Math Mathonwy

Agreed - it was an utterly amazing board!

The previous weekend saw the biggest non-commercial con in Europe, Ropecon, in Finland. We had a large skirmish minis games area with demos of Infinity, Eden, Heavy Gear, Dystopian Wars, Carnevale, a home-brew Cthulhu game, and, yes, Malifaux. Ropetus from these forums demoed Malifaux 2nd edition and the biggest newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, did a story on minis gaming. The intrepid reporter saw straight away what the deal with Malifaux was and picked out a Rotten Belle for a close-up shot (the pic was a bit more conservatively sized in the actual paper - on the web it's kinda huge). http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/a1374895134693 The caption reads: "If a zombie prostitute like this were to come at you at a park, you'd be sure to get goose bumps. Game: Malifaux, which combines western, steampunk and horror." Anyone else know of Malifaux stories or references in mainstream media?

No, my point was that the uproar would've been gigantic. I know I would've abandoned Malifaux right then and there, if the only options of getting the new cards would've been through their own webstore from the US paying outrageous shipping and tolls (not Wyrd's fault, mind you) or by buying the minis again. Most people here would've dropped it then. How many examples do you want? Eden, Bushido, 1650, and Hell Dorado just to name a couple. Infinity doesn't use cards, but they give out all their rules and stats out for free (as do all others with the exception of Hell Dorado). If you want more names, I can give them. Eh? What you said was a falsehood and no, what I said didn't support your point. Historically Wyrd has been extremely customer-friendly when doing business releasing the rules manual for free as a PDF and so on. I can very easily see them releasing the old minis' cards as PDFs.

Dude, come on. Can you imagine the uproar that would've followed if Wyrd would've said that the only way to get M2 cards would be by buying new minis? Has any minis company that uses cards ever done something as patently insane as that? Well, the last time they made major changes to many of the cards, they released them as a PDF, so that's kind of an outright falsehood you're telling there.

Resurrecting a Resurrectionists paint log. Certainly seems appropriate. Anyway, two Crooligans. The boy I finished for OOTers on Speed painting contest, if he seems familiar to some of you. I went for a monochromatic palette with blue skin and green weapons (and a brown teddy bear) to bring out the creepiness. The girl got maybe a bit too creepy, in fact.

Spoken like someone who has never played a skirmish game with pre-measuring. It isn't about how spatial awareness. Because no matter what sort of a wizard you are, you won't be able to always put your models exactly 8.1" from three different enemy models while just extending the edge of your 4" aura to affect a spot 29mm from the objective where you plan to put a model. Seriously, pre-measuring makes things a lot more tactical. If you haven't experienced it, you probably won't be able to appreciate the magnitude of the change.

I, on the whole, rather like the new direction. I like the newest plastics more than the last metals (the first metals were in my mind the best, but then again my join date is earlier than anyone else's on this thread, so that's kinda to be expected, I guess). However, this particular crew was a big miss in my mind. Also, have people cut off hair and then sculpted the end to look good? Because I find that continuing the strands in straight, long hair so that it doesn't leave an ugly join is really difficult. Then again, I'm not the greatest sculptor around and yet I'm rather particular about the end results, so maybe all the others are better or else just not very picky.

Dude, there's like two people who have posted twice - all the others are noting their opinion once, be it positive or negative. Please stop with the histrionics. People are allowed to voice their opinions and no one is making a particular spectacle over theirs except you (over your opinion over their opinions, granted, not about the minis themselves). I'm also somewhat flabbergasted that some people think that the dancing DM's pose is cool. It's redonculous. And if you don't think so, you're wrong. Wrong! ... *wink*

Wow, Lady Justice looks awful. That's prolly the stupidest hair Wyrd has produced to date and that is saying something. Urgh. And the Death Marshalls are all dancing. Scales of Justice is the only one I like.

There's apparently multiple views on the viability of Rafkin, but RN - I don't think I've ever heard of anyone hiring him except in a Molly crew. He gets summoned a lot and is really good then, but as a model that is on the field from the start of the game, he is very lacking. And now with Izamu on the scene...

The OP won a tournament in Adepticon for the second year running so, even though I disagree with his article, his level of play is as high as it can be, basically.

"Arbitrary" and "quantification" aren't concepts that easily go together. The number of wounds is an arbitrary choice that doesn't really tell you much. What about summons? Armor? Heals? Being insignificant? Being fast? Or the myriad other things that affect stuff? It's just that you lucked into getting the needed number (six or seven) out of that and now you feel that this somehow implies causation. That said, if you feel that it helps you, be my guest. Someone else might use astrology to get the number and if he or she does well with said number, then more power to him or her, I guess. But I would avoid using the pseudo-scientific proto-math reasoning you've presented as a justification, really. *wink*

Well, to be fair, facing any Master for the first time ever is very, very tough - especially so in a competitive environment where the other player is likely to have lots of games under him with his Master. Play five against Tina and you will see her weaknesses and how to exploit them.

I dunno. It sounds fancy but there are so many variables that I really don't see it as useful the way you have presented it. I mean, as a rule of thumb, sure, but your presentatin makes it sound like you're striving for some kind of soft "scientific credibility" with this stuff and it just doesn't work that way. A trivial example: the last wound off an Izamu who is about to activate is prolly twenty times as valuable as knocking off one further wound from a previously unscathed Rotten Belle. But wait, what if Izamu is about to kill your Master? Is it then fifty times as valuable? But if the total was fifty to begin with, how can this one wound be fifty on its own? Or is it ten? Or, if the victory of the tournament hinges on it, is it perhaps one MILLION?

That was a great read and I enjoyed the picture! Thank you for posting

That was quite possibly the most well-made video battle report I've seen. Great job!

But if you used that money to buy Wyrd minis, you would help Wyrd more. Because no matter what, their marginals for the decks won't be as high as they are for the minis.

So you're afraid of the proxies? I guess HalcyonSeraph was wrong then: He has been arguing that the monetary losses incurred by the lost profits of missed card pack sales are the sole driving force behind the detractors of the PDF release. You seem to take the complete opposite view that the profits are miniscule and that the proxies are the real danger. I have to say, that like I said to Fetid Strumpet, I can see the logic in that fear a lot better. I personally don't believe it to be a likely scenario but I can respect it a lot better. Especially so with the rather low opinion people outside these forums seem to have of Malifaux plastic (I have had to defend the plastics in many a corner of the net - there were hickups (the Neverborn box) but the more recent releases have been good quality for the most part (Izamu is IMO a great example, though it does have components that break easily)). So yeah, maybe people are looking to proxy more in the future.

People are saying that it is a financial risk to release the cards as a PDF. That is equally meaningless or meaningful. Believe it or not, considerable money is a thing. Seriously. It means that the amount of money would be of some consequence. If they make, say, $0.002 of profit out of each card pack they sell, then it is not considerable (unless they sell millions of them, which is not likely). If they have a healthy margin and make, say, 10% of their profits out of the cards, then that would be considerable money. But I highly, highly doubt this. Out of interest, do you have any financial education? Or experience with minis companies' finances? We do? You 100% sure about that? I guess you have some inside information, then. Heh, I didn't think that the stuff I'm saying is difficult to grasp, but here we are. *shrug* We can't say that, but even if we could, making a miniscule amount of money isn't really better than making no money, in the grand scheme of things. I also note that you didn't acknowledge the three facts I laid out but decided to ignore them and repeat essentially, yet again, the same thing you said before. So I doubt that anything fruitful will come of this conversation. I've provided reasons and examples yet you insist on repeating the same things trying to obfuscate the fact that your only argument is that Wyrd is going to be making money out of the card packs and therefore, no matter that the amount of money is very likely to be inconsequential, they should not publish the PDFs. ---------- Post added at 10:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:56 PM ---------- Agreed! I don't think that they "owe" us anything. The second edition was bound to happen and they are giving us ample warning of it and the open beta sounds very good. Business as usual, really. But I share the belief that free PDFs won't hurt them one bit.

Well, the way I see it, either they make considerable money from them or they don't. I very much believe that they won't because 1) they haven't in the past, 2) they said that the card packs would be very affordable, and 3) no one else in the business seems to make real money from the cards (I have quite some knowledge about the inner workings of the minis business, though I don't claim any inside information on the workings of Wyrd, so maybe they're a special case and somehow all these dozens of people opposed to the free PDFs somehow know it - who knows). OK, so the only argument against releasing the PDFs for free is because people think that Wyrd is going to make substantial profit out of the card packs. Fair enough, I can't prove it either way, but I just feel that it is very silly belief due to the three facts I outlined above. ---------- Post added at 10:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:02 PM ---------- Two out of three of those suppositions are extremely unlikely based on what I know of other companies in the business. And I do mean extremely. Seriously, minis games companies make their money out of the minis. No, not 100% of it, some high percentage. Or do you have some better insight?

So, just to recap and make sure I understood correctly, you honestly think that Wyrd really is going to be making fat loads of cash out of those card packs? So you really are afraid of proxying? Interesting. That is, IMO, a more reasonable opinion than Wyrd making a lot of money out of the cards but I still feel it's a bit... non-likely? But fair enough, maybe that is a real chance of things going horribly wrong and a lot of people suddenly start proxying like mad. Out of interest, have you seen lots of proxies for the models whose v2 cards are available on Wyrd's site?

So you believe that Wyrd is going to make loads of cash out of those card packs? That the sales of the card packs will cover the costs of balancing the models and writing the new rules? What is the risk? People proxying the minis? Because other than that, I really don't see what it could be. I very, very much doubt that Wyrd is going to be making a lot of money out of those card packs. In fact, I feel it somewhat likely that they will actually sell them basically at cost. Or even lower! Edit: I will, btw, most likely end up buying the card packs. But I would still like the free PDFs.

I actively play six skirmish games currently. Eden gives rules and stats out for free. Hell Dorado gives out stats for free. Infinity gives out rules and stats for free. Carnevale gives out rules and stats for free. Alkemy gives out rules and stats for free. Malifaux is the odd one out, that doesn't give out stats for free. Now, naturally you can argue whether those others are succesful. Certainly not as succesful as Malifaux (and in Alkemy's case, quite marginal indeed). But I doubt that it was the free stats that are standing in the way of their success. But that is a bit beside the point, really. I'm 100% sure that Wyrd didn't make any money with their v2 card exchange program. I doubt that they are going to be making money out of the factions decks, either. I mean, maybe they don't make a loss, but the marginal is likely to be miniscule. The stuff that Wyrd makes money from, is the minis. Now, maybe people would go crazy proxying with PP minis or something if the stat cards were freely available, but I seriously doubt it. Wyrd has rather a unique aesthetic and I honestly believe that most players are drawn in by that. Or at least I hope so (though with the advent of plastic, at least the forum talk around new releases died down significantly).

Ordering from Gencon, I need to pay MSRP prices, overseas shipping and since it's coming from outside the EU, VAT. That means that when ordering $100 worth of stuff, I'll end up paying something like $170 while from a shop in the UK I could get the same stuff for $80 or so. So yeah, paying double the price for getting it three months sooner is a luxury I can't indulge in, really.

Thank you so much for doing this! I really dislike podcasts (they take something like ten minutes to convey the information that in written form could be relayed in a minute or so) and it seems that most of Malifaux news are nowadays distributed through those. Ah, something that I've been wanting for Malifaux since the beginning (meaning the original playtest). This is probably the only thing I'm worried about. Such things tend to be extremely difficult to balance properly and most of the time lead to lots of no-brainer "choices". OTOH Lucas does have several valid load outs, so I guess there is hope. Ah, another thing I've mentioned a couple of times. A very good change! Hooray! I feel vindicated! Ah, again a very good change. This is something that I hadn't considered, but I very much like the sound of it. Sounds great! All in all, astoundingly enough, all the changes bar one seem to be stuff that I've either suggested or that I approve of heartily. Very excited! Now all I want is a way to pass the turn if the opponent has more models and I'm as happy as can be. P.S. what's with the gazillion font and colour tags in the OP?