madaxeman

actually... taking this off topic a tad, could Johan in theory remove "insignificant" from a Guild Hound anyway... ?

Insignificant as a result of Toss is a condition. Aaaah - I thought you were referring to the dogs that become significant when operating in packs. Anyways, tossing something to within range of Joss to de-insignificantize (ahem) is starting to get pretty complicated!

Aside from the other posters points, I'm also pretty sure that Insignificant isn't a condition - its printed on the card, so is a characteristic. Basically, using movement tricks to push the Golem and its target together, and then using the Golem to hit people very, very hard at close range is a far better use of SS and activations ...

You will someday need Joss and the Metal Gamin in all Arcanist lists, so start with them. Not too overpowering, but all solid models.

I'd agree - Other thoughts and suggestions from my handful of games are: - Johan is almost an auto-include for me, he also has a neat heal action, and can be a great carrier for taking BET up the table. - There are often some metal large (often packaged as "Steampunk") Arachnids on ebay. - Spiders don't need to attack or charge to be useful in combat - if you have nearby models with better attacks, sometimes moving twice, or going defensive but still ending in base contact will be enough to buff your proper attack later in the turn, and also it can force the enemy to "waste" activations attacking your spiders. 2 in base contact with an enemy is -2 on Df, and takes at least 2 attack actions to kill them off, most likely 4-6. - Essence of Power looks like an alternative to Brass Arachnid on paper, but it does have to stay very close to Ramos and it does have to do its 2-action buff right at the start of the turn to be most useful. - at some point in the turn Ramos is no longer going to be able to generate spiders who have time to actually achieve anything, especially remembering that they come in "slow". He is always a big target for enemy to try and kill, so by turn 4-5 it may be easier to just let him take the pounding and die rather than throwing cards and stones to keep him alive

I used him at a 4-round event at the weekend, having played a handful of practice games beforehand and my thoughts and suggestions as a still-semi-noob are: - getting the initial sequence of spider-spam/scrap generation right is very important, and easy to mess up unless you run through it a few times first. Maybe its worth writing down - or just printing out from the threads on here! - 2 spiders is kinda the optimum number per turn, or put another way don't feel too upset about not summoning 3. With 2, they come in on 1 wound (2 wounds less armour) so as long as you have Bleeding Edge Tech they fully heal on their first activation - Brass Arachnid, rewire, self-reactivate, reactivate 2 constructs is very good, but does need three 10's - but given how tome-intensive the rest of the crew is that can be a great use for your other cards. Again, sequence of activations can be important here - you will spend a lot of time effectively doing nothing in the early part of each turn to tee this stuff up. - Focus on the schemes, and achieving them by the end of the game, not immediately. In several games I was able to "see ahead" and work out that the spider factory would allow me to score points freely in turns 4 and 5 enough to win, and I could send spider off on a 2-3 turn mission knowing that my opponents didnt have enough models to chase them all. In Turns 1-3 just building spiders, creeping forwards, tying up enemy models and starting a slow process of attrition was enough, even if I wasn't really getting much scoring done. - Magnetism can be used as a movement trick as well as an attack, even on your own models ... but it does compete with Electrical Creation summoning for the zero action. - Powered by Flame makes the irritating low-level spider attacks a lot better, and it makes attacks by metal gamin who have metal protection positively evil. - Ramos can get away with surprisingly few soulstones. Using one for 3 spiders is rare as you also need a decent card, and he is fairly tough as well, and will be likely sat towards the back of the board. On the same basis, putting BET on another model (Johan...) allows the spiders to move up the board and keep healing whilst Ramos lags behind. - Generating 2 scrap in turn 1, with Joss or the Big Spider will save you worrying about having scrap for 2 turns. After that, something else is going to be dead anyway...

Really...? Really...? Surely there are only 2 possible scenarios here. 1. Wyrd, who appear to have gone to great lengths to design a well balanced game and to support and encourage the idea that it is played by sensible people with adult attitudes about fun gaming, sportsmanship, and the importance of developing a narrative gameplay style over power-listing uber-competition gamers have however deliberately included one (just one) specific interaction in the entire game, that only works between 2 of the 300+ (?) models they have or plan to release that serves to throw all of those core principles completely out of the window, allowing power-gamers to either effectively spoil the game for their opponent, waste as much time as they like, or to - by using more time than is allowed for a standard game - to effectively totally eliminate the randomness of the card-flip mechanic which is fundamentally core to the way the whole game works. 2. Wyrd didn't spot this one particular interaction in pre-release testing, but they will of course issue an amendment to outlaw it in the next set of clarifications and amendments to be published. Don't know about you, but I'm kinda guessing option 2 is correct....

You should have my payment ...send on the 12th. That'll be marking a full year of Malifaux events for me

I've just added an Essence of Power to my Arcanist stable... The image on the card has the man as some sort of green-skinned thing, but I thought it might be more horrifying if he was a "real" person who'd had a rather bad time whilst being possessed, so I did him in a flesh colour which I then toned down by highlighting in a mix of Sunny Flesh and Bleached bone to give it an almost-dead look - before Windsor & Newton Peat Brown inking it to highlight the musculature and make it look like he has had the sort of horrific experience which involved pain, suffering and far less access to soap and water than even a hardened gamer would consider borderline acceptable. he "Magic" is white painted, then inked with Windsor & Newton Indigo blue - which was a bit too strong, so I matt varnished it, drybrushed heavily with white, and then inked again with standard blue. The "Soulstone" I initially thought was a part of the casting of the "magic" which suggested that I'd lost a bit of the "magic" that the nub of the Soulstone that it would plug into (wouldn't be the first time I've lost a bit of a Wyrd model during assembly...), but finally I worked it out, and highlighted it in gold paint. He was held in this position by a pin put into the base, and then glued rather unkindly between his buttocks. I tried to hide it with some grassy tufts, and also I did manage to get two points of glue (his foot and, well, somewhere else... ) You can see more of him at http://www.madaxeman.com/Malifaux/Malifaux_Rasputina_and_Kaeris.php

when you said; "then at the end i jump totally to the right putting me in the enemy corner in one turn. I don't know if it is correct but i did the obj pretty easy." I did wonder if you were playing Railwalk correctly - its a maximum jump of 6" (between her and a metal thing) per walk action. Getting Mei from one corner to the diagonal opposite one in any game sounds like a lot of APs used up just moving from a model that really needs to fight at some point..

One for the "unlikely, but cool of it happens..." pile. Am I right in thinking that a Malifaux Child, when peoning with Mei Feng, could in theory take her Railwalk (1) Ca action, and then trigger from that with Express Line into a jackhammer kick... Not a bad damage spread and 9" threat range for a 3-point model

Metal Gamin protection for DF6 - no need for the upgrade slot ?