Gnomezilla

Leveticus can also hire the peacekeeper and large arachnid, both of which remove scheme markers, peacekeeper all in a pulse, large arachnid one (friendly or enemy) to power its buff. He can hire Philip and the Nanny to convert one scheme marker into a corpse marker (although I find it an even harder time to justify why he'd ever hire a yammering head in a pram). Performers have a debuff powered by discarding a scheme marker.

Admit it, you're looking forward to licking all the tears off of [blank] faces. I know I am. ...dammit, these are not tears.

It's not an offensive slow. He "may" drop slow on one of his own crew [constructs] to become fast himself. And if it isn't legal to drop O.S.A. slow on the same construct twice, pullmyfinger needs updating. The 'steal an AP twice, for the cost of activating once with slow' trick is part of the write-up there. Sloth's slow is different because it includes the word "must"...somewhere. I don't have that book.

We have Witch Hunt (for witch hunters), we can hire Freikorps librarians as mercenaries, is there any other way to remove built-in suits although to be honest those two options seem adequate?

You might be able to buy the starter set decks and tapes off of someone else inexpensively. The good thing about that set was the minis were useful even to experienced players, so there's players who bought it who already had decks and tapes. One of our local players bought it for the minis and was even converted to using the flexible tapes instead of a ruler because movement in a curved line IS legal in Malifaux and the flexible tapes better showed the possibilities of that. He has used a walk action to walk a 50mm base mini around a mini of mine that he was attacking, then using the base in its new location to block an incoming aura which might have saved my mini. It was smart, and very annoying. Our local game store only had a shelf or two of Malifaux although we had players every week. They just liked to special order everything in the months when FLGS promos were running, so boxes came in but were very quickly sold. (Wyrd has promos some months where if you spend $60 in an FLGS on Wyrd product, and you email Wyrd a photo proof of purchase with itemized receipt and/or photos of boxes, they will mail you a limited edition figure at the end of the following month. The next one is probably September, but not certain yet, and certainly not August. Even if it's a figure that's not for your faction, it's a good idea; there's a healthy second-hand market in trading limited edition figures you can't use for ones you can.) If you are on Facebook, there's a very large group called A Wyrd Place, with more than a few members who are also playing Malifaux with their families and have had lots of good info on not curbstomping younger opponents you have to live with while playing Neverborn.

You are GMT +1; they are GMT -5; it's nowhere near the change of daylight savings time, so as long as your country has daylight savings time (or summer time or whatever you call it) we can ignore that, and they will always be six hours earlier in the day than you are. For them it's after 2:30AM as I post this. As their afternoonish turns into eveningish, you're experiencing midnight. I think you go to bed earlier than that though. [When in doubt about the time, find someone who had a long-distance relationship from time zone A to time zone B. They will know. ]

*goes to nearest thrift shop or charity shop or op shop or whatever you call them* *buys tchotchkes still in original packaging* *ditches tchotchkes, refills packaging with superior Wyrd tchotchkes* *wraps, addresses, adds to wedding gift pile* And these you can use instead of just sitting them on a shelf to collect dust! It's win-win!

A recent Facebook topic on getting minimum damage 5 out of Guild models got me thinking about each henchman's unique abilities and the costs thereof, and Francisco's tricks ALL work at the low cost of no cost and/or discard a card, and companion+flurry is the best for pummeling the opponent with no chance to react (I think he failed to pay the cost for either of those abilities, let alone the combo, when he was costed), and on top of all that landing on base cost 8 instead of...well, what everyone else got. If nothing else, writing that list out made me appreciate Samael a bit more for lessening the importance of the suits in one's hand. All he needs is someone else's AP to set things on fire first, not a suit or a stone. And that need to survive more than one enemy activation in order to exploit that burning is why he's useless without any defensive tech baked-in. So much closer to being complete than I had first thought, and yet... Off topic, does anyone else find it hilarious that Sidir does not randomize while emptying the magazine, but can't reliably shoot into engagement if he's firing at a single target? Other than the wastrels, of course. I guarantee they find friendly fire hilarious.

Well, excuse me, let me modify my last post. Hoffman players are supposed to be playing with the wave three toys that Leveticus can't touch, nyah nyah! I like you. You have interesting ideas. Not awesome ones *stops hitting Kobayashi*, but interesting nonetheless. But yeah, the longer I look at Phiona the more I think she just isn't going to qualify. She's near to the line of legality and human decency, but not over it. One awful warning of a creature is enough.

I am pouting, but not surprised. Think we're supposed to be playing with the toys that wave three brought. That reminds me, though... *dispatches a warden to slap @Kobayashiupside the head for last night's fitful sleep* You don't get a full-on peacekeeper slap upside the head, not least that it wouldn't be able to reach down that far, but you still get a slap.

I want to know about the blindfolded prisoners. Guild's really putting its prison population to work in the last wave or two. Which is as it should be.

One of these days I will learn NOT to read ANY Malifaux related material after 22:00 local time.

*adds 'werepigs' and 'sentient slop' to the list of things which can be dropped from airships* Keeping my current wallpaper though. I'm actually happiest about the master stat cards on the website. Having the mechanics of the game visible alongside the visuals/fluff will be a huge help to when anyone's trying to explain how the game plays in a two-minute blurb, which is about as much time as I can generally get in when greeting new folk at our meetings. It ends with "...and go visit the website!" and now that's a one-stop shop instead of adding "...and pullmyfinger but it goes into too much detail for absolutely brand new players!". Thanks also for fixing the links on Mah Tucket's page.

Drama unrelated to Malifaux has interfered with me going up to Great Escape, though I knew the invite was there and made in good faith. Other Yan Lo has something like an hour's drive to go up there, though, so it could definitely be worse. I'm playing when the Sacramento Miniature Wargaming Society meets at the library up in Carmichael, monthly. It's shocking how many kids detour and drag parents after them to see what these grown-ups are doing with what look like toys, so we do have to constantly watch our language (rotten belle jokes have to be saved for other days) but it's been great for spreading the idea of minis gaming to people who would never, ever step inside a FLGS.

Alright, I'll come out and say it. It's just not right that Aaron simply drops information outside the scheduled announcements without being a total tease about it first.

Adding a few notes before Ripples of Fate is released: The Tear of the Gorgon has been removed from Seamus' head and is presumed to be back in his possession; Ramos in his final avatar manifestation built something which may have been another 'device' like the one Hamelin/Plague is pursuing. I think the keys to the aether are back in play. Taelor's relic hammer works 'to protect life', and she is lethal to summons which are life made unnaturally. I speculate that its target is the Gorgon, queen of unnatural resurrections--life doesn't get much more wrong than the soulful undead. Johan is the renegade who inspires others in the system to rebel. I speculate that its target is, besides authority in general, Meridion--reasons to follow. The Captain controls the winds. Not much idea here, with almost no fluff to go on. What's the last element of the Five Rivers? Is this one meant to thump a Dragon whose powers are partly of the wind? Viktoria's Masamune is tied to the spirit of slaughter. It's a relic hammer which has fused with its target Shez'uul and has traded its relic hammer damage track for generalized pain. My wild-ass speculations on Meridion: It's a tyrant of control, as the Governor-General was trying to be. The Great Geometer. People are constructs, to be moved about by a tug on the appropriate leyline. That's why, when the G-G picked up the leylines of people and pulled on them during his ritual, he instead tugged on everyone with more than a dab of construct to them (which really makes me wonder whether Lilith saw what he did, or felt it--if she turns out to be someone's puppet, heads are gonna roll).

The sisters did not hold grudges. Once the constructs and their apprentice had proven their toughness, the student of conflict pointed out the direction in which McCabe and his wastrels had last been spotted, then ran off through paths too overhung with leaning debris for a full-grown human to pass through, let alone the steamborg. The Freikorps patrol, forewarned, greeted them almost with friendliness. Only Lazarus locked his single soulstone eye upon the other constructs, glaring first at Hoffman and the Guild's constructs, then at Howard Langston and those of the Miners' and Steamfitters' Union. "--Haven't seen the welsher since," Von Schill shouted at the end, "but we can mostly agree on safe passage of the Guild which are chasing McCabe." " 'Mostly' agree?" Hoffman echoed. They both looked at Lazarus. "It's the best I could do, given prior commitments," Von Schill admitted, "and I couldn't guarantee safe passage for anyone who wasn't Guild either. No good reason for it. As long as you don't break--" A shot whistled through the air. "--the truce. You people bring 'shoot first and ask questions later' to an art form. Well, brace yourselves." The child once again darted away from the main fight and around a wall, waving and shouting to the woman in the strange mechanical suit which was not a construct. "Hannah! Hi again! Why are you fighting, she said she was going to get us safe passage?!" "You look terrible, child, they haven't been treating you well," Hannah remarked, reaching down to brush the hair away from the bruise on the side of the child's head. "And that was a women's agreement, between the sisters and us; the librarian and I aren't attacking you." "That's not fair! You're helping them! I saw her cast some kind of magic at Von Schill!" The child turned to stare at the metal gamin and urge it to shield Hoffman. The Freikorps librarian next to them flipped another page in her binder and started another drawing, with Hoffman and the gamin cowering behind a low wall, and the watcher straining to fly away with a head clutched in its claws. "Lazarus," Hannah called, "Have you got a clear shot on that watcher?" ++AT PRESENT, I DO. HOWEVER, IT WILL FLY AWAY BEFORE I CAN RELOAD.++ "What's his problem?" the child said. "What'd that hunter ever do to him that he had to blast it so hard?" The maimed hunter in question leaped at the women, but misjudged the leap with its single remaining eye. If the Freikorps librarian hadn't panicked at the sight and tried to flee, it would have overshot them all. Instead, she dashed into the arc of its descent, and the battle drawings slid out of the binder once the hunter and librarian hit the ground, binder and papers alike bouncing and scattering over the area. Hannah lifted up one hand, and the soulstone powered suit mimicked her gesture. "He hates the Guild for what it did to him, what it still can do to him. Watch me, and you'll understand." Hannah passed her hand in front of her face, sideways. Hoffman turned to watch the inexplicable gestures of the construct-which-was-not, and when the soulstone suit opened up a crack between its fingers Hoffman found himself, against all recommendations of the witch hunters, staring into Hannah's eyes. The child watched his expression go blank, his jaw slacken, mouth half-open. "Observe," Hannah said, and slewed the suit around in a spin more Hoffman than Hannah, and while Hoffman blinked as he was freed from her stare, she locked her eyes on Lazarus and moved her finger over the blank pages of her own notebook. The child gasped. Lazarus quivered as though Hoffman had reached out to make him obey. ++I WILL NOT FORGIVE THIS!!!++ But Hannah asked neither forgiveness nor permission, and forced Lazarus to fire. He poured his rage into the grenades, far more than was necessary to shoot down a single watcher. Multiple shells burst over the area, but the Freikorps in their suits did not flinch or flee. After the noise of the explosions had faded away, Hannah spoke. "You see, he was no construct. He was human, but they made him less than human...." Whatever else Hannah was going to add, the child didn't stay to hear it. Instead she flung herself at Lazarus and kicked him in the metallic shins, and with every kick crying out in pain and jealousy: "Not fair! Not fair! Not fair!!!!!!!!" "Hold fire!" Von Schill shouted. Another bullet streaked through the Freikorps, off the right flank, where Hoffman's constructs were not. He leaped after the shooter, and noticed the flat top of a top hat interrupting the jagged line of a falling wall. "Hold all fire! Wastrel sighted! One of McCabe's bodyguards sighted!" Hoffman followed the metal gamin over to the Freikorps. "Now do you believe I hadn't brought any gunners of my own?" "Of course not. You're still Guild." Von Schill holstered his own gun. "There's your lead, though. Get out of here and I might be able to hold Lazarus back until you're safely away....Now that I think about it, what's holding him back now?" They both turned to see Lazarus slash his bayonet down against Hannah, only to have her sweep the flat of her hand across her notebook in a gesture of erasure: Lazarus vanished. The child, interrupted in yet another kick at Lazarus' shins, stomped her foot and began to weep, loud and angry. "...Or that could happen," Von Schill added, after a few seconds of silence. "Get going. We'll add your damages to what McCabe will pay up once you drag him back here. Deal?" "Agreed," said Hoffman.

Wait, we have two Yan Lo players in the greater 'this city sprawls out too much to be a cohesive metropolitan area' metropolitan area? I don't know whether you are part the of north Sac, east Sac, west Sac, south Sac, or 'so far south it's practically Stockton, but there's a stigma attached to saying that' Sac groups. I thought those players were rare.

Vengeance Cold and Metallic (Hoffman vs. Von Schill) Von Schill avenged that 'better can opener' remark previously by using his can opener to shank the mobile toolkit for the kill. It wasn't efficient use of AP; it was strictly personal. The hunter prepared to pounce, rip and tear on the Freikorps librarian, and on that double positive, flipped a black joker--and the librarian flipped an ace to tie, out of an empty hand. The robo kitty leaped, and overshot! and then the librarian, screaming and turning to flee, ran right into the arc of its leap regardless. Hannah needed to kill the watcher at range before next activation when it would flee, but the Freikorps librarian was dead and could not loan casting actions. She looked across the field at Hoffman. She looked at Lazarus. Lazarus felt red-hot rage at the touch of machine puppet, and was so livid he red jokered the grenade launcher damage flip on a construct with two wounds left. The watcher must have dropped the head it was carrying off the field, instead of its own, because it was smashed into its component molecules otherwise. Guild's vengeance came in scoring 5 points at the end of the final turn (love Detonate Charges) to shoot into the lead, and win.

With the new boxes every faction now has its option for starting with all girls or one girl and a bunch of neuter monsters. Nellie from the Guild has an all-girl box, and Asami from Ten Thunders has one girl and a bunch of monsters. The Resser girl 'box' is two boxes, Molly and the girl crooligan plus the belles from Seamus' box, which is half-ok as Seamus' box is a popular pick for some women who are new to minis gaming (I have given up on figuring out why, and now I just pin it on the pretty rotten belle dresses). So are you going to convert Ramos into a Mommy Longlegs or not?

*sigh* I'm sorry I got so upset over the aura yesterday. I have just got to learn to think of it as an infinite number of 8" lines between the master and the attacking and/or interacting model, instead. There's too many options here to unravel. I'll end up getting her, and not even last among the Guild masters...as long as I don't have to keep track of an area.

I DON'T LIKE YOU ANY MORE! Comparing the awesomeness of gnomes to stinkin' greenskins! *harrumphs* (This was a really good quick post. You do a lot better with short deadlines than in-depth analysis. Parker's paragraph is analysis with reasons and it's only two sentences instead of two tangled paragraphs.)

Field Reporters with... Lady J: Wonders why anyone would need pictures of this, or anything else, but doesn't object. Perdita: Shrugs and continues to shoot while the reporter dives for cover, curling up into a ball to protect the camera. Sonnia: Uses the reporter for a field dictation service so she doesn't have to write her own notes. Hoffman: Repeatedly breaks the cameras until the reporters understand he is not interested in an interview now or ever. McCabe: Makes them run the gauntlet of the wastrels' welcome, but any which tough that out are welcome to an exclusive. Lucius: Provides stories already written and 'suggests' most dramatic camera angles. Refuses to let them take their own notes. McMourning: Fobs them off on Dr. Grimwell who's always so eager to talk, maybe his ears can get a rest now. As they are now the have the visuals of wastrels with their more modern clothes and unified theme that's plausible if odd in the real world today, so I've got them in the same mental bin of 'very limited utility outside their chosen master' (I do, rarely, take one to fill out a list when I simply can't free up more than 4ss and the effigy's already hired--at least they can shoot), but we'll see.

Guild McMourning dual box would be the starter set and those had to all be sculpted new for him. It's his hard hitting henchman to make precise, his Guild approved nurse for tricks of movement, his almost equally quick minions. So his is either done or very hard to do since he doesn't rely on his Guild crew for synergies. Neverborn Lucius would keep the lawyers but add changelings and one Neverborn heavy hitter to be copied; I don't know them or NB Lucius well enough to fill in that blank.

She woke with a shriek, falling, and struck metal and tile almost hard enough to knock herself unconscious again. "Your services will no longer be required. Your contract is ended." The child writhed on the floor trying not to cry aloud, clutching at her head, which had struck Hoffman's iron-shod foot as she tumbled. Blood showed through her fingers. The mechanical attendant stepped over and past her, pulling Hoffman face to face with Ryle. The abomination's arms rested by his sides, as though they had not been upraised seconds before. "Do not return here after this shift has ended. Not after you--" He cut himself off, and sent the mechanical attendant to the other side of Ryle. She felt the little construct buzz as he borrowed the sight of its soulstone eye, inspecting the entry and exit wounds at the same time. She whimpered and kept her eyes squinted shut, and did not see Hoffman shudder and reach out to note the warmth marking Ryle's skin where she had been resting, and even if she had would not have noticed how the skin over the warmed entry wound had relaxed and smoothed itself down compared to the gray folds lapping the exit wound. When next he spoke, minutes later, the cold rage was gone. "Child. What did you do to him?" The child sat up, pushing aside a broken doll's limb, and tipped her head so she could look up at him with the half-open eye on the uninjured side of her head. "I didn't--" She shook her head no, whimpered again with fresh pain, quietened herself. "Ryle picked me up. I don't know how I made him do that but I'm sorry. I tried to get down but that made his arms move more. And you said no moving his arms so I was stuck...." The child looked at the floor instead, beginning to blush, and went on. "...I was talking to him, like he really understood. I think I took a nap, too." Hoffman hadn't bothered to look down at her. That was just as well: she couldn't see the effect the last confessions had on him. What had flickered across his expression was not kind. " 'Playing pretend'," he echoed, half to himself, bitterly. Then he took one deep breath, and held it, and when he let it go his expression and tone of voice were level once more. "Child. This...'playing pretend'...will be part of maintenance until all the wounds have healed. If you have questions, ask them of the mechanic who was apprentice before you. If he cannot answer them, ask permission of me only to consult Ramos, and I will write out permission. Do not bother me with the details of maintenance," he emphasized. "Yes, Mr. Hoffman." The child kept on holding the side of her head as she stood. The blush had started it bleeding again. "Good. Now sweep up that doll so that no one will step on it by mistake. It was rather expensive. It can be repaired." Hoffman absently rubbed a spot on his lower back, and winced. Some days passed as she repaired the doll in between her duties. Her blanket had been moved into the private workstation, and she sat atop the workbench to go to sleep sitting up, on alternate nights leaning against one side of Ryle's back as he stood by the workbench, or starting the night leaning so against his chest but waking up draped over his arm or shoulder. It wasn't the soundest way to sleep, and she yawned through most of the days, even after she caught the mechanical attendant's arm against her upper teeth, or worse yet yawned right as a coolant hose which was threatening to burst finally did. As she got more bruised and haggard, though, Ryle improved. The skin, pressed flat and kept warm, adhered to the repairs instead of sagging loose, and soon the stitches sank in until they were only splinters of metal, invisible until the light hit them. The child grew to like the routine, and sometimes sat by the abomination and chattered to it while she held bits of scrap metal to the broken doll and tried to light the soulstone torch off of her hand. "It's Ok, you don't have to turn, I don't have to lean front to back, it's not sleepy time. What's this?" She patted the mark of Ramos set upon the abomination. "Wish you could tell me. Hoffman doesn't tell me anything at all. I don't think he even likes me." She welded the doll for a little while, until the flame died out and she could not reignite it. "I don't know why. I didn't do anything bad. Except that one time. And..." She looked around, stood up on the workbench, whispered into the machinery that was his ear. "...He wasn't right. The downers did help. I don't want to hurt you with the scrubbing brush but you've got to be scrubbed. But not now." She sat down again and gently grasped the doll's left wrist and waved its arm. Its original clockwork activated with the motion and the tiny metallic fist curled shut and opened again. "See? I do too like you best. They didn't sell any dollies like you though. So I'll make one!" Though she did not understand why she knew it to be a good idea, whenever Hoffman was scheduled to inspect Ryle the doll was hidden away well before he arrived. Instead of the mechanical attendant, this day, he followed a mobile toolkit. The child sat on the workbench, which had become almost a permanent seat of hers, yawned, and saw Hoffman very nearly smile while he looked at where the wounds had gaped before. "You have done well," he told her, and she sat up straight with pride. "The hunter has brought me information that McCabe has been spotted in the Quarantine Zone, speaking with the Freikorps. You are from there originally, are you not?" Her smile faded, but she nodded. "Good. You will guide me there. The peacekeeper will protect us, as will some others." Not an hour later, he and Howard Langston were lost. Not geographically: the child had led them and the other constructs through the rubble with ease, to an open patch of earth doing duty as a warehouse of heaped, bulky, nearly worthless goods. But the men, now, were not part of the negotiations. The other child had leaped down from the pile, katana drawn and held in a two-handed grip, and screamed out "Wahlaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaau!" in unmistakable tones of challenge. That was normal. That was to be expected. What wasn't expected was the child alongside the constructs screaming back "Wah liaaaaaaaaaao!" and darting past the men with daggers drawn. The girls, added together, probably still weren't half as old as he was, but the grown women behind the student had halted also and let the children negotiate. 'Negotiations' had meant screaming into each other's faces for at least ten minutes. Hoffman listened as they built up a pidgin between them. The student of conflict was speaking tonal syllables in perfect Little Kingdom accents, the workshop child was echoing the same words but was using more vowels that were not tonal. There was a syllable that was a question mark, another one that may have been an exclamation point since the girl saying it usually jabbed her finger at someone when she said it. "You talk chop so ah!!!!" the workshop child repeated, and all but stabbed the student of conflict with rapid repeated pokes to the chest before pointing straight back at Hoffman. "It's over, whatever it is. Time to fight," observed the steamborg, and readied himself to charge. One of Hoffman's manipulator arms waved him to silence. "Wait. I don't believe 'chop' was English, they haven't spoken it in quite the same fashion." Before Howard Langston could ask what Hoffman meant by that, the student of conflict straightened herself to military readiness, sheathed her katana, and spoke--in perfect colonial British English, only betrayed by the occasional rising tone. "You are in the territory of the sisters. What is your purpose? Why do you bring excessive forces?" Hoffman straightened himself as best he could, and answered as formally. "We are in pursuit of Lucas McCabe and have brought sufficient forces to bring him in for questioning." "In the name of the Guild?" The hand which rested on the katana's hilt tipped it at the steamborg and steam arachnids in turn. Hoffman nodded once to Howard Langston, who answered for them both, "No, this is private. He's too slippery to wait to make it official." She turned and shrieked more of the pidgin back at the women behind her. All Hoffman could pick out was 'McCabe'. Howard Langston instead watched the workshop child listen, go tense, and turn to stare at the peacekeeper. "Trouble!" he barked, and once again readied himself to charge. This time Hoffman did not restrain him. Even now, Hoffman thought, it might have been avoided, had the Viktorias not jumped to conclusions. But then, he added to himself, jumping was one of their specialties, after all. All the same, it was quite satisfying to watch them attempt to dismantle every arachnid of the swarm. Every time they had almost succeeded, he fed another piece of scrap metal to the mass, and tiny legs reinstalled it against severed stumps. Howard Langston was entangled with a ronin whose forehead was scarred from his first, nonlethal strike; the peacekeeper had been similarly tangled with a Freikorps librarian, but she had exploded its flamethrower fuel line with such force he had been forced to shield himself from the shrapnel. The child had been livid, as she had just finished bolting additional plating onto its knees, and now was focused on the swarm but so far doing nothing to help. Well, she had the right idea at least. He pressed his will against the arachnid swarm, and they chained themselves together into a little siege tower, tall enough to reach the forehead of Viktoria of Blood and mark her as well, and then to strike with every claw of every spider in the tower.