AgentRock

That does sound pretty nasty.

I'm definitely looking at the Metal Gamin. If nothing else, they're cheap, tough guys to buff up his activations. Eventually more Watchers and Wardens will find their way in, but with the Wardens costing 18 a piece they're kind of prohibitive for this format.

Month 1 Wrap-Up Post, Here

So I've been running Hoffman for the Tale of Malifaux Bloggers (link's in my signature)(shameless plug) and as those of you who are familiar with the project know, we're coming to the end of month 1. This means it's time to start thinking about what we're doing next month with the crew. For the purposes of month 1, I took the Hoffman box set (Hoff, Guardian, Watcher, Hunter) and a Peacekeeper. I am aware this was cheating, as it went over the cash budget by 2 bucks. I don't care, I wanted a Peacekeeper. I have not regretted this decision. The rules for month 2 are that we now have 25 bucks, from which I've deducted the 2 extra bucks from last month, leaving me 23. Obviously my first thought is that I don't have a lot of VP scorers here. The watcher is good at it, but he either needs a friend or something like soulstone miner to help him out. Other possibilities include his henchmen, Ryle or Joss (what, you didn't know he was a Guild henchman?), another Hunter, or throwing in a Warden. As an editorial aside, eighteen bloody dollars per Warden is kind of a drag, particularly in this format as they're going to chew up a whole month's budget all on their own. Anyway, the point of the ToMB project is not just to build the most face smash-y crew imaginable, but to explore the models that work well for the master and create a resource for new players to use when coming in. So, I have my own ideas of what to look at, but I thought I'd farm the idea out to the Malifaux community at large and see if there's some things i haven't considered. I'm definitely not a master with Hoffman at this point, so there's more I may have missed, and I'm interested to see what people will come up with.

Yep. I actually sort of like it better this way, as that's a whole different level of strategy to figure out which mods to throw on which model.

It's shameless plugging, but my master for the ToMB project is Hoffman. The last several posts on my blog have been on this topic (see the link in the signature.) He's kind of a Collodi-esque puppet master, but with much tougher puppets. He has a ton of healing off of scrap markers, and his modification upgrades make for a cool mechanic of patching your robots as necessary to give them boosts as necessary.

My experience has been comparable to what others have said above. I use the Peacekeeper mostly out of a nod to the previous Hoff, but I could see where the beater role would possibly come down to personal preference. That said, don't overlook the Peacekeeper's (0) to blow up enemy scheme markers. Could be a game winner in the right circumstances.

Update Hardware says you can only use it on constructs that don't have any modification upgrades yet.

I'm using Hoffman for the ToMB project, so I've got a few articles there on my observations thus far. Want to make sure you're only using one Modification upgrade per construct. Sounded like you were stacking them on the Peacekeeper, which is verbotten unless I'm missing something.

And now an additional post, detailing a game against Sonnia that went...a little crazy.

ToMB Post 1.0: Shakedown Cruise In which I show some painting progress thus far, and take them out for a test run against the Iron Zombies in the solo play scenario.

My month 0 post http://midwestmalifaux.blogspot.com/2014/02/tomb-week-0-musing-on-tale-of-malifaux.html

I wouldn't hesitate to throw her in with Lynch. Lynch doesn't really need the Brilliance thing anymore. Nekima benefits from a stacked control hand as much as anybody else does (possibly more, since she can control her triggers better.) And you get to watch your opponent consider starting to cut himself so he can feel something again after playing against Huggy and Nekima in the same game.

What that guy said. The masters are so complex, I thought it would be best for them to get individual attention with their own articles. Lucius actually seems to be right up my alley, as I'm a Neverborn player and I appreciate crews that come at you sideways and are very focused on the objectives of the game. Ryle can shoot things to death in a hurry, but in the small amount of test-play I got with him he drew a ton of attention and got killed rather quickly. It wasn't a construct crew, however, so he didn't have scrap to heal off of. That could make a difference.

Here's a link to the article. Thanks for the responses.

Alright Outcasts, it's your turn. The series of articles I'm writing regarding the state of the factions at the end of the Wave 2 Beta has come to you, and I need your help! I didn't do a ton of Outcast playtesting, so I need you to point me at the models that need discussion. Is somebody very good? Underpowered? I'm especially interested for input on whether a faction that is so segmented can really have any cross-faction synergy, or if it really is just everybody for their particular groups in the Outcasts. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. Here's a link to the article.

As some may know, I've been writing a series of articles looking at each faction's minions and enforcers at the end of the Wave 2 Beta, with an eye towards their general utility rather than specific crews. I'm onto the Neverborn now, and the forum's been very helpful in throwing out suggestions, so I thought I'd keep it rolling. I'm more familiar with them than the last two so I have a pretty good idea what I'm going to write, but I want to know what YOU think. Is a particular model strong? Underpowered? Who are the standouts? Thanks in advance.

Here's the article I wrote, using my own opinions and the suggestions from you guys in the other thread.

I had the same thought when I was reading them: other than to save one of them from dying (IE they're at 3 wounds or something) why would you give up 1 AP and combine them?

The point of the article seires was to take a look at what was strong at the end of the beta. Once the final versions come out I'll take a look at writing something to address any major changes, though I'm not sure I expect to see a lot of those.

So I'm in the process of writing a series of articles taking a look at each faction from a general standpoint coming out of the Wave 2 Beta. The Gremlins are probably the faction I payed the least amount of attention too during this, not really having any context to compare them to. This is where you folks come in. Point me at the minions and enforcers (no henchmen or masters, please, they deserve full length posts rather than small blurbs) that you think are particularly strong, potentially underpowered, or which just you'd like to see some analysis on. I know how rabid the Gremlin fan base is, so I don't imagine I'll have any shortage of response, so thank you in advance for the assist.

Thanks for the tips. Expect the article sometime later today.

I did. I like the more dynamic layout, but I may switch back. The black and white is a little bland. I wasn't blown away by the riflemen. Damage 1/2/4 doesn't exactly impress. It looks like it would require pairing them with another guardsmen just to get the extra ram for critical and give them a normal damage spread, which I don't love. You're going to need to focus every turn for their abilities, so they're going to need Lucius or something to give them back that AP. I don't know, I just wasn't impressed.

Continuing my series of articles on the Wave 2 models at the end of the beta, here's my post on the Guild. Feel free to comment and tell me what I got wrong so I can fix it. Happy reading.