Nyarlanthotep

Then you are fine, the McMourning Box will have all his duel faction Upgrades, adding the Guild Arsenal deck will give you all the Guild Generic Upgrades.. You shouldn't need the Rezer Arsenal Box as the only Rezer models you can use Sebastian, Nurses and Chihuahua Stat Cards are in the box.

But then after Gencon they had issues restocking the Rulebook, so they had to release the Small Rule Manual as a stop gap measure.

TBH I think all the Master specific schemes should be a level harder than standard and factional ones. This way no Master gets a real advantage in tournaments, but players get a bit of a challange in normal play.

Isn't only the push into base to base and to within that were given an errata to make them a teleports (place).. I believe any push with a distance is still a movement effect.

I agree wholeheartedly. The people that post most on a topic are those that feel strongest about it, which is only natural. But this can lead to situations where things look very skewed on the forum. For example the Red Joker debate. If you looked at the post on the subject you would think that everything fell into 2 camps, those that thought that Red Jokers were the most broken part of the game, and those that really liked what they brought to the game, and this split was maybe 60/40. Then you do a poll of what people think, and all the people that lurk on the forum vote and what you find is a very different picture and probably closer to what is actually out there.. with 5% having real issue with the rule, about 10% thinking it should maybe be tweaked a bit and about 85% who either had no issue or really liked the Red Joker the way it is (note these are from memory, memory can fail us old fogeys). IE forums while useful don't give the whole picture without some futher investigation. Also have you noticed how the Avatars seem to be in two camps, the stronger Masters get Avatars that are generally side shifts in what the Master does, while the weaker masters get a bit of a buff. I'm not sure if it was intended this way, but would make some sense as a way to balance things a bit.

However the names of the Playtesters are a matter of public record. They are in the book. If they say something was Wyrds intent, it may well be they are talking gibbly-gook, however there is a fair chance they might have some insight.

The thing is I don't think Wyrd is aiming for 100%, and by that I mean every player takes Avatars everytime. You take a company like Games Workshop. Their business model is to release something big and expensive. Make the big and expensive thing really good. Players have to buy the big and expensive thing to be competitive. Wyrd Business model is to make the price of entry into the game low, and to release cool models. So it is not in their best interests to have a really expensive model that is essential to be competitive. [Note you already have a situation where not every model is used every game, most people have multiple crews, models they use for specific strategies and matchups. I know that every game I play over 90% of my Malifaux models will remain in the case.] So I believe going in Wyrd was going for the idea that the Avatars would be display pieces which people would really like to paint. That they would not be compulsory to be competitive, but would add interesting challenges to experienced players. That they would not just increase the standard game size. And they would not replace the original Masters. You look at the Epic Casters, they are close enough to the original Casters that what you really end up with is either them being better than the original Caster in which case they are always taken, or worse so they are never taken. So what it really comes down to is a cultural difference. You are always going to get some members of the community that don't like something, or want it to be more like another game they play. Overall from what I've read on the forum, seen locally and on Vassal. Avatars are used because people like the model, because people want the challenge, or because they fill a gap so they allow a Master to deal with a situation better. Which is exactly what Wyrd were going for. The only real issue I see is like anything in the gaming some models will be a bit better than intended and some will be a bit worse. So a few Avatars could do with a tiny bit of a tweak.

The other thing people seem to have forgot is Playtester resources. I assume big changes will need some sort of Playtesting, whereas small outliers won't need as much. From most of the posts on Balancing Hamelin it seems like people think it's more than just Hamelin that needs a tweak, it's like the whole of his crew. I don't know for sure but with Book 4 coming out I would think, and I may be wrong, that maybe Playtesters were wrapped up doing Book 4 testing. There are only so many games they can play and if they are playtesting Hamelin changes they are not testing the new book.

I personally prefer 30ss for tournaments. I feel that there is a tiny bit more skill necessary at 30ss as you have to make tough choices. You can't quite get in that uber-combo while having all the points you need for your SS pool and having grunts, objective grabbers. So something has to give. At 35ss I find you can normally get everything you need and then have a few SS to spare.

There are 3 paths you can choose to go up.. Spirit, Ash and Bone. You must complete each level of a path to get the next one. But you don't have to exclusively put points in a single path.. So you could grab level 1 in Spirit, then level 1 in Ash, then level 2 in Spirit and then boost that up to level 3.

It seems like he needs to have the Relic to summon the corresponding Ancestor, and he then uses Corpse counters to give them Wounds.. So an Izamu summoned with 3 Corpse Counters would come back on 6Wds.

You see I have no issue with Pandora, She's a solid debuffed, control model. Excelent, really enjoy playing her, always a challenge but I never feel I can't beat her. Then you get to Hamelin, now I have no issue with him being a controller, creating swarms of rats, making the opponents model insignificant. These all feel like they are things he should do. The real issue I have is he can do SO much more than this. Hamelin is fast, has fate is meaningless and a really high Serious damage. So you manage to fight your way through the rodent horde to get to him and he can practically one shot you in melee. I have seen games where Hamelin has run off on his own and killed Avatar Ramos, the Mechanical Rider and a Arachnid Swarm single handed in melee. Hamelin can come back indefinitely, which means he is also much tougher than a lot of support masters, and too be honest he's not even that easy to kill once. On top of that due to the way the swarm works, he can really slow down the game. How many times have I seen one rat get killed which creates another rat that kills the first rat, just to run out activations. So yeah I feel Hamelin needs a bit of a fix. But no, it isn't because he's a Debuffer/Control model. It's because he's a Debuffer/Control model that can hit as hard as McMourning and is as tough as Leveticus.

Well it looks like he's going to be one of the earlier releases. http://www.thewarstore.com/product74596.html

I think people may be missing half of the picture here. Seamus is very good at denying certain Strategies, so if you opponent has a Strat like Contain Power, Distract etc and you get a Strat that Seamus can achieve (even if it's not the best Strat for him) he might well still be your best choice.

I would go with the version from Ukrocky's UK comp pack in favour of Sandwich's suggestions. I think they cover a lot of the same bases, but also deal with rats killing each other to out activate the enemy. But also matches Hamelin's Bully to match his hiring, which makes some sense, if you can't bully someone to work for you, you can't Bully them to not hit you. • Hamelin's voracious rats is 4" range. • Nix's Emptiness doesn't affect SS flips • Rats only get positive attack flips on impetuous, not damage flips. • Lure Malifaux Citizen becomes a (1) spell needing a 14 to cast. • Rats cannot be activated the turn they are summoned • Bully does not affect gremlins, constructs or masters