ravenborne

I might change the big small hammer head to the bigger one...

I should mention the best thing about Crooked Men, if you can pull it off, is dropping scheme markers and then activating Shafted. JD can push tormented models into the scheme markers, Jakume can lure them in, or you can just put them in front of models to hamper charges. Combining that with terrain checks starts to get nasty. Montressor can work with this tactic, drawing people into scheme markers.

This is all good stuff. I have been playing JD for several months now. I started out being awful with him, but now I regularly get 7-10 VP with him. A few things I have learned: Montressor is mostly not worth it, but there are a couple of cases I might take him: 1) Frame for Murder (he loves to die) 2) If I want to Paralyze models (I dont take him for killing) 3) Against Gremlins he seems to perform best. As for crooked men vs drowned, it depends. Drowned are slightly better in general. Drowned are better if you think your opponent will be heavy melee, crooked men if your opponent has more shooting. Also there is a way to build a JD crew where you just paralyze everything. I like this crew with Cursed Object and schemes where you are not trying to kill but interact with models. Crooked Men, Nurses, and even Montressor can actually work here. Takes a lot of crows though, and if you do take Montressor he is going to use a lot of soul stones to do his job. Of all the Masters I have played, JDs crew choices seem to be the most dependent on what my opponent is playing and my schemes and strat.

Seems like a Nurse could be pretty nice in a Jack Daw crew. I am going to give one a try on my first run with him. Anyone have thoughts that tried that?

My lesson is, that in M2E, you pretty much can trust the rulebook and the cards, unlike the previous edition where the word of that other player often meant they knew about some 17 page thread in the forums that did in fact explain why what they were saying was right (but could not be found in the rulebook or cards). It looks like those days may be behind us thank goodness.

Some people just can't take a complement.

Smelling like cheese is fine if you are a rat.

So I am 2 games in to M2E. Ive been reading cards and processing the changes. I have not been through the slow process of the beta, I have been thrown right into the deep end. As such I have a perspective that lets me see directly the dramatic nature of the changes. And you know what? I feel like a newb all over again, but there are some really strong points about this version. I know the designers have worked hard and probably taken a lot of flak over the beta, so I thought we should take a moment to appreciate their work by acknowledging what we like. So, now that Wave 2 is out, what has improved? I will start. 1) The cards are so much easier to read. Used to spend so much time learning a model just because of its card layout. Now I spend time flipping the card going, what am I missing? But I am not missing anything. 2) The game is so much cleaner. The language is consistent, the abilities are consistent. Really complicated annoying things like 3 pages of damage resolution steps are gone. 3) The game is far more balanced. 4) Schemes and strategies matter alot, you cannot just kill the opponents crew and expect to win, You really have to figure out how to get your points, 5) I would say in all this change, the flavor of the models has been maintained. I really expected the models to play totally differently, but once you get your head around the new rules, they translate pretty well. Bravo designers. Anyone disagree or agree?

Thanks. I was playing Levi, and nothing I see in his crew seems to bring the abominations in at half wounds. I was hoping I hadn't missed an errata somewhere, glad to know I did not.

Getting back into Malifaux now that wave 2 is finished and there are some local guys to play with again. I played my first 2E game last week at the local game store, and largely played on verbal rules explanation. They were playing summoning such that summoned models come in with half wounds. I picked up a copy of the rules and I cannot find that anywhere. Am I missing something? Thanks

Anyone online? I am up for a game.

I hope I do not seem overly simplistic, but you are using an awful lot of words to define already well understood concepts by game designers. I wrote my thesis on this topic, and my lack of in-depth response comes from the fact that I have already written 75 pages on the subject and I do not feel like typing it all over again. If you are interested in reading it let me know, I will send you a copy.

As I mentioned in the other thread, but maybe not in plain enough terms...there is an inherent problem in mixing games and narrative. The more game you add, the less story you get. The more story you add, the less game you get. I suggest you read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Crawford-Interactive-Storytelling/dp/0321278909

Narrative vs Interactivity is a classic struggle in game design. The more narrative you add, the less game you have. Its simply a fact (its far too much too explain in one post, but I have found it to be an absolute truth). So when you say the goal is to "to maintain a consistent connection with your own narrative" what does that mean? Goals in a game must be measured. How do you measure this in game mechanics? If you cannot measure it in game mechanics terms, its not actually a "goal" in the strictest sense of game design. If you want narrative goals then you need to reward the completion of narrative sequence with actual game mechanics rewards. Otherwise you are simply relying on the hope that your narrative drives player incentive to a final hope of rising climax and then denouement. In short, a game is not about narrative it is about gameplay. If you want to marry your gameplay with your narrative then you need to marry game mechanics with narrative conceit. This my friend, is why Malifaux is so successful. You capture that and you have something.

Hamelin sort of plays like Levi now, in the sense that he can pick one model a turn and destroy it (and isnt paranoid about dying). Take into account the way the Viks play and Ophelias guns and Outcasts actually have a sort of unified playstyle now, I love it.