StormHalo

I know you can make the Belles VERY quick, but I am wondering why you'd want to? I mean, territory control strategies and the treasure hunt lead to obvious conclusions, but a lot of the time, moving my Belles up into the face of an enemy with decent ranged attacks isn't always the best option. Belles are durable, but putting Seamus so far behind of his meat wall could be very discouraging. I'm a rookie though, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt.

I'm a bit partial to Savage Worlds for Malifaux, especially since one could use the resources found in the Deadlands book.

The first question that comes to my mind is, what about the strategies that have players claiming or camping objectives? They wouldn't have a target at all. Would they have to pick the player that sets up closest to that objective as the target for their schemes?

I also own Lilith and her crew and must say, they're impressive. They have good defense values, good combat values, good enough WP...they're just pretty darn good all around...except for shooting. If you want make ranged attacks, don't buy Lilith's starter crew.

That looks like a tree I saw at Michael's...only repainted and retextured. Nice.

That's a darn good question. I seem to remember the book saying something about only ever needing to pass 1 WP test per character per activation...but I could most certainly be wrong...it's happened several times before.

The Belles have two options for close combat right? Not two attacks per turn?

The crew builder has my vote, for what it's worth.

I'd like say that my first criticism has been totally erased from my mind, going in the way of the misinterpretation of the damage rules. I've had a few days to think the game over, and realize how much more effectively I could have played my crew. With the Belles hiding in a nearby wood, I could have cast lure to draw my cousin's strongest Neverborn off of the bridge. With Seamus, I could have made short work of a few terror tots, got some tokens and raised a few more Belles to up my model count on the objective. Oh, silly silly me! This a great game, especially once you start realizing the just how effective and diverse your models can be.

The fluff is good...but not sticky-pages-good! Calm down, buddy!

I also played a game with Seamus, my first and only game as a matter of fact. Aside from being extremely difficult to kill, the Belles aren't very good at anything. They have a few support powers, sure...but they're not particularly adept at getting them to go off, nor can one rely upon them to hit anything in close combat. To me, they're meant to slow down or reposition the opponent's crew, allowing you to pick your battles with Seamus more effectively. Seamus too isn't a combat ace and he's no sure shot, but he can use soulstones and he can raise corpse counters. He's damn hard to kill and excessive bleeding is not to be taken lightly. If you have a rough game with him and cause very few wounds but hit everything with excessive bleeding, you can pull a win out at the end of the game that your opponent can't do anything about. Again, I only played one game, and I am searching for a good way to play the crew too. These are the things I've noticed about them so far though.

I was considering the same question concerning construction of a building. I had the idea of Popsicle sticks or tongue depressors (which I can get from work) over a cardboard shell (also readily available from work).

Aha! Thanks for everybody's clarification. Ignore my criticism concerning the damage then. I'm a buffoon! Capcap: I live in Sterling Heights, which is a ways away from Garden City. It'd be tough for me to commit to anything that requires that much of a drive.

The way I understood it (and really, I am not the best with new rule systems) is that you flip your card to hit. If I flip a 13 I add Seamus' Cb of 5 and end up with a total of 18. The tot flips its defense and gets a 7 added to its Df of 6 to have a total of 13. The combat total would be the difference between them, five. With a combat total of 1-5, you flip one less card for damage. Seamus only flips one card for damage...so essentially he gets to flip no cards? Again, I read the rules through only once, and I've been piling overtime up at the job and getting very little sleep. I very well could have misunderstood something...and really, I am hoping that I did!!

My cousin and I tossed down a game of Malifaux last night, popping both of our respective cherries. Overall I enjoyed the way the rules worked. I like the alternating activations, the way spells are cast, and the amount of decisions you have to make with your control hand, soul stones and (0) spells and abilities. However, I did have some questions or concerns... I played Seamus (and his starting box) and my cousin used Lilith (and her starting crew). He randomly chose the strategy of "slaughter," while I chose "claim jump." Our strategies made for a bit of a boring game. We met in the middle after deploying in a line and the game stayed in the middle (upon a bridge that was my objective) for the entire time. This fact forced us into making bland decisions when it came to movement or game-board-interaction. All of those cool terrain rules in the back of the core book, they went right out the window... Secondly, I know the models need to be survivable, but damn is it hard to wound in this game!! I'd flip a 13 with Seamus against a Terror Tot who would flip a 7 and still get denied a damage flip because of the negative modifier imposed by the combat total. Do you REALLY need to flip the red joker every time you need to wound opposing models!? I understand Seamus' crew has ways to lower defense, and trust me, I tried to do use "undress" almost every turn and was only ever able to get it to go off a couple of times. Needless to say, I was more than a tad discouraged when it came to my crew's ability to EVER cause damage. Sure, they could take a fair bit of a beat-down, but they had NO teeth. I think I personally could beat Seamus down with nothing but a wet noodle and have little fear that he'd ever do more than scratch me and cause some excessive bleeding.