LoboStele

...but without breaking individual afflictions apart from each other it comes accross as the apocolypse.

Umm...I thought the whole point is that it IS the apocalypse? 4 Horsemen and all that...

As for the Miner... it is really dangerous but you've gotta be willing to risk it. Get your Melee Master up and they just keep burying every turn to keep it around. Lobostele has done up some really nice works about the Miner and how to use him, try contacting him or checking out the Miners article on the Wiki and see what you can glean!

FWIW, I didn't write up the SS Miner article on the Wiki, but I probably mentioned it in other places. It definitely needs some touch-ups, and with tricks like Lazarus' Assimilate now, there's some new things to write up on it.

It's certainly a good minion for Leveticus though, IMO. Levi can use Blessings of Desolation to give the Miner the extra :crows to its Cb, which then allows it to automatically get its one Trigger that gives you a Soulstone whenever the SS Miner kills stuff. Can actually use the trick on turn 1 to kill your Canine Remains for the extra Waif if you wanna. Then you only 'spent' 1 SS on the Canine Remains, effectively. Kind of a cool trick.

There's lots more to the Miner as well, but just the trick to Burrow and hang onto (+2) Melee Master is well worth playing it, IMO.

The only thing I would worry about is that levi can't (or it is a bigger detriment to) hand out scraps like ramos, meaning it will be more difficult to permanently assimilate abilities with him unless you spend a whole bunch of ap killing 3ss constructs.

Soulstone Miner.

Yes, it costs you 6 points to run it, but it's cheaper than the alternative of killing cheap constructs just to get the scrap.

Also, on Turn 1, if you run the Canine Remains for an extra Hollow Waif, if you're OK with waiting till Turn for said Waif, you can have Levi give a :crows to the SS Miner for it's combat, and then use the Miner to kill your Canine Remains with it's trigger which lets you gain a SS when it kills a model (does not specify enemy).

yep it's says ignored or modified.

Cool, OK.

Well, at least the other stuff still works. Looks like I need to find a way to work Hard to Wound into my Ramos crew. But I definitely like the idea of grabbing Use Soulstone.

The model already has an Armor Value, if you have any other Armor effects on the model they try to modify the existing value and can't.

Yeah, but Modify is different from Ignore.

Like I said, I don't have my Twisting Fates book on me at the moment. Does Patchwork Armor say it can't be ignored or modified by any means? I remember the ignored part, so maybe I'm just forgetting the rest. Since Bulletproof or Magic Resistant are separate abilities though, you could Assimilate those, right? Or would you run into the same issue during the damage resolution step?

You can't ignore Patchwork Armor in favour of another Armor value you have assimilated. Lazerus' Armor is +1 period, though at least you get it against everything.

Huh??

We wouldn't be ignoring the initial armor. Armor stacks. Would this stop you from using Assimilate to gain Bulletproof 1 or something? That basically grants you armor against those specific types of attacks.

Honestly, I don't understand this one at all, and I don't see how the RAW in Twisting Fates supports this (granted, I don't have my book on me at the moment, but I was just reading it last night).

I'll get back to you with a Clarification.

Cool, thanks. While you're at it, we still need that clarification on whether we can Assimilating Reactivate or not.

Remember, Use Soulstone is an ability too.

something rather disgusting you can do with Ramos is take a large steampunk arachnid. Turn 1, activate it, kill it with ramos or the toolkit's controlled detonation.

Lazarus moves up, picks up 2 of the scrap counters, assimilates Use soulstone off Ramos permanently.

Turn 2 onwards, do stuff with the added benefit of being able to assimilate all sorts, while also being able to use all those soulstones that Ramos doesnt really need unless he avatars.

Oooh, nice, hadn't thought about Use Soulstone, but that's definitely a good one.

Oh, and that's why the Soulstone Miner is in the crew, so you don't have to kill a Large SPA for the Scrap. You just Assimilate Burrowing off the Miner, and then you can bury Lazarus before the end of every turn so he can hang onto the various abilities without having to ditch the Scrap counters.

@Ratty - wouldnt you be able to copy the armour anyway, since it would be from a different source? you could copy armour 2 off ramos, and you would then have armour 2 (from ramos) plus armour 1 (from patchwork armour, different armour source).

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I remember Patchwork Armor saying it could not be ignored, but I don't see why Assimilating Armor +2 off Ramos wouldn't work?

OK, so having a few games with Lazarus under my belt now, we're finding that he can be darn right scary powerful. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been a thread like this already.

I've only played him with Ramos so far, but I'm definitely looking forward to trying out some similar options with Leveticus.

So, in one game yesterday, I managed to have ALL of these abilities below on Lazarus at one time:

Armor +2

Burrowing

(+2) Melee Master

Strength in Numbers

Evasive 3

Reactivate

Oh...and I had all of those on him by Turn 3 as well.

I felt sort of bad, but against a Sonnia crew yesterday, Lazarus managed to kill a Witchling, Fransisco, Sammael, and Nino in 2 activations. Lucky flips for Exposive Ordinance trigger helped, but that was crazy.

In a Leveticus crew, you can still take a Soulstone Miner and an Arachnid Swarm if you want. Uses up a lot of your points for the build. But if you get Steampunk Abominations in there as well, then you can grab things like Hard to Wound, (1) Anomaly, Caustic Aura, or Keep Pace as well.

If you want to REALLY get crazy...put Ashes and Dust in the crew. All SORTS of fun things to Assimilate off that.

Well, to be fair, I think it has mostly to do with crew synergy. The Arcanists seem to have more specific synergy than any of the other factions.

I mean....honestly....why would you play Steampunk Arachnids with Marcus? When they die, they wouldn't even drop their Scrap Counters because he's not a Scavenger. You can't heal them, you can't summon more, you can give them a Df buff with Arcing Screen...

Same thing with any of the Arcanist crews, really. Running Beast with Ramos is just silly. Now, Raspy probably has the most variation available, because she can make stuff Frozen Heart, which then gives easier access to Ice Mirror or other stuff. Even still, she just generally works better with the December themed pieces to start with.

I don't think it has too much to do with a particular mindset of Arcanist players. I think it has more to do with how the faction is designed in general.

I'm certainly open to some more ideas, but IMO, I haven't seen too much yet that does well with cross-Master crew builds within the Arcanists. Perhaps the Mechanical Rider is one of the few, as it makes a nice beatstick model for either Raspy or Marcus, especially if you give it Frozen Heart, or turn it into a Beast with a Raptor.

I have to agree with Lobo here. There are specific reasons why "not friendly" doesn't mean "enemy."

I know this specifically came up with the Lawyer and Marcus' Alpha ability. The RM has a non-friendly AND non-enemy classification that doesn't have a name.

I'm not sure the answer for Mindless Zombies, but not friendly should not equal enemy.

Ah! Marcus and the Lawyer. I knew there was a spell I was forgetting about that factored in here. Granted, if it DOES work, it gives Marcus a decent power-boost, so that he could Reactivate his own models.

Still though, when you go to target the model, there is nothing that indicates it should count as an enemy for the purpose of Alpha. Pg 13 of the Rules Manual says "Oh, I hired this piece for my own crew, so it must be friendly". The Lawyer's Prosecute spell says it doesn't count as friendly. But by looking at those things, neither of them specify the model as an enemy instead.

For a bit of anecdotal evidence....

I ended up playing against the Dreamer last night. Now, I wanted to try something fun which I hadn't had a chance to run yet, so my crew consisted of Ramos (Avatar attached), Alyce, Lazarus, a Large SPA, Soulstone Miner, Mobile Toolkit, and a Steampunk Arachnid, for a 40SS game. Maybe not THE most competitive Ramos build, but decent. The Chopmy build was the Twins, Coppelius, Stitched, 3 Daydreams, and a Night Terror.

Chompy's crew had Plant Evidence for Strategy. Turn 1 he did a little bit of swooping in, but my opponent told me he didn't have the cards to do the full assault. He was going to plant some evidence first turn, but my Electrical Creation was too close, so he just attacked it for 1 Wd with Chompy, and then popped back to his Deployment zone.

Turn 2, he brought the whole crew forward, popped out all the Nightmares on top of 4 separate Terrain pieces, with Chompy simply doing an Interact before hiding again. My best recourse to keep him from getting all 4 Victory points, as there was no way I could reliably kill ANY of his models from my current position due to cover, was to move an Arachnid into base contact with Coppelius, and stop him from being able to get Interact #4. Next, Lelu/Lilitu bond activated, did very little beyond Interacting with Terrain and trying to Lure Alyce. Long story short, Turn 2 ended with all of his guys buried again, and the Dreamer/Daydreams back in his deployment zone again. He now had 3 VPs to my none. Turn 3 was a positioning turn, and I began trying to advance (I had Reconnoiter for Strategy...ugh). He spent all of turn 3 doing Defensive stances, etc. Then Turn 4, was when he swooped all the way across the table, pooped out everybody right on top of Ramos, SS Miner, and Alyce. Luckily, I had Ramos' Avatar form ready to go, and I managed to survive Chompy's initial attacks. Didn't matter much though. Ramos only managed to take down Coppelius, then Lelu and Lilitu layed into my pieces.

Long story short, game ended and he still had Chompy at full Wds, Lelu had been down to 1 left at one point, but was now back to 4-5 left. Lilitu was nearly at full health. The only piece I had left was an Arachnid Swarm.

Honestly, I don't feel like I played THAT badly. In my opponent's defense, he's a decent player, but certainly not our best Chompy player at the LGS. I felt like the flips went pretty evenly overall. However, I did have things like one turn where the SS miner tried to hit Lilitu and out of 3 attacks, 2 of them failed to get past Irresistible, and she won the Duel on the 3rd one. One of my Large SPAs used up 5 attacks on Lelu (thanks to Burn Out from Rusty Alyce) and still only put 8 Wds total on Lelu, thanks to only hitting twice and getting lucky Moderate flips for damage on a :-flip.

Honestly, the fact that Dreamer can move his WHOLE crew across the table AND back again in the same turn, pick up 3-4 VPs without any way I could stop it....That's what really irks me about the Dreamer. It's the fact that he can move 20+" AND back again in the same turn. If he has to do it over the course of 2 turns, that would be fine with me as it leaves things open for winning initiative, etc.

I'm gonna bump this thread, as this whole thing came up again at the LGS last night when discussing how the Lawyer works.

The Rules Manual pretty clearly lays out what it means to be an enemy. And so I think Masque's question above definitely deserves some consideration. Ryle's abilities say he does not count as a friendly model for the rest of his crew, but he also does not meet any of the requirements listed on Pg 13 for being an enemy either.

The Lawyer's Prosecute spell is somewhat similar. It says the target is not considered friendly any more, but it also does not change the fact that the target was still not hired by the opponent's crew, and is not under control of the opponent's crew. So per Pg 13, does not count as an enemy either.

Sketch, you stated that if you aren't friendly to a crew, then you must be an enemy, but that isn't what the Rules Manual states, and it's not clear on the cards of pieces like the Lawyer or Ryle. It does open up some weird interactions for using abilities on Ryle, for instance, that say you can usually only target an enemy model. For instance, can I have my Hunter use his (0) Shadow ability on Ryle? If Ryle is in a Levi crew, can Ashes and Dust attack Ryle and turn him into an SPA with its trigger (which specifies "enemy defender")?

IMO, you're opening a bit of a bag of worms. Would seem much simpler to have Friendly, Neutral, and Enemy as 3 separate states.

Having used the SPAs in my crew last night, I would definitely agree that they are worth the price. I played a crew that was a bit sub-par competitively, but the Large SPA was a definite star, nearly killing Lelu by itself over 2 activations (thank you Rusty Alyce Burn Out). Being able to summon them with Avatar Ramos is amazing though. They also really help out Ramos builds when you have strategies requiring interaction. They are the cheapest construct/themed models that don't have Insignificant, except for the Ice/Fire Gamin. So, for 1 point more than the Gamin, you get 2 extra Scrap Counters, more Wds, and some other nifty tidbits. I definitely think they are worthwhile, and I will certainly be picking up a 2nd one here soon.

I ended up spending several hours pinning my first one together, and am holding off work on the second for precisely that reason.

As for construction....yeah, they're a bit fiddly. However, the blister comes with some of that black foam. I just cut a small rectangle about the same size as the LSPAs main body. Then I rested the foam on top of the base I was using, and then set the LSPA's body on the foam. Then I simply glued each leg to both the body and the base at the same time, and worked my way along each leg that way. Probably took me less than an hour to assemble the whole thing from start to finish, and it turned out pretty sweet, IMO.

Most of the time I don't do this.. I will Into the Spirit World 18" forward of my start line.. and summon Ikiryo 12", for a total of 36" out, then Soothe Spirit myself and swirl back 12".. so that's a hit all the way across the board and a return to my half.

Still though, being able to do this requires 2 different fairly particular cards in your hand, or burning soulstones, at least if you want to do it on your first turn. So I still don't see it as quite as bad as the Dreamer's yo-yo options.

And as noted before, Ikiryo still does less damage than Chompy, even if you get Severe damage on both attacks, it's pretty tough for Ikiryo to kill an enemy Master on Turn 1 or 2. For Chompy, that's no problem at all. Between Poison and Onslaught, I've had plenty of times where Chompy has killed my Master, even though I burned all of my stones trying to stop him. Onslaught is brutal. And my card flips weren't THAT bad in those matchups, so I wouldn't chalk it up to just bad luck.

I think I could manage longer with Kirai actually. use Datsu-ba to walk a Insidious Madness, move 2nd Insidious Madnes forward, move 1st Insidious Madness forward. Into the Spirit World to 2nd Insidious Madness, Swirl to 1st Insidious Madness summon Ikiryo. 44" forward.

LOL true.

The difference being that Ikiryo gets two actions at best. He also doesn't have Use Soulstone. He also doesn't have the Onslaught Trigger, which allows Chompy to skirt around the issue of how many AP he has left.

It also has no option for a yo-yo AND leave Kirai 36-ish inches across the table, vulnerable for a counter attack.

Now, granted, with Kirai's crews, you could typically pull this off at the end of a round by out-activating an opponent. So, if you get lucky with the Initiative, you might be able to get Kirai back to the safety of your side of the board the next turn right away.

Still though, it's MUCH more limited compared to what Chompy can do, IMO.

Yeah, if our tables are set up with mostly big items, we usually let people do plant evidence more than once on a big terrain piece, but it must be at least 6 or 8 inches apart, or something like that. Make it work.

I can companion chain the showgirls, attack you with both the duet and cassandra, and then get all of them to safety, leaving you a mannequin to attack. not just chompy bits has ridiculous threat range. All book 2 masters, cept hamelin, are really fast.

To be fair, you can do this with the Showgirls, but I don't think the damage potential is nearly as high as with LCB.

At this point, I think either the suggestion on limiting the use of Magicial Extension similar to Avatar Colette's rules where two different Daydreams could not cast the same spell seems like a good one.

I do also like the idea of having to discard cards in order to summon Nightmares. I definitely think you should get 1-2 for free though. So maybe something like you have to discard 1 card per Nightmare after the 2nd one. Gives you the freedom to un-bury a couple for free, but then costs you beyond that. Doesn't completely break the system, but slows it down a bit. Obviously, would need some varied testing to see what level of card discarding would be appropriate.

I'm talking about at least 9 peices who are roughly 5"x7" or bigger (our gaming club is kinda new to Malifaux, and we are still making and buying new scenery)

And that's really quite fine, because if you think about it, a 5x7 piece is 35 sq inches. A 3x3 is only 9 sq in. So, a 5x7 piece is approximately the same as four 3x3 pieces. So, in reality, if you're using nine pieces at 5x7, you're just about where you should be in terms of total table coverage.

The only reason it becomes a problem to utilize large pieces like that, is in Strategies like Plant Evidence, where you have to Interact with a bunch of terrain. Can be tough to make sure there are 4 pieces completely on the opponent's half of the table.

I know when I set up tables at our LGS, I usually go for about 4-6 'large' type terrain pieces, and then sprinkle in 8-12 smaller ones.

Definitely check out Ramos' Avatar form, and start getting used to that. It's arguably one of the stronger Avatars out of Book 3.

If you want some more ranged support, definitely look at Kaeris, especially if you're playing the Mobile Toolkit already. Lastly, I really like the Steamborg Executioner. I know some people think he's a glass cannon, and while that's partly true, I have found that when he's used effectively, he's an absolute monster.

I'd recommend checking out the Arcanist section of http://pullmyfinger.wikispaces.com/home for some more ideas.

Derp! Yes that does work, so armor +8 is the max, but at the hefty cost of 2 Guardians and a PeaceKeeper...

Ding ding ding!

You guys started tossing out +10, and for a moment there, I was like...WOAH, I missed something! Because 8 was the max that I remembered.

Ratty...what you were talking about above seems to shed some light on the Assimilate issues. Could you and the other Rules Marshalls take a look at the Reactivate business as well?

I think the ability to attack AND retreat within the same action is what makes him so powerful. Any other model in the game has to make some sort of a commitment, and has to stand and take a beating for at least 1 activation on the opponent's side before getting swapped out or brought back to safety somehow.

I do like some of the ideas presented in the thread though. You guys are coming up with some good ones. I'll have to think on it a bit more before I can give any better opinions about things. Plus, I gotta run right now...gotta be somewhere!

already been said that you can assimilate evrything, even the reactivate that hoffman gave to a peacekeeper (or somethin else)

(unless this has been changed recently)

Yeah, currently this is the ruling. Keep an eye on the 'Is Reactivate a Talent' thread to see if they end up changing it. For now, that's the RAW.

But, you can actually get quite a bit higher than just Armor +4 on Hoffman. Keep looking for other combinations. You're on the right path though.

Might try using the 'Quick Links' button, and then select the 'Today's Posts' one instead. I find that one gives me many more threads.

Also, the 'New Posts' button excludes anything in the General Discussion forum.

I.e. Hoffman ss miner bury loop (if you havn't played against it yet watch out).

Heh....I haven't even posted my ridiculous Lazarus build yet using that trick. Seriously. Crazy stuff.

Anyways....

As for the Twins...I think comparing them to the Coryphee Duet is a solid idea. For one, you really can't run one of the Twins without the other. So, they really do come as a 14 SS package.

That said, you can dish out roughly 3AP of attacks per turn, and then another 3AP of board manipulation. Hmm...sounds an awful lot like the Coryphee Duet, it's just that their board manipulation is wrapped up in their own ridiculous movement, Sword Dance, and their Push-generating trigger.

Yes, Lelu's damage is impressive and that's probably the only thing I would say could potential be toned down. However, with only the 5 Cb, I find that it's not really all that often that Lelu gets more than Weak damage. Yes, Weak damage is often enough to do some serious hurt, but that's what resource mitigation is about.

I don't know. I suppose my experience is likely colored by the crews I run. With Ramos the Arachnid Swarms don't mind too much, as their Armor helps, and Self-Repair does well to mitigate the poison. Then their 4 attacks with Paralyze trigger work wonders to annihilate Lelu, not to mention what a Steamborg can do to him. Or even Colette, Cassandra, and the Coryphee Duet. Not too hard for a Duet to kill Lelu in one activation, especially if it uses a Hypnotic Movements trigger. Oh, and Levi? Yeah, Lelu or Lilitu go down like a sack of bricks against him. Lelu can tear up a Desolation Engine something fierce, but if he doesn't completely kill it (which can be dependent on some lucky flips), it's going to hammer Lelu right back and heal back up again.

True, there are probably no 7SS figures that could go one-on-one with Lelu and survive. Compared to many other 7SS pieces he IS a solid model with some huge damage output. But with ONLY those 7SS, he also dies really fast, faster than most other 7SS models.

So, I really think you have to consider him in terms of the 14SS pair. But when you start looking at combinations of 14SS models....LOTS of options emerge that, IMO, can handle Lelu and Lilitu without too much trouble. As noted with the Ressers, a Flesh Construct and a Rotten Belle can do just about the same. Some Guild minions (Peacekeeper and Pale Rider first come to mind) can single-handedly deal with them, IMO, thanks to Immune to Influence (lets you basically ignore Lilitu), and good damage output. And you'd still have 4-5 SS of other models to fill in to match up at the 14SS level.

I'm not saying across the board that they ARE OK, or that they're not OP. Lelu is certainly a seriously BAMF, and a model that you really have to plan your strategy around. I just personally have not seen enough situations of OMGWTFBBQ to make me feel like he needs further errata.

Perhaps as we see more Dreamer lists with the Twins instead of mass Alps those perspectives may change. We'll see.