i_was_like_you

Let's just chalk this one up to personal preferences / play style. You say, No card is so bad that it's better not to have it. I say, I don't need any low cards in my hand that aren't of a suit I need for triggers, not when discarding one card and using 2 AP can net me much better cards, unless I'm battling a crew with heavy discard abilities. At that point, of course I'd hold onto my control cards, like gold, to prevent losing precious soul stones instead. Besides, once they give us the new rules that allow for other non-Master, non-Henchmen models to upgrade to Henchman* status, I will be most likely running this crew with Nekima at its head, instead of Lilith. [*See Ronin (p. 198 of the main book) for their Talent of Drifter which states This model cannot be upgraded to Henchman. It's one of the many rules, such as Avatar and Henchman that will be explained later (p. 20 of the main book). Yes, book two, Rising Powers, explains what a Henchman is, but it won't be until either the Rules Manual, due out this month, or a third or later book that they'll explain how a model can be upgraded to either Henchman or Avatar. My guess at the moment is that both abilities will have to be inextricably linked. For example, I could upgrade Nekima to Henchman and use her as my crew's Master; however, I may still want to summon an Avatar of Lilith if things go sour. As they have already released a model for Pandora's Avatar form, I don't think I'm too far off track with this.]

Actually, a model can target itself or another friendly, non-master model, with a melee attack / melee spell. Malifaux main book, p. 62, under Spellcasting: "Attack spells follow the basic rules for that type of attack". In this case, a melee attack. Now let's look at combat. Main book, p. 54, under Strike Attack Sequence - Details "1. Declare Target, then Check Range A model must be within the attacker's LoS to be declared the target of an attack. Any model within the attacker's LoS can be targeted, including any friendly model other than your Crew's Master (they're expendable, but he's not, right?) or the attacking model itself. If there are no targets within the attacker's LoS, the Strike fails." [underlines mine] The reason a spell like Inject Blood has a range of melee, not C, is so that it can affect itself or another model within melee range. It's not feasible that the Black Blood Shaman could Inject Blood from further than melee range, so that's the limit on it. Otherwise, it can heal itself, or any other model with Black Blood, or deal damage to any model without it. On a side note, with Blood Magic, if you happen to have any non-Master Neverborn models on your crew, other than your sacrificial Desperate Mercenaries, you can use your Black Blood Shaman to give it Black Blood, then use Inject Blood to heal it.

Depending on where you place your shaman in relation to the sacrificial mercs. If they're close enough, they can just use the counter that's sitting there, right? It works for Seamus and the other graverobbers.

Thanks for all the support. The Viktorias crew is fun. I've added Hans and Convict Gunslinger, but I've mostly been using it as a backup crew for teaching other players. My other crews are the Dreamer / LCB and Lilith in a turn one growth spurt from tots to mature nephilim. My friends have the following crews: Noir :seamus :pandora :rasputina and :lucius Bun :kirai Deno: :colette Last night was our last night at 25ss. Tomorrow we're upping it to 35ss. I'll get to use my Nekima proxy. Oh, good news for Akron, Ohio, Malifaux players: JAC games will be hosting a Malifaux game night (in addition to their sporadic Malifaux matches) on Friday, February 25th.

I get to ditch one bad card and use 2 of Lilith's 3 AP to make two attacks, that both separately have a chance to trigger Bloody Fate, allowing me to draw back more cards. Also, with a high enough SS crew, I could have other models within the 2", such as more Terror Tots, to spill a lot more blood.

Good crew overall, but I'd tweak the placement a bit to save a few AP and switch totems. I'd go with Primordial Magic instead of Malifaux Cherub to increase our control hand by 1 through Arcane Resevoir. It'll really sync up with Lilith's Rush of Magic to get us better cards. It also works quite well with Whirling Death. Speaking of which, I'd park Lilith between the Desperate Mercenaries to use (2) Whirling Death to make strikes against each of them, which may in turn each trigger Bloody Fate. Since Lilith has (+1) Fast and we only used (2) AP through Whirling Death, we can still use (1) Blood from Stone to gain any extra blood counters that we might be running short on from our previous models' activations. I'm still puzzling it over, but I think I'd rather use Lilith's (0) Brood Mother to make the Black Blood Shaman her Companion so that it can activate immediately after she has slain the Desperate Mercenaries so that it can make use of the corpse counters as blood counters to power Inject Blood, instead of using the Shaman beforehand. That puts us at: 1 blood counter from Nekima's Blood Offering of which damage the Mercs' Noble Deeds should have healed. 2 blood counters from Lilith's Whirling Death being each absorbed separately by Nekima and Black Blood Shaman's Blood Sense, as well as 2 corpse counters for the Shaman to turn to blood counters through two uses of Inject Blood triggering Bloody Mess which will heal the 4 Wd he will have inflicted upon himself through Blood Offering that he would use prior to using Inject Blood, which will give us 1 more blood counter, putting us at 6 blood. Additionally we could use Lilith's Blood from Stone for 2 more blood counters, should we need them. If I've missed anything or overlooked something that errata may have altered, feel free to let me know.

It's been about a week since I've been introduced to Malifaux. A couple of friends and I had stopped in at JAC Games here in Akron, Ohio. Another friend had mentioned Malifaux to the one guy, and he showed us just what it was. All the years of mini games being overly expensive to buy and build a consistent game winning army for just to lose to a poor dice roll are all now over. So are the days of painting those pricey figs just to have a careless dice toss chip them. Hurray for fate decks. I may just be able to drag a few more friends away from WoW and back to real gaming. Dice have been the bane of one of my friend's existence when it comes to gaming, but he's always had, to borrow the Yugioh phrase, "the heart of the cards" (even though we play Magic the Gathering, not Yugioh). The factions all have their perks. Think I'm going to start out with the Viktorias, opting out of a second master in a brawl for the extra soulstones.