Gnomezilla

Did it involve Nicodem and some variation of the phrase “hold my beer”?

Spiders fit anywhere you need a cheap, somewhat durable model (single arachnid) or stronger quick Onslaught model to attack extra times per turn (swarm—bonus fun points with Diesel Engine for crazy high mobility). Mecharachnids are a super situational counter-pick hire, but Precise is such a good tool against layered defensive tech (*cough*Ironsides* *cough*Fitzsimmons*) that I can be happy with them being niche. Tanky-crew Colette sounds fun! Swarms don’t have mobility problems, but everything else doesn’t mind. The mecharachnids might especially like being dropped off where they need to be. It’s not a great plan to plan for your models dying (the part about mannequins feeding swarms). I have run Hoffman with a list heavy on arachnids because I was counter-picking lots of Evasive. The guardians tossed the swarms forward for mobility after Hoffman had made them fast. Lots of onslaught triggers! The swarms got too far separated from Hoffman’s bubble and token generation suffered that game, though I think I can do better with positioning now, with practice.

Hold Up can be an auto-loss against an outactivating summoner. What are your chances? I might try to trust the bubble to kill anything hired that is cheap and/or isolated enough to score Hold Up, but not otherwise.

You want fast? Guardians can toss most masters. Just saying.

I had to face Yan Lo with three samurai before I ever fielded Ryle. Yan Lo could pulse focus, at the time. Once I calmed back down, we agreed to focus (ha ha) on Yan Lo and revisit the Gatling gun quantity question later, if at all. Hunters are mini-peacekeepers with much better survivability. GuildHoff will run into trouble later in the edition, but for now their retention of crit strike keeps them in the game. Riotbreakers shoot, so they need to retain a power token to enable shooting, so if you want a Min3 threat gunline you need to give them an additional token to start. But they don’t need support after that (the shotgun damage track isn’t worth focus, in my eyes) so they are fire-and-forget once two tokens have been dispensed. I am very fond of Vent Steam and making onslaught models cry/hurting nephilim without provoking black blood/doing things with Scatter which ought not to be done but nooo, some things had to not have resists, so I rate Howard Langston well for passive damage output & defense of the crew via concealment...but he is much safer in Arcanists.

I would be leery about relying on armor into Guild. Three out of eight masters have some way to cope with the problem: those aren’t good odds. Sonnia is perhaps the most vexing of counters to Collodi, with a ranged, blasting, armor ignoring innate (if she brought the Expert Marksman upgrade, and she will bring the upgrade) attack. Guild doesn’t have as many answers to bypassing those underbrush markers. They can buy ignoring-concealment upgrades, limit two. They have a Blow It to Hell model in the riotbreaker, limit three, not yet seen one hired outside of Hoffman. They have very little flight and incorporeal, and fewer but still not many place effects (look for Ride with Me and I’ve Got Your Back, and see the limits on engaged/unengaged targets). Guild is pretty good at resisting being moved into said markers, so they aren’t as good offensively, but as defense they are probably full-powered. @11Anthonyc what does a Titania vs. Basse table start looking like at turn’s end, anyway, with all the markers?

But if they’re chopped and changed, then they’re conversions and stay legal as long as they’re X% Wyrd model (and/or greenstuff, nobody begrudges wires and putty).

Oof. Even in our extremely lax meta proxy environment that would be a little troublesome. We try to use models that would be impossible to field under the declared master (so proxying in-faction is discouraged) unless their pose is strikingly alike to what they are proxying and so it would be confusing even with the real model (and none of these fit that criterion either). Child, no longer a cross-faction hire, as totem-of-the-hour is not confusing but seeing ‘Nicodem’ and ‘shieldbearers’ in a Resser list is a plausible outcome, and therefore they are not great as proxies.

Only once so far, but Nellie provided solo disruption enough that I’m willing to try it again. I had a whisper in my ear that Lucius might make a good secondary to a minion crew. He is so much better to his own keyword that it’s almost a waste, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong that other minions might like having him around...

We play it the other way, that hazardous checks at the end of resolving the action, at which time the generator of the hazardous aura is already dead and the aura is no more. As the owner of the Vent Steam model generally, I’d certainly prefer it to be otherwise, but...

I’d leave the Peacekeeper out just because it doesn’t get tokens automatically out-of-keyword, so half its card text would be unusable. Extra confusing for new players. Position the effigy next to a gun user and demonstrate the heal aura buff before the gunner gets wounded enough to need it right away. The Lucius block is more of a Dashel crew these days, but Lucius can work as a secondary master into any crew (if you’re willing to introduce the idea this early in their Malifaux careers—master cards are most complex).

It does not say ‘friendly activation phase’, so the enemy hits discard the shield. The shield, if Burning and Poison use the Shielded during the End Phase, stays on.

Nobody needs to see Killjoy’s booty clap. 😖

Only getting to turn three leads to a lot of ties. Lead-Lined Coat is a strong counter to the ‘bounce you through terrain for fun and profit or pain and loss’ tactic. But I felt less of it that game because Nellie also squealed off towards the table edge every time, so it was Titania as well as Killjoy left somewhat out of position by chasing and killing the nosy newsy. 8” isn’t the greatest of reach. Also also, that table had so much scatter terrain with a bit of height (think of a hall full of rows of columns) that not only the models were funneled but the markers. We all had to move like chess rooks and not get markers slid into us by oblique angles.

Second game of last night took what is rapidly becoming my standard Leveticus list, although I’m getting sick of spending 2ss for only 6” move at game start. Leveticus: Rusty Alyce & Servant of Dark Powers, Pride, Ashes & Dust, Marlena Webster, prospector, Malifaux child (someone needs to have a chat with Marlena about her ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ approach to schoolyard romances), two waifs Into Corrupted Idols, met a fully thematic Dreamer list with a ridiculous penchant for flipping at least one Severe card for lucid dreaming on turn one. For reasons known only to himself Dreamer advanced upfield. Pride activated very early every turn to mitigate everything which wasn’t a Stitched, as they bit great chunks out of my crew (as this edition, so in last, why in the name [ok that one was too rough even for me to commit to print] is Gamble your life still a tactical action? this was mentioned the week Neverborn dropped). I hammered Dreamer almost exclusively, to drain his hand, even daring to risk the waifs on shooting, and by the end of turn two irreducible hits were beginning to land on the twerp. Pride stayed alive until the end of turn two, I know not how as he was getting hammered as hard as Dreamer, but Marlena was assisting there. Turn three, Alyce chewed through the last of his potential stone use and killed Dreamer—and then dropped the first of the stitched. The prospector had pushed an idol then died to an insidious madness, then the child copied the madness’ Scatter to push the nightmares away and walk to a new idol. On the other flank Ashes and Dust zipped into the backfield to kill another stitched, ending up in the deployment zone next to a scheme marker with one wound and one poison left. I wish I could say I had planned it. Pop went the Core and Storm—both ready to scheme next turn and finish Breakthrough as nothing else was near enough to contest it. Pride slots into here like a born Amalgam. He has a defensive trigger for damage which isn’t on Alyce’s or Marlena’s suit. He does irreducible if you don’t discard, and if you do discard Alyce giggles and stones for the execute trigger. Really having problems with that whole 10T thing and ‘no defensive triggers for you’ upgrade, though. Which is as it should be, but I greatly miss the lost DPS.