admiralvorkraft

Good luck! They can't ply you if they're burning to death.

Yasunori hits more accurately, but as with anything it's just a resource management exercise. Between that and a good source of bury/paralyze/spam summoning you can hold up just about anything. Misaki is hard for me, as are Ironsides and Yan Lo. Those last two don't kill as much, but they haul my models in and lock them down which is harder to efficiently jam up imo.

When they show up against me they tend to do very little or die very quickly...

That's fair. I guess I'm the only one routinely underwhelmed by the big beaters :-P

I'm surprised not to see a reactivating Dawn Serpent call out...

Be killed and explode for 4 to a large number of models (that blast off a 50mm base is not insignificant) after sucking at least a couple of AP. Look at it as a (1) action that paralyzes a model and deals blast damage. It's not bad at all if you pick your moment. Otherwise just stick to summoning gamin and blowing things off the board.

I usually have 8-9 models in my crews without spamming by which point I can usually tell where the alpha is coming at least. Outside of like Hamlin the buffing and delivery mechanism for the alpha takes enough stones that the activation control isn't outrageous.

With Arrest Him! He can usually get up and summon a Guild Guard engaging the alpha-striker. Sure that guard will immediately get eaten but it will take resources and probably stop a charge. It doesn't work in every instance but it will take the teeth out of most alphas.

I played another vassal game tonight; Symbols of Authority Punish the Weak Recover Evidence Hold Up Their Forces Covert Breakthrough Take One For the Team I took that same Lucius crew from above; Lucius - 7ss Surprisingly Loyal Deep Pockets Condescending The Scribe Lawyer Death Marshal 2x Orderlies Austringer Graves Tannen My opponent took; Lady J - 5ss Swordfighter Another one Franc Wade In Hermanos Jury Numb 2x Recruiters Investigator Brutal Effigy Scales of Justice I took Take One For the Team on the Death Marshal on the theory that he was definitely taking Punish (spoilers, he was) and Recover Evidence because, Lucius. He took Punish and Undercover Breakthrough. The game was fantastic. Turn one he rolled up and I jockeyed for position. Top of two I popped Recover Evidence and threw Lucius in to score the first point on it and tie up his crew for a minute. I had a solid hand to back up the play - eight cards and nothing lower than a 9. Plus a full cache. He activated Lady J and discarded an 11 and a 12 for Justice at the End of the Blade to gain positives to all flips against Lucius for the rest of the turn. The rest of his hand was three 13s and the Red Joker. Now, thanks to some lucky prevention flips it did take both J and Frank to kill Lucius and I was able to sneak in and grab a second evidence marker with the Marshal. Other highlights included the Scales chasing around my lawyer turns 5-6 to try and stop it interacting. Both times I discarded a card to put it on negatives to disengage, and both times I black jokered my Df flip, and still managed to disengage. Graves showing both Frank and Lady J the door, repeatedly, in order to deny him Punish points. My Orderlies ganging up to beat a Recruiter into the ground. The game ended on turn 6. We tied 7-7. I scored 2 for Take One For the Team, full points for Recover Evidence, and two on the strat. He scored three for the strat, three for Undercover Breakthrough, and just the one point on Punish.

Lawyers might be fun. They are a steal at 5ss and if you're throwing a saber around their situational attack is less of a drawback. I don't have my cards in front of me, do Field Reporters have Reference the Field Guide or something? If so, then they are durable for their cost (disguised, manipulative) and can stack rams for crit strike on the saber. Otherwise you're pretty much describing my Lucius lists. Wardens, a Death Marshal, Pathfinder, Dashel, etc.

Lust draws a card on a tome for df. You can probably get ahead turn one by going defensive +2 and then flailing at her with Desperate Mercenaries or the like. The trigger is after resolving on df 6 so you probably don't even have to hurt her.

They are very different masters that work very differently. That being said, Sonnia does plenty of damage and brings solid board control to boot.

I lose most of my games period, because my most common opponent is incredibly good at the game. I've won or taken second in tournaments in four states. Mostly with Guild though I've also solo'd Jack Daw and Ramos. Heck, pre-errata Lucius and Guild McMourning got me to a top table at an (admittedly small) tournament back in the day. We're definitely stronger than that now.

That attack on Zipp probably needs a nerf - there's a reason Grab and Drop is a (0) and Up We Go (or whatever it's called) is significantly better. But that doesn't mean that our masters are somehow invalid.

@Fazza92 - What I'm saying is, drop Frank. I never bring him outside of Perdita and I do not miss him. Try playing Lucius, try playing McCabe. Build your lists with a bury/paralyze element. Or take Dashel to neuter alpha strikes. Try actually looking at the models we have in faction and using them to solve your problems rather than starting with Frank/Phiona/Peacekeeper (or whatever) and complaining that you can't build a crew. Of course you can't, you're starting ~30ss down at that point and outside of specific strats/schemes it leaves you playing with 20ss to actually score points versus 50ss crews. I'm sorry if I'm coming off as harsh, but you can't say that a faction is bad when you only use a tiny sliver of the models in that faction.

I've had success for years playing Guild against type. Now we have an awesome spread of cheap utility minions. Lucius went from good to incredible with his new upgrades. Lady J plays a strong denial/skirmish role. Sonnia has solid board control... Sure, if you lean into the "Step 1 kill things, step 2 ? Step 3 profit!" model then you're going to struggle against players and factions that play different games in different ways. Thanks to the Family models Guild more than any other faction has been pigeonholed by the global meta despite having the tools to play in a number of different ways.

I mean, run her with a large crew of union miners, performers, and midrange beaters that benefit from marker spam - Envy, Large Arachnids spring to mind. Her new upgrade to let her take Saber Trick as a (1) is super useful for spamming out slow and decent damage and the triggers on her main attack are useful if situational. All Together Now is great for scoring some tricky schemes like Recover Evidence. Prompt is still great - it's pretty comparable to Lucius' Issue Command action (which is also limited to once per turn). She's not bad, she just doesn't compare to an OP master like Collodi.

Ah, makes sense then. But yeah, Fastest Draw and Companion everywhere help you create tempo breaks and really force spike damage. I lost a game yesterday because I didn't trust the shear amount of damage that Perdita and Frank can put out back-to-back. Turns out even Titania with her new upgrades can't take that standing up and I really should have taken Eliminate :-P

Did I miss something in the errata that affected Nellie? I'm pretty sure until that happens the Guild meta will stay pretty much as-is. I'll take Lady J, Sonnia, and Lucius in more-or less equal measure. I'm still dabbling in 'dita but I'm really bad with her.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Fastest Draw In Malifaux. It's pretty much mandatory as far as I can tell, gives you a better shot at winning that critical initiative flip, and takes some pressure off your hand if nothing else. I have yet to get any mileage out of her other new upgrade - Spotter is just a better way to shut down marker heavy pools. Typically I take the Nephilim, Trick Shooting, and Fastest Draw. Beyond that I build for strats and schemes. If it's interact heavy then Nino, Abuela, a Guardian to marry in, etc. If it's murder happy then, well, it's a guild crew... EDIT - Beta beat me to Fastest Draw. But yeah, what they said.

We played; Ply For Information Surround Them Hold Up Their Forces Take One For the Team Recover Evidence Public Demo I took Lucius Surprisingly Loyal Deep Pockets Condescending The Scribe Lawyer Death Marshal 2x Orderlies Austringer Graves Tannen My opponent played a wonky Kaeris list with three raptors, a couple Soulstone Miners. That sort of thing. We both took Recover Evidence. My opponent took Surround while I took Public Demo. Ended up winning 6-4 as Graves and Tannen kept my table corner covered denying points on RE and Surround until Lucius killed them off on 5 to deny a point for Ply. When all was said and done Lucius was my last model standing, and I was back up to 7 stones in cache. Which is about a perfect result as far as he's concerned

Why Open Current on Joss rather than the more traditional Bleeding Edge Tech? Not criticizing - I tend to run without BET myself these days. Just curious about your thinking.

I really hate alpha-style games generally. If you look back across my post history I'm always advocating for slower, less kill-centric games. So the Viks are pretty much the antithesis of what I like about Malifaux. Sounds weird coming from a Guild main but there you have it. I want a cagey game settled on turn 5, not a slaughterfest decided by the turn 2 initiative flip. Not that that's the only way to play Viks. Holding them back and just threatening a huge part of the board with countercharge threat is a valid approach, but it's pretty categorically the worse way to play them. At that point you're better off with Sonje/Raspy/Lilith who bring some active board shaping in addition to their threat. But, the Dreamer. I like (read, hate to face) his summoning build less for Stitched spam, and more because he can bring in a huge diversity of models, including enforcers which is pretty unique. He can just adapt on the fly to pretty much anything the game can throw at him, and with wk 7 Incorporeal he's basically impossible to threaten if you play him smart. His ranged expert play exposes him to more threat but it can definitely be nasty in its own right and it's how I would recommend playing him to start - you'll get a better sense of what is on the whole of his card rather than the default summon 2-3 things, (0) to lower Waking that I've seen quite a few people do. I can't really comment on his cricket bat upgrade other than to say that of all the masters who really need alternate sculpts for their Wave 5 upgrades, he's top of the list. The concept art is just brilliant.

Does it not? There I go just assuming my opponent knows better than me (also, why you keep the GG document in your gaming case and don't leave it at home...)

As I said in my argument, "suffered" is not a clearly defined or consistently used game term. It should be, but it isn't. I think there is a preponderance of evidence that it works the way I'm arguing; that damage prevented doesn't mean it was never suffered. That being said, if/when M3E drops it should have a glossary of game terms and phrases that are used consistently in the core rules and across all of the cards. Without clear and consistent language I don't think we'll ever agree on this or a number of other corner-case scenarios.