Dereikt

1 hour ago, trikk said:

 Shouting Orders that give like 5 benefits (unless Mantra's don't somehow stack)

 

Mantras only stack for Elementals, and only Academics benefit from shouting orders, so only Kandarra and Banasuva can combine Shouting orders and multiple bonuses. Also, except for Kandarra's mantra to draw a card, the benefits are minor and situational-I don't see models easily getting good use out of more than one or two of them.

7 seems to be the standard card requirement for an obey that can target any non-master, including opponents, and sometimes with additional triggers. In that context, a 6 seems an appropriate card requirement for an obey limited to a specific type of friendly model, without any triggers. 8 would definitely be too much.

Turf war requires a mix of the mobility to move quickly between markers and the ability to kill opponents to flip markers to neutral/clear markers to interact with them, which to me suggests Marcus or mei Feng. In particular, the combination of jackhammer kick and constant motion allows Mei to push  opponent away from a marker and then push into it in a single action. Hoffman feels like another good choice, mixing a strong presence of powerful models with the highly mobile watchers. 

Plant explosives shifts the focus from mobility around the board to an ability to push into the opponent's half, and I feel this favours Marcus, whose crew is fast independently as opposed to the foundry's need to set up a network of scrap. Marcus also benefits from the fact that his fastest models are enforcers or henchmen.

Corrupted idols again requires a potential to change position quickly, but also requires spare wounds to spend on the interacts. I'm inclined to agree Sandeep with his ability to bring in extra wounds and healing from mages has the edge, but Hoffman and Marcus also have good healing potential. The fragile crews of Mei Feng and Colette would be good at interacting with the idols, but will likely miss the wounds it costs them.

Reckoning feels like one of the harder strategies, since Arcanists lack a strong damage dealer. Mei Feng is solid, but feels too fragile for a strategy with a strong focus on killing the opposing master. I'm inclined to say Marcus again-a strong damage dealing crew and good personal defences including an ability to throw his demise (eternal) insignificant totem in the way of attacks.

Rasputina is an odd sort of generalist- she lacks the speed or damage to be good at any of the strategies, but is very good at stopping her opponents scoring them, and it's generally easy but to pick up a few points if your opponents aren't there to stop you.

Looking at the maps, it seems that your opponent was using a 10ss model for scheme running because there wasn't another option available. You basically had his whole crew pinned in their own half, in a strategy which requires markers to be placed in the opponent's half, meanwhile you already had scoring markers in place. That's a bad situation to be in, and largely down to the fact that while his entire crew was concentrating and combining into golems, you were moving forwards. Another big factor is the absence from his crew of fast scheme runners, due to using all his stones hiring the Golem engine. Honestly, I get the impression he could have done better hiring two golems and then summoning Gamin to make up numbers, which is something any summoner can do.

While they haven't got much attention and are significantly down from the monsters they were in m2e, December Acolytes still feel like a model which is doing a lot, and doing it all well-

powerful deployment ability

Average, but not *bad* resilience

Good damage

Slow(and additional damage against models with slow)

Moves enemy models

Card draw

An armour ignoring aura

*And* soulstone generation

That's a big list of abilities for 7ss, and I'm not really seeing weaknesses to balance it out.

Blessed of December stands out more for one single ability, that being it's very high damage score-2/4/6 with critical strike, onslaught and pouncing strike feels like it would be good at 8s and adequate even at 9, but for 7 feels decidedly excessive.

Steam arachnids I think I've seen used once or twice in battle reports, and Mecharachnids not at all. They seem to be simply a bit too generic and not quite good enough at what they do to compete with keyword synergies, but with so few low cost minions available to most keywords, it feels important to maintain variety that the versatile minions are, at least, worth considering. Our other versatile models either seem to be generally strong(emissary, Arachnid Swarm), or to have specific skills(Saboteur, Soulstone Miner, Effigy).

Firebranded and Fire Gamin don't so much need more power so much as something to make them a bit less mind numbingly boring. Firebranded especially is a static gun turret, and that's all. Doesn't move, doesn't scheme, doesn't have any tactical support abilities. Completely helpless if engaged in melee. For such a specialist model, it's not even that good at what it does-it's ranged attack is decidedly average even with all it's synergies active, and the fact that those synergies depend on being within a pyre marker greatly exaggerates the 'doesn't move' problem.

Fire Gamin are better by dint of being cheaper and at least being immune to Burning damage from the Pyre markers they depend on but, again, this is a model with only weak damage and poor resilience on its card, and has the same kind of synergies, in ones that it needs to be functional. Specifically, it's incredibly fragile without burning, and having put in effort to build up burning, becomes marginally less fragile, but still not actually tough.

In the context of the Wildfire crew, these are their only two minions and the crew's totem is insignificant, so it's important that at least one of them is useable as a scheme runner, at least in the sense of having a minor movement ability. I'd really like to see Pyreheart allow the Gamin to first place in contact with the target Pyre marker, giving them a little bit of extra movement to get where they wanted to be to scheme, and also giving a characterful mirror of the Fire Golem's teleport. Not enough to make them an expert scheme runner, but a bit more utility and character on an otherwise very bland and generic model. 

1.Hoarcat-I'm inclined to agree, this feels like a model that's dependant on it's synergistic bonuses to make up for it's weakness, but even with the Tundra Hunter bonus is still only average. Having to remain within 2 of an Ice Pillar is pretty big requirement for a melee model, and can only do so much for a weak damage track. 1/2/4 also vastly lessens the usefulness of armour piercing, since armour can't reduce damage below 1 anyway. 

2. Mecharachnid-Keyword hiring has put significant pressure on versatile models to be good at a specific role, and the Mecharachnid still feels very generic. Also, at only 5 wounds on a 6 stone model it's far too dependant on its armour which I know from harsh experience in m2e isn't something you can depend on to keep models alive.

3. Steam arachnid-See above, with the additional factor that pass tokens also put pressure on cheap models to actually be useful. 

4. Kaeris-put simply, has somehow managed to evolve into, simultaneously, the most damage-focussed master in the game, and the least effective at dealing useful amounts of damage. The first of those makes her boring, the second makes her weak. Also not keen on the number of Pyre markers she's putting on the board.

5. Arcane Emissary-my concern here is actually in the opposite direction, that a model which combines such powerful attacks with an anti-cheating aura might be a little too powerful.

6.Firebranded-Even more than Kaeris, are a dull, static, turret of a model. Also, like Hoarcats, a model dependant on set-up to be even average. Without the extreme and awkward measure of setting themselves on fire, their ranged attack just isn't very powerful, and their heal doesn't work at all unless the target is either on fire or near an opponent on fire(more awkward set-up) but caps at healing 3.

7. Fire Gamin-4 wounds and defence 4 is poor resilience even on Gamin that have the token protection offered by armour, and this is a gamin which needs to spend resources building up burning on itself in order to have that token protection. Also, another dull Wildfire model with nothing but weak attacks on its card. 

8> Metal Gamin-4 wounds, defence 4 is bad on 4 stone Gamin, but on a 5 stone model it's dreadful. Armour, as I've said, just can't be depended on to compenstate for weak stats, and particularly not for a low wound count.

Disagree on the Poison Gamin-not sure if they're something to hire, but they definitely feel like they've got enough extra resilience and melee damage over other Gamin for Sandeep to pull out the extra values to summon them, and their demise ability combines well with both Banasuva's Mantra(latest revision) and Aetheric detonation. 

I'm pretty sure she's actually having to work harder to achieve *less* effect than other damage dealers. Smolder increases her damage track to 3/4/6, but Basse with the same range has a basic damage track of 3/4/5, with triggers to gain Shielded or inflict Injured, and retains the same damage track in melee. Perdita has 2/4/5 with a longer range, free to damage against uninjured targets, and the potential to dial her damage all the way up to 4/6/7 with critical strike, or use her other trigger to take a second attack.

Similarly, where Kaeris can use the raging inferno trigger to gain a single blast, Sonnia has the blasts built into her attack, along with 6" extra range, triggers for more blasts/more burning, and a powerful second attack for finishing off models with burning on them. 

These aren't even pure damage masters either-they all manage to find room on their card for a few powerful tactical actions or abilities in addition to simply doing raw damage. Kaeris is, so far as I can tell, practically unique among m3e masters in having almost nothing on her card except damage-I don't think I've seen the Burn it All trigger mentioned once in a battle report, and marker removal is situational enough that to be useful you need to be able to actually target the marker you want to remove, not a model your opponent has generously left next to the marker. It's also entirely negative in it's effects-there is not a single scheme or strategy where you score for removing an opponent's markers. The other action she's practically never used in a battle report is the basic interact to place a scheme marker-the consistent pattern is that on turn one she walks and places Pyre markers, and from turn 2 onwards she devotes all her actions to attacks, with perhaps the minimum movement necessary to be in range. Unless the opponent attacks her, in which case she dies swiftly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss.

Kaeris can only reasonably be described as a damage master by default, in the sense that she isn't doing anything else, but not in the more important sense of actually doing enough damage to qualify as a damage master. She isn't even close to that with a weak damage track of 2/3/5, short range, and an even weaker melee attack of 2/3/4, further limited by a complete inability to do *anything at all* if engaged by a model with flight, and a lack of resilience that requires her to avoid attacks. To be an effective damage dealer at master level, 2/4/5 is the bare minimum, and that only in the context of masters with long ranges of 12"(or more) and means to increase their damage track or deal additional attack actions.

The recent changes to injured also removed the last pretence Kaeris had at any sort of board control. Where before my opponents could move through Pyre markers at full speed and shoot through them without penalty but would at least incur a penalty if they took multiple actions actually within the Pyre markers, they can now basically *completely ignore them* for the entirety of their activation. If they spend their entire activation in a Pyre marker, plus fast or triggers to take extra actions, they might just accumulate enough burning to deal one, single, point of damage. At the end of the turn. If they don't remove it, remembering they chose their crew knowing Kaeris was your master. They also suffer a defensive debuff, which most of the crew, including Kaeris, simply doesn't have the damage track to usefully take advantage of, and which only matters at all if they get attacked in the same turn. It may look impressive to be covering the board in Pyre Markers, but they simply aren't actually *doing* enough. They really needed to benefit from the 'less, but more relevant' approach used in respect to upgrades.

I think, whatever wording is used, this is inevitably going to be a rule that is a lot messier and more ambiguous than it's worth, especially given that one of the intentions of m3e is to streamline the rules. For reference, see the m2e discussion about Hoffman's "may not ignore armour under any circumstances" upgrade versus December Acolytes. This rule has the same problems-it's trying to override multiple different ways for models to ignore hazardous terrain, none of which are well defined in the rules. At the very most, to keep things clear, Third Degree Burns should ignore specific, clearly defined rules or abilities, for example 'models may not use the Incorporeal rule to ignore the hazardous terrain trait from Pyre markers'. Also, however airtight the wording may be, since the only purpose of Pyre Markers is to give models the Burning condition, you'd still have opponent's effectively ignoring them by being immune to burning, or the damage from Burning,  so it still won't achieve the desired effect of making Pyre markers universally effective. 

Generally, I just really don't see the need for this rule, and I feel it's the sort of rule that shouldn't be needed, in the sense that if the Wildfire crew is so dependant on their pyre markers being able to deal small amounts of burning to their opponents, then that dependancy should be addressed.

Rasputina doesn't have a rule making her Ice pillar markers impassable to all models even if they ignore impassable terrain, after all, and I haven't noticed people saying she needs one. If the December crew can function adequately against models that ignore their Impassable markers, the Wildfire crew should similarly be able to function against models that ignore their hazardous markers. 

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.

HOther dedicated damage masters do enough damage to get through armour and still be effective. Kaeris is one of the most damage focused masters in the game, with almost nothing on her card that isn't damage, so she absolutely needs to be a threat to models with armour.

Really, I'm not seeing any evidence in this report for Kaeris being a good master, or even an average one. She isn't even mentioned for the first two turns, and then then only manages to kill weak models with very low wound counts and no defences. For a master dedicating all her actions to attacks, that's weak.

13 stones of hired Gamin upgraded to 3 golems:+17 stones

5 Summoned Gamin:+21 stones

So my first thought-this doesn't feel like an overpowered option. If anything, it's inefficient one in terms of stones gained vs resources spent. If anything, I'm more concerned about it being too weak to be worth bothering with compared to simply hiring said golems. 

My second thought-

3 cost 7 minions:+21 stones

I don't think any other summoner in the game doesn't have a 7 cost minion available, and many of them have powerful eight and nine cost minions. Not quite as powerful as a golem, perhaps, but close enough that the extra resources more than balance things. Also, these minions are designed to work with the summoners themed crew, while Golems, and most Gamin, are primarily designed to work with a different keyword. In that context, it's hard to justify limiting Sandeep to just 4-6 cost minions that have no synergy with each other. Ideally, the Arcanist faction would have Elemental models that fit in the 7-9 cost section of the summoning pool, but the Golems are what is available.

Third thought-

The example above takes three turns, and is dependant on the three original Gamin surviving. You can mostly rely on a Gamin surviving turn one if you keep it back, turn two onwards is unreliable. Even within each turn, there's an activation's delay between the summoning action which creates a group of Gamin and the activation which forms a Golem, so your opponent always gets a chance to kill one of the three Gamin(very easy, given their poor defensive stats) or move one of them out of position(even easier for some crews). If you keep the Gamin back in a position of safety, your opponent is also safe from the newly created Golem. 

Fourth and final thought-

Most reasons for removing Golem's from Sandeep's summoning pool are now obsolete. The initial reason was that certain interactions made summoning Golems easy, but all those interactions have been changed. The once-per-turn limit on summoning stops him dropping multiple Golems on the board in a single turn. The final reason was that being able to summon golems with a 13 made him "too swingy", based on whether he had those cards or not. This method is more predictable, therefore less "swingy", but if anything takes more overall resources.

Overall thoughts-this doesn't feel like an overpowered action, or one that shouldn't be available to a specialist summoner. It may, as I said above, turn out to be one which is too hard and resource intensive to be worth bothering with, but it's certainly worth testing to see if it works.

7 hours ago, Mycellanious said:

I'd like to see Kaeris have an ability like: "If this model is the crew's leader, when an enemy model suffers damage from burning it suffers 1 additional damage."

Whether this would stack (for 2 damage) or be 1 damage dealt twice, idk. Also if it would have to reduce burning on the enemy by 2 in the end phase, idk.

She actually went through several variations on this ability during CB, but I feel it's a poor direction for her and the crew. A crew which applies a condition to do damage at the end of the turn is simply at too much of a disadvantage compared to crews which do damage *right now*. 

Burning, after the initial +1, currently does 1/3 of a damage, rounded down.

That damage occurs at the end of the turn, after they get to activate at full effect, and after they spend the whole turn getting. your way. They also get an entire turn to remove the burning condition or heal. It's a weak condition, and a crew that relies on ticking it up will also be weak. 

Kaeris doesn't need ways to tick up burning, she needs actions and abilities that make burning a powerful condition. What she has is +1 damage on a weak attack, which is also all her crew has. The only powerful action in the crew which uses burning is the Fire Golems ability to teleport. 

By contrast, Sonnia, has-

An innate, board wide, ability which turns burning into a significant debugging.

Can ignore Los, cover and concealment against anyone with burning.

A powerful attack to finish off models with burning that has an in built summon effect.

Her crew complements this with abilities to push models towards enemies with burning and turn burning into scheme markers.

Similarly, with pyre markers, I'm pretty sure that if two 50mm markers a turn is insufficient, them the problem isn't in the number of markers, but in their lack of effect. That lack of impact is directly linked to the weakness of burning as a condition, since their *only* effect  is to hand out burning, which isn't a threat. Give the crew tools to make burning a real danger, and the Pyre markers also become a danger that opponents want to avoid.

16 hours ago, TheBjorn said:

I played another two games of the latest Kaeris. While I appreciate she is not in all out fan mode anymore I think she needs a few tweaks to.

1. Help out with the defensive part of pyres

2. Get burning going on own crew

3. Make burning tick again

To adress 1&2 I feel there is a easy fix in making the Firestartr create a pyre within 3 at start of activation. This pyre can then be walked by the elementals to get their burning going and act as protection for Firebranded and Elijah. I really dont like blanket effects nor bookkeeping but I think Inferno needs to come back. But maybe limit it to a 6” aura and put it on the Golem instead as Kaeris card is pretty cluttered.

I really like the idea of Kaeris simply giving her entire crew immunity to burning damage. As I said earlier, a basic part of the toolkit for any marker or condition based crew is immunity to the effects of their own terrain or the damage from their own conditions. This is a crew which places terrain markers the *only* effective of which is to hand out, indiscriminately, a condition which does damage, and also has abilities like Fiery Presence which are, again, indiscriminate in handing out burning. So they should absolutely be immune to the damage from  Burning, and the best and simplest way to do that is for Kaeris to have an ability which makes her crew immune to that damage.

An additional benefit of attaching this ability to Kaeris as the crews leader would be to include versatile models in the immunity, which would go some way towards addressing the horribly restricted hiring pool available in theme. 

The problem with an ability like Blaze of Glory is that it ends up controlling the models actions-having set themselves on fire, they *have* to then attack an opponent to clear their burning. If they are in a Pyre marker, they then get an additional burning immediately, so they *have* to keep attacking. Even if it's not the best choice. If they move, or interact, they end up taking damage. Or, worse, they don't attack and are dependant on their opponent to attack them to clear their burning. Also, because they have to keep clearing their burning, they can't save it for important duels, or build it up as a resource to use later the way Hoffman can do with power tokens, or Marcus with his upgrades. Most limiting of all, to keep getting burning for the ability, they have to stay in the Pyre markers. The description of m3e Kaeris talks about 'hemming her enemies in with growing walls of flame', but with a crew dependant on abilities like this and Promised to the flame, right now it feels like she's hemming *her own* crew in, and to the relatively small area close to the Pyre markers. 

Blaze of Glory also doesn't fix the core weakness of Kaeris's attacks having a poor damage track. Immolate may have required too much set up, but Conflagration was only ever an attack you used to set up more powerful abilities. It still is, except now the best it sets up is a 3/4/5 damage against a single model. That's a decent basic attack for a damage focussed master, but not worth an action to set it up. For reference, Cornelius Basse has the same range as Kaeris, and simply has a straight damage track of 3/4/5. No set-up required, and blasts plus a trigger to put Injured extra. Basse isn't even a damage focussed master to the same degree Kaeris is. More than ever without actions like Immolate to build up to, I feel that Conflagration needs to simply be an attack worth using in it's own right, even with no burning involved on either side,  and definitely without the awful handicap of having to stand still in a pyre marker to fuel Blaze of Glory. Up we go is at least OK for moving opponents around, but as her only melee attack really *has* to be able to attack models with flight, and feels like reposition, so Kaeris could move away, would be a much more useful trigger than 'rising flame'. 

My biggest objection to our versatile model pool is that, being almost entirely constructs, they don't feel like they're "representing the faction as a whole", rather they feel like the constructs that Hoffman and Mei Feng didn't want. Their isn't a single Gamin, spellcaster, or beast in the list, which is over half the masters in the faction completely unrepresented. 

It also feels like it's lacking a worthwhile 4ss minion, which is important since most Arcanist themes have at most one Keyworded 4ss minion, and some have nothing at all less than 5ss. It's not so bad having one or two high-cost models in a theme since you aren't usually taking duplicates of them, but with low cost minions the restricted numbers feel a lot worse.

In the context of the rest of the Wildfire crew, I'd agree that it feels like they need the Firestarter's current functionality as a scheme runner in addition to Carlos. This is a crew with only two minions, and not only are neither of them good scheme runners, they aren't even average scheme runners-

The Fire Gamin has average speed, no scheme marker related abilities, and what little resilience it has depends on Burning it can only get from melee or Pyre markers.

The Firebranded is a long range minion with, again, average speed and no scheme abilities, that has several abilities which basically chain it to Pyre markers to be effective. 

Kaeris is doing nothing to either improve the mediocre movement of these minions or allow them to drop scheme markers efficiently. 

That leave the Firestarter, at 7 stones, as the cheapest thing in the crew even resembling a useful scheme runner, which is already a very bad situation for the crew to be in, so I really don't like the idea of making it worse by limiting them to Carlos as their *only* scheme runner at an even more expensive 8 stones.

Blaze of Glory feels like a poor ability for Kaeris, for much the same reasons that it's bad on Firebranded-

Firstly, no efficient way to put burning on themselves for the benefit. Kaeris's action to put a Pyre down, then another action to walk through it, is not efficient, and standing in a Pyre marker to keep the benefit ties them to a stationary role-particularly bad for Kaeris who, with a medium range and poor defences, is going to be heavily reliant on being able to use her mobility. 

Generally, it's always felt to me like Blaze of Glory is backwards-in a crew mostly focussed on setting their opponents on fire, it's burning from the target they should be using to boost their attacks.

Secondly, and a lot more importantly, Kaeris has no immunity to Burning, and therefore should not be applying it to herself at all. 2e Kaeris tried several variations of setting her own crew on fire then using other abilities or actions to remove burning under specific circumstances, and they were all awkward, difficult, and tied the crew to complex and specific sets of activations just to avoid taking damage. In 3e, the only Wildfire model universally agreed to be strong from the beginning is the Fire Golem, which is also one of the few models in the crew which is immune to Burning damage. Elijah can just about get away with this ability because he has healing on a bonus action, but Kaeris with her poor defences definitely can't afford to be dealing herself extra damage.

A much better way to solve the problem of Kaeris getting pushed into her own Pyre markers is to simply to make her immune to the Pyre Markers through the Flameborn ability. This seems to be quite common in any other crew that uses markers or conditions-

The Fae  crew are all immune to their own underbrush markers.

The Frontier  crew all ignore severe terrain, allowing them to move through their own Dust markers without penalty.

The Experimental crew all have perverse metabolism, making them immune to damage from poison.

The hazardous damage aura from vent steam is only hazardous to non-constructs, allowing most Foundry models to be immune to it.

In that context, it feels very hard to justify that only 2 models in the Wildfire crew, not even including the master, have the Flameborn ability. Also, while Blaze of Glory encourages Kaeris to act as an immobile turret, a playstyle we established very early on in the Closed Beta should be avoided for her, allowing her to move through her own Pyre markers without worrying about burning damage would both allow and encourage her to be more mobile and dynamic. 

Regarding the other changes, I like the extra mobility from Run and Gun and the movement increase, but I feel like she really needs something to use that mobility for other than weak attacks, and 2/3/4 is a weak attack. 2/3/4 with a situational trigger to increase damage by one is still a weak attack. For a damage focussed master, it's very weak-she's basically spending resources to build up burning just to have a similar damage track than other damage focussed masters with less range and no triggers. Fan the Flames can hit multiple models, but it's still just a weak attack that hits multiple models. It's still only 2 damage, and it is still only doing damage. Taking immolate out removes her only genuinely powerful attack, and +1 damage from Smolder just doesn't make up for that loss. If it was +2 damage, maybe, but it doesn't really feel like good design that her main attack is dependant on burning to be worthwhile. This was another big problem for Kaeris in m2e-because she needed to constantly spend actions to place burning to make her attacks worth using, she was never more than a mediocre damage master. Again, going back to the Fire Golem, it doesn't depend on Burning, it just has a damage track appropriate to its role as a high cost melee damage dealer. Similarly, Kaeris really should simply have a damage track appropriate to her role as a mid-range damage dealing master. 

She also needs at least one or two actions or triggers that fall outside damage dealing. Removing markers is situational at best, even more so when it relies on your opponent generously standing next to markers they want. It also doesn't score points in any scheme I know of. To score points you have to either place scheme markers or move models to specific positions. Currently, all Kaeris has in those areas are to move opponents small distances, at close range. She can't move friendly models, and can only place scheme markers through the basic interact action which just isn't efficient on a master

Page 29 of the core rulebook, "friendly, enemy, and control".-

"Friendly models, Markers, and terrain are those models that have been hired into your Crew, Summoned by your Crew, or Created by your Crew."

All markers, even Scrap or Corpse markers, are now, technically, friendly to a certain crew. However, it remains very rare for an ability to distinguish between Friendly or Unfriendly markers, and Inferno doesn't feel like a powerful enough ability to merit such a limitation. 

Which is a common problem with Kaeris and her crew-a lot of her abilities have extra limiations and costs that other models don't have. I'm pretty certain, for example, that she's unique among models that apply the injured  condition in needing  build up the burning  condition, and then convert it into the injured condition. On every other master, or model, that uses that condition simply has an action, attack, or trigger that causes the injured condition. In most cases, it acts as a bonus to an attack that is also dealing damage or other conditions. Only Kaeris has to spend multiple actions to first apply a condition, and then convert it to the injured condition, and it's simply not efficient. That both conditions involved can be removed with a general action, and that it will usually need one action to remove the injured+2 that Kaeris will require a full *3* actions to apply, is enough to push Third Degree Burns firmly into the realms of "so terrible Wyrd may as well not bother printing it". Nearly every week of the CB, Third Degree Burns got changed, and every week the feedback was that it wasn't worth using. Past time to throw it away.

Similarly, everything she or her crew does with Burning, is something other crews do as well or better without Burning. Indeed, burning, itself, is simply damage with a lot of extra limitations on it-it's damage at the end of the turn, *if* it's not removed before then, and *if* they aren't immune to it. Even if it does kill them, they get to stay on the board and activate as normal, and then as a final drawback you don't count as having killed them. It's very much designed to be a secondary damage source, which is how other models use it, but Kaeris tries to use it as a primary one, and it just isn't useful in that capacity. It is, very definitely, not designed to be a benevolent condition that you apply to your own models.

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.