geistwald

IMO the heavy hitter style Marcus lists are all about Kaeris, as far as "heavy hitting" goes for Marcus. Piling up expensive beasts just doesn't work for me, especially because they just don't hit hard enough, compared to their high SS cost and the fact that most opponents maim them with surprising ease. And poulpox is right, Killjoy rocks with Marcus and raptors.

An all-comer list for tournaments that served me well enough: Marcus +4SS -Jackalope - Kaeris - Silurid - Silurid - Malifaux Raptor - Jack Daw Substitutes: change Jack Daw to another Malifaux Raptor (2SS) and an expensive hitter (8SS), preferably a Shikome, or maybe the Cerberus that you already have.

Silurids are far more than objective grabbers. If you're facing a crew that lacks living or undead models, they are still effective and expendable tools to assassinate key models (hollow waif, sorrow, puppets, whatnot) from tremendous distance. If you have a chance to play pack leader + Marcus charge + stare down, it's an awkward moment even for SS users. Night terrors are amazing for their cost, but they also bring cheap abilities on the table. Sometimes they worth it, sometimes not. However, I still have to come upon the situation when I'll regret having 2 silurids for 10 points in my crew. IMO buy a blister of silurids and a jackalope, fill the rest as you like, and you'll have a competitive Marcus roster

1. yes 2. no

It's not that you're a new player or Jack Daw is under-pointed, it's just he stops dead this build of yours. The usual way to deal with him is making your opponent discard his hand, then put wounds on Jack, or try and attack his low-ish def with nice triggers that paralyze him or make him flee or even sacrifice him, without involving dmg or wd. You can also try and out-activate him, because he can't cover the whole field, so your cheap and numerous minions can collect VP's all right. With your crew, I think your best bet is to get him in melee with someone immune to Terrifying (=gamin), then hope for a nice flip on the disengaging strike, or spam Jack with Biting Chill attacks if your opponent seems to be low on cards or soulstones. You can also drop the Snow Storm for 2-3 other models, suddenly making the cost of Jack Daw restrictive at the 25pts level. I'm not sure I wrote anything you didn't already know... Anyways, congrats to your performance, two wins out of three games is pretty solid.

Your gamin and especially your ice golem show a nice attempt of mastering colors and the rules of lighting. Much harder to do than washing and blending and all the fancy stuff, because you have to think, not just let the paints mix and flow. Very well done !!

Some ideas: - always hire Kaeris as your henchman, with her totem she can play the Dreamer's hide and seek game well enough, and burn those softies - you probably want to remove daydreams, so hire a soulstone miner and whatnot - auto-damaging effects are your best friend, such as detonating constructs - hire something to screen and/or protect your master - your crew has to be able to collect all the VP's given, because the Dreamer seldom scores less than 6

I really don't want to pick on you or something, but you say your wk4 def4 wd4 model once tied up a peacekeeper for a while (well done), so it covers Raspy's most apparent weakness, namely getting caught in melee and die?

I just pointed out that each and every totem do something for Ramos, if only on paper. Meanwhile the essence of power does zero point zero things for Marcus, and the wendigo is something like an independent 2 pts model that doesn't fill any totem-like role. It's far from wasting 2 pts, of course... and one of the funniest miniatures in this game.

This is one of the fortunately rare examples of poor game design in Malifaux. The vanilla arcanist totem essence makes the wendigo laughable, while it's outright useless with Marcus at the same time. That way Ramos has 3 totems to consider, anybody else from book 1 have no choice at all. Out of curiosity, what weakness of Rasputina the wendigo exactly covers???

Before purchasing Kaeris herself, maybe you should consider that she'll get another sculpt sooner or later. At least that's what these results mean...

Now, I totally missed that one... One more reason to look forward to my gamin box.

problem #1: what if the gunsmith have to walk to get in position, then your opponent activates. problem #2: if the gamin keeps on following the gunsmith to defend him, you'll have a pretty expensive gunsmith, practically for a price of 2 gunsmiths. The metal gamin seems to be a good choice to protect ranged models, but I feel the gunsmith is a rare exception, because he isn't static enough to fully capitalize on this kind of protection. In this case, the silent one(s) fit much better. Of course this is just my opinion, based on no amount of real experience

Choosing the effigy also locks out other special force members, such as Kaeris or gunsmiths, which is even more restrictive.

McTavish is pretty expensive for a SRM wrangler, and he doesn't seem terribly good at it. Now there's Hamelin who can have a complete crew built around him, costly but damn useful. How about obey and piper's lure in the same breath, that's 8-11 extra inches for the mauler. Not mentioning the whale of useful things he can do for the crew.

Well there are two kinds of beasts: the arcanist ones that I don't really feel like fielding, and the out-of-faction beasts where this characteristic is only the key to hire, nothing more. This new guy seems to be the first one that we could hire without being a beast (mercenary), but being a beast will be its selling point for Marcus

Now that's good news, thanks for sharing! Just what Marcus needed. Sort of.

Yes, if you play Shared Deliver a Message

Your crew doesn't seem to be tailored to fight armoured constructs. I'd try a pair of gunsmiths for a start.

What I mean is they can't really outrange Rasputina and Kaeris, except for the obvious tricks and sniping positions which also lock them in place. Activating in companion is a double-edged weapon: they can shoot unwary enemies for sure, but they also get out-activated easily. (If they activate en masse to hide, good for you...) I don't know your crew builds, neither your opponents', but Perdita usually wins by slaughtering the enemy, not by collecting more VP's a smart way. It's you who has better tools for the latter.

This game is supposed to be terrain-intensive. Place and use walls, forests, whatnot to block LoS and give you cover. Ice pillars with flame walls help a lot. In my experience, ranged Guild crews steal the show where people still build WHFB or Warmachine style boards. Otherwise, they aren't half as scary.

And Willie also looks better than the digital image. The sculptor never has seen a real wheelbarrow in his life, and he didn't take the trouble to make up this leeway, but the whole model came off well enough.

Far from useless, just worse than normal Marcus in every respect

Slowish forces can work if they have high staying power and/or ranged tools to make your opponent worry. A force made of hoarcats and maulers have none of these talents.

How do you target enemy models with drain souls?