Kharnage

7 minutes ago, Adran said:

I think that is them all standing close enough to get focus from the pulse of the shamen.  

Or shawomen 😉

But yes, Adran's got it right. Typically your Blood Hunter pukes up a corpse for your Shaman to Ancient Ritual off of, who will then step on that marker when they charge your Noxious (or whoever, but for sure not your matures because combat finesse doesn’t distinguish friend-or-foe and you want to be able to cheat at least one mask trigger for your Tot to eat) and you need your crew to be real tightly packed for the 2 inch pulse of focused that comes from the Shaman. After that, go nuts. 

Sword Maiden Nekima is more than happy to not play like a bubble. She basically needs Inhuman Reflexes stapled to her card, since her ability to multi-charge allows her to stack up Blade Rush damage, and Scamper lets her stiff-arm 1 inch reach foes, which is a focus on mobility rather than being within a bubble of yourself. In my experience her most effective builds involve hiring two Matures. Modern Shamans also encourage the hiring of at least one Terror Tot so you can take advantage of Ancient Ritual's contribution to the growth cycle, and in my opinion are essential for Nekima as the keyword lives and dies by forcing stones/cheats with focused attacks from Nekima and her Matures. This typically leaves you with a slot for an 8-9 cost model, and you can make the choice between a helpful versatile such as Serena if you need the armor pen/condition removal, or something in keyword like the Noxious Nephilim whose card cycling effect on being damaged and HtW makes him an ideal Knife target for a Shaman, whom you'd use to carve off corpses for Ancient Ritual and/or growth, or Hayreddin whose basically-Min-5, Revitalizing Ichor, and ability to cause Tots on black blood death are quite helpful tools to have.
Overall, once you've finished what I call your initial "Nephilim huddle" actions, you're good to separate and fight where you need to be. Teach Them Fear is a good aura, but not a must-have to fight near Nekima for. Enraged by Insolence is a nice consolation prize for keyword death, but just as often that last point of damage from Blood for Blood is just as impactful.
Broodmother is less solved for me, the strongest attack action without Sword Maiden then becomes Hayreddin, and he's harder to keep alive, since his value far outstrips his tankiness. She needs Matures to serve as her front line, but doesn't want to hire them because she can grow into them, but a focus on growth loses you board control (since Nekima's actions are spent supporting her crew, rather than being a threat) and then wants to win by more or less, a war of attrition. With current rules devaluing the impact of summons on strategies, I'm not sure I rate her highly at all. That being said, there are people who find success with Broodmother, and I'm not saying they're wrong, but I personally haven't been able to unlock her potential to the same extent as Sword Maiden.

2 hours ago, doubleW said:

Not a comp player - but what if you are just allowed to ban one master (incl title) after each player chose faction... 

While this is a fine approach in Vassal, in meatspace Malifaux, there are plenty of dedicated one-trickers (such as myself) for which you could ban the one keyword they brought on the plane and thusly disqualify them from being able to play the game. While there are plenty of things that are unavoidably unique to the Vassal format (uniform maps for all matches, massive lead time for each match, everyone has their whole faction all the time, etc.) striving for a format that makes sense regardless of medium would be the approach I'd strive for. So if you're, say, a Nekima stan, but want to play into things that have been through an errata cycle, BalanceFaux is the most appealing solution, IMO.

4 minutes ago, Plaag said:

like community patch and show it to wyrd-maybe they will add it to errata

A banned list is miles easier than manually rebalancing the game, and we don't have the time for even that. 'Community' patch would add new layers of complexity before agreement, since not only do people not agree that some things are too powerful, they further cannot agree how to nerf something or by how much, even if they thankfully agree that it should be nerfed. 

Give the format a shot if y'all are interested. You might have fun, you might not, but it could address some issues people are having with the game at large. We're just trying to find out. 

20 minutes ago, SEV said:

I would much prefer a banned list handle by a committee and revised every X months.

 

Got a committee in mind? Cuz "we" the VWSC (I'm mostly a rules nuisance) are pretty strapped for time and willpower as is. This seemed an amenable solution that we were comfortable with, without having to step up to bat for every A/S tier master in the game.

1 hour ago, Plaag said:

so killing him will not give u big advatages

 

Denying Damian arbitrary + to damage flips feels like a pretty big advantage though

I'll give you the vassal world series ruling, and the reasoning behind it:

We, with this excerpt from the rulebook on page 3, ruled that whatever interpretation "prevents the most" is correct. 
So with that in mind, Eye of the Hurricane prevents the effects of enemy auras except where Alone in the Dark prevents friendly auras, and Alone in the Dark prevents friendly auras (like Captain of the Superior or Phalanx) except where Eye of the Hurricane prevents enemy auras. 
So it's hard to see anything while you're alone in dark in the middle of a hurricane, I guess.
The issue of trying to figure out "which aura wins" without the above interpretation, is that they both basically claim the same thing, so we had to go with something.

2 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Again, I'd go with declaring your most condition heavy master to push them towards Unbound, then play wide to minimize blasting, and approach him the way you'd approach Leveticus. Kill the backline, kill the scoring models, try to waste their high-impact AP.

 

So my boy Doug played into David's Unbound with Titania2. For every turn that Titania was alive, he went for stunning Damian (as indeed, she has one of the rare triggerless stuns with a superior attack stat) and trying to separate out the crew, Into Thorns / Heaving Lohith away from Damian and almost killing Lohith. This meant that he couldn't cast Restore to remove his own stunned because he had no node to draw from.
It took Damian a little extra time, but he still just, consumed the crew himself. Doug even won initiative for most of the game which was important because otherwise Inkfingers on Marco just straight up forces him to drop his hand before the champion upgrades can discard to stay on. Which of course was helpful into Lohith, but was just strictly a debuff into Damian who now got healing and severe injury triggers against the Champions when Titania died and couldn't hand him stunned anymore. 
There might be a better condition heavy master to run into Damian than Titania2, but she's not far from the top, and she executed on the "keep him busy" plan to no avail. Not to say that it'll never work, but people, myself included, did try to go for his squishes and ignore the master, but it thus far has been an unkind experience. 
 

6 hours ago, Peturd said:

Both I believe are usually play testers

I know David didn't, I'm mostly sure Cody didn't. The larger issue in my mind is that in a tournament that motivates you to play the strongest thing you can play in every pool/matchup, they, in Arcanists, mostly or entirely just spammed Damian. It's not like they're unaware of the tools that other Arcanists have to offer, or were unable to bring different things, it's that these really great players sat down and said "if I want to win into these other scary/good players, Damian spam seems like my best shot". And it appears that that assessment was accurate. 
And it's not like they're famed one-trickers who spent months and months really honing their Damian skills, using the strength of their Ls to forge their Ws. They picked him up in the month beforehand and crushed it. There's no way to softball that, it doesn't look bad, it is bad.

2 hours ago, Adran said:

Shockwavec is the only place in the core  rules i can find where something originates from somewhere else other than the relevent model, but that doesn't mean that every instance follows the same rules. 

 

Well Damian's Resonate Power, amongst many other "pulse originates from other models" effects, such as Thunderous Blow, Cryptic Message, or Quicksand, clearly intends to affect himself despite generating the pulse from someone else, in this instance, his target. He's the one "making the pulse happen", it's centered on someone who isn't himself, and I think the clear intent is that he is meant to be able to heal himself, and also his allies. Rasputina was playtested with the understanding that she was included in the pulse of December's Passage. There's plenty of "pulse from somewhere else, affects me" precedent. 

2 hours ago, Adran said:

( I think you can be hit by your own shockwave as you aren't generating the pulse)

Yep, you've got it. This is the core concept. The Shockwave happenstantially generates the pulse from the marker, Damian generates the pulse from Lohith. There's no verbiage in Shockwave definitions to make this unique to Shockwaves. 

1 minute ago, Adran said:

I can't quote as I'm on a phone,

Lemme help.

Notice that this ruling doesn't refer to Shockwaves to uphold its logic, it specifically refers to Pulses. That would be because Shockwaves don't actually mention whether or not the generating marker/object of the Shockwave is affected at all; indeed, it assumes the effect is centered on a marker rather than a model, so there would be no reason to specify that a Shockwave marker is excluded from the Shockwave's effects, since it's likely that it doesn't even have stats. (Reposted below for reference)

With this in place, the only rules that govern what is excluded, is the Pulse rules, which is what they refer to in order to make the case that the model centered on with Uncontrollable Magic isn't affected; Pulse mechanics, not Shockwave mechanics.
Damian gets to cleanse himself using Lohith.

Actually, I think that FAQ is hella relevant now that I think on it. The Wong Uncontrollable Magic shockwave thing is a clear cut example of a pulse excluding the object that the pulse is literally being drawn from, and even goes so far as to reference the BRB and the pulse rules. The only model to get ignored 'as per the core pulse rules' that they expressly reference in that FAQ, is the model that "created" the pulse, clearly implying that the don't consider Wong to be the 'creator' of the pulse. Hence, Damian can cleanse conditions on himself if he draws from Lohith (or whatever)

4 hours ago, Adran said:

Strictly Damien is still the object creating the pulse, which is what is excluded from the pulse. 

This is an interesting point. Quoting BRB for reference:
"All models inside the Pulse's area or overlapping the object generating the Pulse, excluding the object that created the Pulse, are affected by the pulse as long as they are in the generating object's LoS".
They go out of their way to use 'generating' vs 'created', which, you know, means the same thing, but in context the implication is that they're different for our purposes. I was initially aghast at such an interpretation, but you've given me something to chew on. So this means, in theory, that Damian can't cleanse Stunned off himself, which is a massive deal. I'm sure this has some implications that I haven't considered yet in some other model, but for now, I'm excited that Damian has a hole in his wall against counterplay.

45 minutes ago, santaclaws01 said:

I think you meant to say B instead of A, since A is starting point doesn't matter, ending point does. Whereas you're arguing that the starting point is what matters, and the ending point is irrelevant.

No, my argument is that the push finishes and then checks to see if the model is in range. So a Thrall gets pushed from 10 inches away to 6 inches away, then we resolve EBTM, because it is AFTER the model is pushed that we check for range, at the timing of the ability. 

1 minute ago, theamazingmrg said:

But because it uses active language, the Ability reads (to me) as saying "Is the model within 8" and being Pushed?" which conflicts with the "After" timing.  A model is not being Pushed after it has been Pushed.  It is only being Pushed if it is being Pushed.  Which is far too many Pushed for one paragraph.

If the ability said "When a model is pushed" I'd agree. But it's After. The logic to me; After "is", is "was".

5 hours ago, PiersonsMuppeteer said:

Is there any Aura currently in the game which lets you resolve the effects after a model leaves the Aura’s range? I don’t know of one, but I certainly do not know all Aura abilities. An example of the above would help to quash opinions in favor of option A.

This is really the kicker, to me "After a friendly Witch Hunter within 8 is pushed" gives a clear timing. The timing? AFTER a model, that is NOW CURRENTLY (post push) within aura 8, is pushed, resolve the rest of the ability. If I were TOing, I'd rule in favor of A, because anything else feels like a stretch. 

EDIT: Clarified timing

36 minutes ago, PiersonsMuppeteer said:

The lasting game effects clause only specifies effects which targeted or chose any of the original models. Unclean Influence does neither, since the words target or chose are absent from the text. I would also say that a “lasting game effect” is one that has a defined endpoint, like “Until the end of this model’s Activation” or “Until the End Phase”, or lasts for the duration of the entire game, like Schemes. 

I think we get into annoying territory with this interpretation either way. If a 4 hp Mounted Guard gets hit by Candy's Burn Out trigger on Glimpse of Insanity, does the old model dying to her Misery on his fast and a Lyssa's ping on his Stunned, then also immediately die because the Guard Patrol is now not carrying over any lasting game effects and getting pinged by Pandora and a Sorrow for the 'new' model's Fast and Stunned? I would initially assume that "have I been pinged for gaining this" carried over but now you've got me wondering. 

11 minutes ago, Jesy Blue said:

Do not confuse thematics with rules.

Either way, this was unnecessarily condescending, and didn't address my thesis. 

"If the new and original models belong to the same Crew, one new model becomes the target of any effects that targeted or chose any original models, such as Schemes, Leader designation, or lasting game effects. That new model is always considered a legal target for those effects."

6 minutes ago, Jesy Blue said:

No, only the model taking the Tangled action is the one being replaced... the rest no longer exist.

Is there a reason that step 4 wouldn't carry over any "lasting game effects", such as actions waiting to to be taken by the replaced models?

Hamelin uses Unclean Influence on a pack of 4 Malifaux Rats. The first Malifaux Rat takes Tangle Together, replacing the other Malifaux Rats and himself with a Rat King. Do the 3 remaining accumulated actions that were generated for the original Malifaux Rats now get carried over to the Rat King?

On 6/26/2021 at 9:17 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

Signed up!

... As NEVERBORN 😱

Time to sign up as Ressers

As far as I can tell, double viscera is de wae. They are mind-bogglingly efficient, strong minions and giving them fast and focused will still give you plenty of reach and teeth. That being said, you've got more breathing room against Schtook turn 1, which is helpful for a health of the game perspective. 

Schtook still has some of the most incredible models in his keyword and I don't think other Resser keywords can match his tank and card manipulation. He just can't mindlessly dump AP into his henchwomen anymore.