Aramasu

I'm curious as to whether it's worth taking on McCabe, given his penchant for returning soulstones with the right triggers.

I look at our generic upgrades, then look at Imbued Energies and Oathkeeper and get incredibly sad. Expert Sleuth looks like a great movement trick against a scheme heavy crew, though. I've tried putting it on some of the slower melee brutes like the Executioner to some success.

I use him less for his +1 Willpower aura and more for the ability to filter out bad cards from your hand. If you're being cautious with your advance on turn one or want to improve your hand quality, using Defensive Stance to milk out your worst cards and then filling back up with the Scales can be very useful.

The Judge with a Brutal Effigy is excellent as well. He's already extremely difficult to take down while being flexible with no particular stand-out weaknesses. Tossing a little healing on top of that can be great. He'll speed up your beatstick of choice, hits quite hard, and can easily tie up tougher models or take them out all on his lonesome.

I think it's an interesting pocket tactic to have, but doing it more than once a game will become extremely costly. For games where you want to deny Blasts/Pulses, your totem will be fairly valuable to begin with and none of Hoffman's models are clearly expendable in comparison to the other Construct masters since he can't summon more of them. In a pinch it's nice, but I would see it more as a 'in a bad situation, need to recover quickly' strategy than anything else. Nonetheless, Joss is boss with Hoffman so it's definitely useful! Now if only I could feel like Hoffman was a top tier master again... <.<

Haha, yeah, his effectiveness as a tar pit isn't in dispute for me. It's just moreso 'is it worth the 8 points for this tarpit' and the answer is probably yes. Like I said for everything, I really do want to get more games in with both models that I'm disputing. The Lone Marshal in particular seems like a great way to pick off other scheme runners and make some lategame schemes happen.

For the Guardian: While this is true (and I do love the mini for him!) the feeling that damage isn't so much mitigated as given a higher chance for avoidance makes me worried about whether the eight stones are really worth it for the model. I'd really have to play with it some more to finish off my opinion, but he IS really nice as a tar pit that's almost impossible to disengage from without blowing a lot of useful resources. Then again, his ability to force friendlies out of melee with that trigger on his shield is pretty sweet looking so... time to give him more playtime and find out, I guess. As for the Lone Marshal, I largely agree. It felt like they wanted to make the Riders are more distinct existence but they couldn't just keep Trick Shooting on the Pale Rider so they threw it as a castoff ability onto another model, put a few useful but not incredible defensive abilities onto him, and then called it a day. The combination of high mobility -and- shooting capacity is nice, but his shooting ability isn't particularly exceptional in a faction that can field terrors like multiple Austringers. I do want to put him on the table once or twice just because his model is sweet, though. Maybe he's more useful as a flanker on earlier turns and an objective grabber on later turns than I thought? Edit: And I'm more than happy to be wrong! I primarily play Guild, so if I'm missing anything about just how good these models are then I'd love to know to improve my own play.

My problem with the Guardian stems from the fact that he doesn't necessarily make you more resilient, which he used to -- he just increases your effective chances of being more resilient. Defensive +2 certainly is a good condition, but it doesn't increase the upper ceiling of your defensive capability so much as make it easier to reach it, which makes him feel extremely lackluster for an 8 point model for me.

I think a pretty safe argument can be made for Austringers, Stalkers, Death Marshals, and Francisco as the first four anyone should have. The fifth model up is up for debate but I hear great things about Sidir. If there's a model that I think is a little overpriced for what it does right now, it's probably the Guardian though.

How well do Hunters do outside of Hoffman crews? And from what it looks like, Stalkers still sound golden for their point cost.

What are the current good general Guild models for combat? I've been playing around with a few Lady Justice lists and while Death Marshals are certainly solid objective grabbers and Pine Box is a great ability, they feel fairly lacking on the combat end of things. Are Witchling Stalkers still the most efficient choice for combat on the lower end of the spectrum as far as Soulstone costs go? Or should I be looking to leave objective grabbing to my lower point models, the Austringer does it all, and then leave combat to my higher point things?

I figured it was a really poor matchup. >: Just going to have to change up masters for it!

From what I understand, he gives it fast with Student of Conflict, keeps line of sight with Viktoria of Ashes and pulls with Sisters in Spirit, then (since I was playing further back to try and avoid it) walked to line up a Charge and three attacks later, Ryle bit dust. The thing that annoys me is that I felt like couldn't do anything about it at all -- he activated his other models first, our strategy was Squatter's Rights so he put his models clearly in position while burning through my relevant activations, and Blood went last so it became a crapshoot of whether I could win initiative for the revenge kill... and even if I succeeded, I would have burned through several good cards just to end up not-really-even with him. Still salty. >_

Yeah, I just played against them again tonight and this time took a bigger group of beefier models to have a chance of duking it out and even though I barely advanced my crew, I just had to sit there and buff up while he moved his Ronin, Taelor, and other models around to actually get in position for objectives... and Viktoria of Blood STILL jumped across the board and managed to one-activation-kill Ryle barely inches away from my deployment zone. I've never played a matchup so frustrating where I feel like I have zero chance of winning. If we keep trading models in combat, it's trading game where I already start with fewer models if I want to have a chance of fighting and it only gets worse from there. I feel like I can't do anything about the Viktorias rocket, because I can't even take a Hoffman objective based crew since I'll just get bullied around and killed or he'll take all the objectives. Is there any way to win this matchup short of them flipping all low cards and having nothing in hand? At this point I feel like if my opponent declares Outcasts, I need to just switch to Sonnia. It's frustrating to the point of making me not want to even give 2.0 a chance when the matchup feels so one-sided even if I barely move.

Nice strategy! I thought every model had a 1" Bash (0/1/3?) as a generic action, though? Or was that removed in the shift from 1.5 to 2.0? I'll be playing a rematch against the Viktorias today, so I'll give an update later tonight.

What's the general opinion on Joss? With his Hard to Kill -> Reactivate shenanigans, it feels like all those healing flips and buffs that Hoffman can hand out would be amazing. And how do upgrades work with hired Arcanist models in his crew?

So during 1.5, I was a huge Hoffman fan and played him all the time. I'm now just getting into 2.0 after taking a break from miniatures games, I've got my arsenal decks so I can use my new models until I can muster the cash for when the shiny new plastics come out, and I'm wondering: just how is my favorite gearhead faring? I've read up on the PullMyFinger wiki, so from what I gather: The protect chain is out. Hunters are good (great?) models now. The hilarity of Open Circuit is gone. Hoffman has lots of stat-sharing shenanigans. Watchers are even better objective grabbers. But overall, how are most people building a complete 50SS crew with him? Can he do most objectives well? I played my first game of Malifaux after my break against the 2.0 Viktorias and I just had to shrug my shoulders and go through the motions after a Fast, Melee Expert, turbo-buffed Viktoria of Blood knocked out my Peacekeeper and I was out of the game. Do I need to bring multiple high point models? What's the best general setup with him? Tell me everything. I'm a sponge. o.o

Sam is begging for the Kill Protegee scheme with an average defense and nine wounds with no special defensive abilities. But if you get him in position and he starts opening fire, he can really do a lot of damage - especially if you soak up cards and other resources with the rest of your models. If you can soften them up a bit and leave their hand weakened, Sam is capable of blowing a lot of masters out of the water with Arcane Hunter, Blazing Bullets, and ignoring all cover penalties. Fun but risky!

Sometimes it's fun to just load up on stones with Perdita and watch people cringe in fear at the best stat line in the game pummeling them and looking untouchable. In serious games I try to take a minimum of five stones, but tend to be reserved about going higher than six. They're important to ensure you nail the other master when it counts and if anything slips past your defense it's imperative to have a stone or two on hand to deal with the fact that the gunslinging gal only has eight wounds.

At 25 SS a balanced crew is Sonnia, three Witchling Stalkers, Nino Ortega, and a Desperate Mercenary. This will give you a full cache and a fourth Stalker by casting Inferno on turn one (make sure nobody is standing next to Sonnia except the Mercenary at the end of the turn!) and then casting Violation of Magic on him to form a fourth Stalker on the cheap. Part of the reason why I prefer Stalkers over any model with Sonnia isn't just their sheer strength for their points, but because they are extremely useful for a strategy she enjoys just as much as Rasputina - bouncing blast markers off her own models. At 2/3/5 Flame Burst will deal a maximum of 3 damage on Severe (and 1 on anything below that) to your own Stalkers, allowing you to aim for Moderate damage to put 1 on them and splash the 2 damage from the marker onto enemy models. If you fire into clumped melee with a Stalker, you're either going to get the chance to manipulate the totals on your own model to ensure you spread some havoc or you're going to go up against one of their models, which certainly isn't a bad thing either. I'd recommend giving this list a try if you really like your SS, because this gives her a max cache and a strong core of models. Just don't forget to look for enemy targets to make into more Witchlings!

Lucius is a perfectly fine master to learn the rules of the game with - he will present your opponent with some tough decisions, as it is very hard to attack him directly, and will give a lot to learn (but not overwhelmingly so!) in terms of learning how to position your models and get the most use from tight-knit teamwork and a healthy dose of Issue Command. Give his box set a couple tries, but the Lawyer tends to be more useful in a Marcus crew than a Lucius one. If you like him and want to pick up more models, then you absolutely cannot go wrong with an Austringer.

I rotate the Peacekeeper with the Mechanical Rider, Pale Rider, and Ryle as his ride, but on the other hand I think that Ryle is extremely expensive for very few benefits that other models can just do better, outside of Hoffman. With the Hoff, it's much easier to direct the 4" Push and get full use of his mobility and shooting power. With anyone else, he's a big lump just waiting to be murdered. As for the Peacekeeper, too much of a card hog for me to be risking it in crews other than the Hoff. Nino Ortega is a staple for every master that isn't Hoffman and you can rarely go wrong with him. Witchling Stalkers work fantastically well with the other three non-machine masters as well. The Austringer, Francisco Ortega, and Von Schill are good picks to anchor my line. Yes, that last one makes me a very dirty person.

The short rundown is that Maintain Machines was clarified as being -only- listed abilities so it can't remove things like Brilliance, Slow, and Paralyzed that are acquired in the course of the game. On the other hand, it does not target (similar to Lucius' Reinforcements) so Hoffman is capable of making Ryle ignore his Can't Connect ability, making him a friendly model.

I dip into Arcanist for fun and use the Viktorias to teach newer players, but when the chips are down I'm all Guild. Hofflepuff is still my main man of course!

I usually take the Watcher every game with Hoffman, as it makes Stake a Claim ridiculously easy to score with - just keep the Watcher 14" away and for the rest of the game it's 3 Soulstones that filters your cards for you. Wardens are another key piece for me; with strategies like Deliver the Message and their ability to scale walls, they're a solid 5 Soulstone piece with decent combat ability. Hoffman gives them some really solid Cb to work with for their Paralyze trigger as well.