Ciroth

Hodgepodge Effigy seems like an interesting choice if you are using Collodi. With all the paired attacks and Levi's card mechanics, seems like you could really burn through a deck in a turn and could get some benefit out of seeing jokers turn back up.

I think I mixed up poison with burning tokens. You're right. Colette, Death Marshal, Stitched, Soul Stone Miner, Nicodem Avatar, and Dreamer stuff, run afoul of the "unbury once per turn" idea. With Dreamer, I knew this would happen, but didn't care as their are other ways to get the buried model back on a different turn. With other crews, you could end up with no way of getting a buried model back because there is no uniform phase when buried models return. Even if you added "Unless otherwise stated by spells or effects, all models may choose to unbury at the start of the turn," you'd still have issues with stuff like Death Marshals dying and pulling buried models back. Plus, the rules start getting cumbersome. I will admit that the "unbury once per turn" idea was an attempt to include some of the other ideas in this thread. So, maybe that idea needs to be set aside. Has anyone thought through the implications of having bury wipe a models clean and remove everything but wounds on the model? Or having a buried model brought back into play recieve slow?

Just taking a quick stab at things how about: "While buried, a model is out of play, but still in the game and effects on the model, including Wd it has suffered or on going Spells, resolve as normal. While buried, a model which is killed or sacrificed is removed from the game along with any counters it carries or would generate. A buried model returns to play when an effect allows it to do so, but may only return to play once per turn." I'm sure this would create some issues if there are objective counters that a model has but is killed while buried. Perhaps killing a models while burying it with poison would become very powerful, but that seems like it would take a lot to make that happen on a regular basis.

Has anyone tried to use the raptors for their cheap corpse counters? I have been trying to find ways to use them with the Spawn Mother or the Blessed of December. I was thinking you take Spawn Mother, Jackalope, raptor, and Silurids to taste. Smack the Jackalope for 1 counter. Smack the Raptor for +2 (3 total so far). Jackalope comes back. Get the spawning pool in a fun spot and all of a sudden you have 2 Gupps and an annoying piece of terrain that can keep summoning Gupps. Not to mention the extra movement that the spawning pool provides gives a pretty huge radius that your Silurids can effect things. I guess I see it as kind of a big tar pit (both of models and terrain) that you can run Marcus through to get away. If you kill a Gupps, they drop 2 corpse counters and their should be enough Silurids around to make sure those counters get to the pool by the end of the turn to be summoned again. Essentially, any Raptors could be converted into Gupps once they had done their job as objective grabbers or whatever. Just some thoughts

I always thought that the imps from Wyrd's "Twisted" line would be great models for them.

I will start off by saying that I am a little biased in my opinion, but I have been waiting for a game like Puppet Wars to come out for a very long time. I don't know anyone that has watched Star Wars and seen the chess scene and not gone "wow, that would be cool!" Puppet Wars is like Malifaux chess. Everything may start out on Zoraida's workbench, but thematically I don't think it is a huge step that the citizens of Malifaux would embrace a board game about fighting puppets. For many, the masters of Malifaux are already seen as kings and queens and their henchmen as pawns. I digress, but my overall point and the point of my suggestions, is that Malifaux is a great world and where a lot of things fit and as such, I would really like to see Wyrd embrace some cross promotion of games. With that premise, here are things I would love to see: 1. More Puppets: The themes, art, and mechanics are already done in Malifaux. It would be crazy to not work them into Puppet Wars. Plus, people initially are going to want to take their favorite Malifaux crew into Puppet wars and vise versa. Besides, more puppets equal more options and more options equal more fun. 2. Puppet Theme Boxes: As a miniature game, people are going to want to customize what they play with. Other people have hit it right on the head. Theme boxes would allow people to get the extras they want and lower the start up cost for a new player. I will state it again, initally people are going to want to see a translation of their Malifaux crew. There is no reason not to promote that until players learn the benefits of drawing from all the puppets. Starting with a theme box provides those fun moments where a new player can go up against something they don't have and if they like it, go an buy that theme box. 3. 3D Terrain, Modular Boards, Bigger Hexes: The benifits of 3D terrain has already been talked about, they look great and alot of people (like myself) have looked into building their own. I'd also love to see some other terrian types. Modular boards promote innovation, as sizes and shapes of the game can be changed. Bigger hexes promote 3D terrain and modular systems, but they also have the benefit of cross promotion. Bigger hexes mean bigger models will fit into them, which means Malifaux models will fit. Now a new or experienced Malifaux player can take his crew directly into a game of Puppet Wars. It is a lot easier to justify some extra purchases for your Puppet War game or you Malifaux crew if it can pull extra duty. It is also a lot easier to sucked into buying another batch of modles :-) For the people that have been looking to a solution for individual models, you have it while not needing to increase your SKU numbers. 4. Schemes of Event Deck: One of the greatest things Wyrd did is came up with games that promoted something other than kill your opponent until they are dead. Adding schemes to Puppet Wars adds a lot of depth to the game and promotes some of the best mechanics of Wyrd's other game. Puppet Wars can do a lot as a gateway game into Malifaux mechanics. The opposite can be said of Malifaux being a gateway into Puppet Wars. The idea being that you already have card draw combat, why not include objective/scheme based things to make transitioning between the games more seemless. 5. Promotion of Variant Game Types: While my other suggestions have purposefully been to cross promote Puppet Wars with Malifaux, it is the ability to adopt different game modes that Puppet Wars shines and truely differentiates itself. The mechanics of the scrap pile, workbench spawn points, playing on a game board, all really lend themselves to innovation and adoption of other games that make use of these mechanics. Some examples being: a) Capture the Flag: Grab a marker and run it back to a base. Infinite spawns, workbenches work as spawn points. (Inspired by WoW battle grounds) Take and hold: Similar to Capture the Flag but based on turns you can control an objective(s) getting you points c) DOTA / League of Legends Inspired: Any model killed drops stuffing counters which can be picked up by models. All models get the ability to use their action to teleport back to a workbench and turn in their stuffing counters for upgrades. Once a workbench is taken, it is destroyed. When all of an opponents workbenches are destroyed the game ends. Maybe toss in some random neutral puppets that drop buffs or can be killed for extra stuffing. d) Puppet Ball / Football / Soccer: Similar to capture the flag, but with rules for throwing/passing the counter. Heck, with a couple of quick rules you could have a game that could compare to Bloodbowl. Require a certian number of puppets on the "line." Any puppet reduced to zero stitches is "knocked down" and can't do anything until healed. All puppets heal back to full at the end of a turn. Maybe include rules that you can spend a stitch to disengage or a stitch to move an additional square. e) PvE: I would love to see some rule about Puppet vs. Environment games. Very funny idea about a bunch of puppets fighting a Cat or a Rat. In the end, the sum of these ideas is to get some sort of official promotion of a game type that the community could potentially go nuts with. I think this sums up a lot of my most immediate ideas. I'm sure I'll add more as I come up with them. Sorry about the wall of text.

As a new player this thread has been very informative and a lot of fun to read. I can't help but wonder however, if defining a game/tournament format would be helpful? It seems that a lot of the perceived balance of masters is dependent upon open vs. closed lists. With no defined standard, I can see how it would be hard to make tiers. Unlike Magic the Gathering (only as an example) there is no defined system that players use as a base for their competitive assumptions. As a side note, my local area has run some tournaments using a sort of magic deck plus side board system. A fixed list and caster with up to half the points in a set sideboard of models. Extra soul stone are listed and transferable. Players would know opposing masters before the round began and could side board in models. All the games seemed to be close and kept model count manageable for new players that couldn't afford an entire faction.