When I started this post, I hoped that we'd see a wider assortment of folks with actual experiences. Hopefully, this will expand given a little time...and these players will add their thoughts to this thread.
Life conspires to keep me off the tabletop at the moment, but when I get a little freedom, I'll have some Ulix booty-shoot'n to report on here too.
I've not gotten a huge amount of Malifaux games under my belt, but I've played many other systems and rulesets. Sometimes a model/rule looks uber on paper but translates more reasonably onto the table...I am not dead set on a n3rf being needed, but anytime a see a "you keep it going until you fail" rule in a game where activations and actions are king, it gives me great pause.