Gnomezilla

He’s the tournament organizer. Unfortunately for Arcanists, and fortunately for everyone who’s still sick of Sandeep M2e.

I broke it! Can get the Malifaux scheme rules from saving the picture instead, but I think the TtB people will want their link fixed in order to get their details.

As far as I remember there is no anti-forced-movement tech in Arcanist constructs that is as useful as Laugh Off from Lead-Lined Coat. The traditional bane of a Hoffball was getting it dispersed by forced move effects. That hasn’t been the case as much this edition in my meta (except for telling a Shove Aside trigger to shove it) but it’s still nice to have...just really expensive. Phiona is special because her strengths run counter to stompybot weaknesses: good raw defensive stats and high wound count. Agent 46 is special because mimic is flexible.

Broadly, I say yes that’s fine to have summon fodder, if not too much of it—but rarely are they as costly as 5ss, which might be the sticking point. Witch hunters/witchlings have one of the few valuable 4ss hires though, so it’s not as much of a loss as it might otherwise be. Go ask Ressers about their experiences with summon fodder, I suppose.

That sounds devastating. Eggs very much in one basket, but devastating nonetheless! I relented and returned the peacekeeper to my Hoffman lineup for the 2” reach squad, with a last minute substitution of wardens for bomb runners on a not-bad suggestion to try and get some slows out after the bomb run. I shouldn’t have. A single attack, a heap of ping damage, and as usual it didn’t get a second activation. After Howard got (somewhat less predictably, and at least with some effort expended) killed. It was demoralizing. I’m glad other people are getting use out of it, but still, demoralizing.

The trio of Guildies in central Texas (two Sonnias and one stubborn little construct handler) always end up at the bottom of the rankings, no surprise that they didn’t travel to LVO for more of the same. It’s the lack of Outcasts which startled me...but then, and I attribute this to being in Texas, you can’t throw a stone without hitting a Parker player, let alone the rest.

I have had two weeks in a row of standard deployment Plant Explosives. Out went the prospector and child, in went a pair of necropunks (one bomb per punk, one each to Alyce, Ashes, and Leveticus himself—this last a new idea for me). Both games, for different reasons, I ended up splitting my forces onto the flanks to try and blunt the enemy master’s killiness. First game was against Sonnia, some expensive witch hunter hires including the handler, and the pale rider. We spent turn one circling around a large obstacle in the center of the board, as he sent his thrall (my Vendetta target) in the direction most of my crew wasn’t, and after Sonnia spent the first pale rider turn being ferried to where my crew was, I walked around the back to the other flank. Turn two, the thrall rushed and demolished Alyce (that handler Mv buff ain’t no joke), then Ashes beat it enough for Marlena to step in and tag-you’re-it-no-tag-backs for Vendetta, leaving Leveticus to finish it. An increasingly irate Sonnia returned to her start point and tried to blast Marlena, only succeeding in pushing her out of range and closer to the necropunk which had already done its job. Meanwhile on the abandoned flank Ashes and a necropunk were ignoring a forest and leading the sanctioned spellcaster and second thrall a merry chase. Turn three, the pale rider caught up with that flank (again) and the handler finally crossed the centerline, while Sonnia flipped a lucky red joker on damage to kill Marlena before she could scurry out of LoS for the rest of the game yet leaving actions enough to score points, flipping a potential win for me over to a loss. Leveticus was not much use on that flank once Ashes cleared the area: I’d hoped to have him put some more passive healing on Marlena, but that would have required Sonnia to target Unmade users (especially dead Alyce) more often than she did. Second game was against Nekima (yes, that list) and the pool was sufficiently schemey that I went for escape and evasion early, even stripping Servant off of Leveticus to give it to the necropunks. Hayreddin did indeed catch up to a necropunk after it dropped its bomb but thank goodness, negative flipped into minimum damage so it lived despite blade rush. Alyce marched up the center and a mature met her, the waifs and A&D made the other flank enticing and Nekima went that way but didn’t quite finish A&D. (Here he stopped the game to tutor me a bit about having expected me to try and shoot the mature engaging A&D at one wound left, thus black blood splitting it and reforming it at the turn’s end for the heal, thus the engagement of Alyce and blocking of Leveticus.) Turn two, Nekima looked at the trio of targets and elected to finish the Core and score the first point of Dig...which let the surviving necropunk escape and Storm jump to Hayreddin’s side of the board. Alyce disengaged from her mature and put two lucky shots (red joker and moderate, both on negatives) into the other to finish it, but on the flip side Leveticus couldn’t finish the shaman before it advanced and grew. Turn three Nekima, alone and disgusted by it, scored points instead of hunting down the breakthrough punk, which was good as Storm stole the bomb Hayreddin dropped and sprinted back across the line. I dropped a bomb, accomplished the Leveticus teleport for the first time (felt great!) and promptly whiffed on Hayreddin (felt bad) just like Pride had. Marlena charged the new mature and found the red joker herself to also kill one in one activation. We called it when it was apparent we were heading for a draw, a very rare event. I had cheated myself out of Hold Up Their Forces by various Disengage actions and push triggers, but slaying the matures certainly helped thwart him scoring also, so.

The only conference which dares to give y’all the raspberry. (I may have already been workshopping designs on the theme. 🙃 )

If you were one of the Yan Los, I’d love details. For all that he has been played around me, I rarely get to spectate those games (and then I’m usually cooing over a stunning paint job by the 10T Yan Lo) so I know less than I should about it on the table.

Welcome to my world... I dunno, might rate Brewmaster more highly because he doesn’t need to flip a resist to get his debuffs rolling and brings a lot of 2” melee ranges, both good tools for coping with any flavor of butterfly jumping 2” melee range models. Also because of said jumping beans, I’m not sanguine about the potential of any gun line. Gunfighter is quite useless when you’re being stiff-armed by a long reach, and as noted you will get exactly one (1) activation of clear shots before being engaged. Gracie makes me outright jealous though—Armor 2 and full wounds for her cost and Ride with Me?! Full disclosure, armor only slows down the beatdown: if the Nephilim cards are good enough they can tear through Augmented like armor isn’t even there, let alone a partially armored crew. Other people want to try it though and I’m happy to see them add to that data pool.

Usually after a tournament reports that a fixed list soloed it to win, the peanut gallery of commentators who weren’t there reacts with ‘that’s broken, plz fix’; this time it was never that but instead ‘learn to play’, and I know all these guys play way better than to deserve that label. I get my l2p-level butt [gently] kicked by them in round one on a regular basis.

Until such time as the actual attendees show up, feast your attention here: Also tagging @Guslado the esteemed TO to please share the table photos. I haven’t got any photos on this phone that I can positively ID as Houstonian tables.

Third Floor Wars has the final standings, and there’s boards photos on A Wyrd Place. The TO is going to assemble a final report later, which will probably cover most of the top tables since they all regularly attend his home tournaments. (They also ended up playing against one another a lot after the initial rounds, so there was less mixing of metas than you nigh expect from raw results.) My hot take is: the chatter from the masses is a lot less ‘that’s a busted list’ than ‘y’all (you say ‘y’all’, right) got outplayed’, which speaking as someone who also attends aforementioned tournaments at the other end of the rankings, is disrespectful to some very skilled players; that’s the best showing for female US players I’ve seen in some time, which is both glorious and a sign that we [read: me] need to step it up some; and it’s something of a comfort that people other than me can’t beat that particular list either even though I’ve lost to it far, far more often.

*laughs in Lonestar Conference* There’s maybe two metas in this state that close to one another? I wouldn’t even give good odds on ‘outside Houston, but in different directions’ metas making that cutoff.

The only blanket party I know of is the one where a bunch of grownups hold the edges of a blanket up off the ground and make a sort of trampoline out of it and a kid gets on the blanket and gets tossed in the air wheeeeee! and that doesn’t sound like the un-fun idea you are talking about.