Paul7926

@Cpt Sandwich Thanks so much for taking the time to do that. So Asami a first choice over Shenlong or just a different way to build a list?

Hi everyone. This is a weird question (pun intended) but hey it's a slow day at work and 'faux players and forum members have been very helpful to this noob in the past so I figure why not. I've stumbled into Ten Thunders after an impulse Tanuki purchase (they are so cool and I got the extra one in the box as well) and picking up a collection from a friend who gave me a price I could not refuse. So I've got a few models, no idea what they do and I'm actually not going to play them immediately as I'm learning the game with Outcasts at the moment. So why the post? Well I'm going to do my best to give these awesome models a decent paint job. There is no pressure to get them on the table so I can take my time and hopefully do them justice. What I need from you devoted TT players is an idea of what to paint. What, out of my collection, goes with what and where should I start putting a 50ss crew together? Now I know that a fixed crew is not how 'faux is played but the idea is to get a base crew done first then add to that once I start playing it and figure out what everything does. The only rules, should you accept this strange challenge, is that it must only be models I have already and it must include the absolutely fabulous Shadow Emissary which is first on the painting list no matter what. What you come up with doesn't have to be tournament killer list just something that fits together on the table. So if you're bored, if you have the inclination and fancy helping me out then build me a list for 50ss. My collection Asami Tanaka Amanjaku Ohaguro Bettari 3 Yokai Shenlong Sensei Yu 2 Peasants 3 Monks of High River The Brewmaster Apprentice Wesley Fingers 3 Moon Shinobi 3 Monks of Low River 2 Katanaka Snipers Izamu, the Armor 4 Tanuki Shadow Emissary Thanks

@misterfinn Thanks. I mean I don't think I'm anything special as far as sportsmanship goes. I just think that by the time you get to a tournament you can expect your opponent to know how to play the game. I hold myself to the same standard I want from others. I'm not talking about being a good player just knowing the rules and being able to play a game without constantly either asking things or making illegal plays out of lack of knowledge. Anyway I totally agree with you about the importance of finding my own personal style and using the models that fit that. It's what I had intended to do but this tournament puts a time limit on me where I think I need to reduce the number of variables by concentrating on a single list that isn't fantastically complex in terms of synergy and timing. I'm already sold on the SS as something I'll get and now I'm considering just back filling with my existing stuff to make the rest of the list. From what I've read over the last couple of days that doesn't seem like a horrible starting point.

Again I can't thank everyone enough for the advice and opinions I've received. I'm certain to get hold of the SS after doing a little bit of research. I'm also certain I'm going to drop the specialist although as yet I'm not sure what will go there. Sue is a good call but as it's another purchase I may back fill the spot with things I own. (possibly Ronin)

I'll leave it for now then but thanks for the idea

Like I said all the Thunders models were bought from a friend who wanted out of Malifaux. I've never played with any of them or have the slightest clue what they do. I picked Schill because whilst he is considered not to be very good the crew is also considered to be quite easy to pick up and play. If a Schenlong list would not be more complicated then I have no objection to considering that. I've no experience with the thunders but then I don't exactly have much more than that with the Outcasts if the truth be told. The reason I'm here is to take advice and consider my options.

I'm very lucky in that my local Henchman has a large collection and I'm sure that I can borrow upgrades as required from him for the day. I agree that I should get my own but I'm currently torn between getting the physical cards which I would prefer for playing the game or getting them for the app. It makes more sense to get them on the app (can't get damaged, they update with changes, they don't need storage) but as I only have a smart phone and not a tablet I'm not sure how usable the app really is for playing the game instead of just building crews.

Again I'd like to thank everyone for the help in this thread. I've found my collection list although I don't think it changes anything. The 10T models were bought from a friend so I have even less idea what they do then the Outcast models I have. The Gremlins are from my first go at Malifaux and are the old metal ones so whilst I list them and have played them the most I'm not expanding them because I don't feel the old and new styles work together. Viktoria of Ashes Viktoria of Blood Taelor Student of Conflict 3 Ronin Von Schill Steam Trunk Librarian Trapper Specialist 2 Freikorpsmenn Vanessa Asami Tanaka Amanjaku Ohaguro Bettari 3 Yokai Shenlong Sensei Yu 2 Peasants 3 Monks of High River The Brewmaster Apprentice Wesley Fingers 3 Moon Shinobi 3 Monks of Low River 2 Katanaka Snipers Izamu, the Armor 4 Tanuki Ophelia Francois Raphael Rami Pere Ravagé 3 Young Lacroix 2 Slop Haulers

Thanks everyone for the advice. I've got some research to do.

@Raimu Thanks. I've checked and wave 5 upgrades are allowed so I'll investigate them and the SS.

@Scatterbrain I think it comes from when I played competitive Magic the Gathering and used to end up with a first round draw against people who didn't even know how to play the game. It used to annoy me so I have a desire not to be the 'problem' in another system. I understand that the event is only 'single faction' locked so the lists can change (as is the design of Malifaux) but that sounds like a step too far for me at the moment. I'll accept the disadvantage of a locked list compared to the complexity of trying to properly build each round to the schemes and strats. I may try and find out if the schemes and strats are going to be announced before the event to help with my practice. I have all the models listed already (VS and Viks boxes plus a couple of other figures) and the tournament has waived the painting requirement so no worries on those counts. EDIT: Bonus points for getting an Office Space reference in there by the way. @Raimu I don't own the suit at the moment. If you would be so kind as to explain your thinking I may invest in it. Given it's GG2017 and Wave 4 models I'm not sure if the wave 5 upgrades are allowed. I'll check. @gribble If it's a synergy thing then I'll look into the SS, thanks.

Greetings There is a 50ss three round tournament near me in a couple of months that I'm thinking about attending. I'm still ultra new to playing the game so the purpose would simply be to turn up, play some games, have a laugh and not totally embarrass myself or ruin the experience for my opponents. I've played a few Henchman Hardcore games and some 35ss games but not 50ss yet. My plan would be to pick a crew now, get some practice games in before the event and hopefully be competent enough to play three games without needing to constantly ask about rules and whilst I don't expect to win I'd like to be able to at least give my opponents some semblance of an actual game. Nothing worse than travelling to an event and getting drawn against the guy who has no clue how to even play the game. I'd rather not go than be 'that guy'! All we know so far is that it's a 3 round event using GG 2017 allowing wave 4 models. Yeah, means nothing to me really but there you go. I have some Gremlins, Ten Thunders and Outcasts in my collection (don't have the list with me but can provide it later tonight if it helps). What I'm trying to build is a crew that is easy to learn in two months rather than a tournament winning killer list. As stated more than once I just don't want to be the guy who ruins anyone's experience on the day. I've come up with: Von Schill (Oath Keeper, Survivalist, The shirt comes off) Student of Conflict Taelor (Oath Keeper) Freikorps Librarian Freikorps Specialist (Oath Keeper) Freikorps Trapper Freikorpsman Now this is because I'm led to believe that Schill is a good box to start with even if he is not considered a top tier master. I have all those models but not all the Oath Keeper cards. I should be able to borrow cards and possibly buy/borrow models if necessary but please bear in mind that squeaking every last competitive advantage out of the list isn't necessary because my lack of skill will negate that. I'm more interested to know if there is a better 'starter' list or anything in that list is really out of place or counter productive. Maybe you have a different list that is more beginner friendly that you would advise using instead? I will have time to study the rules and two of my local group have already offered to play 'teaching' games with me to try and get me ready. It doesn't hurt to get as much advice as possible before putting a list together to learn from. Any/all advice or comments most welcome.

Interesting read. I would like to just raise one point that's slightly off topic. A lot of people use the phrase 'tournament play' to describe a highly competitive environment where the sole aim is to win and players are interested only in the best performing builds. Now whilst this is true to a point and, in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with this there are other reasons for attending a tournament. For some players the experience of going to an event and playing against people other than their normal opponent is reason enough. Now don't get me wrong there are two extremes that are often generalised. Hard core tournament number cruncher and bearded background loving story player. Most people fall somewhere in the middle rather than at the extreme and even at the extreme there is nothing wrong with playing the game the way you enjoy. Friction only occurs when you and your opponent are not after the same experience. The trick for any company is to make something that appeals to different approaches and it become harder to do this the more interacting parts your game contains. Ok so that started off topic and just got worse. Sorry.

It's the driving reason for me suddenly ending up with a ton of TT models and where I want to start but it most certainly will not be where I stop. I've noticed that I have some sort of subliminal pull towards anything with a 'Far East' feel in my gaming systems. If there is a side/faction that represents a Far Eastern country, however stereotypical, I tend to end up playing it. I blame David Carradine and the TV series Kung Fu from the early to mid seventies. Shenlong will always be Kwai Chang Caine in my head and known to his crew as 'Dave'. (Younger forum users will no doubt have to google that)

Hi I'm pretty new to Malifaux and still learning almost everything so I'd decided to not grab tons of models....... Yeah, that didn't work. So last night I'm at the FLGS with some store credit and I see the Tanuki box. I really love the sculpts and this box had the 'extra' model in so despite not having any TT models I decided I had to have them. Now obviously I can't use them on their own and my Outcast models are no help (Viks and Von Shill boxes) so I look at the shelves to find no TT masters at all. Disaster was averted by someone pointing out that they had the Brewmaster box amongst the gremlin stuff. I have a very old metal Ophelia crew from way back in the day when I tried to learn before so I end up going home with a new crew box and the Tanuki. Someone said that it was a good fit because the Tanuki have Tri-Chi which fits in with the Brewmaster crew. Anyway, none of the above is really a TT question until I point out that a conversation with a gaming friend late last night has led to me picking up his unused Malifaux collection. So I've also got coming to me: Shenlong box, Asami box, Izamu, Katana snipers and Low River monks. So here I am with complete TT overload, no idea what I've got, where to start, what to do. If any of you would like to take pity on me and give me suggestions for a crew out of that lot that includes at least 1 Tanuki I would be very grateful. It does not have to be a good list it just needs to include Tanuki! All advice and encouragement gratefully received. I'm also expecting a fair amount of head shaking and finger pointing at the impulse buying idiot so don't hold back.

Just wanted to say that I'm liking the new app. Sure there will be a few teething troubles and bugs and we will all clamour for new functionality forever but such is the life-cycle of software development. Keep up the good work and I wish the programmers good hunting when it comes to bug fixing.

Thanks. I have no intention of increasing my model pool for some time and even then I doubt I'll go out of faction. I have a reasonable grounding in other games system that mean I'm Ok with upgrades even though I don't have many Malifaux games under my belt. I think I'll keep my eye open for a copy locally and pick it up if I see it but I'll not rush to order it straight away.

Sorry as I'm sure this is a question that probably gets asked a lot but I couldn't find an answer. Maybe the answer has changed over time as well so I'm asking for your help. I've just started playing, I've picked Outcasts and I have some basic models on their way to me (hired swords, hired guns, Vanessa). So I'm sorted for models for a while because I intend to try and learn the game with those models (they seem to be the most new player friendly). So about the only thing I have left to consider are the general upgrade decks as I'll only have the upgrades that come with those models. I suspect I'm probably getting a little too 'fancy' here and that I may not need them which prompts the question. Do I need these decks given my self imposed limit on models? I don't want to drop money for something where I will use only ever use one or two of the cards. I don't want to not get them if they are really useful. Thanks.

This is what I'm starting to understand. I've played pretty much all the different game systems over the years (yeah I'm old, still remember when 40k was just the Rogue Trader book and almost an RPG) and I think Malifaux will easily fit into not only my personal preferences for a rule set but also something I can continue to learn and enjoy for a long time. Just need to get in the games now.

You see now that is the key point. When you are asking "Can I?" you are learning the mechanics but when you are asking "Should I?" you are learning the game. A good game should have you asking "Can I?" for a short time but "Should I?" almost indefinitely.

@Ludvig @Adran Thanks for the quick replies. It's helped. I'll certainly try and move forward from Henchmen Hardcore faster than I had perhaps planned. Once I get the basic game flow to be second nature that should be enough at that level. I'm thinking as soon as I'm not asking questions like "can I cheat that?" or "Can I use a SS here?" or "How does that work?" it will be enough. As an Infinity player I already understand that a game based around fulfilling mission objectives plays totally differently if you ignore them and just play 'kill everything' style games. Again because of Infinity I'm pretty good at not suffering from 'analysis paralysis' and taking ages over making in game decisions. That should help with the total length of the game. I'm also not concerned with winning in any way shape or form at the moment. Which allows me to do things just to see what happens and experiment with my own crew synergies rather than doing what is simply statistically the best play to achieve victory. Certainly to start I'll not have the experience to know what the optimal play might be anyway! So I think my plan of attack now is this: Henchman Hardcore for a few more games and then on to 25SS to introduce the strats and schemes (slowly at first). I'll stick to a very static set of models until I've experienced enough games at that level to be comfortable before moving on. I think I'll be here for quite a while. Then I'll start introducing new models to get a feel for them and how they play and interact. Then 35SS picking a crew 'properly' using what I've learned and eventually get to that at 50SS. Who knows if this will work but I like it as a general plan. Thanks again.

Apologies to the OP as I'm about to hijack his thread because I have some learning questions and this seemed like a good place to add them. I'm starting playing and I was wondering on the best sequence to follow to gradually ramp up the difficulty without overwhelming myself with new options. I'm a seasoned gamer so whilst I have a ton of other games that help me understand the basics they also sometimes get in the way because I mistakenly think "Oh this is just like x in game y" when it's actually subtly different. I have already decided that I'm starting with Henchmen Hardcore to cement the basics in my head and I've also selected Outcasts, specifically the Victoria's, to play whilst I learn. I'm not bothered about being competitive at this stage so I'll just be keeping the same models with minor additions and/or changes along the way. I guess the end goal is to be comfortable playing a full 50SS game including crew selection within the sort of time frame that would be allowed in a tournament. It's not that I intend to set the tournament Malifaux scene alight but I do enjoy playing in tournaments so I need to be at least able to not flounder on the rules etc. So what would you consider the steps to be and what milestones would you consider important before moving on? Just ramping up the SS limit is one thing but when is a good time to be using all the proper strats and schemes? When do you progress from bringing a set list no matter what to properly selecting a crew as the game rules stipulate? What is the sort of time frame to be aiming to complete a game to it's conclusion? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help plus the OP for starting this thread.

Firstly, if you and your players are having fun then who cares if a game takes 2 hours or 2 days? Your hobby, your games, you can do what you like. Now with that said I do understand that you might want to speed up as you expand your games outside your group of friends. As someone who has played most games over a lot of years in the hobby I can offer some advice. I'm just getting back into Malifaux so I'm sure at the moment I know less about the game than you do rules wise. Initially I plan to do some basic things to reduce the amount of 'clutter' that I need to worry about. I'm going to limit myself to Henchmen Hardcore to reduce the model count and I'm going to stick to the same list no matter how bad it might be until I learn what my stuff does. Even when I'm comfortable with with those 4 models and their interaction I'm only going to swap out one at a time for a new model to reduce the amount of new stuff I introduce. I've noticed that something a lot of players in any game suffer from is 'analysis paralysis' where they contemplate each 'order/action' like it was a decision on which wire to cut to defuse a bomb. Sure if you are at the final table of some national competition with enough experience to properly weigh up all the competing factors then that's ok. The truth for the rest of us is that we are playing either friendly games or in small local competitions. We simply can't evaluate every possible outcome before each decision. Honestly I find the best thing to do is just give myself a few seconds to consider an overall plan and then try and execute it. It will either work or not and the time to evaluate my choices is after the game. Some time spent then honestly reviewing what happened will help you make better decisions faster in the future. Losing the game is not the end of the world as long as you had fun playing. Being unable to play or being too stressed about what should be fun is a disaster. Something that can help and something that you are cutting yourself off from is playing experienced opponents. I do understand your fears about expanding to a wider group and I'm not belittling them. In my experience however if you can find an experienced player that loves the game and wants it to flourish they will have no problem spending the time to play you and answering questions. My local Henchman (I think that is what the local people are called, so many games so many different names for the same thing) is great. I played a small game against him last week and spent the whole time talking through what I was thinking and doing. He was able to correct any errors in my understanding of the rules and also point out things I'd totally missed. We had fun, I learned a bit about gremlins and the game rules and even with all the non game related chat we were done in 90 minutes (not a full game only 4 model henchman hardcore). The actual result of the game was immaterial. Anyway, this turned into an essay. Just keep on keeping on and you will get there.

@Adran Thanks for that. More useful than you know. I was not overly sold on Von Schill but you have pointed out that now Parker is a reasonable alternative. I had it stuck in my head that I would have to get Hired Swords and Hired Guns but it seems not these days. I'll probably end up with everything but as stated before the first few purchases are the make or break area as I'm trying to get started again. I think that takes away my only real problem with going Outcasts.

Hello everyone. I'm returning (again) to the game having found some local players. I played a few games a long time ago and have a small collection of the old metal gremlin models. It's basically the 'Kin' box plus a couple of slop haulers and some young LaCroix. These were from a time when Gremlins wasn't a full blown faction in it's own right. I've picked up the latest rules and cards for my old models and I do have just enough to play games without a great deal of choice. So far I've limited myself to Henchmen Hardcore as I try and remember how to play the game! So what's the problem I hear you ask. You thought it I'm sure you did. Well the problem is that whilst I think all the latest models are really nice they just don't fit in with my old metal ones. Nostalgia and the fact that I painted them quite well means that I'm not excited about mixing the two styles. So I've decided that I want to branch out into a new faction as I get back into the game. I just have no real clue which ones. So instead of multi-posting across all the faction sub forums I though I'd try a post here. In a futile attempt to assist anyone brave enough to answer this post here are some things that might help: Rule of cool means I was thinking maybe the Viktorias from Outcasts. The problem there is that I like to keep things themed so after that box I'm struggling a bit as Outcasts seem quite eclectic in there styles. The fact that the Kin are imitations of Perdita and the Latigo Posse made me look there. The Gulid seem to have more options within the same (cowboy steampunk) theme but is it a good or bad thing that I think it might just play too similar to the gremlins I have? I'm just not sold on the Neverborn or Resurrectionists looks or concepts. I have no clue about the Ten Thunders as they were not around last time I played. However who doesn't like Asian influenced Ninja and Shaolin types? In other games I tend to prefer the more elite forces that are flexible but brutal rather than the horde style forces (not applicable here) or the very high synergy/tricky/control forces that need to stay out of the fight and be clever. For Malifaux I'll be playing a lot of Henchman Hardcore to start and whilst I wouldn't mind attending tournaments in the future this is not my 'hardcore tournament system' it's more about fun and theme and the aesthetics of it all. So whilst I've written a wall of text I've probably not helped you much in answering the 'where do you think I should start looking for a new faction?' question I'm asking. Any thoughts appreciated. EDIT: Just to add that the reason I'm asking and not just experimenting is that both cash and hobby time are very limited so wanted to avoid, if possible, going down blind alleys and ending up with a little of everything rather than a good core of stuff I can build on.