admiralvorkraft

If I were writing the game I'd give the sanitarium to Lucius. After all, reprogramming "patients" and sending them out into the world as sleeper agents is a pretty Elite Division move.

Another for Lucius. Because winning the game with only Lucius left on the board with a fat stack of soulstones looking pleased with himself... It's a great feeling.

She is extremely resource-efficient at removing individual models. My frequent opponent runs a frustrating Collodi crew that spams small activations, Vasillisa slings Hinamatsu into a key model at the bottom of each turn and they teleport back to the Doll Collection markers at EoT. It's a finesse crew, but it scales well with player skill - the better you are at reading the opposing crew and board state the more you'll be able to get done.

I don't get the hate on the Nephilim. It's absolutely one of the best totems in the game.

Sounds pretty card intensive. It could be a good back-pocket play but not something I'd count on. Doxy's a pretty solid model anyway. That push in a Perdita crew is less meaningful, but for Sonnia or J it could be fun...

I'm definitely interested. And if you're looking for the gold standard of tournament reports (imo) check out ArgentBadger's posts - the action is really clear and easy to follow.

It looks like Lucius has three lawyer sculpts at gencon. So maybe his Elite Division will focus more on legalese and more, well, Elite guards while Dashel has most of the current guardsmen models?

Overall, I really like what we're seeing out of gencon so far. I'd love decent pictures of any new models they've got on display...

It's exactly the synergistic nature of Malifaux that (in my mind) requires a rotation. Otherwise there's no getting away from overpowered interactions, and no way for players to hold a reasonable picture of the game as a whole in their head. It's not unplayable at the moment, but coming back to the game I've pretty much limited myself to the original three Guild masters with the idea that I can just blow anything I don't recognize off the table. Reading tournament reports, following podcasts, etc it looks like metas globally have seen a similar paradigm shift. There's too much going on in this game that will blow you away if you try to play for points, so you better just table your opponent and score later. Streamlining conditions will help shift the dial back towards Malifaux over Murderfaux but you can't really get away from the fundamental problem of bloat. Too many interactions to anticipate and test properly, leading to more errata, leading to more untested combinations gumming up the release schedule and bogging down the competitive scene in a morass of same-y aggro lists. But again, if Wyrd isn't doing this for the health of the tournament circuit then I totally get why people are upset.

I don't think it's misleading. Clelaning up the rules will help but over time it is impossible to have a game that is balanced for competitive play if you consistently release new models each year and don't do anything about bloat. And it happens faster with a game like Malifaux that is fundamentally built around TCG style combos than it does in a game like Infinity where the focus is more on positioning and maneuver. If Wyrd is serious about competitive gaming then they need to either massively slow down their release schedule (which may be a hard sell from a profits perspective) or they need to control bloat by rotating models out of standard play by some mechanism.

Even playing casually I sunk more money into Magic than I have into Malifaux. And again, without minis rotation - or some other measure to control bloat - the competitive side of the game is dead.

Absolutely. Wyrd has both been really proactive around issues of diversity, and more than usually responsive when people have brought up problems. There was a big discussion a couple of years ago on the forums that got a bit heated, but honestly I think the game (and art, etc) came out the other side stronger for it. Of course there are always more stories that can be told, but this world is already richer than any other minis game I can think of.

@Mason - I read what y'all have said about DMH. What we the player base will need to know moving forward (I understand that this isn't available at this time, it's complicated) is who will end up in the DMH and how long we have until that happens. We also need to know sooner rather than later if any other models are being DMH'd. We need to know if masters currently in the DMH can be expected to be brought into the standard set, or if they are out of competitive play for the edition (and, again, approximately how long that will be). We need firm expectations about what the DMH actually means - and this speaks to WWHSD's point below. Does it mean 90% of nothing because most TO's are going to ignore it? Or will Wyrd be imposing some incentive for it to actually be adhered to (different tournament formats, etc)? We also need to have an idea of the intent. Because currently it sounds like masters were DMH'd more or less "for fun" or because some writer or another decided that's where the story would go. And if that's actually where we're at then I really do empathize with the folks who are upset. On the other hand, if I'm reading it right and it's a way to add new models while keeping the game viable on a competitive level then we need to know that. Partially so that we can plan purchasing if tournament play is important to us, but also so that we (I) can continue to be really vocal in defending the choice as it gets implemented. I'm doing a lot of guessing and wishful thinking right now because I'm excited about the game for the first time in over a year. I think that the M3E news is overwhelmingly positive and I want the change to be as smooth as possible. The one shadow is the uncertainty around the DMH - about what it will actually, concretely mean to the average player next year and five years down the road. I understand that information may not yet exist, y'all were wrong footed by the leaks and that sucks, but the sooner we can know what impact this will have on our daily experience of the game the better.

@Saduhem - I definitely agree that I want greater clarity as to what's going on with the DMH and what it will be used for going forwards. For example, I think that people should know that named models (arbitrary distinction) have 5 years eligibility in Standard format. After that point they may be reworked and re-released or retired from Standard indefinitely. For perspective, I'm back after about a 6 month hiatus that I took because the game state is so bad post Wave 5. I was feeling like the several hundred dollars I've spent on the game have been largely invalidated because I was investing in a dynamic game that was balanced for competitive play and that was just clearly not the case anymore. If I'd bought into the game as a fun way to kick back with friends, or because I wanted to spend a lot of time converting and painting, then I wouldn't have been bothered. The DMH seems like a way to keep the game relevant for competitive players and also maintain support for casual/hobbyist gamers. But again, you're right, Wyrd needs to be super clear and consistent about the DMH models. To that end I would actually like them to be stricter about how the DMH interacts with competitive play - no DMH models in Masters qualifying events, but allowed in non-master "legacy" tournaments. Something like that.

Okay, but by doing nothing they "invalidate" competitive play whereas this way you still have perfectly "valid" rules for your models in casual and semi-competitive settings. I played casual MtG for years, the changing format didn't somehow "invalidate" any of my purchases.

As someone who made a post that could be construed as critical of some/all of those complaining about their "lost" masters, allow me to elaborate. You are allowed to feel however you want. Your feelings are valid. However your feelings don't change the fact that the current game-state makes competitive play basically a joke. The shift towards optimized aggro crews is a natural extension of there being so much crap in the game right now that the only way to reliably deal with it is to just clear the board. It's like if every chess game saw you sitting down across a board and looking at sixteen models that moved in ways you vaguely recognized but didn't really understand. Rather than trying to play for the checkmate you almost have to first set the board to a simple enough state that you can accurately anticipate moves. It defeats the whole way the game is structured. So to have a competitive Malifaux scene you need a way to limit the variables to some quasi-human manageable number. To do that you need to streamline the game somewhat and introduce a limiting factor on the number of models that players need to be familiar with. The first one is obviously a goal of M3E but the second one is tricky. It's tricky because some people have an emotional investment in their crews - that's to be expected - and it's tricky because Wyrd needs to keep people buying models. The only way to satisfy the first and third priorities (maintaining a competitive scene and profits within the business model) is to impose a rolling limited format. Say 7 masters per faction, 10 henchmen, etc. Satisfying the the emotional needs of individuals to see their well loved models on the tabletop means a compromise. I think that a good place to start is updating those masters and other models that have rotated out of "standard" so that they are playable under the active rules-set and are balanced for good casual play - meaning that they aren't rigorously tested in all combinations and scenarios, but that they are put on the table a few times with their theme crew and are reasonably fun for both players. Now if Wyrd intends to move to a rotating format (and I really hope they do) then I think they need to do so very intentionally, and communicate proactively. This is especially important with the US Masters Tour coming online. That way those of us who are committed wargamers first, last, and always have a continually balanced and supported game that we can continue to spend money on. Those who care more about the hobby aspect can build and paint to their heart's content and play casual, fun games with whatever master they want. And players who like to see the story move can cheer for certain results in tournaments and special events that will advance the story in interesting ways. I'm not saying make the game "worse" or "unplayable" for certain players, but supporting different formats that encourage players of all stripes to continue to engage with the game seems like a strictly good idea. We can all win out of this.

We'll see... I already don't like expensive models so it's not super appealing.

My Sonnia crew is pretty set, though I could probably run him instead of Gage... I mostly run him with Lucius because I mostly run Lucius

Dashel has been good since Arrest Him came out, but at 8ss he's a steal. I haven't run much with him lately as I've rediscovered how much fun Graves and Tannen are together, but I'll miss having Dashel in my Lucius crews come M3E.

I've spent a couple days getting caught up on the thread so this is going to be a bit of a scatter-shot post. First and foremost I think that model rotation is critical for a sustainable competitive scene. Now that rotation would have to be well communicated and predictable - if we know that the named models in a given book will rotate out of "standard" after three or five years or whatever then we can plan our purchases accordingly. As Ramos has been basically my only Arcanist master for a couple years I feel people's frustration at "losing" them out of no where, but there's a reason why every card game has a rotating tournament model. It's just simply impossible to balance five years worth of releases all at once and continue to add a book each year. The only way to shrink the number of interactions that need balancing to a manageable level while continuing to release new models at a rate that keeps Wyrd profitable is to rotate some models out of competitive play. Now there should also be an official "legacy" model or something similar for those people that enjoy holding ten thousand interactions in their head at all times, but for most people a smaller pool will make the game more skill based and less gotcha-based. The same goes for streamlining. Memorizing combos is a skill, but it's a really boring one and building a game around memorization doesn't make a game deeper, it makes a game broader. Imposing reasonable limits puts the focus on creative thinking on the tabletop - how do you use the tools you have to get what you need. That's strictly a good thing in my book, right now it's way too easy to reveal crews and go, "well, I didn't bring the hard counter to X so that's pretty much the game then." Don't get me wrong, skill is still a major factor in Malifaux but the build/counter-build factor is getting really high. With all that said, my only solid complaint is about the cards. I don't care so much about size (though standard playing card size is definitely the most convenient for those with good vision) but the cards should be optimized for clarity and usability above all else and the M2E layout is hard to beat. At the very least the health bar on the new cards should be moved up to just below the stat block and the faction symbol should be moved off of the stat line so that it's not breaking up the actually relevant gameplay information. I'm biased towards landscape presentation after my years of Battlefleet Gothic, so take that criticism with an appropriate serving of salt. I'm only really concerned about increased threat ranges and mobility options. Walk actions are already a rarity at this point and I'd much rather see a more slowly evolving board state that encourages planning for turn 5 over the current meat grinder. But I'll keep an open mind. Anything that limits crews from hanging back and playing with themselves rather than mixing it up in the scramble for points is probably a good thing.

I like the teaser of her as a board control/manipulation master. Dropping Pyre Markers everywhere, moving them around, shoving people into them, slowly smiling as their screams fill the air... Sorry, got distracted by something.

I actually think Dashel is pretty fun after getting Arrest Him! so I've got some hope for him as a master. I just hope no one summons like Nico/Ramos - i.e. in the back with no interaction with the other crew. Summoning off of something like scheme markers within 8" of an enemy model could be fun.

I mean, it's basically how I play Sonnia now. So...probably, yeah.

Dashel and Perdita sound like they might be fun in a tempo build.

Yeah, Jury wouldn't be my first choice. Especially in Guild, half the faction has a 12" pistol to just get that first point on the board. Good job all around though!