E.T.A. Hoffman

I did. And it is. She's was too wild for me. She always wanted to play Brace the Yari. And she always ignored the safety word.

What's the precise upgrade again? Just flipped through my T10 cards and I dont have it.

Wait is it being said that Misaki and Mei Fang are bad?! lol what? Worst master in the game? While things like Yan Lo are running around drop loads of hot piles on everyone's gaming tables? I don't think so! ;D

Yah Misaki is not the answer to Peacekeaper. In fact anything hard to wound is bad for her. She really relies on that pos for damage. Wouldn't take her against ressers honestly.

Haha big talk from Mr. 3rd place ;D I dont like Yuckysucko. For 7 stones I'd rather take a Lieberryin.

lol nope! if you dont take the cannot be charged upgrade then deadly dance has no purpose because she's just going to get charged. plus she should really be using her AP to kill things. downburst is useful and so is the blast attack but only in limited situations. although using downburst is great for getting your models out of combat with enemy models. and dont forget. she can declare charges in combat. which means she can declare a charge on the model she is already in combat with if you want to change her position. Example: You're within 1" of Lilith and so if you attack her you'll take Black Blood. Since Misaki can declare charges in combat, you can charge Lilith even though you already are in combat. This way you can move to a safer spot 2" away and avoid that BB. cheers!

Sure I'd be glad to! I still think Misaki and her Torakage have a solid anti-ranged defense because of One In the Crowd and the Smoke Bombs (of course let's not forget Misaki's speed). Funny enough, in all my months of trying her out I never played against Guild lol. Just didnt happen. But, I played her against lots of others: Lilith, Kirai, Molly, Mei Fang, Mcabe, Yanlo, ect. Which made me realize that she's generally good against a lot of stuff. To break it down they way I categorize crews, I find the schemes and strategies that she is best at. Since I run Outcasts competitively I like to know when is best to take them. Misaki is a brilliant cruise missile. I found the best combo of upgrades to be The Stalked Limited, Survivalist, and Oathkeeper. I've tried smoke and mirrors and I've tried Pilfer and I found they are useful but in special situations, I"ll cover those little later. First off, I always took Shang and The Liberian. I tried out the Student but honestly he's just a chore to use sometimes. I found Shang's healing and Rush of Magic to be well worth his points. Putting that together with Survivalist and Misaki is pretty darn hard to kill. I had Lilith put out 20 wounds over 2 turns and because I had that upgrade and model I was able to heal almost back up to full and lived long enough to kill Lilith and run my master away. So this upgrade is a must for outcasts. Misaki gets into the thick of things real quick. I found out that you shouldnt be shy with her. Jump on a flank and start tearing things up. Go for a key model and harass and eliminate then always use the push 4" to make it so your opponent has to further extend away to get her. Don't! Rush her into the middle of the crew though, if she's surrounded she will die. Ideally, you want to keep her threatended by no more than 1 enemy model so that your Hard To Kill really helps, which means keeping Shang nearby. I also take the Liberian for the extra heal because most competent players will ice the totem real fast once they learn what you're plan is. I never found taking the defensive limited upgrade worth it. Misaki really needs that positive for damage to get any work done. Doing weeks of 2 are just not that worthwhile and while she can be very defensively built, if you wanted a master who won't die you should have picked Daw. Oh! And the Schemes and Strats that I was going to mention lol. I think she excels at Collect the Bounty and Headhunter. Now I've thought about this hard. Because i have Levi. So when I'm at a Tourny and I see these two Strats I usually say Hell Yah to Levi. But, I think she might actually be better than him in some ways. First, she can kill more a turn than he can. If you follow this order of operations: 1) Turn 1 stack a target. 2) Rush that target. 3) Turn 2 charge that target getting all your positives and killing it (minions best choice for Collect the bounty). 4) Push next target to minion you should be able to kill. 5) stalk him and then use your last AP. This can net you 2 easy kills with one activation. Where as Levi usually needs all 3 AP to kill a single target. Also in the Headhunter she has a great advantage because she can Charge, trigger next target, and use the last AP to pick up the head token. Schemes now! Assassinate. She rivals Levi for this task. Both can do it very well. In this case I found Pilfer to be very nice to have. If you think about it, there is no downside for you when you use this trigger. Never spend the AP to do it. Just swing your big ole stick. Trigger the pilfer action if you can. There's only good outcomes for you: 1) they flip high and you flip low and that clensed the deck for you before your next attack. 2) You flip high and they have to cheat which only makes your assassinate trigger easier to get. 3) You win and get a SS and they lose one. But, I only take this when I know I'll be harassing the enemy leader the whole game. Any game I took the uprade and didnt plan on assassinate or just wanted them dead (like if I play against a ressser I love to harass their masters) they uprade gets wasted cause you might be better off taking out other models. Murder Protege: Same story, she ices single targets so well. But, its not all about murder. This is where her crew comes in. She's good with the following I think. Breakthrough Power Ritual Plant Evidence Here's why. Torakage and Smoke/Bury Upgrade. When these are the schemes. I'll take a Trapper or two. And turn 1 bury 2 Torakage and unbury near the From the Shadows Trappers. Then turn 2 plant my long distance schemes. Best part is, you just saved a ton of AP and can now just going deep your opponent. Plan it right and they should have a hard time finding AP to deal with you and do their schemes because you just finished all yours very early. I think at most you need are 2 Torakage and only if the Schemes/Strats have both killing and schemes placement. Things like Interference I dont think are good for her. Nor guard the stash or Extraction because her crew is not overly hard to take down. Things I do not like! Yamazuko. She is just not worth it. I only ever took her so I could carry the bury upgrade on someone other than Misaki. And each game I found the old lady was just a waste. A way to easy to kill henchman which a lame attack and only useful for sticking around with her spear up. Just not worth it IMO. Oiron. Hella bad. Sorry. It's true. They are not worth their points when you can take Ronin or Ten Thunder brothers. Im sure someone will disagree with me but hey I've tried and tried and each time I run them I wish i hadn't. Otto. He's ok. He can be really killy. But, he also pretty much is a guarantee dead model. There are so many other options for a hard hitter that survives longer. I'm always happier with Bishop, Strongarm Suit, and or Taylor. So that's about the long of it. Hope it was helpful. For this amounts to the collected experience I have. If I think of anything I forget I'll append later. The real trick to this lady is knowing where to put her so you can be really dangerous but not someplace easily reached. With oathkeeper you can charge 20" away. Don't poopoo that! If you stalked a turn early that's 20" charge and 3 Attacks with positive for damage! Appended! Assassinate Trigger. A helpful tip here. Wait late turn. Don't come out swinging unless you know you have too. The later you wait to go with Misaki the better chance you have to getting this trigger to work. If they are a resser master however, or a summoner in general, then you can go early. Go after a master and trigger each attack. At the very least you'll steal the cards and stones they need to summon. Also, Ronin and the Hodgepodge are great with her because you can be very aggressive with your stones. Dump them quick and to get that built in crow then get more stones back later to use to damage prevent. Also on stones! Bring at least 6. I see people take like 3 with her and it's not a great plan I think. Stones are more cards. That's the real power of SS. 6 Stones means you can draw 2 cards each turn and still damage prevent. I see player lured into that positive defense and crow so they dont a min cache. But, remember Misaki is only def 6 with 12 wounds and no damage reduction. Attack values of 6 or 7 are going to get through that positive flip and without SS to prevent Misaki will get smoked sooner than you think. There, thats my collected knowledge! Hope it helps!

I've finished my 3 month long play only misaki stint and I feel she's, not her crew, is really really solid. She's a hell of a scalpel. Collect the bounty and assassinate she excels at!

Iron. You can hire most if not all the University models. You can hire all the effigies. You can hire Peacekeaper or Langston. You can hire watchers and wardens. You can summon off scrap but not corpse. Only time I take bone is if I want bells in my list. Otherwise I say iron is best.

I wish I could take coppy with Jack Daw. Futhermore I wish I could take him with Hoffman ;D

I thought it said sunday

Not fixed list! Woot! Then I'm in! Hey I care because I didn't spend all that time and money building the entire outcast faction to NOT get to play it at Gencon. Justin you has my money, don't take my heart as well! And Wilktor...Vilktor...Viktor....Polish Sausage... what are you trying to insinuate with that sexy giff? I fear your intentions with me are no longer pure...

AND! Hard Counters. You fix the lists and you're basically just saying whoever is luckiest with the match ups wins. You get a hard counter and that's pretty much it. Did you spend all that money on wyrd model? Well too bad, you can only use a few. I just... dont get it

Did i just realize that its fixed list? Yes. This is outrages. This whole game is structured to give you options! You get to pick your crew after everything and you choose that format for the tournament? Why would you take the game and completely do the opposite? Do you not realize how boring it is to play the same list for every round? Seriously... wyrd come on what's with the tournaments? You design a great and well balanced game, one that I think is nearly perfect for competition and then you go and mess with the formula for no reason.

I'm all for more game formats to be hosted at Gencon. Diverisity is gunna bring more attention to the game. I applaud this. Be that as it is, people who attend the avatar are looking for a competitive game. We can argue all day about wether malifaux is a competitive game or not but at the end of the day who do you think attends the Avatar and tournaments like it? Competitive people. So when you have two qualifiers out of three which are not based on a fair and competitive game format you're messing things up. I was at Gencon last year and I didnt' see any issue with attendance from qualifier one to two. Both days seemed to have plenty of players, day two having only a few less. So I dont know where this is coming from. But, if this is the only solution then the competitivness of the avatar is skewed. Henchman brawl and enforcer are really fun but have much more to do with luck and have less balance. So anyone could wind up winning. Then the avatar will be a game of who got the most favorable match up. Other note, does any one know if the emissaries are going to be legal in the avatar?

Ahhh that explains alot. lol thanks

Rank Bonus is just 1 - 4 though right? So an enforcer is +2. Well that's where I was confused. Because you wanted to pick pocket a guard Sargent its basically a resist of 3. And he's an enforcer! So I figured that malifaux has only 2 resist stats in the whole game. It must require one of those. So the TN of a pickpocket would be his rank + cunning + notice + def (since pp is really a . Which is more like 11 now. I dont like the pull it out of the air really, and would rather base it on stats in some way. What do you guys think of this as the bases? WP/DF + Blah?

Does anyone feel like a lot of the social skills aren't overly well explained? Like convince, decieve, scrutiny, hell even pick pocket and others. They don't explain how we're supposed resist these duels. I have players wanting to use convince on NPCs all the time. What is the resist, will power? Or am I suppose to just make something up? Further more I'm seeing strange numbers for some of the beasts. Like the guard Sargent, he has notice 1 and cunning 0. So I have a player with av 1 for pickpocket. So what is my tn 1? Or am I suppose to add in his wp plus his notice? Or is really just an auto success?

Hey all, so this is my first game I'm running for TTB. I'm used to take like DnD where I let dice decide what happens. But as we all know in this game out NPC don't get rolls or flips. So I things happen where I just decide what happens. Like if a player wanted to try and drink an NPC under the table to get some info. I can do a extended courose challenge and see who drinks to much first. But that's really it. So I have to just decide if the guy knows anything where normally it'd be random. So my question is do you guys is howo do u decide when something happens or not but we the respect to not hard blocking ur players?

No no no no! lol Never take min stones on a master! I see people do this alot and I dont get it. If I see a master across the board with only 2 ss. Then I'm coming for them. Two stones means you're probably never stoning for cards (which is the best thing to do with them most of the time). You're also not going to get off any triggers you don't luck out getting. Sure Misaki is one master who gains a bonus from having no stones. But, it's not worth it. You'd have to get really lucky and at the end of the day, its only 3 or maybe 4 attacks. You'd have to trigger them all to actually kill something with her trigger because your opponent is going to see you coming with this trick if he's any good. He's going to hold onto his cards and stones to weather misaki's attacks. Then, if you miss even one attack. He's going to send in his cb 7 or high damage attack model, throw down the 1 or 2 good cards he kept. And beat her lady to death because she cannot stone away any damage. Sure you could wait till late turn with her. But, then you have to wade through all his activaitons. I truely think you're better off taking 6 stones at least. Use them for stones and protecting your henchman and master. Then around turn 4 (maybe 3 if your opponent is overly agressive with his cards and stones) then you dump your cache and bury misaki in. Because then, when they spend one or two turns chewing through her above average defense, they'll have lost all that precious late game AP taking her out. Sure she'll probably die, but if my opponent is wasting AP on killing her when there's no points in doing it instead of taking care of schemes and strats, then its totally worth it for me.

I think Misaki and friends are more powerful when the perfect schemes and strats are on the board. Like, Misaki with two trappers and two torikage with plant evidence or break through are really good because turn 2 you can be done with both and then spend the game running interference. Early schemes are great for messing with your opponent. Or, if you have all interact based schemes. Torikage can walk away and remove distract or cursed object. Or if there is only 1 kill objective. Like murder prot then Misaki is good because she is all you need to focus on that while you do objectives else where. I think in a few of these examples she might shine better than the other outcast masters. Levi's crew is not very mobile, they just have a lot of staying power. Except Levi who is pretty agile if you have the right set up. Levi is so universal strong though because of his offense and powerful summoning. But, he suffers in collect the bounty because his summons become a liability and most of all he's weak to guild. Two austringers are all you need to really counter levi. Schill I find is better suited for anti resser and neverborn. The armor, the immunity to pulses, the take your shirt off attack against low wp ressers, hard to kill, ignore hard to wound, and the high will power are really power against these two factions. But, his crew suffers if they have to spread out more than 6" from schill on the trunk. So i find that he's only really good in extraction or guard the stash. Daw is a board control fiend. So he's good at interference and if the objectives are not about killing, but more like enemy interactions then all his paralyze actions shine. Plus he's good if the schemes have assassinate because he's so hard to remove. Viks are just too much about luck. Because they realy only get a single GO turn and if they dont make good on it they usually die right after. Misaki is similar to Viks I think but her crew has at least a specific match up that they are better against. And with the smoke bombs, bullet proof, and one in the crowd, they have better def against shooting.

I think I pay better is good for the torikage because it makes them even better and makes there ranged attacks little better. And mostly because it helps get smokebombs and bury off.

Let's brain storm. How can we make Yan Lo interesting with only adding one upgrade to him. Purpose! Family Reunion Cost : 3 1) Cast 6. Rebirth : Name one undead or spirit model which this model hired at the start of the game. If named model is not in play, summon named model at a casting cost of 10 + model cost. or! The True Path - Limited Cost : 2 0) Forgotten Ancestor : Lower this models Chi by a max of 3. For each chi spent, one model within pulse 8 gains the ancestor trait for the rest of the game. 1) Empower Ancestor : Ca 5 TN 14 -> Lower this model's chi by 1. Target ancestor gains following condition until end of turn: Chi Infused: Choose any stat. This model gains +1 to that stat. 2) Overcharge Ancestor : Ca 5 TN 14. -> Lower this model's chi by 1. Target ancestor gains following condition until the end of the turn: Spirit Charged: This model gains +1 to all stats. When this condition would end, the model gains the following condition until the end of the next turn: Drained: This model gains -1 to all stats. IDK! LOL I'm sure the numbers need work. But, I like the idea of Yanlo doing more for his crew with his chi. I think an upgrade that gave out various buffs based on his chi level could be cool. OH! Yah something like this maybe. Path of Chi Cost 2 Yan Lo gains one of the following abilities based on his current chi condition. chi = 0 : Aura 4 -> Friendly undead and spirit models gain hard 2 wound + 1 chi = 1 - 2: Aura 5 -> Friendly undead and spirit models gain hard 2 wound + 2 chi = 3 - 4: Aura 6 -> Friendly undead and spirit models gain hard to kill chi = 5: Aura 8 -> Friendly undead and spriit models gain Terror 12 + Hard to Kill 1) Chi Eruption: This action may only be taken if this model has Chi+6 or greater. This model sets its Chi condition to 0. All friendly undead and spirit models within pulse 10 gain the following condition until the end of the turn. Spirit Swell: This model gains positive 1 to all damage flips. Probably not balanced but you see where I'm going with these ideas. Right? lol. It would be cool. So you can take his Chi and use it for upgrades or giving out armor. Or you can save it and give out passive buffs. Or you can save it and dish out a really powerful buff but then you lose it all.

I think the armor of the arcanists is problem. But, if you go outcasts you can always take ronin. That'll help. Or bishop. But, then you dont need Misaki. Hm....tough tough. But, I like her as an outcast because of I pay better. Which really helps torikage.

Hm.. IDK if my opponent was Sonnia I was try and use Misakis superior speed to lock that lady down in combat asap. Plus, she's a card/stone heavy lady. So assassinate is a pretty nice thing to have.