Ferossa

I love this? If you want to free up word count, you can remove most dialogue markers when the speaking action is self-evident (he replied, he bluffed, etc.), especially if it's followed by the speaker performing an action (or verbing a noun, if you like). Grammar Point 1: Present participles ("pressing") occur simultaneously with the action or as a direct result of the action. "She sneezed, drawing her hand across her mouth." In this case, the gun suffers the action of two consecutive verbs. Ie. the Questioner can't draw his pistol while pressing it to Jeffrey's forehead, because he would never get it out of the holster and that would look very silly. But! Grammar Point 2: You don't need to repeat the subject if you separate consecutive actions with a semicolon. Compare the sense of action and anticipation: He drew a pistol, pressing it against Jeffrey's forehead. He drew a pistrol; pressed it against Jeffrey's forehead. Absolutely perfect reversal ending. It's a little pronoun heavy for the style you chose (see my feedback for edonil); I think you could tighten the action to free up words for more action. Very good use of grammar and pacing. Become good friends with the semicolon, you're made for each other. This works great as a series of sentence fragments and not as a connected sentence. The verb (becoming bolder) is too separated from the earlier action and you lose the sense of menace early on. Semicolons don't follow conjunctions, they replace them. Suggestion: "At first he followed her cautiously, hanging back; as she moved further into the ruined alleyways, he grew bolder. Too far away for anyone to hear her screams."

If they include pants, I redact most of my objections. That said, it is a terrible piece of art for the cosplay section. It feeds into the worst stereotypes about the people who wargame, and it's going to scare off cosplayers because it's yet another article that reduces the time- and skill-intensive hobby of cosplay to something women do to make themselves sexy. It looks like it belongs in The Onion beside "Horny Male Gamers Can't Figure Out Why Women Won't Play Their Miniatures Game." As someone who came in for 2e, I was unaware of that history and the non-sexualised alternatives to masculine models was one of the draws of the company. If Wyrd wants to do a cheesecake model every year, they are welcome to, but I'll be the first to go on record as saying that the sexualisation and commodification of women are major problems in the industry and I'm deeply disappointed in Wyrd's decision to revert to such sexist practices instead of doing something new and different with the potential to improve the hobby and reach a newer, larger player base.

Similar model but not-dead and as a Wastrel? I'd be all over that. But Sybelle hardly counts when she's the ONLY female model with that body type, and among non-masters the ratio of female to male models is around 1:5. That's the issue, here. Wyrd has so few female models that when they make yet another sexy waifish female model it's insulting. Female players deserve to have models that look like athletes, just like male players do. Miss Ann Thrope is more sexualised than anything from Colette's or Misaki's box ffs, and their whole theme is weaponised femininity. She's not a female power fantasy, she's a male sexual fantasy and it reads that way from a mile away. Moreover, the fluff for the Wastrels is pretty sketchy and adding a female model to the Black Sheep who is indistinguishable from some of my friends in their stripper gear shows a lack of understanding of the implications of one's subject matter. To make it perfectly clear, again: one of my friends is a stripper and has that exact outfit. This is insulting, and Wyrd is not getting a pass.

Women wearing pants. I didn't think that would necessitate a post, but here we are. Women. Wearing. Pants.

What sort of self-respecting high-society lady fallen on hard times wanders around Malifaux in a skirt that won't cover her assets and no pants? Really disappointed in the overtly-sexualised Wastrel model. The Miss series is usually an interesting take on models that need better gender diversity. Miss Ery, Miss Step, literally every single Miss model except this embarrassment (or is that em-bare-ass-ment?) looks like it belongs in the game. Combined with the cosplay angle, it feels like pandering to female players on the basis of their sexuality. Participate in your hobby (that already comes with an uncomfortable amount of sexualisation and sexual harassment) and in return you can get a female model with no pants and her butt hanging out! Don't you feel welcomed and included? With the placement in Wyrd Chronicles, it carries the implication that Wyrd expects its female fans to dress like Miss Ann. It's lends a sexualised, predatory air to the event and as a cosplayer who would be into this, it makes me feel like Wyrd only wants me to show up so they can stare at my ass. Serious question for Wyrd: do you have a woman on staff who looks these things over? You need one. Gross. Gross. Gross. Wyrd can do better. Wyrd is better than this. What's going on? Final point: It's not inclusive if you use the same body type for every female model. Not all women are size 00 with DD boobs. If you want to do a model in a short skirt with her butt hanging out, make her a size 18 and at least make women feel good when they see the model. I just finished painting the McCabe box and this makes me regret buying it. Between this, Lust, and the MissingNo debacle, I'm wondering if Malifaux is the game for me. Which is disappointing, since I was praising it to the high heavens just a few days ago for NOT doing gross, alienating things like this.

I'm hoping for another official Strats & Schemes deck. The plastic cards are durable and great to hand out to new players or during demos. If we're going to get one, we'll probably see it around Wave 3. Does anyone know if the new Gaining Grounds strategies will be published in the book?

The flash of metal sparked in her eyes. She had seen it once, a small boy with a small ball on a string going around and up over again. The gem sparkled in the late afternoon sun. She charged. He twisted. To her left a stone exploded, blinding her in glittering dust. She heard the weight on her blade, felt the jangle of coins and— Yes. She cartwheeled forward, her hand brushing the ground as she— Turned, the rough steel grip warm in the afternoon sun. Light sparked between her fingers as her eyes smiled hard and cold. Misaki charged.

I'd like to keep it focused on Malifaux, since this is their forums. While drabbles don't require a formal beginning, middle, and end, they work best when they focus on a singular element or characterisation. Nicholas Was by Neil Gaiman is an excellent example of what a drabble can do and the effect you have when you focus on the meaning of everY single word. *Edit* And now let's talk about the importance of proofreading.

An offshoot of Iron Quill, that focuses on flash fiction and hardcore editing. Flash fiction is short fiction (<900 words), usually written over one or three sessions, and tends to focus on impressionism instead of telling a full story. Flash fiction is often incorporated into larger bodies of work; I encourage all writers to revisit their flash fiction when in need of inspiration. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." - Mark Twain Prevalent writing advice says to write ten thousand words and edit them into a thousand. I disagree. Your pen is a scalpel, the ink is your lifeblood, and you are going to write the very pulse of your soul. I want one hundred good words, no more, no less. A story, a person, an impression, captured forever in one. hundred. words. Make me proud.

If you're moving your Torakage in pairs, that's your problem. Face in the Crowd and Works Best Alone stack.

No, don't bring back Unexplained Connection. Explain it in the fluff and give us a story encounter. (This is my opinion on all things that would be fun fluff-wise, but don't merit the testing required to permanently add them to the game.) ((Also I love story encounters.))

This is what I want to do for the writing challenge (Editor's Desk?) and feedback. So you WILL see it in a week or two! I do not think we should have a longer Quill. 2-3k words is the maximum accepted length for short fiction in most publications. Nearly doubling that creates an undue burden on readers and voters. I do not want to read 50,000 words of Malifaux fanfic. Honestly, I find the submissions now to be an overwhelming amount of fanfic. People wanted editor feedback? I haven't read a story for Iron Quill that couldn't be improved by cutting at least 250 words. Genre fiction, and fanfic especially, tends to be wordy, bloated, and pretentious. Genre fiction is persistently underestimated and under-reviewed due to those issues, and I think as writers we have a responsibility to hone our craft and elevate the genre. I think if people want to do longer fiction, we should focus on serialised fiction. As long as the link is posted in Iron Quill, I don't care if it's the first chapter or the fourteenth. I'd like to see something like [sTORY TITLE] (Iron Quill) and then links to each part in the first post. If that takes off, I'd rather vote at the end of year for the best finished novella. TL;DR a potential 50k word dump can murder your ability to participate in judging. If people want to write longer fiction, I'd rather they plot their story and then serialise it. And it's much easier to follow a few chapters a month than one enormous story.

Conversely, Yan Lo and McCabe are a great way to teach the importance of upgrades and the effect they have on the game. I think Misaki's upgrades are the hardest to balance for demos, since Misaki's success depends on the chosen upgrades meshing with the player's style. Mei Feng and Lynch are in the middle. Their upgrades are cool, but aren't felt as strongly outside of a few scenarios.

Feminism. Malifaux is the only miniatures game that cares about presenting options for women. It's streamlined, elegant, and the card system is weirdly intuitive, but I wouldn't spend a cent on it if Malifaux didn't have a variety of non-sexualised female masters. "Bits out, tits out" is one of the things that kept me away from first edition, as well as the creepy fetishisation of Seamus. (Overheard at my local game store: "That's a lot of belles." "What else are women good for?") I really respect that Wyrd acknowledges their responsibility to their fandom and player base. The characters grow and evolve through the editions and the canon, and it's a hobby where my participation and "nerd cred" aren't attacked or questioned because I present as female. That has never been the case with any other war game. Aside from that, I find skirmish games appealing and I like that one can play Malifaux with a minimal investment. Most people don't have $300/mo for a hobby budget, and it's nice to feel like I have something to offer even if I don't have 3k points of army.

Misaki for Ten Thunders or Outcasts. Her mobility suits my play style and the Last Blossoms are just solid for most schemes. McCabe gets an honourable mention, but I'm waiting on models for him.

Lots of good feedback already. I find it incredibly hard to choose first place, and would like to see sponsorship increased for the runner-up. The last three runners-up have been too good not to reward imo. Maybe it's just me, but I get excited when I see good things happening to people and I like seeing that spread around the forums. I'd like to see genre challenges in addition to the ingredients. Yes, Malifaux is a horror game, but the canonical stories are full of drama, intrigue, and humour. I'd like to see some challenges that focus on things like tone and atmosphere. In the vein of the Judge's Challenge, I think it would be interesting to have a monthly writing exercise for constructive criticism and feedback (with a limit of >1,000 words). The full stories are really good, but I think all of us have issues as writers that we'd like to work on, and this would provide an avenue for working on those issues outside of the judging. Basically, if people are really interested in creating a writing group complete with constructive criticism, I'd like to make that happen in an arena separate from the competition. (If people want this, I'd be happy to run it. I know Edonil is busy and already gives us everything he(?) can.) In terms of new writers, I think Iron Quill is very welcoming, but the close to 2k word limit can be daunting for new people. I'd like to see some challenges for format (short story, blank verse poem, drabble (exactly 100 words), ballad, play script, etc.) that bring people out of their comfort zone. It's not a challenge if it doesn't challenge you, right? Overall? Iron Quill is great and the community is great. There's room to grow, but I wouldn't say anything is broken. Edit: I would change the start/finish to the first/last day of the month. So voting would finish in the first week, and writers can immediately start on a new story.

Mei Feng and Rail Workers/Survivors: and

The wording "as my opponent wished to use the trigger after performing the walk action" is what's confusing, as it's not clear which model "my opponent" means. If a model is Obeyed to Walk, then the trigger resolves after the Walk action, not the casting of Obey. The caster cannot declare the trigger, then take a walk action, and then have the model finish the Obey trigger to drop a scheme marker. Does that make sense?

That's correct.

Triggers occur after the action that generated them; you can't split them up.

Oiran with Misaki! The +1 Wp really helps. If your opponent is running a death bubble, just avoid it. Misaki + Disguise keeps her from being charged and lets you nibble off the edges and move. Untouchable lets Misaki gain Defensive for free and prevents horror duels. Yamaziko's Brace Yari protects models within 3" (which puts serious control on Baby Kade), and Master Tactician can ruin your opponent's hand and leave them open to assassinate. Torakage are hella mobile and really punch up in my experience against the Neverborn. You can untie Pandora's knot or you can avoid it and scheme harder. I think Misaki is the best master for it, but it definitely requires a more gentle touch. If you can frustrate your opponent into breaking their models off from the bubble, you're well on your way to winning. Oh, and Oiran have a Lure. It's not great, but does help to dismantle Pandora's bubble.

Using this logic, "My Bidding" only lets you charge, since that is the first part of the action. It's pretty clear that "this action" refers to the entirety of the action, not the individual steps.

Which masters are you playing with? If you run Misaki using backup better suited for Mei Feng, you're going to have a bad time.

I'm 95% sure the wording means "no triggers" regardless of how they would be achieved. Either way, Charging is a (2) action as per p. 39 of the rulebook. If the model has an ability that lets it charge for (1), then that action may not declare triggers, because it is then a (1) action and per the wording, (1) actions may not declare triggers. That was tautological.

Depending on what you're up against, Hans is definitely worth the merc tax. 9ss for armour piercing, card depletion, and an ability to shoot 36"? I'd say he stands up to many of the 10T models. I second The Lone Swordsman, but Bulletproof 3 won't save you against a bunch of Guild models. Really, the best defence is not getting hit in the first place.