Malicte

While this statement is true, there's a problem with it in that, when you select crews, the only information you're going to *definitely* have is opponent's faction. Sometimes your opponent will say, "Hey I'm gonna play Kirai" or "I'm gonna try Yan Lo and spirits, that sounds neat!" and then hey, great, bring NB. But if my opponent declares "Ressers" I can pretty much assure you I'm not guessing on the maybe 2.5/7 chance they'll run a ton of spiritis.

One thing I don't see a lot of discussion here on, or at least not as much as there should be, is 10T units outside of Master box sets. Toshiro, Kang, Torakage, etc. come up in every conversation. But I don't see as much talk about Katanaka Snipers, or Tengu, or other minions. Might be interesting to get more information on them into the discussion.

I think I saw Lone Swordsman art recently, so he's probably not super far off. He's very, very good.

If you're not looking to buy another master box set, Lone Swordsman looks like a good buy. Fuhatsu is probably a good fit as well. Oiran if you're not already using them.

One thing to keep in mind when choosing 10T vs Arcanists as well is that Mei can be remarkably effective as an Arcanist with a relatively small number of units. Metal Gamin, Mech Rider, Howard, Coryphee, and you're 9/10ths of the way to just about anything you want her to do. As 10T, to be really, truly, effective, you need to have access to a lot more of the model range. 10T have a lot of options and their strength as a faction lies in being able to tailor themselves to the strategy using those options. Obviously having those options means *buying* them, and that adds up. Fast.

There are a couple of 40ish stone lists run by henchmen that are remarkably effective. Dashel plus a guild gunline, or a neph grow list led by Barbaros, for example. I've also seen good success with a Toshiro-led summoner list. But generally no, you're going to be at a disadvantage against the same list led by a master.

I will very probably just set the 30mm bases of my current proxies into a 40mm base, tack it down, and play on. I had been wondering how they were going to get the one on the table into a 30mm base.

Good catch on the front page art, I hadn't seen it. That does seem to be the new A&D and it looks pretty.

Karina is very definitely inadequate in my mind, and a lot of other people have pointed out reasons as to why. Now, I like Tara as a master alone. I think she has a lot of neat tricks, though I'd definitely shuffle around some abilities between her card and various upgrades to be in a better place and make her a little less upgrade-mandatory. Wretches are very solid units for 4 stones, and I use them in many of my outcast crews. The sticking point for me is the Nothing beast. 10 stones for a 3 AP model is a good start. He's an enforcer, which in faction draws a pretty quick comparison to Bishop. Ok, fine. 3 AP is admittedly very good and he has the possibility to dump out a lot of damage, particularly if you drop him out at the end of a turn and then win initiative. That said, what the NB brings to a crew is killy. This is a fine thing to bring and many very excellent models do so. However, when you look at a minimum damage of 2 combined with Tara's own pretty heavy need for mid-high cards to fuel her abilities, it can actually be difficult to put out a worthy amount of damage for cost. If you hit weak damage 3 times, you may or may not kill 5-6 stone models. You won't kill anything of much value with only 6 wounds. I understand that dropping 21 is also possible, but it's fairly unlikely without holding a very good hand and being willing to spend it. His fragility is one thing. Incorporeal can help, but realistically because Tara really does need to hold a few cards his Df is probably going to be middling, and he is deceptively easy to kill. As a viks player who runs a lot of Bishop, I'm used to this and I accept it. You need to protect those models somehow, and for the NB that's by burying it. Fine. But the fact that it has a weak damage of 2 on a model meant for killing things? That means the NB just isn't going to see the tabletop in a competitive game for me. Not with better, similarly costed options available in faction, both Outcast and Resser.

I could see situations when you'd want 3 of them, but almost all of those situations seem to involve "Reconnoiter" and "Protect Territory". If they don't have to go super far, can sit on some ground and just occupy it with a low SS cost but high cost to remove, they're very effective. If you're scheming otherwise though, i think 10T has some better options to do it. Tengu at a similar pricepoint are less durable but much faster, and at a higher pricepoint Torakage just do everything.

Misaki and Assassinate is almost automatic for me, unless I see a *really* survivable master on the other side of the board, like maybe Leve or Daw. 4 Attacks in a turn is easy to do with Stalk, 5 if you play her Outcasts and use Oath Keeper. With her Ml 7 and recalled training, she should be putting out minimum 8 damage to whatever target she's going in on, and you'll of course save your cards to use with her. As long as you have a crow in hand you can stone for a crow to threaten assassinate, forcing the opponent to play more conservatively with their resources. As mentioned above, when you start to drain resources like this for a crew that *really* needs high cards or specific suits to work, like summoners, this is almost enough damage already even if you don't put them down. Misaki's also actually on the more durable side of the master spectrum. Decent Df and Wp, 12 wounds, bulletproof, misdirection, her movement tricks all add up to her taking a lot of resources to put down. Add in Shang's healing, since he often is overlooked by enemies, and even if she doesn't quite finish the job off one of your other units can, and Misaki's burned enough of the opponent's resources in cards, stones, and ap, that you may have won the game elsewhere. Obviously anecdotes only go so far but my last Misaki game I had her personally put down Ramos, Howard, and the Rail Golem and still end the game on 9/12 wounds. This is a solid game for her but not especially outside the norm.

I think your go to models for mobility are Terror Tots for Neverborn and Torakage for 10T, as mentioned above. You really aren't gonna do a lot better at stone cost on either side, and neither model will let you down.

Sounds like a neat idea, but I'm always somewhat wary of Wastrels due to a couple of sticking points on their stats. They're not durable enough to actually survive a swing from true "hitty" models like Howard, Nekima, etc. Their Ml and Sh are not especially impressive, and so they may have a hard time actually dropping anything with a reasonable defense. I'd be interested in seeing it, though.

I usually see two different types of Misaki: Killy Misaki (aka stalking bisento), if you think you can score based on killing one or two models, almost regardless of what they are, this is often the way to go. Assassinate, Murder Protege, Reckoning, Make Them Suffer all work very well here. The second type is as mentioned above, misdirection and disguise. With the ability to freely move out of melee, inability to be charged, and misdirect, plus bulletproof, Misaki is nearly impossible to remove for any reasonable amount of effort. This can be used when she needs to hold some ground and anchor a point (such as Squatter's Rights or Turf War) to great effect. Also, and I can't recommend them enough, Torakage are the best thing since sliced bread. Use them, teleport them, love them.

That said you will probably have several 6 stone models, so it shouldn't be a huge hassle to keep anchors around with a little effort.

Very glad to see Nathan's thoughts here on this. It's always awesome to see a game's developers engaged with the community at this level. I too think it's a bit overdone in a number of other minis games, and I'm somewhat glad it's not a major theme in Malifaux.

Went ahead and posted in your friend's thread with some advice. May be worth keeping in mind as a Lynch player yourself.

As a (generally former) Lynch player, there's a couple of things to keep in mind as potential counters. 1) Negate Brilliance. The ability requires Brilliance to work, and while Lynch can (fairly easily) provide Brilliance with Play For Blood, that takes one of his valuable AP. If he also has to move out of that cover he's tucked away in to get LoS, he's down to one cast. Easier said than done, but it's always something to keep in mind about the crew. 2) Woke Up is dependent on Lynch actually *having a hand*. He gets 2 cards if he's activating last, which is certainly possible, but it requires the Lynch player to adhere to a pretty strict activation order restriction, and that's something you can take advantage of. Furthermore, if your opponent is holding cards to power up this ability, he's *not* spending them to cheat fate. This means that you might have the advantage on the rest of the turn in other places. In this case, it pays to be aggressive. 3) Lynch's range for his abilities isn't *super* long. He really likes to be within 8" of a target. That's close enough that a melee model of yours may be able to get in his face, and he's deceptively fragile. 4) This comes up a lot, but make sure there's enough terrain on your table. You want to cover around 1/3rd of the table in terrain, which should provide plenty of LoS breaks. Breaking LoS can force Lynch to come to you, or at least waste crew AP setting up the ability, which somewhat negates its overall usefulness. If Lynch fires it off three times in his activation with a big hand, he could do 8+ a shot and hand 25 damage or more out himself. If he's spent some AP moving into line of sight, and handing out Brilliance, he's down to one cast and maybe at a lower damage value. 5) It may be useful to know what crew(s) and master(s) you often play. I (or others) may be able to provide some specific advice on counter play. 6) Does your opponent play 10 Thunders Lynch or Neverborn Lynch? It matters, and once again I can provide better info on counter play knowing that.

It's something we've discussed at a bit of length in my local meta, though not had a chance to try yet on account of our Mei player not having that many 10T models. You've correctly identified a lot of the synergy available, and it's definitely very valuable. It's all certainly viable. What I think makes 10T most interesting as a faction, though, and what I think a successful 10T player needs to do to some degree or another, is to take advantage of the abilties of other factions. Mei can use scrap counters to railwalker, and her crew will certainly leave them as they die off, since she likes constructs. Why not Toshiro? He'll buff your minions, he's a solid model in and of himself, and he lets you summon on a relatively easy cast off of both corpse and scrap. As you've mentioned, Komainu are very solid and the Emberling can drop scrap to get that engine rolling. Toshiro will more than like pay for himself this way (although it requires some mid to high cards) in addition to what he brings on his own. Yin brings the abilitiy to target WP and bring fear abilities, plus control, in a way that Mei might have some difficulty getting access to. Not bad to be able to hit more than one defense. Shadow Effigy can help keep Mei alive in melee with its (0), and can provide a little bit of scheming tricks that she might lose leaving Arcanists. Sensei Yu unfortunately doesn't have any awesome (0)s to copy off of Mei unless she's bringing Hard Worker, which may or may not be a super great idea. That said, he can spread burning, help move your units around, and generally make himself useful wherever you put him. Lone Swordsman is an interesting replacement for, say, Howard, if you're after a way to accomplish Assassinate or Murder Protege away from Mei. Kamaitachi pushes friendlies around and spreads burning, but may not compare well to Emberling. Tengu make a good scheme runner and are equivalent to Molemen in many ways. Katanaka Snipers bring a (very) long ranged threat that the crew can often lack, and synergize well with Mei since she's in melee and may or may not survive the end of the game. You might get that Reactivate out of them.

Not even. If I'm bringing a ranged damage unit in such a crew I'm probably bringing it to do something well away from where the melee ball is. If it's in the melee ball, just let melee handle it. So if we're turf warring or something, rather than fire into melee, why not just bring another 7ish stone melee model? I hear Punk Zombies are nice this time of year. 10T actually has no shortage of options in that stone range, though. And if you're bringing a ranged unit to attempt to affect something outside of the melee ball, say, pick off enemy scheme runners, I like many of the other options at the same price point more.

Can't wait. Dates are marked.

The way I figure, it can be hard to count on LoS alone for back alley. Having a pair of 50 mil based constructs standing next to each other covers a lot of that for you.

Anyone up for a game tonight between about 6:30 and 11 PM Eastern time?

Which, incidentally, comes out to Leve, Avatar, 4 Riders, and 2 Waifs at exactly 50 stones.

You won't go wrong with his vanilla crew. It can cover nearly everything you'd ever want. Killjoy is great. If you're just looking for some of his pool and not all, you'd probably want to pick Undead or Construct and focus that way, depending on what your collection already looks like. Keep in mind that a number of undead he likes (Necropunks, Flesh Constructs) are Constructs as well. Seeing a Leve-based puppet list has hilarity written all over it, though I'm not sure how effective it would truly be, it would certainly win for the sake of amusement. I think there's a lot to be said to looking at other master's crew lists and just *running them with Leveticus*. This is basically possible for the entire Resser faction. There's probably potential for an asian-themed Leve list that runs Kirai's spirits, Toshiro, summons Komainu and Ashigaru, hires in Torakage, etc. In fact, I'm curious enough about that one to see if I can make it work myself.