Helm

This new art reveal has made me jump straight onto Ebay, looking for the old sculpt. That's where some of the money I set aside for Gencon will be going. Old Colette wasn't just unique in Malifaux, she was one of the unique drawing points to the game itself; you'd have been hard-pressed to find another miniatures game with stage-magician and burlesque dancer miniatures, let alone the Coryphee. She was similar to the Dreamer and Teddy in that people would stop and have a look when they saw her on the table, and I haven't shown the art and miniatures to a single person without them commenting positively. Chandra in a dull dress really isn't a substitute. I'd be happy with this as an alt miniature, and hopefully this is the case with the artwork jumbled a bit. It's just a real shame to think of this being full-production model played by newcomers to the game, and to think of the potential players passing the gaming table without a second glance.

It's hellish. I've been forced, in the past, to cut the lid off mine with a craft knife and extract the cards that way. I have to superglue the damn thing back every time I put the cards back in the box, and break the seal every time I want them back out. Unacceptable, Wyrd. Unacceptable.

Thanks, that's not something I knew! I suppose it is a possibility that the Doppelganger copying Viktoria was the incompetent one who was forcibly given the short straw. "Who'll we send to attempt to assassinate and replace this trained killer? Who's good enough to take her on with zero support when we know she uses an incredibly rare and powerful magical weapon?" "We haven't a hope, she's got 3 AP to our 2. Just send Bob. Nobody'll miss Bob."

The only bit that I'd like is a Vik of Ashes in the new scale. A trio of giantess Ronin? Whatever, people can be big. Identical twins at different sizes? That's something I'd like a fix for. Apart from the Vik of Ashes, I'm very happy with my misprint set!

"Limited" Upgrades are like any other Upgrade, except that your Master can only take one Limited upgrade at a time. Justice doesn't have a huge number of tricks, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't have depth. Justice's simple capabilities act to bring out the depth in the Malifaux system itself, and she can really play with the head of your opponent. Apart from being the obvious combat piece, you can use Justice as an objective runner. Unlike other hitty models, she's got a Master's 3 AP, so she can move 5" then Charge and steamroller an enemy model. The opponent then has to keep hitting her with more models, because otherwise she'll break out and start moving 15" a turn to earn you VPs from things like Breakthrough. She's also useful as a denial piece. If you sit her near the back of your Crew around a vital spot, the opponent has to assume that anything they move within 15" or so of her is getting charged by Justice. This often means moving in a single threat and getting wiped out, or moving in more threats which leaves them thinner on other parts of the board. This does require you to do some outactivating and your countercharge could get countercharged, but it's still very intimidating against people who don't like losing vital models. Finally, remember that you have a Crew. Just because justice is your Master, it doesn't mean that the tricks need to originate from her. Instead of Justice moving models about, it's fine to have the Judge pulling Justice away from enemy countercharges.

She gets stronger the fewer SS the game is. Remember, enemies get punished severely for either going first or last while in 3" of her. In smaller games of 5-6 models, she can team up with Pandora to paralyse enemies using Incite and then wander over to other models late in the turn to potentially damage them. It can be really devastating.

The second time in three days that I've been pointed in the direction of Justin's blog. I suppose I ought to start reading it! I'd absolutely agree that using a pronoun that welcomes women constitutes PR, as does anything that aims to bring in more players. I suppose the point of contention would be whether or not it's "hollow" PR for the purposes of money or an effort to change behaviour for the purposes of social change. Either way, I'm happy to have more people playing in greater varieties. Good luck with your exam too.

Just finished listening today, and had an absolute whale of a time. The most instructional, informative and enjoyable episode I've heard from you, and the three-person format worked out really well too. Loxley, not that I'm particularly knowledgeable about the subject, but I think that Wyrd had some reasoning behind their decision to have the pronoun "she" used throughout the rulebook. At the minute, "they" is not a gender-neutral work in wargaming; the average wargamer isn't female, so "they" or "their" is going to conjure the image of a man. Leaning towards welcoming women specifically is a solid decision from both business and equality standpoints, as the split isn't anywhere close to 50/50 and more female players doesn't mean losing male players. Ultimately, the very fact that the use of the word "she" leads to disappointment from some and praise from others while "he" does not indicates that "they" is likely not going to be perceived as gender-neutral. All in all, though, I really enjoyed the whole discussion and especially the various tangents. You've got an excellent balance with Bill and I'm hoping that he gets invited back.

I can guarantee that your post was not the only one complaining about Nexus. Perhaps the only dedicated thread, but certainly not the only post. And Nexus didn't need to be "heavily abused" to be good; it paid for itself the first time someone used a SS in its area of effect (since 1 ss prevents around 2 dg anyway). The benefits were easy to reap and provided a solid defensive bonus, which is why I'm concerned about the effect that a downgrade will have upon balance. Perhaps there wasn't a big noise about it within each report, but any battle where a) Nexus was present and 2SS were used in its area of effect was actively benefiting from Nexus from a Wounds perspective. I'm willing to bet that that's a *lot* of playtesting.

Thanks a lot for pointing this out. Hearing about the details makes me feel better about the rapid change. That said, Nexus was part of the environment in which Neverborn were balanced, and Justin seems to believe that it was a must-take Upgrade. That means that changing Nexus affects the balance of the faction as a whole, and the change has taken place after public playtesting has been completed. Are there going to be more Faction-wide Upgrades? Having confirmed that this kind of Upgrade hasn't been playtested sufficiently in the past and is influential enough to have a card changed immediately after release, will Wave 2 Upgrades be getting attention earlier than planned?

Thank you for pointing that out, I'd never considered it that way. I'm not sure that the influence upon level of general offence will be as great as the effect upon the Neverborn defense. I mean, offensively speaking, any given Faction will be most likely to be facing a Faction that will not have access to Nexus; meanwhile, every Neverborn Crew will have access to Nexus for defense. I'm also not really a fan of the idea of Wave 2 being less offensively powerful than Wave 1. This does make me feel better, though, knowing it's not as simple as all that.

This isn't really what I meant. Certainly no particular model could only be viable with Nexus, however its effect on Neverborn as a whole was significant; if it wasn't, Wyrd wouldn't be changing it right out of the gate. Neverborn in the public playtesting got much more bang for their Soulstone while using Nexus of Power. SS users with defensive deficiencies could do well if positioned close to a Nexus carrier, and I believe that many playtest results reflected this. My worry isn't for any particular model, but rather that the Neverborn were balanced with Nexus in mind. Take away Nexus, and you lower the Wave 1 models' defenses. If Wave 2 is balanced with new Nexus in mind, they will have better defensive abilities than Wave 1 models. It's just a little close to Book 1 vs 2 for my liking. A new group of models balanced for higher performance than the initial group.

My main concern is the effect that the cuddle will have on the rest of the faction. I know that all of my playtesting has been done with the old Nexus in mind, and imagine that this has been the case for a lot of other peoples' testing. Candy felt very effective for me when she held Nexus and tied down groups of enemies; can she do this any more? How about Taelor/Nexus? Is Aura of Decay going to be as good now that it doesn't have to counter Nexus? While I'm very happy with this release in general, this kind of last-minute errata makes me worry a little about Wyrd. Is there someone who could suggest, in a very general way, whether or not this got significant internal playtesting while the faction models were being balanced? Because the wasted external playtesting is a real shame in my opinion. That being said, at least we get to take the effect into account for Wave 2. Nekima and Widow Weaver in particular will have their effectiveness changed for me. I just hope we don't see a Book 2 syndrome again now that Wave 2 will be balanced post-cuddle.

Have you seen what's happening with Dreamer? Because if it's movement tricks you're after, it seems to be a Crew built around Pushing Nightmares around 5" a pop. Combine this with some of the difficulties he has in summoning bigger models, and he may have a slew of hidden tricks that need a steady hand to reveal. I know he's still in beta and still may carry some of the old stigma, but I'm hoping that we'll see something very interesting when he comes out.

Even better, print the beta Dreamer cards for free and give him a pin now. Would be good to get the perspective of a new Malifaux player using Dreamer, and since it's a public beta your feedback will get taken into account as they adjust the models.

And I can't get in *goddamnit*. Wyrd really does love to twist the knife!

Heard about Malifaux on D6 Generation and found myself looking at a bunch of the boxes in the local gaming shop. This was when Book 2 was new. Didn't see much in the boxes to inspire me at the time, but picked up the Dreamer in order to have something to try the game with. Then I saw the Doppelganger, asked if she could go with Dreamer, bought her without waiting for a reply and decided that I loved the game.

This. Nexus of Power is a little crazy, especially since Ml and Sh damage against Huggy ais halved but his prevention and healing are not. And if you're so desperate to play Huggy, you will likely be playing Neverborn; it's the only way he can take Beckoners.

Not to mention that every wave 2 will have far more models that it can interact with. The number of possible model combinations increases pretty much exponentially as you add more models in a Faction.

All the OP asked for was It's okay. It's really okay.

I think that this pretty much defines the problem, assuming that a problem does exist. We're playing a miniatures game where we put models down and play games with them. Malifaux is well-known for being a character-based game, but ultimately it's a game and not a novel. Even with the wealth of fluff we have, a lot of people who play don't actually buy every big rulebook and read up on every character. Even if they *did* do that, you're never going to find a detailed background for Joss or Kade or Yamaziko; anyone who's not a Master gets a few lines beside their stat card and gets to turn up in the occasional story. We still don't know basic facts such as how Viktoria got her hands on the Masamune and how the damn thing works; going indepth into cultural details isn't possible in the current scope of the game. To get characters to *feel* fleshed-out on the table and in the fluff requires a preexisting framework, and stereotypes are extremely useful in that regard. Once we know about Zoraida being a voodoo witch or Nicodem being a gentleman undertaker, we've got 70% of the character's life sorted out and their personality can ably fill the other 20% or so. As an aside, if you want a really fleshed-out cultural setting, take a look at Battletech. It'll take you a while, because the fluff for that game has been building for years, and it goes to the extent of having many Battletech novels and an old cartoon series. That's the kind of effort you need to pump in to resolve these issues within the setting of a tabletop game, and I'm not sure Wyrd has the resources for that.

Actually, from the 7th till the official release date your models' value will be greatly enhanced. The public beta will be going on, which means that the games you play with your models and your playgroup won't disappear in the wind; you can use your feedback and game design experience to make positive changes to the game. Once the rules are out officially, you're not going to be able to make the same kind of impact on the game. How is a public beta not helping guarantee that players' investments are not being provided for? I love Lady Justice. Earlier in the public beta, there were issues with her. Along with other people, I got to make suggestions for improvement and now I'm getting to see those improvements in print. "Converting to plastic" has got nothing to do with it; there is a slow public examination of the rules for the betterment of the game in general, which to me seems like the ethical route to take.

I refer you to FUHATSU, GREATEST HERO OF THE TEN THUNDERS. Honestly, I'm thinking of going TT just for the sake of that guy. On a more serious note: I'd argue that Wyrd has done a pretty careful and thorough job when it comes to racial representation. They've always made it clear that the game is all about mashing together strong themes and stereotypes. We have the fat rich white overlords coupled with powerful personal wizardry, the inherent cuteness of a teddy bear coupled with monstrous strength and a hideous appearance, and the Old West coupled with Asian themes. This isn't actually a new thing at all; there was a lot of back-and-forth between Westerns and the films of the likes of Kurosawa. Seven Samurai got remade in Western form as the Magnificent Seven, with the blessings of the original creator. The last book I read on kendo featured a Japanese swordsman and teacher who had taken part in real duels, and he pointed out some of the parallels between ancient Japan and the Old West. However, Malifaux is a bad place filled with bad people. We have incredibly callous, unhinged and corruptible individuals in this game, and there are white male creators steering the fluff. Without making any judgement on the ethics of the situation, I'd suggest that one reason for the Asian themes to be so separately Asian is to keep them away from more negative stereotypes. On the white male side of things, we have Seamus, Nicodem and McMourning, who are obviously monsters. Lucius is clearly far from being a good guy. Ramos is simply a manipulative political who wants more than his already-considerable power. The bureaucracy of the Guild is pretty hideous. On the TT side of things, however, Misaki is struggling to act with honour despite crushing family responsibility, and is coming into her own power. Yan Lo is a respected elder who works using Ancestors more than simply undead slaves. Mei Feng is portrayed sympathetically. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but you won't find many hateful characters who aren't in the creators' (and let's face it, the majority of the players') own social group. While I can't speak for the fluffwriters, I'd say that these kinds of decisions have been reasonably conscious. ---------- Post added at 06:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:44 PM ---------- Sorry MEP for ajy offense due to fuhatsu allcaps, was typing as you posted. An on puone on train now so cannot post properly, but believe that Fuhatsu is a positive character overall.

In 1.5, Hoffman could always take Coppellius. It's well-known that Hoffman is pretty much entirely under Lucius' control. (I know, I know, there's the whole name thing. But I'm desperately hoping that they're the same guy.)

Lady J gives some buffs to her Crew when she kills people. She is very good at killing people. Judge, meanwhile, is very solid in combat. Whenever my regular opponent plays him, though, he ends up dashing around pulling Lady J out of bad situations or bringing other Death Marshals closer in. Another way to use Lady J is just to have her hang around at the back being intimidating. Your opponent knows that anything that moves within 14" of her (5" move, 7" charge, 2" sword) is likely going to get killed. This means that if they have a model that they intend to use for scoring or assassinating a particular model, they'll probably be wary about letting it near Justice.