lusciousmccabe

I love how clean and friendly looking your Mortimer is.

I actually had a really good painting to purchase ratio going there until I bought and entirely unpainted collection second hand. Then my ratio went from something like 30/40 to 30/??? and I lost the will to even finish off those 10 models I had such high hopes for. Now I try to avoid looking directly at the press of unpainted models for fear that all the white metal might fall out and crush me.

Felt a bit weird hitting like on a post from 2 years ago but your alps are the coolest thing in a thread of cool things. Good job sir!

That's pretty much why I think the new rules are simpler in some places and more complicated in others. Effects and tokens were a bit vague in v1.5 but they were essentially the same and could be removed by the same stuff. Conditions are much better defined but then there's these other effects that are like conditions but different. I think it'd be a lot cleaner if they'd just classed every effect with a duration as a condition and printed them using the old format without all the horrible reminder text.

Em, to avoid colluding with filthy Resurrectionist scum? I think poison is a big part of McMourning's style and as a Guild player I'd want to get at least some use out of it when I bring him.

I'm very much divided in my thoughts on 2nd Ed. The cards are easier to read because there's less rules on them, but those rules are cluttered up with reminders and the phrase gains the following condition until end of turn "Condition name: condition rules..." appearing everywhere, which 1.5 dealt with far more cleanly. The upside is less referring to the rulebook but it's boring to read the same passages again and again and I often glance over them and miss things. The consistency was improved a lot by folding together similar rules, but you still get stuff like Scent of Blood (on Bete Noir) and Thirst for Blood (on Young Nephilim) which are basically the same and easy to mix up. The changes to how conditions work also tidied up some things, but then there are loads of effects with durations that aren't tracked as conditions, which makes condition removal more complicated and that visual clutter seem even less justified. Why does Mei Feng have an action that gives her an aura and Victoria has an action that gives her a condition that gives her an aura, for example. I couldn't comment on the balance from a competitive perspective but most models now seem to be more generally useful than before and big combo effects seem less swingy so I like the balance in that regard. Gameplay doesn't really seem simplified to me very much, there's still a lot of flipping and maths that goes into even simple actions so while the combos are toned down things don't feel simpler or faster to me. The new schemes system is really great and better balanced than the old one but it is more complicated with a lot of small distinctions that can completely screw your game if you don't read them correctly. I like the changes to soulstone use (i.e. no random duel totals of 30) but adding suits seems to have just meant that there's now triggers with (effectively) triple suit requirements, which is basically a wash. Triggers in general seem much more built in or easy to use than before with far less suit dependent actions, which is probably better from a balance and accessibility point of view but does dilute one of the core mechanics of the game. And then there's the odd ability that was clearly written out of the game on purpose (Slow to Die) but then managed to creep back in later on (Bacon Bomb), but that's really just a pet peeve of mine. tl;dr I think M2E started has major improvements to the core rules over v1.5 but didn't have enough time in development to make those rules work really consistently for all of the new and updated models. No offence to Justin if you're reading this and feel free to correct me but in my experience there are few projects which couldn't be improved with longer deadlines

Are you saying the Male Executioner doesn't?

If you twisted the loud-speaker the other way around you could call it an exhaust pipe.

Hunters seem like a good fit since they're pretty mobile and can drag enemy models out of position with their chain harpoons.

True, but if you're discussing how good poison is for Guild McMourning compared to his other options then how good it is for Resser McMourning is kind of irrelevant. I'd say you'll be able to get a fair amount of poison down with a list like this, but I'd be concerned about the level of redundancy in the models. You'd have to play it a few times to work out the optimum numbers for Performers, Lawyers and Nurses but two of seems like a lot to start with. Having some tougher models in the mix could help you play the attrition game and guard your combo pieces while they set up. If you changed the numbers a bit you could probably make room for The Judge, Francisco or an Executioner, all of which are fairly tanky and have a bit of synergy with your other piece. I'd be interested to see how it works out for you, so good luck!

Very nice. I particularly like the flames on the scales and your choice of colours on the pathfinder. The traps are great as well, good call on adding more metallic colours, they tend to look quite boring all silver.

Hells yeah to that. I absolutely love it for scheme heavy games since enemy scheme runners can't end their activation near a scheme marker without drawing a massive bulls-eye on themselves. Plus it doesn't really feel like playing Lucius if you can have people shot from somewhere off-camera.

I've been meaning to get a chess-clock and try something like this out. I was thinking timed turns with anything not activated by the end of the turn considered to activate and spend its AP doing nothing. I hadn't considered swapping time during duels, seems kind of cumbersome.

Exactly. You can't get the purposeful strike trigger and have the spell work unless you stone for a ram or mask.

I really like those flowers on the male merc's base. Nice colour schemes as well, I like how they're similar but not identical.

I think Graves looks great but his eyes look a little bit off in the head on picture. The facial details on that sculpt are ridiculously fine so I think you did a really good job getting the eyes in at all to be honest.

I just use it whenever I need to keep Lucius alive and don't really try to mitigate the cost. If something big is threatening Lucius then any weak minions around him are liable to be paste shortly regardless of wound count anyway. If you want to use it more like a rechargeable battery then Governor's Proxy is probably the way to go although you'll want to keep Graves or something to move him around and I'm not sure you'll make back the 3 stone cost by healing from Devil's Deal.

Lucius is quite like Zoraida in that your crew can just be a grab-bag of stuff you like for the scenario, the difference is that he wants to have a fairly high amount of minions to delegate responsibility to. Ignore the guardsman/mimic related buffs, that's more of a Guild thing and doesn't really apply to most mimics anyway. He's particularly good at making melee units around him more killy, but even something random like the Stitched Together or a Terror-Tot can benefit a lot from extra AP. I usually take the Surprisingly Loyal upgrade and bring along a Lawyer plus 1-3 Guardsmen, but if you really hate Guild you can do without them, although the buff to Commanding Presence from the Lawyer is quite tasty. My playstyle with Lucius is pretty negative. I go for objectives you can achieve easily early on and then spend the rest of the game trying to keep my opponent's score down. I'm not sure how much of that is just me, but I'd say Lucius probably sacrifices a bunch of models to maintain a small lead more often than wiping the other side off the table or winning 10 nil.

Exactly

It's worth remembering that commanding presence doesn't have the 'non-Austringer' clause and buffs from a Guild Captain or Lawyer can make it less card intensive than Obey. I wouldn't cram all these models together as some sort of Raptor artillery platform, but you could use it to get some extra AP into your Austringers while keeping cards in your hand to use elsewhere. On a semi-related note if you plan to bring some hawk throwing pain into Neverborn I'd strongly suggest trying out a Waldgeist or two. They're great at stopping stuff from getting at your Austringers by creating terrain, engaging things and base-blocking. The Austringers can move and shoot through their tree markers at no penalty and target models in engagements without ramdomising if you don't focus. On top of all that they're solid minions in their own right that Lucius can Issue Commands to and get the buff from the Lawyer's aura for commanding presence. I fecking love trees.

Those witchlings really remind me of Ringwraiths. Don't know if it was intentional but it's still a really cool look.

The Executioner is like the Lawyer's best friend. The Lawyer gives him Hard to Wound while the Executioner provides a big bag of wounds for people to bloody themselves on through Special Damages and then heals himself by killing them. The system works.

Cool! How did you get that red colour for the armour? I've been trying something similar for my Doctrine Librarian, but it keeps coming out pink!

I don't really mind that, I often want to activate my master early after the first couple of turns anyway. What makes it more difficult to evaluate is that a lot of potential holders either don't want to get near enough to use it (Sonnia, Dashel) or have other (0) actions they'd like to use (Lady J, Fransisco, etc.). Still, there's a hell of a lot of synergies out there that rely on , so I'm keen to try find a place for it.

I was horribly frustrated by the amount of parts tiny puppet wars death marshalls come in. Of course it probably didn't help that I thought the peg you use for inserting them into their bases was a bit of sprue on the first one.