Guslado

There are indeed several settlements outside of Malifaux City:

As to the first question--there is generally a lot of benefit to having Sandeep going late in the turn to keep his Arcane Shield active and summoning in Banasuva late in the turn is also quite beneficial as he tends to be rather easy to kill. With the crews I have been bringing along with Sandeep it's usually pretty easy to out activate most other crews, which means summoning in Banasuva after my opponent is activated out is usually quite doable; if the strategy is one of the more static ones where you are attempting to control an area (Turf War, Extraction, Guard the Stash, Stake a Claim) I tend to summon him with Command in Earth (can't move or push but +1" on , +3" on ranged) into melee range with an enemy I really want to kill. On less static strats I tend to summon him in with Command in Fire (immune to slow but can't cheat fate) and fling him at a lower Df model after my opponent has used most or all of their control hand. As to the second question--Sandeep can kick some serious ass if he is focusing on laying the smack down. Arcane storm is really potent and if you take To Command Another Plane he hits even harder in melee; also, the common wisdom is that if your opponent is kicking your ass from range you should get up in his face doesn't work well in this situation as he is quite potent at range and up close.

Your worst nightmare

Yeah, I think the he's new and people are still figuring out how to deal with him thing definitely comes into play, but I have found that I am playing him more effectively more quickly than I have when I was just starting out with other masters. I don't know if it's because he's an easier master to learn or I'm just more experienced now and thus pick up the ins and outs of a master more quickly than I used to. Probably a combination of all of the above and wonderful information from the hive-mind that is the internet Whatever it is, I am having a lot of fun with Sandeep.

Well, I wasn't going to eat it raw, but I think it would be tasty fried up and covered with buffalo sauce.

Save Teddy from the rats! #neverhamelin Also, is it weird that your picture of chicken wing teddy is making me hungry?

Hamelin already has enough creepy kids, we need more Teddy! Think of it from a marketing standpoint--Teddy is iconic of Malifaux (you even had a giant one at Gen Con that was working great to bring attention to the booth), therefore getting even more Teddy into Malifaux is a great way to grow the community!

On the converse side of what we've seen above regarding your Sandeep experiences so far--if you have played as him or against him, how have you seen Sandeep effectively countered? What have you tired with him that didn't work out so well in a Sandeep crew? How are people reacting to playing against Sandeep? In my experience I haven't really seen him countered effectively unless he is overextended and out of soulstones. As to ineffectively play on my part, focusing too much on summoning seems like a good way to burn through your stones and leave him without cards to attack/defend effectively; I summon a little bit early (usually the Metal Gamin with Commands in Wind first, and preferably as an off-activation summon), and then try to activate Sandeep late in the turn and drop Banasuva in when they least expect him. Any games where I tried to do much more summoning than that and I found myself stone and care starved. As to people's reactions, I have consistently had startled reactions at how effective he and his crew are at doing pretty much anything. I'm surprised that I haven't heard much more complaining on the forums or elsewhere at home strong he is (I've heard the comment "How did this guy get through playtesting like this?" on multiple occasions). How have your opponents (or if you have run against him, you) reacted so far to playing against Sandeep? For how effective he is this early on, I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it.

If it makes you feel any better, I pulled this move in a tournament (which I ended up winning) and didn't realize that Joss couldn't use that action until I wrote a tourney recap on my blog and then got called out on my mistake in A Wyrd Place

Sadly Howard can't use Sandeep's (0) 6" placement--at the very bottom of that action is says "Only Academics and Minions may take this Action." Very easy to miss that part of the action (I missed that part myself and went on a similar assassination mission with Joss), but I can see why they did that (and the Valedictorian or Bansuva can still use it!)

Yeah, I enjoy how potentially tough it makes Joss to put down and the added benefit of letting him charge through other models. Downside is that getting it off takes up Sandeep's (0) for the turn, which I tend to frequently use for his teleport to get Sandeep to where he needs to be. I'll give it a go (probably tonight) and see if I like how it plays.

I can imagine that with 7 possible outcomes for 3 different story-lines it will take a bit to compile not only what happened, but also put together the next step in their journeys. Thanks for keeping us posted! I can't wait to see what happened and where each of these stories is headed. And luckily since you're in the Eastern timezone and I'm central, CoB for you should be before CoB for me and I'll be able to grab the new scenarios before I head to the shop for Malifaux Mondays!

I've been running him mostly with Unaligned Sage and the Commands upgrade; as to the crew I've been bringing 3 Oxfordian Mages (with their new 0 cost upgrade they are all kinds of awesome) and an Ice Gamin (great to summon Banasuva off of as it has 5 wounds instead of 4 like all of the other gamin), I've been playing around with the make up of the rest of the crew but Joss and Cassandra (both with warding runes) have been making frequent appearances. While unaligned sage is handy that it lets you bring along out of faction Academics, Academics being able to utilize Beacon outside of LOS of Sandeep allows the crew to spread more than they would otherwise. The biggest reason I have found to take To Command Another Plane over To Behold Another World is for the Commands in Wind upgrade--the model with that upgrade can't make attack actions but all friendly models within 3 gain to all attack actions. I love to put this onto a Metal Gamin (who doesn't mind not being able to make attacks) and all those really make for some powerful attacking. I've found this works especially well on strategies where models like to be grouped up (Turf War, Extraction, Guard the Stash). I need to give the incorporeal upgrade a go, seems like it could be really handy but I haven't found a spot for it in the crew yet.

Whoever is losing the duel after the initial flip cheats first if they want to cheat, then whoever was originally winning the duel. In the case of a tie, the defender must decide to cheat first.

Awesome! I could swear I saw somewhere that it was kicking off todayish, but didn't want to be checking the page/forums obsessively (instead of doing my actual job) if it wasn't kicking off until next week.

So, when do we get the encounters? It's Malifaux night tonight and I'm hopping to get one or two games in for this!

@Aaron: Are both players required to report it?

Sweet! That makes it a whole lot more convenient than the Nythera campaign; there were a couple of times last year where we wanted to get in games for the campaign but my friends had forgotten to sign up for it. Sounds like a lot of fun, looking forward to seeing what the scenarios are!

@Aaron, as there is no map involved with this event am I correct in assuming that we don't need to sign up for this in advance, just enter games as we play them? Also, on the submission for it has spots for "Full Name" and "Opponent's Name"--should we use our forum names there or the names the rest of the world generally knows us by?

Third outing with Sandeep last night, definitely the most successful so far. We played Guard the Stash (corner deployment), Schemes were: Convict Labor, Take Prisoner, Leave Your Mark, Covert Breakthrough, and Inspection. He played Reva; I don't remember his exact list, but it was basically her crew box minus Corpse Candles (he summoned those in) plus Anna Lovelace, Bette Noir, and a Necropunk. I brought: Sandeep Desai + 6 Pool - To Command Another Plane (1) - Unaligned Sage (1) Cassandra (8) - Practiced Production (1) - Warding Runes (1) Kudra (7) - Warding Runes (1) - Free of Mortal Shackles (1) Oxfordian Mage (5) - Blood Ward (0) - Temporary Shielding (0) Oxfordian Mage (5) - Nemesis Ward (0) - Temporary Shielding (0) Oxfordian Mage (5) - Doom Ward (0) - Temporary Shielding (0) Sanctioned Spellcaster (5) Ice Gamin (4) Malifaux Raptor (3) I selected Leave your Mark and Take Prisoner (Reva), he took Leave your Mark and Convict Labor. I've had good success with other masters using the Cassandra with Practiced Productions + Malifaux Raptor combo any time Leave Your Mark is in the scheme pool, so I wanted to see how it worked with Sandeep and friends; turns out that it worked out great getting me 3 easy VP off of Leave Your Mark that he was pretty much powerless to contest. I prefer using Cassandra over the cheaper Angelica as Cass is more durable, Understudy can be fantastic, and nimble is rather handy. As to the rest of the crew, the Oxfordian Mages with their new upgrade end up being fantastic swiss army knives--oh, you're trying to get away from my immobile Banasuva? Windblast you back to where you belong! You're doing too many things I don't like? Slow! You have Armor? No you don't! You really need to die? Burning! Not going to give a play by play on everything, but a few things I learned I figured I could share. I played Sandeep in between a balls to the wall aggressiveness I played outing #2 and the hold back and support I played outing #1 and it worked out really well. I used his free AP from Student of All early in the turn to summon a Fire Gamin (Banasuva was going to borrow his Magma spit if the enemy stayed out of range) with Commands in Wind (no attacks, but gives friendlies within 3" to attacks) and having those on attacks early for everyone was really handy and it preserved Sandeeps Arcane Shield longer. I was also able to out-activate my opponent, which meant that having Sandeep go late in the turn he was able to summon Big Blue with Commands in Earth in a great spot to tie up a lot of my opponent's crew. He did get Bansuva low on health after Bette Noir popped out of a dead Necropunk, but I took initiative the next turn and had Big Blue activate first and take the Explosive Demise 2 from the Ice Gamin--I figured he was going to die, so get in 3 very effective smacks on my enemies and then make them take 3 damage and a burning when they took him out. I was able to summon Big Blue again later on, but effective use of the from the Fire Gamin made it so that the fate of the game wasn't resting on Sandeep summoning. I think that planning on only 2-3 summons a game and using mostly Sandeeps Arcane Storm or Gada will work out more efficiently than making summoning a priority (a mistake I make in game #2 with Sandeep). I should have taken Convict Labor instead of Take Prisoner on Reva--I usually only like to take 1 scheme marker based scheme and I figured that pressuring Reva would make him expend resources to keep her alive to the point that he didn't have the resources to use with the rest of his crew (which did work quite effectively), but apparently Big Blue with on the attack and the +1 damage buff from the Ice Gamin because he borrowed Frozen Heart makes Reva go down faster than I anticipated when I pummeled her into the ground turn 4 after a Oxfordian mage pushed her back into Bansuva's range after she pulled her Death Shroud teleport thing. Had I taken Convict Labor I would have been able to get at least 2 points, potentially 3 off of it, so worth trying in the future. I ended up winning 7-0, so not bad at all. I am definitely enjoying taking Sandeep; still need to tweak things a little, but I am starting to get a good feel for what he's good at and what he's not good at.

That QR code scan thing is super handy so long as both players are using the same app (gotta get more people to adopt it!)--most of the time when getting ready for a game one person generates strats/schemes while the other sets up terrain. It's super handy to just hand over a QR code instead of reading them off 3 times (because no one ever hears them right the first time

Crazy idea that seems like it costs more stones than it's really worth but worth considering--using Hans' "Smile you son of a..." ability and shooting upgrades off of your own Gamin. Thoughts?

Sadly it doesn't, when Big Blue has the Earth Vision/Command upgrade it can't be moved or pushed, only placed. I'm mostly looking for fun abilities for Big Blue to assimilate from other Gamin.

Random question--do Arcanists have access to a way to unbury friendly models? I was thinking that if we did and Big Blue is getting low on health, he could take the Wind Gamin "To the Sky" ability. Use Kudra to kill him off, then he heals up and is buried. If there is a way to unbury friendly models, wait until he loses the "To the Sky" ability as he no longer would have the restriction of not being unburied by friendly models. Seems silly and I don't think we have access to a method to do this, but if we do and I'm overlooking it it could be an interesting way to heal and reposition Big Blue.

I just put the upgrades with the card of the model that I summoned. As to which of Sandeep's Ca actions have been used, I've just been using a dry erase to mark them off each time they are used in a turn.