madaxeman

Sarah. So it's an effect that has the same in-game effect as Cover, but isn't "cover" ... Easy mistake to make! I can see why it seems odd to stack, as stacking a condition seems to need a "number". That makes more sense. (On an unrelated note, I hit something three times with the Ice a Golem today, and git the trigger every time. Left it with a walk of -2 :-)

I've found that Mei is a melee master that can sweep a couple of low-mid range models off the board in one turn with repeated trigger attacks - but against something beefy, that's where Joss or Howard come in. Could someone explain to me the benefit of multiple Vents though please - isn't it just cover for your models? Does it stack?

I surprised myself and tried him tonight with Armour of December. That gives him a potential move of 11 + one attack at the end of it, armour 3 every turn and with an engagement range of 2 its a threat range of 13. Its 11 points but it intimidated the c--p out of my opponent - being able to push 3" and reach another 1" into a mega-smash attack was pretty painful for their 12-wound master.

I'm currently wondering if the answer is psychological, and if the answer isn't just to bite the icy bullet and design a list without the Ice Golem. The theory goes that he soaks up a lot of points, needs upgrades or a supporting Metal Gamin and only really has a couple of (admittedly very good) tricks. And so, once he starts tossing around the Ice Gamin, they too seem to become inherently (psychologically..?) expendable models who's gameplan involves not making it to turn 5, so all of a sudden you look at your 7-8 model starting pool and at least 3 or so of them are looking like walking deadmen before you start. Which leaves a lot for the rest of them to do. Roll on Wave 2 Snowstorm !

And you've used 4SS....

I think the key thing to remember is that once the pack is "used up", you shuffle it and start again. So good (and bad) cards are not actually being "used up" - or "wasted" at all, they are just being recycled a bit quicker. Given that the "used up" / "wasting cards" argument is, erm, not really true, all that's happening is that you are getting to pick the best card in 4 to win each duel, and your opponent gets just 1 card. That's basically much better, every time, with no real downside* - as the entire deck cannot, and does, not "run out". * If you flip 4 cards instead of one, I suppose the risk of picking black joker is 4x as high on each flip, and it will therefore come up 4x as often when compared to flipping just one card each time ... but so is the chance of flipping a red joker, so that will balance out.

Arcane Miniatures are showing the new stuff as "in stock" in the UK right now.... not sure how reliable this is as other retailers are showing "pre-order" though

I'd also consider taking Joss over Howard - and add in the emberling as a scheme runner/extra irritant/extra activation model. Mei needs jumping off points and Howard is sometimes too fast to hang around and be one, whereas Joss can tank it out and soften people up for Mei. Second all of the above in using her late game with a decent hand against clusters of smaller models - if you can back them into a corner even better as they all stay in range of the 1" triggered attack even when pushed. Take imbued energies and you get a truly insane turn of action and movement, and look to rail walk into combat to get the first attack on a "free" trigger too. I only take the 3" attack trigger when there is a marker removal scheme benefit as I find it pushes people away from more attacks otherwise Metal Gamin and Johan (to heal the Gamin with the BET upgrade, remove conditions and heal big models occasionally) are the other things I'd suggest investing in asap.

Let's face it, anything "can" work if it's spare. But to be better than the average model I'd think it's fair to assume the OP is asking which models move more than 4" (assuming no enemy -dependent movement tricks), as pretty much every model in the deck is at least 4ap and can move 4" Given that as a baseline criteria, a 4AP metal Gamin probably is the baseline against which everything else that is "better" can be considered as "good"

Yeah. I came to this game after the testing, but I can see that at 1SS it would be very tempting indeed. At 1SS it would be good value, but as its a DF buff that's not entirely constructive, and so it would be a decision based on whether it was right to pick it in competition with other upgrades for a slot on Henchmen and Enforcers I also - to pick up on another poster- like the idea of a "rouge Necromancy". You'd have to be very careful about applying the makeup though!

Always seemed a bit pricey at 2SS to me, but I do keep coming back to it.... If you do pick it, do you prefer to take it on high DF models (making them un-killable), or low DF models (making them more viable) Thoughts and comments...?

You could, erm, make the bases with sand and small rocks, and cut up some HO-OO scale train track for rails and sleepers ...?

Molemen are for digging in I find - which there are better models for anyway most times. Making them run schemes is something I find tricky as they need something faster to have spent it's own APs and have been there first and pooped a marker before they really get any advantage from their "underground leap" anyway... However A Soulstone Miner + Emberling combo will run most schemes for you (with Mei) pretty much on their own, and as other have said, your Ramos must have some spare Spiders somewhere..... If however you are obsessed with making it easy, go Marcus + Silurids !

Picked up a metal Kaeris box from eBay (should I have waited..? I guess I'll be proxying some of the stuff that will be in the plastic one!) and these are the results. Nothing overly-clever in the painting, just basic colours, dry-brushing and inking. I dithered a long time with the wings, as there are plenty of examples on the internet of how to paint them. In the end I went with a dark Desert Yellow, with a drybrush of bronze to give an aged metallic look - finished off with the ubiquitour Army Painted Quickshade medium tone. Here she is close up - I rarely try and paint eyes on models, as it often ends up looking, well, either rubbish or just really a bit Papa Lazarou, but these seems to have come out OK. Black base coat, heavy white drybrush, yellow, Orange ink, then black reverse-highlights, Army Painter wash and a bit of grey drybrush to finish. I thought the faces on these looked quite skull-like so I did them in black and then drybrushed them in white, finishing off with red eyes. A partial success...but they do look mean! Differentiating a flame being shot from a being which is, erm, flame was a bit tricky, so I didn't Army-painter the flameball and also gave it a pale blue drybrush at the end to suggest some sort of magical/electrical element to the flames Very pleased with the hair on this one - black undercoat, heavy white drybrush, then yellow, then orange ink, finished with a bit of Ushabti Bone drybrushing. His face is hidden under his hat, so I managed to take this photo from below to show his goggles. See more of these on my website

A 12 point Mech Rider is a lot of points spent on a scheme runner ! - Soulstone Miner is pretty unstoppable given it ends its first turn 6" from the enemy deployment zone. Once it's dropped it's markers, it can do other stuff too - Likewise for the December Acolytes - Anything that an Ice Golem throws 10" upfield will be most of the way there before it even starts it's own first move - Blessed of December has a great leap, and can come back and kill stuff afterwards

Ok. I'd read it as affecting the Gamin and rail golem too - didn't realise "immunity" was a defined term in the rules. Sorry!

OK, so talk me through how you use the totem then. I'm struggling with the idea of a 6" bubble that removes immunity to burning being A Good Thing in a Kaeris crew...!

Yeah... I sort of see what you are saying, but in all honesty I simply haven't played enough games (or against enough masters) yet to be in a position to do any sort of meaningful crew-tailoring to match my opponents faction... and without knowing that, even seeing the terrain was not that big a deal, as I had no idea how my opponents would play on it anyway. Having time to plan a crew in advance to try and come up with a plan to achieve the scheme pool would still have been much easier for me. I still think going forward I'll be looking at Gaining Grounds etc and coming up with a whole series of pre-planned crews who can have a sensible go at each major scheme (strat?) before I try another tourney

Really pushing the boundaries here, but for some unfathomable reason I'm trying to use these giant American football playing rats in capes as Guild Hounds https://www.blackscorpionminiatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=31&products_id=284&osCsid=4orj5iq4e1754lnsiorbc6b1e6

See the Arcanists struggle with the rules, the list building, the terrain, the opposition and most of all the dietary properties of the food on offer at Wayland Games industrial estate lockup in 4 reports from Spring Showdown 2015. Mei Feng, Ramos and Marus all struggle - so an equal opportunity failure policy - in reports brimming with a big pink flying baby with a bad case of piles, hot chicks in leather with big swords, re-animating snipers in a childs playroom and a cast of thousands of mechanical spiders all of whom are creating confusion in deepest Essex You can also join in a half-hearted and half-baked debate on the merits of pre-announced schemes and strats elsewhere on this forum... enjoy! tim

Yep, thats kinda summed up my ramblings as well - thanks ! Pre-announced schemes and strats helps everyone raise their game ( ), and probably/arguably helps experienced players even more than it does newbies. But it's definitely a lot easier and less painful for new players ( ) Now, what on earth is a hooded rider, and should I be worried about them .... !?

I can see where you are coming from ... however with my (ahem) very limited experience of (ahem again) 2 events it was probably the opposite. At Gertifaux, where I had the schemes and strats in advance, I could spend "slow-time" in advance of the weekend designing different lists that would support a broad plan to "have a go" at each scheme/strat. I'd generally pick which 3 things I'd be trying to do, and then pick a list to do that - for example I decided to include a Rail Golem and a lot of Gamin in a "bodyguard" + "protect territory" game, and I had a plan to try and use the Golem to do a late run into the opposition half in that game, and the Gamin to just, well, be Gamin. Because each time I had a list that I had already formulated a plan what to do with, I was able to concentrate on actually playing the game itself. My pre-planned lists didn't really change when I saw the terrain or the opposition - I just accepted the fact that I have no idea about playing against most masters and treat that part of the game as a learning experience. At Spring Skirmish however I faced 4 brand new masters (to me) in 4 games - but as I didn't have the experience to be able to tweak a list to match the opposition anyway, that made no difference to me. What did make a difference was that I don't (currently) have enough games under my belt to have a set of "that's my Breakthrough list" lists on file to pull out of the bag/back pocket/memory banks as soon as I know the strats and schemes - which in retrospect the more experienced players clearly did. Instead I - stupidly - just tried to conjure up what almost always turned out to be sub-optimal lists at the start of each game, which meant I was always somewhat hamstrung and also incompetent during each game.. good if your opponent just wants the points, but maybe not if they want a good game and/or to get to turn 5? So, what am I wittering on about... ? Well, if I'm right in assuming (as you also seem to be doing here) that no-one is really building a list from scratch on the fly each game, but instead that the experienced players are (by and large) actually pulling one of a set of pre-prepared lists out of their toolkit in response to seeing the schemes and strats anyway, does it really matter all that much if they see the schemes 1 week, 1 day or 1 minute ahead of the start of each game? The response is still to wheel out the same pre-prepared scheme/strat specific optimized list, and then maybe tweak it for the opposition. However for a newbie like me who doesn't have that big library of existing lists in place, it sort of pushes you down the route of trying to pre-plan just one or two advance lists. Which I guess is OK, but having the chance to pre-plan all 4 would be more fun for me, I'd learn more, and I might well be a better opponent to play against too. I'm conscious that this is just my perspective, and also that my background in other wargames is very much one of pre-event list building so this may just be a "me" thing... but it would also be interesting to see what approach to list building at events that other new (and experienced) players honestly adopt ?

I think that's certainly true, however ... standardized/optimized "net lists" already exist (let's face it, a lot of this forum is "what models/combo should I use for...?") with the possibility of facing 36-odd masters, and hundreds of different models in every game, are "net lists" ever really going to be as good as a good player picking a good list on the fly..? of all the many and varied skills needed to do well in this game, should "can you build a competent list in a short period of time?" really be - arguably - the most important? As a new player, it's the last point that I'm really looking at here. A schemes-on-the-day format places a pretty steep learning curve in front of new players that they will need to learn to overcome if they are to be competent - and that step takes place even before they get their figures on the table and start playing the actual game.

Just trying to express this slightly more concisely: - Whether the schemes and strats are published in advance, or on the day, or at the start of each round ... ...a player who is experienced at this game can still pick their list once they know the opposition. Assuming they are good at Malifaux, that should still give them a meaningful advantage in the game all three scenarios. - Having pre-tourney sight of schemes and strats allows less experienced players the opportunity to pick a list for each specific scheme/strat combo before knowing their opposing crew. They can try and tweak it once they know the opposition, but for new players (who've probably not played lots of different crews before) that's not going to be too likely anyway... The newbie choosing crew in advance based only on schemes/strats isn't anyhere as good as picking a list for the strat/scheme AND opposition crew, but has the following (generally positive) effects on gameplay for both players: quicker start to each game quicker turn-by-turn play from the less experienced player the more experienced player is more likely to find themselves playing a unskilled opponent with some sort of plan, rather than an unskilled opponent with a very poor poor / no plan. All of the above is (arguably) more interesting than bunny-bashing for the experienced player, and more educational for the new player. The downside is that its not the hard-core "pure" form of the game... but serious players can still pick their crew on the fly anyway - the only real difference is that newbies have a better chance of contributing something to the game if the shemes are known in advance.

I'm keen on this again, but I have a sort of generic question (probably the wrong place for it..?) about the logic of handing out strats/schemes at the start - rather than publishing them beforehand. Last time schemes and strats were also handed out at the start of the day (rather than immediately prior to each game), and it seemed this meant that everyone sensible ( ie not me!) then just worked out their list for each round at the beginning of the day whilst we were milling around waiting to start. For me as a relative newbie this meant I ended up struggling to work out decent lists for each game in the short time available, and as a result I suspect that I was both a/ slow at the start of each game, b./ slow during the game as I was struggling to work out what to do with my often rather random collection of models, and c/ staggeringly incompetent during each game (see point b/ !!) - none of which were probably that much fun for my opponents either. If I'd seen the strats in advance I'd definitely have been a quicker opponent at the start of each game and also in-game, as I'd have had time to work out a plan and a list in advance. I think that I'd also probably have been a more enjoyable opponent to play against (not necessarily good, just more enjoyable) rather than beating up on a dithering idiot .... I'd almost certainly still have lost (!) but it would have been because my opponents were more experienced, better players of the game, not because I was a blithering idiot caught in the headlights with a sub-optimal crew and no coherent plan (well, most of the time!) Don't get me wrong - I full appreciate that at some level the 'iron man' type "work out your list on the fly" tourney setting is a real key part of the meta of the game, and for really good players its the ultimate test of skill that brings out all the subtleties of master vs master, faction vs faction and scheme vs scheme inherent in Malifaux... but all I'm suggesting is that as a relative newbie, and coming from other types of wargaming where pre-event list-building is a big part of the skill and enjoyment of the game, that having sight of the strats beforehand would make it a lot better for me - and maybe also for my opponents. Bearing that in mind, I'm not sure where this first thing publishing of strats at the beginning of the day actually sits in that spectrum...? Is it a common half-way house between pre-published and "iron man", and does that mean this event is intended as a similar mid-level challenge ? Or am I reading too much into this ? Thoughts and comments anyone..?