admiralvorkraft

Congratulations Brewmaster, Lord Byron, and everybody else. It was a fun round.

I don't know, with a little creativity and conversion I'm seeing an Alt Flesh Construct, a Drowned, and a Crooked Man, plus two Mindless. But then, I have a very proxy/conversion friendly group that I play with, so.

With Zoraida isn't a nurse an obvious choice for getting the paralyze engine rolling?

I can see where you're coming from. The current McMourning sculpt just gives me more of a murderous waiter vibe than anything else... I think I'll toy around with it if I ever have the money, but at this point the old McMourning does what I need him to do.

Is it just me, or does the new Leveticus sculpt look more McMourning than Mcmourning does? Crazy hair, giant syringe, plenty or surgical tools... What sort of conversion would you like to see, if I were to convert the new Levi into an Alt for the good doctor? Thanks!

Best of luck everybody, I had a lot of fun reading the submissions this round, we covered a lot of ground.

I find with Hidden Sniper I'm almost always stoning for the ram to make it go off in the first place...

I can't blame him, Simon's an ass Like I said, I really enjoyed the story. I just like to leave a little critique on every piece I read because I hope people will do the same for me. I think I would have liked it better if you'd stopped at the second-to-last paragraph, it would have been nicely circular, without the really heavy Gothic note at the end. I also think you could find something to do in that last paragraph that develops his character in the present, and makes him distinct from his character pre-death. But then, enigmas are good to, especially in stories this short.

Dark indeed. I enjoyed reading it, a straightforward story well told. The last paragraph is, perhaps, a little heavy on the Gothic for my taste. It's not bad, and it fits the story well, but the monster brooding on his inescapable situation, horrified by his own dark side... I don't know, it just seems too well packaged? Maybe he gets a perverse joy out of getting to kill Simon over and over again? Or maybe not. It works the way it is, and if you're happy with it then so am I.

Voltaire seems like an obvious fit, Abney Park as well. They really nail the weird steampunk / comic vibe. I'll second Vagabond Opera since that was the first thing that came to mind, and anything Kurt Weill composed probably fits in somewhere.

I definitely hear you on the word count front. Even that little bit of physical detail helps though.

I really like what you're going for here, and I think the style really works in this setting. Your imagery is very clear without being overbearing, so that's great too. In the interest of providing some constructive feedback (something I'm always looking for, but that you can ignore if you like) here are a few things you might want to play with if you ever want to revise the piece. The first thing is that the twist comes out of nowhere, you may be okay with that and if so then skip to the next paragraph. As a reader I find that I like twists that I don't see coming, but that are inevitable in retrospect. In a piece like this one I might want to show the two realities crossing, if Reginald is Winston's avatar maybe the smell of ink or whiskey drifts across the narrative barrier at some point, maybe the ding as the typewriter reaches the end of a line distracts him during the sword fight, maybe something way better that you come up with. those little notes wouldn't be unreasonable in the moment, but once the twist comes the reader would feel like they were suddenly seeing a whole picture, as opposed to being kept in the dark until you decided to turn on the lights. Maybe you put those notes in already, and I wasn't clever enough to spot them. More importantly, I really don't get a feel for Winston or Reginald's motivation. You address it in generalities, the Marshal took everything from him, or something, but I didn't get a good feel for it. Back story is one instance where I would rather have a tangible detail that I can extrapolate from than a broad picture. Say you've decided that the Marshal accidentally killed his wife in a shootout with some Wastrel. All I need as a reader is a flash, "the haunting smell of her hair," or, "the way her blood dried on my hands as I cradled her in my arms," maybe even, "Reginald would have his revenge, the Marshal's blood would finally wash his hands clean. 'Do you remember,' Reginald said, drawing his sword, 'The night my Margaret died?' And then he attacked." Of course, that's just my two cents. If something inspires you to go in a new direction or open up new meaning, take it and run with it, if you like your story as-is, then it's perfect. I'll look forward to reading more of your work.

I'll hop on the congratulations train, your dialogue is sharp. I had great fun reading this story, and if you were going for a Sky Captain-esque pulp feel you nailed it. In my head the voices were all old-timey radio actors, it was great. In the interest of providing critique, I think you could stand to look at your dialogue tags. There are a couple of times when it's not immediately clear, early in the story you have the tag, "Terrence shook his head before responding." Which I would move to the next paragraph, so that it is immediately before Terrence responds. It's just a couple of little things like that, they aren't a big deal but they force me to think for a half-second too long and it breaks the flow of the patter. That's just my two cents, I'm grasping at straws to find constructive criticism to give.

I honestly expected this to go in a more Twilight Zone direction, so I appreciated the rather gruesome surprise. There was a good flow, steadily building tension, my one complaint is that it felt like the antagonists came out of nowhere. Adding even a little bit of physical description for them would help make them feel more present in the scene. My only other critique is stylistic, so take it or leave it. I found a few passages to be needlessly wordy, specifically, "...with the current situation unfolding before him..." In my own writing I try to avoid those sorts of general phrases, especially when I'm working under a short word count. I don't always succeed, and that's what the proofreading I don't do enough of is theoretically for, but it's something I'm aware of as I write. If you're happy with the piece, that's great. If you're looking for places to tighten it up that might be something to keep in mind. Once again, I liked the story. You had some fun ideas and managed to subvert my expectations, which is always good.

Good call, that's something I hadn't thought about.

The Scribe has usually been my go-to. Mostly because he tends to be in the area when I need the stone anyway. In my fantasies there are tricky things that I can do with it, dealing damage to Graves to get Black Blood out, or killing my lawyer where I need him for Finish the Job. Reality seems to dictate that there's always an easier way to get it done though.

While each faction has certain trends they also each cover a huge breadth. A Seamus crew, and a Kirai crew are completely different, and a crew built to counter one won't do much to counter the other. I think that it's generally a better idea to use models you know well to accomplish the schemes and strategies available, and bring a variety of abilities to the table so that you have some flexibility. But then, what do I know?

The defensive condition usually ends at the beginning of the model's next activation. I would assume that this is no different.

Cheap as they are, I would think you'd hit diminishing marginal returns on Depleted (at least) pretty quickly. Wastrels can potentially do so much that they may be worth running three of - actually, they might be worth running three of just because the models are so cool looking. Even Witchling Stalkers, which pretty much live at the corner of good and cheap, seem to run out of things their best suited for doing by the time I activate the third one in a turn. In general I don't find Malifaux to reward redundancy too much. Of course there are always exceptions to that rule and Dirial has a much better understanding of the game than I do.

I'm not primarily a TT player, but I've never run more than two of any model at once, with the exception of Witchlings. I could imagine 3 Oiran with the new upgrade, but I doubt I would ever actually do it.

The Guardian I've been running with, but I've somehow never managed to pull the heal trigger. Wastrels I always forget are dual faction, I'll give that a shot!

I've been playing a lot of Lucius lately, and starting to get the hang of him. The one ability of his that I really haven't gotten any use out of so far is Devil's Deal. I can see how to use it if I declare Neverborn, where Depleted and (relatively) easy access to healing flips make it extremely good. In Guild it has been a really corner-case ability for me, and while that's fine I was curious to see if anyone else was getting more mileage out of the ability. I've considered running with Ryle or Candy rather than my surprisingly loyal Mr. Graves, but that cuts my mobility down quite a bit. I've also considered the Governor's Proxy, but the Scribe's defensive aura and built in Red Tape seem too good to lose. The Friekorps Librarian is an expensive enforcer with a once-per-turn heal and nothing else that I need... And that's it off the top of my head as far as available healing is concerned. Thoughts?

C. Hoffman gets a jump on the counter game with his (0) Shakedown. All you need is a 4 of anything to generate a scrap marker next to a friendly construct within 12". Once you're in the thick of things it's nice to have someone like Joss around to generate the extra scrap you'll want to use healing or buffing your own models.

If you haven't got the core books I would make them your first investment. Every single master in the game is worth playing, and has a unique style to them. I would get a feel for playing the game before buying a crew. That being said, I've had fun playing every master I've run so there's something to be said for just choosing the one that looks the coolest to you! As for your second question, I don't think Lady J. has a whole lot of innate synergy with the Rifleman, but everybody likes a rifleman and an Austringer paired together and putting out ranged death like nobody's business.

Zoraida and Lilith might work. In my experience it's less that Zoraida likes what the Lilith box has to offer, and more that Lilith loves herself some swampfiends. Those two, the Waldgeist box, and the Nephilim have the most obvious synergy in multiple masters and multiple playstyles. My two cents of course, ymmv.