retnab

Alrighty, well then: M3e Mei Feng is the best thing to happen since I started playing Malifaux and you all better not take her away from me!

General rule I've learned: if something can have an Asset (Adjuncts aside), it probably should

They're normal playing card size. I've got mine in plain old Dragon Shields and they work fine there

Open beta sounds exciting! Kyle, does this NDA being loosened mean just in the soon-to-be Open M3e beta area or can I just start ranting about how [new favourite Master] is so wonderful to play that an angelic choir should start singing when they're taken?

Thanks for doing what you did so well Mason (and putting up with all of us ), I hope to see some sweet new stuff from you in the future!

They are gorgeous eh? My only complaint about the Cult deck (besides the lack of Twisted Horrors art) is how much darker the backs are than I expected, maybe it's just my print but it's significantly darker than the art on the box:

"When a CoBM Fireteam in this Company comes into (or starts in) base contact with a friendly Portal Marker, you may place its unit in base contact with any other Portal Marker. Fireteams that move in this way may not use any remaining movement that was granted by the Order, and cannot use the DI rule again during this Activation." First: you can only use DI once during "this" activation, not during "their" activation. Second, movement (from an Order or otherwise) isn't required at all, they can use DI if they start b2b with the Portal Marker. Third, if during an event someone told me that a Portal Marker moving to be b2b with a fireteam didn't cause the fireteam to "come into base contact" with it I'd be calling over a TO for sure.

There's nothing in the rule that says it has to occur during the unit's activation. The only thing that mentions activations is that if they use DI via the movement from an Order, they can't keep moving afterwards.

It works both ways. Whether the unit moves b2b with the Portal Marker or the PM is moved b2b with the unit, the "comes into base contact" requirement is satisfied and the unit can teleport. This is also why a Stalking Portals fireteam moving b2b with another unit lets that other unit use Dimensional Instability as well.

This is a big one, even if you never give out a single ST you still get to see every card they draw during the activation phase which against Abyssinia will be huge.

Signal Flags is super good but only in some of the strats. I aim to Glory them asap (sharpshooter on one of them and have Charles give them bonus shots for more kill potential) and then drop objectives and mess with the enemy's hand as needed

Sam can't have a HHRC as she's not an Abyssinian unit, she currently can only take one of the generics. Otherwise, looks good!

Spoilers for The Other Side's core rulebook incoming, I'm just going to write out this blurb of a paragraph so folks reading the front page post note thingy don't get accidentally spoiled on everything, but there's a lot in the book that has to do with this thread I think! Okay, going to go ahead and assume that this is enough, I'll break down my thoughts on the three Tyrant-things I think are affected in this book. Again, spoilers ahead. The Burning Man So the first thing to note here is something that I've wondered for a while, whether the Burning Man is aware of what's going on, is conscious at all, or has just become a force of nature - and this is answered in the book very clearly: "It is not conscious, and any sense of agency it may have once had has been drowned in its own madness." So, it's a force of nature now rather than an active character. Secondly, and I don't have any direct quotes to back this up, but the way that the worshipers basically become irreparably magically converted to the cult (when Edmonton looks at the Broken with his magic monocle he describes them as "a blistering legion of smokeless flame, linked together through a chaotic web of leaping, swirling fire") makes me think that Kitchener was successful and did actually manage to become the Tyrant Rulership, but thanks to the ascension being sabotaged and Cherufe screwing things up further he can't really benefit from that. Meridion We actually get a LOT of information of Meridion's past and present in this book, and actually a description of what she looks like too! As far as her past goes, even before she fell with the other Tyrants it's noted that she had palaces and shrines (plural for both), indicating that her desire for the worship of her followers has been a key part of her for a long time. The book also notes that the Gibbering Hordes who "dwell on the beaches and in the swamps of Malifaux frequently built idols to Meridion" and that "as more idols are pushed into place along the ley lines of the world, [...] the whispering voice that speaks to [the Hordes] becomes more clear." This pretty clearly says to me that Meridion is getting stronger as her followers get back into building up her places of worship even now. Most disturbingly, in part of Thrace's story it's noted that some jellyfish-like Hordes monster appears to have the power to basically mind control humans and force them to pray to Meridion as well, probably to strengthen her even further. They note that an idol probably built to look like Meridion is "in the shape of a woman, but her features were all wrong. Half of her face was a mask of range, the other a serene smile. One leg kicked out and twisted more like a broken metal pipe than a leg, and the other stood tall. She was cloaked in an armor of scales and, much like her face, half of her armor was torn and tattered, the other half pristine." Now to me that reads pretty clearly like a Hel-like creature, more about duality than any one feature. Later in the same story, she speaks to one of the Broken who, when Meridion is mentioned, says she "is an ancient thing, unable to change. Unable to even free herself from death. A pathetic husk, chained to the veins of a beating world by her own worshipers" which seems to imply that maybe her being worshiped is actually part of her prison rather than a potential exit from it? I'm not sure which way it'll go in the future, but it's a lot of cool info on an otherwise barely known Tyrant. Obliteration This is just my own personal theory, but when the Burning Man and Adeodatos are mentioned there's a lot of mention of time and the "space between spaces". Specifically, when the Burning Man came into being he teleported about a week back in time and from Malifaux to San Francisco, and when his timelines matched back up the San Fran earthquake happened (it doesn't clearly state whether the Burning Man's the cause or if it's a coincidence, but it feels causal from how it's written). Additionally, the two Tyrants merging is said to have caused a "surge of magic [...] so great that it imprinted itself on the retina of the cosmos like a breand on seared flesh, and visions of the entity rippled backwards through time like ripples on a pond." The Stalking Portals are described as portals that don't actually lead to anywhere else but "connect to somewhere in-between [Earth and Malifaux]." Lastly, when Edmonton shoots Adeodatos in the head with a Soulstone bullet (which is described as being a "perfect shot") instead of dying or showing any sort of injury Adeodatos just sort of fades away and states "This is not the end, [...] In his light, I have found eternity." So what does this all mean? I predict the Cult messing around with huge amounts of breaches and intentionally using ones that only go part of the way is going to screw with the Void in some way, and maybe even give Obliteration a back-door back into Malifaux. There's a lot of mention of time and space in the book, and maybe I'm just reading too much into it, but it could be a cool angle for everything.

Grenadiers and RRC are the biggest threats to the Cult, though using Borderers to clog them up works well too. The biggest thing to keep in mind is the start of each turn, that's the only time they can move a Portal Marker guaranteed or buy The Approaching Convergence / The Burning Man Descends. If they don't buy either of those, you know the Portals are staying where they are at least on that turn. As far as the ECB go, they're expensive so they almost definitely won't have more than 1 unit per Commander of them. Remember that on the non-Glory side they don't have any melee attacks so if you can rush and engage them they're in trouble.

Blowtorch Granny may be my favourite sculpt! Though the Horrors beg for some wild paintjobs, and the "rat flail" Broken guy's probably got the best face.

I've found that the Frenzy do best when they're in a big swarm, so I'd put them more in the 2C boat. Stormsiren's power mostly comes from her though, so playing 1C doesn't weaken her much (especially getting 3 TT per activation).

Howitzer's awesome, just not against the Cult. This game really relies on you changing up your list depending on who you're fighting more than Malifaux I've found (if they declare Kassa, Adeodatos, or the Frenzy then you're probably playing a different list against each of them).

The TTB rulebook's guide to making magic users has some amusing effects that can happen if you make your magic too elemental. I never made one, but I keep imagining someone who's a healer but can only heal someone whose drenched in water or whose healing causes them to get drenched ("Get in the tub, I need to heal you quick!" xD). Getting some more elemental shenanigans to people's magic like that could be fun!

Plus last spring/summer there were some models shown off in the Monday Previews. There weren't any Arcanists shown off, but unless they're for models that were being shown 2 years ahead of time it almost definitely means there's going to be new stuff in M3e core.

You can do a Coordinated Strike after the first activation in the turn, yes

That's the same situation as the Speckled Crawlers. If something has the same timing (start of activation), then you can do it in the order of your choosing, which does include flipping to Glory and then doing X on the Glory side.

Yes, you generate TT's after going through all "start of activation" effects so if you flip them to Glory you get 2 TT's instead of 1

They both happen in the "Choose a unit" step. So, they happen in the order of your choosing due to the wording of Timing: "Sometimes, two effects have the same timing. In these cases, the Acting Player (see callout above) can choose the order in which the effects resolve."

Yeah, there's a mispack option on their Contact Us page to use

I'm guessing their theme is more or less "we want the world to know our (my) name(s)!" But Zipp's airship is called the Infamous IIRC so it's probably just that Zipp hired them onto his crew somehow?