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Malifoe

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Everything posted by Malifoe

  1. I will play the necropunk advocate, then, as the zombie's positives have already been described. Two matters that were mostly over looked above: First, Necros are significantly cheaper than zombies meaning you get more corpse tokens for your stones. Second, in pairs or triplets, they can tie down an important model by giving him slow. I have been experimenting with a large number of necros (5-8 in 25-30SS games) with Nicodem. Since I want corpse tokens throughout the game, I like their survivability. The only downside is damage output, which is pathetic at 1/2/3. I don't want to spend control cards on flurry, so most of the time they are swinging and doing a couple of damage here and there. Their ability to be where you want them is unmatched. If you take 4 or 5, there is a good chance you will get a leap with at least one without cheating each turn. That necro has a 15" move, which gives nearly unparrelled movement, especially at an essentially dispossable price. I think they are better with Nico than with McM, since his bolster undead is more efficient with more models. Don't discount them as an attack option or an alternate cruise missle option for your nurses. With some mid-level mask cards, one of them could easily get 22" across the board and then flurry with 9CB and positive damage flips. Lastly, there is a view that they are not worth targeting. Taking out a punk zombie removes a potent threat and significant investment. Taking out one necro is annoying (requiring at least two hits) and still leaves the necro next to him ready to accomplish the objective. In your case, try playing with a mix. See what you like better and whether the rest of the list lacks mobility or hitting power. Good luck.
  2. EricJ- That's good. It would be lame if the master of zombies was more interested in animating engines.
  3. I don't have the book with me, so apologies if I miss the names on anything or I have overlooked an obvious rule. Can Nicodem, with 3 corpse tokens, cast his create undead spell (Reanimator?) and create a desolation engine? The engine is undead, is not unique or a spirit. It is in another faction, but the spell doesn't limit the possibilities to faction and Nicodem can recruit outside his faction anyway. This seems pretty powerful, as I am guessing that to play Nicodem at all you need plenty of corpse tokens for zombies anyway. If you take just some of those tokens and make the 12 SS Desolation engine you are getting a great deal, plus the 2 steampunk abominations that it will creat upon death and the two corpse tokens those will create when they are destroyed. Am I missing something?
  4. What is your take on this monstrosity? I used it in the following game: http://wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?t=7284 and wasn't terribly excited by the results. My basic plan was to send it straight towards an enemy arachnid swarm, pulling an abomination with it, and start wrecking things. Problem is, it only has 8-10 wounds by the time it arrives in combat (from the effects of Unstable Creation and moving). With a defense of 2, the swarm had no problem doing severe damage twice and putting it down. Since it is a big threat, a big target and a big investment, my opponent didn't even think twice about dropping the big cards on killing it. Do you feed it things to keep it healthy? With Ht 3 and a big base, it will eat ranged attacks and generally come into melee pretty messed up, if at all. 12 stones is pretty expensive and I would hate to bring along an abomination just as food. However, I guess I would get it back so long as I killed at least one target. Maybe it just needs an escort at all times. What has been the experience for everybody else? What worked or didn't? Have you ever used it to finish off leveticus? I guess that would be a good way to get rid of him if he had too many wounds to do it himself.
  5. Thanks for the clear up on Alyce. So, I guess I have to get her to be within 3" of the waif every turn. Good thing she is handy with a pistol, but it does prevent me from just hiding the waif completely out of sight. Will have to play with that a litttle and see how it works. Any ideas on schemes, bugking? Is there any reason I wouldn't take two in a scrap with the idea of maxing out my chances to score VP?
  6. Played a 28 stone game, mostly as a rules test. We tried to be very fastidious about the rules and would check things even when we thought we knew the answer. Game took about 2.25 hours for ~6 turns, but turns began to speed up at the end, especially as I became familiar with Lev's death mechanics. My group: Alyce, desolation engine, Steampunk abomination 5 stones His group: Ramos box set straight up (2 stones from cache) He got reconnoiter and I got slaughter. I chose Thwart and announced, he chose sabatoge twice. First turn everything moved into position and I worked on understanding the Companion mechanic and how the engine can pull along the abomination to get past Hobbled. He summons an electrical creation. Second turn: Alyce shoots the executioner, headshots, but he drops cards to prevent. I shoot again and bring it down to 3 wounds and drop snares to prevent the charge. His steamborg double advances and uses the extra melee attack to bring Alyce to two wounds. Lev activates and I take about 25 minutes figuring out how that works. I didn't know that you couldn't reduce yourself to 0 wounds, which made the planning more difficult. I use Necrotic Unmaking to kill the borg and summon another steampunk. The desolation engine w/ steampunk meet and arachnid swarm and the engine dies. Steampunks pop out and a battle of attrition begins that I will lose. Need to learn how to make the engine work, as it is a giant point sink right now. Ramos makes the critical mistake of wasting both soulstones summoning a spider. Third turn: Alyce is killed by the electrical creation. Lev puts down a swarm and my abominations die quickly. ..... Last turn: It is down to Lev plus waif against Ramos plus arachnid. Not a good match up for me, as Ramos's counterspell is proof against Lev's awesome spell list. I spend a soulstone to win initiative. Lev goes, uses death's lessons to put the red joker on top of the deck, necromantic sacrifice plus Wk to get into melee and then puts the death touch down with a triple plus flip from Face of Death. One severe damage later and Ramos is history and we call the game. Lessons learned: Leveticus is tough to get your mind around in the beginning and it really pays to parse out his turn so you get the right stuff happening at the right time. His spell list is ridiculous, but counterspell makes you get into melee. The ability to deny Ramos scrap tokens from both my guys (steampunk abominations) and from his by summoning Steampunks first, is great and cripples a lot of his support ability. I like the seesaw feeling of invulnerability from wanting to die each turn to the terrible weakness that is the hollow waif. I think that blocking terrain, particularly thin forests, are incredibly important and a must drop for the Lev player. Death's Lessons is fantastic and lets you either set up the conditions to successfully cast your high target number spells or set up for a couple of great defense flips. It really feels terrible when you realize that you miscalculated the number of wounds caused and will end up living through the turn. I didn't like how the engine performed, but that may just be my screwups. The steampunks were weak, but I get the feeling they are supposed to be. Alyce was ok, but I may change her up for something else next time. Questions: Why would you not pick the maximum number of schemes? You don't lose VP for failing, so pick a couple different and see what happens. Can I use Killjoy and then sacrifice Leveticus at some point to summon Killjoy? It says "all models gain (1) sacrifice" and I would like to be able to use this when I don't have enough actions to bring me down to one wound on a turn. Alyce only grants additional draw cards on the first turn for Leveticus, correct?
  7. Thanks for the responses, guys. I like the idea of explaining the fate deck, dueling system, twisting first. Then stepping it up to a small game. Just to be completely clear, I wasn't knocking the Wyrd crew, as they were invariably excited about the game and wanted to help. There was always a crowd at the booth and the demo and it looked like the product was flying off the shelves. The only thing that was difficult was actually figuring out the mechanics. It came highly recommended from a friend, so on my second trip to the booth I resolved to buy the book and a crew and teach myself if need be. The last time I was there (on Sunday), Kelthios and Ambrose (don't know your forum name) took the time to actually explain a bunch of the mechanics and run through a turn of actions. This helped immensely with both my understanding of the game and my interest in it. It also corrected a number of my rule misunderstandings. Definitely need a bigger booth next year, since there will be even more models to sell!
  8. Actually, the booth demos at Gencon is where my question comes from. All of the Wyrd guys I met were awesome and incredibly helpful/knowledgable. However, they were very reticent about actually showing how the game worked. I went to the booth three time before I actually got to play out some of the mechanics with miniatures and then only for one round. I went to one of the official demos (the one that the D6 generation attended), but it was crazy loud and the rules felt a little overwhelming to me.. I have since read through the rules and really enjoy how they work, but I worry about scaring off new players. Now, this is the internet and you can write that experience off to my being brain damaged, but I thought a more basic version might be useful. Have you had success with teaching the full game straight out of the gate?
  9. For balance in demo games when using box sets against each other, do you use a set points limit or just box on box? If the latter, do you fill up the lower point value box on soul stones to balance it off or are they meant to be played straight against each other? As an example, the Cult of December Box is 21 stones (I think) but some of the other boxes are more. If you were to play CoD against another box, would you add soulstones to the pool to equal it out? What point level do you recommend for learning games? I see more than a few recommendations for 25 stones. I am most interested in learning Levi, so I would like to get my losing streak started tonight on my way to learning how he plays. Would it be best to play against another box set and just build up to their "stone level" or should we have a slightly higher level? The latter would allow my opponent to swap in other models or just increase his starting cache a little. Last question- which rules, if any, do you streamline or cut out when demoing? I have a good amount of warmachine experience and I remember those demos as focusing much more on the "jack go smash" mechanics and much less on the "my 8 model combo just mudhole-stomped you" idea that makes up the bulk of a more advanced game. Is there an equivalent here? I am worried about overloading new players with interesting mechanics and getting the feared eye glaze.
  10. I certainly agree with the draw of something complicated. I have way less experience than most of the people on this board, but you might want to consider saving some of the stones to bring onto the board. Levi doesn't have a cache, so you only have the soulstones you save from hiring your crew. Also, I think that you can kill him for good, if you also kill every hollow waif on the board before the closing phase on the turn he dies. This means his waif is very important. Because of that, you might want to consider switching out an extra stone for a corpse token, which he can use to create another waif, should his die in action. Of course, given the crew you listed (the same one I will likely going use), Levi is the only one with graverobber, so you will be dropping the token every turn you die. Alternatively, I believe you could give him a scrap token and have Alyce build a steam punk abomination first turn, while you still have extra control cards to burn. I'm not sure that this works, so I would appreciate any corrections that those who are better versed in the rules could offer. Don't forget to bring other proxy bases for the extra steampunk abominations and waifs that you will summon, either by magic or by the destruction of the desolation engine. Side note: is there any concept art out there for the desolation engine? My imagination creates an undead steampunk locamotive of destruction (complete with steam whistle) but I'm not sure that is what the creators are really trying to convey.
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