Dices

Think really the main themes of first edition Kaeris was Accelerant, Resource Management, Immolate and the trigger Turn It Up. These were unique to her and it would be nice if those at the least stayed into the new rules. With the new 3 actions per master and way soulstones now work, mind, there is a chance Turn It Up could become a bit overwhelming - that's a lot of burning tokens flying around and a ton of shots in one activation. Flamewall would likely be present on an upgrade, same as the way Sonnia gets the spell. As for Avatar, I'm doubting following the fluff in book 3 that Kaeris is all that safe for anyone to be near in a combat situation. She doesn't seem to plan ahead what she's going to next. It'll certainly be fire oriented, but whether the flame element of the avatar would have a controlled form like a Phoenix may well be doubtful, I'd like to see such a model though.

Iirc the original Lillith sculpt was some of his work.

The original box set for Justice was the first set I got for Malifaux, the quality of the older sculpts sold me then, and I'm half tempted to this set now. Just for Judge and the Marshals, not overly keen on Justice's play-style.

At the very least Jack Daw is a good candidate for Henchman if not master. From his own back story he has some very specific goals and judging from his old "Betrayed" rule a very strong disliking of Neverborn or at the least their subtle masks suit associated magic. These elements could make him suited to gaining Master status.

Don't know on that one, it would certainly simplify his older rules allowing him constructs from Arcanists into one symbol on the card, but then it would open up non construct items too. If Hoffman remains true to how he was designed in M1.5 mind you won't see him using much more than constructs really. He wouldn't really be Arcanists "final" master in the same way that McMourning isn't the Guilds "final" master. Had Hoffman pegged as potentially dual Arcanist/Guild myself.

Been playing Malifaux for a while myself, but a number of local players were deterred by the rules being overly wordy in many places (looking right at things like Yan Lo here). True a model in possession of upgrades in this edition is similarly wordy, maybe moreso than its original iteration, but the complexity is reduced a good deal now. Since the M2E playtest began my game group has actually had more games of Malifaux in the past few weeks than we've had of the previous editions of the game in the past few years. That to me is a good sign, even if a large number of models I've got aren't useable currently. I really liked the previous edition, but the new is just as good and not tremendously different to the old, just simpler and way less broken.