Hateful Darkblack

I hear that Dreamer and Pandora stack well together because they have so much Crew in common. I imagine that there probably are some kinds of super-crazy combos, but the one I always thought would be powerful is Levy + Tara. Just because Levy provides Tara the killing power she lacks, and Tara provides Levy the objective-grabbing he lacks.

Yep, that's legit! (Assuming Pariah of Iron). How'd your game go?

Every time someone plays a 35ss game, even across the globe, Ausplosions stubs his toe painfully. Thinks of Ausplosions and his toes, please. Play only at 50ss!

Thanks Grue! Glad you liked it!

Summon with Paralyze sounds good! Summon to Deployment Zone sounds interesting, but it could have weird interactions for some Summoners (Molly especially!) Try them out and report?

Last minute entry! Swimming the Seas of Blood

Word Count: 1627 All elements used. (The narrator is Bête Noire, of course.)

I live here on the other side. Somewhere cold, hard, and unfamiliar. You’ll know the place soon enough. It’s on the other side of that tombstone-bridge, a road paved with red and screams and quick jarring motions and a glint of steel. You’ll know the place soon enough, I promise. I love it here. Cold. Hard. Unfamiliar. And most of all, eternal. But there’s never the sound of a heartbeat here. Is it a Labyrinth? Perhaps. The Void of Nothingness? If you see it that way. The Greeks said there were apple trees here, or perhaps exotic tortures to punish wrongdoers. In the Three Kingdoms, they say that it’s more like a waiting parlour that you come to visit, and then leave again for your next assignment. I believe them all well enough! Why quibble? This place changes in aspect, depending on who’s looking. But I’m always here soon enough. I love your world just as well though; it’s always such a swirl and dance to come visit. You make a doorway for me, a bright speck of light in the curtains, a gateway I can peek through. So nice of you to invite me. I am grateful for the name you’ve given me. It’s French, did you know? So elegant. It means “The Black Beast,” but people use it for so much more than that. It’s the thing that annoys you for life, the big enemy that you’ve set yourself to oppose forever, no matter how many times you fail. A pet peeve magnified to obsession. Like King Pellinore’s Questing Beast, if Pellinore was in a constant furious rage about it, beyond all memory of nobility. Come to me with your anger and your blades, good people. Keep swinging. I’m your Black Beast. I’m told that I’ve become a little legend to you. That you whisper about what an enigma I am. Why do I do these things? What drives me to kill as I do? Oh, you lovely flatterers. Isn’t it obvious? Recall your tale of the behemoth, Leviathan. The beast of the sea; she was sent to keep you humble. Even while you build your cities and ships, and explore the world, you must know that the world is greater than you, that your cities will crumble. Tremble at your own mortality. Whatever great things you may achieve, an even greater beast waits! Here in Malifaux, I am that behemoth, a great hungry thing swimming in seas of spilled blood. I am a message and a reminder: whatever you achieve, you will still come to this cold, hard, unfamiliar place. However brightly you live, you will die. No matter how many times you survive, you only need to die once. The blackness yawns before you. And you’d like to forget that, wouldn’t you? It’s more comforting to cover that up with a tablecloth and decorative lace curtains and remember these precious moments of life you’ve borrowed. But you do disrespect to the inevitable by ignoring it! And so here I am, your Black Beast, your message of reminder. I will come for you in your moment of pride!

Taelor seems to be a great answer if you want to commit a third of your Crew's Soulstones to hiring Taelor, but that may mean that you're spending your efforts countering summoning instead of doing what your Crew does. If your Crew hiring decisions need to be defensive (stopping the opponent from doing their thing) then you won't be making your Crew flourish the way it should be, since you'll be losing your Crew's own internal synergies.

An extra AP is amazing if you get it at the right moment to get VPs from it. Remember that point in your last game where you said "Oh, if only I could get a model over there, AND do this thing, I'd be able to get my Scheme and deny theirs! Or maybe I could kill that model, but only if I could charge it and then do an Interact right after!" With an extra AP once, you can. And four cards drawn is super huge. The more I play, the more I feel like card draw mechanics are the secret key to winning. There's no other effect in the game that draws this many cards in one go. (Zoraida's Bewitched and Some'r's Survival of the Fittest come close, but in smaller chunks.) I know when I'm facing an Arcanist Crew, the turn where Myranda Sacrifices herself and gets four cards is the turn that everything the Crew wants to do succeeds because suddenly they have nearly twice as many resources.

There's another favorite thing I want to mention here, and it's more about Wyrd than Malifaux. I really love the way that I feel like I can trust Wyrd to make the right decision. I know Wyrd has problems with their upside supply chain sometimes (model scale and so on) but Wyrd very consistently works hard to think of the players, support the community, create excellent products, and listen to feedback. Every time I've posted something about the models that was a solvable problem, I've noticed that four months later, that problem has been solved. The first run of plastic models had model pieces scattered all over the sprue -- and the next batch fixed that. Early plastic models shipped with slotted bases until someone noted that those weren't really helpful anymore -- and the next batch fixed that. People posted asking about cards for metal models -- and the Arsenal Decks got announced. I like to imagine that there's an angel who reads every post and starts working on a fix the moment the problem gets mentioned. But really, I think it's just that Wyrd is a company that plans well, thinks about the playerbase, listens, and makes good decisions. And I love that.

I've never actually had interest in playing another miniatures game, before or since. I've always (well, for the past 30 years, anyway) been mostly a tabletop roleplaying-game player. I think the things I like most about Malifaux: The flavor. It bends a lot of different styles in a way that feels natural, and the narrative is compelling, rich with conflict, and fascinating. The character focus. Individual characters are not similar. In many games it seems like models have different stats and maybe a third of them have some special ability, or maybe all of them have one special ability. Every model in Malifaux has a ton of special abilities, and every special ability affect tactics while also alluding to fluff. The complexity of tactics. Whenever I've played with a new player, there's this wonderful point I can't wait to reach, where they ask "Hey, if you kill all my models, can I still win?" and when the answer is "yeah, that happens about one game out of ten, really, or something close to it," their face lights up as they realize this is going to be a much more interesting game than they expected. The aesthetics. Every time I play Malifaux with someone, I feel like we've just made a diorama of a freaky 19th century horror scene, in addition to playing a wargame. Just making a beautiful board, with well-painted figures laid out, feels like we're telling a story together. The sense of having so much to learn. I have a habit after every game of Malifaux, whenever my opponent indulges my at least. I like to go through what went well, and what I could have done (and my opponent could have done) better. Every game I play, I feel like I've learned something, but that I still have a lot more to learn. It's awestriking for me. (As far as favorite models go, I think I've made it clear that my favorite Master at least is Leveticus. I talk about why that is here: Why I Love M2E Leveticus. All still very true!)

A lot of people are disagreeing with the premise of the thread - and a lot of really smart people, whose positions on Malifaux I respect! I think the general complaint is that any house rule is going to affect Summoners unevenly, or that it won't be effective, or that it will be too effective and make Summoners unplayable. All these might be totally true! I don't know. I suspect I'll find out more on the table. Some (most notably the excellent SpectreEliteGaming) have argued that it's best solved by just assuming that low-Soulstone games are unbalanced, and never playing Summoner vs. non-Summoner. This seems like it'd work! But what if you want to play Summoner vs. non-Summoner and have it be a fair fight? In my experience so far, Summoners of any kind just win in low-Soulstone games. Even if it's just Sebastian summoning some dogs or a Rat Catcher making Rats and Rats making Rat Kings, Summoning just seems to make a scarce resource plentiful in a low-SS game. I'd like to be able to play a low-Soulstone game with full challenge for everyone. So far, the most promising house rule proposal I've seen (in terms of simplicity, potential effectiveness, and universality) is the "No Summoning Turn One or Two" rule. I'm going to try it for a few games and report results. If it seems like too much, I'll probably start trying "No Summoning Turn One" instead. If it turns out it's not possible, or it's too much, or that it makes the game less fun, I'll report on that and let y'all know! Thanks everyone for suggestions! Including those who pointed out the problems with attempting this at all! If anyone gets a chance and likes trying house rules, try it out and let me know! (Don't try it out if you're already doing another playtest or something, of course, since that would mess up results.) Thanks all! More later.

Push toward and away must be center-to-center. Charge, on the other hand, can be at any angle as long as it ends up in melee range. Heed My Voice only changes one allegiance: Huggy and the target are friendly. Otherwise, the target model is still friendly to its own Crew and an enemy to Huggy's.

I'm leaning more and more toward "No Summoning on Turn One or Two." This trips up a few models that like to summon a helper thing early (Zoraida summoning a Voodoo Doll, Levy summoning a Waif), but mostly it just means that you won't have endless waves of summons, and the amount of extra AP you get from a summon is minimized. Plus it's simple.

A lot of people really like Bishop with Pandora specifically, since Bishop causes a lot of Wp duels. Some people say a lot of good things about McTavish in a Neverborn crew, especially with Zoraida. (Mercenary, but not Outcast) Everyone like Johan for Condition removal, and Freikorps Librarian for healing.

I am thinking now of a game I played, where I played Nix in a Henchman-led 20ss game, with Summoning. The game was quickly overrun with Malifaux Rats and I won without any effort. It was clearly a balance problem. That game was Henchman-led, and I only summoned models from the Hamelin Crew box. So maybe other rules are needed!

Good house rule! Personally, I have a house rule that I wear greaves whenever I'm playing a Summoning Crew, though, so I don't know how that'll do.

Another one I am considering: Anyone who imposes a "No Summoning" rule on their own Crew gets an extra 5 Soulstones.

I don't think the system needs to be perfect to be valuable here. Just better than the current difficulties. What I want from a Summoning house rule: Keeps Summoners useful and possible, just not overwhelming. Affects all kinds of Summoners, since there are like four or five different styles of Summoning in the game. Is a fairly simple rule that can be expressed in a few sentences. Doesn't render any model completely moot.

I'm cautious about any anti-Summoning plan that hits different Summoners differently. It's possible but I suspect it's too hard to balance. Rules I like and would consider so far: No summoning Turn One and Two. Cap on how much you can Summon. ("Summon only slightly above your starting". Start + 1 model or Start + 5ss or something.) Summon only from basic Crew box. Summon only from Crew box would mean that Ramos couldn't summon Electrical Creations ever, and Widow Weaver couldn't Summon at all (and should just not buy that upgrade) but I suspect it would help calm the results. These are worth trying! Thank you!

A lot of these ideas seem to involve increasing TNs or AP costs for Summon, but those only seem to work for some Summoners. McMourning, Sonnia Criid, and usually Leveticus don't need TNs or AP spends for Summoning. It seems like a Summoning cap might be the right way to go, rather than trying to increase each kind of summoning with a different cost and balance those. (Also, some of the best summoners also have some kind of card-control scheme to keep them in good cards, so increasing the TN would only slow them down slightly.) One suggestion I heard from a Resser player was some sort of model limit. Maybe something like "You can't summon more models than you started with" or "your max models is your starting models +1". That way, Summoners could restore losses and even add one model, but couldn't overrun the board. Do you think that a model cap or SS cost cap would help?

Godlyness, any suggestions for house rules?

(I'm hoping for suggestions that make Summoning possible but not overbalancing. If you think that Summoning is just fine in low-SS games, or don't like house rules, this is probably not going to be an interesting thread for you!)

I've heard a lot of people say that Summoning is overpowered in low-Soulstone games. Does anyone have any ideas for house rules that can make that better? (Or other format or implementation changes that can improve it?) I know a lot of Hardcore games say no Summoning -- I know when I play them they do -- but I'd love to hear other suggestions too. *** EDIT: I think the one I want to try out is "No Summoning on Turn One or Two." Once I've tried it a few times, I'll post results here.