McNs

After Labor Day, I'll try and catch you on a Sunday. I'll PM ya before I head up, but I'm older player looking to get back into the game.

They don't seem like the end of the world, though I'm morally opposed to changing the ss cost/rules of models. Be interested in hearing how it worked.

My experience with Bete is that she's "great" until your opponents learn how to manage her, at which point she's merely "good". Karn makes some great points: she's got a solid Cb of Paired 6, some nasty triggers, and a very good Df. She is "squishy", but StD with One with the Night give her some good survivability. But she's got some odd-problems: Her unique placement mechanic works great a defense to pulses, etc etc; but also makes it harder to synergize non-Aura effects with her. She's a low on wounds in a faction that has a large number of healing effects. Her damage output gets really hampered by certain classes of models (Non-living models with Armor can cause her problems). Sure, she can pass out Slow - but then I'm usually taking her as a heavy-hitter, not as a board control piece (which, admittedly, might be why I've taken less of a shine to her as of late). To that end: she's a very good consistent damage dealer (and great at hacking through H2W), but she's not a high damage dealer. I think coming from a Book 1 background (only recently picking up Book 2 and 3), I've yet to adjust to looking at her as another control piece, rather than a heavy hitter. That may be influencing the broader meta's opinion as well. tl;dr - She's solid, but she's not "Zomgxorz auto-include".

Got my book last night, so I'm still chugging through some interactions but I've got a rosier few on the minions than the OP: Dead Doxy looks useful mainly for handing out :-fate on DF to enemy models. Quite nice for helping Belles hit, helping the Drowned do his thing, or (most importantly) helping the Hanged get off his myriad of nasty abilities. The Drowned I'm mum on. He looks like a good horde management piece, but I think I'd still prefer Punk Zombies for general utility. The effigy is interesting: digging it for Seamus or some McMourning lists (help keep the big nasties up and running; albeit at the potential loss of body parts).

I agree, but trying to apply statistical principals to "absolutely" prove something in a wargame is a fool's errand. There is no standard player, standard list, standard terrain set-up, standard strategy, standard set of schemes, and/or standardized card randomization. Even if you normalized a set of data for the above, people will argue some issue with the normalization. Moreover, its a frickin' game. I'd rather paint my models than crunch R-square's and p-values in order to further argue an opinion on what is, arguably, a subjective matter. My thoughts on this generally: there's a difference between a model being game-breakingly overpowered and a model being very, very good in certain situations that, despite being beatable, takes a disproportionately large amount of resources for the opposing player to overcome and makes the game a negative play experience. To make an analogy to another wargame: Sorcha1's (from Warmachine) ability set before Prime Remix was almost unarguably game-breakingly powerful (especially in conjunction with the tournament rule-set at the time). In contrast, Vlad2 later in Mk I wasn't game-breakingly powerful, but was powerful enough that he dominated the national tournament scene. The model was beatable, but he was powerful enough that if two players of near equal play abilities played each other, Vlad2 gave one play an edge, all else being equal. With that in mind, there were many an internet argument started by "ZoMG! EVlad is teh borkens!" that played out similar to the arguments in this thread. Interestingly enough, Vlad2 was toned down a bit in the 2nd edition of Warmachine and remains viable but doesn't dominate the tournament circuit. At least in my metagame, this has been considered a good thing for the health of the game. ****** I'm not going to argue specifics of the NB models to that metric, but I think that's a fair metric to go by rather than searching for a perfectly objective statistical analysis.

As someone who PTs for another company, there's one big glaring hole in the logic I'm seeing here: - NB presumably were PT'ed for full games (i.e. - 6 turns) and balanced around that. Per Karn et al (and per common sense), NB are the "we hit hard but can't take a punch" faction. - The metric for balance that everyone seems to accept is tournament placement. However, most of the tournaments I've seen haven't been allowed to go to a full 6 turns, usually due to time restrictions (notably: the Masters event at Gencon). Given that NB's weakness is attrition and players aren't being given a full game to take them to attrition, it seems NB may have an up due to the format. - Doesn't it seem logical that some of the problem may be NB models and some of the problem is in the tournament format/way we're measuring balance? FWIW: I think Lure ought to prevent strikes if you're already in melee (Bells usually won't care; they're happy to just take a swing). Alps need a look at too, though with some thought to not make them terrible. Just my 2 cents.

Hoping for the B's to take it again, though after last year I'm not sure how they'll top themselves (we beat Canada so bad they stopped acting Canadian). Go B's!

Order #9176 just listed as completed. Woot!

Thanks Mentat_Canis! Looks like we did get an answer there, though it looks like North Wind doesn't extend Ice Mirror 3". T'would have been nice, but having a 19" is still pretty nice. In terms of Strategies/Schemes, what do people like with 'Tina? Should I be gunning for schemes that require minimal interactions with terrain/movement?

Howdy: I'm coming back to Malifaux after a ~2 year haitus. Played a lot at Gencon 2009, came home, sold the game as hard as I could locally, then life kicked me in the junk and I had to drop gaming for a while. Anyhow... after a long break, I'm back in the game. I've got a lot of stuff to catch up on from Rising Powers, and a lot to get used with Gaining Ground (instead of just using the scenario schemes from the book). I'm initially going to play mostly with Rasputina and her theme models. When I left, I usually took: Tina - Essence 2-3 Gamin Ice Golen December Acolyte Gunslinger/Cerebus A lot's changed since then, obviously. I know Silent Ones and Snowstorms are well regarded for 'Tina; though I'd love some list/strategy help with how her new models turn. Any advice? Thanks in advance! - Owen

Aww... the "Crazy Cat Lady List" @ 25 points. Best of luck, here's some pointers based upon my experience with it: - Devour is living only; you actually have to beat up the undead. - Be judicious with your use of the Cerebus; don't let him get too far away from Rasputina and end up unsupported. - The list would be much happier with a Wendigo as a mobile buff support piece, but if you don't want to proxy (and noone else in your group does), you should be fine. - Watch out for Perdita; she can kill you dead Again, best of luck and I encourage you to join HIKOMA! - McNs