wrabbit37

My gaming circle and I have been talking this issue back and forth all week now, and I think I've finally distilled my feelings on the matter down pretty well. I don't know how often intolerance or harassment happens in the gaming community. It might be more often than the public at large. It might be less often than the public at large. But I don't think anyone can say it does not happen at all, and if the amount of intolerance and harassment is not at zero, it means we still have some work to do. No one should be subject to that. We might be doing better than the world at large (again, I honestly don't know), but that's not a reason to stop making strides to make things even better still. I think the point of articles and discussions like this isn't to make huge, grand changes, but rather to shine a light on something that isn't always lit up. Right now because of these articles, I am hyper-aware of harassment. I went to the game store this week and on the drive my mind wandered to how I would react if I saw it. It's impossible to say until it happens, but I can say that I am more likely to speak up now than I was last week because these conversations forced me to consider my reactions. If having these conversations helps a handful (or better still, a lot) of people consider those situations and be ready to not play the silent partner next time they see it happen, they will have done a good job. I think we are moving the needle, but it's not something that happens overnight. It requires people who are on the fence to get off the fence and offer some help. That help could be in the form of preparing yourself so you know how to react if you see situations of intolerance and harassment. It could be in determining a set of words you want to work out of your vocabulary because there are plenty of others that aren't harassment that convey the same message. These conversations are important to have, because each time they come up, I believe there's a small subset of people who are at the right time in their lives to listen to them and will make positive change in themselves, and that just keeps making a better place to game.

I go high on stones, trying to hit 6-7 on almost everyone. As Math says, they're an incredibly versatile resource, making my best models on the board that much better. Each one is essentially an additional 1-3 wounds on a Master or Henchman, and I like to play aggressive with them. Or it's a better hand, or a shot at initiative. I actually rarely stone for suit, though I don't play a lot of summoning masters right now. I have never regretted taking lots of stones, even if I end the game with 2-3 remaining. I have, however, regretted taking few stones in a game.

Thanks for the tips - having played 10 Thunders a lot, I know which upgrades I like to reach for there. Good to get some perspective on the Neverborn options. Yeah, I'm getting back into the game a bit more heavily. I'm actually not in Northern VA anymore, which is part of why I've been gone for a bit. Last year was a wasteland for Malifaux for me - new kid in April, and then house-hunting and moved to Pennsylvania at the beginning of the Fall. Took me a while to get things into a routine, but I think I found a decent store down in Bel Air, MD that I can get more games in.

For the new year, I think I am planning to move into Neverborn. I used to play them heavily back in the day, but with M2E, I have been exploring other factions. Hard to stay away forever though. I was wondering what people felt about the Neverborn generic upgrades, though. Looking through them I am having a hard time being wow-ed by many of them. Fears Given Form is fantastic, and the Mimic's Blessing seems like a decent investment, but what about the others? Aether Connection, Depression, Fears Given Form, Hexed Among You, Nexus of Power, Obsidian Talons, On Dreaming Wings, On Wings of Darkness, Pact, Rapid Growth, Retribution's Eye, Stone of Tyrant Echoes, The Mimic's Blessing, Useless Duplications?

Good choice. All the best tactical writers choose Ten Thunders.

I ran into a similar problem with my Ten Thunders - in v1 I used other factions primarily, but when I came to M2E, I found that Ten Thunders was the faction I liked most. Unfortunately none of my crews matched at that point. Mei Feng was in a junkyard, Jakob was in a city, Misaki was out in the grass, etc. What I ended up doing was using snow to make all the bases uniform. So Mei Feng's crew is still in the junkyard, but it's covered with a layer of snow. Misaki's out in a snowed-over field. Jakob is on partially-covered snow bases (part of the city streets have been uncovered). It makes putting all the models together work fine as the snow draws them all together. I have had to touch up the paint on some of them - bring the colors more into line with each other. And one of the crews in particular - McCabe - needs a complete rework. His crew is on desert bases, and I like the way they look too much to make changes, so I'm just going to have to get a second set of that crew to work with. But everything else looks solid.

Holy cow, you're not wrong about that! That stuff is amazing!

If you're looking for article suggestions, one I wouldn't mind seeing is someone give a short tutorial on how to sculpt with green stuff. I see some people do some great things to add to their models (add a coat to someone, or give someone a hat, or something like that) but I have no idea how to even begin doing that. Other than, you know, buying green stuff.

What do you do with this information after you collect it? Do you ever act on it? What could you foresee yourself using it for?

I dunno, sometimes the complaints are the most interesting part.

Hey, Mike here. I just sent you a PM.

My tracking number never worked either, but I got my book a couple days ago. Awesome book - great idea with the ribbons. I hope this catches on and more RPG books start including them.

Aaron, you are a beautiful man. Let no one tell you otherwise.

Hmm... that makes sense. If it comes up in tonight's session, I'll give it a try and see how it goes. Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Heading into my second session tonight - I'll see if I can get some of these tricks to stick. Brewmaster, I completely agree with what you're saying - these aren't for checks that are stopgaps in the game (I also avoid having those in play). This is more for getting secondary information out of situations. Stuff that's not required to advance beyond this point, but stuff that could help you in the long-run. For example, are you being followed as you head home? Doesn't really matter much if you know you are or not - the story will continue - but you have something you can do about it or can use that information to help you out in the future. One question about having people flip cards at random times during the game so they don't know when it's important and when it's not... how do you deal with cheating at that point? Do you let people cheat when they don't know why they're flipping, or if the flip even matters for anything?

In many dice-based roleplaying games, I'll roll to check for my players to determine if they notice something in passing or get the feeling that the person speaking isn't on the up-and-up. It's easy to do then, and when my players know and trust that I'll make those checks for them, they don't feel inclined to say they're looking around all the time or trying to detect lies from everyone they're speaking to. In TtB, I can't do that since I can't touch the Fate Deck. And if I call for the players to make that check themselves, even if they fail, they know something is up. Even if I could make the flip myself, the player has the ability to cheat and would need to know if that option was available in the first place. How have other FMs worked with this staple of roleplaying games?

I've gotten through three games with Shenlong at this point (not a huge set, I accept, but starting to get the hang of his tricks). I've found that he works fantastic with an elite crew that's designed to go after objectives. My most recent showing had him with Izamu, Sensei Yu, a Samurai and a Dawn Serpent. In Turf War, Izamu was able to shore up the middle with Shenlong nearby healing and removing conditions from him. Once my opponent's entire crew took down Izamu, I was able to move in with the Samurai and Dawn Serpent to split focus on them and keep Shenlong healing them back up each turn. Meanwhile Sensei Yu was able to sprint the back of the board grabbing Power Ritual and Bodyguard - he was fast enough and resilient enough that my opponent didn't really get much of an option against him. So far my tactics have tended towards defensive with Shenlong, which he seems to excel at. Has anyone pulled him out more offensively and managed to put a major beat-down on the enemy?

Why you gotta be mean like that? I come in here looking for good advice and get greeted by some folks who will give it to me, and then the COMPANY SPONSOR comes in and starts treating me like this? It shows a distinct lack of respect for the community. They give you a job and all the sudden you think you can just move away and act all high and mighty! <sniff> I miss you Aaron. Come back to us, Aaron! <sniff, sniff>

That is awesome. I'm going to have to paint up my Katanaka proxy and get him on the table. Shenlong sounds more and more fun the more I see what he can do.

I used Ototo, Samurai (with Earth +3 wounds), and the Lone Samurai with him last night. It was my first or second time using each of those, so take it with a grain of salt, but being able to move the Lone Swordsman up with healing coming in from Shenlong when he was getting plinked by my opponent's gunline worked very well. Ototo is a beast - he died without killing anyone, but he absorbed a significant amount of attention allowing my others to move up field. The Samurai took a position of ranged support in this game just by virtue of the fact I needed someone to put some heat down. Long story short, if you're looking for specifically melee support, Ototo seems the best call. I like the Lone Swordsman, but he needs someone to take some pressure off him too so he's not great as your only melee option. In theory, I think the Samurai could be a fantastic melee option too, but I haven't tried.

I got my first game in with Shenlong last night, using the Peasants to try them out. They did me pretty well - I was playing with a few higher-cost models, so having two activations I could swing in when I wanted to control the flow of the game helped. Other than that, they did very little. They dropped a Scheme Marker that I could have tagged for Protect Territory, but I already had that Scheme wrapped up elsewhere on the board. I did get a free soulstone out of one of them, and I did have them drop a couple of free conditions on Sensei Yu and Shenlong, so that was helpful. Having two activations I could get into the turn was definitely the most useful part of having them on the board, though. I'll have to try out Kamaitachi next time around to see how he compares.

Do you find a lot of opponents end up going after the Peasants to kill them at that point? They don't seem that hard to kill, and getting two of them killed in a turn doesn't seem that difficult when Shenlong can't really control summoning them back - it just happens at the beginning of the next turn if there's still one in play and he decides to go that route.

Shenlong has great synergy with the Peasants, no doubt. But the generic totem for the 10 Thunders, Kamaitachi, looks solid for him as well. Which do you figure runs best with him, and if it depends on the situation (strategy / scheme selections), when is each one more favorable? How would you run either totem with him?

Great idea! A couple other models I see use few cards to get the juices rolling... Sticking in the Resser theme, I think Belles are another model that does not require cards invested to work effectively. With an 8 Lure, they will pretty much never need to cheat. They're so easy to hit that you're never going to cheat to have them missed. Their defenses come from Hard to Wound and lots of wounds, neither of which require a card investment on your part. And they're cheap enough that if you lose one early, it's not that big a deal. I think Ten Thunders Brothers are another model that requires no or low cards to function. I tend to use them to shore up scheme markers and protect them, and neither of those functions require them to use cards. About the only time I use cards is when using their (0) and then it doesn't matter the value of the card - only the suit. They're a high defense so usually they're going to require a higher investment from your opponent to kill.

I approve of Ezyrder. Avatars... interesting concept that has never hit the mark mechanically. With the restrictions placed on the idea (must make a new model, must be different, must come about in game through actions of a player, and must not make the game into a 'race for Avatar' or a 'if you don't own one, you lose') it's not something that can really be done effectively.