Thana.

Wild, I'm definitely excited for the new edition. Since m2e had its over and under-powered choices I wonder if we're going to get into a situation where some of the thematic models sets are going to be drastically better than others and that will be the driving force for what becomes the competitive meta rather than the strength of the master itself as is currently the case. Eyes peeled!

The idea that Leveticus and A&D are in any way subpar is pretty wild to me... grass must always be greener I guess :P.

Coming from NB the things I'm most envious of are: Francisco, Brutal Effigy and Debt to the Guild.

Tier 1: Collodi, Dreamer, Pandora, Lilith Tier 2: Lynch, Zoraida, Titania Tier 3: Lucius

Agree with Ergonomic but imo Lilitu replaces Graves or Johan, not Nekima. I tend to use 2-4 of these models irrespective of master, schemes and strategies. Very, very rarely take all 5-6. The models that most often round out the crews are totems for some masters (Lynch and Dreamer mostly), Waldgeist, Illuminated and scheme runners.

Your argument is that we can't know the social climate of a fictional world and yet we can (somehow) know that divergence from social norms would be seen with disdain. Furthermore, that since homosexuality is a divergence from social norms in 1800-1900 in the real world that it "is a safe bet" that these standards would apply in a fictional world that we can't know the social climate of. Logical flaws aside we could ask: Are there any examples of social norms from that time period in the real world being violated and are they met with disdain? I can think of plenty: Women with prominent roles in front line combat, lack of the use of racial epithets in casual speech, lack of conspicuous religious displays, and marriage and children frequently being absent from female characters' lives. Are any of these met with disdain? No. Yet you think it's safe to assume that in the special case of homosexuality it would be? Finally, in my opinion, the people who, civilly, called you out for using autistically as a slur were right to do so. Putting people down for something they have no control over is crummy behaviour. The fact that it's semi commonly done on the internet doesn't justify your doing it here.

No, but the 1900s in that article aren't the historical 1900s either. The story you linked makes that abundantly clear right away.

The game already applies modern sensibilities to the world of Malifaux, consider the prominent role of women in front line combat and leadership positions. I consider this to be a strength of the game's setting. Also not sold on Malifaux counting as a historical setting.

@whodares First question: On the fence about hiring lelu in a starting crew, it's true that he's a decent bit better with his 0ss upgrade but he's also competing against other hiring options that imo, outclass him a bit. Second question: Torsul answered it. Third question: I think the NB emissary is weak for his cost and wouldn't recommend hiring him in any crew. If I was to hire him in a summoning dreamer crew I'd take the mysterious conflux because + flips to stitched together duels is better than everything on conflux of nightmare. Bonus Question: I think your core build is alright, I'll be upfront and say I don't love coppelius with on dreaming wings (or at all). 10ss for a min damage 1, 2 ap, squishy model is (imo) highway robbery, even if said model has walk 8 and flight. Some people do like him so I'd try him out and see how he works for you. What I found was that people would put a stronger, usually cheaper model on his flank and just kill him before he can accomplish much. Stuff like miranda and francois will go through coppelius like butter and have no trouble matching his speed either. I also think you're overestimating the value of flight on alps. They only have flight while within 6" of coppelius, can't charge and come in slow so they're mostly just going to walk the turn they come in and then the next turn double walk somewhere to be annoying by which time they'll likely be well outside of the flight aura.

If you want to use the playtime into card draw combo none of wisp, ronin, and bloodwretch are the way to go. Of the three mentioned the ronin is the best because you can push the teddy forward 4" with a daydream and then push upfield on the ronnin's attacks. This will let you draw 3 cards at the cost of 1 and push both models upfield. If you have a model that can drop a scheme marker the thorn can charge upfield and draw 4 cards at the cost of 0. Furthermore, you have a thorn instead of a ronin. The other benefit is that she inflicts only 2 damage instead of the ronin's 6 while pulling this off. She doesn't pigeon hole you into taking a teddy.

The problem I see is that almost everything you're hiring has no threat and no resilience. What's to deter your opponent from just rushing your lines and killing all your stuff? Dreamer, tannen and weaver are all squishy support pieces. Coppelius isn't even threatening once he gets 3 eye counters but before that he's paper. Try running stuff like Nekima, doppel (with a summoned lilitu gives a great mix of hitting and lures) waldgeists, illuminated/depleted etc. Those models buy you the time for your support (lilitu), schemers (madness) or damage (stitched/chompy) to come online.

For me, Nekima's higher walk, flight, higher min damage, less feast or famine 0 actions, and melee expert are worth more than the 2 extra stones you pay for her. I still like Teddy, especially his model. If you have the time, what you might try is playing both of them, learning their strengths and weaknesses and going from there. You'll learn a lot more by taking that route and it'll be more fun too :).

Personally find Nekima better than Teddy irrespective of schemes, strategies and crew composition so I'll recommend her. Second Azkral on graves, very useful model. Tots and gupps are usually semi interchangeable with insidious madness but Jacob likes them more. Pukesnake is very useful. The most glaring omission to me is no brutal effigy for Collodi. The only model that I think is an auto include for Collodi. Best of luck :).

Collodi with bag of props can pretty much just take the pmagic and lose next to nothing in terms of summoning :D.

Yw I agree that there isn't a wrong choice. All the masters play differently enough from one another that I don't think you'll be hurting for diversity of play experience no matter how you go about things. Personally, with NB, I focus on building a crew that can complete the schemes and strats and then almost tack a master on after that's been decided. I don't think any of the NB masters benefit much from investing heavily into synergy with their crew, just little things like bringing a brutal effigy with collodi to heal up his strum the threads damage or tending to favour gupps/tots vs madnesses as jacob. Zoraida got a huge buff in book 4 through wisps. Check them out!

Hello, I don't think that any of the masters are autopicks for anything. You also don't need to play 3 masters to cover all your bases you can easily get by with only one master. Additionally, I don't think there is a clear ranking of NB masters at the moment since zoraida and lucius got buffed. Narrowing your selection of models to focus on learning them well is a good idea imo, I wouldn't limit that to masters. Perhaps this isn't what you were hoping for but I'd honestly just take whichever 3 masters you find the most fun to play and go with them. If you're the type of person who gets satisfaction from playing in theme then that will likely dictate a lot of your crew building choices. If not, then this subset of the NB faction is a good entry point: Illuminated, Waldgeist, Silurid, Tot, Doppelganger, Nekima, Lilitu, Graves, Totems, Madness Push comes to shove my personal opinion of the top 4 masters in the faction are: Dreamer, Collodi, Pandora and Lilith in no particular order. All the best!

In the interest of providing honest feedback and offering a different perspective, here's what stands out to me: Your descriptions of how advice is given on the internet, while vibrantly described, is hyperbole. You use supplicants before God to characterize the relationship between advice seeker and advice givers. I don't, personally, tend to find forum/facebook Malifaux advice very useful but it's uncharitable to describe what, I assume, are the honest opinions of well meaning people attempting to help others improve as creativity-killing squawking. When a newer, or weaker, or even a very strong player asks me for list advice because they want to improve, if the advice I give is intended to foster list diversity instead of reflect my honest opinion of what works and why then, I think, I've answered in bad faith. I also find the notion that uniformity shouldn't exist to be an odd one. Consider your notion in the context of other games with much stronger players and scenes. If I'm playing poker and a new player is hemorrhaging money because they're open limping 70% of their range in a 10 player game, any advice that doesn't discourage this is very dubious. Chess would be a more diverse game if people opened knight to f3 more often but given how weak that opening move is I, personally, wouldn't find it more enjoyable. Anecdotally, when we've played (same vassal name as forum) you've been pretty quick to give your opinion, stated as fact. I'm not mentioning this to call you out or suggest that it undermines the message of your blog post, but rather to highlight that I actually found it conducive to learning. One thing I remember was you stating that two mid cost models (ronin + coppelius in this case) forces tough choices on a flank in a way that a single high cost model does not. My reaction to hearing this was thinking that you were about to lose your flank to Nekima while I score uncontested vp all game long. It's interesting (to me) when two differing lists, informed by two differing ways of thinking that result in two differing strategies meet. In that game it went as I thought it would but it got me thinking, did his plan fail because it was fundamentally ill conceived? would it have worked with other model choices? which s&s favour making a "fork" play with two mid costed models vs a single high cost one? What about a single, durable, mid-cost, blocker model that could neutralize twice its ss cost while denying scoring opportunities as an alternative? I have since added strategies informed by your way of thinking, with the models switched up, to my arsenal. Had you not expressed your thoughts as explicitly as you had I probably would have just chalked it up to a mistake. I'm glad you wrote the article and put the ideas out there, I hope my comment adds to the discussion.

Seems good, bandersnatch is also not important to own at all so you can cut corners there pretty easily.

I would strongly recommend taking Joel up on his vassal offer. If you can't find a convenient time for the two of you, I'll play you. Having players who win often and are able to articulate how they win in real time is a very good way to get a whole bunch of knowledge in a short time period.

Dreamer is also my most played and I think the change is fine. Makes him more stone hungry, as noted. I think he was tied for top summoner with Kirai before and now he's a little below her probably but still one of the best. I think hiring daydreams has gone down in value unless you plan to hire a bunch of nightmares (I usually don't). Agree that card draw goes up in value for Dreamer (it was already very valuable, but also very hard to fit into lists since dreamer crews usually had 15ish stones worth of summoning support locked in at the outset).

I think these changes are for the better. I agree with others who have posted that errata is preferable to 0ss upgrades. For me, an interesting consequence of reducing the power of some of the game's premier models (austringer, colette, dreamer, belle) is which premier models became even stronger by slipping through the cracks. Off the top of my head Johann and Doppelganger were more powerful than any of the models that got toned down and at least Kirai was in the same power tier as Levi, Dreamer and Colette. An interesting thought that I heard expressed was Kadeton's that any model with a stat below 5 is "useless." Given the number of df/wp6 models that don't pay for their high stat lines with deficiencies in other areas of their card (a&d, carrion and shadow emissary etc.) I think it's a reasonable view that any model with a 4 (and even a 5) offensive stat that doesn't have something else on their card to heavily compensate would be disregarded, better choices are almost always available. Analogous to this is that any model without a powerful 0 action is heavily disadvantaged compared to a model with one, frequently without any sort of equivalent recompense elsewhere on its card. These are also hard sells. I agree with Kadeton's sentiment that it would be more interesting if the range of competitive statlines was broadened (presumably by giving models well defined, counterbalancing, strengths or weaknesses in other areas). Final thought: the black blood shaman combo alluded to above is not only not "that bad" it wasn't even worth playing back when people assumed it worked. The only thing thing I predict that will change about the bbs is that it will go from a poor model that doesn't synergize with its own abilities to a poor model that does.

Doppelganger has more synergy with lilitu and mctavish than any other model in NB. Waldgeists are great, and great with mctavish but the synergy is much less if that's what you're trying to maximize. Perhaps you're overvaluing key-word synergy or visual theme compared to how well two models actually function in tandem.

Inflict is nuts because it's a 9" diameter circle of wp14 duel or take 2 instances of 1 damage. You can often hit tons of models at once and do either a ton of wounds or destroy the opponent's hand (sometimes both). You can use that core with almost any of the NB masters with minor tweaks. Beyond Lilith and Pandora it goes well with Dreamer (sub PM for daydreams), Collodi and Titania. I wouldn't worry much about when to use each one if you're newer to the game. They're both fine in almost all situations.

Dave and Cloak's advice is solid. Minor point: Cherub is competitive with pmagic in the GG2016 schemes Upgradewise, Beckon Malifaux is the only mandatory one although Wings of Darkness is pretty hard to pass up. She's also perfectly fine saving the ss and not running a third upgrade. Even in killy schemes a grow list either requires you to hire models you wouldn't otherwise hire (young) or else play scheme runners with additional restrictions on where they move and when they activate (tots). You can, of course, treat any growing as icing on the cake but not something you play around which, imo, was already the best way to view growing and has had its opportunity cost lowered by using the thousand faces upgrade. Good luck!

Pandora can be very independent of her crew so a mixture of generally good models and models that work well for the s&s are good. She's quite versatile so you're best served by learning when to do what. Some of the things you want to do with her are to: Abuse fading memories nonstop to push her into a position where she will waste the enemy's ap (ie at a range of 2.1" vs an enemy with a 2" melee range or directly behind a model to block l.o.s when she's being shot at) Paralyze crucial models (especially Masters) at inconvenient (for them) times Spam inflict in a crowd of enemies to do massive damage and drain the opponent's hand (bonus if combined with box opens and fears given form) Use incite and doppelganger so that you can hit with your best models before your opponent has a chance to hit back with theirs at the beginning of a turn Use self loathing to kill expensive high damage low wp enforcers in a single activation Engage models to prevent them from interacting and getting to where they need to go to score vp Some of the best stuff to take with her: Pandora with either a voices, aether connection, wings of darkness loadout for more control or a box opens and two out of fears given form, wings of darkness and aether connection for more disruption Some best in faction NB models like doppelganger, nekima, primordial magic S&S appropriate models eg.) waldgeists for holding and denying, scheme runners for dropping markers (don't get suckered into thinking you have to take sorrows or madnesses because of wp synergy, choose the right one for the board, your list and s&s) etc. Support models that fit your desired goals lilitu is great to drag them into your lines, graves is great to deliver pandora into theirs, johan for condition removal etc. An example of a strong list for, say, turf war with several marker reliant schemes: Pandora (either set of upgrades depending on playstyle) Nekima Doppelganger Primordial Magic Lilitu Waldgeist Terror Tot Madness 5-6 cache That being said, while Malifaux does have a vibrant competitive scene it isn't really a game that's played highly competitively (if highly competitively is meant in the same way that, say, Chess, Poker and Starcraft are played highly competitively) so I don't think anyone is really in a position to offer advice of that type. Best of luck!