Gruesome

I continue to trot out Chiaki despite poor performances.

I keep waiting for those moments whee Pull of the Grave will be a game-changer. it SEEMS like it should be, but I am just not seeing many non-living crews of late.

Now, I could very well be playing her terribly but for now it seems like she could be my new "Rafkin". What I mean by that is that she is a model that when I read her, I feel like she is going to be awesome and full of utility on the field and then it just never pans out.

(At least she costs 2 less than Rafkin )

I have not assembled my Yin yet, so don't have a particular opinion on her.

Just wanted to say that, IMO, Izamu is no where near "overpriced" and Yan Lo's abillity to bring him back has nothing to do with his cost. If he cost 11, I'd still take him.

With Nicodem, Izamu is perhaps even MORE wicked depending on the situation because of Bolster and Grave Spirit.

welcome good sir!

Oh wait... you are guild... BOOOO!

ALso remember the "Yin-Yo-Yo".

Her defensive trigger for falling back can allow you to fall back from their melee range and then back into their melee range all on the same push so that models that have already passed their terrifying have to recheck their very next attack.

But if neither him nor Rafkin have made your Rezzer games, what have? Just curious what you play.

No prob... all is cool.

Rafkin has been a source of frustration for many of us. He was one, that when book three came out, that I could not wait to get my hands on.

He "read" well...

And then heck if I could get him to play like he did in my head. Once in a while I trot him out with a different idea but so far my own ideas for him have been less than stellar.

He is an EXCELLENT dog killer. And if you get the crow, alongside Nicodem Arising corpses and then reanimating them, he can drop an awesome number of MZ on the board. But i have always struggled to get him to do anything useful afterwards. He is typically pretty far back. I always envisioned him healing more than he ever seems to be in a position to.

The thing about forum critiques to remember is that usually when anyone tells you something is "bad", what they really mean is "the things I have tried have not worked". (But sometimes the model is just bad. )

I still hold out hope for Rafkin having some sort of tricks up his sleeve that people like me have not seen yet because I *WANT* to like him more.

What I have resigned myself to is the fact that if I am going to kill a particularly LARGE number of dogs for some known scenario that as long as he can drop 4-6 MZ on the board that he has paid for himself already and that anything else he does is just gravy.

Unfortunately for him, I have a new "friend" in Sebastian for the dog killer role. Sebastian can obliterate them too and after picking up just one corpse, he then has a solid heal ability as well as the ability to hit like a truck if he gets in an engagement.

*AND* he costs a point less.

Mortimer is a different animal for me than Rafkin. I have had him be the star of the crew a few games when I had a large number of low crows to have him stream out non-stop corpses followed by "money" Fresh meats. (I really love that spell)

And then there have been other games where I could not buy a crow, but at least he was pretty durable. (Rafkin dies fast under fire)

Personally, I think he would be more appropriately costed at 6 because I do not think there is more to learn about him or things we do not understand, but I at least find him more consistent than Rafkin.

Gruesome,just chill. You make it seem like one of the worst ideas in wargaming (whics btw it's not by a long shot).

What are you talking about? You asked for opinions on your dog chop list. I gave you mine after running variations of it on and off for over two years. I even spelled out scenarios where it can work. I dog-chopped all day at the team tournament of Adepticon just last week. (Except one round where we wanted the dogs alive for land grab)

Where did I say anything about "worst idea in wargaming". I chop dogs frequently. Your particular list for it happens to have many weaknesses.

When you asked for opinions, did you mean that you were actually wanting people to just say your approach is good?

I am chill... Not so sure about you anymore.

EDIT: And if you are facing a primarily non-living crew, Molly is deadweight. She is still hard to put down, but the thing is, you do not have to put her down until last so you can ignore her for the most part. For one point LESS than her and her totem you get Izamu or Dead Rider... They both very specifically benefit from Bolster whereas Molly gets nothing. And with decent positioning you can heal them with decay blasts that you pop off of the Grave Spirit.

Its pretty darn slow.

And if your opponent has certain crews and you do not draw the high crows Nico needs, you will get obliterated in your deployment zone because you are not starting with any models that can actually fight.

Dog chop lists are very particular about when you can use them.

IMO, *IF* your opponent is slow and *IF* you are playing something like shared claim jump and*IF* your schemes do not dictate that you be on the other half of the board and *IF* you do not mind letting your opponent have his schemes, THEN you can get away with such a lopsided list.

But, if I were your opponent and playing viks, I am taking First Blood and holdout. If I am Neverborn, I am taking kidnap and holdout.

If I am guild and have lucius, I am trying to think of a way of sling-shotting an exorcist into your deployment at a good time to wipe the table of corpses... I do not care at that point if he dies because, as mentioned above, you will still have nothing left that can fight.

You are handing me 4 VP, so you had better HOPE that you can maximize your schemes AND compete for the strategy.

He said it was his second game... Lets cut a little slack...

It actually warms the heart to hear about a Belle leading to the demise of that old hag.

I'd be cool with that. My biggest concern was the time limit.

The 3 hours was... AWESOME! Its actually a big part of why the day was fun to me to be able to play, talk, relax AND finish the game.

But then again, I am ok with 3 rounds too. Tie breaks don't bother me and final standings is a secondary concern of mine compared to relaxing.

But I understand that not everyone feels the same, so more games is cool.

Yes

Same with Acid Breath if she copies that from a Rogue Necro.

I looked at photos of Jim's Crystal Brush winners again... Just awesome.

And the color palette is so striking and different than so many of the other "Devlan Mud Inspired" models.

'gratz to him!

Had a really terrific time at The Wandering Dragon tonight playing Malifaux for the first time! Thank you guys for putting up with a newb. It was really cool meeting you all and I definitely look forward to playing next week!

It was nice to meet you and sorry I did not have as much time as I thought. We are a 1 car family for a while, so there is much juggling with kids that play sports...

Look on the bright side, if you really enjoyed playing tonight, imagine how awesome it will be when you don't have to play Raul!

Finally got time to try it at Adepticon and bought it along with Special character "El Cholo" (Machete!!)

We had a blast playing. brought it home and my family has played it three times since. (That's a lot for us)

*+^$&@ Jack Daw.

Pshhh... Play against *MY* Jack Daw and he will become your FAVORITE enemy model.

I cannot speak to the relative efficacy of many of the Avatars.

I can say that I greatly dislike the large swing in difficulty between some manifest requirements and others.

I *LIKE* that I can basically set myself up to automatically manifest Nico and Seamus... McMourning is relatively easy throughout the course of a game.

But others take some specific events, which possibly force certain behaviors at less than ideal times if you are actively desiring to manifest.

I would rather there was some sort of consistent means of doing it that was equally accessible to all.

THEN I would be concerned about the individual avatars and whether they were good relative to one another.

(For the record... I LOVE my rezzer avatars... )

Well, to be fair, models like Izamu screw with everyone.

I guess that I sort of meant, for non-masters/soulstone users that cost less than say... 7'ish?

I forgot about my other hated model... The Watcher... (Pretty much solely because of aSeamus)

Convict gunslinger and watcher... hates 'em....

Obviously different people will play different models with varying levels of skill against you.

But I am wondering if other people have one or maybe two models that really stick out to them that, for their points, are an eternal thorn in their side.

(So, I get that Izamu can be a pain, but he costs 10, too)

I will start by saying that every Adepticon and whenever I face them in store, that the Convict Gunslinger just has it in for me.

I *HATE* that model even more than Von-Swill.

I think that model comes with some sort of "Add five :masks 's to your hand during the draw phase" ability that is not printed in my book.

Hate him/her...

General advise: Don't try to 'Always use' models, you build your list when you know the strategy and your opponents master.

Against living, low Wp, they are great.

Against non-living, they are weaker.

Against non-living Immune to Influence, they are dead-weight. (Well... Spirits don't weigh much, I suppose)

You know you totally need to make a special player web interface so they can update there lists and strats directly to the software. It would be awesome(and save us more time).

The only thing he NEEDS to do is always bring more caol ila...

In prepping for Adepticon team, I actually discovered that Team format is my favorite.

I have played normal 1v1 twice in the last 6 months or so and not a single time in the last 2 months. I would much rather play teams and look forward to getting to the game shop when I know there will be a team match.

(I think my lack of normal 1v1 was illustrated well enough during the masters... )

We took advantage of a broken pairing between Yan Lo and Nicodem, dog chopping our way into Turn 1 Rogue Necromancies and Avatar-Yan Lo (Path of Bone level 4 complete, Path of ash level 2 complete and level 1 path of spirit complete)

With Sebastian doing the dog killing and then creating another dog to kill with his melee expert anytime we started a game with 7 :crows and then him having the body parts for periodic heals in the crew.

We actually brought Chiaki with us all day (Fixed list) because we sort of assumed we'd be seeing Brett and Viktor at some point and wanted an ace up our sleeves, but the pairings did not wind up that way so she basically did NOTHING for us all day. (But we felt better knowing we had her just in case, I do not need Brett to wreck me again to know he is a better player)

Beyond the broken pairing of those masters, we actually... PRACTICED...

explorator, in second round we were on the sewer board, were you the NB or Vik?

That was a fun game and the only one in which we did not kill our dogs because we needed them for the land grab.

Everything came down to that very close battle with Lillith and the Mature almost wiping Izamu off the board at the start of turn 2... Once that tilted in our favor the final score was not indicative of how that whole thing could have gone.

I felt a little bit dirty with the list... But not so much that I didn't want the swag.

Mechanically for the game, I get that its a "new" toshiro.

But Fluff-wise, it does not seem that way to me. "He" is just in his "relic state". Like a genie that has returned to the bottle.

I am not trying to use that as any sort of argument for why he keeps tokens or anything, just saying how I think of the ancestors when they are in relic form. Whereas if Yan is not there to "catch" the relic, it falls and shatters on the ground and now they are actually GONE...

With Extreme Prejudice! I know that it was Dave (Gruesome's) Team. Dunno who was his partner, but he was telling me of the soul crushing (his own soul) victories.

Korrosion(Raul De la-NameButcheredByEveryoneAllWeekend-Rosa III) was my "significant other" on the day.

And... As an aside... New Adepticon record for us...

We went through 6.5 bottles of Whiskey for the weekend.

And Korrosion, my Son(Dalek, the 6-foot tall 12 year old wandering around the room all weekend) and I took 3rd on tiebreaks in cake match.

Seamus can easily make models run off if you play him right, after all, how easily do you think most living minions can pass Terrifying 14 with -2Wp?

Sure... Math says so...

But come on... Easily? Seamus running people off the board? So, you've done it or seen it done many times, yes? Because that's the frequency of "easy" things.

I didnt mention anything extra for Lady J as it makes no sense that she cannot complete her scheme by killing Spirits or by killing Constructs powered by SS. So I chose to keep it simple and just kill 3 enemies.

Ok. I guess then that IMO, if its not going to be anything unique to LJ such as use of her Final Repose, then why make it unique to her at all and allow anyone to take it?

Misaki, Mei Feng, McMourning, Yan Lo, etc... Would all love to kill 3 models.

Where I thought you were going originally was that against her nemesis, the undead, that she has a special scheme. I guess maybe just the name "Lay These Souls To Rest" and the fact that fluff-wise she is sort of the "anti-rezzer" with final repose and last rites had that notion planted in my mind. My bad.