Trevelyan

So Levi should be with us shortly, and the new minis look pretty good. I'll be up a box even though I have a full Levi crew already and look forward to ending my Malifaux hiatus. One thing troubles me, though; the box by itself looks far from playable. I understand that we are getting a fair few minis (9 in total) which is as much as a box can reasonably hold, but Levi needs more crew than the box contains. In the days of 1E (and 1.5), my FLGS ran several tournaments for beginners based on the starter boxes alone (sometimes with one extra pack for variety). Is Levi valid in that format going forwards? Do Levi's additional hiring requirements mean tat he is less valid as a starter master than many others?

That is not dead, etc! Mostly I've been biding time with other minis games while I wait for the 2E boxed sets for the masters that I want to run. A few of my regular opponants are in a similar situation. That siad the recent arrival of Through the Breach has people excited, so I'll probably be turning my attention towards Malifaux in the near future.

I've been taking a hiatus from Malifaux while I waited for Levi 2.0 to appear. Sad to see he didn't make the Gencon announcements, but the cards are at least something, and I do have a full Levi crew to keep me going until the v2 minis land. Have people been getting some playtime in with Levi since the playtest? How is he doing?

Nice tactica. It's good to see that Levi is still getting some love after his incredibly difficult M2E birth.

Given what we went through to get here I don't think it is that bad. Unnatural Wasting is a lot of faff for limited benefit. It would have been simpler to just have the half damage on the rams trigger without needing the half damage. Given that Levi is likely to have a positive flip on most damage flips anyway it won't be that unusual to have at least a straight flip once defence is considered for a good change of naturally getting a 6+ and the option to cheat when required. In most cases you are only gaining a point or two of damage if that, and plenty of targets are worse off facing a normal Unmaking than Unnatural Wasting. It is cheap, but also niche and still only really an option if you aren't planning to take a Pariah upgrade. Other than that there is nothing that stands out as odd.

Lots of fun discussion about our favourite pervy old man. I feel that I should point out that I never suggested or intended to imply that Levi was an advanged master or that the tactics required to beat him should involve clever trickery which only experienced players can handle. I draw a distinction between "good" and "experienced" (nand equally between "bad" and "inexperienced"). A good Malifaux player is one who recognises that VPs are the win condition and that killing the opposing crew varies between one method of winning among many and a complete distraction. I won a lot more games of Malifau in 1E/1.5E than I lost and in a lot of those cases it wasn't a case of me skillfully outplaying the opposition, but rather the opposition deciding to get into some grudge match and target my crew while leaving me free to skip about and score VPs. Beating Levi should take as much skill as beating any other master. But recognising that Malifaux has never had an assassination victory option, and that M2E downplays the value of straight out killing the opposition even more than the first edition should be a prerequisite for having your views in the beta taken seriously. The game should be balanced around the ability to score VPs. Being immortal doesn't directly help Levi score if he does nothing with it, and doesn't prevent the opposition from scoring either. It isn't the major balance isue that some people seem to think it is. What mattes is how much Levi can accomplish each turn while he lives. If Levi lives but wastes his entire time summoning minions which can't achieve much then Levi doesn't score and looses the game. The trick isn't to kill Levi but to neuter him. That said... I agree on the theme, but the caveat there is that Levi's entire crew tends towards low level entropic damage which doesn't necessariy result in enemy kills. Without any other obvious means of manipulating markers, etc (see the sort of stuff the Lucius can pull these days) killing targets (not necessarily masters) Levi needs to be able to remove a model or two per turn to prevent the enemy blitzing the VPs before they die.

I wrote pages on why Levi wasn't working in the last round of playtesting. As a long term Levi player I was pleased to discover that Wyrd recognised he still needed a lot of work and are taking the time to get it right. If he hasn't progressed from the last version we saw in the last couple of months then I'll be disappointed. But the real problem was that Wyrd wasted a lot of time listening to the wrong people in the first wave of playtests - when the Levi players are telling you that something is broken beyond redemption and the Levi opponents are insisting that it only needs a slight tweak then you don't waste three weeks of a six week playtest trying to tweak it, you remove it and start dealing with the other issues that the Levi players are concerned about. The final playtest verison of Levi was a lot more viable than the original version, but still had a lot of issues. I'm not going to rehash them all here unless there has been no more progress (in which case it'll be worth raising them again as part of the playtest feedback). EDIT: Anyone complaining that they can't easily kill Levi is a prime example of the sort of feedback that can be safely ignored. Levi has always been hard to kill in the hands of a good player, but a good opponent should realise that killing Levi isn't the goal. M2E is even more focused on scoring VPs than M1E was, and killing Levi is a distraction from that. The problems with Levi in the last playtest revolved around the summoning balance, the distribution of core abilities over cards and the fact that the Wiafs didn't seem to know what their role was. Among other things.

With great regret, I can't make it either. Am in the process of moving house and weekends are proving increasingly precious. Normal service will resume once things settle.

I play Levi and this pretty much represents my view. But as the guy on the Levi side of the table I am painfully aware of his limitations and the ways that people could easily undermine my plans. My advantage is that most players seem eager to play to my strengths. Although I have never played as a Resser (Nico idles on my to-do list after I raided his box for parts), I have used plenty of undead minions and I imagine that Levi's attrition style is not dissimilar to that of the Ressers - gradually tearing down opposing minions and using them for spare parts so an initially small crew greatly outnumbers the opposition by Turn 3. In that situation, the people who lose the swiftest are always those who continue to throw minions at me and ignore their own Strategy and Schemes. You can't beat someone who can turn your own minions into cannon fodder to use against you by providing them with more cannon fodder. People who are slow to learn this deserve to be beaten hard and often. In the context of this thread, I personally find ressers laughably easy to defeat, but bless them for trying.

I don't fear Pandora because I play Hamelin is probably not a good defence against the suggestion that Pandora is a problem (even with post-errata Hammy). Personally I don't fear Pandora because I can call on the services of the delightful Ms Ortega, although she doesn't trouble my Levi crew much either.

I second Ashes & Dust. Levi shouldn't leave home without him.

What exactly is it about my warty green armour that offends you?

You don't really want to be shoving Hammy in someone's face most of the time anyway, if you can help it. Hammy can handle himself, but he works best as a a threatening support caster churning out spells to render the opposing crew insignificant. Remember that the aim in Malifaux isn't to kill the opposing crew but to score VPs from your Strategy and Schemes, and to prevent the other crew from doing the same. Hamelin specialises in denial against most other crews (some crews do have ways around being made insignificant and therefore require a different approach). Using Hammy as a beat stick doesn't play to his strengths. As for actually killing Hammy, there are plenty of masters and minions who can do the job if necessary, especially post errata - those Stolen aren't just for show. Running Hammy too far forward and hoping that the Stolen will keep him alive is risky if you face someone who has the capacity to take out the stolen with Burst damage and whack Hammy himself hard. I can think of a few candidates for that. Having 8 soulstones will obviously prolong Hammy's life and make the entire tactic a waste of time for your opponent, which is why they wouldn't bother, but that is a huge resource sink and a canny player will just ignore you and go off to score their own VPs and win while you keep trying to chase them down with the rat swarm.

Only if you are playing against a complete moron or total newbie. Attacking Hammy when he is accompanied by a full entourage of Stolen isn't soething that anyone who knows the crew will fall for, and 8 soulstones should be enough to warn off anyone who doesn't.

Conversely, if you are winning in a duel without the right suit for a trigger and the other player does not cheat in a higher card then you are free to cheat in a lower card yourself with the right suit for the trigger (as long as you still win the duel with the lower card, if necessary). That is why it sometimes pays to cheat in a card when losing even if you cannot win.