Satyrwyld

(five page script summary snipped) To properly embody Malifaux in just two crews, Ramos is a given, for the steampunk angle, and I'd like to see Pandora as his adversary. Playing up the Neverborns' real goals and a properly done Candy could make them quite chilling, while Ramos' motivations and methods make him a strong, complex antihero.

Oh, fantastic! Thank you. Now to figure out how to open a photoshop ffile without having photoshop...

Oh, yeah, I'm just looking for somehting to help with the formatting, not the point values.

If anyone's interested in details, here's some of my parameters:

- Group of heroic types who fell through a Breach from an alternate Earth (all unique minions).

- While the Henchman who leads them is in play, their attacks can't reduce living models below 1 Wd.

- Individually they're slightly underpowered, but proximity to each other bolsters their power level, and the Henchman can enhance that even further.

- Pushing the boundaries of what the Maalifaux ccard system lets individual units do.

So if anyone should have a Word document or similar that would help me set this up all pretty-like...

I'm working on Malifaux versions of some OCs, and I was wondering if anyone knows of a convenient template for statting such things up in?

I could swear that somewhere in the deep recesses of early teasers they referred to the boy as "Nathan the Dreamer," but I'm not where where I remember seeing that.

Well the first game I played VS LCB was with nicodem, and i had my dogs run up in there pack and they got themself killed by the alps. I did something kinda cleaver I placed a shafted marker in the center of my dogs so that the alps could only do one thing then move out of range of the marker. Though the result was the same 4 dead dogs, 2 new alps.

So you ran cannon fodder models up in a group, and were surprised when they died in droves... would you have run them up against Sonnia, with her blasts, or the Ortegas, with their guns?

In spell casting you have to flip and you might not get the suite you need or flip a black joker and so on and the spells effect would not damage you. On top of that you could have a flip to counter the spell's/weapons damage and then your safe. But alps -1 to your flip for each one there and add on top of that they each give you one wound if you fail. so on a normal model with wp 5 since thats seems to be the norm for undead, I have to flip at lest 4 cards and none of them can be below 7 or else my model dies seems a bit steep.

If twelve (or more) points of your models (that's three belles or two punks) ganged up on one 4-5 point model, how survivable would you expect it to be?

In the game every other attack seems to have a chance to fail, bad flips black jokers in the mix and a chance to defend it. But a -3 flip on a 7+ is not a possable defence so its basicly auto hits and since the wounds come from lots of sorces there is no real defence vs the damage. And that is what makes the models stronger then others.

I'd argue that it's what makes the models competent. The majority of their stats are pretty mediocre. While they have other tricks, those other tricks are anything but reliable. Anything with a damage spell, or a weapon with more than 6" range, is going to tear through them like no one's business, and that's before blasts and pulses. Honestly, where was Decay through all of this? It doesn't matter who you hit with that- cheat down a friendly victim model's Df and get the blast off, friendly model gets healed, alps die in droves. How about punk zombies and their lovely aura damage? It's not like alps are terribly resilient.

Heck, in the brawl I proxied them for, I bought 3. By turn two, I had 7. They were doing great, until Lilith transpositioned in and then started whirlwinding. Yeah, she took some damage, but by the time she was done, I was back to three alps, and one of those was halfway across the board where she'd swapped it to. She'd also taken out my insidious madness and badly hurt Coppelius and my Stitched Together. All this from a master I have a hard time considering a credible threat without book 2 models. LCB was hiding back out of harm's way, since there was no way I was letting a nephilim close enough to gnaw his face off, and I found myself turning to my star player, Pandora (it was a brawl) to finish off Lilith and bail out my nightmares.

D'oh, dunno how I missed this, thanks!

This came up in my last Treasure Hunt game, and it's been bothering me.

Pandora's Fading Dreams does not contain a "may" or an "up to" for the push. Does this mean she's required to move the full distance each time she wins?

The reason this matters is I was in a (very rare) circumstance where it was advantageous for her to be the one to carry the treasure back to the deployment zone. (Everyone else but a couple insigs were pressing the enemy master, and nothing else hostile was left). If she were targeted, would she have been forced to push, and thus drop the treasure?

Just only kill two of them, and keep on of the originals as a only in the most dire of emergencies.

Also Grow replaces one model, so I would assume that the pick would just transfer to the new replaced model.

None of the models I listed are particularly hard to kill for a crew bent on taking out that model. A couple activations of dedicated aggression and no more ronin/canine/etc. and all of them are models that their typical master(s) usually get rid of themselves one way or another.

Now, as for the tots, the scheme specifies that "model" not being "in play." So I suppose it's a question of whether being selected for a scheme counts as an effect, and as such passes to the larger nephilim. (Assuming they aren't just ripped apart for blood counters.)

And.. Douglas McMourning gets Nurses.

Just because it's in the starter doesn't mean that they have to be awesome.

In all fairness, McMourning can summon more support. Yes, it means having more packages of models on hand, but he can still do it. Pandora doesn't have that option.

That said, there are situations, and not horribly convoluted situations, where a nurse or two might be useful. Sorrows, much less so. Again, when equal value models that were designed to synergize with another master (I'm looking at you, alps!) are more desirable than the models designed to go with that master, something is every wrong.

Rule of Equivalency. You cannot get two gakis and a seishin for one desperate merc.

In my (admittedly limited) experience with Kirai, seishin fall from the heavens like rain. There's a reason half her abilities involve them popping like soap bubbles. If you're that worried about 2 VP, start with less than three and make him work for it.

And no, you don't have to kill 15 points of models to get rid of three ronin in a Vik crew. You just need to convince him 2ss (or another Vik, although that's harder than killing the Ronin outright) are worth more than a wounded ronin that may or may not be the target of an unannounced scheme.

As a primary Neverborn player, you've now convinced me I need to start loudly talking about how great Kidnap is before each game, and then not announce Hold Out or Bodyguard or something and watch the delicious paranoia...

Don't start with three seishin? The same can be done to any other resser with three canine remains (often used for spare parts for the models truly desired), a Lilith crew with three tots (no Grow for you!), Gremlin crews in general, Vik crews with three Ronin, etc etc etc.

Shortly after I started playing, someone posted in a thread "Why spend 3 ss on a model whose only purpose is to die, when you could spend them on something that could do something before it died?" While I don't necessarily agree with this assessment (pre-cuddle, anyway) it got me thinking, and I tried a few alternative, no-sorrow lists. No one has ever managed to kill my Pandora (granted, I haven't played vs. Perdita using her, but I'm not sure how much sorrows would have helped if I had). So ignoring what this means for Pandora, since this thread is about the sorrows, this means:

Sorrows' "primary" purpose is at least partially pointless.

Their secondary purposes are made much harder given this cuddle, so why take them? After a little playtesting, I'd prefer 3 alps to 3 sorrows, hands down, and alps aren't even Woes. Honestly, the only worthwhile combo I can think of with Sorrows right now involves a doppelganger borrowing unhealthy relationship, and then I'd only need one.

Compare to other starter triple-sets: Criid gets witchlings, Lady J gets death marshals, Nico gets punk zombies, Seamus gets belles, Lilith gets tots, Zoraida gets silurids, and Som'er gets gremlins. All of these have clear and useful synergy that makes having three on hand worth it. Sorrows are more baggage than benefit when compared to Teddy (harder to kill than three sorrows), Kade (harder to hit than two sorrows), Candy (heals, harder to kill), or Doppelganger (heals, more versatile than three sorrows). So now we're past a 35ss game before I'd even consider sorrows. That says a lot to me about the change in the model's power level right there.

I found her to work particularly well with an alp swarm. Granted, it was a Brawl with the Dreamer alongside her, but she was one more damage every time a failed Wp test put slow on a model, allowing me to pick and choose targets to get even more alps... and even more alps... Coppelius underperformed, and my luck on Stitched gambling flips was miserable, but the alps (with Pandora support) took out roughly 3/4 of a combined Lilith / Zoraida force on the first turn.

I used Sorrows extensively before I learned of the errata, limped along with them for a bit after, then dropped them altogether for more bulky expensive models. My typical 35 list has Pandora, Poltergeist, Candy, Kade, Doppelganger and Teddy, and I find any one of those models contributes more in a game than their equal weight in Sorrows. They definitely need something, be it Significant to contribute better to strategies and schemes, Spirit to have some survivability as they try to life leech (this is more of an intuitive wysiwyg thing for me- their lower half is made of smoke!), the old Link rule back, or something. As it stands, I don't foresee using them much at all, as in larger games I'd rather bump up with another beatstick, and in smaller games I'd swap out for tots or silurids before I went for sorrows - they simply don't contribute as well as anything else in the Neverborn right now.

I don't really ever see Pandora played, and all I keep hearing is what needs to happen, but I am not sure why.

Sorrows have a variety of abilities, all of which require them to be in base contact with (or linked to) a given model. The main offender is Siphon Magic, which is an (All) action that requires this. The way Link is currently set up, they're limited to being able to do something about every other turn under most circumstances.

Try beginning small... it appears you are playing to win, rather than teaching this guy how to play.

Perhaps some starter games of [Chosen Master] + 1 minion...

Eg. Lillith + Mature Vs Your Master + Large base minion...

Similar to the way they used to teach 40k.

Alternatively, point the guy here to these forums and ask him to read up then come back to you.

The guy (quotemyname) has responded a couple times in this thread already... I'm generally an easygoing sort, but these aren't demo games. He's got several other opponents he beats on a routine basis. I give him feedback after each game. I let him pick point size and sometimes even my master. He can't beat me, specifically, and I'm looking to give him an edge, not patronize him. To recap:

The issue here is not that I'm getting discouraged. At all. Knowing that I keep getting my ass kicked by Satyr is really given me renewed interest in this game. (I won every other game I ever played against the rest of my friends just by rushing the field with Lilith). Going against the other neverborn masters, however has been quite difficult.

(snip)

So in short, what I'm really looking for here is less of a, "How to play lilith," and more of a, "What to do/not do against Pandora/Chompybits/Colette, etc."

Doesn't sound like someone who wants things watered down to hand him a win. As for me, I like a challenge, and I've been swapping masters to try and find one with a competitive disadvantage against Lilith.

Using a soulstone is generally described in the fluff as crushing/destroying it (mostly seen in Book 2).

but

Soulstones can be "recharged" in the presence of a dying person.

Do they reform? Am I missing something?

Lady J will be missed, however where was Lilith

Rule of Death #1: Until we see a body, she's not dead. I somehow doubt that Lady Justice, demigod object of the Guild's worship, could be stopped by something as trivial as dropping a building on her.

+1 vote for three sculpts with matching cards. The second biggest reason I don't play Nicodem much is the identical vultures. (The biggest being he's the only master I ever lost with...)

I don't even play Lady Justice but I felt for her. She seems like one of the real "good guys"

She's always struck me as uncompromising and unmerciful. In old school D+D terms, lawful neutral taken to the extreme. Even dealing with Sonnia in book 1, she was all about her duty and punishing people without consideration for alternate perspectives, innocent bystanders, or common sense.

Not that this makes her a bad character, mind you.

Each faction has subfactions that play a little differently. It's possible to mix and match a bit, but I'll list the feel of each master's synergized troops. With the new book that just came out, we're up to 26 possible subfactions.

The small elite forces (and their synergized masters) seem to be:

Ortegas (Guild, Perdita Ortega) Mostly shooty, they rate "good to amazing" with a couple of expensive models from their own group and some supplements from the mercs and the rest of the Guild.

Beasts (Arcanists, Marcus) Melee monsters, literally. Alpha strike glass cannons. Haven't tried them myself, but hear they take a bit of finagling to "get."

Woes (Neverborn, Pandora) With the changes to link Cuddling sorrows, the general consensus seems to be Pandora's currently best with a small core of relatively elite models. Pandora does most of the heavy lifting herself, despite her stats appearing somewhat lackluster. Review some tactica before trying her, as she plays different from just about anything seen in the world of minis gaming before. I'm currently undefeated with her, for what that's worth.

Mercenaries (Outcasts, Viktoria) Viktoria mostly gets specialized named models with relative elite status, the exception being ronins... which can become additional elite models for a price. This force is the hardest to pin down a description for, since available models are each specialized in different ways. Hans is a sniper, Taelor is a beatstick, etc.

I advise you look over everyone though. I swore to myself I wouldn't touch the undead in this game, because I play so many undead factions in other games... and then I read Seamus, and couldn't keep up the hate I wanted to feel. The fluff alone sucked me in.