LoboStele

The online copy has lots of useful/important diagrams removed, so you really need the paper copy anyway.

That's actually not really that true. Most of the 'redacted' stuff in the online copy are examples or art work. The key diagrams are all still in there.

Don't feel too bad....she actually never made it to GenCon period. I had to order her when I got home.

LOL

- from amongst a group of Agent Smiths

Oh, I agree Jonas. Personally I think it's time for the Guild to get their pieces first. Maybe next year though. We'll see.

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Hi!

Haven't been able to keep up with this thread AT ALL since I can no longer access the forums from work. Looks like you guys are still having TONS of fun without me though. So that's cool. Looking forward to meeting bunches of people this weekend.

Oh...and Mei Feng....drool....

Actually, I don't think the Colette/Kaeris combo is all that powerful, personally. I don't think it's bad, necessarily, but there are other things I'd rather pair Kaeris with.

I think you lose out on too much of Colette's offensive usefulness if you don't have enough other Showgirls to work around her.

Well, if you're gonna run Kirai, you need Shikome and Gaki. And probably a Desperate Merc if you want a really competitive build.

For the Arcanists, at a minimum you need the Coryphee Duet and Doves to fill out Colette's crew. For Ramos, first of all, the Electrical Creation is Unique, so you only need 1 of those (don't worry, lots of people make that mistake). Then for him I would look at stuff like Mobile Toolkit, his Avatar, Large Steampunk Arachnids, Soulstone Miner, and Rusty Alyce. Maybe more Arachnids/Swarms too, unless the ones you already have are magnetized.

If you haven't checked it out already, go look at pullmyfinger.wikispaces.com. That's the Malifaux Wiki, and there's lots of good info over there.

For what it's worth, they have never had something for any faction at any GenCon to date. (except maybe year 1 when the game launched? I don't know, I wasn't around then.)

In 2010, they released Kirai, Colette, and Ophelia at GenCon. Guild players had to wait till February or so for Hoffman. In 2012, the Outcasts didn't get anything new, as it was rumored that Viktoria's Avatar was supposed to make an appearance but got delayed. The Arcanists only had Marcus' Avatar, which could be argued as them being as good as ignored too, LOL.

I think with the switch to plastic and everything else this year, it doesn't surprise me that a few things got delayed. If the Warstore's dates are good though, doesn't seem like the Guild or Resser players will have to wait too long to get some goodies though.

The Guild or Neverborn models would be my votes. I think you're missing key models for the other 3 factions to be able to field decent crews.

Bringing the Arcane Effigy keeps you from 'attaching' any totems, so as soon as you summon a dove, it goes poof. Or, you might not be able to summon it at all. Whatever the case, I don't think the Effigy is worth using with Colette.

As for the Performer/Mannequins...yes, definitely worth it. The Mannequin is the only model with 'Companion (Showgirl)' so you need at least 1 in order to pull off Alpha Strikes. The crew TedPro listed is a really good 35 point crew. For what it's worth, I beat a 35 point Chompy + 3 Teddies list with that same crew last night (actually, I started with 2 doves). Granted, I DID get the Mannequin Replacement trigger off 3 times in that game, LOL.

More importantly what time will the models come off sale?

I will be without easy internet access until the sunday afternoon (GMT) and am worried that I might miss out on some of the gencon models.

Last year, the stuff was still in the store until about 9pm EST on Sunday, because that's when I made an order. So that would be past midnight, GMT. So you should be ok.

As for the Neverborn, people thought they would knock each other out last year too, but it didn't really happen. Were still several of them at the top tables.

I'm hoping to see a nice mix, but to be honest, I think it has more to do with what factions the top players decide to run, which is tough to tell ahead of time.

I don't think anyone ever said that 'all' would be revealed. Last year, NO stats were revealed until Thursday of GenCon. 2 years ago, some basic info about Colette (and maybe Kirai and Ophelia, I can't remember) were revealed a week or so ahead of time.

Wyrd doesn't owe anybody anything. The fact that they have been doing as much in previews is more than they have to do anyways. Experience says that people buy the stuff either way. Experience also says that as soon as people get their hands on the book on Thursday next week, there will be enough info floating about for people to make informed decisions about what models to buy. So you have to wait to get info and buy stuff in the online store on Friday instead of Thursday. Learn some patience. Will get you a lot farther in life.

+1 to everything but the 'on par with the Ressers' bit.

Care to elaborate? You think Arcanists are better or worse?

Most factions have a master that can perform in most, if not all strategies. Arcanists don't have that. You have to switch masters as some strategies are a dead loss for some masters.

Every master has a "focus" and it is easy to try and stick to that focus;

To me, these two things are the only problems I have with playing the Arcanists competitively. I think it's too easy for an opponent to predict what crew you are likely to play, and therefore, plan accordingly, because certain Arcanist Masters are just simply better at some strategies than others. For instance, if you have Shared Slaughter, it's a good bet the Arcanist player is going to run either Tina or Ramos, in which case, if you take some armor-ignoring models, you'll be good on both fronts.

Overall, I think Arcanists CAN be competitive, but I do think it's slightly tougher. That said, I'd put us on par with the Ressers for the most part though. They have Kirai, which is more or less a top-tier crew for everything except a couple strategies. I'd say we have that with Colette. If I REALLY want to win a tournament, I will play mostly Colette, except for perhaps the Slaughter strategy. I do think both Ramos and Tina can handle certain strategies really well though. (I LOVE playing Tina/Kaeris in Shared Supply Wagon, lol) I don't personally have enough experience with Marcus to make the call one way or the other, but I think he's maybe a bit more finesse than people would like him to be, so that makes it tough to consistently perform with him.

So do I think Arcanists can be consistently competitive? Maybe not as easily as some of the other factions. But it can be done, and I'm content with playing and only winning some of my games, but not all of them, for the fun of playing with crews that I really enjoy.

These are fantastic models, let along how beautiful the sculpt is. Will be very interesting to work these into my Colette crews. I think Tranquil Dance is actually the biggest boost they offer. Lure is just a bonus. The ability to completely shut down your opponent's Cb and Df triggers is absolutely devastating against Melee centric crews, which, in my experience, has always been Colette's weak point. She has much less to fear from Chompy or Lillith if they can't get any triggers off.

FWIW, I've probably only blown up spiders maybe twice in 2 years of playing Ramos. IMO, if you're using Controlled Detonation or Self-Destruct, you're already losing the fight. So Dampening wouldn't ever really bother me.

Yeah, you spread around the damage and keep your opponent from killing models. Thus you still have activations and actions next turn. It works sort of well, but it is a strategy that is kind of like a countdown clock, IMO. You keep some models around longer, but once stuff starts dying, it wouldn't be unusual to lose 3-4 models in one turn.

It's panda-monium in here!!!

Very cool new artwork!

The food court! Make an effort to go find the food court in the mall across the street from the convention center. It's not too tough to find if you follow the signs. But you can get decent prices on food there, and realistically, I can often walk over there, get food to go, and be back in the gaming hall in less than 20 minutes.

Oh, and Subway footlongs are my #1 favorite. $5-6 for two sandwiches. Stash the 2nd half in a bag for later. Works awesome.

Definitely bring your own bottled water and candy/snacks/trail mix/etc. The con doesn't prevent you from bringing in outside food, which is nice, so take advantage of that and avoid paying the ridiculous prices of the convention food.

LOL i love this thread

En garde! Have at ye! And all that...

Protect Chains....ahh yes. You see, my fail-safe for that is simply to just always go after whatever has the lowest Df score. Thanks to Hoff's towering robots, it's not unusual to be have various targets due to Ht differences. So picking targets is relatively easy (and if you want to block everything by putting the Peacekeeper up front...OK!). Just hit whatever is the lowest with Ramos' Electrical Fire or Rusty's Rust (lol), both at a Ca 8 I might add, and in most cases, if I get a 9 or higher, the best you can hope to do is tie. I'll gladly just whittle away. Even with a protect chain, if your constructs are taking 8-10 damage per turn from just 2 of my models, not to mention whatever the Arachnids, Steamborg, SS miner, etc. might be dishing out, then the Wds won't last long.

Oh...and Paralyze trigger on spider swarms....My favorite.

I could see the opening bids starting at "$Texas" and going up from there.

LOL this really made my laugh.

I don't really play guild, and since I have the Nightmare Justice set, I pretty much already have more Death Marshalls than I could ever need. That said...I will ABSOLUTELY keep mine that I'll get at GenCon. It's a beautiful model, and I can't fathom getting rid of it, outside of a major financial issue like Nilus said.

But assuming it's still early in the game, the board belongs to Hoffman. One area that I can doubtlessly claim superiority in is mobility. Given access to any number of Guild approved fast constructs, I can be anywhere on the field I need to be. Ramos, no doubt distracted from daydreaming his next 3 Dimensional Chess move against the Guild, can barely make it out of his deployment zone. Furthermore, he must waste his own actions to do so. While you might have effective tools against my RoBros, it's I who gets to decide when you'll be able to use them!

Absolutely will cede early mobility to Hoffman. Though I think late game that can hurt him. Basically Hoffman and Ramos are opposites in this area, particularly if Ramos' Avatar is included. In turns 3-6, Ramos can be INCREDIBLY mobile with his Avatar in play, popping out Large Arachnids 3/4 of the way across the table, not to mention Leap. Hoffman moves incredibly well on the first couple turns, but once the Peacekeeper/Warden gets killed, Hoffman kind of tends to get left out in the open, IMO.

The one thing I have not liked about Hoffman is that it's often easy to attack the Constructs around him, thus avoiding having to deal with Soulstone flips, and kill them, leaving Hoffman for last. In doing so, you severely weaken the Hoff, and he kind of ends up being left with only Machine Puppet on himself, which is decent, but far from being able to win a game with it. Whereas with Ramos, the longer you concentrate on killing his Minions around him, the more time you give Ramos to Manifest, or gather more scrap, or summon more stuff, or whatever. On that same token though, if you go after Ramos first, you stand a decent chance of taking him out, and then you can deal with the Minions later. Good luck doing that with Hoffman.

It's really interesting, but this discussion has really made me realize just how opposite they are as Masters.

As for the Electrical Creation....eh....I mostly use it in my Ramos crews just for an extra activation and to give the opponent a little something to be worried about. The exploding aspect of it really isn't that big of a deal to me. You could still get the 1 Wd for moving through Hoffman or his pieces, so that could work well, since they all tend to huddle close together.

Come to think of it, that would be the other place where I think Ramos might have a slight edge: Activations. Not tough for Ramos to have 4-6 Small Arachnids on the table allowing Ramos, Rusty, and some other heavy hitter to activate last in the turn after Hoff has burned through all his pieces.

I absolutely will. Maybe I'll get Tuesday to make a trophy.

Haha, awesome. I'll be working in the Wyrd booth and the gaming area on and off for the weekend, but I'm sure we can find some time.

You've put in the hours on him, you deserve the recognition.

Well, last year I felt a bit like a traitor when I played Outcasts for the Masters event. I intend to rectify that this year! Might not play Ramos all the way, but definitely Arcanists.

Haha, hilarious. Not laughing at your hypotheses, but at the post in general. Great idea!

I will admit, it's a sketchy matchup, sometimes. I've had quite a bit of success vs. Hoffman with Ramos' Avatar in play though. One use of 'Override' will usually do in a Hoffman crew pretty decently, in my experience. However, I will admit that I haven't played a game with Avatar Hoffman vs. Avatar Ramos, or at least not since playtesting for book 3.

I will say there are certain things that Hoffman can do better, like Line in the Sand, simply because he has easier access to cheap non-Insignificant minions.

Personally though, since I like running Rusty Alyce with Ramos anyways, the combo of Rust and Electrical Fire chews through most Hoffman crews as well. Plus, I think Ramos' minions tend to have higher defensive scores, but comparable attack scores. Gives Ramos a slight edge.

Eh, it's all theory-faux though. Every game plays out a little different. You going to be at GenCon? We could test out the theories.

(Seriously though, I'm humbled that you would call me out like this. I consider myself a decent player, but not 'top' by any stretch of the imagination. I love being involved in the forums, and it just so happens that Ramos is my favorite, so I consistently focus on him, whether I can win with him or not. )