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Zoraida is very nice with collodi. Scratch that, zoraida is damn good with just about anything.

Her spells (specifically obey) will most definitely help with collodi. She can give a marionette an additional attack (or charge if not already in melee) or can get Collodi to cast one of his buffing spells. Zoraida doesn't tend to need soulstones herself so they're still available for collodi to use. Most importantly she can create wicked dolls as a (2) which can then teleport themselves to Collodi where ever he is. You might also want to consider a Widow Weaver.

I regard Collodi as really being designed to work with Zoraida much more than with any other master. He can certainly work on his own, but she brings a lot to the table.

I think I need more information about in what way you consider him situation so I can tell you how well that matches my experience/perceptions.

As far as what he needs, well yes he does need marionettes and I'd pretty much never even consider running less than the full four. He will of course need other stuff if for no other reason than 4 marionettes only comes to 8 ss

Wicked dolls are excellent as they can teleport to where ever Collod is to help with the ambush. Stitched togethers won't be able to keep up with collodi's speed (by a long ways) but are more than capable of operating independently. Plus they are ferociously good models for the cost. The widow weaver is clearly designed to work with collodi. She can help him keep supplied with dolls and also can dish out a bit of hurt on her own. You can also add effigies but personally my favorite effigy (the arcane effigy) is of limited use for collodi simply because it'll get left behind and thus not be able to give him more ap for casting.

I'd love to add in a reasonably priced model with a healing spell or action that the doppelganger could mirror but I can't think of any for neverborn. Candy's a bit spendy at 8ss.

Hamelin might make a good addition for a 35ss version. He can nuke counters, can also cast obey, and messes with Ht 1 models.

What do people think of the following as a generic go to zoraida list?

25ss Scrap

Zoraida + Avatar

Arcane Effigy

2x Stitched

Doppelganger

6ss pool

(or 8ss and no avatar)

The force is designed to have maximum flexibility. Zoraida of course can use her obey to either mover her own minions or the enemy's. The arcane effigy improves card capacity as well as improving Z's casting and has some decent damage attacks. The stitched have a ranged attack that can slow enemies as well as a card drawing ability and the nasty gamble your life. Finally their fog can be used to put a crimp in enemy ranged attacks. The doppelganger can then copy whatever is working well among my force or whatever she might find tasty among the enemy (I quite like the use of Z's Wp and the stitched's Gamble Your Life, or with a good card Z's Obey spell).

Any thoughts? For a 35ss match I'd add something or someone beefy- a teddy, rider, mature neph, etc.

Alternately for a 35ss scrap:

Z + avatar

Collodi

4 marionettes

Arcane Effigy

Stitched

Doppelganger

5ss pool

(or 7ss and no avatar)

although this is a bit vulnerable to a construct Cuddling opponent (Hoffman in particular). I can't think of any strategies these crews would be particularly bad for.

I generally like the idea of the avatars. Like I said I'll need to try them out to see if I like their actual abilities. Some seem to be a little too close to the original masters. I also like that they hint at having multiple types of avatars for a given master.

I guess I'd say that 2 felt really necessary to the game and 3 felt like some nice options to add.

I don't know if this is what he meant but you could make an argument that Lilith's usual troops (all the nephilim) have a lot of options but are also very focused and synergize together well. On the other hand Marcus has a huge number of options but they're much more hit and miss as to whether they actually work together.

Of course book 2 added 5 new masters, all the rules for henchmen and special forces, and all the rules for the scenario system. I think that's all together considerably more work than the avatars. The avatars may have been harder to balance but probably not by much when you consider all the effort to make the special forces the right balance of powerful and exclusive.

I'm not overly bothered by the amount of stuff in the third book but it does seem to be significantly less than 2 to my eyes.

Book three has a map of Malifaux city marked with some key locations (it is also on the Malifaux.com website).

For the record though 011121, the Hanging Tree with Jack Daw is located right near the Governor General's mansion and the breach, just outside of Malifaux Station and downtown (not in a ghost town). I do like the concept though.

If you look on the map it is south of malifaux station but that's clearly outside city limits. And if you look for the hanging tree special feature it shows up in the ghost town terrains (as well as bayou's edge and a couple others that make no sense).

EDIT: just noticed the governor's mansion is also outside of town near the station. Seems a little odd, but okay

malifaux would be perfect for the kind of terrain based story campaign they have in white dwarf 213-214 (thorskin's Island)

Basically the person running the campaign wrote up a very simple map of the island, you'd want a simple map of malifaux and the surrounding regions. Each turn (every couple weeks probably) you mark 3 locations on the map with goals and a description of the terrain. For instance one week you might mark the following:

Malifaux north- The Hanging Tree Horror. For the last fortnight bodies have been found each morning beneath the hanging tree south of Malifaux station. Despite being stone dead each corpse's eyes follow the swinging body of Jack Daw in the nonexistent breeze of the Hanging Tree's branches. The Guild has ordered the matter investigated. The Resurrectionists have had their own curiosity piqued. The Neverborn recognize signs and are on the warpath. Arcanists have a delicate experiment in the area and can't afford to have it disrupted.

Fight a scrap in ghost town territory, include the hanging tree special terrain piece. You may chose any of the following strategies: contain power, destroy evidence, distract, plant evidence, reconnoiter, or treasure hunt.

and similar ones for the other two sites. Then players can play series of matches against other players who are going after the same site. They can play more than one but they get more points for the first game played against a given opponent (to encourage people to play as many opponents as possible). Players with the most points for a site face each other in a final fight. Winner gets some small bonus in the next turn. You may want to customize the bonus by faction- for instance in the above scenario a Guard player may get a bonus of a free exorcist in the next turn.

if you only have 5-6 players it may work better to only have one or two sites for each turn to fight over.

Damn, Gamin are constructs and zoraida can only take living models with WP 4 or less from other factions. Ah well.

I only have Pandora and Collodi, but I have to say they have been very difficult to use. I've yet to win with Collodi, but I havent used him much. Having hemchmen with 2-3 wds sucks lol. Pandora is a double-edged sword. She rapes face when she works, but can easily be squished if something goes wrong. And if she isnt with her crew, then the damage output is very limited...

I've had very good luck with Collodi. Have you read the pullmyfinger article on him? He's basically an ambush predator. He (meaning him plus marionettes plus wicked dolls) moves insanely fast and dishes out tons of small attacks. The problem is, if you strike and fail to cripple the enemy, you're pretty fragile for return strikes. Marionettes are your lifeblood as they are collodi's movement, his defense, and his offense (with wicked dolls helping). Sorry if I'm just telling you things you already know. I haven't tried him with effigies.

Has anyone thought of using Fire Gamin (WP 4) and Iggy for a Zoraida list? Seems unusual but potentially effective. It'd give her more ranged firepower (although with a low Cb) than most Zoraida lists I've seen. Lots of burning tokens to spread around, even faster if obeying your own minions. Burning plus poison (from the voodoo) seems like a nice attrition style of play.

25ss list

Zoraida

F Gamin (4ss x 4 = 16ss)

Iggy (6ss)

8ss pool or 6ss pool + aZoraida

What makes them difficult?

the masters in that list all have kind of complicated mechanics of interaction with their crews.

I think there is supposed to be a certain amount of inner tension in the factions. First of all, it's dramatically interesting. Second of all, it makes sense that if none of the can present a truly united front none can dominate-that's why this is a skirmish game and not a war game. Finally I think it allows adequate reasoning if you want to match up against an opponent in the same faction, which I don't think is currently verboten or anything.

I agree with the idea of the factions having inner tension and a certain amount of cross purposes. For instance the Zoraida-Lilith-Pandora relationship has a good amount of tension and distrust in it.

But I think there's a big difference between "we are at times at cross purposes" and "I fear for my life to approach my supposed allies." The dreamer and tina and sonia are all more in the latter category with regards to their own faction.

And what's the issue with Soulless? they don't drop corpse counters and don't take terrifying tests.. They don't seem that over the top compared to other types of non-living.

Soulless don't drop corpses, don't take terrifying tests, aren't affected by any of the huge number of abilities that target living only, aren't affected by any of the significant number of abilities that affect constructs, and aren't affected by the reasonably large number of abilities that affect undead only (or living and undead).

And the down side is... wait there isn't any downside. They don't seem to pay any SS cost for soulless and there are no anti-soulless abilities (or at least there weren't until the exorcist and his abilities are anti undead as well).

You can say that soulless won't gain the benefits of buffs that only affect living or undead but since you plan your force you can choose whether or not to buy models that have such buffs, so it's really not much of any drawback.

Soulless and Nightmare are just uber.

I think it's actually fairly true of a lot of systems. If you look closely at 40K there are quite a few characters that weren't even alive at the same time that you can take in the same force. It's even the same with WFB. You can take the Lord level Manfred in the same crew as Conrad, though by the time Manfred got to this level of power Conrad had been dead for quite a few years.

Like I said it's a bane of most game fiction, although it's worth pointing out that in warhammer/40k special characters are the exception and not the rule.

Also quite a few of the stories are largely about new models though older models appear. The Witchling Stalker story introduces the Handler, The story of Zephir introduces the Widow Weaver. A lot of the stories are indirectly about the Avatars. OK there are a few stories that aren't but out of them most move on the main storyline and even they generally introduce new characters.

I haven't counted but I'd put it maybe 50-50. The only stories that seem about the avatars are the short fictions immediately preceding them. There are several tina stories but none of them involve her golem body thing for instance. Actually, the Levi and Zoraida stuff does either directly or indirectly reference their avatars (zoraida is young, levi has a connection to the riders).

Units

I'm really not sure I like the implementation of henchmen and special forces. It essentially means that you have subsets of units that can only be used by a specific master which may be good for sales but is annoying as a customer. Furthermore I think the rules are too limiting on henchmen requiring them to only use their special forces and maybe one or two other types of units. It seems ridiculous for instance that Ophelia can't use pigs, only kin and gremlins despite pigs being integral to gremlin life. Why can't lucious requisition a guild peacekeeper? Too limiting.

I'll have to try out the avatars to really get a sense for them. I do like the mechanic of manifesting them where the more achievements and later the turn the less AP it takes. This pleases me.

the exorcist seems like an attempt to redress the imbalance of certain types of troops (yoohoo soulless I'm looking at yooooouuuu...) but isn't nearly enough in my opinion.

thematically I like the four riders. Haven't used them and they're complicated enough I don't have an opinion on implementation but like the idea. I was initially taken aback by Levi being a tool against the tyrants but as I thought about it entropy would represent a threat to entities trying to concentrate as much energy as possible within themselves.

I was disappointed by the witchling handler. I can't really say why, she's just not what I wanted in a witchling buffer.

I really don't get why effigies are special forces instead of totems. They'd be an example of something where I sort of like the idea but I'm not really liking the implementation.

They seem overly complicated for no good reason.

Crooligan, why special forces?

I can see why they'd like to flesh out Seamus options more but the dead doxy seems very similar to the belle, do we really need both?

drowned are definitely in the same mould as the crooked men and hanged but I like them anyway.

Rafkin makes a nice connection between McMourning and Nicodem and I can easily see him in either force.

Angelica seems useful, and I can see where Colette players might like having another named showgirl option besides Cassandra.

Blessed of december is basically a cerberus, what with leap, stalker, and the gaze instead of howl. It trades fewer attacks for some nice healing. Pretty nice overall.

I do like that we see a few units that are cross faction, such as the effigies and fire gamin.

slate ridge mauler- well I guess we know why bear skin armor is so damn good. Cheap enough Miranda can copy it. Nice stats. Me likey! Picture kind of sucks though.

Silurids- like the concept, okay with the implementation. Amphibean bothers me though. It says the creatures gain +2 walk while moving in water terrain. Would make more sense if it just said it gains the bonus if it starts in water, otherwise what happens if I leave the water terrain, do I lose the 2"? What if losing that means I can't get out of the water? Can I designate when I use the bonus 2" or is it always the last 2? as written it raises lots of questions. Why do silurid mothers and babys have poison when regular silurids don't? seems decidedly odd. It's too bad no growth mechanism exists to turn gupps into regular silurids.

Widow weaver- like her. A ranged damaging spell that causes a morale duel? Yes sir!

Lazarus- Holy cr@p! Auto fire on a weapon with blasts? Yikes. And why is patchwork armor better than most other armors? Pretty nasty.

Ten thunder brothers- Love these guys. I really hope they upgrade Misaki to at least a henchman. I'd really like to have an all three kingdoms force. Maybe I'll get the viks and paint them up to be asian.

The fiction is... troublesome, I guess. It's not that I dislike it per se, but it leaves me uneasy in a couple ways. Sometimes, not always, the prose is clumsy and formulaic. And while I am a big proponent of not leading the reader around by the nose I think this goes too far the other way leaving just too much in doubt. then too it also suffers from the usual bane of game fiction- fiction that does not reflect the game. That is, things happen in the game that the fiction explicitly forbids or vice versa. This is jarring and annoying.

Finally there's a real sense of timing that is off in terms of when the fiction shows up. An awful lot of the third book fiction seemed like it really belonged in the second book as

it was mostly about models introduced in that book. Hoffman, Kaeris, Molly, Ryle, Lucius, Nytmare, Silent Ones, Snow Storm, Gunsmiths, Necrotic Machines, Rogue Necromancies, Collodi, Marionettes, Hollow waifs, and Desperate Mercenaries all play major roles in the

fiction of the third book despite being introduced in the second book and having extremely little fiction in that book about them (most of those named have absolutely no mention in the second book fiction at all). It very much feels like several pieces in the third book were written for the second and delayed til this book. While this is not exactly the end of the world it's disconderting to have the fiction consistently out of phse with the game material. Precious few of the units introduced in the third book have any story coverage at all, presumably we'll get that in the fourth book.

Despite all this A Great Adventure and the tale of the Witchling Stalker deserve special mention as being quite enjoyable, also the Oyabun of the Dervish Swords was a cool bad guy if a little heavy on the mid-boss vibe.

Actually there is one more thing that bothers me about the fiction- it is starkly anti-faction. What I mean by that is the game is heavily influenced by a faction identity- it controls allegiances and thus what units can work together. Factions are balanced against each other, rather than individual masters being balanced against each other. This suggests an at least superficially unified front against enemies, and yet that's not at all what we find. According to the fiction the dreamer is very much afraid of the other neverborn masters. Sonia is practically a guild outlaw. Rasputina seems to be completely at odds with the rest of the Arcanists. Ironically it seems the ressurectionists are the only group that manage to all tolerate each other. We get precious few examples of a faction master working together with other faction minions besides their usual crew (for instance Lady J does work with two Ortega brothers in one story, and that's the only one I can think of) and at the same time we get examples of cross faction masters working together (McMourning and Marcus). It just really doesn't fit with the game mechanics.

This may seem overly picky and anal. I understand that complaint, it's easy to say "hey it's just a game and they wrote some stories, who cares?" The thing is, as I see it the point of the stories is to make the world richer and the setting thus more fun to play. Fiction that runs contrary to the game rules does just the opposite. Now when I think about building an arcanist force I feel an immediate negative reaction to the idea of a force combinging Tina and anything except cult of december, because that's what the setting (as exemplified by the fiction) supports, and really only that. I don't want to put Snowstorm and Blessed of December in the same force because I know that settings wise that should be impossible. The fiction has become a net negative to my enjoyment of the game because while it's an interesting world that it paints, it isn't the world of malifaux I can play in, if that makes sense.

I got the son the second and third books for christmas and have read through them myself before hand

I'll post some thoughts about the game rules, fiction, etc. in follow up posts. Consider this a SPOILER warning if you don't want to know about either book.

Well that is probably why you think Ophelia is underpowered. Against most other crews she is like a more powerful version of the Ortegas (you'd be surprised at how much damage the little guys can generate)

And VonSchill is definately not underpowered.

I'm willing to believe that that's the root of my problem with Ophelia which is why I mentioned it, although it seems like any force that can force terrifying checks (which is really anyone with the right build) will just eat her crew alive. Wp they suck at.

Von Schill seems pretty tough, although the lack of troop choices again seems pretty limiting. Freikorps seem pretty hard but I can't believe they're capable of handling all eventualities

Levi and Haemlin seem like they have the hardest playstyles to get down, maybe pandora as well. All three play weird, either counter intuitively (Kill me, I like it!) or using mechanics that you mostly don't see elsewhere (I make you insignificant so you can't fulfill strategies, or morale duels for fun and profit).

as for weakest? Well all the henchmen seem a tad on the underpowered side to me (maybe not Von Schill and Collodi) but that may have more to do with the restricted troop selection than anything else. I've personally sucked with Ophelia every time I've tried her, but I've played against the dreamer mainly...

there are pdfs with stats for almost all first book models. If you need help finding them they're in the downloads section of the main malifaux site.

haven't seen the new ones. I've been pretty tenuous on GW for a long time now. Just went and looked at all the new Necron stuff. I agree the new flayed ones look pretty awful but I rather like some of the other new stuff. May have to dust off the small necron force I have at some point here.

FYI at one point I had a mad idea to use Desolation engines as "counts as" proxies for necron pariahs(!). I currently use a Cryx lich asphixious as my necron lord (looks so much better than the normal lord model).