GuySmiley

I completely agree that you can't count on Pine box to happen. However, If I stumble across a 12 or 13 of crows in my hand I do tend to hold on to them and wait for the opportunity to box someone. This is extra nice if you are running the gov. proxy. The first model I ever did this to was Bete Noire. It was a good way to keep her from being one with the night. (and the difference between my cast and her res is only 1. Additionally I have an abundance of Ortega at my lgs. It really is a great way to deal with papa. Masters are a bit silly to try and box and really if your trying to do it then either the main plan failed and your back against a wall or your just adding injury to insult. Really it comes down to how well does your opponent use cover? If they use it well then the stalkers are great. On the other hand if you like to go toe to toe then marshal are the better choice as they will take the hits and when they die they can potentially toss out more damage.

The Peacekeeper does have armor 2. I am surprised neither you of you mentioned the Guardian. If you need the heal on Hoffman then you can assimilate his self repair and get the healing flip for no action points. On the other hand the guardian healing itself will set off feedback. That combined with the outrageous armor possibility granted by the guardian makes Hoff pretty tough to kill. On the other hand if your looking at wanting to move Hoffman quickly then you can shadow an enemy with the hunter and then have him drag Hoffman across the board as they move. Although I might be a bit nervous about throwing him out there like that. (but if your dealing an opponent who split his force up it might be handy) I haven't gotten to far into the arcanist constructs yet, as I am still trying to come up with more combination based on what the guild has. Mostly this is because of the increased cost but also because I don't want to sully the name of an upstanding Guild Master. :secruity:

I read the original post twice so I could consider the view points of the OP. Well that and because two cookies are much better then one. I have posted my love of the guild in the past. The last time I was prevented from continuing my support of them due to a few real life situations that prevented me from a timely response. (Although the proof from the story did not sell with me. It was clear Molly killed all those people) However, to quickly throw in my pocket change. I still have yet to see any terrible proof of injustice from the guild. They are both parent and servant to the people. Unfortunately, the masochistic nature of humanity knows no bounds and so they will pout, whine, and fight any attempt to protect them from themselves. (I know how the book paints them, but have to do a little PR for the guild J ) All of the guild models are great units. The are fairly easy to learn but versatile enough to take months to try and master. I myself play LadyJ and have been extremely successful with her. She is not just a killer of undead (only played two games against the resurrection) Blind Justice does wonders against Pandora players and seems it will continue to be very useful in the new book units and masters. Combat Prowess and its ability to give more melee attacks is pretty handy if say you have someone with giant claws for hands. All of this says nothing of her skills as a terrifying master to have to fight. Criid- really speaks for herself. The amount of damage her crew can put out is just silly. She is the main reason I am very hesitant to play higher point “tank” characters in an force. Her crew can burn them down so quickly. Perdita- Well you can take her. I really don’t like the Ortega’s at all. I do have several other crews I do play. However, in the end I am guild first and foremost. After all somebody has to watch out for humanity.

Welcome to Malifaux. It is nice to have you with us. Lady Justice is a wonderful choice for your starting crew. She is an amazing master. All that said. The 40SS list will really depend on your playing style. I, like many of the people who have already commented prefer the executioner over the peacekeeper. The executioner has some huge draw backs. Mostly that he is so easy to hit and if he caught by range he is in big big trouble. The peacekeeper really isn’t going to worry about this. However, his biggest advantage is he can heal with love of the job which is such a rare ability on the guild side of the table. Also you can box him for transport with a death marshal. Hopefully fairly early in the game you can get the crow and buy yourself the time to build up a strong mask hand so lady J can destroy the other crew. On the other hand if you are on a shoe string budget, but are looking toward the future. If you really like our new master and want to get an early jump on the constructs so that you are comfortable with them then I encourage you do that. In the end the most important thing is to have fun. The guild really doesn’t have poor choices so you can’t go to wrong.

Those are pretty awesome. I am very curious to see what Wyrd ends up going with for the guard. The English bobby look is a very interesting choice because it adds another aspect to the Guild. I do like the western look of our current models very much, but a bit more Victorian would be nice to add a bit more old world feel.

-Gav My thinking on balancing less guild guards had more to do with mixing in Austringers. They have the guardsmen trait so you would have the option of still using many of the talents. I am also balancing this with how much respect I have for paired weapons against how difficult it is to get cordon off. I am, alas not in the beta for the next rule book so I don't know if we are getting more guardsmen to really take advantage of patrol and raise the alarm but at this point I am really just trying to get a few ideas down. (I am so busy with league play, demo, or help a few friends get up to speed that I am lacking in my just to try out different ideas games) As for your list. It looks pretty strong and fairly scary. Personally, I would swap out the convict gunslinger for one of the Ortega's. Having the extra companion might be handy. Also you get a higher will power which is handy against those casting armies.

Gav or whisper- Based on what you have seen thus far then would you recommend guard as a single model to intersperse with stalkers or marshal, or maybe in a small group to just put up a wall of firepower? I am working on fine tuning a list. I am worried the guild guard will be overshadowed by the austringer who I think will be one of the more popular models for any build.

Gav I was reading over your battle report, which was wonderful by the way, and I was hoping for some insights into the guild guard from your games. I see they were hung up on a canine remains and I hope this was just a run of tough cards. Also due to the amount of undead and there not charging, halt didn't come into play. Any abilities or experiences of note?

I agree with pipeline. Death Marshals work well with Criid. However, that being said in my opinion for the cost Death Marshals are the best work horse the guild has to offer. They work well in groups, pine box is wonderful, and slow to die has made the difference in more games then any other ability. Lastly by cheating up to just match the attack value I can get a lot of negative flips and really get a feel for what the person across the table is working with.

This is an interesting question. I do think that crew is fairly important. Personally I have used mostly lady J and Sonia Cridd as my two demo crews. These two crews are awesome for covering most situations I can think of. The biggest thing is just getting them comfortable with duels and then making sure something happens in cover, someone will want to shoot into melee, someone will try and disengage, etc. I think that the Viks or Lillith could also fit in pretty well. I hadn’t thought of Lillith at first but a terror tot getting to grow up in a game would be sort of neat for a new player. As for throwing a game I don’t believe in it. If you lose a game due to setting up cover, and different aspects for them to experience I think it is fine. However, the game might seem less dynamic if they feel they beat the guy showing them the game on the first go. What I normally try and do if possible is leave it down to a single model either way. If all that was left was a wounded stalker then it comes down to the super close game. These games seem to stick better in memory then huge wins, or a devastating loss.

I am glad to hear that LadyJ did well for you. Those spiders can be a huge pain, but congratulations on overcoming them.

Based on the abilities of the guild guard I can't see using more then two. Most likely one will do the job you need them two. If you need a unit to take a hit then the guild has faster and higher wound units to do this. (wish we had a healer) However, with one you will still have a cordon, halt, option, while being able to tune your list with the other eight points. Conversely, if you went with four guild guards you could use patrol to activate the other three. Which is a lot of pain heading someones way. I am not going to even go into austringers worked into this as that would turn into a overly long post. The Ortega are a scary crew when they all companion up and blast away. So you can build on that to be pretty scary. With that in mind I don't know that I would go with the hamlin option. For the points you have so many other painful tricks you can pull off.

Whew, that is a big list. I think that you will have a lot of luck keeping the stalker list. With scout you can make a pretty fun group of skirmishers to deny "hold out" or whatever the game throws at you. You might also consider making sure to you keep in the peacekeeper, francisco, or the Judge as they are the fastest runners we have. If you are going to bring in outcasts then maybe a ronin. This will give you options with treasure hunt or just to make sure you have crew where you need them.

Looking over the list you have some amazing damage potential. However, I think you are going to be in a lot of trouble if anyone gets to your line. So I would look at a few different options for a melee. Something to either catch anything that gets within charge range, or just to provide some screening. All three of the low cost guild minions have perks. It just comes down to your style and what you want them to do. Also I have always found more stones better. With the firepower you have at your disposal you have a fair chance at getting off Violation of Magic.

Andrew, You are awesome. Keep up the great work in representing the guild and getting some testing done on the guild guard. It really helps me when building up lists and considering how I should play. I was set to try them out myself this last weekend but unfortunately allergies have been bad around here and my opponent had to bow out. I was very curious about how big of a role armor would play with the guard. Witchling are super anti magic and the marshal has the hard to wound so I was curious to see how this affected survivability. Cordon has a lot of potential. However, it is a tough trade as it uses high rams which are pretty valuable. I can still see using it to seal off flank by running it between two pieces of terrain and a few other times. However, it does seem like something that will take some practice to really get a feel for how and when it should be used. The other ability I was thinking of was Halt. There was a post awhile back that was discussing if the guild was over powered. For awhile in that post the thought was because the guild had good ranged attacks to go with their melee options. My personal thought was that the distance between shooting and charging was fairly close in most cases as to not make it really to major of a deal. Even though they aren’t particularly good with their pistols they should be able to land hits with them. Did you have any experience in having Halt really gum up any plans or (and judging by your lists) spend most of your game blasting at each other from range? Keep up the good work. I will be interested to hear more of your experience with them.

If you do decide to run some games with them, let me know how they do. I am running on theory here so anything you can do to help confirm or break that is always welcome. As far as cordon goes I personally think it would be a great and fun unit just to make ronin and rattlers cry. The only things that come to mind at the moment that will get around cordon are obey, lure, float, fly and lure. I still have a bit of confusion on how cordon will work. I am assuming it is the invisible wall. With that in mind if you shift the wall by moving a unit, what happens when the wall comes into contact with an enemy unit. Do you push the unit or are you forced to stop. This question and a few others I will ask in the rules area, but it does have a lot of potential.

Something just keeps nagging at me that the guild guard are more then they appear at first. I have been looking over a lot of situations to see how they would apply. I honestly just need to get a bunch of games in with them so I can apply some of these ideas and see how they measure up. However, lacking that here are a few thoughts. They have don’t have hard to wound but with armor they are one of our toughest low point guys on the field. They have the same cb with a pistol as the witchling stalkers. While you might not want to go after some of the high defense masters, a guild guard still can manage some decent hits with the their free positive flip. Halt is a good ability but I am not totally sure how excited I am about it. Given the range of the pistol I don’t know how many plans this will ruin. It can be a headache, but I will need to play it out to see just how nasty. Cordon is the biggest thing for me with these guys. Yes that 8 ram or higher makes me wince but the possibility of what can be done with it are huge. Cordon an invisible line that only a few models will be able to get past. Also it is a wall that can be moved as the target moves and changes the set up of your wall. If you have the cards you can basically set up how you want the board to look like from turn to turn. On the other hand, with some positioning you can split an army up with cordon and divide and conquer. It seems that Guild Guard is very much a large denial model. Like I said I haven’t had the chance to play with them. (I don’t like to proxy) However, my gut feeling tells me there is more to them then it might seem. Course that could just be something I ate.

No, The Box Opens breaks her immunity. On the bright side 7 wp isn't to shabby. So it is an all or nothing situation with her.

We still have a wait on the release of the guild guard but I have been looking at them pretty closely. I really like the low ss cost. Also while it will most likely take a cheat to get off cordon has some possibilities. My question is has anyone tried out the guard in games yet? How have they played? Moreover, has anyone in the community come up with fun ideas for them that might be fun to try out?

Raid is fairly common for me to use. Even more so then hold out. The guild are hard hitters so it isn't to nightmarish to kill off the other crew. Unlike eye for an eye where you have to be within one model, raid gives a bit more freedom.

There is a lot of loathing and disdain for the Guild. I don't completely understand why but such is the way of things. If you find yourself picking up the executioner you also might want to grab the governor's proxy so you have the universal totem.

Lady Justice is a wonderful master. For the intro and low level 20 ss games that you are seeing at your local store she is fairly friendly because of the strong combo of shooting and close combat. At 20 points you not only can run the full crew but will have 5 souls stones as well. You might want to get a few games in at the 20-25 SS point and then decide how you want to expand based on more shooty or CC options. The Ortega box is great and the strongest shooty crew. It will also give you another option if you are showing someone the game or feeling a different master. However, it is really worth the time to get a feel for her crew and then pick up more ranged or melee as needed.

And best of all it doesn't cost 10 bucks.

I like LadyJ. Her spells are easy to cast and are mostly all buffs. Her only offensive spell is vs undead. If she gets anyone in melee they are dead. If anyone misses her in melee and her trigger df trigger goes off they aren't going to be happy. Of the three current guild masters I think she has the most synergy with her crew.

If your looking for just where to expand your army that is a really tough question. It really will come down to your style of play. Personally for most games I like to build a skirmish group with my hard melee hitters and then a ranged support. This will help me keep pressure on while take the time to move my fighters in close and undercover. Additionally, if I am playing against another person as aggressive as me I can use the range to buy me more time to read how the other guy is moving and then adjust my skirmish group as need. However, aside from my tangent about tactics, the executioner is a wonderful model. He has managed to be my mvp several times. If you are looking for a cheap and versatile unit then the witchling stalker is a pretty good choice. He was my first addition to my death marshal force as I wanted a unit that was fast and able to fill any role I wanted. He fit that bill and I could fit him in for a 25 point force. Currently I have been playing around with the peacekeeper but I am largely on the fence with how much he brings to the table for nine points. Hopefully in a few more games I will sort out my feelings on him. I am also needing to start using a proxy of the austringer and guard as I can see a lot of possibility with them. In the end you just have to ask yourself if your wanting some range or melee. All that being said I think I would go nino for range and executioner for melee. If you want to stay under 25 points go witchling.