Cats Laughing

shhhh, I hear people take that game very seriously...

Wicked Dolls can make more Wicked Dolls, just not on the turn you (0) teleport to Collodi.

I was playing it that you could choose to not use the automatic trigger. I thought automatically triggered meant that the trigger conditions were assumed to be automatically met, but that you still had the option to declare and use another trigger (that had conditions that were met) or choose to declare and use no triggers. When Ramos gets a +tome to CA from the toolkit(?) he automatically meets the requirement for the Surge trigger, but doesn't need to declare or use that trigger. (to explain my thinking) That was the change for me, and I'm fine with realizing that I had been playing it wrong. Oh well. As for the cuddle. It is not a major cuddle. In fact it's kind of minor, but it's still a bit of a cuddle. 1) If you can choose to not use Overpower, then you can choose to use Surge instead. If you have to use Overpower then you can't use Surge (biggest part of "cuddle") 2) If you're forced to use Overpower, then you will be forced to flip cards with the potential outcomes of (in order of likeliness) -A) flip low and cast fails, stop casting - flip high cast succeeds, opponent flips low, spell not resisted, cast again -C) flip high cast succeeds, opponent flips high but lower than your total, spell not resisted, cast again -D) flip high cast succeeds, opponent flips higher than your total, spell resisted, stop casting -E) flip black joker, stop casting, draw two cards E and D are highly unlikely, though both have beneficial outcomes (draw two cards or opponent wastes high card). C is fairly unlikely and typically not beneficial, as you're wasting a high card for no gain and you have to flip again with a chance of wasting more high cards to no gain, but at least your opponent wasted a somewhat high card. B is what really sucks. You waste a high card, have a good chance of wasting more high cards, and your opponent has merely gotten rid of a low card. This is somewhat unlikely to occur, but sucks when is does and really sucks if chained together. A should happen most frequently and is what makes this only a minor cuddle. You cycle through a low card to no gain. On the otherhand, that low card could still have been enough to cast one of Rasputina's other spells (like the Armor or Terrain spells) and possibly even trigger surge off of those other spells. If you want to break the chain at B, C, or D (prior to seeing your opponent's flip), you can cheat in a low card, but this has several possible detrimental effects, or reasons why you wouldn't want to or can't do this. 1) less cards in your hand for cheating other flips (a low card can sometimes be enough to win a duel or at least lower your opponent's margin and add/increase negative damage flips, a low card can also be enough to cast a low CC spell and also possibly get a trigger) 2) less cards in your hand for Surge trigger discards and other abilities requiring discards (Flurry for instance) 3) less cards in your hand for bluffing (if you do this) 4) you might not have any low cards to cheat with 5) you might not have any cards to cheat with period 6) certain opponents get benefits when you cheat in/play cards. Essentially this clarification/ruling comes with no benefits for a Rasputina player and does have minor downsides, and therefore is a cuddle. I do admit, this cuddle is minor and probably so minor it doesn't deserve all of the above text...

Swarms comes with the swarm sized base and you would need to get small bases for the individual spiders. Having extra small bases is typically a good thing, so I wouldn't worry too much about having to invest in a package or two of small bases. You can use magnets to allow you to switch between bases. As the spiders are small, you may want to glue them to some kind of terrain bit, and magnetize the terrain bit to the base(s), as trying to magnetize a tiny spider is difficult. I believe there are pictures of how other forum members have done this in the miniatures subforum.

Because Rasputina really needed a cuddle? I understand the reasoning and am not arguing against the ruling, just noting that this is actually a cuddle for Rasputina, as you're now forced to cycle through good cards while a Biting Chill target is at 1 wd, unless you can cheat down to fail the cast or flip something low. It's not a huge cuddle, but it is one. I also wonder how many other models are affected by an auto-trigger "Must" ruling?

Hmmm, so as mentioned by another poster, Fast provides an additional General AP. If the Dreamer or LCB gains fast, and uses 3 General AP, then the other half cannot use any General AP, correct?

Collodi is amazing at certain Strategies(speed based ones). He zips around the board, and a simple addition of the PuppetWars models as wicked dolls or a blister of Stitched Together and you're pretty much set until Effigies are released...

Could have sworn I got mine for $31 (and Snowstorm is $35, iirc).

I believe the blister does come with all 3 bases. Snowstorm, by itself, is more than the Rasputina box(iirc), and reasonably vital for reaching Raspy's full potential. You'll probably also want a Silent One (or Two) and an Essence. You don't need the Duet and Doves to use Colette's box, though you will eventually want them to reach her full potential. I think you're eventually looking at expanding beyond the box for any master, to reach their full potential.

1 Coryphee Blister and magnets The Blister includes both models so you can magnetize them to be able to swap from 40mm bases to 50mm base as needed. I'm pretty sure you can browse the forums to see various ways other forum members have done this.

What I would like to see from Wyrd (and also from Privateer Press, for that matter) are Fluff Compilations collecting the fluff, background stories, tidbits, art, etc... from the outdated and out of print rulebooks. Even though I have most or even all of these rulebooks, I'd like a nice tidy compilation so I can clear out space. I believe they would sell, but it's possible they wouldn't sell well enough to justify the costs.

Check out the Wyrd Chronicles (free downloads on this forum, see the lefthand menu bar, about halfway down) for pre-Book 1 Fluff. You might get lucky with ebay or with someone on this forum checking out their FLGS. Not sure if mine has any left.

Models that are Unique will have that characteristic noted on their Stat Card, underneath their name(edit: under their "Cost/Cache" on both front and back of card). I believe this is noted in the first few pages of the Rules Manual (~pg 6-7, iirc) I believe most models with specific names are Unique, but ruleswise, they are not Unique unless noted on their cards.

This requires a friendly spirit to get 18" forward of your start line and thereby telegraphs the move. I believe Kirai lacks any sort of companion tricks for this manuever (could be totally wrong here) so your opponent gets at least one activation (barring your opponent having companion) to remove that spirit and force you to start the manuever over from scratch. This also causes 5 wounds to your 8 wound Master. Using your 2nd (0) to do a healing flip denies you the ability to keep your Seishin alive and denies you the ability to reapply Pitiful, removing two of Kirai's defense mechanisms. (You will already have spent one (0) action on the 18" teleport) As noted by other posters, the Ikiryo is not as dangerous as LCB. She also doesn't drop the rest of her crew in your face, potentially blocking LOS, blocking movement with disengaging strikes and/or tying up ranged models in melee. Since her crew is also left behind you're not facing the one-two punch of LCB followed by a companion chain of Lelus/Lilitus It seems there are a decent number of balancing factors in Kirai's long bomb yoyo. What are the balancing factors for the Dreamer? What balancing factors could we introduce? (that wouldn't cuddle the Dreamer into oblivion)

Note: I'm commenting for discussion purposes and the flesh out the idea. The inability to cheat fate(for offensive or defensive purposes) if the Dreamer drops his entire crew in your lap would be the mitigating/balancing factor of allowing him to do that. There are still ways around using your entire hand. You could: -Drop less than your full crew, thereby keeping a few cards in your hand for cheating. For instance you can drop just a Lelu-Lilitu pair for 2 cards and still have 4 in hand. -Use daydreams/alps/other cheap unburied models to stall until near the end of the turn, allowing you to dump your entire control hand at the end of the round and redraw a full hand for the following turn -possibly other ideas I can't research now as my books are not here... Additionally, you can choose how to manage the discard, dumping only low cards. Should you draw a hand full of low cards, then there is very little lost by dropping your whole crew and discarding your entire hand. You do lose the possibility to bluff and defense against things like "Headshot" however. Another thought is that you could modify the idea of discarding cards on the "All My Friends" trigger to be some ratio other than 1-1. Perhaps you could unbury 2 Nightmares for each card discarded, or 3 Nightmares for every 2 cards. On the otherhand, more "exotic" ratios like 3-2 do cause some issues when you want to determine how many cards to discard when the ratio points to a non-whole number. Discarding cards for the mass unbury might not be the best idea, but I think it's something that could be looked into.

I like the idea of pledging to comment and if I get around to reading some of the stuff on this subforum, I'll do so. I suppose (for Devil's Advocate purposes) that a possible downside is clutter of a story thread with comments inbetween "chapters"(posts) by the author. I guess that would be the author's fault for not reserving additional posts and can also be addressed by simply continuing later chapters in a new thread (linked to the original, of course).

I think I saw earlier in this thread a suggestion (maybe by Fetid) that the All My Friends trigger require control cards to be discarded for each Nightmare unburied by the trigger. I think this might be a reasonable suggestion. It still allows the Dreamer to drop off his entire crew in your face, which seems to be the intent of the Dreamer, and zip back off again, which might also be intended (unsure), but limits his crew's output after the mass-unbury by denying him the ability to cheat fate. Alternatively, the Dreamer can unbury a smaller number of crew members and retain some ability to cheat fate. On the otherhand, this mechanic would moderately reward a poor control hand (a draw of nothing but low cards) and leave the Dreamer vulnerable to control hand interference (like Somer). it also doesn't do anything to the LCB yoyo attrition game (where LCB comes flying in, kills something, then gets ported out). However, I feel that yoyo isn't as dangerous without his crew also being thrown out in an opponent's face. Losing a model a turn without being able to strike back is annoying but something that you'll face with a Guild player running Nino. Making the Dreamer vulnerable to control hand attacks might be a worthwhile weakness to give.

Stop making me want to play ressurectionists...! :-) I'm kidding, looking forward to more installments

Yeah, but Sabotage is typically easier and you can only choose one of the two Faction Schemes. I also find that fighting your way through an opposing crew to grab the 4th corner for Power Ritual can be quite hard in either of the diagonal or corners deployment. So while 1VP out of the Power Ritual is pretty easy, getting the 2nd point takes more work, and makes Sabotage my preferred Arcanist scheme.

When I first read the Dreamer rules I thought he was pretty cool and his method of getting soulstones was interesting and *limiting* However, that was because I was still very new to the rules and thought that his rules gave him a soulstone for each Nightmare but also capped his total starting cache at 5. Compared to other masters, that could get 8 in a scrap, I thought that was a nice limiting factor. He got his for taking Nightmares, effectively for free, but was limited in his total, so could be at a disadvantage against masters that took a full cache of 8. Too bad I was wrong

Power ritual is "fluffy" but sabotage is much easier. Holdout and various kill-type schemes are also typically easy for Raspy.

I can see it now, Kirai's parents are backwater hicks with no education and a bit of an accent/slur. They give birth at home with the help of a cousin/midwife and the father goes to the county clerk to register his new child. "I want to name her Kirei" he says, but slurs it just a little. The clerk is also mostly uneducated but at least can write. However, he's had a bad day, isn't thinking straight, and writes down Kirai. Kirai's father can't read and marks his X on the official registry... Little Kirai goes to school several years later, gets laughed out of her class, runs away eventually making her way to Malifaux and we know most of the rest of that story.

Karai and Kirai are very different in pronunciation, as well as meaning. Though I occasionally tell Japanese friends that I "kirai" "karai" foods... :-P People in Japan and Korea do, in modern times, occasionally select names for the sound of the name, rather than the meaning. In these cases, they often skip giving the name characters (which carry meaning) and instead use their respective phonetic* alphabet. Parents can also attempt to find characters that have the sounds necessary to combine for the sounds of the name they have selected. Many characters in Japanese have multiple pronunciations and meanings, which allows for a wide variety. I know several girls named "Yuki" and none share the same set of characters in their name. That said, very few sane parents are going to name their child "Baka" "Sukebe" or any number of other common words with negative meanings, regardless of the combination of characters with nice meanings they could use for those sounds. *I'm not a linguist, I could very well be using the wrong terms. Please forgive me...

The reason I mentioned that is that Nerdelemental has mentioned that the Mali-verse is not exactly Earth and the Three Kingdoms that Kirai, Misaki and others have come from is not exactly China, Korea and Japan, despite the many obvious references. Instead it's some melting pot of of those three cultures with whatever changes he felt makes for a good story. You'll note in book 2 that she speaks to Phillip in some mix of Chinese, and that her "Kimono" has some aspects of a Hanbok and perhaps other influences. With that in mind, it seems possible that the characters for her name are something unrelated to "Hate" and/or are the same characters we would recognize as "Hate" but mean something entirely different. I suspect that in the Mali-verse Kirai's name was originally written with characters that have a more beautiful and feminine meaning in the Three Kindgoms, much for the same reason Dracomax commented (Ie: what sane parents name their little girl "Hate"), but perhaps now others(and Kirai herself) in the Mali-verse think of the words "Hate" and "Darkness" when they hear her name.

I found it to be moderately cheesy myself :-0 Though it does entirely depend on what characters are used for her name and, one supposes, whether or not those characters mean the same thing in the Mali-verse. I've always preferred to think of 安国　(peaceful kingdom) as the characters for her last name, as it helps deflate the cheese in my mind via being somewhat ironic compared to her first name and storyline... though I admit "Darkness" make much more sense in keeping with the Kirai=hate meh