Prunesquallor

Episode 21 of The Aethervox is now live! This episode is a very special interview with Justin Gibbs and Mack Martin and it's all about the impending Malifaux Version Two. (By the way, for those of you who have been wondering, we're definitely not dead, and we'll have a regular episode up soon, in which we announce the winners of our Circus Crew contest...well, sooner or later *wink*). Hope you enjoy the interview: http://theaethervox.com/

For those of you who haven't yet listened to episode 20 of The Aethervox, we announced a contest calling on listeners to help us design rules for Mr. Magpie's Cemetery Circus. Here are our rough notes. Feel free to expand on these ideas or ignore them and start afresh: Master: Mr. Magpie. Stage magician and lion tamer. Sort of a cross between Collette and Marcus. Birds can lift him, so he can fly up to his walk. Can hire Arcanist beasts. It’d be nice if he synergised with beasts better than Marcus (who is better at fighting enemy beasts than buffing his own (imho). Reactivate beast within range of his whip(but causes a wound at the same time?). Lure (picking a volunteer from the audience). Totems: Magpies. Can steal soulstones from opposing masters. Deliver orders. Flight. Perch. Conjoined twins: Ranged attack pistols (paired? 2 attacks per AP?) Teleport between any 2 terrain pieces (All action? Or is the hidden passageways action from the wastrels better?) Mighty Murphy: High damage, low cb. Great debater (wp-wp duel to target?) Olga: bearded lady/werewolf. paired claws. Frenzies after causing a wound (blood price? variation of stampeding pigs?) Gremlin clovvns: Use bayou gremlin as a base, and work something more *****y into it Knife juggler (throws with his feet): can't move and shoot in same turn. Ranged expert. 'Armless Kind of a mid-range (10”)sniper. Maybe eye of the needle from 10 thunders archers. Rubber Ruby (contortionist/acrobat): Pass through, from the shadows, scout, some kind of evasive ability. Should play a bit like a Torakage without the model swapping. Kind of a super objective grabber. Fast, hard to pin down, but little in the way of damage. Then we move into stuff that hasn't appeared in the stories (at least not yet) Gypsy fortune teller: Support piece with abilities connected to telling the future. Spell that makes opponent play with open hand for the turn. Opponent can discard 2 cards to prevent this. "Know your awful fate" causes terrifying duel. Weapon: Hot tea leaves (magical)! ("extended universe" stuff) Gremlin cannon: We thought it would be cool to have a human cannonball in the crew. This could either be an artillery piece (we'll adapt from the pigapult rules) or make it a kamikaze rule for the ****** (this model moves in a straight line toward any point on the edge of the board. Any model in its path takes a x/x/x dg flip. When this model hits either the board edge or any terrain piece that would provide hard cover, remove it as a casualty) Baby elephant (!!!) Some kind of trample attack if it moves over you (Ride down from McCabe?). "Roll over" action that would do a lot of damage. This is the tank of the crew. Scared of rats! Carnies: Not sure about their role yet, but they should be able to kidnap ht1 models!

Awesome idea! I think The Aethervox will be a wildcard in this one. On the one hand we have Adrian, a tactical genius and reigning national champion. Ian and I, on the other hand, barely know how to play.

Really? I can see the last episode on iTunes just fine. Are you looking on the store itself or are you subscribed? If you're subscribed to the feed it should download immediately and the new one should be up on the store within a day or so. But the last episode should definitely be up already. Anyone else having problems with this?

This episode is a chatty, catch-up episode. We talk about the new Vassal module, Through the Breach, and our recent exploits in Malifaux and other games. We also introduce our “design the circus crew” contest and we have a great story by Iron Quill winner Mark Rogers. Hope you enjoy: http://theaethervox.com/

Woops, fixed!

That's right, we're not dead! This episode is a tactica. Adrian talks to Mark Williams, aka Vanilla Dice, about the one-man-apocalypse himself, Leveticus. Hope you enjoy: http://theaethervox.com/ (P.S. We’re already hard at work on Episode 20, which, with any luck, will be released before the end of the year.)

The Aethervox Crew would like to apologize for our lack of new content of late. We fully intend to get our next proper episode out soon, and we’ve all been eating lots of prunes to try to improve our regularity. In the meantime, here are all the stories from the Mr. Magpie’s Cemetery Circus arc, conveniently ripped out of their individual episodes and stitched together into a single mp3 file, like some hideous construct in the basement of Dr. McMourning’s laboratory: http://theaethervox.com/2012/10/the-collected-circus-stories/#more-300 Hope you enjoy. And fear not…The Aethervox will be back on the air very soon!

After a Summer holiday, we're back into the swing of things. This episode we talk about all of Wyrd's recent announcements, Ian and Adrian talk about Sedition Wars in our new segment "Beyond the Breach," Julian and Ian recap a Malifaux tournament they went to back in May, Adrian talks about Bishop in "The Man Comes Around" and we have a fascinating interview with Adam Rogers of Miniterrain Studio about terrain making. We hope you enjoy: http://theaethervox.com/

I am in temporarily in Toronto, until mid-August. I'm not sure what the community is like, but there is a fantastic game store called Meeplemart that stocks Malifaux and has open mini gaming on Tuesday evenings. I haven't been to the mini gaming night yet - anybody on these boards game there? Anybody in Toronto fancy a game? A word of warning if you decide to go - the store is kind of hard to find. There is no sign at street level and you have to ascend an unmarked stairwell inside a loft complex to get to the entrance.

Episode 17 is out now at http://theaethervox.com/ . This one's a short but very special episode. We dedicate the bulk of this episode to an interview with Justin Gibbs (aka Lalochezia) in which we talk about “Dead Heat”, the Malifaux summer campaign, in which The Aethervox, Cheated Fates Radio, The Bayou Broadcast, and Gamers’ Lounge all play a central roll. Hope you enjoy!

Episode 16 is finally here, and it's chock-a-block with Malifaux-y goodness. Check it out at: http://theaethervox.com/ This episode we have the return of Mike Howell's Confessions of an Aspiring Resurrectionist, we review some terrain and bases sent to us by the Terrain Geek, Adrian discusses the joys of Killjoy and proposes plenty of possible proxies in The Doppelganger. We also have the usual chat about the May releases, news, hobby aspirations and more!

Dear Aethervox Listeners, Over the past fourteen months we have been proud to bring you The Aethervox, covering all aspects of Wyrd Miniatures' character-driven, tabletop skirmish game, Malifaux. Sadly, all good things must come to an end. When Ian and Julian first began The Aethervox, in February 2011, we were the only dedicated Malifaux podcast on the internet, and we proudly filled what we saw as a lacuna in the miniature wargaming podcast landscape. But ever since the meteoric rise of certain other Malifaux podcasts, we have begun to feel that The Aethervox has become redundant—a dinosaur among mammals, a V1 statcard in a V2 meta. We believe we have served the community well, bringing you the latest news, commentary and tactics interviews (and, we hope, a few laughs along the way), but it is time for Ian, Adrian and Julian to move on to bigger and better things. We feel secure leaving you in the capable hands of the good folks at Cheated Fates Radio, and of course our old friend and mentor, Bill at The Gamer's Lounge. With such talented and dedicated guardians watching over Malifaux, we will rest assured knowing that the community will continue to flourish and thrive without us. BUT WAIT! We may be done with Malifaux, but we're certainly not done with podcasting. Now that Malifaux has achieved near-total dominance within the hobby, we feel that there are other, lesser-known games that deserve our attention. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of The Aethervox, we are today announcing the launch of our brand new podcast: VoxHammer Xtreme. This new show will be dedicated to a little-known tabletop battle game that the three of us recently discovered and immediately fell in love with. It's called Warhammer 40,000. "40k" (as the cognoscenti know it) is a futuristic battle game created by UK-based games company Games Workshop. Like The Aethervox, VoxHammer Xtreme is designed to appeal to newcomers and veterans alike, so whether you've heard of Warhammer 40,000 or not, please click the link below, give our new podcast a listen and let us know what you think. Thank you all for your support and encouragement. It's been a blast! Peace! Julian, Ian and Adrian

You lucky things, getting two new Malifaux podcast episodes in one day (be sure to listen to the latest episode of Cheated Fates Radio). Episode 15 of The Aethervox is now up at http://theaethervox.com/ This episode our guest is Dan Sulin (aka Nilus) who will be talking about Perdita and the Ortegas.

Episode 14 is here! It’s our birthday, and we received the best presents any podcast could ask for. You’ll just have to listen to find out what we unwrapped. This episode we have the return of Confessions of an Aspiring Resurrectionist by Mike Howell, we chat with Nilus about the Malifaux events going down at Adepticon, Ian chats with Bill from The Gamer’s Lounge in “What the Fluff?”, the Doppelganger is Resurrected, Adrian announces the winner of the Marcus Avatar competition in “The Man Comes Around” and has a special report about a Recent Malifaux tournament he attended at CanCon. Also: Game Reports, New Releases, Incoherent Ramblings, and everything you ever wanted to know about Silurids. Whew. Have I forgotten anything? Probably. You’ll just have to listen to the episode to find out: http://theaethervox.com/

I was about to make a Junkyard Wars joke, but then I discovered you already made it (Scraphead Challenge was called Junkyard Wars in North America).

I love it!

I was also thinking of a reduced control hand - but maybe that would just make it all the more luck-dependent. Fewer cards means a less representative sample of the deck. Would it work with no control cards at all?

We've been thinking for a while about starting a new Aethervox segment in which we pit models against each other in one-on-one battles (tentatively titled: The Arena). Who is a better in close combat, Lilith or McMourning? Sniper-fight: Hans vs Nino - go! Lightweight round: Bayou Gremlin vs Malifaux Child. King-of-the-Hill: select two random characters from the game, winner stays in to face the next random pick. We want to make it as accurate a representation of the model's abilities as possible (i.e. it should accurately test who is better in close combat, or who is the better sniper) in a "pure" sense, outside the context of the rest of the game. At the same time we want it to be a series of entertaining fights with boxing style commentary. My question to you forumites is this: How should we set up these one-on-one bouts? What should the parameters be? How far apart should the models start? Will winning the initiative flip turn out to be too important? Is a full control hand overkill for just one model? Should soulstones be allowed? Should each matchup be a best-of-three? More importantly, which matchups would you like to see? Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Episode 13 is a tactics interview with Palmer Buss, better known as pgbsamurai. He will be discussing Lilith, Mother of Monsters. Check it out at http://theaethervox.com/ or on iTunes. Nota Bene: There are big, exciting changes coming to the Aethervox, and many people we need to thank, but we’ll save all that for episode 14. This one is just the interview, plain and simple. Oh, and no we didn’t use Bill’s mixing board to record this – so hopefully next episode we will sound better.

Hi Everybody. After a holiday-hiatus we're back for the new year with episode 12 of "The Podcast That's Mostly Malifaux" This episode we have the continuation of Mr. Magpie’s Cemetery Circus, we announce the winners of our first ever contest, The Man Comes Around (in which Rathnard talks about some of Marcus’s minions and announces our second ever contest), the Malifaux Ministry of Music, Movies and other Media, our trip to Hal Con, Game Report, New Releases and more… Check us out at http://theaethervox.com/

Thanks guys! I really enjoy writing 'em. Especially when I know someone will actually be reading them.

Also, I think it's a question worth raising: Do we gamers secretly like the fact that our games are inaccessible? Do we like being part of an exclusive club that outsiders don't understand?

This is a great discussion! I think it is important to make clear to newcomers that they should not think of these games as an extension of board game culture. Your analogy with the car is great: some people love custom building cars from parts, giving them custom paint jobs etc. But most people would find this frustrating and pointless - even people who really love cars and love to drive. Because let's face it (controversial statement): miniature games are bad games. Compared to Settlers, or Dominion, or Carcossonne, or Chess miniature games are inelegant, bloated, badly balanced, slow to learn and play, with overly-complex rules that are not always clear and almost never exhaustive. All the things that I love in a well-designed board game are absent in a miniature game. And yet I love miniature games too. I love them for a whole different set of reasons. There's almost no overlap. I love becoming immersed in an alternate world. I love the sense of identification with my crew (my unique crew, that I've chosen and painted). I love the fact that the rules of the game bring out facets of the personality of each character. The rules have to be inelegant and complex because they are vehicles for character development (and there's nothing worse than straightforward, streamlined character development). And I love being part of an enthusiastic and dedicated community (with board games that's not important - you can just break them out at parties or with friends and still have a good time). I think the most important thing in explaining miniature gaming to a newbie is explaining why people love these games. Because if you just want to play a game (as someone who has wandered into a store called Games Workshop might reasonably expect) there are much better games out there.

I love it!