TreeNinja

I have to say I like how you threw down your stats. I will say that most of the time I have stuck primarily with Arcanist beast and have only reacently in the last 5 games been going outside of the faction for them. I have 45+ games with Marcus and love the fact that I'm still learning his crew. To copy ukrocky my counts are:

- Alpha'd: I have pulled this off 3 times and agree its more situational and I used it more to steal the activation from my opponent then to actually kill off any of his other models.

- Primal Flame'd: only once with Marcus. I typically reserved this for the Jackalope an Myranda when I use her.

- Feral'd: 6-7 times now, pre-Avatar I much preferred to just hit them

- Howled: only once when my opponent sent a pack of Guild Hounds to surround me and I set it up to have my cerberus roar with me (man did they run)

- Stare down'd: only once in the same situation above, but I think that will change more when I pick up some Malifaux Raptors. I find this much harder as I typically find it more useful to use Marcus for my last model to activate in the turn. but its all situational.

Doesn't Defend Me only work against enemy models?

No it can be any model that performs those types of attacks against Marcus. the only stippulation that you have to keep in mind is that you have to have another friendly beast within 3" of Marcus to pull it off.

That is where using the razor spine can be useful as you can move without drawing disengaging strikes against it or myranda who whould then (if you time the activation right) use her +1 melee then shift to something like the sabortooth and use her +2 melee along with her last AP.

Almost forgot to mention Marcus's ability to turn other models into a beast which will allow for some interesting combos like teaming up a shikome with a coryphee duet.

As for getting him out of melee you can either raise his Df to a 7 which can help him get out or have one of your models charge him ans use his defend me trigger to pull him out such as the razorspines.

I think as brdparker points out there are alot more types of synergy combos that come into play when you start going outside of the Arcanist beast pool. I will agree there are not a whole lot when you are just using Arcanist beast. but I don't just look at abilitis, I also look at how a crew moves with one another, and when you look at how Marcus can keep up with his crew to take advantage of the hit and run tactics with his beast you see that the synergy is not in their combined abilities all of the models have but in the fact that the can operate as a unit.

I agree with ukrocky. Marcus's play style is true gorilla warfare. He is not about standing toe-to-toe with anyone. He is all about the strafing runs. The run around his opponents and cause them to go crazy tactics. it can be very hard to accomplish startagies such as contain power against opponents like Lady J. but he is super amazing at statagies such as destroy the evidance. Marcus is by far my all time favorite master, so I am kind of biased. I disagree that he has nothing to add to his crew aside from being able to put them together, however I will agree that he is not a lynch pin in his crew which if you ask me is a bonus. it is true his damage out put is not great but with his wild heard ability he becomes very versitile as he can add + flips to att and/or damage and even add +2 to the damage so that his 1/2/4 turns into a 3/4/6 which can be very respectavle the getting free attacks and even a 1 ap charge are not bad at all either. so no he doesn't due crazy damage but he can add in the extra umpf to make his strafing attacks really count where it matters.

The other thing to point out is when you do start to get Marcus down and start to win consistantly. other players just look at you with this confused look because they just knew going in that you using Marcus meant you would just never win.

I somehow missed this topic when it first came up, cause I always wondered why everyone said the EoP was the only way to go and that its not even worth buying the Wendigo. I of course have been consumed with Malifaux and just can't seem to stop mysefl from buying models so I picked up a Wendigo, with the rational that even though I may never play this model I really like the way it looks.

Well I decided to try him out on a few games and I have to say that if you play him really close to Raspy then yes you would have been much better off playing the EoP. It seems to me that playing Raspy's crew really does naturally lean itself into close formation.

However, one of the games I played I decided to split my crew and flank my objectives from oppisit sides of the board while I was using him and he played so beautiflly. I was able to setup pillers from either end as I needed them and I was running him with a silent one who I was able to then bounce spells off of him so that I could still utilize there Ice Wind ability and not wast the 0 action on Freeze Heart on him.

So all in all depending on how you play or want to play your crew. if you want to add more punch to some of you spell damage, then EoP all the way. If you want more board control then I would go with the Wendigo. Its true you can do some of those things with EoP but that model does have to stay fairly close to other models otherwise it looses its true potential.

The other thing to consider now that the avatar's are out is he does have the graverobber ability so that will (in the case no others exist on the board) mean that corpse counters will be left behind so that if/when Raspy manafests then there will already be counters for her to use.

I think that true card counting is kind of worthless in Malifaux. at least if you have to teach yourself how to to use it that is. The reason I see this is because the game is not just about the cards. its about your and your opponets models abilities, and its about positioning, and also about objectives that can very from game to game. because of these other factors I think card counting could help but it really won't give you that strong of an advantage.

I can more or less follow what high cards my opponent has laid down and I pay attention to the jokers. the reason I do this is because I play more or less from what I have in my hand and I figure the likely hood of them pulling it off. I do that so I know if I have a shot or if its something I will be using as a way to maybe forcing my opponit to burn some cards to make something I try later on in the round more likley to happen.

I know I'm not the only player doing this. and it may be that one day I will be able to predict what cards I will pull and what cards my opponent will pull but it no matter how good I get it will not tell me what importance my opponent will place on an exact model or objective and with that element in place with this game I feel that things like counting cards just won't give that big of an advantage.

no it only takes effect at the start of the closing phase soit will only effect those models that are within 3" at that time which will motivate players with melee models to keep their distance

Not seeing where los is not required. Los is required for talents and actions unless otherwise stated right?

sorry misread your post. As far as I can see unless stated in the talent directly or listed as a melee/ranged talent it does not require LOS

I'm not trying to say ice pillars require LOS, I'm trying to say that Raspy can use ice pillars to create a protective barrier for herself and still be able to cast spells like December's curse through her minions using her ice mirror ability cause she does not need to draw LOS to her minions to use it. So she puts up the pillars between her and one of her gamin she can still bounce spells of them even though she cannot see them, as the ability ice mirror does not require LOS only for them to be within 6".

yeah they actually become terrain and stay past the closing phase which is nice cause ice mirror doesn't require LOS so she can use the pillars to protect her while still being able to unleash havoc

this is a fun theory

yeah the spell is a really nice deterant against melee models

agreed this is an opposed duel. I would add though that once the starting duel total is announced that the losing model chooses if they will cheat, provided they did not have a negative flip, if they opt not to then they do not get to go back and cheat/use ss later. The other thing to note is that is for all opposed duels except for those to resist a spell which is you cast and do al your cheating and ss use up front and give them the grand total they have to resist against.

yes because the spell reads the ability takes effect at the start of the closing phase unless this model is killed in which case the ability takes place before the model is removed from the board

So no more Dreamer swooping in to deliver LCB and the rest of his crew to cause hate and discontent and then getting them berried and swooping out. Though the LCB slingshot has not been reduced which is fair enough as its more of a psycological attack then a true detrement to play against.

All in all, for a first showing I had 8 people show. A few others that would have if they didn't have things that had to come first. The factions that were represented were:

1 Guild

2 Resserrectionist

3 Neverborn

2 Outcast

1st place - Neverborn (Lilith)

2nd place - Outcast (Vicki's)

3rd place - Neverborn (Dreamer/LCB)

Best Painted - Guild (Perdita)

Sportsmanship - Neverborn (Lilith)

I have to say that I have learned alot from the experiance and look forward to running another, in about 3 months (give or take).

Out of the Guild Masters I think Sonnia has the most difficult learning curve. The thing about using her is that she really weakens a crews magic so she will take out quit abit of a crews punch in that manner and she can lay down some serious smack down especially in crews that are grouped up.

I would like to know what all he is running in his list as the stalkers are nice cheap models that are good at weakening a crews ability to fling spells and can be great against ranged opponents but they may not always be the best to run up against melee models. Of course the new Witchling handler may change some of that.

Really comes down to what the stratagy they are trying to achieve is and what schemes they add on to try and achieve xtra VPs. I know that some of the people I've played with sometimes spend more time with trying to kill me and less on achieving their objectives I use that to tag them along while I achieve my objectives and I find if I can get them to chase my carrot I usually will win. its something I struggled with at first but I'm starting to really improve.

As I read it, Quick Draw would not go off, so as long as the model that was attacking (ranged), casting/channeling, or charging was in range to pull of there attack they would bypass Perdita's Quick Draw ability if they were outside of her range which is 10". an example is if Nino who has a 16" range was to target Perdita and was lets say 12" from her then he could successfully shoot her while her Quick Draw would remain unused.

As far as his age I haven't seen anything to suggest anyone's except maybe Zoraida's in book 3. As for Hoffman's character I think you will get what your looking for in book 3. Book 1 has nothing on him. Book 2 paints him the white or fat kid that gets picked last but is not dissuaded in the least. I feel that book 3 shows his emotional depth and that he starts to gain some confidence in himself even though some still view him as a under. Least that's my rough summery. I really enjoyed reading his stories and feel you will really the what you want from book 3.

I know the companion ability is very well discussed but I wanted a clarifications to a model that has companion to multiple models like the guild hound who has companion (guild hound) and companion (master). I believe this would allow them to perform an alpha strike with their master and their other packmates simultaneously, but just want to confirm if that is the case.

Thank you for pointing that out I was told by everyone that it would go away which really bummed me out as it really degrades Tina's defensive ability I found the thread that this was corrected on (http://wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23032&highlight=pillars+duration) so again thank you

It would become HT 0 severe terrain, however the effect would go away at the end of the turn as the effect normally would. So that severe terrain will only last till the resolve effects step of the closing phase of that turn

Also I wanted to point out that I will be at Phoenix Fire Every Monday around 6:00 PM to play Malifaux with anyone that is in the area and wanting a game.