heckler

try fears given forms on pandora and/or candy to capitalize on the low defense of the ice crew. kade seems to be a good choice to me as you can reliably put out plenty of damage through the armor and pandy and candy have long engagement ranges. use mood swing to control his activation order and tie up frozen heart models so raspy can't ice mirror through them. i would try the box opens upgrade since you can remove immunities to horror duels or just skip the limited upgrade in general. sorrows will just die quickly so i'd skip them as well. teddy is a good choice since he can mangle any models in that crew and will likely take 2 damage from december's curse. he can also be placed in BtB contact with an enemy giving him great speed. combo that with kade's 2 action and he can move quickly if needed.

I will be running a Malifaux league on Sundays starting at 2pm at At Ease Games in San Diego, CA. The entry fee will be $10 and I’m still working out what will earn prizes (I’m thinking win/loss ratio, most VP’s, and some form of painting for now). I will select or make up a strategy for the games for the week with schemes being randomized and selected as normal. The default game size will be 50 soulstones, but as some players have limited models (or some might like to play larger) then players may agree to a different value. All models from waves 1 and 2 are perfectly legal and able to be played; just ensure that you have printed out the stat cards for any models you want to field. Wave 3 is currently in its infancy and so I’m saying that players may only use wave 3 if both players agree to allow it. The format for each game will be to set up terrain, then announce factions and 2 masters to each other. flip for schemes and then select a crew using the faction and one of the masters selected. I’m choosing to not allow full selection within a faction due to some newer players having only one box available. Yet, I still would like them to get used to the standard format for crew selection and so this will stand to indoctrinate them. Players with large collections may agree to use the standard crew selection rules. On top of the 10 possible VP’s, I will also have small side missions of varying difficulty each week. These will each earn 1 extra VP upon completion and each may only be earned once unless otherwise stated. Hope to see you there! Justin

sorrows are just as killable as before but went up in points 67%. my sorrows die pretty regularly if an opponent decides to target them. many leave them completely alone, which is a mistake. if you see an opportunity to wreck a better model, then go for it but swinging at kade with a Ml 5 model hoping to get him without any edge means you should have just killed a sorrow instead. sorrows require close proximity to be effective, so you should have little problem being able to swing at them. if teddy is present, you can try to kill him before he can go crazy. it will usually take 2 models activating in order to do it (assuming you can pass both terror checks). he is impossible to wound, but his df3 means he gets hit by nearly anything. many things can bank on 3+ minimum damage and so he is 4 shottable (3 with a lucky severe) in many cases. candy can be quite survivable between her Df, soulstone use, and manipulative. if played well, she can live most of the battle while being a thorn in the opponent's side. if she doesn't have FGF then you can try to go at her with 2+ models. she doesn't handle multiple models well. also, engage her with models that have low end damage on their melee attacks but have good effects. she only borrows the damage with self loathing. candy dies nearly every game for me and it is usually due to repeated attacks or i leave her on her own due to FGF. none of the crew really take blasts well. sorrows are low Df and only 4 wounds, candy and kade are fragile, it bypasses pandoras wp->df mechanic and teddy dies to repeated damage. the models tend to be a bit apart from each other, so sonnia might fare better than rasputina would in this regard. also, i fear witchlings used properly. well, time to board my plane now.

most of the auto includes i chose are for a specific crew in a faction, meaning synergy reasons. i like this dynamic as it stresses things that work well together instead of choices that are just flat out better due to stats and/or ease of play. really the only thing that has strayed from this dynamic for me is the witchling stalkers and terror tots. stalkers just have solid combat abilities for a 5ss model and dont mind dying too much. tots help tie up annoying shooters and engaging and blocking melee powerhouses.

the sisters healing kind of parodies this.

i never burn cards to keep the sorrows alive. usually i use misery needs company and move them into base on the far side of candy/pandora. their second action is usually a doldrums. kade can pretty much handle it if needed and usually sits outside till it's time to charge later anyway. if teddy isn't low on wounds, then he gets to regen 2 of the 3 anyway. depending on the battlefield layout, i would activate pandora or candy first. it all depends on what i need to happen at any given time and whether i get first activation or not.

mood swing (incite) will last until the model next activates, so you can set this up the turn before without needing to win initiative. i usually do this with pandora's 0 action. i like running candy with depression to be able to get multiple heals through most of the time if needed or to guarantee mood swings. sometimes i will run her with fears given forms because her melee range is so large (along with pandora, giving two large bubbles). if you give FGF to both and the box opens to pandora, then the opponent will burn most of their hand in order to keep from taking 3 damage all over and to keep from failing the wp duels on pandora and teddy. with pandora and FGF i try to get her into as much as possible in order to maximize card advantage. she can get out of a jam by passing a wp/def duel. with candy, i really only try to engage 1-2 enemies and play games with mood swing and self loathing in order to kill stuff and make it paralyzed. sorrows round out the crew (i usually take 3) by being fast and able to cause more misery damage and damage just from activating first. if you set it up right, you can cause 3 from FGF, 2-3 from sorrows and 3-4 if they fail a wp duel. you often end up spreading damage around liberally if you don't focus, so use candy/kade/pandora/teddy in order to be able to focus down priority targets to take them out. the sorrows just fill in the extra damage here and there as needed.

i take it fairly often with hit and miss results. most often i use it on samael and fransisco. sam is woefully easy to kill much of the time and i find that i can usually live through one dedicated assault if i stone properly and then retaliate. i use it on fransisco with wade in. it usually takes an extra hit, sometimes two to bring him to hard to kill, then the healing flip seems to mean more in theory. in actuality he always flips healing for 1 damage, but thats enough for another hard to kill moment. i feel that it might be a decent choice with the judge and hard to wound, but I don't play lady J. 2 points is steep and warrants much consideration. for 1 i would take as many as i could methinks.

yeah it competes directly with the box opens which is my choice.

good call

i run FGF on pandora and candy in my pandora list. pandora can sub in WP when she tests off candy for an extra 4" boost. if you're worried about it then activate the FGF model first and move it out of the way. i regularly take FGF and addict on huggy. between cheating up Df duels and horror duels you can really get the decent cards out of someone's hand. it's not so bad if an illuminated fails the FGF duel if it has no damage on it.

are you trolling me right now?

it is absolutely ridiculous. i can't believe his family doesn't just give him crap about the absurd hat he wears. his face is also very 2 dimensional and the sword looks more hastily made than a pirate cutlass. i can't believe this guy would be elected as the mayor.

i don't understand what the point of the no shelter here rule which prevents misery from being reduced. since the FAQ points out that they each come from different sources, i don't see a reason that this needs to be so.

the illuminated you don't like is my favorite one. i'm not a fan of the fishface chick. i've been tearing stuff up with Neverborn Crew - 50 - Scrap Jakob Lynch -- 7 Pool +Expert Cheater [2] +The Rising Sun [2] +Woke Up With A Hand [2] Hungering Darkness [0] +Addict [1] Terror Tot [4] The Illuminated [7] The Illuminated [7] The Illuminated [7] and 3 depleted.

pretty much. the illuminated are about the best value the game has to offer. and both HD and lynch can give out under the influence along with beckoners themselves.

i have been taking pandora a bit lately and have yet to lose. faced misaki, lynch, lylith, victorias, rasputina, seamus and mcmourning. my usual setup is pandora, candy, kade, teddy and 3 sorrows. pandora gets fears given forms and the box opens. candy gets fears given forms and depression. between the cards to cheat terror checks and FGF there tend to be few left to cheat up opposed duels. kade just mauls things if given the chance as does teddy, as always. sorrows seem slow but actually get around the board very fast. you can use mood swing and melancholy to ensure targets around candy suffer from sweets and sours. after a few cheats from the opponent for terrifying and FGF, i will try to doldrums good targets with the sorrows.

i've been digging witchlings. handing out burning with all damage they deal, sometimes 2 with shooting and good melee attack to boot. i've also used an austringer regularly. i tried the guild riflemen, but only used 2. they seemed so-so.

I've been playing them with wave 2 stuff. my latest incarnation was 2 librarians, 2 korpsman, 2 hunters, strongarm suit, von schill with 2 upgrades and 2 extra SS. a bit light on the SS but overall it works out well. I feel it needed more melee until the librarian change. i want to try hannah out. it seems like it will be hard to justify the 12ss cost but i'm willing to give it a few tries. is there a model for hannah?

true. i do Df from time to time. but at 14" range i rarely need to worry about it.

played a game against rasputina. 50ss i had sonnia, 5 witchlings, austringer and sam with reincarnation, flame wall and counter magic. he had 2 ice elementals, 5 gamin, wendigo. i killed a gamin and wounded 2 more turn 1. he rushed up stuff to ice mirror turn 2 and killed 2 stalkers. i killed a gamin popping out one stalker and killed wendigo. did damage to the elementals. turn 3 i killed off enough things that were on fire to put out 2 more stalkers and killed an elemental. he called it. played a 35ss game against lady J. she used the box set, i had sonnia, sam, 3 stalkers and an austringer. i played a bit coy since it was my opponents first game of M2E. lady J eventually moved up to kill a stalker. sonnia failed to hit lady J 2 out of 3 times (no real idea how) and only does 3 damage. lady J kills sonnia with a red joker damage cheat and sam finishes her up. judge, and 2 marshals finish off sam for the victory. people have come to hate playing against my sonnia force. she is really really good. I've even started hamstringing myself by not using confiscated lore to add to Ca.

played another game with sonnia today against the lynch boxset with 2 beckoners. i had sonnia box with an extra witchling and an austringer. i lost a witchling first turn but made a new one from blowing up an illuminated by first burning it with sam and then finishing it up with sonnia. second turn was pretty terrible for me with a 1,1,2,3,4,6 draw. i managed to put 2 wounds and 4 burning onto the darkness. and put some burning and 2 damage on lynch and a beckoner. beckoner pulled sam in so darkness could charge and kill him. with the help of an illuminated. next turn the darkness charged sonnia and did 9 damage. luckily sonnia killed the darkness and healed 5 damage and drew a bunch of cards and then discarded for Df. witchlings did a good amount of damage to the remaining illuminated. at this point my opponent conceded saying he had no real way to deal with sonnia. post game musings: witch hunt on sam is amazing at times. for 2 ss i wasnt sure it would see regular use and that is still questionable but.... it is nice to have an attack that does not worry about cover. and after it works, his next shot can shoot unimpeded. i will stick to this upgrade. yet again, violation of magic is ridiculously useful. only popped out one stalker this game but almost had 2 more. stalkers are a constant threat to the enemy. shooting that can't be ignored (or it marks targets for sonnia), quality melee, condition removal, damage upon death, and a trigger to get them close to counter-attack or explode onto the enemy. these guys have a lot going for them even after the ss cost bump. the austringer can create nice card advantage. i found myself cheating with a mid range mask just to force the discard so lynch couldnt sift as readily. combined with the stalker trigger it can be a pain for the enemy. sonnia's ability to sift in melee is not trivial either. even if you pull crap, you are just sifting it from your future flips. if the cards were good, you now have them to cheat with. card advantage was a huge boon in this last game. Ca 9 is just ridiculous. perhaps it should have stayed just a ss to use and not have the 2 card alternative. going to Df 6 is nice much of the time as well if you activate early. some of the triggers/abilities on the darkened models lead to high damage on even moderate flips; like 5-6 damage moderates. if they stack the right triggers and conditions it is deadly.

played 3 games with sonnia against lylith last night. first game was a battle box duel (new one vs my old one) 30SS. i managed to get a lucky shot off and set lylith, and 2 terror tots on fire turn 1 and kill one tot. killed cherub turn 2 along with another tot and like 3 damage to barbaros. was pretty easy to wrap up after that. made a witchling that i had lost. game 2 was box sets and he added a mature neph. i added an austringer and guild guard. i got a lucky hit on the mature neph with a witchling and put burning on him after he moved up behind cover. sonnia dealt enough damage with the burning to ensure his death on turn 2 making another stalker. i threw stalkers up to melee tots and cause damage taking out 2 for 1 dead for me. in the end lylith was meleeing like a beast but eventually fell. third game he came up on me quick. same lists. i shot/cast but had some very low flips and black joker and drew 7 and below for all my cards. third turn sam put 4 burn on mature and melee'd him to ensure death for new stalker. sonnia got tied up in melee by tots and lylith. i swung on lylith putting her at 3 with both of us expending our cache. remembered later that she couldnt have used them but oh well. in the end he grew a tot all the way to a mature. he had a mature, lylith, and barbaros; i had 2 stalkers and an austringer. in the last 2 turns the austringer shot mature for 3 after armor and took 4. he then disengaged and got severe damage with crit to ace him (like 2 previous damage from a stalker). stalker survived by 1hp against lylith with decent flips and a black joker. and managed to kill her. other stalker got into largely a whiff match with barbaros that led to me doing all but 1 damge, black blood killing me, and me exploding to kill him. i only pulled that one out due to quality flips. new sonnia is a beast with range 14. the increase in almost all of the guild's ranges by 2" is likely to be a huge change. sonnia's ability to pop out more stalkers can be huge. stalkers causing burning on all damage is huge. confiscated lore for +2 Ca or Df is a game changer often leading to me hoping at all costs to win initiative to get the Df bonus. the flame wall helps to funnel the enemies to make your flame blasts hit more targets. seriously, on severe damage you can get 4 models pretty easily. sonnia's melee ability is not bad since the opponent can't benefit from soulstones with the right upgrade and since you can increase her Df for the counter-attack and you get to sift more cards. i need to get another pack of stalkers to use 4 in games and keep 2 for creating. i find the guild guard to be very lackluster. even in numbers they don't seem to be an effective use of 4 points. for one more point you get a stalker or a rifleman who has a Sh 6 and useful rules.

but why not just take santiago for the same points?

true, but since it didn't exist during the start of ramos' activation, i'm pretty sure they can't companion the turn they are summoned.