retnab

Raspy is weeping at how much better Smuggler Colette is at arcing spells than her.  Ignores range, ignores los, 7 speed summonable totems with flight can be arcing points, can scheme through it, can use triggers without discarding... December badly needs a look at after this.

I LOVE the idea of alt-TOS models, hoping this is the start to lots of those!

10 hours ago, Jinn said:

Looking at McMourning 2, I really really wish the new Mei had managed to fit his "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" onto her card somehow (probably changing some of her abilities for balance like swapping "Iron Plating" for Armour for example). That kind of ability would make her crew play differently and would give her as a master some resistance to marker removal rather than foisting the responsibility off onto another model that almost becomes required.

It's important to remember that the anti-marker-removal being on a model lets BOTH versions of Mei benefit, instead of giving it to only one of them

50 minutes ago, HomelessOne said:

He’s probably outside the scope of playable Master and comprehension as a written character, though we do have playable Tyrants already in the game so it isn’t impossible.

I'd say he's 0.01% chance of being playable, TOS describes him as not really sentient anymore, just acting out of instinct more than anything

Personally I'm freaking thrilled to see schemey Ironsides!  Very keen to get her on the table.

I think it's important to note that the sheer existence of this title and the fact that it's so different from base Ironsides (beater/lockdown vs mobility/schemey) is actually in itself a buff to base Ironsides.  Remember that you announce your LEADER before both players make their lists, but you don't announce your Masters' TITLES until you're both revealing your completed lists, so your opponent has to try and make a list that can handle both or take a gamble and try to focus on dealing with one (and maybe getting screwed when you reveal it's the other one).

I really, really love the idea of "on failure" effects like Covering Fire, it really expands the value of the unit.  Hit with your gun?  Cool, do some damage.  Miss?  Cool, do some scheming.

I definitely agree that Binh and Thrace show up more often than I think they should, and with more of their Syndicates coming out soon that's only going to get harder to pass them up.  It sort of puts a bottleneck on future Syndicates, because unless they also have Champions that give Tactics Tokens (or something else very valuable) people are just going to go "oh, well I'd like to take it but I need those Tactics Tokens."

Plus for Cult and Hordes, since one of their Commanders is a Titan they each only have two in-faction models that can actually use the Champion-only assets which is a bit annoying.

I'm excited to participate virtually, keen to see what all's shown off!

So since the comparison is between Superheated Claws and Fast Healing, lets just get the wording here first:

• Superheated Claws: Strength 4, Piercing.  Target discards any Assets that flip during this Action.
• When you would flip an Asset to reduce damage, you may first flip the top two cards of your Fate Deck (which may not be Cheated).  If any of the flipped cards are a ram, the Asset is not flipped but the damage is still reduced by the Asset's Disable value.

The Fast Healing FAQ is:

• 35. If a Goryshche would prevent an Asset from flipping using the Fast Healing Ability on its Fast Regeneration Asset, can it then Disable that same Asset to reduce the damage a second time?  Yes.

Now IMO the most important part of the rulebook here is the first sentence in Resolve Action's step Resolve Effects:

• Resolve the Action's effects as listed in its text.

Based on that, Superheated Claws has two steps to it separated into the two sentences (resolve one sentence, then resolve the second sentence).  So by that, option 2 is right.

Yeah I was gunning for the Council back then, but that may have been because I wanted to see Ramos with a 120mm base mega-spider 

5 hours ago, Rathnard said:

Back during the Kickstarter, Aaron (the lead designer for TOS at the time) said that the plan for expanding the game was to go wide.

True, when I wrote my article comparing Malifaux and TOS (Chronicles 36) I made sure to point that out and they kept it in the article, so I'm assuming they meant at least then it was still true.  Though that was about 3 years ago now though, and like you said things can change.

The core of my Mei crew is always:

Mei Feng

Forgeling

Metal Golem

Survivor + Magical Training

The rest is filled usually with some mix of Mech Rider, other Foundry Minions, and other OOK as needed for the schemes.

I feel like the worst part about Acolytes is that they're ranged minions in a crew that's about throwing Blocking terrain all over the place.  They really need to ignore terrain traits on markers or something.

My money's on Rail Workers, a 2/4/5 track on a 5ss durable minion is really good, especially since they can also do positioning tricks as needed as well.

Yeah in TOS the smallest base sized used for solo mini Fireteams is 40mm, 30mm is only used in Squads, I'm curious to see how they get around that here.

1 hour ago, touchdown said:

I want to see control Mei. Putting enemy models into train cars and shipping them off.

If only she'd get a new model which is literally just a train in the future xD

Don't forget we have Sonnia's card revealed now too, she looks like a heck of a board clearer!

I've realized that I somehow haven't gotten in a single game during all of GG1 and I'm trying to get back into playing now that GG2 has dropped, but I'm feeling pretty rusty.  Who does everyone feel does well for each strat?  What schemes do our masters love/hate now?

3 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

It is on the Vassal Discord

Yikes, seeing that Mei Feng track record breaks my heart

45 minutes ago, NoisyAssassin said:

If I had to guess, the intent was 'stop taking this on SS Miners' but changing it to 'living-only' was the polite way to say that.

 I'm mainly a Mei player, who hadn't gotten a chance to try Sparks yet. Seems like his whole kit got changed around. No explosives (well, only a pale shadow left), scrapyard mines got nerfed, can't burn out for fast anymore or shield as a bonus action... But he did become a Henchman, which means you can invest stones into keeping him alive now. Shielding the Golem (stoning for the new explosives trigger if necessary) obeying it, then having an AP left over seems at least worth playing around with?

Ahh yep didn't think of SS Miners but that'll do it lol.

As for Sparks, he's always been stupid fragile with multiple short range effects that want you to put him in the enemy's face.  That's better with him being a Henchman, but I'm not sure burning stones was the difference between him being worth or not.  Plus what I was bringing him for before was 99% giving out Fast and making Mei and the Golem blast back onto enemies daring to attack them in melee, and with those options gone I'm not seeing it.  At the moment the best value I can see with him is taking him with Mech Rider or Envy to make them do more dakka, I'll have to try it out and see.

I'm curious about the Magical Training nerf to being living-only, does that significantly impact us?  I feel like I was mostly taking it on living models already.

What do we all think about our other unit that got nerfed, Sparks?  Pack with Explosives being gutted 100% removes him from my Mei team, as giving out that upgrade was about the only thing he could reliably do well without getting nuked from orbit.

One thing to keep in mind with Binh is his Spirit Lantern ability means we're basically playing with only half of his card right now, when the other Court models come out it might totally change what he wants to do on any given turn

I feel like the biggest issue with M3e Raspy is that the devs wanted so hard for her not to be the big nuke she occasionally was in M2e and instead totally changed the crew from "threatening" to "annoying".  Even things like you mentioned of her Ice Pillars making it harder for her to actually use her blasts feels pretty frustrating to play with.  I haven't touched her since the beta ended and haven't had any desire at all to.

Man this seems like the most complex of the new crews for sure, my eyes are glazing over reading these guys lol.  Also is it just me or is Nexus' hive upgrade a thing just because she needs 3 card "pages" to fit all of her kit? 

I was coming here to ask why the keyword only has 6 models in it and only 3 are single-keyword, glad to hear there's more coming!  Do we have any idea when we might find out what their cards are like?

Also, I love Anya's style.  When I opened up her card and I saw the feathers and the tomahawk I was like "oh nooo" but the more I look at it the more I love the art.  Very stylish mixing the feathers, buttoned up suit, and the puffy scarf, very "I'm the boss" look, it's great.

Personally I haven't found Area to be overly problematic since it is hard capped at 1 damage per attack and the flip is separate from the primary damage (so if a player wants an amazing area attack to go off they potentially need to cheat 3 times: hit, penetration, and area).

However I do agree that Hazardous seems to be more efficient than I'd expect, especially against new players who are the least likely to know what to do about it of course.  Of the suggestions above I think making it uncheatable or only do 1 damage like Area would both go a long way, but I do have some other thoughts on what might help:

• Make Hazardous do no damage, and instead units gain a PT per Fireteam that moves within Hazardous (Stormsiren would likely need a rework though)
• Let there be a morale action that makes the Fireteam immune to damage from Hazardous for its activation or until its next activation (so you have the choice to take the Advance or Focused Effort orders, take the action, and ignore the effect of Hazardous for a short time)
• Move the Hazardous damage to the End Activation step, so at least there's not the frustrating "I activate- oh wait nevermind they all instantly died" thing which REALLY sucks

The 2nd and 3rd would mean you have to remember whether a Fireteam moved through Hazardous where there are zero other delayed effects in the game so this is maybe not likely but honestly I think it's kind of needed.  I get we want a simpler game, but everything being immediate definitely has its downsides for what we can do.

I can't speak to the Rhino or Goryshche because honestly I haven't gotten a game in in months, and the last game that wasn't just me messing around playing solo was genuinely over a year ago when I tried (and failed) to get some hype going with demo games.  I personally think TOS is by far the superior game compared to Malifaux, it's just so much cleaner.  But I seriously prefer the Malifaux models by a huge margin, the rubbery feel of the TOS models just doesn't excite me (and what we saw in the Kickstarter about sooo much of the delay being about getting the models to work makes me wonder how it can be the better option compared to HIPS).