Haight

Except that the combo is being looked at by development, per the thread "deck stacking" in the Ress'er section. Keltheos let the people talking about it in that thread know that the situation was being "looked into", but to continue conversation. If this was 100% intended (and i'm not saying its going to get errata'd, though i'm betting there's a higher likelihood than not), they would have come out and said "no, this is meant to work this way". That the "situation is being looked into" suggests to me that it may have been an unforseen situation, and that they are now evaluating the following - 1) if it works (pretty damn ironclad it does) 2) if it works as presented (again, pretty damn ironclad it does) 3) if its a balance issue 4) if its what they intended the models to do: 4a) If no, path of least resistance to keep intent of model design integral while stopping the balance issue with minimal disturbance to design intent. This could present many issues, some of which are not attractive (errata'ing something that wouldn't appear on the cards, which is never good in mini's games with game aids, errata'ing something to work a different way, etc - many options here), issuing that clarification. 4b) If yes, issuing that clarification. My guess is that its currently being investigated by some people, and possibly even playtested out by some peeps. No matter how hard you playtest something, the second you release it to the public, you subject it to more eyes and hands that will put every possible combination of things together in ways you never imagined - moreso than any group of playtesters can even in the longest design cycle. It's just the nature of playtest.

Sweet! She's one of my more highly anticipated models to see (and i feel confidant saying i'm not alone there).

I play Warmachine and Hordes - long time Cygnar player, but recently ditched them for the Retribution, which is a faction that seems tailor made for me. Play pretty competitively in hardcore format. I dabble in infinity and AEWWII. Casually on both fronts. I play Pan-O in Infinity and Americans in AEWWII. Malifaux, clearly. Just getting started, but already have crews with several masters. Leveticus is my main focus, but i plan on dabbling in Nicodem, Sonia, Perdita, Ramos, Pandora, and Lilith when all is said and done. RPG's: I play in a long running (like, 9 years) shadowrun campaign. Still have the same character from the first day i started too. I'm not a big RPG guy but its with some of my best friends and the GM is a really good story teller. Past that i like gaming RPG's of all sorts (open world, non-linear types are my favorite - stuff like Fallout 1, 2, and 3, Mass Effect, Oblivion, etc - anything where i'm not hammered into a linear story and can just tool around is great with me), and play Team Fortress 2 on Steam. Boardgames: I'm a scrabble junky. My girlfriend and I play 2-3 times a week. It's not unusual for our scores to be like "high 400's vs low 500's". And we are nazis with one another when it comes to the game. -- Haight

That Ramos is downright awe-inspiring. Such a visually simple thing (though i'm sure physically difficult), but very, very cool!

I definitely agree that you cannot inject realism into rules. Rules are an abstraction to maintain a balance and represent a particular effect or occurrence, and how such things are governed. Essentially almost all rules in a wargame boil down to math. Furthermore reasoning with "realism" in regards to mechanical mathematical systems in a mechanical system paradigm meant to be an astraction of a game with magic, cyborgs, walking dead zombies, nightmare demon creatures, and all other sorts of stuff is a bit self-defeatist. Your argument holds no water before you even make it. The rules don't make mechanical and logical, balanced sense because of a sense of "realism", they make mechanical and logical sense to keep the game from breaking. Any fluff extrapolation is just a reflection of the abstraction the rules represent. From another board i frequent, Fluff != Rules. It appears that to me, mechanically, and mathematically, that there is no reason that a Slow figure cannot perform an (all) action. That said, i hope they change the mosquito trick. To me, balance wise, I don't think any infinite mill trick is a good idea, regardless of ability to interrupt. You should never be able to deploy behind a piece of terrain all the way in the corner and 100% (or rather, very nigh-on so, as it's not exactly 100% guaranteed) assuredly pull the red joker into your control hand.

Bete Noire is french for Black Betty isn't it ? And it's escaping me at the moment, but Black Betty is a cultural reference to .... something. .... in america, isn't it? I may be off base with either / both of those there, but my spidey sense is tingling. Love the freebooter proxy, btw! May have to pick one of those up for use in my leve lists for Bete! Just checked - its french for "black beast". I know its unlikely, but i hope that the concept art of the pale ressi chick behind the grave in the book ends up being black betty. I think that would be somehow fitting rather than a slavering rotting monster. More like a serial killer born of nightmares rather than a monster.

Hmmm. Haven't checked out the exact wording, but if that works, they need to do something about that. Doesn't seem quite right, though i guess you are still sac'ing one model. Still - sac'ing a three point pig doesn't scream "Get Joker Automatically" in terms of fair trade balance!

Probably appropriately too - i'm pretty sure Wyrd didn't intend any infinite mill tricks to consistently pull red joker every flip. Sorta takes the game out of the game, wouldn't it ?

Well howdy Hack.

Seconded. Do tell.

Play leveticus. he can do this via Death's lessons. Takes damage for it, but that's sorta the whole point. He can also hire undead without extra cost. Death's lessons is one of the reasons i'm interested in Crooked Men for LEve.

Well, it will insta-kill a 5 wound model in two activations. However the real effectiveness of the spell is that if you do whispers + wasting, it puts up to an 8 wound model at one wound that can't be healed. For two spells. Assume Whispers then UW: >5 wound = insta-death if you land both. 6 wounds = 3, then 2 = 1 wound left 7 wounds = 3, then 2 = 2 wound left 8 wounds = 4, then 3 = 1 wound left 9 wounds = 4 then 3 = 2 wound left 10 wound = 5, then 3 = 2 wound left 11 wound = 5, then 4 = 2 wound left 12 wound = 6, then 4 = 2 wound left That's the other nasty part about it: no healing. Perfect for masters or regen'ing models. And while you're op will hold his control card hand, so can you. The values involved are pretty darn good with the hanged and leve, so its probably going to come down to quality of hand. You can always soulstone as well with Leve too. As to why not cast unnatural wasting twice, If i can have a previous activation do half the job for me, and spend one of my casting actions doing something else with leve, why wouldn't I ? That's sorta like asking "why don't you have your master do all the heavy lifting all the time?" Quite simply because they can't all the time. They need help. The hanged's Whispers basically acts as a slightly weaker version of UW with the added benefit of no healing. If i can land it, i've just done half of Leve's work for him, freeing up a cast to do other things. This is especially important with a caster that relies heavily on recycling himself. I'm not saying its the end all tactic, cleary its not. In tandem with the hanged's terror tactics and WP nonsense, i like it, as its a ghetto version of wasting with the benefit of not being able to be healed. And yah, Black Betty's awesome, but sometimes you don't want to take her in every list. I like having options and keeping my opponent's guessing. If they know Betty's going to be in every list (or the hanged for that matter) they start building appropriately. I like getting to a place where i have a nasty trick with every model, and every combination of models. -- Haight

I actually had the same thought, but it depends on the duration of Blessing of Desolation, which is not currently defined in the card or the book. If its a turn duration (likely), then it may be a little harder to pull off. If it's permanent duration, that's pretty sick.

This is a random side note, but I can't help but laugh every time I read "Stick 'em Tha Ass". I adopt a redneck, hillbillie inflection every time i say it. If i ever do gremlins, i'm mod'ing them all to have wheat stalks sticking out of their mouthes, and labeling each base with names like "Skeeter" and "Cletus".

It depends a little on what you're looking to do. You said you have necro punks and McM's box. Are you looking for a little ranged for your army ? Convict gunslinger could be a good choice for a relatively cheap alternative (6 stones for a res force), and provides some good shooting with some good denial. Definitely a decent investment if you're seeking ranged. Hans may be a decent investment, but he's pricey at 9 stones for Res'ers, and his long, long range could make token collection a bit difficult, so he might not be ideal - though he's good for dealing with a host of different opponents, and softening up bigger threats on approach. He's also incredibly defensible. In the Res line, Zombie punks offer good melee for relatively cheap. They are fairly durable with 6 wounds and hard to wound 1 and slow to die. Slow to die and their melee ability makes them an enormous melee threat. You also can't ignore self mutilate. While their casting ability isn't exactly stellar, it's not abhorrently bad, and is a great direct damage tool against low defense targets. Belle's are nifty. Relatively cheap, with two different attacks and Rot, one which is great against weenies due to high accuracy, and another that is good against heavier targets because of higher damage. Really the draw of belles is an obscenely high casting value when casting Lure, which can really mess with an opponent's position, increase your threat, and generally screw with the game. Distract and undres are also excellent spells for denial / anti-buff purposes. Mortimer seems like overkill for your list seeing as you have sebastion already. He's good, but i don't think you need both in a list, personally. You could always go with another flesh construct to have on hand for summoning purposes as well. The rest of the choices are pretty SS pricey. Hamelin at 10 is really pricey, but MAN can he mess with threat ranges and does board control like you read about. Killjoy is a melee beater that as long as you can keep him from coming at you and don't mind tossing a card a turn makes a great addition. If your goals are "paint first, play second" for now, then really the choices are more about what you find asthetically pleasing. You could add any of the above and find ways to make them work and be interesting in a list.

The fact that many retailers do it neither makes it a good business practice, nor changes the fact that it's disingenuous. As an estimator for one of the company's I have worked for, I ran our stock warehouse of HVAC goods for over five years, including all shipping and receiving including nationwide and local shipments. We never counted ordered stock from the manufacturer as "in stock", as it would lead to problems on construction jobs if there factory delays, recieved goods were damaged, shipping delays, inclement weather that delayed a shipment, etc - a whole host of reasons. By counting these items as on hand when they weren't, if an issue occurred, it could stymie the contractor's schedule, possibly incur delay fines against him, and sour the business relationship. While possibly slightly less consequential, this situation is no different. Unforeseen circumstances can happen, and while you had every intention that X stock would be in on Y day, when something happens, and you do not have X stock in on Y day, your customer can draw no other conclusion than you are disorganized and disingenuous (which may or may not be the case, but its the only logical conclusion your customer can draw from his frame of reference) - particularly if you don't pre-empt the issue. If this behavior becomes a pattern, then there is a problem with your customer relations. I'm not telling FRP how to run its business - they've been in business for years and so must have figured out a model that works. However on the service end of things it's not a model that I (and others in this thread, and other gamers i know) have any desire to do business with. Customer relations is a tricky thing - it takes years to build, and moments to destroy.

I actually thought about doing that. My one issue with it is if i can keep them alive long enough to turn them into scaps and form voltron. The answer is "probably", with the added benefit that the DE is probably going to be very close to the enemy by the time you get it up and becoming voltron. It's definitely a good idea. My one concern is points... what do you cut from the list to get that in ? That's the real question! For me, i'm not 100% sure. I could always drop a steam punk zombie, which pays for 2.5 of them, but past that i have absolutely no clue (i really don't want to drop the hanged - that combo is just vicious). For bigger games (35 SS +), though that's going to be a great little way to engineer yourself up a DE. Don't forget too, that alyce and leve can always spend a turn scavenging for scrap, which means you could get away with 2 dogs, and two scrap tokens, and go from there. That's another solution too!

Which is a sign of a good dev team. No one is infallible, not even the creator / developer. A good dev team helps the creator / developer take a step back from their cherished creation, give pause, and possibly re-think a previous move. Not always, but sometimes. Bringing up issues with book is very very helpful. My comments were just directed at the fact that if you want to see rule books that would make baby jesus weep for the future, there's a LOT worse out there. Wyrd's virgin book is pretty damn good, all things told. But again, player base proofreading = never bad.

Yah, i brain farted - sorry about that. I was confusing them for SPA's which drop either or. So, no go on necropunks. Shame. Their other specials are pretty attractive, but not enough to warrant not dropping scraps. Oh well.

FRP games is notorious for this kind of bad service, and ri-goddamn-diculously long shipping time frames. I placed two orders with them a while back for "in stock" (my ass) items. They took my money right away, and six weeks went by before i got a notification of shipping, despite several emails and calls that went unanswered. Worst friggin' service and shipping i've ever run across, and they didn't even attempt to make it right or make it up to me. I've used Warstore and Dungeon Trader for years, and over the hundreds of purchases i've made from them, the only times something got goofed up, they made it right, and then some.

I find him incredibly fascinating. He immediately struck me as a master that, in the hands of a skilled player is going to be incredibly nasty, but for a mediocre player, will pretty much always remain high hanging fruit. I love games with "primary models" like that. What i love most about him is that his crew can be so amazingly varied, and his tactics change more than any other master that i can see dependent upon which crew you take. You can take SPA's out the ass and go for a swarm / direct damage approach, you can take an undead loadout and go for lots of direct damage, or necroswarms which you can then turn into SPA swarms when your opponent kills them (and is currently something i'm testing out a little bit). Just a very varied minion pool to select from, including some of the nastier things that each of the ress'ers and neverborn have to offer (bete, hanged, punk zombies, teddy, juju, hooded rider, etc).

Gotta agree here. There are many, many indie and emerging games who's rules and books look like a sloppy, bloody abortion performed by jackson pollock holding a weedwhacker in comparison to the Malifaux book. Is there a hiccup here or there ? Absolutely, and I don't think anyone is saying otherwise. Are there some things that are going to need to be errata'd or are the result of transcription error, or a loss of translation from design intent to public understanding ? Yes. This is true of any game - no matter how polished or long standing. Every game has errata and clarifications - its a part of the wargaming process where you cannot apply a digital patch (like in PC / Console gaming). In fact, errata and clarifications serve the same function as "patches". A handful of developers and 20+ Playtesters have a fraction of the sets of eyes on the product that the general public will upon release. That's the nature of development, design, and playtested products. There are going to be things that Development understands one way, and players interpret another - and thus a clarification or errata is required. Frankly, i'm pretty impressed with the quality and the relative tightness of the rules in Malifaux considering it is the companies first outing (though i do know the forward says they scrapped at least two versions of the game, so i'm sure there was some learning / growing pains there). There is a simple elegance to most of the rules that I find impressive.

Killjoy worries me with leveticus. He is awesome, but i hate the idea of having to toss cards away just to keep my opponent from sodomizing me with my own model - particularly with leve. Leve's card discard protection mechanism will not protect him from Killjoy's effect (it's not enemy, and it's not targeting him, so no go), and even with alyce, your card replenishment is going to be at a minimum until you recycle leveticus. I don't want killjoy to pre-ordain my order of activations with leveticus, particularly because he is so order of activations reliant. Then again, that could just be my own paranoia. Give it a go, and post the results. JuJu is a tempting option. I keep finding myself drawn more to hordes of mid-sized minions that like doing direct damage. One problem i see in my list above is lack of soul stones. Brain farted that Leve has a cache of 0. So i may opt out of the crooked man and either put in a SPA + 1 soulstone, or a canine + 1 soulstone, or simply sit on the cache of 4. Still - that would only leave me with leve + 4 minions. Definitely going to have to give it a try and see how it goes. Early on i may also do what i can to scramble up some SPA's with Alyce and Leve to give myself some body count advantage (and possibly get a D. Engine going if things go well).

Yah - saying lilith is a pain in the ass is like saying the sky is blue! Seriously though, she's my number one concern with Leve - If she hasn't activated yet, you need to be ridiculously careful how much you go consuming leve with his various spells, as transposition makes it sickeningly easy for her crew to nix the waif, and then concentrate on killing Leve.

The errata doesn't bother me much - it just means that i'll change the way i play Nicodem slightly. I means i'll concentrate on punks a little more, and buffing / decaying, etc., rather than trying to whore-out the mindless zombie angle like I was in a red light district with a fistfull of hundreds. : Just means you have to work a bit harder to get the mindless zombie ho-train going, rather than taking Nic, Mort, and 2+ dogs, digging up counters, and making craptons of zombies turn 2. He's still pretty mean, and has many tricks up his sleeve. However, if Mortimer's spell is cheatable, that would be flippin' fantastic.