Math Mathonwy

They do circumvent certain defenses better than anyone (hello, Yin!). Now, this is naturally a bit of a gamble since you don't know whether your enemy will have such defenses and that you can threaten them and that your Shinobis survive to do so but still. I have used them a lot when going less full throttle against newer players and they often perform surprisingly well. The ability to choose the defensive stat is amazingly powerful and as long as you have something with Poison they have a sort of a pseudo third AP with their (0)Action. I don't think so. Or at least it seems that on these forums all models get defended, more or less. But I don't think that we have any true stinkers like pre-Upgrade Oiran or whatever. Even Bushwhackers truly suck only within theme and they are only mildly over-priced when taken with someone else than Mah.

I dunno if you are familiar with the Infinity Tournament System but it essentially combines the Gaining Grounds and logfaux. Every player has an ID number and they use it when registering for the tournament and the tournament organizer inputs these into the system when they hold the tournament and the system also records the results and such things so it's also a tournament organization solution. So almost all Infinity tournaments are "official" Infinity tournaments.

Yes, but as a mandatory step in organizing official tournaments (like it is in Infinity).

The most common one is the girl Young LaCroix - her gun is appropriate and she is bigger than an average adult Gremlin. If other companies are OK, I guess that either one of these could work (the first one is probably better while the latter could work as Sammy): http://freebooterminiatures.de/index.php/en/shop2-2/goblin-piraten/product/view/14/153 http://freebooterminiatures.de/index.php/en/shop2-2/goblin-piraten/product/view/14/257

I wish that Malifaux had some sort of an official system like Infinity has that could be used to record this sort of stuff. Would provide quite a bit of cool data if people simply recorded the result, their faction, Master, and the pool of strat and schemes available for each tournament game. But it isn't a trivial task so I can see why Wyrd isn't doing it currently.

And now you know why Pigapult is so awesome - it always randomizes into your dudes! Pretty bad luck - I mean, it was a very tough match from the beginning being the first time you play your Master and first time playing against the opposing Master but it wasn't helped by your luck, certainly. That said, it still looked like somewhat educational, so there's certainly a silver lining. I know I tend to learn more from defeats than from victories. ...though describing Bayou Gremlins as "reliable" seems a tad odd. As for Francois, you can also try giving him Crows and look him shoot up low Df models til the cows come home. Oh, have you marked your W/D/L result wrong for Somer on the right-hand side of the blog? Thanks for the write-up and better luck going forward! Break a leg (the enemy's, that is)!

Wouldn't Gracie work better in that role due to her easier access to Reactivate, and Unimpeded? Oh, and since her durability is more about her Armor rather than lots of Wounds, she makes better use of Healing as well, which is nice in a Brewski crew? Yes! Heck, they could heal from Poison (Embalmed would work as an Ability name, even ) and they still wouldn't be anywhere near overpowered. I don't think that it is necessarily all that far from a "competitive" Brewmaster list, though

Using Fermented River Monks on the Gremlin side seems like a bit of a waste since you need a costly Upgrade to hire them and the Action you get from it is pretty situational to say the least. Full disclosure: I haven't tried it in GG17 so maybe it's better these days. Still, taking just one Fermented River Monk seems really expensive. Though I must agree with you that they are fun! Old Major seems like an unorthodox choice - why him? And without any other Pigs? My main problem with Moon shinobis is that they are quite squishy, especially if they start messing around with Poison. And if they don't them having only two AP (with Gremlins I suppose that counts as a weakness) kinda lets them down a bit, I feel. That said, I don't think they are bad! They have very unique stuff going on that can really wreck the day of some enemies. And Runeman's point of the extra movement being more potent in GG17 than it was before is a good one.

I agree with the general gist of this and consider it an important message and good advice (especially in the context of this specific thread!) but I wish to note that killing enemies is, most of the time, denying enemy VP as dead models don't score VP.

I think that Mah is pretty tricky in that using her as a little green Lady Justice ends usually in a disaster. Especially if you try to use her thematic crew with her! And the same goes for Brewmaster - if you do what you're supposed to do with him he is pretty lousy. And I means supposed based on his abilities and his theme force. If you focus on something else entirely (Hangover, Pick Your Poison, and almost no Tri-Chi models) he is... well, still the weakest Gremlin Master but not hopeless. A bit like Marcus was in first edition where, if you abandoned the beast angle completely, he was pretty OK.

Oh, and this is a good point that I forgot to mention. Even though I do talk about 6AP a lot, I do give up on the reactivate pretty easily when needed. So those 6AP are there if I need them but I'm not sure I've played a game in a long time where I always went first with Tara. It's important to not get hung up on the reactivate, powerful though it may be!

He doesn't have 6 AP to play around with, though. And when Tara goes first (in order to get the reactivate) and last she can ensure that some evil enemy is essentially perma-Slowed. Natural flow, mostly, but trying to ensure that I don't myself take too many Void critters or similar models that don't drop Corpses themselves. Again, her ability to go first and last helps with opportunistic utilization of Corpses. Oh, and my propensity for mid-range models also means that Corpses are probably a bit more plentiful than if I relied on fewer but more expensive models. I've found him surprisingly good at staying alive for some reason but I'm not quite sure why, to be honest. He can also himself naturally Poison stuff and then there's of course also Rafkin who I might take. I don't focus on Poison but Seb himself does absolutely insane damage if he simply manages to put two Poison on someone (non-SS user preferably) and then hang around. In one game my Necropunk died on the other side of the field to something that had been sent to intercept him. Nurse pumped some medicine into Tara who then stormed 18" towards the goal and then spent her 6AP next turn laying down Scheme Markers and winning me the game. Again, an opportunistic use of her. I must commend you on the phrase "I much prefer to make my opponent be "versatile"" which is IMO an absolutely brilliant sentence. Bravo! (we need a thumbs up smiley!) As for the argument itself, I don't think that versatility means playing reactively. To me it means that you see an opening and take advantage of that and then your opponent has to react to that. It's not necessarily defensive in nature as such. When my super-versatile Zoraida rams an opportunistic Rooster into the opponent's backline that isn't reactive as such, I don't think. But, unlike Viks, she can also take the opposing Shikome and use that to charge the opponent's Autopsy. To me versatility is the ability to take advantage of the holes in opponent's game. Viks do what they do and you can prepare and overcome. You can leave some holes and know that they will have a hard time capitalizing on them. A more versatile Master might not steamroll you as convincingly when you play against them for the first time but those holes should come back to bite you the arse more easily. That said, I can see your viewpoint and feel like I understand where you're coming from. When you can build your force specifically for the coming challenge, what's the role of jacks of all trades? If you need to kill stuff you take a killer, if you need to control places you take a summoner and if you need to interact you take an interaction specialist. This is true of many minis games but Malifaux's system of multiple objectives IMO gives even the generalists their place. Oh, and thank you - good stuff to think about and well argued! True. Many of them have been balanced around them being summonable which makes them somewhat lackluster as hires.

Relying on Canines to find corpses is extremely risky.

Spare Parts makes her a very good Summoner and with her two Activations and 6 AP she can chase the Corpse Markers if needed. Autopsys also synergize really well if you're taxiing Sebastian - ping the enemies with Poison from afar and then throw Seb in their faces and watch those faces melt. She can also do Schemes (try having a Nurse give her Wk a boost and watch stuff happen!) and intercept enemy Schemes. Pinging Slow onto key enemy models can make them really sad (in one game I completely neutered Lazarus by giving it Slow every round - it's a very sad model with just one AP). Fast pulse is of course awesome and Belles can Lure a single enemy into the midst of your guys to make the best use of it. Finally, with her 6AP, she can simply sword things dead surprisingly well if need arises. Her only problem is that she is squishy against big scary melee beaters but that's why I usually use her as a skirmisher of sorts running every which way. I like her versatility. When your whole plan doesn't hang in the balance based on whether your Killjoy alpha manages to kill enough enemies I find her more consistent. (Oh, and in general I love Resser mid-cost models and consider the expensive ones a bit sub-par so I tend towards lots of 4-7 SS choices in my list building with this faction).

I prefer it coming out when a Stuffed Piglet goes pop! ... Sorry.

It seems that my mileage does indeed vary. IME she rarely gets shot at since it's often such a waste, I extremely rarely dump my hand in order to help the Void critters (though Fast pulse does that for me, I guess), and I usually use Obliteration Symbiote max once per turn and I use mid-sized bombs as opposed to Killjoy or something (I've found Sebastian, Death Marshall, and Carrion Emissary (well, he's big but in a very different way) to suit me better as bombs). I do admit that my way of playing Tara is probably a bit different from the mainstream wisdom (but then again, mainstream wisdom tends to rank her very low while I do consistently well with her so I dunno). But that's the richness of the game, I suppose!

I can sorta see the list (don't really agree with it much but I believe I can see the reasoning behind it) but how is Tara card-dependent compared to the likes of Nico (well, Nico does have good card draw but he uses those cards as well) or Molly or McM or even Seamus?

Oh aye, that's the usual approach but it's not quite a silver bullet due to needing to activate between Seamus activations (often meaning winning ini - though Doppel/Trixie naturally helps), Nurse being sorta squishy, needing Crows (this is pretty common, granted!), and so on. Also, if there's anything else around that can put even two damage into Z, it is often enough for Seamus to then seal the deal.

Just to note that the opinions presented aren't necessarily very widely shared. I mean, I'm not saying that they are objectively wrong or horrible or anything silly like that but just that they represent one individual's opinions and include some quite controversial choices. So take them as they are (as they were surely intended, mind).

IME when the opponent knows how it works, it forces him into awkward positioning which makes it more difficult for them to utilize their synergies properly. Because the threat of the explosion is really scary - five damage that goes through some important defenses (HtW, ItW, Df Triggers, and Incorporeal to name a few) and Wp 13 duel with Seamus' -2 to Wp can be quite difficult to pass as hydranixx notes above. Especially if they don't save cards against it and if they do, that again affects their play. So yeah, it might seem that it doesn't have a big effect since there's never a good spot to use it but then you end up winning the game since the opponent is seemingly making weird choices all game long. YMMV, naturally. Edit: And I wish to stress that I don't mean that YMMV dismissively but rather to acknowledge that it is very possible that our experiences differ because of terrain and general meta and so on.

Yeah, I can't claim extensive experience with them so am willing to be proven wrong! The way I tried them, they seemed to be a bit like Roosters in that they have giant destructive potential and therefore become prime targets and die. Of course that doesn't mean that they are actually necessarily all that squishy since when the opponent wants something dead in this game, it usually dies but the question is one of resource expenditure.

I didn't find them very tanky at all. In fact, they tended to die pretty easily. Maybe I was just being too reckless with them and maybe they were such a threat that the enemy was always very keen on killing them but IME they really don't hang around long enough to really benefit from the healing all that much. Yeah, being Minions is good - Gremlins have very little in the way of elite Minions.

The mere threat can render Zoraida essentially useless. Also, our tables might feature too much blocking terrain but it's really, really difficult to hide far away from it and still be able to do something remotely useful. As for SS on defense, yeah, that is what you should do but Zoraida dies to weak and moderate damage so it's still extremely risky. And if Seamus is in the right spot (winning Initiative, for example) he can even Focus twice and thus still get a cheatable flip a lot of the time.

Maybe you just need to pick your targets better, then? If you're using 3 AP for the one shot, then I guess that you are moving somehow somewhere. So don't shoot models whose cover, melee, armor, SS use, Incorporeal, HtW, Df, and/or HtK are going to ruin your day. Yeah. You still probably need the AP from something else in your force to kill whatever it is that you've Swilled. Or else you get to keep Swilling the target for the whole game. But it's absolutely impossible to somehow comprehensively and objective establish who is worse. I know that I'd much, much rather face Brewski than Seamus. I've played quite a bit with both and Seamus just wins games a whole lot easier than Brewmaster. YMMV. But I'm pretty sure that neither one of us will be convinced by the other's arguments so I refer you to that gif that I posted up thread.

Not really, no. Fetid Strumpet disagreed with a person saying "Compare Seamus to the worst in 10T, Gremlins or Guild and I think he comes out ahead." Unless you consider someone worse than Brewski for TT and Gremlins, I believe that that was the implication.