AnythingBut

Did some work to finish off the blue layering on the Golem which I was pleased with (unfortunately the only camera I posses is on the iPhone so its not a great shot for that but I did want to ask people thoughts/advice about the white highlighting. 

Is it a bit harsh on the eye to just go from my blue layers to a white straight up? do they need softning or layered up themselves? or does it look ok as it is? Contemplating a very light white drybrush on some of the larger blue areas to break it all up but would like the ideas of maybe some more experienced painters before I changed anything. 

And the back shot. Again advice welcome.

You'll notice the base was done in the same way as my gamin. I was thinking if I did this base style for all my crew, Rapy/ wendigo/ december acolyte it might be a bit over the top on the ice front. It makes sense that the ice creatures might be emanating an aura and freezing the ground they walked on but not sure it would tie in with the living models of the crew. 

Would people suggest doing them on snow covered mountainous bases or carry on with the cracked ice theme?

1) Im no expert Marcus player but there are a few more beasts to comsider from outside the faction.

The neverborn have a couple of excellent scheme runners, arguably better than the choices we have inside the Arcanists itself. 

Silurid - A decent defensive choice. camoflage gives neg flips if he hasnt activated yet and he has leap for amazing mobility if you need to get somewhere for the purpose of a scheme. 

Waldgeist - Maybe also worth a look if you want a tougher, harder to kill 'cheapish' beast for turf war and the like. He has armour and camoflage and his (0) action allows him to place two 50mm markers with the Ht5, severe and soft cover traits meaning he can give the rest of your crew some staying power against ranged opponents aswell as being naturally tough himself.

Dawn Serpent - You want some shooting? This is your guy. has a good ML attack which gives poison and has a ranged attack with hands out burning. Being 'hard to kill' and having a (0) action heal makes him alot tougher to bring down than his Df5, 10 wounds would suggest. He also has flying and movement 6 which makes him alot quicker than some of the other options which can put out the same amount of damage. 

Im a mainly Rasputina player myself but there is a great article written by DGRAZ pinned at the top of this forum which is where I got most of the knowledge ive used in my marcus games so far and would definitely recommend you give it a thorough read!  - http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/92826-m2e-marcus/

2) Ive never played Myranda with the skin walker upgrade but im sure DGRAZ talks about the pro's and cons in his article. 

Yeah, page 45 of the big rulebook. The third paragraph begins "the attacker flips one card for each model within 2" of the target...." If Rasputina is the attacker then she would get to use Decembers pawn.

The bottom paragraph gives an in game example. "A guild guard is shooting into a melee involving a death Marshall, a slurid and a terror tot. All three models are within 2" of one another, so the guild guard chooses the slurid as the target (be has LoS and range to it) HE then flips cards...."

The operating word being HE; the guild guard model. Considering the rest of the book refers to controlling players as she, it seems certain it is referring to the attacking models itself when describing who makes the flip.

Ah, a fellow cumbrian! I used to live in the south lakes, but left to go to Uni and pretty much never went back

South lakes here too! It's a small malifaux world!

Also left for uni, but after 4 years went back to my roots

I think with my raspy crew that game I had the prefect counter to killjoy then. It's slightly dependent on when in the activation chain you kill the model to unbury killjoy. But as I killed the death marshall that spawned him with raspys second AP I had one left to decide what to do.

I decided to put the pillars down to stop a killjoy charge next turn but as it turns out I think it would have been even worse for Adam if we'd realised he has to charge friendly models as the pillars blocked off his charge to my wendigo but still has a friendly death Marshall within charge range! I guess It would just lead to killjoys controller cheating in his low cards for his attacks and avoid damage but still worth it to pull him out of position for a turn or two.

Thanks for the replies guys and nice to know were mainly on the right tracks with the rules in the build up to my tourney in a purple of months! It was only the first report I've done but will probably continue to make them as the experienced players on here are a great help with rule clarification.

To be honest after re reading the Decembers pawn card I'm not sure how I managed to misplay it. It clearly says 'this model'. I guess for 2ss it would be far too powerful if it changed them to red jokers for the whole crew.

As for killjoy, it was the first time either if us had played with/against him. I did read the card but hadn't though that legal target would have included friendly models. I know the game allows you to target friendly models with attacks so that you can use randomising into combat for your advantage or simply trying to use a trigger, so I guessbibshoukdnt be too surprised you can charge a friendly model.

In this case how do most people play with killjoy? Either buried and unburying when a friendly model dies that is not too close to another friendly model or starting him on the table out on his own flank so not having to charge his own crew?

Turn 3

The flip for initiative here is the start luck going my way. I flip a 4, adam gets a 12. I ponder and decide its worth a SS to try reflip my initiative as if I get to go first joss will be able to paralyse Lady J with the high Crow I have in my hand. I flip a 13, apologise for my good luck. If looks could kill, id be a dead man.

I activate Joss, cheat in my 13 of crows which does enough damage to reduce Lady J to 4 remaining and give her paralysis. 

Killjoy activates, and as hes blacked in my the pillars, simply moves slightly and drops a marker for ALitS. My wendigo activates, moves away from the Judge before using his magical extension to copy ice pillars and block him in

The death marshall above the central building runs around the pillars and drops another marker for ALiTS. It gets counter charged and crushed by the ice golem.

The death marshal on the far left, takes a shot at my gamin, misses, then drops one more scheme marker (he really wants ot score ALiTS it seems!) I activate raspy, kill the marshall who has just activated (who drops just more markers as he goes) giving me the first stratergy point for killing two in one turn. 

Turn 4 

Turn 4 begins and I get first activation yet again. (thank you card gods) I actiave joss. flip a black joker (thank you decembers pawn) and take Lady J's last 4 wounds giving my all 3 points for assasinate. 

Next kill joy managed to walk and be withing charge range of a gamin (with his 1ap CG action) smashing it to pieces. 

Rasputina then paralyzes killjoy as hes within 6" and the wendigo charges in to try devour! I fail twice and the beast lives!

The judge walks all the way around the building ready for a charge next turn and the ice golem double walks up to him and has a swing with his melee expert doing a few wounds. 

We both score 1 for Bodyguard.

Turn 5

The judge dances inbetween the golem and wendigo and kills the wendigo in 1 hit. The golem then uses 3ap to smash the judge for 9 weak damage taking him to his hard to kill would. Killjoy activates and unparalyses.

Raspy when shoots into combat does, randomises onto killjoy, gets moderate damage and kills the judge with the blast token. 

Then with an amzing hand of high masks. Im able to cast my 2 remaning spells on killjoy, hit my over overpower trigger on each of the two casts for a total of 4 spells on the last model on his crew. I kill him aswel to claim one more point for the strat and deny him more bodyguard. 

The game ends in  8-4 victory to Rasputina. 

2 points for Rekoning, and all 3 for both my schemes. 

Adam claimed 1 for body guard and 3 for ALiTS.

It was a great game with lots of luck in my deck!

This is my first attempt at writing a battle report. Me and a few mates from our war gaming group have recently discovered Malifaux. That given there may be a couple of points in the report where I ask if we played a rule correctly, clarification from some of the more experienced players would be welcome to correct us where we went wrong. 

Ive gone in at the Malifaux deep end, buying multiple crew boxes and metals to give me a decent pool to select from whereas most of the guys have a crew box or maybe two. Ive also signed myself up to the 45ss Tournament 'Not a Bad Thing' in September so with this in mind asked one of the other guys for a game this size even though neither of us has played 45ss before. 

I was playing the part of Rasputina and my good friend and club founder Adam was playing his Lady J crew with a new mercenary addition.

Stratergy : Reckoning 

Scheme pool : ALiTS, Spring the Trap, Plant Explosives, Assasinate, Bodyguard

Having only a handful of games under our belts neither of us had played reckoning before and with a raspy crew I was stuck between taking only big hard to kill models and hurt my ability to cast through ice mirrors or to take some smaller ss cost models that migh tbe easy Stratergy point targets but would enable me to use raspys casting to its full potential. 

In the end I went with the latter option hoping to keep my small minions safe for long enough for Raspy to blow some poeple to pieces. 

Crew Selection

Adam hasnt bought quite as many models as me in the short time we've been playing but still had a decent enough line up for the Strategy selected.

The Guild 45ss used, pool of 4

-Lady Justice (Badge of office, Implacable) I believe Adam thought bulletproof would reduce the damage caused by my casting too when selecting the implacable upgrade)

- The Judge (Lead Lined Coat) 

- Killjoy

- 3x Death Marshalls

Scheme's taken - ALiTS (announced) + Bodyguard (Killjoy)

The Arcanists 45ss used, pool of 3

- Rasputina (Decembers Pawn, Cold Nights)  My standard set up on Rasputina at games less than 50ss. I find the annoyance of getting into a perfect tactical position for it all to be undone by the black joker too much to bear and has been in ever list since my second game. The ice pillars I also think are ridiculously good in so many situations. Blocking LoS, markers, objectives etc. and at 1ss I dont see myself ever playing a game without them)

- Wendigo (double ice pillars you say? Sign me up!! not to mention a fast, non-peon 3ss totem who can one shot kill any target raspy can paralyse) 

- Joss ( probably a given in most arcanists Reckoning crews, especially given the death marshalls and the judges hard to kill and wound abilities)

- Ice Golem

- Blessed of December (Risky given the strategy, but hopefully with her leap could surprise and kill a model of two before going down itself) 

- 2x Ice gamin

Scheme's taken - Assasinate + Bodyguard (Joss)

So my plan was to keep my gamin and wedigos safe for as long as possible while using joss, the golem and blessed to kill stuff, hopefully two at a time! I had taken assasinate as Lady J need to be up doing work in combat and bodyguard as I figured I could keep a hard to kill model with armour alive easier than doing Spring the trap or plant explosives against his crew.

The Terrain 

We had a building in the centre, the top right is another building with a dense forest attached to the front, the top left is a long piece of Ht 2 impassible, blocking wall. on the Centre left of the shot is a hazardous toxic waste pool. Bottom left is a ruined Building which was Ht3, blocking but did have a shooting lane through it. and bottom right is a third building with a Ht1 wall courtyard.

Deployment

I won the flip and let adam deploy first

Sorry for the landscape picture but I think its the only one! Adam decided to start will Killjoy burried, with Lady J on the own at the far end behind the building and the Jodge plus death Marshalls slightly spread behind the Ht2 Wall. 

Seeing my assasinate target alone on one side of the board was a nice sight and so I deplyed my hitty BoD and Joss up towards her. Raspy and 1 gamin are behind the ruins and the golem with his two little friends are in the centre. 

Turn 1

Adam win initiative and as I out activate him and its turn 1 I allow him to go first. He activated Lady J first and triple walks her out into the thick of the action inviting a charge from my BoD. I then activate my Golem, throw a gamin ten inches up behind the building in the centre and trundle forward. 

The next few activation are death marshalls jumping over the wall and advancing towards the centre line while I move my wendigo up to the house also ensuring I have LoS to his crew as ice mirror.

The blessed makes a leap before charging Lady J. I manage to put weak damage on her while triggering my ram for another free attacking which does weak damage again for a total of 4. My second attack misses and adam manages to cheat in a high Mask for his reposte triger putting a whopping 4 wounds down in defense. not a good charge for me!

Joss moves round the building to help in the Lady J combat next turn.

Rasputina then activates and manages to blast the central of the three marshalls twice for 4 damage in total then deciding he was sufficiently softened up for a turn 2 kill for the strat points and put down some ice pillars to give the wendigo some cover. 

Here's the photo of the turn (the 50mm bases with blu tack on are my pillars. 

Turn 2

I win initiative and charge Joss into the fight. He swings a couple of times hitting once for 4 damage and missing the second attack (but no mask trigger thankfully this time!)

Lady J then activates. Heals for a 0 action. Smacks the BoD to death with 2 attacks then fails to hit joss with the third. 

The rest of turn 2 sees Adam's righter most marshall nip round the building and take a shot at my gamin which does 1 daamge thinks to my armour. in retaliation the gamin shoots back twice for a grand total of 0 damage!

His other death marshalls  spend their turns moving up to drop markers on the centre line. My golem moves up to provide one more ice mirror for raspy, who then proceeds to shoot the wounded death marshall again killing it (releasing killjoy and dropping another scheme marker as it went). Seeing this horror appear from the death marshalls body I decided it would be better to not shoot at the beast but instead block his charges with some more pillars. 

The judge goes round the back of the the building, presumable to try and start chewing through the gamin and wendigo next turn.

I dont manage to kill anyhting else however and so no strat points are scored by either side. 

Heres the end of turn shot. (adams scheme markers are the dice on the centre line as he forgot his 30mm bases) and the judge is hiding just behind the house near the acrobatic death marshal at the top of the shot. 

From here on I dont have end of turn shots, but do have kill shot and charges to show some of the important plays. 

Continued on Page 2!

Took the plunge and payment sent.

As a native to the far north west (Lake District) it shouldn't be too much of a trek for my first event!

As a relative new comer to the game (with tournament experience in other wargames) I was thinking about this tournament for my first as I should be able to get at least one crew up and painted by then (although I see that's not a requirement in the pack)

I'm hoping to get a couple of the guys from my club to come along too but if they can't commit soon I may be tempted to buy a ticket anyway to ensure my place.

I think by the looks of it, the malifaux scene would be nice enough to offer a lonely newbie a warm welcome in his first tourney before stomping him into the wooden spoon position

UK here so actually on GMT but keen to play on vassal.

I've played a few games at 35ss at my gaming club and now started expanding to 50ss. I would say I'm good with the rules but may be a bit slow on vassal as I'm not used to the programme although I do spectate the odd game on there now and then.

P.s. Here is a graft video about malifaux on vassal and all stages of the game. This video is part 1 of 3 but the other parts are in the related videos section on YouTube. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6kOuPabAOOU all worth a watch if you're not familiar with the programme

Thanks for the positive responses about the bases, much appreciated.

In reply to Jonasty I honestly just think it's about playing to get the right thickness of agrellan. I don't prime or varnish I simply put a layer of turquoise paint on the base first and that wasn't to help the technical paint it was purely for aesthetics.

I put it on trick enough to get the big cracks but I've never had flaking problems and I give the agrellan two thourough dry brushes afterwards and they stay in place no problem.

I found the right thickness to apply was simply to cover the base until the agrellan was thick enough to reach the 'lip' that runs all away around the base. I wish I could give more sound advice but I've honestly never had any issues with it!

Hey everyone. After watching a couple of the guys at my local gaming club play a game of Malifaux a few weeks ago ive become well and truly hooked! 

After reading through the rulebook and looking at each faction I settled on the Arcanists due to the seemingly huge amount of variance in crew play style. To date Ive only played a handful of games (all as Rasputina, my chosen 'main' crew for now) and am having a blast and learning every single time. I already own all Three Arcanists master plastic crew boxes and a load of older metals just because I dont like the idea of Proxying untill the plastics are released. 

So I created this blog to try and motivate me to get through the rather large amount of unpainted figures I have already amassed. Although I must admit so far Im having a ton of fun and the motivation isnt strictly needed Im new to skirmish games and the fact each model feels like a unique character makes a nice change to huge hordes of mono pose models in one unit.  

To start here are my Ice Gamin. The first Malifaux models ive ever painted. I was having a hard time deciding on what bases to do them on and after seeing some great results from Agrellan Earth as a cracked desert theme I decided to have a go using the effect to create an Icy wasteland.

Next a picture of all three amigos! 

And a quick look at how I created the bases. First of all I Painted the base a turquise blue/green, as when the earth paint drys and cracks you will see the base through the gaps.

Then I put a thick player of Agrellan earth (from the GW technical range) deep enough to fill the base up to the lip. After allowing this to dry overnight I painted it with a Deep blue.

The finishing touches were then a simple srybrush with a light Icy blue color before a final light drybrush of white. 

Id be interested to hear what you guys think, about both the models (as a first attempt with Malifaux minitures) and the base idea I came up with.

More posts will be coming as the fully painted models are completed. 

So as a new player ive been running exclusively rasputina so far and having a ton of fun and sucess with her. Totem wise I'm loving the wendigo, he has great synergy with raspys spells and the plastic model is fantastic.

Another fantastic use I've been having with him is to use his magical extension ability to copy rasputinas ice pillars.

I'm just looking for clarification that this is infact legal? The spell simply says to copy a leaders Ca action at a casting value of -3. The fact that the ice pillars is a spell you gain from an upgrade shouldn't effect the wendigo being able to copy it I assume?

I never leave home without the upgrade on raspy, it's invaluable to protect markers as well as minions and block off whole areas of the board, especially if you can cast it twice! Just making sure it's not breaking any rules as I plan to use it often

Crew recieved on time and in excellent condition.

Thanks for a great transaction at a fantastic price!

Thanks for checking over the 'cheat sheets' Thaarup. We have all read the rule book but having found the cheat sheets online it's often easiest to just glance at that than find the corrosponding page In the book.

I'll be more careful to double check in the rule book if something on the sheet doesn't feel right when playing (like the dense forest rule)

Ahh, I guess this is where the confusion lies. One of the guys has printed out some reference guide 'cheat sheets' that tell you turn phase order, set up order, drawing phases + and 1 ive charts, when you can use Soulstones etc etc and all that good stuff which has helped us beginners out immensely.

And in the terrain section of that sheet it says when drawing LoS through more than 3" of dense it is considered blocked. Is that a 1.5e hangover that he's left unedited? it does say its fixed for M2E but I imagine one or two small detail like that may have slipped through. 

Here are the two links 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_eOxXD9soheWlpucHFBOFJCc2s/edit

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_eOxXD9soheS2JoNTdCQ0NLU3M/edit

Not sure if anyone has time to have a quick read though and see if the rest seems to be about right?

Ok guys I know the rules book is fairly black and white on the subject but I was wondering how most or you out there and more importantly how most of the tournaments out there play with DENSE woods.

Is the general consensus that two models BOTH inside of a grove of trees who are 3.5 inches away cannot see each other? 

We have a few large forest bases our gaming club (6-10" in diamater) and there was some discussion between us (all newer players) if the rules should be taken straight out of the book as written with the 3 inches. Or if it was supposed to be just blocking for the purposes of trying to see models on the opposite side of the forest when neither model was itself inside.

I myself would assume that the rule was normally played literally and if you were 3.5" away from each other while both being inside the forest then we didnt have vision. but if there was a thin section of forest, say 2" accross, between two models who were not inside the trees themselves they would still be able to see each other as there was only 2" of the dense trees between them.

Others seemed to imagine it was more of a case of - we're both inside the forest so can always see each other no matter of distance, and if the models were stood outside opposite sides of said trees then they wouldnt have vision.

Actually, it only gives the Attacker a to Damage Flips. Their Attack Flip is unaffected.

Yeah I got myself muddled but it gives you a + to defence and a - to their damage. Still two benefits opposed to just a + to attack if you use it when attacking. That's what I was getting at.

I'm only new to the game myself but have found that you generally want to use them in a couple of key ways.

Firstly to swing am important duel but I will just point out you're much better off using them when defending in a duel as it gives the attacker a -flip to both attack and damage where as you only get a +flip on attack and NO bonus on damage when you burn a SS as the attacker.

Then there's to get a reflip for initiative. Obviously a risk as you do have a 50/50 flip again but in a key turn getting first activation can be the difference between a win and a loss. Other than that I've once or twice used them for a flip on the damage mitigation chat you get for burning a soul stoke but the first two options are where I spend them most.

So I'm a fairly new player to the game but have a decent amount or wargaming experience over the last ten years.

Having been drawn into the world of malifaux by its rich character driven stories I settled on rasputina as my first master (as I'm sure is a relatively common occurance). Who doesn't love an ice queen blasting magic accompanied by lumbering beast made from pure ice right?!

Anyway I've played a few games at 35ss against other new players. It's fair to say she's strong at these levels and a newby friendly master to start with so I've been having a blast... (Ba dum)

The main problems I find with the crew so far are its speed. When playing with mainly the box set and an added December acolyte it kills well but doesn't move across the board with much speed, except the odd ten inch toss from the golem.

I see Rasputina being recommended to new players but don't see much discussion on her at a high tournament level. Is her play too one dimensional and therefor easy for an experienced player to avoid and shut down? Or have I just not delved into the vaults of the forum enough?

I was assuming her starter box, maybe changing the totem to am Essence of power would be a good base for most schemes and strats then I would need to add some speed , marker runners and maybe another melee threat.

Adding then from a selection of Cassandra, the captain, mech rider, joss, December acolyte I don't see why she couldn't hold her own in any matchup against a player of any skill.

Please tell me I'm right and I don't have to give up on Raspy to fulfil the arcanists full potential?

As a new arcanist player I would be keen to take you on that offer.

Would you prefer to message me the email attached to your paypal and I will send you the payment and mailing address?

As I was typing the post something in my head did think you might only be able to claim one scheme per marker but wasn't 100% sure.

Another question in that vein then. If I were to have 4 markers down in the opposition DZ, two on each side and all within 6" of the corner I could presumably choose how many markers I used to claim VP in each scheme.

In other words I wouldn't be forced to use all 4 markers for power ritual and could instead elect to use two of them for that scheme and leave 2 for breakthrough?

You can also hit target that was out of range.

And presumably out of LoS too?

New player here and I assume that would be fine just wondering for clarification.

I'm not sure if this is a common question but it came up in a game last night between two relative new players.

The wording of the scheme says to place a marker within 6" of the enemy deployment zone. Does this include the deployment zone itself or just the 6" buffer around it?

It came up because the scheme pool included both breakthrough and power ritual which seemed to synergies perfectly together.

Or maybe the wording of breakthrough is specifically intended not to include the deployment zone itself to avoid one marker fulfilling both of these similar schemes?

Thanks in advance for any help.