Philosfr

1) I have two Miss Terious, sorta by accident, so it's 9+2 2) Just because I have guild, doesn't make me a guildy! All hail the mother of monsters... Neverborn to the core. I just need to study my enemies in the guild...

What kind of blasphemy is this? I think I have 9 Death Marshals at the moment (3 old metal, 3 new plastic, 3 Dead Justice) and if you include Miss Terious, it makes 11. I figured I was going to paint up half to go with my Guild color scheme and then the other half painted to hang out with my Tara crew. I'm an addict and trapped under a pile of Wyrd mini's, please send help

I named one of my black cats Baba Yaga. Who doesn't like huts walking around on giant chicken legs? Ink is another movie that has some Neverborn-esque themes going on it it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_(film)

With the Guard and the Riflemen, you're well on your way towards Lucius as well

Ultimately, my best analogy would be health insurance. If you have health insurance, you're paying a little bit even while you're healthy and it doesn't matter. Maybe you get lucky and it never matters. In that case, in hindsight, you can say you wasted money on health insurance. However, if you end up in some horrible accident or catching some exotic disease, that health insurance may make or break you. It quickly repays for itself and you come out ahead. Keeping the black joker is a little like paying each month for health insurance. Yes, it costs me. And yes, the game may play out and I would never have flipped it at the bad time, and therefore it was "wasted". Unlike health insurance though, by paying to keep the black joker in my hand, I successfully avoid the bad stuff that may have occurred. In Malifaux parlance, I cheated fate by keeping the bad stuff out of play. There is no way to know if I wasted those resources that game since the joker was not in the deck. I would only know that I should have kept it in my hand if I comes up on a bad flip. In many games, there's often the choice between "burst" and "sustained". I see this as a similar argument. Both sides have merits. I tend to argue for the "sustained" and "reliable" damage in those games. I'd rather know I can count on my abilities rather than counting on luck. Removing the black joker helps me do that. Keeping the joker in the deck for more resources relies more on random chance and luck rather than my own abilities. I'm counting on drawing something better by discarding the joker, and counting on not getting it on a flip. I don't have control over that, I can only hope. I'd rather have control by keeping it in my hand.

City of Lost Children! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_Lost_Children It has all sorts of stolen dreams and body modification and waifs and is very fitting for many Malifaux themes

I disagree with this. If my opponent is holding onto cards, I usually assume they are good cards. If they were bad cards, they would get pitched. If my opponent opts not to cheat and they have a card they did not discard, I would be more likely to assume it's the red joker or a specific suit they wanted for something else. I would rarely expect a card they are holding to be the black joker unless I noticed them going through their deck an entire round and not flipping it. As far as playing the same game 100 times, I agree that odds are that it would not happen again on that flip. But that does not mean that another critical flip wouldn't have had similar impact on the game. In a game against an opponent at least as reasonably skilled as you are, I would expect there to be a several pivotal turns where I success or a failure would have game changing consequences. Maybe not 6 VP worth, but certainly game changing. If you're playing against an opponent where you had no critical flips, you probably outclass them enough where you don't need to worry about keeping or discarding the black. My Adepticon story is hardly the only story about the black joker, but it is a great one for 1) how impactful it was and 2) that it can happen in a Masters tournament and completely change the outcome of the entire tournament.

Those of us that keep it in our hand are trying to do just that. I can think of several games where the black joker had a huge impact on the game. Last game in the Adepticon Masters tournament this year had a 6 point victory swing due to a black joker on damage on the last swing to kill a hard to kill model with bodyguard that turned around and assassinated the opponent master. Now in this case it was my opponents black joker and my good fortune, but that was a huge VP swing. If you have a crew or are facing an opponents crew with a lot of horror flips, pulse flips, focus, or automatic positive or negative twists, it's easy to burn through your entire deck in one round. Having the black joker in my hand keeps me safe from an ill timed flip. The downside is playing with a control hand effectively one less card in size. Yet having one extra card in my hand doesn't necessarily mean it's a good one. I have just as good of a chance drawing a 1 or 2 as I do of a 12 or 13 if I discarded the black joker. I've played Lilith a lot and enjoy the extra cards from Rush of Magic, but I've never felt that was anything more than a minor bonus rather than a game changing ability like a black joker on a damage flip tends to be.

All of them? Justice is a great melee master that can run in and smash face Perdita is a great ranged master that can stand there and shoot holes in everything Sonnia is a great caster master that can blow things up left and right Those are probably the trifecta I'd recommend based on your comment. You mentioned the "non-tricky" play style, which all three of these fall into (though they are not without their tricks... this is Malifaux after all, everyone is tricksy). Hoffman requires a lot of careful activation planning and is more complicated to play. He's a great support caster, but wants lots of constructs, something few in the guild use besides him. He's a gateway drug into Arcanists though. Lucius is also a great support master and wants armies of minions to do his bidding. If you want to brush up against Neverborn and suddenly start paying allegiance to the Mother of Monsters (All hail!), Lucius will set you on the path. McMourning is a resser at heart that happens to have a day job in the Guild. As Guild, he really likes poison and can do crazy things with his nurses. You will find yourself drawn to hordes of undead and playing Resser masters if you play McMourning though, since he doesn't get to play with undead as Guild. McCabe is a bit of an odd duck in my opinion. He's also a support master, similar a little bit (very little bit) to Lucius. He also happens to take side jobs with the Ten Thunders, though I don't find a lot of overlap between McCabe and the other 10T masters. Though to be fair, I haven't looked that closely for it, other than maybe using Sidir, his henchmen.

After damaging and suffers damage would be two sides to the same coin. I would think they happen at the same time. The target is the model that is doing the damaging, so they would read "after damaging" on their attack, but the target is the one that suffers the damage. There have been threads talking about why the language isn't identical, and it was pointed out that this was done due to English. Phrasing something as "after the attacker causes the defender to suffer damage" just to make the language the same is unwieldy, and still opens up questions.

Look for things that aren't released in plastic and you'll have most of your answer. Some of the old metals are still available online and those tend to be very inexpensive and on clearance, but for the ones that are sold out everywhere, the metal's go for a lot on Ebay. Named models in Colette's crew (including Colette herself, and Coryphee) Witchling Handler (super rare) Abuela Ortega Austringer Guild Hound Drowned Those ones I know mostly because I've looked for them myself and can't seem to get my hands on most of them. Guild was my last faction to get into. I'm sure there are others that I already had in metal. I'd say Mechanical Rider probably would be another high on the list.

Lilith, "Black Widow" by In this Moment. Really the song fits for several female masters, but my ability to win with Lilith reached a new level when I read a comment about playing her like a spider in the middle of a web. I took that to heart and started doing much better with her. A more literal interpretation of the lyrics really ends up screaming Colette though. If you want to give Black Widow to Colette, then "Sex Metal Barbie" also by In this Moment works for Lilith Really, In This Moment has a lot of tracks that fit the "kick posterior female Malifaux master" theme songs.

I'm not sure I concur that deploying first is a major disadvantage. I rarely see any deployment except a line of guys at the edge of the deployment zone, other than maybe tucking a couple support pieces in a second rank, or if it's too crowded. Sure, occasionally someone will deploy wide flankers or stick a sniper in some challenging to reach terrain, but it's rare that it's either not predictable or that it has much influence. If I deploy first, I am even more likely to just lump my guys roughly towards the middle. This gives really nothing away to my opponent, and most crews have enough movement turn 1 that they can spread out to pretty much wherever they like during turn 1 anyway.

I've never had any concerns about the fact that there are often only 2 possible deployment zones on a table. I've never encountered anyone who wanted to play at a 90 degree angle. I've never even had a player ask to switch sides or determine what side of the board they are on, even in tournaments like Adepticon. Can one side of the table be beneficial? Yeah, but if it's that obvious that you can pick it at that stage of the game, the table shouldn't have been set up that way. If the tables are setup roughly fair, every game I've ever played, my opponent just sat down on the side they were on and we started flipping for deployment. Now, that's not saying it has to be that way. If my opponent deployed first and deployed at a 90 degree angle from where we're sitting, I wouldn't even pause and would just setup. I think it's totally legal... just not all that practical.

Me too. I really like having my cards with the "correct" name on them. I doubt we'll ever get a M2E Miss Pack or anything, but I would buy them if I could. My Miss Ery has the correct picture, but still lists Teddy as the name.

Since I had the cards from the arsenal deck, I didn't even look at the cards in my Troubleshooters box. I'll check to see if mine is missing too.

Our group just finished up an achievement league where one of the players ran Hamelin most of the time. I think the model aesthetics have something to do with the lack of interest in him as well. We had several new players and interested people around as we played, and they ooo'd and ahhh'd over a lot of the plastic crews. But Hamelin, the rat-catchers, the wretch... all of them are pretty "plain" in comparison. Plus... rats and disease aren't a very "sexy" way to win. Many newer players gravitate towards the bigger, cooler, named models. It's fun to watch Killjoy go on a spree, or to see the terror in your opponents face when Nekima comes flying over their beat sticks and lands in the middle of the squishier support pieces. Swarming them under piles of rats (that you need to go find piles of them in metal) is less interesting.

Same here. I'd much rather keep the black joker in my hand than risk it on a critical flip. I would rather draw a black joker than a 13 in most cases. I do tend to ditch it at the beginning of turn 5, risking it showing up on turn 6. Usually if there is a turn 6, there's not many flips happening in my experience, so it's not a concern. The red joker is more challenging... I have a tendency to hold onto it longer than I should, waiting for a perfect time to use it. But then it's not in my deck any more! I should really start using that sucker the same round I draw it.

At least dual-faction means you can pass her up with any of 13 different masters

The scenario with the "Miss Anne Thrope" seems like a very obvious tease to me I'd bet money that's who we'll see! Question is... who the heck is she? Other than someone who dislikes or avoids humanity...

I know what you mean! I have 7 Lilith miniatures for similar reasons. The original metal is my favorite and I ended up with 3 of them... the first ugly paint job, the second paint job was much better, but I picked up a 3rd for in the future when my painting skills reach some magical pinnacle. Then two of the alt-metal sculpt, the new plastic, and a modified Lilith Avatar based as a standard master Lilith. Plus the unmodified avatar to use as the avatar. I only have 4 Rasputina's though...

So I know that most tournaments things like proxies are the realm of the TO. But I was wondering in the more official and larger events if there was some consensus on using the Avatar version of masters if they are on the correct size base? Such as Avatar Zoraida on a 30mm base as normal Zoraida.

When I started playing Malifaux, I had no interest in the Neverborn. Cartoony-feeling demon-thingies just didn't interest me. Then I read the fluff on them, and was intrigued. I started buying them. Fast forward to 2E and they are my favorite faction, with Lilith being my favorite master. 1) Use Barbaros and especially his (0) Challenge action. That thing is awesome! Note that it comes into play even when your opponent is targeting their own models... 2) Walgeists are a really fun addition to Lilith. I get more use out of them than other Nephilim 3) Lilith can easily get obsessed with running around with her sword... don't be tempted. She's far better when you don't go get her killed by being to aggressive. I saw an awesome description of playing her like the spider at the center of the web (PullMyFinger maybe?) and that definitely increased my effectiveness with her. 4) Lilith likes all Neverborn. She likes Nephilim and has fun tricks there too, but I've run her with all sorts of Neverborn minions and had good success. She certainly doesn't require Nephilim to be successful.

The "mountain of plastic" effect is one of the nice parts about Malifaux. If you play a specific master, there's things that will make many of your crew lists, but they aren't mandatory. You have a lot of options. The fact you can hire an entire faction (or two... or three if you include mercenaries) by one master gives the game a lot of variety and constantly changing tactics and options. It's definitely one of the major reasons Malifaux has come to be the pinnacle of miniature games for me. I would get bored if every time I sat down to play a game I saw a master on the other side of the table and could guess what 90% of the crew was going to be just based on the master. Some of my favorite (and most effective) crew builds haven't utilized any of the starter box models for the master. The downside is that Pokemon is alive and well... I've ended up acquiring a huge pile of Malifaux miniatures in all the factions now. Of course, the upside to that is now I have a huge mountain of awesome Malifaux miniatures that I get to play with now. It's a win win!

I sleeve both my cards and my upgrades, but then have two deck boxes. One for cards, one for upgrades. It's a bit tight on my Neverborn (I think I have every released Neverborn model... I went a bit overboard) but it still fits. Well, I don't have all the metal + plastic versions, but in many cases I do...