anathema

Wouldn't get rid of anything with Hard to Kill, surely?

Yeah, I'm also going for his alt as top half. I really tried to like the avatar, but conversion is the only way. The main bit that worries me is getting a good join between top and bottom.

There's a difference between knowing a word and using it liberally in conversation and I'm not doubting the generally incredibly good command of English of many Germans by the way. It's just the way Wyrd like stereotypes I'd imagine German characters saying things such as "Now ve haf ze soulstones herr doktor Ramos!" but I may be doing them a disservice. Anyway, Hoffman strikes me as an attempt as an upper class English gentleman scientist. I'm not saying that the fluff must match real life, but a lot of Hoffman and Sebastian's speech is pretty incongruous.

Slightly different question: does animal instincts need the suit requirements of the copied spell or just the TN?

ReAs I have a while to wait until my bits come through for my Avatar Marcus conversion I've started looking at a bit of theoryfaux for his uses. Bear in mind that I like to use all beast crews for Marcus so there's probably a load of synergies I'm missing with non-beasts. General changes and weapons Overall, the loss of Wild Heart is a big one. He loses a great deal of flexibility and his Shillelagh without the +2 Dg and (+) attack flip is now quite frankly a bit balls. Onslaught is nice, but you really want those decent Rams for other stuff. His stats are slightly tweaked, +1 Wp, Df and Wd are welcome additions, with -1 Ca not a huge deal IMO. He's still Ht2 as well, so finding cover and avoiding shooting in melee are not as big a problem as most of other Avatars. I'm not sold on Chimeric Assault really, it gives flexibility at the cost of a card per strike and against some masters that mess with your hand, you really don't to discard even the low cards. The option to boost it with Evolutionary Confluence would be a no-brainer if not for the 1SS cost. When you're paying 2 for the Avatar its a costly deal for a weapon without a spectacular Cb or Paired. Abilities Mark of Instinct combined with the loss of Howl means that with your Beasts at -1Wp you don't really want to take the Avatar against Pandora or anything with a good terror engine. Against other crews it makes your beast more killy which is nice. Its also a good way to simultaneuously activate the Bear and Snake using Rise of the Beasts as it ignores Ornery. This ability (Rise) alone is fantastic IMO, really allowing you to nail a specific model or get some Strat/Scheme stuff done, especially when combined with: Instinctive Behaviour One of the first thing I noticed is that his Instinctive Behaviour (IB) gives the much-maligned Myranda a few new tricks. Apart from allowing her a free shapechange, you can quite happily send a big hitter in with Marcus casting it and then have Myranda cast IB again (using Animal Instincts) after she's activated using Rise of the Beasts getting another beast in the mixer or being the first one again. You can also potentially get her to extend its effective range by casting it on Myranda, who can then use IB as her (1) action (using Animal Instincts)allowing you to get a beast 14" away to charge, hand off that treasure marker, trigger the dynamite etc. Of course the Jackalope could potentially do this for a third time, but you have to wait until another beast is dead to get it back after manifestation and it has a worse Ca. The other advantage is that you can obey a shapechaged Myranda (Myrandabear/cat/snake) to charge, activate next using Rise of the Beasts, rip some face off and then IB the other beast you've simultaneously activated with her. You can of course try this on enemy models, but you'll probably need a high Ram to get it off unless you've already managed a Feral/Dominance combo (itself using a high card) for great justice and a -2Df for them. Its easier to do it on your own beasts IMO, but might not be as useful as putting that crucial model their Cg+2" way out in the middle of nowhere (as they don't have to charge a model they can actually reach). The power seems to give a Marcus crew a great deal of flexibility, the only downsides being: 1. You need those 7+ Rams in your hand which may also be needed for Myranda healing. 2. If you want to activate an IB'd beast right after, you have to make sure its within 6". Good to use if Marcus gets forward and then uses it to bring something else up into the melee. 3. The affected model gets -2Df, so you really need to be carefully how/where they end up if casting it on your own crew. Actions Give in to it: This is situational, obviously being useless against non-living/undead crew. After the first time players lose the (reaonably do-able) WP-12 flip and suffer under Dominance they'll at least burn cards to pass it but it may work vs. opponents with empty hands. Most likely to get this off on the turn he manifests having already Howled for -3Wp. Fast: Makes up for the loss of Serpent and Tiger IMO, plus greater utility so that's all good. Diving Attack: Very useful but situational. Smell Fear: OK, but without much causing Terrifying or Morale Duels in a Beast crew it won't happen much unless I'm missing something. Spells Feral: I imagine that most player will be at least trying this combined with Dominance as their Instinctual actions to nail that one model you want to paste this turn. Roar: Not a huge fan as all of your beast are at -1Wp and if you want to use Rise of Beasts they'll definitely be in range of this. Could hurt you more than the other guy. If you can get it off and then move into range for Rise by the end of your turn it could be devastating but has a high cast requirement. Situational. Please feel free to add or correct me where I'm wrong. I thought I'd have a crack at getting some ideas bouncing and a mini-tactica possibly.

Really? A gentleman type from London who studied at Oxford, watches rugby, drinks tea and uses the word "chap" all the time is German? I can accept the fact that the only Englishmen in the fluff are (as usual) either the upper class gent or the Cockerney rogue, as the background has some good fun with stereotypes throughout and usually to amusing ends. It it's just a bit jarring when IMO they read wrong. The Hoffman concept is great though.

Glad its not just me who hates the (at times) clumsy writing style. The speech written for Hoffman and Sebastian is just awful IMO, they sounds like no Englishmen I've ever met. On the other hand the concepts are imaginative and enjoyable to read. While the writers no doubt love doing it, they need better editing to make their ideas shine. In summary; great ideas for a fictional world, poor written execution.

From my experience playing tournaments in other systems for a good few years I have to say that Swiss works by far the best, but to get the best from Swiss you need to have 5 or 6 rounds. The only other way to look at ability is placings over a season. I've always treated 3 round events as a good laugh but not enough that you can really correlate the results with ability to a great degree. Obviously the winner will be good and the top 3-4 in general will be good but as one bad game can knock you out its a bit random for the rest. With more rounds, you stop people placing better than their ability due to a lucky draw against the inexperienced. That's because the beauty of Swiss over enough rounds is that if you want to be the best you have to beat the best. Going through rounds 4,5 and 6 the eventual winner will have beaten players on 3, 4 and 5 wins. You can't say they won't have earned it after that. Anyway, if grizzled Ancients gamers can do 6 games of 3 hours each over 3 days at Britcon, the very much younger UK Malifaux crowd could surely do a 5-game weekend event more often and sort the Masters from the Slop Haulers!

If you have the cards there's nothing stopping you going for onslaught off the first attack, especially after you've hit the target with Inflict Dreams for a - flip on Df. Dropping off a primed Madness next to them pretty much guarantees that'll happen. With the claws being paired you can then benefit from any medium masks which appear on the starting flip for Onslaught too. The beauty of All Done is that you don't need to have done any damage for the trigger to work, so if you find that your total is beaten on a soulstone flip or some such you can accept it and still be safe, but with Inflict Dreams in play you're likely to get it off most of the time with damage as well. In the mean time your other Daydream (s) can be dropping off one or two Nightmares all around the board where needed as they're not tied to the site of Chompy's strike. I agree that you don't have the AP for uber damage, but as a surgical strike to finish something off or take down a low DF model when you have the masks in hand its a low resource option.

While we're at it and for completeness, here's V.3 of the Shufflette (sounds like a Motown group!): 1. Dreamer activates, companions 1+ DD 2. (0) I can fly 3. (1) Move 7" 4. (1) Frigtening Dream (unbury LCB plus others if triggered) 5. (0) Optional: Inflict Dreams 6. (+1) LCB Melee expert 7. (1) LCB Melee strike, cheating in a high tome to trigger "All done" 8. DD activates, moves 6", magical extension: frightening dream, turn LCB back into Dreamer. Max. strike range: 16" Drawbacks: More card intensive, needing a 3, a 6 and a decent tome to make that last strike worth it. Risks the black joker screwing you over if it comes on the DD's Frightening Dream flip, companioning 2 DD mitigates this. Advantages: Only needs 1 DD. The Daydream(s) can take a move action in any direction rather than having to move within 6" of LCB, allowing you a wider range of respawn spots. You can have the Dreamer finish up to 34" away from where LCB strikes.

Well, that was a thoroughly enjoyable day's gaming. I had 3 cracking close games, learnt a lot about each crew I played and all three opponents were fair and fun. Can't ask for much more than that (well, maybe a win would have been nice!). Kudos to Mythicfox and his glamourous assistant for organising and running the event and the Leeds gaming centre for providing a load of excellent tables, unfortunately I ended up on the only non-Malifaux table twice, so I just wish I'd got to play on more of them!

Interesting, looks like I missed that change. It alters the Dreamers interaction with Daydreams significantly. Although legal, this combo is a bit too close to seeming like rules abuse to me (not criticising you). I'll just do it the old fashioned way by companioning two Daydreams at the start of the Dreamer's activation and using the second one to put chompy in a different spot at the end. It works well enough for me.

Once you've unburied and reburied lcb the first time his activation is over and he can't activate again that turn so your first tactic won't work.

Hi all, thinking of getting a lilith crew and wondering how they get on against those models that don't bleed, like constructs, nightmares and spirits. Getting blood counters seems pretty important so how do you deal with this? Thanks for any help you can give.

The Dreamer's board position is only limited by where his Daydreams are. Even after he's activated, it just takes a Daydream to magical extension "Frightening Dream", place LCB within 6" somewhere and then "Calm Nightmares" to put Dreamer back out. With up to 3 Daydreams you can get to bounce around the board to most places pretty easily.

Ah well, sounds like demand is outstripping supply. He might need to order a bit more then!

Fair enough, I wasn't implying it was an issue with Wyrd by the way as somebody round here always gets theirs bang on time, just not always the same guys! It definitely sounds like it must be an issue with the distributor this side of the pond . Will speak to my store owner and see if he's heard more.

Yes,but would that cause different shops in the same region get releases in at different random times each month? Ive heard there's only one UK distributor so everyone should get their stuff at the roughly the same time. It's no big problem as I cant play much at the moment. I'm wondering more out of curiosity really.

Sounds like you have a couple of solutions: 1. Take one more dog than you need and leave it safe at the back. This will cost you 2SS you'd normally save by not: 2. Paying the stones to take a crew full of big, tough models you would otherwise summon from the start. Get your body parts/corpse counters from your opponent's crew the old fashioned way. 3. Trade the 2VPs for the summoning power that will hopefully net you more VPs than him in the end. Asking him to change is not on really , you should be adapting to his tactics especially when you could easily do so. Once you deny Kidnap a few times he'll be forced to change. My friend's Showgirls usually go for Sabotage and power Ritual. I have to try and ensure that I can get to the Sabotage target first and see what I can do to stop the Ritual. It might actually be worth more to me to ignore the Schemes and deny his strategy while fulfilling mine and maybe nabbing a VP or two from a scheme of my own.

My local games store (Manchester area) still hasn't received any of the new releases for April while others in the region appear to have received some but not all. It seems that some months the new releases come in bang on time and in others they take forever. Is the situation similarly patchy around the country or just near me?

Obviously not. I'm saying that most companies only expect you to pay for new versions every 5-6 years and release errata for the existing version in a free pdf throughout the existing version's lifetime. Even GW do that. Cutting them some slack extends to not expecting them to have all the problems ironed out until a while after release and accepting that issues will only get errata once they've been discovered and then a solution approved. I don't complain when problems are found, its expected. I have complained when a usable comprehensive errata isn't released and it could easily be done so. Wyrd have released errata and V.2 card which is commendable. They could quite easily continue their good practice by making the damned pdf usable, which is the sole complaint I have. As for the LGS argument, not only is it a post-hoc explanation but it could also have been solved. By releasing a bare bones consolidated errata pdf and saving the posh formatting, graphics, layout and all the other good stuff for the paid version you're giving the best of both worlds. The LGS would have a superior physical product to sell that most players will buy anyway and the existing players get the basic errata in usable electronic format and can spend more on models. As it is, I could possibly get my Malifaux cheaper online but I shop where I play. The main problem in my area is not electronic rulebooks but the awful UK distributor.

Noone is 'bashing' Wyrd. That is ridiculous hyperbole. A rulebook has a shelf life, everyone knows this. What the company does about this is what matters. Other companies change versions every 5-6 years. Not 2. This is not standard and looks bad without player support. Wyrd told us they'd release a pdf, making it sound like a great resource for new players and a reward for current players who didn't want to buy another rulebook so soon. Excellent customer service. Until the pdf doesn't do what its supposed to. If they hadn't release the pdf, releasing what is a consolidated errata for sale 2 years after the game starts doesn't bode well for new entrants. As it is they have the chance to stand out in the market by supporting their early adopters with a usable basic update while retaining the extra content for the book. Most people would buy the book anyway for the extras, everybody is happy.

I think there's a few things we can all agree on: V2 card redemption and pdfs were a great example of customer service. Having rules marshals making forum rulings is great. Including the whole game in book 1 made it easy to get into another book 2 expansion grew the game nicely. The rules manual is a great reference at the table and handy for new players. The only thing people don't agree on is the pdf. Some think its fine as is and that people should shell out for the manual if they want the news rules. Wyrd ate doing their best and were not entitled to free rules. Other like myself think it should be made usable on phones etc and printable for use as a big errata. Much like the excellent v2 cards pdf. After all, we've already bought the rules once. Fair summary? I don't think anyone is saying they don't like or enjoy the game. And Bulhallin, I believe it more than reasonable to want a usable pdf now they've actually released one. Would it take that much effort to strip it and make it usable? Tech types may know more but I doubt its more than a few hours work and if I could do it myself I would.

UK Spectacular cherry picking there. I don't approve all of their practices, but the rulebook redemption was an example of great customer service whether you like it or not. And the fact remains that none if their books are officially obsolete. Whether they're competitive is a different issue but I assure you that ostfront pioneers are miles better than in eastern front. BF also give web rulings and have errata docs. they are not perfect and I have my criticisms of them, but none of this invalidates legitimate criticism of Wyrd no matter how to try to distract it. Saying everyone else is bad doesn't mean you shouldn't hope for better. FoW is also not a cheap game to get into. Malifaux has it as a selling point. I appreciate that rules get update periodically. This is usually after 5-6 years in most systems. Anything sooner than that and I believe things like a pdf should be produced. If Wyrd make the pdf usable I could consider them pre-eminent amongst gaming companies instead of merely good.

I stopped playing 40K about 3-4 years ago, so saying Wyrd are as bad as GW doesn't make things look any better from my end. I don't think they're as bad by the way, hence I still play the game but I expected more in terms of support for those who purchased Book 1 as a rules manual. I look at Flames of War as my other main game. Battlefront aren't perfect, but they have not made any army books officially obsolete since they went from rules V1 to V2 about 4 years ago and offered V1 owners an A3 core rulebook when they switched. It works for me. Problem with Malifaux is that it is played so close to the edge of the rules and clever rule-stretching combos are encouraged. There's much less RAI or clear interpretation of 'spirit of the rules'. It not a bad thing in most cases, but its why errata will continue to build up despite the manual. V2 cards for book 2 models are already needed and a requirement to release a new rules manuals every year or two is a distinct possibility, especially if Book 3 comes out and needs errata straight away as it probably will. Despite the best will in the world, a game like this will have errors as its played so close to the edge and 20-30 playtesters can't do the same job as hundreds or thousands playing week in, week out. What happens when the next load of errata becomes unwieldy in 12-18 months? Another manual? Or will a good pdf be better for all concerned? I enjoy the game and would recommend it to anyone. I will actively help new players in my gaming group. What I won't do is pretend that getting hold of everything you need is as simple as buying a manual and a crew any more. Two points: 1. I don't buy graphic novels and after taking out all the Malifaux rules I wouldn't pay £50 for the fluff in book 1 and 2. 2. I have never read the chronicles because they take too damn long to open on my desktop and scrolling through the pdf is a nightmare. Sound familiar?