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I've found something which could be an annoyance rather easily. In the cart where it says "Special instructions for seller", there is no character limit. So if someone wanted to be a dick, they could spam an infinite number of text in this box.

 

Not that anyone would do that, but before someone (annoyingly) does.....

Speaking as someone who does computer security, yes people will do that and it can be a major problem.  Wyrd please make sure your database inputs are limited (to prevent overflows), and sanitized (to prevent injection attacks).  If you don't know what this means hire someone who does immediately.  Online stores are popular targets for stealing credit card info.

I've been assuming it lasted until a non-focus action is taken.  I thought the table top game played that way too, actually.  Was that changed from 1E?

Anyway with the calm and collected talent and ranged expert it's still possible in game to get focus + 3 and fire in one round.

So I'm looking at the rifle special rule and something struck me.  

it says he gun's range is multiplied x10 for each  from focused.  Focus can give a total of     .

Now maybe they intended this to mean a max of x30 (10 + 10 + 10) but as written it looks a lot like a max of x1000 (10 * 10 * 10).

So the howles pattern 1874 has a range of 24" which basically means 24 meters.  3 rounds of focusing and you can hit some one 24 kilometers away.

to give an appropriate sense of scale the earth's (and presumably malifaux is on a planet similar to earth in size) horizon is about 5 km away for a typical human height observer.  Twenty four kilometers straight up puts you, again on earth, halfway into the stratosphere which is higher than the concord flies.  The longest sniper shot recorded to date was 2.47 kilometers, a paltry tenth of what a decent malifaux character can do with a vastly inferior gun.

Frankly even at the x30 we get 720 meters which seems unlikely given how crude rifles in the late 1800s were.  I've limited it to just x10 regardless of the amount of  's.

1) Neverborn Hunting License Uses?

The players guide says that the guild allows basically anyone to get licensed as a neverborn hunter.  So what exactly does this license allow for?  I would think it would allow for entry into the quarantine areas and sewers, since that's precisely where you'd want to root them out from but doesn't that make it awfully easy for any group of players to completely circumvent guild restrictions on such areas?  It can't just be like a hunting license since nobody is going to complain about a non-licensed person killing a nephilim.  For it to make sense it must confer some kind of additional rights similar to letters of marque.  

2) Manifested Powers Verbotten?

Clearly the Guild heavily cracks down on unlicensed magic users.  It's unclear (at least to me) whether a manifested power is also cracked down on or simply viewed as "weird ^%$# happens."  But if manifested powers are not forbidden how exactly does one tell the difference between a spell and a manifested power that does the same thing?

3) Sanctioned magic use?

So how hard is it to become a sanctioned magic user?  Is it allowed only to specific branches of the guild, basically the special services, or is it allowed for anyone who works for the guild, so there may be the occasional guild guard spell slinger, or can non-guild members get sanctioning in some manner that is likely intrusive and annoying?

I'd really like some more details on how this all is supposed to work.

The blue highlighted part in your post though, is another major annoyance of the system for me. The weapon customization rules add yet another level of Munchkin potential to an already weak combat resolution system. Why would "Folded Steel" make a bludgeon more lethal, when it gains it's damage from mass not cutting power? 

I wouldn't take it so literally.  Just assume that "folded steel" really means "extremely high quality" and it works just fine.  My Cruelty Kincade character (NPC uses a "folded steel" cudgel which is explicitly made of wood from the hanging tree.  

out of curiosity how are you seeing these characters built?  In my game (which we just started) the main melee character has a def of 2 and an AV of +2 with his weapon.  He has resilience so high wounds but he's nowhere near the +10 def +7 AV you mention.  Maybe I'm missing something but it seems like people are talking about have vastly more powerful characters than what I've seen so far.

Looking at the simple construct design rules on page 233 there seems to be a significant corner case that was not considered.  The cost is 1 + (10 * construct points used) + cost of optional extra bits.  Stats meanwhile are based on the height of the construct.

My son immediately looked at this and said "So I could make a height 12 construct with might and resilience 9 for $1 if I didn't use any construct points?" *

The rules as written say yes (unless you are required to use all the possible construct points but that seems unlikely since it means Rams could  never make a cheap simple construct).  My guess is into the steam has better construct rules so this may be moot but I hope those rules take into account the height of the construct in the base cost.

* Yes I know that construct would have abysmal speed and grace scores and no skills, but for $1 you better believe players will find game breaking uses for them.

I'd probably just grab a guild NPC from the fatemaster's almanac, which one would depend on what kind of sheriff I wanted them to be.

The group will have access to the Hettfield and Sons Rail-less Train ("The Mad Hettie") - An armored carriage driven by a coal fired steam engine (though may run off of a soulstone?) Limited steering, almost no suspension so requires flat ground to drive on or easily bogs down. 

I recently got TTB and am planning a game for my son and his friends.  The plan is that the players work for a minor gangster named Cruelty Kincade running a messenger/delivery service that covers for a smuggling operation.  I think this gives ample opportunity to have them move all over and interact with various interesting groups.

To get a better feel for the character creation system I created Cruelty as a PC (with 10 adventures under his belt).  I present him here.

Cruelty Kincade

"Father said bringing another mouth into the world was an act of cruelty.  The name stuck around, even if he didn't."

Cruelty has been caught twice by the guild for crime and twice hung, but never died.  He bears ugly dark bruises around his throat.  Looking carefully they can be seen to comprise two separate rings of bruises encircling his throat and criscrosing.

Cynic  to resist deception

Competitive Edge on  draw card in expertise duels

Specialized Skill add  to all melee flips

Specialized Skill add  to intimidate

Critical Strike melee, +1 damage per  in total

Deathly Pallor  to intimidate skill or terrify with magic

Skill Mastery  with intimidate

Gallow's Mace-

a heavy walking stick carved from a branch of the hanging tree.  The top is carved to resemble a noose.

counts as a "folded steel" custom bludgeon.  2  range, 2/3/5 damage w/  to damage, stunning 

 

Manifest ability

Grave tidings

Cruelty slams his Gallows Mace into the earth and a hazy image appears hovering above him.  Close inspection reveals the grave spirit itself!

use Tencity + Intimidate to cast (total 6   with   ), TN13   (can ignore the crow due to talent).

Magia- Terrifying aura

Immuto- focus object: Gallow's Mace (-4 TN to cast)

Immuto- increased  resistance x2 (+4 TN to cast and resist)

Immuto- affects spirits (+3 TN to cast)

Immuto- additional suit crow (-2 TN to cast)

I think the plaid pants the picture taker is wearing are more scary.

Fair enough, but we were specifically discussing bayou gremlins.

I think spreading out your gremlins to kill stuff it usually bad.

In most cases I'd tend to agree, but when dealing with someone who can whirlwind, blast, or otherwise hit multiple targets in a small area (as mei feng most definitely can) spreading out is necessary.

Might work well to spam bayou gremlins so that you have vastly superior activations and a ton of firepower. Sure she'll paste them with each attack but she'll do that to most gremlins anyway. Just make sure to spread them out so she can't bounce from one to the next with attacks. You can use tem to get around steam clouds by shooting a gremlin next to th cloud and getting blasts which you use to hit the hidden model.

Bayou Gremlins are an amazing value for the cost.

I'm realy hoping they streamline some of the more needlessly fiddly bits. Examples:

1) get rid of the rule preventing the combination of different types of AP.

2) change gunfighter to simply allow ranged attacks while engaged in melee.

Things like that that don't have a major effect on the gam but hich get rid of tons of issues wth referencing and arguing over the rulebooks. The basic rule set for malifaux is quite good, it just has had some unnecessarily complicated rules over the years.

Collodi is very solid and dangerous but there are a number of good counters available to every faction. He's never risen to the level of pre-errata Dreamer or Hamelin in terms of wrong-ness.

Arcane Effigy: Other than the additional card (which is great for the Widow) not a great addition to a Collodi crew. It has no chance of keeping up and therefore loses it's greatest strength ('Conduct Aether'). All of it's other actions are very short range so it struggles against shooty crews (it was the first model to die I think). Why it doesn't have 'Float' I'll never know. Will probably use it again but keep it solely as a bodyguard for the Widow.

I use the arcane for 3 things mainly:

1) first turn speedup to the collodi ball of death (extra casting AP)

2) extra card to support flurrying marionettes/sewing Widows (arcane resevoir)

3) close in support of the widow in case an enemy who can catch her goes for it

lastly, but more rarely I use it to target things with too high a defense for the marionettes to hit, not too many things have both good casting and good defense.

Weaver becomes a henchman with better summoning (can create stitched)

Its the underlying illogic of a hamelin grow list that offends me. Hamelin can take (i.e. control) ht1 models, as soon as he grows a mature nephilim it should turn right around and bite him.

I think it should work that if you place a new model in the course of the game it should have to either be a model the master could have hired or a model that a specific summoning ability on the master allows them to get. Otherwise you end up with crazy crap like Hamelin never being able to start with a mature neph but being able to get them in game.

I hadn't thought of using Keiris with mei feng before, but will give it a shot in a game i have tomorrow against S'omer. I usually use fire gamin in my list for the extra bits of fire it adds to the battlefield. But fear that they may be points misplaced.

They were pretty much made to go together. Kaeris of course hands out burning counters like candy and she also provides some well appreciated fire power to a Mei list. Mei of course give Kaeris the big beatstick she often lacked. On the down side though both are pretty soulstone hungry, actually Mei is soulstone rapacious. So managing the supply can be a head ache. You may have to let one of them take one for the team.

That means I have to play Zoraida vs. The Dreamer a bunch. I've been looking at his figs (Stitched Together, Daydreams, Alps) and it seems that I'll have a good time Obeying the Stitched and Alps especially. The Alps are 4 Wp have Blood Gift that will knock them down to 1 remaining Wd and heal one of my guys (since they are also Neverborn). This is good news.

Any particular strategy I should be looking into for this sort of matchup? Obviously Lord Chompy Bits is a problem, but if I can Obey a Daydream, then I can use them to Calm Nightmares and bury LCB to bring The Dreamer back out.

Unfortunately I don't believe this will work. While under the effect of Obey the daydream is considered friendly to you, not the dreamer. I believe (but double check in case I'm remembering wrong) that daydreams can only pull bury and unbury shenanigans on friendly dreamer/LCB models. You may be able to use their (1) action that sacrifices themselves, can't remember off the top of my head if that is legal. One thing you definitely can do is use obey to make a nightmare near th dreamer move away. This matters because you can't target the dreamer when you have another nightmare as a valid target. Consequently the dreamer often hangs out with a daydream. Force that to move away and Juju can whallop the kid. Hell even silurid's will take a chunk out of him.

---------- Post added at 01:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:39 PM ----------

Juju and Z are pretty immune to the dreamer's stitched. The silurids are the only ones who need to watch out for gamble your life from the stitched, but silurids are much faster than stitched barring bury/unbury shenanigans. I'd recommend trying to take out the daydreams first thing. They're integral the the rude things the dreamer does. LCB is a nasty melee opponent but not all that tough if you can catch him in the open.

poison from the voodoo doll will make short work of daydreams. Z inbuilt defenses should help her survive an LCB attack (better yet get somewhere high and when he shows up to beat on you use the pulse to knock him off, falling damage sucks). The main concern of stitched for you is that the fog will cut off line of sight for conduit and casting from Z.

There's no reason to go outside the box set for what you want (except you need a voodoo doll). Silurids are superlative objective grabbers while still being decent fighters. Bad Juju is often looked down upon but i think that's a mistake. He's extremely durable, has hitting power on par with a teddy, and surprisingly mobile if you let him die and respawn. In short he's ideal for holding an objective. Z herself is quite good at grabbing objectives, if it isn't more important that she makes the enmy's life hell. Between raven, proper manners, obeying enemies to move away, and her pulse that knocks people back, she can get to the target and keep others off it while surviving.

In terms of strategy, It of course depends on the strategy you flipped for he game. In general though you want to get Z up somewhere with good lines of sight so she can summon a voodoo doll and cast obeys. Silurids should move fast and probably in cover against any ranged opponent (including ranged spells, if it has the gun icon you get cover bonuses against it). I usually wait to bring out Juju until either he has a cear shot at an objective or I really need to distract the opponent. Most of the time if I need a beatstick I just borrow the opponent's instead (with Obey).

Have you read the articles on Z, Juju, and the silurids on the pullmyfinger wiki?

---------- Post added at 10:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:46 AM ----------

If you are wanting to expand past the box set then some good models for Z are:

Beatsticks

Mature nephilim

Teddy (especially if you plan to get the dreamer at some point)

Collodi

Utility

Doppelganger

Insidious Maddness

Stitched Togethers

Coppelius

Objective Runners

Collodi

Ranged Damage

Gremlins (any with WP4, which is most of them)

Iggy

A lot of people really like the twins. You have a huge range of options with Z, though.

Spirzamu is fun, no doubt, but he still dies to lots of pings. The reason for takin the SS would be to have ping immunity.

Vic's are def. on the "Don't field against" list. Any other masters that should be on that list? I'm think Misaki and Raspi probably make it too.

Pandora, probably Zoraida, Levi, Hamelin.

In computer science we tend to use the term edge case. If you think of inputs as occupying a multidimensional space then edge cases are well edges that tend to give unexpected results. An easy example is if you have a program that divides 'a' by 'b,' both of which are integers then the edge case is 0. It fits the criteria for the input (it is an integer) but it has unexpected results if it's 'b.'

in terms of Malifaux then with the way gunfighter works the edge case is when the gunfighter is in engaged by a model with a 3" melee range. It's a wierd result of a particular circumstance interacting with the rule.