jonahmaul

This is awesome!!! I started this campaign at a poor point to be fair as I'm having a break from Ressers and haven't played for a fortnight!

If you want Guild or Neverborn the obvious answer is to start with Lucius who is a dual faction Master for both. But he's not the easiest to learn to play with.

As Dirial and Asrian have said there's no bad choices, just go for whatever you like the look of. I always think Outcasts are a good place to start as Hired Guns and Hired Swords are both pretty easy to learn/play and a lot of Outcasts are Mercenaries so you will be able to use them even if you do decide to go with another faction. But going with whatever you like the look of best is the way to go because it'll keep you interested.

Looking forward to the details. My playgroup can't wait for me to show up with new Seamus shenanigans I'm sure...

Hmmm, my first instinct is no but by the writing on the rules it seems like you could. The restriction is that you can't declare charges whilst engaged but Misaki's rule takes precedence over this and neither make any mention of the currently engaged model.

I agree that he's not the best. Whilst he can do most things pretty adequately he's not really exceptional at anything. I would say that McMourning and Nico are both more powerful than him because they can do the things he can do better. In a fixed faction pool you'd almost automatically reach for Nico in Reconnoiter or Turf War for example (though I do like a nice Terrifying Turf War set up with Seamus) whilst McMourning is better for Reckoning and Squatters is generally accomplished by your crew so Masters are less important (IMHO). Schemes such as Assassinate, MtS, Murder Protoge are ones that McMourning excels at and he can do Breakthrough or Entourage just as easily as Seamus (although a teleporting Seamus for a last turn Entourage is a thing of beauty, Breakthrough requires a bit more planning with him). I definitely enjoy playing as Seamus and definitely think he's a top tier Resser Master but not the best.

In my experience as a Resser player he has been the hardest Master for my opponents to put down (though Nico is also surprisingly resilient). Terrifying, Feast of Fear and his general ability to just bugger off wherever he chooses really put a dent in most efforts to kill him! When you add in things like the Nurse/Chiaki combo to keep him alive you're really (manically) laughing. I've been playing McMourning a lot recently as I'm finding him lots of fun and though is healing make him a pita once he had activated his low Df usually makes him a pretty easy target to take down. I find both Seamus and McMourning very versatile though and for schemes like Plant Evidence, Breakthrough, Entourage etc. they really excel.

I'm also surprised to hear this as I play Seamus quite a lot and consider him to be pretty good (for many of the reasons explained above). He was the first Master I really used properly and I partly chose him because he was quite simple to play but I don't think this is necessarily a weakness. As you learn more about him you definitely learn that there is much more in his Bag O' Tools!

Another to hearing a bit about the crew (and also the strats/schemes that were being played). I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being a similar crew to one most of us would take with Seamus mind! InsidiouslyMad - why is Seamus a hard counter to Levi?

I know nothing of Ant of his crew but as MythicFox says, skilled players shine regardless of what they are using generally (and especially in Malifaux where the game is very well balanced). Having said that I have a fair bit of experience with Seamus and he is pretty good at most things. He might not excel at anything in particular but there are so many strats and schemes that he is good for that he is a swiss army knife. I tend to use him to shoot opposing scheme runners early in the game then teleport him towards the end so he can run around dropping scheme markers or scoring for things like Entourage. Being very hard to kill means he's almost always around late game. Another major strength I can see is that he works mostly independently of his crew which mean they don't rely on him as much as other crews rely on their Master meaning he can go off doing his own thing and if he does die then it's not always the end of the world.

I definitely like the separate prize for sportsmanship option.

Ah, I see. I thought you meant A&D could actually do the summoning itself!

Ironically my Ressers are also based on autumn themed bases! I'm just starting to paint some non-Resser stuff (namely Outcasts and Guild) and am planning to base by faction (snow for Guild and I have no idea what for Outcasts!) so that there is some consistency but if there are models that end up getting hired out of faction then I'm just going to deal with it!

Nico can but only through the Vulture so I'm guessing that doesn't count! Seamus and McMourning definitely can't and I'm pretty sure that Yan Lo can't either as he needs a corpse marker. So I'm going to say Molly can somehow but I've not played her! How can A&D do it?! It can only summon off a trigger from an Attack Action (which needs LoS) can't it?

Could you give some of the others? Not doubting you but the only summoners I play are Ressers and I can't think of any off the top of my head that can do this.

Hmmm, that's interesting. I've always played it by regular summoning rules (I say *always* but I've only played Kirai twice!) but the quoted section from Dafty does specifically call out summoning as an action. I wonder if this is another case of lack of consistency on cards or whether Kirai is supposed to be able to put Ikyro in your face without needing LoS.

If you are summoning then Ikyro needs to pop out within LoS. But being that she is Ht3 it's usually pretty easy to plonk her behind things and her still be in LoS.

OK, I'll go with a single Master to start and get the initial crew box done and then see where the Tale takes me!

I also think sportsmanship is very hard to score. If you end up playing a friend do they both end up with top scores? Does losing effect how well a person would score the sportsmanship of their opponent? Could a disagreement over one part of the game negatively (or positively) effect the way that it's scored? There's so many different factors and it's so subjective that I think it would be very hard to just have a score every game and I think that having it count towards the final tournament standings would be a bad idea as it should be based on playing alone. Having said that I think sportsmanship is a massively important (probably the most important) part of tournaments and games should always be played in a friendly spirit regardless of it's for a tournament. My tournament experience is so far limited to a single tournament but my experience of that, and what I've read elsewhere, seems that Malifaux is mostly played in a friendly manner. I do think a separate award as Seregon suggests is a good idea.

Are we doing just one Master or can it be Faction?

This is correct. Removing Distract is a (2) Interact action, removing Cursed is a (1) Interact which then requires you to pass a successful Wk duel as admiralvorkraft states.

I know from Wordpress that you can set up notifications so you can e-mails when people update their BLOGs. I run the Tale of Skirmish Painters over on Warseer and post a new thread each month (as to the various other Tales) so it would be good to do something like that where everybody gets a reminder that they're due a BLOG post and can post the links to their BLOGs with the latest entries each month.

Pandora's Nullify means that you can't take Interact actions. So if Distract or Cursed are on somebody puts them on you then she stops you being able to remove than by removing your ability to Interact (you are required to take an Interact action to remove either). It also stops you being able to turn Squat Markers, drop Scheme Markers for any number of schemes etc. So you need condition removal to get rid of Nullify which is a condition so that you can take Distract etc. from yourself (it is very irritating when you have this option completely removed and it allows Pandy and her crew to rack up VPs for these schemes very easily). And Insidious Madness was what I was thinking of! Thanks! Positive flips are always welcome, as they are against most things, but as has been pointed out she is Wp7 so very hard to beat if your opponent as some high cards in their hand. I am a fan of Yin's Gnawing Fear against her and if you want to make a sustained attack against her then getting this off will help a lot (I will burn a RJ on it if I have one) because she will get to her Wp duels and it also stops her cheating them which means that she becomes very easy to hit (once you get hits through on her she goes down pretty easily as she has a low wound count).

The Poltergeist I think can also make you have to throw away cards before you cheat (there's definitely something else that my regular opponent has run that does this which isn't Tannen anyway!). Fears Given Form is also horrible for us Ressers with our typically low Df. You have to take a Df13/14 duel (can't remember the target number) or suffer three damage whenever you activate within the engagement range of somebody with the upgrade (3" for Pandora herself). If your opponent does take this then ensure he's taking checks for his own models too as it's any model. I typically find spreading out and ignoring Pandora can be quite effective. She's so hard to stop doing what she wants to because of her high Df/Wp (which are usually the same thing), her ability to push after winning successful Wp duels, and the high Ca values of her actions that devoting things to stop her is often a waste of resources. Just concentrate on getting your own schemes done. You also want some condition removal, especially if there Cursed/Distract etc. in the scheme pool (and in general anyway). She can make things Insignificant very easily which can completely gimp your ability to do anything towards accomplishing your strats/schemes (Candy can also do this I believe though it's not as high casting). If your opponent knows their stuff they will target your condition removal though so treat them with care!

Slice and Dice is particularly effective because Pandora does not get to use her Wp7 to defend and has to use her crappy Df. She can only use her Wp on opposed duels and Slice and Dice forces a simple duel (if you can stack poison on her and use Sebastian's pulse to force a Df duel it's also nasty although that's not much help with Kirai!). I also think your game was against my very close friend Neil so I don't know whether I should be annoyed with you or take satisfaction that you gave Pandora a tooling as I hate that nasty cow (I'm gonna go with the latter!)!