Gnomezilla

The keyword struck me oddly, too. I always saw Lilith as having the mechanics of faerie mythology, with creating forests and bogs out of nothingness and twisting people's locations, and never could make that mesh with the nephilim being her flock. Wild speculation: Titania was built from the very earliest notes that were considered but rejected to be part of Lilith, winged lady artwork and strange mechanics both, that were still necessary to the story. She, and to a lesser extent Reva, have scraps of fluff that fit a bit better with the rest of the lore as already built than do the other five. Nellie and Asami built upon the game's mechanics (the oni have been there for years, waiting, and good gods did everyone need a rewrite of Lucius* ((sorrynotsorry, Neverborn!)) ) but they don't have much, if any, groundwork laid in the fluff. The other three are new altogether. And I look forward to Sandeep moving the story forward, not sure what Parker will do, roll my eyes at the thought of Zipp pulling a McCabe and stealing something he doesn't understand and doesn't know which way to point it and ruining everything in a considerable blast radius. Soooo not taking that bet. *Mechanically, anyway. Fluff-wise, I'm not arguing with--I'm going to go on the record with some even wilder speculation, here--derailing the ascension of the tyrant Meridion king-and/or-queen-of-constructs** by rerouting it through the Governor-General and then creating another divide-by error with the effigies which Zoraida added to the mix. Dance amongst the ruins, Lucius: anyone who can take down a Tyrant without a relic hammer has earned it. **Given Vanessa the lady of leylines and constructs, Lady Duffield the Guild astronomer, etc., I say queen. But then, I view everything as female by default, and then have to correct to male when necessary, and this is apparently not normal, so.

*looks at the sad, neglected scheme marker stunts of guardsmen* Forced scheme marker dropping. Interesting. Can you imagine it, guild guards actually being useful in interference? "Go to that quadrant! Follow that lead!" and two guild guards push towards the marker the enemy is encouraged to drop. Same idea as straddling the line with a hunter, only two bodies instead of one for 1ss more. I'd still probably want the hunter because I like offense, but...

Immediate tie with Pandora for the master I would least like to play with or against. I have discovered I do NOT like "if X happens then perform Y" auras of any size. I will put up with one for Sidir's By Your Side, and that is it. Thankfully that's only once per turn and then no longer a bother. Using Scathing Review instead to fuel the evidence engine without relying on the luck of finding a cooperative non-killy opponent and then just flicking attacking models on the nose out of activation and telling them 'no, now back away 4" ' may be amusing, although it relies on that if-X-then-Y aura, ugh. But then there's the idea of turning evidence into phantom activations, which turns master AP into a sort of rattus praeconis mini activation engine, which sounds dreadfully wrong somehow. Or Propaganda unpowered by evidence as a pseudo-obey only with a light sauce of damage on top, longish range moderate TN, I can live with that. (The Guild in general has the problem of 'if all you have is a hammer [of murder], everything looks like a nail'. I have a screwdriver [of obey].) Honestly, she's all yours. Have fun.

I knoOoOooow... (Ooh yeah good idea on tossing people overboard too. *adds "other people" to the list of stuff which can be dropped overboard*)

I'm going to add onto a GenCon order with some individual minion boxes, because Miss Fire is delightful, but wait on the crew boxes at least for friendly-local-gaming-store purchase and later LE promos. Also, books. Can someone who has ordered books before talk to me about shipping costs of previous years? I am happier with reserving minis business instead of books business for the FLGS (if, heavens forbid, I couldn't fulfill my contract to pick up the stuff, minis don't get shopworn as books do), but the FLGS has no shipping fees on what's a rather heavy item.... Don't forget to yell "MAYDAY!" when one of them is shot down and crash land it in the next board over. And I would get the shirt and not the survivors, if I were you. Shirts are for the summer. If you wait to get the shirt at Black Friday it will be too cold to wear the shirt for months.

I do count it because it makes two lists with a different enough play style, positive flips and summoning versus boosted stats and friendly obey/copy actions. Also it introduces the tricks of proxying/dual duty minis/whatever you call it (putting a 30mm steam arachnid, base and all, on a 40mm base to signify a swarm is not something which came naturally to me, magnetization was another revelation, etc.).

Seamus hadn't hit the hunter after all. When Hoffman's order to halt dropped away, it kept on retracing its footsteps from its previous command. Hoffman had gotten himself further entangled with the whip as he chose to shut off the stabilization of the walking frame, and tore more coils away from Sybelle's thigh as he and the metal crumpled to the ground. The barbs dug in, and she screeched in surprise as much as pain to find herself tethered to the machinery. By the time she had wrenched the whip free of the manipulator arms and out from under Hoffman himself, the steamborg had fled in one direction and the abomination in another. She looked back and forth between them and howled for Seamus to shoot one of them down, but Howard Langston had already dealt with him. "Wooooh, this one's more like it!--" "What, another one? Here? Ain't this someone's happy hour!--" "Two minutes of joy, and fifty-eight of apologizing?--" Perdita, without bothering to set down the boxes under one arm, put a bullet through the nearest pin-up calendar. The mechanics nearest the wall with the (now headless) Stephanie the Steamfitter went silent altogether, while a half-completed catcall collapsed into a sad slide-whistle noise. Further into the workshop they started to mutter more hostile remarks under their breath, until Abuela drew her own shotgun upon the mechanics inspecting and repairing her steam-chair. "You marry her? No? Then shut your dirty mouths." The child, a few steps behind Perdita, looked back and forth between the groups. The last time the mechanics had been yelling those kinds of things, they had been yelling them at Hoffman, and were very gleeful. But now Perdita and Abuela were here, and Hoffman was not, and nobody was making noise now, and nobody was happy. She hugged the doll tighter to her side. The hunter stopped behind a pile of debris left by the flooding of what was now a small shallow creek, and inspected the scene. McCabe stood alone, bleeding, in the middle of a circle of Freikorps, snapping his whip at any which tried to bring their knives into range. "It was a misunderstanding, I told you!" he shouted at one of the anonymous masks. "If he tried to bill you again for it, that's not on me." "McCabe," Von Schill boomed, "We know better. We know you. Either you pay us the balance due, in soulstones not scrip, or we can fire again." ++A FACTUAL ERROR.++ "What's that?" ++WE CAN DO BOTH. WE CAN FIRE AND THEN HE CAN PAY US WHAT IS OWED.++" "Lazarus, he can't pay us once he's dead," a Freikorps specialist said, but then added, "as unlikely as it is that he'll pay us now." "Seventy-two percent unlikely," chimed in the Freikorps librarian, taking advantage of the pause to fill in more details of her sketch of the fight. She added a splash of redder watercolor to better illustrate McCabe's rancorous smile, and corrected herself, "Seventy-eight percent, and rising." McCabe's smile froze in place, and he said, "I'll die before I pay you another 'stone. I promise you that." Even as he spoke, he dropped the whip, drew his strangely illuminated sabre, and hurled himself between Von Schill and the specialist, trying to punch through the circle. The hunter watched the fight end. Now lacking a target to point its steps toward, the reversed program set it to retrace the path it had just taken. "[They didn't say such awful things to you, did they, grandmama?]" Perdita helped the steam-chair turn in the scanty space available. There were several tool chests narrowing the aisle, which the mechanics had looked at, and hadn't moved. Abuela waved off the helping hand, and started the chair from a standstill, and cackled with brief laughter. "[It'd be a treat! No, Perdita, not yet. The chair starts easier now, see? No more of those damned jerking starts to throw off my aim. Now roll me along.]" She did, with the child walking alongside once the gaps between workbenches widened. Abuela leaned over, pried the doll out of the crook of the child's arm, replaced it onto the child's other shoulder. "You hold a doll this way," she said, and grabbed and moved the child's hands to support it. "[Perdita, what do they call Cojo? If he didn't have a name?]" Perdita thought for several seconds. "Gorilla." "Yes. Hold it like that, not like a gorilla. [How much did it cost?]" "[More than I gave her, I think, grandmama. One of those soft city girls, you know the kind. All I did was talk plain truth to her and she hurried us out of there.]" Perdita looked at the end of the doll's box. "[There's what it cost. I didn't even spend fifty though, not even with the stop for coffee and--]" She sighed. "[--tea and cakes. The girl wanted to give the doll a welcome home party. Grandmama...why?]" Abuela set the chair's brake outside of Hoffman's darkened office. "[Has that child said one word about machinery since you took her to the toy shop?]", she said, and watched the realization and relief dawn on Perdita's face. "[That's why. It'll get her thinking about what she's supposed to do in life, which with any luck you'll do one of these years. I don't have any great-grandchildren to spoil, do I?]" The calm melted off of Perdita in moments. "[Now read off that doll's full cost to me, and the coffee and the tea and the cakes. That's all getting taken off of the repair bill. I'm running a ranch, not a charity for lost children.]" Perdita's incipient explosion was delayed when Ryle stomped past them all and back into the private workstation. They watched him go past in mutual silence. The child's hands slackened on the doll and she hurried after the abomination; Abuela tut-tutted and looked toward the workshop entrance; Perdita's eyes and rage refocused from Abuela to Ryle, and she strode out of the workshop altogether. "Ryle! You're back! Mr. Hoffman said you weren't supposed to move! He didn't make you move. Where'd you go?" She skidded to a halt as he settled himself back beside the workbench. The doll almost went flying, and unconsciously she tucked it back into the crook of her arm, somewhat like a gorilla--and gasped for breath as Ryle copied the motion and swept her up into a crushing hold. The child kicked, squirmed, and finally wriggled past the gun to more malleable flesh nearer the elbow joint. "Ow! I'm sorry Ryle. I didn't really mean to like the dolly more, it's only new. Perdita got it for me. See?" She tried to pull it loose and hold it up, felt Ryle's arm shake beginning to copy the motion, and stopped. "Don't do that! You're my clockwork dolly. I promise. But don't move your arms please. You got lucky you didn't rip out the stitches." The child inspected the repairs from centimeters away: the stretched pallid skin plucked up into ridges where Hoffman had handled it with hemostats, the zigzagging scars distributing stresses so that a single overloaded metallic stitch would not tear through that skin, the traces of blood itself nearly purple instead of vivid red and not nearly enough of it for such a deep wound. It left a lot to wonder about. So she did, gradually leaning against a shoulder even broader than Joss's. At one point, she yawned, and while her mouth was open "you're kind of cold" slipped out, but she drifted to sleep otherwise unaware. Not long after that Hoffman halted in the doorway and looked into the gloom, at the sight of the child sprawled on Ryle's shoulder fast asleep and open-mouthed. She must have been drooling, too, but he couldn't see it. Nor could he see the unhealed wound--she was lying across it. Nor could he tell that Ryle's skin was breaking under the extra weight, as it must be, nor that it simply wasn't right that anyone would willingly touch-- Abuela's voice behind him jabbed into him in a way the stock of her shotgun had not, even though the backs of his kidneys were full of fresh aches. "She plays pretend with him, then? Answer me." The shotgun stock jabbed him again. "...Yes." He swallowed. "Good. Kids play. I made her play. You thank me later." "Thank you?" Hoffman reached out and touched the hunter behind them both with his mind. If she dared to offer grandmotherly advice about Ryle... Abuela nodded. He could hear the brim of her hat swish with the motion. "You want her grow up like you, alone? Stay here all her life? No? You make her play. You find other children and you make her play, you buy her a doll and you make her play!" She chuckled, then, changing tack. "I bring the doll, you buy it for her, no? Very fancy, very expensive."

Aww man, I missed mad libs! I LOVE mad libs! *makes a note to move those over to the Writing Room since Iron Quill's practically dead*

I had to cut the file size down a LOT on my picture to get it to post. Because it was a .jpg I cut the size down by cropping and cropping again. That's why it is so blurry. I probably should have used .png instead to get a smaller file.

You just want a Gremlin catfight in the sky, don't you.

It was the swords which startled me at first, and then I realized where I'd see the flatblades before. Guardian's sword; guardian's shield; shieldbearer. Proof that Ressers still have no originality and have to thieve from the Guild. (I'm happy with it as a continuation of art and style and Resser recycling habits. Not to mention that shieldbearers, being living, actually have dynamic poses.) *As promised, the Malifaux Child storms off stompity-stompity-stomp to go beat up the nearest Resser, with a peacekeeper, all the time mumbling about stinkin' rotten TOTEM constructs....* Adding one, possibly two (what the heck is the Ten Thunders presumed henchman?) boxes to the 'it's all girls, safe to recommend to the shy female gamer' list. Not too much, not too little. Thank you very much for that.

Any model in the game can stand atop a scrap (or corpse or scheme) marker and deny LoS. However, Ramos' magnetism attack combined with the (usually) 2-wounds-remaining steam arachnid within range means he can generate scrap and use it all on his own activation with no chance for you to interrupt. Sure, it's fun and reasonably AP efficient to have Hoffman grab the scrap markers and remove 2 per AP for his own uses, by attaching modifications or using them to heal his own constructs or just exploding them out of spite (kaboom!) while twitting Ramos' player about who's running the arcanist constructs at peak efficiency, but that's still only clearing away scrap once per turn and that's plenty of time for Ramos to generate more. It's been awhile since I fought Ramos, come to think of it. These days Ramos Player A and I are usually alongside one another at different tables and high-fiving back and forth over particularly nice spider attacks. Or me remarking that I could've kept those overwhelm attacks rolling longer and so could you if you followed my recommendations, but noooo. Or him pointing out that brass arachnids are so-o-o-o loyal and useful, what a shame I can't hire any. Or me wondering aloud why exactly the spiders are calling him 'daddy'. Or him announcing with pride that 'Jack the Giant-Killer' a.k.a. steam arachnid #27 has once again landed a killing blow against something much taller and stronger than itself. I would prioritize killing: a single spider that's denying me a VP, a single spider that's holding a VP for Ramos, one out of a knot of 3 spiders unless I was running witch hunters which strip built-in suits on attack actions (steam arachnid swarms are murderous!), and only after those threats were dealt with look to denying Ramos nearby scrap generators.

Ashigaru can be summoned. Summons get separate boxes. You can get partway there with rigid pipes and leather flexible joints instead of wholly flexible tubes. Still, given the pressures needed to (say) power the guardian's arms to lift its sword and shield, I'd be happier if those large diameter tubes had a bit of rubber to them. As regards Madame Sybelle...everyone's gone there. Stupid alluring rotten belles. Ooo, is that why it's so stinkin' difficult to find non-black rubber products these days? Some of those old mint green or white or pink ones from the '50s could really use replacements but they're only available in black! You can't put a black belt or bobbin winder tire on a cool pink vintage sewing machine, it totally ruins the look!

Maybe it's just a late apology for having removed triggers from O.S.A.--would that have been so bad?! It's limited to once per turn regardless! It'll certainly make me feel better. Stupid alluring rotten belles...stupid Lucy, in particular...

What's the point? It's on a master nobody seems to take in a competitive environment ANYway. (Yeah, I can't argue with the consensus of the masters which have too many disadvantageous match-ups, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Stupid, stupid balance to the certainties of playing Hoffman!) I want to wait a few months and see what the release of sanctioned spellcasters does when it takes away the certainty of one way for the opponent to shut him down. If it does, then we'll start to see whether it's a problem, or just a threat to cough and mutter about before putting a different master on the table regardless.

When you recommended only taking one austringer per Guild list I assumed you meant only one austringer's worth of shots per turn. This is silly and not in a good way. And you know my taste for silly things. *A death marshal sneaks up behind Hoffman and whacks him upside the head with the box* See? No Hoffman, no problem!

I am pleasantly surprised that this was addressed before this year's GenCon. Hooray for slightly fewer robot tears.

Wilhemina rolls TNT and paper together. "Message from the Union!" *dynamite drop* *BLAM!* "What the hell message was that?!?!?!" " 'Good morning, here's your daily newspaper, with news the Guild doesn't want you to know. Remember to destroy after reading.' " Miss Minnie Ironsides pedals off to the next doorstep (roll, drop, BLAM!), wheels squeaking in defiance of (roll, drop, BLAM!) M&SU mechanical maintenance guidelines (roll, drop, BLAM!).

I've got a spare Abuela card, let me get that to you.

Unless all your metals are Wave 1 Guild (the girls) you are probably going to want a generalist upgrade deck for buying all the upgrades from all the factions. There's a print on demand service now at wargamevault for individual model cards only, as the arsenal decks are going out of print, but sometimes you can still find arsenal decks. If you have an avatar model stick it on a 50mm base and photocopy out of the third book Shifting Loyalties and you have an Emissary for the faction of that master. I don't know what kinds of markers first edition used but we're using 30mm scheme markers (get 10+), corpse markers (if you use them 6 should do), scrap markers (even fewer than corpse), 50mm blast and other-random-terrain-spells markers (two blasts to pick up and re-use, two terrain to semi-permanently place, for four total). Also you need to download Gaining Grounds 2016 from the Wyrd site with all the new strategies and schemes which may pop up in tournament play, and they are fun refinements on the book's schemes as well even if you don't play tournament style.

Happy to receive minis from Malkyr, well boxed, shipped faster than I expected, all-around wonderful guy.

I do, but so many of our in-faction obey effects are only for friendly models that I wanted to be extra clear about it. It's a total waste of points and cards, but I still want to one time take an oiran, bury it, and lure a rotten belle with it from halfway across the board just to say anything you can do I can do better. Just the thought of the brutal emissary suddenly wearing an oiran's kimono is also weird.

Ama no Zako brings an obey that works on the enemy, and devour. And speaking of an obey that works on enemies...Johan's attack bonus comes from M&SU within 3", NOT within 3. Put some terrain between him and the M&SU in question if the enemy can cast obey! (My Hoffman keeps finding new ways to disappoint Madame Sybelle. This was one of the best.)

I have nothing like the full set of Guild models so this is just what I have for enforcers, and how I have used them with McCabe: Peacekeeper + Strangemetal Shirt = protection for my cluster of models. Because the armor +1 aura is staying until you get rid of the armor +2, hard to wound, terrifying living etc. etc. that is harpooning and pulling enemies in for the kill. (Go ahead and complain about my preference for armored-up constructs again. I dare you. Armor. For. EVERYONE.) I would have to give it a general upgrade for Show of Force and accept that as a 1pt loss of power unless the stars aligned and I got use out of the upgrade. Johan + Badge of Speed = a Johan who actually gets to the fight before turn 3. I've seen wastrels move at a more brisk pace than an unmodified Johan. For Show of Force in a marker-heavy scheme pool he gets Expert Sleuth and sometimes even gets to use it to move. Since I can use him to hold the flank with McCabe, I do. He gets the other stash marker, and on occasion (with a mask) whacks a fresh target into the other meatgrinder. ...that's it? I need to get an emissary just to make up the numbers of enforcers?! McCabe needs to keep the Glowing Saber when he is being the tarpit. Those added soulstones are very nice for damage prevention. Also this is the only circumstance I've gotten Francisco to work as advertised. 'Cisco doesn't get the strangemetal shirt though because he needs to use his own 0 action.

Really. I can't decide which one I love more. The original is brilliant, this is brilliant, both oozing with character. Insouciance. Someone took care to make sure there would be enough surface area to attach to the base...we appreciate that. All welcome Wilhemina, our new Minnie-Willie.