LunarSol

Sigmar is doing pretty well for itself now. No question it was not a well done transition though.

I assume so. It says you can hire Faction models that aren't keyword at a penalty. I assume that means you hire Keyword with no penalty.

Masters are essentially acting as silos for model groupings this edition. It's essentially how every company has started breaking down their lines into more accessible chunks. Warmachine did it with theme forces, Guild Ball is doing it with Minor Guilds, 40k's detachment system is along similar lines. Some of it definitely appears to be a desire to introduce some new masters but I suspect some of it also comes down to how they want to divide up the model lines. It's probably relevant that Lilith/Ramos/Nicodem were somewhat unifying figures in their factions, about on par with the Governor General in terms of faction influence. For example, removing Ramos lets them break up the giant block of M&SU models so that Kaeris, Mei Feng and Ironsides can all have their subsets of models unable to work together, which didn't really make sense with Ramos in charge. His removal lets the Arcanists be more than just the M&SU, which Kaeris's profile really kind of highlights. I see similar benefits from taking out Lilith and replacing her with a Master more Nephilim specific and Nicodem was certainly problematic as the catch all undead umbrella.

I thought it was pretty funny that Arcanists went from having the least to the most.

I'll be curious what other models end up in the Dead Man's Hand. The Judge didn't make it out of that scrap with Nico either after all. I certainly understand being upset about losing a favorite master. Ramos is a favorite of mine and I've quite enjoyed Misaki and McCabe without having to pick up a bunch of 10T models. That said, what we're seeing here is a pretty massive change to the point where I have to step back and remember that until the dust settles, I don't really know how my collection will pan out. It is, after all, the way it is now due to a bunch of specific circumstances created by the M2E setup. My crews are heavily influenced by what works and what doesn't in the current ruleset and will change regardless in the next. Getting worked up about a couple beloved models right now isn't going to do me a lot of good. Change is coming and its going to demand adaptation regardless.

With hiring restricted more along the lines of keywords, I don't think removing masters from a faction will matter all that much. In M2E it mattered because it determined whether or not Yan Lo had access to Yasinori, but if things are paying a tax outside of their keyword, I think we'll find Lynch running Beckoners, Serena and Illuminated regardless of what "faction" he falls under. In M2E, the primary reason you had to focus on a faction was because thematic crews were kind of a flop. You couldn't focus on something like Death Marshals without the eldest Ortega showing up and your Cabaret had that hulking steampunk abomination in the middle of it. If keyword hiring actually works out and masters focus on their keyword link crews more than generic faction all stars; you can play Lynch, 10T locked or not, without needing to buy extensively into 10T. As far as I'm concerned, that's a huge plus. Of masters truly gone, I think its interesting that the remaining ones feel significantly revamped in description, so that might be less noticeably than it first seems. Of them, Lilith and Nico feel like they have obvious analogs in their replacements, with Ramos being the one that feels like there's no substitute. I'm a little surprised at the total lack of Collodi, though with some recent 10T puppet additions, I'm more than a little suspicious of the nature of their new brothel keeper....

A lot I'm excited about from this, not the least of which is being able to play Zipp without having to play Gremlins. Keyword hiring has been sorely needed for most of 2nd edition. I'd say probably since Crossroads. There's just not enough design space for the number of models without breaking them up into their thematic subgroups, and generally speaking hiring was a hodgepodge of faction all stars that made it really gamey feeling. I am curious to see how they'll work with limited conditions. I agree they got completely out of hand, but they still served an important state tracking purpose. I have total faith that the void will be filled; just curious how it will be organized. Overall, I think they've got the vision for the best version of the game yet and have learned all the right lessons from the past. Really looking forward to what's ahead.

This doesn't exactly count as painting, but I really liked the idea of the void monsters not really being there. I might do some dry brushing to turn some of the reflective nature of the material into something a little more dull, but.... and some Outcast stuff to go along with it:

I've picked up a lot of those "I want this master" kind of purchases, but for the factions I haven't touched at all: Neverborn - Collodi and Dreamer. Dreamer is just an awesome concept and the puppet theme is fantastic. Creepy toys is the best Neverborn stuff, IMO. Gremlins - Zipp. Sky Pirate is strictly better than any other character trait. Ulix also is kind of a fun looking crew. Ressers - Kirai. Yan Lo largely fills this aesthetic need for me, but she's still pretty cool. I also like Reva's design and style.

It's April 2nd, right?

What's in a Sonnia build these days? I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping my Guild crews up to date lately. :\

Fixed that for you.

Guard are interesting as cheap activations. They're cheap enough now they might not NEED their grouping bonuses to be worth it, but still not... mind blowing or anything. It definitely matters though. Before a pair of them was not quite worth 8, but notably, killing one left you with something nowhere near worth 4. Taking 3 for redundancy was cute, but at 12 stones... laughable. At 9? Okay, still probably a bad idea, but 6 for 2 isn't too shabby. LLC is actually super interesting. It was laughably overcosted before; probably still not worth it, but its at least worth running the math on a few setups. I wish the Judge's upgrade had gotten the discount as well. That thing makes him special, but at 10 stones its still a little out of reach. I'm not sure what I think about the Witchling Handler.... maybe... probably not... but maybe...

Running an Enforcer Brawl this weekend for a Halloween Minis Day. Painted up a few things for the occasion: Ice Golem and Gamin Izamu and Teddy Killjoy (The Carver) and Executioner

I think the spike damage is important, but it could be slightly more controlled and have less odd interactions if it was a flat increase instead of dealing two keyword damage words. I'd not go to bat for a change really and any change I'd support would be costly and limited. I'd argue before removing the weak damage I'd like models damage prevent against both halves of the damage for example. I'm a little more in favor of a way to keep the black joker from completely ruining a Master who has an important (0) as part of their activation, but even there it's just on my radar more than anything.

Basically, this thread is bouncing around a number of different ways the Jokers interact with the game, but the OP is specifically unhappy with the way the Red Joker interacts with Hard/Impossible to Wound. It's a frustrating situation because it feels like your ability gave them a bonus. I think its largely fine as is. I could see changing it to Severe+1 or 2 damage or something (which doesn't change much but removes a couple extreme spikes) but I think the extra above Severe is fairly important as it messes the the math just a bit in a game that has an exceptionally well controlled damage spread. The game can trend towards a situation where you get counting attacks you can take based on min damage alone and that extra spike is just enough to create moments where its worth manufacturing a straight flip to cheat in the RJ for a kill that would otherwise be impossible. HtW itself is kind of a weird ability, as taken in mass it has a lot of weird effects on the game's probability that are often overlooked. It thins the enemy deck in interesting ways that generally also skews the rest of their flips including accuracy and TN tests, generally for the worst. I have no idea what my point is in this, but in general I think the RJ is important. It could probably be tweaked a bit, but I'd not tamper with it too much personally.

Games solidify as players learn what is above and below the power curve. As they solidify they start to feel stagnant and traditionally edition changes break up that stagnation significantly, though players often have unrealistic expectations for the new edition. A lot of the demand for a new edition is simply because historically that was the only time you could expect significant changes due to the complications of errata. Technology is rapidly making edition changes less and less necessary though. The game's core engine is fine and really doesn't need much changing, but it could be a little more consistent. Overall, the main things I'd look to see in a new edition are: A break to move towards digital rules and cards. This doesn't require a new edition, but its kind of a nice time to switch over in general. New rules concerning elevation in general. Movement and LOS are fine on a 2D map, but struggle with more interesting terrain. Maybe a tweak to Jokers. Spending a stone to cheat a Black could help with it flipping on an important zero. Red I'm less sure on. Restructure action timing wording to clearly distinguish the order of events for complex interactions. Categorize conditions a bit to provide some granularity on rules that interact with them. Remove the Avatar rules from the core rules. As for model changes; the obvious thing would be to pull some of the "fix" upgrades into the base card. I'd also take the opportunity to lean heavier on keywords synergies so there is more design space in the game in general. The game needs a bit more emphasis on themed crews to be able to expand.

Honestly, if not for the Outcast thing I'd wonder if we were heading towards something of a factionless game with hiring pools defined more by keywords than traditional factions. I don't see that actually happening for a number of reasons, but it does seem like the fluff is trying very hard to free the game of some of its structure. Book 4 had a similar thing, with a lot of odd stories primarily about justifying hiring breaks (see McCabe selling Lucius statues and Sandeep visiting colleagues for reasons).

I NEED this. NEEEEEED. Gimmie gimmie NOW!

If we lost every master that was interested in destroying the Guild, I think we'd just have Lady J (unless she dies to Nicodem soon...)

There's been a good amount of work put in to fix them lately, but a lot of the primarily melee beatstick masters aren't really significantly more threatening than some of the high cost Enforcers as far as I'm concerned. There's some exaggeration in that statement, especially because better Enforcers take a good chunk of stones to field, but not nearly as much as there probably should be.

Stuff often debuts in the RPG and comes to the game a book or two later.

While Travis is using the term "low powered" I think it doesn't quite describe what he's talking about. Actual low powered is really miserable to outright boring. There are low powered masters that do less than some Enforcers and they're frankly dull as dirt. I think what Travis is reacting to is some of the extreme damage/extreme threat range aspects of the game. When you've got models threatening the board length turn one with the ability to kill almost anything, the game turns into a weird game of chicken instead of something interesting and tactical. I definitely like the game best with powerful, dynamic masters, but I can also do without the game of passing for activation control until someone gets to send Nekima/Howard/Yasinori across the board to end the game before it really begins.

A lot of it is just the way the transition to M2E was handled. Wave 1 had a rather small set of models without a lot of competition within a single points bracket, which lead to a lack of specialization without the need to give models distinct roles. Wave 2 has a bit of the opposite problem. It was developed after Wave 1 was set in stone but before it had worked itself out to give everyone a sense of where the game's power level really was. The focus on not outclassing Wave 1 models created a lot of redundancy as things were focused more on internal faction balance and not the balance of the game as a whole. Wave 3 was the first release where you really saw things balanced against what was good and seeing play and not whatever random model someone wanted to use to argue their point. Being better than an Ice Gamin was less important than knowing how well something played into Levi. That's probably healthier overall, as new models actually see play, but it does mean that the stuff that was behind the curve in Wave 1&2 feels like its fallen further behind. A Wave 1 revisit is probably in order, but I'm not sure there's enough design space for everything without a revamp. One of the other issues with the small initial model pool was that there wasn't a lot of sub-faction synergy built in the game in favor of providing diverse build options with the small model pool. This made sense when Master's model types were pretty limited to what came in the crew box, but its pretty reliably lead to thematic synergies being pretty heavily overcosted. Make the bonuses for running all the Guardsmen or Witch Hunters together worthwhile and it becomes a lot easier to design models that don't invalidate others in the same point bracket. Alternatively, you can try and make each model in the same bracket fulfill significant different roles; though this will still likely result in the homogeneous "all stars" style list you see today.

I'm gooonaaa huuuuuuug yooooooooou! I have definitely become interested in Lynch's little corner of 10T all of a sudden....