Gnomezilla

Nellie, press, Phiona, two reporters, effigy with upgrade, steward, and (counter-hire to Colette) death marshal recruiter into a very schemey Plant Explosives pool. I lost this one at deployment, I feel, putting Nellie on a flank where she was useless. Only the little ones got good cards: the effigy boxed two models, which somehow on Wp3 top-decked their escapes; a mechanical dove dive-bombed the steward and red jokered damage to kill it. Odd game.

I agree with the answer of ‘No’, but I understand the confusion: definitely when I talk about a model’s attack stat when judging its worth I include the positive [but not the suit], and yet when I define ‘stat’ RAW I only mean the number. On topic, the most recent tournament had the happy circumstance where nobody lost all three rounds. I didn’t attend. I don’t know whether any Guild attended.

Hoffman can hand off power tokens to non-constructs on the free action, and since he had probably been spending other actions giving fast and more tokens to other targets, a non-construct recipient will probably have enough valid donors nearby to get two tokens per Hoffman power transfer. (This is also how you get non-constructs to respond to the mechanical attendant magnet.)

I’m glad somebody is getting use out of that enslaved nephilim but one discard and a 7 is pretty steep cost per action. I have been trying Phiona with Hoffman because I don’t like harpoon guns for repositioning, this edition. He doesn’t lack for 10ss models but she does bring three attacks per activation before fast, as well as proper stats and wound pool, on top of the repositioning I wanted. Tests are still ongoing—I haven’t had her pull models into Vent Steam yet. Nellie has been getting the peacekeeper instead of Hoffman. The scheme pools she plays have better Trail of Gore potential and she is less likely to face armor ignoring as a matter of course. I haven’t investigated the full range of mimicry nonsense but Agent 46 mimicking Joss’s axe is possible, and tests over in Outcasts have convinced me that doubling up on irreducible damage sources is what tips that tactic over to reliability.

There’s definitely that weird spot where I am never quite sure which books are now on general release and which were already read by GenCon orderers. I got Guild/Arcanist/Neverborn from my FLGS [USA] so those are probably freed from the courtesy call for inaccessibility [again, for the USA]. Loved the style of the sepia tone illustration for each story, especially the look of Ironsides in that style. That was a great and unexpected splash of art. Also a nice nod to the masters who haven’t had updated art yet. Against all expectations I think I liked the Neverborn stories best! Not that there was anything wrong with the others (the McMourning and Sebastian voices shift a bit yet again but into yet another pleasing configuration of ‘not all the mental gears are engaged right now’*), the Neverborn just got to indulge in the Malifaux style darkness more than the rest. *I don’t know if I should have pictured McMourning as Agatha Heterodyne at that one juncture, but I did.

‘No lasting consequences’, pfft. You try fielding nothing but damage reduction crews for years and see how the meta responds.

The matches vs. Brewmaster were the hardest for me to justify. In the end I decided that the Tri-Chi were just that good at sleight-of-hand that drinks would be in hand and quaffed before the tallfolk realized it. (Exception: McMourning chugging from his own formaldehyde flasks, willingly.)

Seems I forgot to write down my lists at all from yesterday, but due to lack of models in other keywords ran solo Hoffman (Nellie needs backup plz, hounds OoK work but feel stupid): Plant Explosives, flank, vs Viktoria Peacekeeper, Phiona, guardian & ??, warden & no prisoners, effigy & emissary, toolkit, ?? MVP: Warden killed Big Jake after only one bomb and almost finished off the ronin in its Outflank corner, having grenades them both earlier. Peacekeeper ended up denying the other corner but that was overkill for the job—warden was better choice. Corrupted Idols, standard, vs Kaeris Joss, steward, hunter x2, watcher x2, ?? Kaeris hired elite, so an increasing pile of idols fell into an increasing flashpoint of fire and I decided to contest schemes instead, hunters and watchers bolting from the fight while the heavy hitters dealt with enemy schemers. MVP: the watcher attack finally worked, swooping onto Firestarter and triggering the necessary coordinated attack to kill him before he could solo Breakthrough. Reckoning wedge, vs Asami Joss, Howard Langston, Phiona, steamfitter, toolkit, ?? MVP: hard to say. I have to tip my hat to the terrain forcing me to cluster so hard that McCabe had little room for his usual stunts; Langston’s vent steam ate Asami’s resources; steamfitter buff saved Langston from netgun slow/staggered and dropped Dig scheme and got the blast/heal off that victim; Phiona lured Asami and nearly soloed her. It wasn’t bad. I was only outclassed in the first fight and that was probably due to my deployment errors, with the lopsidedness of the forces. Comedy of the day was probably in round two when a pyre was slid under Firestarter’s corpse and his killers both, I realized it was piling on two debuffs not one, and big tough Irreducible dealing Joss went ‘nope’ and ran away as fast as possible. I mean, Howard Langston also went nope and ran away in turn three, but he was a wounded unhealable Vendetta target (that was a comedy of red jokers, getting him to that state) and it was forgivable.

Wow, is there a lot of ambient healing in a Leveticus vs. Brewmaster bubble. My opponent was keeping up with all the passive damage I was forcing upon him...and then Marlena clapped spurs to tiny teddy and finally reached the bubble. No more healing: no more whiskey golem: no more cheapest obey target. Pride was curiously absent this game; as I needed Marlena forward ASAP he was relegated to claiming her turf marker and skedaddling out of the quarter without dying. She sometimes fails that secondary goal. (Bonus: Alyce at poison 12, having passed Girls Gone Wild stage a turn ago and now swaying back and forth yet somehow still upright, like a waif, in Girls Gone Comatose.) We Outcasts definitely have a leg up in wedge and flank deployment via Servant of Dark Powers, but then I was also a much stronger player in M2e close deployment and I can’t filter how much is the upgrade and how much is personal.

Even if slow play is involved, the time you lose by calling a TO offsets the gain later, and that’s if there is a gain later (a TO can’t un-freeze an opponent whose brain has temporarily vapor-locked). Easier to work on what we can ourselves influence, and that’s moving quicker.

Four different hobbies* of mine and those near me have now been hit by variations of this theme, with no prelude, in 24 hours. 😖 If you aren’t part of the mass trolling, you are close enough to it and have been tarred with the same brush of ignorance. *I don’t mean ‘four variations of gaming’ either. Whatever spawned this wave of trolling scattered far further than that.

I think she might not go amiss in a Hoffman crew, and tried adding her in, but do I ever need to relearn how to play him before I can report anything more than getting destroyed in two turns.

Experiments out of keyword was the theme this week. Hoffman borrowed Agent 46, planning shenanigans, but again absolutely melted by the middle of turn two. (They just can’t go into black blood. Nothing can really under about six wounds or so unless it wants to die without resist flips, but the Augmented wound penalty doesn’t help. Also I failed to block LoS to Hayreddin.) Nellie borrowed Guild hounds to cheaply drop markers to boost the false witness False Claim. (Sadly the witness got turned into a necropunk with one hit, but dogs and effigy stayed out of harm’s way and dropped off their bombs safely.)

Already had the mental image of Pvt. Baldrick from Blackadder Goes Forth for the Dispatcher, this isn’t changing it.

*looks at signature block* Which is sadly not displayed on mobile, but that’s purpose-built for the job...

I love how this tactica has degenerated into ‘here’s how to not bother with it’. P.S. Add austringers?

We just don’t have official story encounters yet. Give it time. The casual metas are still changing their cards and play styles over.

My only quibble with Thrace as Dashel is that I instead want her to be M3e Lady Justice in an ‘inspiring the troops’ style. The more paint which I put onto Kassa, the more she blends into my Hoffman crew without too much of a double-take. Definitely swap out the base, though: Other Side style doesn’t fit with Malifaux at all.

I disagree a bit with the above. Hunters lack something in durability and so does Miss Kore, if the armor becomes unavailable. (There was a recent remark on a pool of seven wounds not being durable in and of itself. This is a bit of a change from M2e and kind of fits here.) If there wasn’t a crew’s worth of Von Schtook’s finest armor ignoring models threatening you then a hunter would have been a safe bet, but in this situation, maybe not. I am still terrible at deployment also and am happy to receive any tips going.

Wait, Guild is getting jank?!? Did someone shuffle the flavor notebooks? ( *gentle whisper* to put on something like armor is spelled ‘don’ not ‘dawn’...and ask an east coast native to pronounce them differently for you )

@Thedeadclaw (and anyone else who cares to argue that the beta was balanced around dual masters): that’s simply a lie. When the gobs of feedback came in about ‘dual masters will be broken’ it was answered with ‘it’s staying in, get used to it’. Someone eventually came up with the counter offer of ‘when this model is the crew’s leader etc.’ restricted abilities but by then it was too late to apply it globally.

I don’t mind the general principle (gods know I hated being unable to send stompybots into Outcasts with any confidence) but thinking it was achievable this edition was a mistake. Ah well. Crowd Control that’s very difficult to remove isn’t the worst consolation prize. Also great for picking on aforementioned Outcasts.

It changed after a particular game vs. Tara, I think it was, because the idea of a master being unplayable into an entire faction was unfathomable...Pardon the cracking noises, that’s just me rolling my eyes so hard the tendons are popping.

Not in this case. Von Schtook equals stuns. But the correct choice would also have been Arcanist, so what’s it matter to us here. (Alright. Maybe possibly the pale rider, but then the AP deficit would definitely have been untenable.)

*wanders in, realizes half the stompybots were Arcanist versatiles, wanders out again, glumly* I took the warden across the picket line, but that’s about all. Needed the Ruthless into Ressers. (Though I wasn’t totally down on trying to play GuildHoff—I just wanted to put freshly decorated Arcanist bases on the table.)