Cats Laughing

This makes a whole lot of sense to me.

Perdita is a man?

probably when they get around to winning a week in the campaign. Or maybe next week, just because...

I like the overall idea and based off a brief reading of the general schemes, those changes look pretty good for the most part*. I definitely think the idea has merit, and I also like that certain schemes have +2 VP as the base, with +1 for the additional, while others have +1 for the base objective, with +2 for making it more difficult. That seems like a good way to differentiate schemes that are more difficult or less difficult. I don't have my rules manual at the moment, so can't comment on ideas for faction/master specific schemes, but I believe the same general idea can work for those schemes. Many of those must be announced, however, and therefore may need to be +3/+1 or +1/+3 or +2/+2 schemes (following the above +1/+2/+1 or +2/+1/+1 schemes). Another idea with schemes that I would personally like to see (but may make this whole balancing act more difficult) are Henchmen specific schemes. I'd love it if those could be taken when the Henchman in question is taken as a leader and also when just taken as a Henchman in a Master's crew. Personally Strategies and Schemes are one of my favorite parts of the game, but I also understand that they may be the biggest factor in the imbalance that others have mentioned. I do think that an idea like the one presented here can keep the flavour of Malifaux, while helping to balance the game. Additionally the changes with announced/vs unannounced may even make the game more interesting to play. * Of course, I can't tell off hand if the changes are perfect, but they certainly look like a very good start!

I. Think this is a pretty cool idea, and look forward to mercilessly slaughtering them in battle. They will make fine corpse counters for Molly.

Grats on the promotion to Henchman. I'll try to make it down if the Car lets me. Looking fwd to this becoming a regular thing.

I believe the answer is yes, because: - you declare the trigger before the damage flip and therefore it's still possible to flip the black joker which would cause no damage and not kill the gremlin. I also believe this applies even if the black joker is in your hand or has been played recently, because the idea is that theoretically you might not killyourself, so it's ok.

In the scenario I posted, by not boosting the attack roll you have usually saved resources and can then boost the damage rolls. There are a good number of weapons in Warmachine that will kill Caine on a boosted damage roll if they hit. In that way, it's a pretty similar scenario. PS: Yes, it's cornercase. However, since no warjack in the game is RAT 10 (most are RAT 4-6), you can actually drop the wall (and possibly another DEF bonus) out of the equation and have effectively the same result, where boosting the attack roll leads to lower odds to hit. So you're better off fishing for a box cars roll on the to hit and saving your boost for the damage roll and the high change of rolling enough damage to kill. I do admit that the H2W2 situation seems like it can come up more often, but that is partially a function of Warmachine/Hordes having 120+ Warcasters/Warlocks, of which only 2 are "Caine" while Malifaux has only 21(?) Master/Henchmen, of which 1 is Seamus. The other reason is that the Red Joker is always somewhere in the deck of 54 cards, while there are some people who will never roll a pair of sixes on a 2d6 in their life. On the flip side, I've managed to roll 5 box car results in a row in one particular game, and seen people do more than that on other occasions. It's not the same, but it is a similar situation of "better and worse" being flipped due to somewhat wonky rules. The H2W2 situation seems more likely to occur, and therefore seems worse. That perception is a reason I'm not totally against minor changes to the Red Joker interaction, but I'm also not really in the camp pushing for any changes, since I still find this to be the one game where I have as much fun losing as I do winning or tying a game... Anyway, carry on

Your experience could be partially an issue with the Dreamer/LCB himself. I seem to recall that he has certain triggers that are basically "any 3+" and he also has paired on his claws (?) and two different triggers related to those claw attacks, meaning that it's pretty easy to get his triggers when he wants to. I played a game recently against a Guild player who was constantly triggering Critical Strikes. After the first two I needed to look at his cards to remind myself that most of his models have a Ram baked into their CB and he wasn't just getting lucky flips. Blah. But yeah, you should be watching his flips.

Regarding Warmachine, one thing that is similar to the H2W + Red Joker issue is the very corner case of Caine behind a wall, on a hill, while benefitting from Blur and being shot at by any number of Warjacks or Warbeasts. In this case, Caine's effective Def 26 means that any Jack/Beast with an effective RAT of less than 10 (which would be all jacks and beasts in the game, as well as most warcasters and warlocks) would actually have a higher chance of hitting Caine if they choose not to boost the attack roll. Basically the mechanism of the 'all sixes' auto hits, means that trying to roll a lucky two sixes on a 2d6 is easier than trying to roll a 17+ on a 3d6. In some ways this is similar to the H2W2 + Red Jokers with Seamus issue. Boosting is supposed to be better than not boosting, but it isn't in this case. H2W2 is supposed to be better than not having it, but it isn't when a Red Joker gets flipped.

I'm not overly bothered by the kill your own master plan, though at least partially that's because I don't think many of my opponents would do that. If anything they'd figure that would be something cheesy that I would pull on them. That said,one thing I've been learning, is that it's important to not put all your eggs in one basket. That includes overlapping schemes and strategies. ie: deliver a message + steal a relic, etc... Edit: by 'not overly bothered' I meant that I'm not going to ditch the game because of it. That said, I don't like the idea that much either, and wouldn't mind if it was changed/fixed. I can also see why it bothers other people. I used to be happy with Warhammer and 40k back when you could shoot into melees, with a chnace of hitting your own guys. We all watched Braveheart, right? I was pretty annoyed when they took that out. In the early days of Warmachine I would occassionally kill my own guys becuase it would benefit me slightly to do so (they were in the way, or I would get a soul token that I really needed). I never did that much killing of my own guys and am perfectly happy with the Mk2 changes that remove most beneficial friendly fire. Now i just kill my own guys when they are in the way. I play Malifaux in a somewhat Rpg sort of way, so I wouldn't kill my own Master, but I suppose I would just roll with the punches if my opponent did so to deny me VP. I think I'm just confused.

Glad you missed with that last swing. Definitely a good outlook on Golf, Gaming and probably life in general. Reminds me that I need to visit the driving range again.

So you would rather throw the Red Joker in your hand at an attack flip, casting flip or defense/resist flip just to get it back in the deck and hope it gets randomly flipped for a damage flip, over attempting to use the resources you have to generate a cheatable damage flip and use it against a target of your choosing? Sounds very much like gambling. Sounds like it could work, but yes, ymmv. Honestly though, I'm not against a minor change, like making the Red a severe + weak, as opposed to the current severe + flip, as i certainly understand the negative perception it can give to players.

Speaking of H2W and the Red Joker, I'm fairly certain I've played far more games where I've had the Red Joker in my control hand and been unable to use it thanks to negative damage flips, than games where I've seen it on a negative damage flip.

You will want more models for collodi to balance the points. Shoot for 25 for starters. As for Ramos, since he can summon more spiders, consider dropping a few from your beginning list to even out the points there as well and give you extra models to summon. Remember that for Masters, unspent "stones" get added to their soulstone cache. Henchmen have slightly different rules there.

Recently I've been just throwing down all my old mordheim terrain, sometimes supplemented or replaced by terraclips. It ends up being in the 16+ pieces area, though that depends on how you count the terraclips.

I'm happy with an Alternate Sculpt based on the worldwide campaign results (or even just ordering the release dates of Alternate Sculpts based on the results). Granting new rules based on internet campaigns seems like a bad way to do business and can lead to imbalance.

He's also a 2stone corpse, iirc, that's I've seen turn into yet another Belle...

Heh, I was playing Molly against my daughter (using my Rasputina) recently, and when I used Uncontrolled Crying the first time, she said "Uncontrollable crying? (me: Yeah she becomes Pitiful again) That's kinda sexist..." Then she proceeded to rip apart Molly's crew. She thought the Necrotic Machine was really cool looking, just before she destroyed it.

I think Raptors have a rule that disallows their inclusion in a list that doesn't include Marcus or Austringers. (I could be wrong)

I don't agree with all of what Sandwich said in his post on pg 2 of the thread (mostly on the designation of masters within the categories he noted, but those are quibbles). However, one thing he pointed out was: Kirai was designed to need Spirits and Spirits were designed for her. However, due to not dropping corpse counters, Spirits are somewhat anti-synergistic with other Resser masters who use corpse counters to raise new troops. Now, I'm not experienced to make pronouncements, but I've heard arguements for and against Resser masters actually ressurecting models in game and how important that is to their play style. While it might not be a major component of successful play, it still is an option, and based on that, taking Spirits is somewhat counterproductive (anti-pun intended). This means that the Kirai crew created in Book 2 was almost a separate crew from the rest of the faction. Showgirls and the Dreamer's Nightmare crews are similar, but at the same time different from this Kirai-separateness aspect, IMHO. Several Showgirl models are constructs that therefore have some syngery with Ramos, while both Rasputina and Marcus can hand out the "Frozen Heart" or "Beast" traits that they desire in a model. Additionally, both Rasputina and Marcus gained models in book 2 that could also hand out the related traits. Neither actually needs for their minions to be completely "Frozen Heart" or "Beast" due to being able to hand out that trait and also because they really don't buff that specific trait all that much anyway (Rasputina will never use more than 4 ice mirrors in a turn, and typically needs only one a turn, while Marcus has Howl, yay... and "companion" which is cool but is a one model version) As for the Nightmare crew, they are a bit closer to Kirai's Spirits in their separateness from the rest of the faction. Except for two models that see complaints on these forums on occasion. The Twins are somehow Nephilim, Woes and Nightmares, which mean they synergize with all of the Masters that desire a specific trait (Dreamer, Lilith, and Pandora), rather than just one. I don't know if this is particularly a bad thing, but it can certainly lead to an impression of imbalance. Essentially, it can seem like every faction except Ressers, got a pile of models that can work for everyone, while Ressers got a new crew and a few models that work with the initial 3. This may not lead to actual imbalance, but it can give that impression. Another comment I noticed while continuing to read the thread is an issue with timed tournaments. It's possible that Ressers are disadvantaged by timed games, much like infantry+AOE+Spray heavy Menoth in Warmachine is disadvantaged by timed turns, whereas in untimed formats they do just fine. This could be due to the complexity of the faction, and I can understand the idea, even if I can't vouch for the truth of it. I know most of my games, regardless of faction, take forever, but that has a lot to do with my inexperience. I don't currently have complaints with the game, though I do constantly wonder why (from both a fluff and rules POV) the Twins have all 3 traits (Neph, Woe, Nightmare) and not just one (or maybe two) of those traits. I don't need to have those traits removed to be happy with the game, but I certainly would love to know why they were designed that way. The complexity of Malifaux makes it much harder for me to be confident in claiming balance or imbalance, whereas I can think of other d6 games where the simplicity of the game makes it very easy to see (and often mathematically prove) the balance/imbalance in the game. I do see great merit in looking into the schemes and strategies, as well as the models themselves. The game is a whole and not simply an assassination or kill everything game. It is very plausible that schemes/strategies catering to movement will favor certain lists and possibly even factions. Kirai, Dreamer and Colette have all been touted as powerful due to their movement shenanigans, whereas Rasputina often gets warnings about taking her in strategies requiring speed (despite having access to the Duet and other speed models). I don't know how much this can be worked on, given that greater movement almost always leads to the ability to concentrate force and thereby also equate to greater killing power and land grabbing ability (at least when land grabs are calculated at end of game). One idea that just popped into mind is to possibly modify certain strategies/schemes to require areas to be held for multiple turns or to grant more VP if held for multiple turns (rather than just at game end). Speed can still be powerful there as you can try to grab early (or stall an opponent from grabbing via jamming), but it does cater a bit more to the ability to tank and survive for multiple turns. Faster models tend to be easier to kill (or at least chase away), though I know that's not true in all cases, so needing to hold an area for multiple turns can balance out the ability to get there first (or swoop in at the end). Yes, this was somewhat stream of consciousness...

It is not actually a "Bad Idea", rather, Channeling/Focusing on attacks with no additional flip modifiers (Hard to Wound, Cover, etc...) is typically not as efficient as simply making two attacks. However, the damage chart is set up so that hitting a target by a small amount (ie: win the attack duel by 1-5) creates a negative flip on damage. Which means that even if there are no negative flips inherent in the attack/cast (ie: hard to wound or cover), it may still be worthwhile to focus/channel to avoid the negative damage flip from a close hit. This is especially true when you're holding a severe damage card in your hand (and more so when sitting on the red joker).

I like Spam with rice, dried seaweed, sugar and the extract of fermented soybeans...

page reference for those who care: pg 51 of Rules Manual, very top of page

Just a guess, but: -In most wargames I've played, ranged attacks always come at a premium cost. The Golem has a pretty decent ranged attack that additionally generates blasts for more damage output. -I think Armor also comes at a premium in this game, despite not being able to be used to completely negate damage from an attack that hit. These are just thoughts and I could be wrong.