agorfein

I prefer it the old way. Getting to use it on negative flips can mean that having "hard to wound 2" can be worse in some situations than "hard to wound 1." For example, if the black joker is in your hand or out of play and a lot of cards have already been gone through, why not take a weak shot at a "hard to wound 2" model? If there are only 24 cards left in the deck and you get a hit in the 1-5 range you have a 1 in 6 chance of severe damage plus another damage draw. I took Teddy out like this the other day early in the game (not in a planned way, just got lucky) and it basically made the rest of the battle really unbalanced. While there is a lot of randomness in many games, the red joker on negative flips just seems to me to be too uncontrollable.

I honestly rarely burn soulstones for damage prevention, on defense I usually find it more efficient to soulstone my defense flip. I think you are underestimating the power of soulstones. For example, if Sonia soulstones four pistol shots and Perdita has none left to defend herself, Sonia is quite likely to kill her even with her terrible shooting ability (let alone using her flame blast or sword). Given the distribution of cards, a soulstone is worth approximately +6 or +7 on any flip (on average). In addition to greatly increasing the odds of a hit, it is quite likely to enable a player to cheat the damage instead of having to settle for a . This is huge. If you want people to buy models rather than soulstone cache, the solution is to make adding soulstones to the cache more expensive, so that models become more attractive. That would also have the side benefit of making masters with larger caches (like Sonia) a bit better and those like Perdita, with a smaller cache, a bit worse (or at least make them forgo more combat power in the form of other models if they want to max out their pools). Of course, this might really piss off the Viktoria players.....

I have to disagree, I think a variable cap is a bad idea. If there is a problem with the cost of soulstones vs. troops, that should be addressed by the rules (like having unspent soulstones only transfer to the cache at a 2-1 ratio or something). My concern is that the number of soulstones a model possesses is directly related to their ability to survive as the rules are presently written. I would bet on almost any master with eight soulstones against any other master with only four. In the example you give, Sonia Criid would wipe the floor with Perdita with that many extra stones. The real problem (if you view it as a problem, I'm not sure I do) is that almost any master, given a few soulstones and decent cards, can beat any non-master pretty easily. If a master with three soulstones can easily take out a 9 or 10 soulstone model, why wouldn't you max out the number of soulstones you're allowed? If you ask me, the masters should be tough. They are the heroes of the story. However, that said, there probably needs to be a pretty thorough re-think of all of the strategies and schemes as they don't seem well balanced. Some are really hard to accomplish (slaughter, for instance, is really difficult in a big game. A player can almost always hide a model somewhere). Others are much easier. Perhaps there should be a starting soulstone bonus or penalty depending on the strategy you draw.

I totally agree. And the Guild needs a priest/exorcist with a sawed off shotgun...

I have been playing Sonia for a while now with great success and have won far more games than I have lost. I agree with most everything Angel of Menoth has said. However, from his description I do try to keep her out of melee a bit more than he does. IMHO the key to Sonia is to have her at the right place at the right time to do one or two turns of devastating blast damage. 7-8 soulstones is a must with Sonia as you will be burning them to use confiscated lore and to increase your casting totals so that you can cheat her blast damage up to severe. Don’t be afraid to spend your soulstones. Also, if Sonia is in a decent position, don’t be afraid to channel the first spell against enemies that are hard to wound. You want to get to a neutral damage flip so you can cheat it. Against enemies that are hard to wound or masters, try to kill them with blasts as you target their underlings. For me, that’s really the key to success. Sonia Criid is the only master I have had inflict 28 damage in one activation, by getting two severe Flame Bursts with three extra enemies in the blast area (take that Razorspine rattler and your silurid friends too!) I haven’t used her with the errata yet, so I don’t know how much making the blast a ranged attack will hurt her. However, I don’t anticipate it being too bad if your main melee troops are witchlings. If you kill them by accident your target is still taking 5 damage (three from the blast and two from immolation). Sonia’s advanced counter spell is really useful, particularly if you keep vulnerable but highly effective characters (like Hopkins) near her. That way he can’t be lured away, affected with disabling psychiatric conditions by Pandora, etc. and is pure death to anyone who is not in melee within 10" Finally, Sonia loves fighting enemies that are “Hard to Kill.” “Hard to Kill” means they always pause just long enough at 1 wound that they can be conveniently turned into more witchlings with “Violation of Magic.” I hope this helps. I really think Sonia is actually one of the better masters. I just can’t decide whether I like running her or Perdita more...

I fought the Viktorias with Sonia Criid the other day. I agree about adopting a shooting strategy as they are vicious in hand to hand. However, one cool thing is that a number of outcasts have "hard to kill," including Taelor (who you see in every Vik list). Hard to Kill is great for Sonia because it leaves enemies with 1 health left which can be turned into Witchlings with "Violation of Magic". I was able to win by turning two of his guys into additional Witchlings in a single turn. It was great fun.

I suppose it's worth a shot, though the odds aren't good. You need an 11+ to cast (surge is 16) which means there are 4 cards in the deck which will do it: 11, 12, 13 tomes and the red joker. Assuming you don't have one in your six card hand, that gives you a 4 in 47 (54 card deck minus 6 in hand and 1 for initiative) chance of drawing it on the first draw and 4 in 46 on the second. Your odds may be better if it is later in the turn and the needed cards haven't come up and a bit better still as you probably had some discards from the previous turn.

It's worse than that, you can't SS for Reactivate, only for casting Ramos' spells. I REALLY REALLY want to get Ramos to work. If Malifaux was an RPG then Ramos would be exactly the character I'd like to play. However, his abilities seem really underwhelming compared to some of the other masters. I am beginning to think that creating spiders should be very secondary compared to creating electrical creations and supporting with electrical fire and arc. I still am not able to convince myself though...

But he is talking about getting off reactivate TWICE in consecutive turns (which you need a natural 11+ tome as it can't be soulstoned) as well as TWO spiders (each of which requires a tome and probably a soulstone or two). Unless your hand starts largely filled with tomes (of which you should average 1.5 in your starting hand) this is not going to happen.

What is it that you like about her totem? I looked at it and was underwhelmed.