of the Ressurectionists to hire. Showgirls are limited so to expand this crew in future books, the arcanists would need to have more showgirls. Dust storm and Ashen core don't move unless you have Desolate engines and Steampunk Abominations. So if you want to resurrect the Ashes and Dust, you'll need to bring these models or run the A&D model close to a table edge. The fluff is pretty good. Lilith's Weed is gonna make a lot of people hoot like when Gandoff and Bilbo Baggins have their little moment in Fellowship. Actually "Dark Treasures" story is pretty friggin' awesome and feels very Lovecraftian. I always thought the second book was gonna really expand the existing synergies of the first book crews, but it actually makes a lot on new crew possibilities but with limited synergies. A nightmare to steward as a rules developer going forward in 2-3 future books, but players who love sifting through possibilities are gonna be in heaven. Big win for Wyrd.

Yes, I will second that question: where the hell were those at GenCon? The Warstore? Where? I can't believe I missed those. I would have loved to have seen those in person. I think you mean these were seen at the Spanish GenCon; a.k.a. TDN. Its happening right now.

Because maniquins work off of any showgirl. Their triggers and links don't say "Performers", it says showgirls. So I played a few games with this crew but unfortunately it was against Lady Justice and with her blind Justice, there isn't a whole lot to do with this crew. Anyone that has abilities that say "Ignore WP duels no matter what" are going to handicap a showgirl crew. Cassandra is the main offense in this list and she can reactivate everytime a showgirl dies which is awesome. I forsee a LOT of "Breathe Fire" casting being done. I like how they designed this crew, they're showgirls and they will be doing a lot of dancing around the table. Very manouvreable crew.

So to years in a row I've demoed this game at GenCon and two years in a row I just fail to see how this game would be enjoyable. You spend more time looking at the screen, waiting for things to load and and you really do nothing on the actual tabletop except move minis around in 16 different quadrants and remove minis. I mean, I want to give this concept a try and I like the idea of having a mainframe do probabilities and have the statistics be more refined into better equations rather than simple add and substractions, but I just can't get behind playing between two different gaming types. Its not really the best of both worlds, its the idea of two worlds and they are sharing a lower common denominator.

Sorry homies, I'm leaving this plague infested desolation known as Michigan and moving back home to the good ol' Land of Enchantment. Ahahahah! Bollocks to the lot of you! Just kidding. I don't want to move, but the wife is using the kids as leverage and I have to cut my time short here. It's been great (except for the damned humidity).

Sorry I couldn't make it. Both my sons got hammered with ear infections at the same time. Laundry is a full time job right now with all the puking.

Cohesive, all unique, and all ready to explode. Good work

Great idea. I don't think those lamp posts are too big. How do they look compared to the buildings? Do they make the buildings looks bigger/smaller?

For my first three matches my scheme was Bodyguard with straight deployments. Match 4 was corner deployments with really dense terrain. I was at 14 VPs, you were at 16 VPs, so I'd of needed to beat you by two VPs to ensure I would overtake you on the leaderboard, and I would need all 6 VPs to ensure I had a shot at 1st vs Godspeed. We were playing Slaughter, I figured at first Hold Out would be better, but I should have stuck with Bodyguard as that would force you to meet me in the middle so to say. Because LJ was running the edges and your forces were split, I probably should have poped Killjoy sooner, but I elected to save him till I could get closer to LJ. The bolstered Zombie punks I figured could handle the rest of your crew, but I hadn't reconned that the Executioner could heal all wounds on a Slow to Die move. That was the moment that broke my spirit. I lost a Punk and Necro punk, and you were unwounded with a Judge, Executioner and LJ surrounding me. Killing everyone but LJ would have only gotten me 2 VPs, at best force a tie and you still stay ahead of me on the leader board. VP leaderboard in Swiss style tourney is rarely ever going to materialize the top player. Not unless you crack out a nice equation for weighing the VPs you win vs your opponent's rating.

Congrats on the job, holmes. Anyone up for a Brawl tonite? I have been wanting to see what the game feels like in a brawl at around 45-50 SS. Want to try that out or a team game.

You're not gonna play with it?!? Just keep it in the case.

'Dox, great discussion with you yesterday, great post. We should really continue this and work on something. Metro-Detroit has the player base, the time, the terrain and the tabletop space to try anything we need. @Nerd, we run public scenarios for our Infinity tournaments and folks build their lists accordingly and this is an extremely successful and refreshing tourney format. A. Folks rarely complain they get hosed by the scenario. B. We see drastically different lists from tourney to tourney because of the changing scenarios But Infinity works great in tournament format, the game can handle it without the shortcomings that WM has to that end. I fully agree with 'Dox on Malifaux not suited for individual player swiss-style or even bracketed tourney format. The amount of character, flavor, scenario-location combos opens up to many shifting imbalances that will leave a very sour taste in some folks mouths. A lot of the imbalances in the game aren't going to be generally solved in say tour of duty events and such, but I beleive you'll mollify a lot of those problems and best off all I think this system offers a great opportunity for some cooperative based events that will prevent the game from devolving into some of the other systems based on how the system pass promoted and pushed. No pun intented.

Uh, don't be too sour there Nerd, 'Dox cut me up good with that list too. I don't think he really needed those 3 Death Marshals. Justice, Judge and the Executioner were all he needed to cut through my whole crew. It wasn't even funny, but 'Dox has some decent ideas for what we could do for Malifaux events that could be pretty damn stellar. I had to leave right after round 4, but I'm betting Dox walked out of there with the tourney win at 22 VPs.

I always envisioned it in the Southwest United Sates. Think Bryce Canyon Utah, Monument Valley Arizona or Folsom Site New Mexico.

Chickenshack Mike? Now that is a name of an opponent you want to play. "How was the tournament?" -"Well, Chickenshack Mike slapped my Rezzers around then he was properly beaten by a swarm of Spiders. Yeah, that Chickenshack was a real hoot."

I lost a lot of Rezzers to a swarm of "Watch this!" The little gremlins die, but they took out a lot of Punks and Belles along the way.