thebarbalag

Fixed that for you.

I've had quite a bit of success running Som'er without any Bayous, Pigs, or even Slop Haulers. A list with Fingers, Francois, Merris, Burt, and Gracie can brutalize an enemy, even without Gremlin staples, like outactivation or rampant healing (though Fingers and Som'er himself, with the right Upgrades, can get quite a bit of healing done, and Gracie and Burt, with Dirty Cheater, can kinda take care of themselves). I do usually bring a couple of Skeeters for the activations, and board control.

Sister is one of the most powerful keywords in the game, due to the seriously amazing buffs that can be given to Sisters by the Viktorias' actions on their cards and upgrades. I'd kind of be surprised if we saw more of them.

I agree with pretty much everything that's being said as advice in this thread. Take a deep breath and realize that a Master charging and killing a Minion, even a pricey Minion, isn't a crazy thing. Especially when that Master is a specialized Minion-killer like Mei Fang. Timing is really important with a model like the Sow, and a lot of Gremlins' fragile shenanigans. Getting something that hits hard, but can't take a hit over-exposed before it has a chance to attack is going to get it killed. Often in Gremlins, you're going to want to take advantage of your activation advantage to avoid committing your power pieces until after things which are a threat to them have activated. For example, Magical Burt Jepsen is usually the last thing I activate in a Wong list on the turn I plan on unleashing him, so that on the off chance that he fails to kill Joss or the Rail Golem, or whatever I aimed him at, I have a chance (a good one, thanks Trixie!) of winning initiative to get another activation out of him before he faces any retribution.

It's not the same thing as just modding Langston, though. It requires an additional (not cheap) model and several additional steps, and requires you to take a very expensive piece off the board for a time. I think it's a beast of a combo, but not one that isn't visible a mile away, and doesn't have decent, usually readily available counters.

Lecture Notes from the Valedictorian or Student of Sinew shuts a lot of that Gremlin-y nonsense down, too.

Cool box. Really inspired. Interesting that last year, Guild/10T got the Miss, and Arcanists got the Nightmare, and this year, it's the same Factions reversed. Here's hoping somebody else gets the love next year...or this year in the form of the Ripples pre-releases presaged in the newsletter...

Fluff - Molly, the brave young reporter, tragically murdered and used for nefarious intentions, breaks free from her abuser to become a Master in her own right Mechanics - Pandora - Cry for Me. Aesthetic - Probably Pandora? But Titania is climbing the ranks.

Did well at Adepticon this year, too.

She's up for pre-order a lot of places for July. I would expect end of July, along with Master Queeg, Brutal, and Hodgepodge Emissaries, etc.

Pandora has an Attack Action called Incite that uses Wp as its attack value, as well as its Rst, so, it is: (Wp: 7, Rst: Wp, Rng: 10) Target gains the following condition, "Mood Swings: ..."

The GG2016 schemes don't have an Interact-with-model scheme that requires an Interact to remove the condition, I believe. Either it's just an action that can't be taken while engaged, or it can't be removed. Also, his pseudo-Chatty, and ridiculous speed is probably going to deter all that much interaction with him.

I highly recommend reading Icemyn's post. I come down on the side that the engine isn't the worst thing in the world, but 1) it has a negative impact on the meta, 2) it has a negative impact on enjoyment of competitive play, and 3) while it is possible to deal with, it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, easy to deal with, and writing it off as such is probably a bit naïve. Well-played Viktorias with the rat engine can be unstoppable, due to their own mobility, the fact that you get a truly brutal crew-killer for free (or cost of upgrades - Mark of Shez-uul and Oathkeeper), access to deadly back-up like Ashes and Dust, the Desolation Engine, or Killjoy, and finally that their primary weakness is an inability to stand up to retribution, which is blunted significantly by getting the back half of the turn all to themselves, and the change to have first activation on the top of the next turn as well. There's a pretty decent chance you won't have anything left by the time you get to activate anything in turn 2.

While I'll admit that I've done it a few times in a pinch, if your plan relies on you using your Master to Interact, something else has probably gone wrong. It's a legitimate option when it scores, but Lady Justice doing things that aren't swinging her sword is usually a waste of Master AP. We don't know what Zipp does other than move fast, but I think we can safely assume that he does something that the designers believe compensates for his inability to Interact. A first hint is probably his pseudo-Chatty, which is quite powerful, combined with his high mobility.

Most Gremlin Masters are Ht 2.

Sure, sure, absence of Hard or Impossible to Wound is surprising, but who knows what else she has going on.

Very correct on front-of-the-card durability based on defensive abilities and Wounds, but she does have that one ability to use Ca actions through Corpse Markers, so she might not ever need be anywhere near whatever she's trying to target.

Yeah, been a while since I've played Somer. For practical purposes, when I've played Gremlins, I've found the Wong build has an easier time getting the pieces in place than the Somer build, which is going to get more out of a single DiLD for Crows for Francois, Masks for Somer himself, or Rams for a horde of Bayous. Sigh. There I go again being realistic. Sorry.

While that's true, that also leaves you with no hand (well, two cards), and 1 less AP, because you're using the Skeeters instead of the Student. Also, you're burning three Master AP. With Wong, you've used the totem, but Wong himself still gets to blast away with his own AP. Of course, now we're getting into actual game ideas, rather than ludicrous flights of fancy. My apologies. Next thing you know I'll be suggesting that there's no reason to do so much damage...

In an ideal situation, with appropriately grouped enemies, and the right flips, Wong can, I believe, do the most damage with a single AP of any model in the game. In a Wong list, with Ooo Glowy, with a Student of Conflict (Why not?) and Lenny in the right place, and an enemy in range, Burt Jebsen can deal, at minimum, 20 points of damage in an activation, ignoring Armor, Incorporeal, and Hard to Kill. With the Rams on the attack, that would be 24 minimum. With 2 Weak, 1 Moderate, 1 Severe, that would be 29, with no Rams, 33 with Rams. Maximum possible damage being 42.

Sure, I meant that kind of as a joke, in that the Gremlins aren't really, as a group, evil, just kind of dumb. The Arcanists as a group have a noble goal, liberty and prosperity for all, but they break legs, and do illegal experiments, and take advantage of the poverty of their workers to get there. The Ten Thunders are a criminal organization, but are, in many cases, viewed by Three Kingdoms people in Malifaux as freedom fighters and protectors, and, in some case, such as Mei Feng, the people are totally right, but in others, like Misaki, and Shen Long, they are after temporal power, or worse. The Neverborn as the strange, fractured whole that they are, are attempting to prevent the return to power of the Tyrants, and reclaim their land, which is wholly noble, but they do kidnap and eat children (or turn them into living dolls), manipulate, lie, and outright torture, occasionally for fun (Pandora, I'm looking at you), and have no regard for innocent lives. The Outcasts are in it for the money, or at least their own selfish (or insane) ends, and while some have a code of honor, some hollow out innocent women to gain immortality, but none are really heroic. The Ressurectionists, rag-tag band of serial killers and grave robbers that they are, have little respect for what most of society holds sacred, most kill without a thought, or even just to get new toys, though a few do what they can to protect the disadvantaged, they seem to be outliers. The Guild, as I've said, is an organization with a lot of good to do, and a lot of evil ways to do it, employing a lot of genuine heroes, who are usually to busy to see what's going on over their heads. Nobody's clean in Malifaux. Everyone is compromised.

It's also possible that she doesn't have a close combat action.

And, based on the front of her card, she doesn't need to be closer than 8" to her enemies to get Evidence. Are we assuming that she has a close combat attack? If she's a control/debuffing Master, we can probably look to her and/or her crew handing out Conditions that make it difficult to do things like Charge, or Flurry, or otherwise interfering with enemy models focusing fire on her. Her stats are also quite decent. She has an uncircumventable defensive ability that can make you deal only weak damage, plus Soulstone use, plus, if you miss her (or her friends within 8"), she can lower Evidence to get a push, so, no follow up attack, ie wasted AP on the Charge, or Flurry, plus a respectable 11 wounds. There will also be other models in her crew, and there is not only another side to her card, but a suite of Upgrades she'll have access to. Lucius's main problem is the cost of his abilities for the pay off, potentially Paralyzing one of your models to combine moving your Master with a Minion getting extra AP is problematic based on the difficulty of the Horror flip. If it were TN 10, we'd probably think it was substantially better. His other AP exchange ability has the problem of being compared to the better Obey (even unsuited) and the much better Prompt, which have targeting advantages, and more bang for the buck. Then, his defensive abilities all have missing suits. If Red Tape were automatic, and Highest Authority needed only one suit, and in addition to friendly models, could push the effects onto a nearby model with Red Tape (ala Marcus's Defend Me), it would be great.

I think the wording is pretty clear - "Damage flips against this model may not be cheated by other models. This model may cheat damage flips made against it, regardless of -flips or any Jokers." This clearly breaks three rules about when you can cheat, that you only cheat your own flips "This model may...", that you can't cheat -flips, and that you can't cheat Jokers. Why does the wording need to say enemy damage flips to make it clear that when any model makes a damage flip that will cause direct damage to Nellie, she can cheat that? It says "damage flips made against it," enemy or otherwise. I don't believe it gets around the wording of something like Riposte, or Gamble Your Life, but otherwise, it's quite clear.

The contrast between the edifice of the Guild and the Master-heroes of the Guild is something I quite like about Malifaux. I find it similar on the Neverborn side, where we have people who (at least think they) have a legitimate beef with the human occupiers of (ostensibly) their land, but Pandora is super evil - enjoys causing pain, the Dreamer delights in dismembering people without a care in the world, the Hungering Darkness consumes people's souls for power. If there is a good guy faction in Malifaux, it's probably the Gremlins, but that may just be because, by and large, they're kind of idiots - lucky, clever idiots, but idiots none the less.