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CN the Logos

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  1. I have returned! After taking a brief hiatus, during which I was working on my thesis, playing some other games and waiting for the new edition of Malifaux to come out, I'm getting back into the game with the new ruleset. And one of the first things I'm doing upon my (hopefully) triumphant return to the game is painting a Misaki crew for my wife. She has the box set, a set of Oiran, and Yamaziko. One thing that caught my eye when I was looking at Yamaziko's stats in the new book was how many of her abilities she's lost. At first I thought they might just have been made into upgrades, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I never played with or against her in 1.5; she looked strong enough to cost more than she did there, but was she so powerful she needed to become more expensive and lose a good chunk of her abilities? Ototo looks like he's gotten a similar treatment, although not quite to the same extent (and he has upgrades available). So, I want my wife to have a good crew to get back into the game with (she lost enthusiasm for playing Rasputina after a while because she didn't enjoy the slow squishy wizard playstyle, and while I haven't looked at new Rasputina in great detail yet, I assume her playstlye hasn't done a complete 180). She really likes Yamaziko's look, so is the kung-fu grandma worth her soulstones? For that matter, I'm curious about Ototo. He looks pretty tanky, but after purchasing upgrades he's as expensive as Killjoy. At least. Does he do enough to justify this? Apologies if there's something fairly obvious I missed hidden somewhere in the book that explains everything. I'm still reading through and trying to process all the changes. Thanks. TL;DR: Misaki's henchmen. Are either of them worth it? :Confused_Puppet2:
  2. ...She's a gender-swapped Darth Vader. Evil, authoritarian magic user that hunts down and does horrible things to unauthorized magic users at the behest of a more evil person (who may also be a magic user, I don't know about Guild leadership, but it really would be great if this game had a Palpatine analogue). Only instead of killing them, she rips out a chunk of their souls so she can use them as hunting hounds, instead of a force choke she has CLEANSING FIRE, and instead of redemption she gets turned into the meat puppet of an omnicidal fire god. You mean the classic creepy Japanese female ghost that (un)lives for vengeance on the people that wronged her? I agree, if only Malifaux had a Master like that. Oh wait. :-P
  3. The male leader of the nephilim subfaction would obviously be Semyaza. And I would preorder that mini. Wyrd, make this happen. Rule 63 demands it. As for female Ressers... I play Neverborn and Outcasts, so I haven't got a huge stake in it. Three of my five leaders are female, and I recently got the Perdita and Ophelia boxsets as gifts, so if anything I need some testosterone to balance things out. But I'd rather have a good version of Molly than another new character at this point. I like Molly, she deserves to be a good model.
  4. I haven't had much luck directly targeting models that can use soulstones with Transposition, but it is an option, and can be a good finishing move late game (once soulstones are exhausted) assuming you've still got a horde handy. Usually I use Transposition to send one of my dedicated melee models to Rasputina though, rather than the other way around. Honestly though, I was writing my advice with the assumption that the OP would not need as much help as his Rasputina-playing friend. The models in Rasputina's starter box are handy to have, but there's not much they can do against a nephilim crew determined to get Rasputina in melee and claw her to death. It's the fact that pretty much all the nephilim have scout/flight/float/Master of Malifaux that does it; Rasputina's got some pretty useful terrain manipulation abilities and when most other crews are hiding behind a building, that at least means they're going to have to go around it to get to her, but nephilim laugh at silly notions like "cover" and "line of sight." The only way for the Cult of December to slow them down is to tarpit some of them with something that can survive a turn or two of nephilim melee while Rasputina Curse-bombs the ones who aren't locked in combat to icy death. Adding a few models (the Essence of Power, a Silent One, Snow Storm for extra movement and tarpit purposes) really helps to make things an even fight, but straight out of the starter box, all the gamins and golem provide is a ranged and melee attack on each model. The extra damage they do to armorless models, their own armor, Shatter, and Ice Mirror make them useful as part of a larger force, but except for the Ice Golem maybe tying up a nephil or two for a turn, they don't do anything to keep Rasputina out of melee, which is where she dies horribly.
  5. Diving Attack out of a forest or from behind a wall or something into melee with Raspy is very often a game-winning move. Of course part of the challenge for the Rasputina player is anticipating this, and it becomes a game of positioning/counter-positioning until one player gets a clear shot. She's not a Bond villain (and IIRC the villain had actually been killed by that point in the movie), but she can drop a swimming pool full of liquid nitrogen on the head of anything dumb enough to enter her Curse range. Shouting "I AM INVINCIBLE" would just be tempting fate.
  6. I only recently got Tuco painted. I've only played two games with him, both of which were against the Ortegas (who he gets a bonus against). He did very well in both games but I'm not sure how much of that was the to attack and damage. On the other hand, he's got some movement tricks that make him fairly quick, and those are the same against everyone. My impression so far is that he's good enough without that bonus to give him a place in any Neverborn list that needs an ranged attack and doesn't want to pay extra for mercs, but keep in mind, if you can see Rasputina, she can see you. If you can't see Rasputina, you may be only seconds away from a horrible icy death. Overconfidence is not your friend.
  7. My girlfriend and I started with Rasputina (her) and Lilith (me) as our first Masters, so I've played this matchup many times. The important thing to remember here is that while both Masters are fairly simple to learn, they're pretty much exactly the opposite in terms of playstyle. Rasputina will die if you get her in melee with Lillith (since I started playing a year ago, there has been exactly one time this HASN'T happened), but if she ever has line of sight to one of your models (and it doesn't even have to be direct if she's targeting a model without Use Soulstone), you will be hurt. Badly. I've seen her take out two Young Nephilim in one activation before (admittedly this was partly my fault for placing the second close enough to the first to get hit by :blast, but still). Your advantage in this matchup is that most of the nephilim have some way of ignoring terrain, and Rasputina's dependent on having line of sight to hit things, so any terrain you can put between you and her will inconvenience her far more than it does you. I agree with you re: Tots versus Raspy. If she can see them, they're gone, and they typically don't do enough before dying to make them worth it. If you need claw damage or something speedy to grab objectives, Young Nephilim are better because flying allows you to more easily get over a building and into melee/out of line of sight. Von Schill's immunity to blasts makes him another good choice. A word of advice, Rasputina's model selection out of box is lackluster. Not terrible, the Gamins are good as cheap bodies on the field and the Golem can at least tarpit something for a turn or two, but anyone starting her should make it a priority to pick up an Essence of Power and a Silent One ASAP. Maybe another Silent One depending on playstyle. After that, maybe branch out into some non-Cult models (I've heard Gunsmiths are good with her but we haven't tried them yet) or Snow Storm (who is an excellent support piece, but don't grab him expecting a tank). But I consider the Essence and Silent One essential, to the point where if I was getting another friend on a budget into Malifaux and they started with Rasputina, I'd buy those two models for them and tell them to pay me back when they got the money. They are tremendously helpful in evening the odds against a well-constructed Lillith crew.
  8. Tuco (not the Malifaux Tuco, the other one) was the Ugly in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Von Schill would be the good. He kills zombies; that makes him good-esque at least. And yes, Von Schill is good with Zoraida; she has a lot of soulstones and is (or should be) very rarely in melee to need them for defense there, and should be able to position her herself in hard to reach places with Raven, reducing the amount of ranged fire she's taking. There are still times you'll want to burn a soulstone with her, but hiring a henchmen and letting him share some of them with her doesn't hurt her too badly. And Von Schill give you another crazy-fast hard to kill objective-grabber who can also kill things if need be. Definitely worth it in this list.
  9. I'm not sure that looking at Lilitu's abilities in isolation is an accurate reflection of the game. I've never paid 7SS for Lilitu. I pay 14SS for The Twins. It's my Nephilim-list equivalent of Snow Storm or Killjoy or whatever big Death Star-esque model you want to compare it to, only it's two smaller models instead of one bigger one. The Belles don't come with a Lelu equivalent, and Lelu is amazing. I've also never had much trouble getting Double Take to trigger when I needed it; three Lures plus a control hand generally results in at least one decentish Mask showing up. I will note that I have never been able to summon another Lelu, but then again I've never tried any of the crazier blood farming lists and my main opponent plays Rasputina. Damn Gamins and their lack of drainable blood. :Sad_Puppet2:
  10. The list looks about like what my girlfriend plays, and it typically does alright. Snow Storm alleviates the slowness of the rest of the Cult a good bit, and that alone may be worth taking him over something else. Be warned however, that despite looking like a melee brute, he really isn't. His defense and damage are decidedly meh and any dedicated melee model with a magic weapon will break him. Snow Storm hates the Viks so much. What he can do is tarpit like a boss providing there's nothing nearby that can magic him to death or deal enough damage fast enough to not care about Spirit. Eat Your Fill increases his survivability further if he has a target for it. And his damage, while not game-winning by itself, can help him contribute to a fight (if possible, let him land the last hit,so that can can Eat His Fill and keep going). Combine all that with the much needed movement boosts, and I'd call him a worthy use of 11SS. Not an auto-include, but worth having as an option. We were at a craft store looking for ideas when inspiration struck for the Ice Pillars. Up to that point, everything we'd considered was either very expensive, required a lot of work, or both. Then, while we were looking for a reasonably priced alternative, we stumbled across the wedding cake pillars. Deciding to take the name of Raspy's spell hilariously literally, we bought eight of the things, repainted them, put some plastic on top of the hollow pillars, covered the tops and the bases with snow basing material (along with some tiny "snow" beads I hoped would simulate the look of hard frozen ice when covered with the basing snow), and called it a day. They fit nicely on the 50mm bases, and no one ever mistakes the literal Ice Pillar for anything else. Some may question Rasputina's creation of perfectly sculpted Doric columns. I ask why those people are playing a game where cowboys, witches, mad scientists, demons, and various other undesirables all fight each other on a regular basis and occasionally have to team up to fight Cthulhu and Friends. Don't fight the madness; embrace it.
  11. This was was I thought. When I was starting the game I considered buying him and painting his face in the skull pattern associated with channeling Samedi, but was dissuaded by the huge number of models I would need. Seems to fit especially with his avatar. Now we need another alt. scupt of him daancing and drinking something borderline poisonous. Von Schill and his Freikorps were real guys who were ultimately killed rebelling against the occupation of Germany by Napoleon. However they apparently did pretty well considering they were outnumbered four to one and the king of Prussia had basically told him to shut up and stop causing trouble as opposed to rallying the people or something. However, he died about 92 years before the time in which the game takes place opens, so unless Malifauxverse Von Schill is just so badass that Death doesn't want to touch him, it can't be the same guy. My personal guess is that he's a grandson or great grandson of the original, whose rebellion went much better in this timeline. That or when he was about to die, he became an Immortal.* Either explanation works for me. *TV Tropes would have said something about a time lord. Screw TV Tropes.
  12. I forgot to mention Black Blood Shaman. I like it, but it almost never sees play with me because I don't get to Drain Blood from living or undead targets often, and I'm not playing a grow list to get blood counters from my own expendable minions (I don't have Nekima or the Desperate Mercenaries for it). Since the OP is likely to see a lot of games versus Lady Justice, it may work better for him. On the other hand, Kirai is all spirits all the time, so it may not be as useful in that case. In any case, it might work really well, but if I had to start buying Lilith's crew all over again, my purchases would be, in order of priority: the boxset, a pack of Young Nephilim, Primordial Magic, at least one of each twin, Von Schill (or his boxset if you think you might want to run Freikorps later), then other stuff. And as someone who picked up Z after Lilith, I can affirm that moving from one to the other is pretty easy and provides a nice contrast in playstyles, if you ever find yourself interested in the witch.
  13. Lilith was the Master I started with, so I can provide some useful advice, hopefully. Lilith herself is probably the easiest to learn of the Neverborn masters; whereas Zoraida relies on the careful use of Obey on both friendly and enemy models along with occasional card manipulation and the ability to move rapidly at the cost of giving up her own abilities, Pandora wants to set up as many Willpower duels as possible to do damage and make her mobile, and the Dreamer now requires you to be aware of more than just the abilities required to slingshot him into play, Lilith likes to hit things. She has Fast so that she can get into melee quicker or make another attack if she's already in it, her Combat and Defense stats are both very high, and that on every attack with the sword means you'll get to cheat a lot. However, she's not just about hitting things (and this is good for you; from what I've heard, Lady Justice is slightly better in melee). Lilith has a few support abilities, some of which I find useful, some less so. Master of Malifaux lets her move through most terrain at her normal speed (6" walk, 9" charge: the lady is fast) and ignore terrain and line of sight for attacking, casting spells, etc... It won't come up often, but you can attack things right through walls. What will come up more often is the ability to cast Transposition on things. Switching the positions of any two models (two of your own, two of your opponent's, one of yours and one of hers, whatever you like) is awesome. Keep in mind that Lilith can't cast it on herself, because it requires a resist duel, but her totem can cast it on her. Illusionary Forest is also very useful, allowing you to either slow opponents down or block lines of sight without inconveniencing yourself. Her (0) actions, Drain Blood and Brood Mother, are dependent on having other nephilim around and living/undead to drain blood from if needed. My primary opponent, my girlfriend, plays Rasputina, and only two, maybe three of her models are living, so I don't see much use there. You may find them more helpful. With the exception of her (0) actions, Lilith doesn't do anything that requires nephilim to support her, so you can pretty much take whatever you like from the Neverborn faction. That said, Terror Tots make good objective grabbers and are surprisingly lethal, and both Young and Mature Nephillim are good at killing things. The Twins (Lelu and Lilitu) are good too. Bear in mind that you have to take at least one of each or they start bleeding out at the end of the first turn, so they're at least a 14SS investment, but they're good. I've never played with Waldgeists, but I've heard good things, and with the upcoming release of Lilith's avatar, they may find a place in more crews. I prefer the extra card from Primordial Magic over the abilities of the Cherub. Draw eight, discard one is so much better than draw six, I find myself missing it when I'm playing other masters. Likewise, if you only have room for one 10SS model in your crew, I find Von Schill is almost always better than the Mature Nephil. The Mature does more damage, but Von Badass is vastly more survivable, potentially faster, has a good ranged weapon, can use soulstones, and is a smaller target. Don't get me wrong, there are schemes where I like having the option to take the Mature Nephil, but he's not the best pick for all situations. Hope this helps you get started. Feel free to ask if you have any more specific questions.
  14. Ah, it's nothing, I'm just being especially twitchy at the moment. He does look a bit taken aback, doesn't he? I wonder what's going through his mind. "Wait, we actually hunt down witches and set them on fire? I thought you were joking! I only applied for this job because you were offering health and dental insurance!" Also, if someone actually makes a Village People crew, I will praise them with great praise. You'd probably have to go Guild or Arcanist to pull it off though.
  15. Do you mean Samael Hopkins? Sonnia's Man Friday? Because Samuel and Samael are two very different names. Samuel, according to Judaism and Christianity, was the last of the ancient Hebrew judges, who anointed both Saul and David as king over Israel. Samael, according to Judaism, is the Angel of Death, Lilith's second husband and the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil according to some legends, and is often considered to be the entity more commonly referred to as Satan. ...I know that was offtopic, but the things those names are referring to are very different, and it was going to bug me if I didn't mention it. Sorry.
  16. I was sort of curious as to what carnival relevant swearword the forum had censored, then I remembered that one of the people in charge here apparently suffers from coulrophobia. So that word is verboten. Anyway, the list itself looks fine. I'm working on something similar myself. Killjoy is pretty expensive, but he's actually good for the cost, unlike some other games I've played where the big expensive cool thing is only useful for tricking newbies into thinking it's worth something. However, in situations where killing things isn't as important as pure survivability, you might want to swap him out for two more Stitched and 2SS. Since Zoraida can make Wicked Dolls, you might also be able to get rid of one or both if you need the stones for something else. I like having one already on the table at the start so that I don't have to waste a turn making one before the Killjoy Delivery System is ready, but that's just me. Lelu and Lilitu could be fluffed and painted as... performers. Acrobats or lion tamers or just freak-show types, maybe. Or, yes, that which must not be named on this forum. The two of them require 14 points and pretty much must be taken together, So you'd have to ditch Killjoy and a Wicked Doll to fit them in, but they're another option to consider. Hope this was of some help to you.
  17. Other than, as I've noticed in my own play experience, Lelu's tendency to want to be in melee where things are likely to hurt him, how is this any different than Lelu having Regeneration 2? He loses three wounds at the end of the turn and gets two back at the start of his next activation. It leaves a potential opening for things to kill him before he heals the damage, but then again, he has more wounds than Lilitu to begin with, and you can have him activate immediately if you win initiative.
  18. Oh, you didn't sound like a jerk, I was just saying that hypothetical lists aren't a totally Theoryfaux practice that no one should ever engage in, and that list writing and adapting to the strategies/schemes aren't mutually exclusive. One can do both. To keep this thing vaguely on topic, given that Chompy needs more support in combat than he did previously, what do people think of Teddie? Is it any good? Worth playing with more than one? I was planning on just using the Twins I already had when combat was required. However, given that Two Sided apparently (I don't think it's been officially ruled on, but it was the impression I got) hurts them when they're buried, making them harder for the Dreamer to ferry around, I was wondering if having something else to unbury in an enemy's face when needed might be good. Thoughts?
  19. Sorry, I'd have replied earlier, but I was busy painting my own Night Terrors to use alongside the Twins and Stitched Togethers. ...In all seriousness, I mostly play Lilith and Zoraida, and picked up the Dreamer to have a more competitive Master for tournaments in which other Tier One crews were going around. Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure he's still one of the best Masters. He just lets your opponent actually respond to the madness now. Which makes for a better game. Oh yes. Every good game needs a number of people who enjoy it enough to break it. Ideally, those people make it into playtesting, or better yet are hired to help design the game, and save the rest of us the trouble of needing errata in the first place. Eh, I like to go in with a basic framework for my crew just so that my friendly opponents don't have to wait an hour for me to pick everything out from the ground up. I'm an indecisive person. Of course it's tailored to the schemes, but I feel it helps to have an idea of what to use for a particular situation before it's actually flipped for my strategy.
  20. Guys, it's really not a huge deal. I take the Twins with Lilith all the time, and I can assure everyone that they don't need to be shuttled around the battlefield with Bury to rock you like a hurricane. Although it does make things convenient and affects the way I'd play with them. It might be useful to start with them buried and have the Dreamer or a Daydream give them some extra movement in the first turn by moving forward and unburying them, or just start with them on the field, or bury and unbury them before they activate. I mean, I'm curious to know if my initial reaction (Two Sided will eat them if they're buried at the end of the turn!) was correct. That's why I asked. But I'm pretty sure the Twins are still good. ...Of course, now that I say that, it's only a matter of time before they cuddle them so hard they're unplayable. :Sad_Puppet2:
  21. I prefer "Sexy Mana Worm" myself. The debate over whether Arcane Reservoir is worth the loss of the Daydreams' other abilities is interesting. No one's arguing that card advantage is not a good thing, I think. The question is whether the Daydream offers enough utility to make up for not drawing an extra card. If Two Sided does harm the Twins while they're buried (unless you've got another one of each in play), then having a Daydream or two to give you another way to move them into position could be useful. And they can be used as a panic button, removing Chompy from the fight after he triggers All Done, albeit at the cost of a Daydream. Those could be excellent options to have in the right situation. On the other hand, Arcane Reservoir is always good. I'm not sure this can be cleanly Theoryfauxed out. We may see a clear difference in actual tournaments, or it may come down to playstyle preferences. And whether you prefer your totem to be a many fanged, magic-spewing phallus worm or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuR_wwxG5lI.
  22. Wanted to check something before replying, then got caught up in the jubilation surrounding the Bury/Dreamer errata. But fear not, I have returned! I'll admit, I haven't got a copy of the third book yet, but I've read most of it in the store,* and I was aware of Zoraida's origins. Weirdly enough, I got an entirely different vibe from the scene where Lilith and Zoraida discuss the Riders and Z's rapidly approaching mortality; there may be scheming going on on both sides, but the third-person omniscient narration indicated that Lilith was really upset at the thought of Zoraida dying, especially the possibility that she might die alone when Lilith was out doing something else. That doesn't indicate to me any malice on Lilith's part. Quite the opposite. Of course Zoraida's manipulating everyone. She's an expy of Baba Yaga, who gave cryptic advice, highly priced aid, and occasionally threatened to eat whoever consulted her. But there's no indication that her schemes threaten the Neverborn more than (or even as much as) anyone else. The effigy she created in the image of the Neverborn is mentioned as having been made "in case" she had to fight the other Neverborn at some point, which leads me to believe a full-blown coup is not in her game plan. And as you mentioned previously, Z's mortal. If her plan involved overthrowing Lilith and declaring herself Queen of the World, she probably would have done it before she reached her hundred twentieth birthday. None of that is to say that Lilith should blindly trust everything Zoraida says, but I don't think Z has any reason to be deceitful here. They're fighting outright now? That must have been in the parts I missed. I was under the impression Nekima was still biding her time waiting for Lilith to screw up badly enough to make dethroning her an easy task. Doesn't really matter though. Scouting doesn't require an entire army. It requires a few guys with enough stealth and endurance to get somewhere (possibly behind enemy lines) without an army directly backing them up, look around without being caught by any enemies in the area, and make it back in one piece to deliver a report. Malifaux's nephilim are great at getting over harsh terrain; I should know, Lilith was my first Master. I don't really know enough about it to talk balance. Here's a brief summary of my 40k experience: A few years ago, I got into it because I knew a guy who played and thought it would be amusing. Bought about $300 worth of Orks, because at the time I was living rent free and had spare cash... then the other dude lost his job (we both worked at the same place) and had no phone or internet access, so we lost touch. I ended up playing a few games and deciding that while the game mechanics themselves were alright, I didn't like the fact that none of my little dudes mattered, yet all of them required meticulous painting (or I could use the "night camouflage" excuse, but I have standards, dammit), and the rush in and murder everything in melee playstyle wasn't as fun as I thought it would be. I'd considered Tau before Orks, but they didn't have a convenient starter box (and I hear they're sort of terrible anyway, so I may have dodged a bullet there). Prior to last December, I thought I was never going to play the game again and had resigned myself to having a box full of useless Orks.Then shortly before Christmas, with birthday money still in my possession, I stumbled across a guy selling over 1000 points of Necrons on eBay for about $150, shipping included. I love Art Deco Space Egyptians, and most of the reviewers who weren't driven into a psychotic nerdrage by the fact that they were given a personality in the new codex said that they were actually pretty good, though not among the most broken armies in the game. So, against my better judgement, I'm now trying to finish putting that army together and relearn the rules. And the best part is that I need less little dudes, and the ones I need are going to be painted copper. With a blued steel look for the guns, if I'm feeling crazy. Maybe this is just the fact that I've only played 3.X talking, but from what I've seen, D&D has two major setting options. High magic, and magitech-based singularity (a.k.a. the Tippyverse). You can theoretically make the system do low magic, but it takes a lot of work and the game as written takes it for granted that noncasters with have enough magical bling to pass for a fantasy version of Iron Man. Not that I know of. Note that in "Apocalypse Malifaux," there would probably still be fewer models than in an average game of 40k. Someone's going to look at that and say "let's run a tournament." I was just saying that it would be a terrible thing to try. I know. I should totally bring this thread to Wyrd's attention and get them to hire me as a game designer, right? That might work, actually. But if the Three Kingdoms breach is in the hands of a government that's controlling who can and can't enter, how are the Ten Thunders getting in? Are they entering Malifaux through the Guild's entrance, or do they control the Three Kingdoms breach? I'd like a more useful version of Nekima, yeah. And maybe now that Sonnia is the demons, Samael can step in and be heroic... anti-heroic... something. Dude's named after Satan, which is why I was slightly surprised when the little bit of his storyline I read portrayed him as less crazy than his boss. Not sure what Cassie or Snow Storm would add as Henchmen though. The Showgirls and the Cult of December are already pretty specific subsets of the Arcanist faction. Are we going to have Cassandra leading the Girls Who Show a Little More Special Forces** while Snow and Storm head the Reformed Cult of December (with Rasputina retaining leadership of the Orthodox Cult of December)? I've got to draw the line there, I'm afraid.:-P *Don't crucify me, I'm poor and can afford either more models or more books, but not both. Wyrd gets more $$$ from me buying models, I think. Going to buy all the books once my degree turns into a decent job, I swear. **As... amusing as this would be, I'd sort of like my hobby to remain something I can discuss in public without getting arrested for scarring some poor child's mind or something. So it's probably better if this doesn't happen.
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