Dereikt

There's been a significant reworking of Mei Feng's signature 'Railwalk' ability, renamed to 'Ride the Rails', which alters how she interacts with her crew and generally means she's likely to prefer her keyword. One important change is that instead of jumping along a chain of constructs/Scrap markers, she teleports from one Scrap marker to another. So instead of building a chain of constructs for Mei Feng to jump along, you're trying to build a network of scrap markers, meaning a cheap construct like the Steam Arachnid isn't enabling Ride the Rails the way it enables Railwalk in m2e-it drops a scrap when killed, but that's not a method you want to rely on. By contrast, Metal Gamin drop a Scrap marker a turn for free after moving, making them an important model, and Railworkers have a few triggers on their attacks which generate Scrap markers. The other significant change is that unlike Railwalk, which is unique to Mei Feng, Ride the Rails is an ability of the Foundry crew in general, so in addition to helping build the Scrap network for Mei Feng to teleport along, her themed models then get to teleport along the same network. The end result of these changes is that her themed minions of Metal Gamin and Railworkers are both more useful to her than the generic Steam Arachnid, and significantly better within her crew. Like a lot of m3e masters, I see her mostly taking out of Keyword models to do a specific task, and as generic cheap minions Steam Arachnids aren't doing a specific task.

I think malifaux combines so many different styles that it's hard to really say any single one would be 'intrusive' or out of place, and that multitude of different crews is one of the charms of the game. Really, it's an impressive feat of writing to keep the overall setting as coherent as it is while combining so many different elements. It's also nice that some of those elements comne from cultures outside of Europe of America.

My initial impression of the book 1 Arcanist general upgrades was that the soulstone costs were the wrong way around-Imbued protection should be the one SS upgrade and imbued energies should be 2. My experience since has mostly confirmed those thoughts. I've tried using it to increase Kaeris's survivability with Eliminate the leadership in the pool, with two outcomes-either Kaeris dies relatively easily anyway and gives away the points, or my opponent takes a different scheme and the 2ss spent on the upgrade are wasted. I'm pretty sure that a simpler and more effective approach to that scheme is just to use a less fragile master, especially in GG18 with Eliminate the leadership tied to a pure kill based strategy Kaeris is terrible at. I've also used it to try to increase the survivability of Df6 models, mostly with Show of force to worry about, but there also I've found I'm adding a minor boost of survivability, while turning medium cost models into expensive ones and expensive ones into absurdly expensive ones. On anything living, Well Rehearsed provides a more reliable boost to survivability while also getting extra pushes. Mostly, my problems with it come down to the cost, and the lack of a certain benefit. If your opponent doesn't attack Defence directly, you're seeing no benefit, and if they don't attack the upgraded model, you're also seeing no benefit, and 2ss is an expensive upgrade to be seeing no benefit on when we have imbued energies at a lower cost that is certain to provide a strong advantage(even if your model dies before you use it for fast, you get cards). The Ice Golem.. is a bad, overcosted model, even post errata. I don't really see combining it with a weak, overcosted upgrade as likely to somehow produce a decent model.

I like the idea of this format. Some Masters would indeed struggle, Rasputina to give a specific example, but I feel that's a lot of what makes alternative format's interesting-they make you find alternative crews and methods to what you normally have to use. This format, I think, would be interesting enough to justify making some masters struggle, without going too far and making them unusable. The only serious concern I can think of is the aforementioned ability of summoners to circumvent the restrictions, which doesn't feel bad enough to give up on the idea. At the very least, it's certainly worth trying to see how well players actually cope(or don't cope) with it.

Gunsmith's do indeed have strong synergies with Kaeris, but are held back by a poor damage track, which is a severe drawback in a model that's mainly in your crew as a damage dealer. Generally, I find that rather than being a good model that becomes great when I manage to line up all their synergies, they feel more like a poor one that becomes good if everything aligns. In terms of synergy with Kaeris, very few arcanist models actually have burning synergies, and when they do it tends to be overly complicated, so a lot of the synergies are less direct. The scheme marker placement from Grab and Drop is at it's most effective with cheap fast models like Wind Gamin or Raptors which can start their activation near Kaeris, move 10-15", and then drop a scheme marker at the end of their move, but fire Gamin with their Wk5 are adequate in this role. One thing Kaeris lacks in her crew box, but usually wants in her crew, is a heavy damage dealer, being at her best an average damage dealer, and more commonly mediocre. This would be the main benefit of the Ramos box which contains two heavy damage dealers, but Ironsides also comes with a hard-hitting henchman. I've found Shaster Vidaya Guard are also pretty good damage dealers, and have some synergy with Kaeris through their ability to draw a card when they cheat fate, which you can use when Kaeris sets them on fire for her support abilities. My own inclination would be to go with Ironsides over Ramos since there's quite a lot of overlap between the steam arachnids and the fire gamin, whilst the oxfordian mages fill a slightly different niche being slightly higher in SS cost.

To me, it's less a matter of needing to hit something in particular with the Rail golem, and more a problem of being able to reliably deal hits at all, which means being able to hit Defence 6 targets even if my opponent has high cards to cheat in. For the 6 stone large arachnid, MI5 with plus flips is good enough, because for the relatively cheap cost it's worth it even if it has to go after a suboptimal target, or even to force my opponent to spend high cards from hand. Worst case scenario, if it fails to do anything that isn't a setback I can't recover from. The Rail Golem, on the other hand, is 11 stones worth of pure melee specialist. With bad to terrible resistance and no support abilities, all I'm getting for those stones is the melee damage potential, and that's too many stones to spend on a melee damage that can be cancelled out as easily as my opponent having the same value of cards in hand as me. For such an expensive model, it simply isn't enough to force my opponent to spend a few cards, so in this case MI5 is a much more serious drawback.

Well, they're a very big consideration with both Joss and Carlos depending on armour to make up for low Wd stats and, in Joss's case, an average defence. As is the fact that armour neither prevents small attrition from little hits or makes a real difference to the big hits. Not a defence to rely on, and Carlos doesn't even have armour except when he's on fire For me, the simple ten wounds, impossible to wound, hard to kill, plus healing on a melee trigger make the slate ridge mauler comfortably our most resilient model, especially for a meager 7 stones and no requirement from other models to support it. A real gem in an otherwise frustratingly fragile faction. Post errata, the defence 6 and 9 wounds of a Razorspine Rattler are also pretty amazing for a 6 stone minion, equal to the much more expensive Carlos. In terms of support, both can also benefit from defence and extra healing from Myranda, in addition to most of the defensive buffs already mentioned. Also, in the realm of absurd amounts of set-up, since they're minions, Rasputina can use december's favour to them into frozen heart minions, and then allow them to benefit from the tome trigger on the 'sub-zero' upgrade to end an attacker's turn after taking damage in melee. That's a powerful extra safeguard against a lot of the most dangerous models.

Rail Golem gets up to a pretty fearsome 5/6/8 damage track if it gets the bonus for using locomotion and having burning, but I've found that a bit tricky to set up since I tend to need to spend one or two burning on locomotion to get into combat, and then another one burning to get the attack. Also MI5, even with makes it unreliable at scoring a hit at all, and it's horribly fragile for an 11 stone model. Large arachnid can hit pretty hard for a 6 stone minion if you have a scheme/scrap marker to spend for to attack and damage so it can go for severe of 6 although again MI5 limits it. Shastar Vidaya Guard are one of my favourites for doing large hits, since they can discard for a free focus, then spend it to get a severe of 6, and with the right trigger ignore damage reduction or get an extrato damage. Theoretically, Kaeris should be able to deal big hits by accumulating burning and using her engulf trigger but in practice, she's just not good enough at putting useful amounts of burning on her opponents.

Over-specialisation, mostly, and depending too heavily on a crew she does nothing to support in order to compensate for her crippling weaknesses. Mostly the same reasons as Kaeris-superficial defences and weak damage capacity, combined with a limited number of situational support abilities, always needing a few more resources than she has(Kaeris tends to be short AP, Mei Feng tends to be short on suits and high cards, but the end result is the same), and very little synergy with any arcanist models. Yes, Vent Steam can be a great defensive resource, but only against an opponent that's using Sh and Ca attacks, and I tend to hear about it in the context of multiple castings, in which case your burning all/most of her AP defensively, and she isn't doing anything. That feels more like a way to draw or stall against an eventual defeat than a way to win.

A:Sandeep, Marcus B+:Ironsides B:Colette, Ramos C+: Rasputina D:Mei Feng, Kaeris.

I'm often tempted by Lilith with her mix of powerful movement tricks, card draw, and the ability to see through terrain, while also having a powerful damage-dealing melee attack for the situations where movement and support tricks just aren't enough.

Doesn't lose burning at the end of the turn, but will lose all the burning that it depends on being able to build up due to the Grab and Drop upgrade whenever it activates near Kaeris? That would be a pretty big disappointment, given it's a design flaw we've already seen in Carlos and the Rail Golem. Most of the other mechanics seem promising, especially the teleport-10" is a big place.

Issue 3 is exactly the reason why clocks only really work within the context of strictly defined turns, because so long as you aren't taking any actions on your opponent's time, it's only possible to lose through the clock, and not to win by it. In Kings of War, however fast or slow I play, it only affects my own clock-I can still only win by time if my opponent is playing slowly or, in other words, if he loses by time. In malifaux, I'm pretty sure I *can* actively deplete my opponent's clock, and in quite simple ways, most significantly through an opposed dual. If my opponent attacks me, we both flip a card at the same time, so there's no opportunity to flip the clock to my side. I don't flip cards at a consistent rate, and I can certainly take an important few extra seconds when I'm tired to read the card, add up the relevant defensive stat, and reach a total. That is time coming out of my opponent's clock from my slow play, as part of a common mechanic, in some cases without even requiring a deliberate effort on my part. Also, in any timing protocol where part of my actions uses my opponent's time, I can take those actions specifically to deplete my opponent's clock. I could, for example, attack a model with a wind gamin-that's four attacks, each of which will partly deplete my opponent's time in an unavoidable manner. I could also use actions like Flare on Kaeris to force an opponent to take multiple simple duels. In both cases, these are things I might be tempted to do regardless of whether they are useful actions in their own right. That's two reasons why a chess clock wouldn't work properly in a game like malifaux which was designed not only without a chess clock in mind, but in many ways entirely contrary to the inclusion of one, and that's without having thought particularly hard about them.

You'd need more of a penalty than that-at the very least enough bonus VPs to turn a loss into a draw and a narrow loss into a win. As noted above, the main point of introducing clocks would be to make players play within the time limit, which is an unfortunate reality of tournament games, and for that, you *need* a harsh penalty for timing out. Being unable to take any further actions is harsh if you time out early, but becomes a lot less of one in late turns-you can quite comfortable time out in turn 5, and that is something players should be trying to avoid. You can also comfortably time out if your opponent is also low on time, since they won't get to take the extra activations-if both players run out of time, you're back where you started with games going unfinished within the time limit. If I can time out and still win, I'm not being trained to play within my time. More significantly for Malifaux, however, it *also* requires that, as a player, I am *solely* responsible for the rate of play during my own turns, and that all I am doing during my opponent's turn is thinking. Chess would be a good example of a game designed this way, that therefore accomodate's chess clocks well. 'Kings of War' also works well with chess clocks because it is designed around these distinct turns-during my turn, I'm moving units, rolling all the dice, and my opponent is not. Malifaux fails spectacularly at it-not only does it have alternating activations which pass back and forth a lot more than a turn, I am responsible for the speed of play in multiples ways *during my opponent's activations*. I'm deciding whether to cheat fate, flipping cards, resolving abilities like explosive demise, sometimes even interrupting my opponent's activations to move models around. In short, both players are active pretty much simultaneously, and this is too much a part of the core gameplay to practically change, so a chess clock would fail.

I'd agree that a lot of Kaeris's inefficiencies come from trying to change too much about the burning condition, particularly when in addition to trying to turn a weak, temporary, damage dealing condition into a strong, persistant condition she *also* tries to use it as a benevolent condition. When you look at most buff/defbuff effects in Malifaux, they divide into two broad categories-Aura effects, which require you to remain in close proximity to the target, or attacks which require you to spend AP tagging a target which then gets the benefit/drawback. Kaeris's have the disadvantages of both and benefits of neither-I need to spend AP and actions setting my models on fire, *and* keep them close to Kaeris, *and* also have a specific timing condition attached to them-they only get the benefit if they are near Kaeris at a specific time. As a final insult, if you mess up the timing or position, you don't just lose your buffs but end up taking damage as well. So, requiring all that much effort, I would expect her buffs to be very powerful to compensate, but they aren't. Really, her buffs need reworking to avoid dependence on the burning condition, for example by allowing friendly models to gain a condition which grants them the bonuses *instead* of applying burning, which they could then use regardless of their proximity to Kaeris. On the flipside of things, applying burning to her enemies, the problem is mostly that all her abilities there basically add up to damage, and at her best she's a mediocre damage master. However, there's also a lot of inefficiency and extra limitations built into her abilities that keep them from working well even within the limited confines of her core mechanic. Accelerant would be the most extreme example-it does 2 damage to a model with burning, which is weak to start with. but has to affect all models with burning including friendlies, and can only be done once a turn so you can't combine it to do medium levels of damage, and requires a TN to work. So it's already reduced to a very small niche, but then as one final limitation if you *do* manage to get an opponent on two wounds or less with burning, they can avoid the damage by gaining paralyzed. That and 'Born of Fire' would be the worst cases, but there's a lot of lesser examples. Flare requires a Df duel, which can't be relented, so it can't be used to reliably set opponents models *or* your own models on fire. Her abilities only do burning+1, so it rarely adds up to a significant amount of damage, Smoldering heart is 'after succeeding' *and* requires a suit, and even with the bonuses against a model on fire immolate is a mediocre attack, and her good Wk value of 6 is balanced out by a poor charge value of 6 and a lack of any movement ablities, so she depends on Grab and Drop for mobility, which in turn limits her flexibility by taking her other limited upgrades out of consideration. Her broken promises upgrades, regrettably, continued the trend of inefficiency-Flaming angel is a decent upgrade, but the combination of a high 2ss cost, requiring a seven or better for incinerating swoop, not being allowed to use it more than once, and most importantly the massive limit of it not ignoring terrain keep it from actually being *good*, let alone great in the way the Broken Promises upgrades for other 'Weak' masters are. Once again, it feels like the designers put in enough limits to keep it from being overpowered, then added one or two extra. The additional trigger on Immolate, which needs an extra suit and sets Kaeris on fire, but *not* the actual target, joins Born of Fire and Accelerant in the 'Wyrd may as well not have printed it' category. All the inefficiencies add up, and the end result is a very limited master who has a small range of effective abilities, and more often than not tends to end up as a poor damage master.