Sol_Sorrowsong

On 9/20/2019 at 1:52 PM, MajorUndead said:

The rulebook says, in the "place" subsection of movement :

The striped skulkers' action says "Place this fireteam anywhere on the table".
Since it is not using any specific terms to say "only one", but is using the "basic" wording "place this fireteam", then I think that yes, it allows you to move all the fireteams in their unit.

I'm guessing the question might come from the second part of the action's description : "If there are any other fireteams in this unit, the fireteam must sill remain in formation"
To me this just means you can't use this placement to break formation.

I believe that the this in "place this fireteam anywhere on the table" is being specific.  (Bold is my own) It specifically is talking about the active fireteam in the squad.  The banner action can be taken by each fireteam and each can use it to place anywhere on the table.

HOWEVER, the caveat is the rule for maintaining formation, which means "anywhere on the table" (italic is my own) must adhere to remaining within 8" of the other fireteams in the unit. (I'm going on memory, I think its 8")

So what can you do?

IF 3 fireteams, a single fireteam must place within 8" of the other two.

IF 2 fireteams, a single fireteam must place within 8" of the other fireteam (a bit more maneuverability)

If 1 fireteam, it may place anywhere on the table. (I believe not into terrain however, I don't have rules in front of me)

What is it good for?

- Getting out of engagement to attack elsewhere or flee.

- To cross over impassible terrain or terrain with gaps blocked by another fireteam or too small to fit normally. (This is really great actually, you don't need LOS to remain in formation IIRC so you can sneak past areas the opponent would think are a natural barrier and suddenly "pop" out on the other side).

-Appear across the map near an objective to score next time (if only 1 fireteam)

Example strategy.

Striped skulkers eat one of their fireteams to gain glory.  They declare advance order for remaining two fireteams and the first moves up behind the edge of a tall cathedral. (On the other side are King's Empire infiltrators planning to mine the main road in front of the cathedral so the Krakinoi cannot assault easily). The second fireteam moves up and after completing the move order they use their banner action and succeed, declining the trigger. They then place themselves over the cathedral behind the infiltrators but within formation of the first fireteam. Then they lash out at the infiltrators, doing some damage.

Infiltrators now come to face the skulker fireteam instead of planting their mines and kill the threat.

...other skirmishes, krakinoi advance where mines would have been and eat the infiltrators..turn ends.

Next turn, the remaining fireteam uses the banner action and stealthfully make their way to a to "place" across the battlefield, out of the action for the moment, but near an objective thought previously secured by the King's forces who have advanced to deal with the krakinoi threat.  The skulkers declare the action to gain a token and choose a reinforcement token, ending their activation as they lie in wait.

Crooligans of the corn!  😈

6 minutes ago, Zebo said:

I can do it with the crews I know the most, but need help with the others.

Never thought Obliteration crew were specially tough, not versus attacks neither to other effects.

Talos, Nothing Beast, Void Hunter are all terrifying. Talos has armor +2 and the others are incorporeal. NB is df/wp 6/6. Aionus is 6/7.  They aren't tanks, but they don't go down so easily. I find the terrifying the biggest advantage because even though it is TN10 or 11 it usually requires a 5-6 to beat and although it isn't high, a forced flip that you might need to cheat, just to be able to attempt the attack can be really discouraging.  My last game vs Tara, I was all set with a high card in hand to get in a great attack, but then failed the TN duel and had nothing better but to waste that great card just to attempt the attack.  Then I flipped low again and lost a card for nothing.  It isn't the best, but it is everytime and that adds up.

6 minutes ago, Zebo said:

Just curious.

Anybody agree with my comparison between Tormented and House of Haunted Hill?

That was my first impression with them.

I don't know the reference sorry, but reading back through, I thought it might also be useful to add a small portion about challenges each crew might have. Specifically for Daw, I believe he uses cards very quickly and can suffer from having a small hand quickly if not careful.  For Parker, he likes to have several soulstones in hand to get things flowing or his cycling of cards and soulstones from the enemy can grind to a halt. Mad dog is great within 8" of something, but can struggle in melee if he can't get the right trigger or someone has greater reach. Tara crew is strong to attacks, but weak to damage from effects not directly from the attack (ex. Enemy models in pulse 2" take a TN 14 WP duel or suffer 2 damage).

2 hours ago, solkan said:

In M3E, there is no more "killed but not yet removed" state.

There is a little bit, in that some other models have abilities to place a marker b2b with the killed model, then remove the model. I'm not so detailed on the rules to know when this action competes with OPs question of interactions, and I agree with OP and yourself to OPs question on timing, just wanted to add to the confusion.😅

Part of the greatness of table top gaming is in the unique and varied battlefields factions and crews will face off against.  From the streets and alleys of the quarantine zones, to the swamps and fields around the bayou, to the frozen mountain wastelands and thick forests. There are ruined churches and villages or rotting putrid mires that wheeze toxic fumes. 

Most often you'll find people play on tables with enough terrain to densely pack 1/3 of the table, and then scatter it around the table before playing.  In our local scene, we usually try to keep starting areas similar so neither player feels at a disadvantage if they didn't get to pick their side.  Perhaps one side has a bar providing some cover with broken doors and a collapsed wall.  The other side of the market square has a gloomy grave yard with a small church and large headstones that give different, but equal amounts of cover in a firefight.

There is no official, build it exactly like this "map", because the deployment area, strategies, schemes, and of course crews are always changing each game.  The amount of variables is too high to say one setup is a perfect fit for everyone.  However, Wyrd has great guidelines for creating a table and the terrain to put on it and several other threads have pictures of tables people play on for you to get an idea on how to set up.

Malifaux is a strange new world for the cunning, daring, and eager.  Gather your friends, and see where you might find strangers challenging you for the same fame or fortune. Get out there and explore!

19 hours ago, Gaston said:

Zoraida aside, the issue I have with Obey is being able to spend conditions, upgrades, and tokens. For example, you can Obey a Chimera and force them to toss a mutation. Or I have had Hooded Rider Obey'd and they spent 10 tokens to generate 10 masks on an attack.

I honestly didn't know this was possible. I guess I've been playing friendly Zoraida for all of M2E and so far in M3E.  THAT STOPS NOW!  😝.  No, I agree those interactions would feel bad.

It's really the base strats that give the most grief I feel to people, when Zoraida is on the board.  I'm less sure about the feasibility of Turf marker flipping, but I understand the pain people feel in cursed idols and explosives.  Does that really require changing Zoraida though?  I think it is far simpler and better for the game to errata the strats or introduce GG strats that alter her obey usage with them.

Points for and against have been shown and if we never all agree, we'll need to be ok with it.  From my point I haven't heard anything against her (other than her interaction with strats) that has been shown to give a consistent issue.  Most arguments seem to be along the lines of "in this situation, all the bad things happened and it sucked" or "her potential to make things go badly for me is too strong".  These are valid complaints and I sympathize. It just isn't consistent enough a problem I feel.

In my games, if my opponent doesn't want his beater attacking his friends, he'll keep it away until late turn, and away from swampfiends. Maybe he doesn't push so far forward with it T1.  Either Z goes earlier and does something else or obeys a different target.  Outside of a specific table, I can't see a swampfiend getting close enough to not take a punishment T1, while being close enough to Z to be an arcnode. She HATES walking.  Old people get like that sometimes.  Blocking terrain hinders her, concealing terrain hinders her, severe terrain hinders, scatter terrain can block charge lanes.  I get that Obeys are annoying. We have two Zoraida players in our meta, I'm one of them and people find creative ways to avoid her strengths (I remember a particularly nasty game vs Nekima where blackblood was wrecking everything and healing the enemy sometimes!).  Playing against her is also tough, she's strong for sure, but just like Zoraida can RJ an obey that's unblockable, she can also get a hand with nothing above an 8.

My experience with card cycle has been a net gain for both players. I only use it to try and stack my hand after using my nice cards, and I get decent cards back but so does my opponent usually. I have more control over it, sure. It ain't guaranteed by any means though.

19 hours ago, Kharnage said:

Just so we're clear, The Nothing Beast is an enforcer. He wasn't using stones to protect it, was he?

No, that's my mistake. I never actually attacked the Nothing beast during the game, but I'm sure he knew it was an enforcer. I just remembered it being a henchman so that gave me more reason to block it with pillars so it couldn't unbury next to me.

Enemy can unbury on their turn but is placed B2B with a friendly model (Tara player chooses), so their big beaters can get teleported behind the support player who may have already gone.  It's on activating too, so not knowing where you'll be placed, and then needing to make something of the model's turn can be really difficult.  Usually at least one action will be just to get in better position.

On 9/17/2019 at 2:19 PM, MajorUndead said:

About incorporeal, I feel like Euripides' crew may have some interesting tools. There are several tactical actions that can do damage (Euripides' pillar creation and pillar push, Thoon pillar push, the Cyclops' runes) and the damage reduction from incorporeal only works on attack actions. Maybe it's not enough to deal with a big target like the nothing beast though.
Another good thing with some actions is that they don't target an enemy model, so it bypasses things like terrifying or serene countenance (looking at you, dreamer 😛 ).

For frozen trophy, a crew with some unbury mechanics will indeed make him less interesting.
As I said I haven't played the crew yet, so I don't know if Thoon might still be interesting without that or not, but he has some ways to move ennemy models, so maybe that could still be useful.

 

All good points.  I think those help with Incorporeal to a degree, and possibly could destroy wretches.  The problem I faced, was they are MV duels and void creatures tend to have a high MV value to start making it simpler to pass.  

As for Thoon, he's still worth taking. Of course there aren't many options, but he's quick, can create pillars once something dies (except those pesky void beings!) from corpse markers.  He and Euripides both have intuition, which I forgot to mention earlier but is quite excellent if you can think how to use them, cheating, and old ways best.  (I had a red joker I was able to put as card 3 so I got the big damage on a neg flip attack).  Besides from intuition, you need to remember he can push a pillar 3" on activation, which helped me somewhat with mobility issues concerning my pillars.  

I think he's in a good place, but he'd be so much better (probably too good) if he could manipulate pillars in any direction instead of towards himself.  

For Parker's crew (Bandits) I would say they ARE quite mobile in that they have easy access to Fast and can gain movement while using their ranged attack.  Yes, not every model gets to go fast, but easily you can have 2 models with fast every turn (easier still with Emissary giving 3" push and marker). A bandido then gets 15" of movement and a 12" shot!  I'd also put a mention out for Mad dog who has blasts, built in armor piercing trigger, and of course can blow cover to hell.  

For Tara (Obliteration), Incorporeal as a protection against attacks. Her summons come in buried but can unbury next to a Fast model. She herself can activate twice, giving her 3 actions and then 2 actions. Lots of Terrifying and WP duels/attacks with this crew.

Figured this was the main Euripides thread so would add this here. I had my first game with Euripides on Saturday.  Ended 6-6 against Tara and I think I got lucky.  The strat was Turf Wars and of schemes I took Take prisoner and Search the ruins. Tara player took Hold up their forces and Outflank, neither took assassinate.  Corner deployment with terrain as a mixture of 3 buildings (impassible ht5), 2 medium forests and a couple of ht 1 walls and some scatter.

I was using the core box plus 1 cyclops and 2 bultungin.  

Overall I felt the game went pretty well, but I definitely noticed quickly  both the need for many ice pillars and very careful placement of them. Frozen Vigor is a great deterrent to avoid 1 action harassment, but I'm not sure if they become more annoying to my opponent or to myself. This of course being fixed with more experience for me. The corner layout and location of forests made it really difficult to navigate without taking some severe terrain MV penalties.  Luckily the primordial magic could get a gigant or thoon out or through a building/pillar pretty well, but only once per turn.  

This game forced more of a spread on my team and having only a single cyclops did not feel very beneficial.  I did use it to help score Search the ruins by dropping a pillar and then scheme  marker, but only once got a heal off and never got into combat with anything worth smacking. DF4 meant it died turn 4 to Talos and a Void hunter. 

Against Tara, the beast bomb from fast had me scared, but perhaps I exageratted how bad it would be.  The first time it was set up to go off, I luckily had Euripides near enough and created 4 pillars to block unbury access near my activated, fast, gigant. It might have been better to sacrifice the gigant and try to kill the nothing beast, but Incorporeal is annoying and its a henchman.  Thoon's frozen trophy was neutered pretty completely by Tara bury mechanics so he was much less impressive than I was hoping. I do like his MV 6 though.

Bultungins remain great scheme runners with MV6 and end phase push 4, but they got beast bombed later in game and removed. They did help delete 2 void wretches and get points for search the ruins, so I'd still hire them again for sure.  

Gigants were interesting with their rock lobbing.  I tried to charge into Aionus and use the trigger to teleport him through the ice, but it failed. In general I think I could play them a bit more aggressively than I did, yet they take damage pretty quickly and I don't think frozen vigor and cyclops heals will keep them on the board long if someone wants them off.

Final thought is on The old ways. It is brilliant most of the time, but once the opponent figures how to get you to start flipping cards you can lose some of the setup. This happened mostly when I attacked terrifying models or if I had to pass Glimpse the Void triggers.

I'd say it is nicely balanced with the damage because on Bultungins it was always a difficult choice if I should take the guaranteed 1 damage with the high card against a void wretch attack, or possibly suffer 2 or 3 damage if my next flip is poor.  As they don't have frozen vigor, it gets pretty intense.  Even with frozen vigor, most of my minions were whittled down half health by turn 5.  

We both played pretty strategic over killy. In the end, Tara lost 2x wretches hired and 2x void hunters summoned. I lost 2x bultungin, 1 gigant and 1 cyclops.

Tara scored 2 on Turf, 2 on Outflank, and 2 on Hold their forces

I scored 3 on Turf, 2 on Search ruins, and 1 on take prisoner (Karina, way in the back!)

What are people's thoughts about Euripides vs Tara? Her access to Fast and unbury, plus summoning makes it a real challenge I felt.  Aionus also receives 2 pass tokens on unbury, so I never got an advantage on the board or for initiative.

Is the action to remove a pillar considered an Interact action or just a generic action?

On 8/10/2019 at 3:17 PM, Trample said:

Additionally, destructible terrain requires a model to be within 1” and take an action to remove it

If interact, then Gigant's bonus action Cave Painting is very strong to follow up with.

A little resurrection, but if a model is under multiple blast markers, does it take damage from each marker or only one for the attack?

@Caedrus Hoping to do Euripides Box this month!  That would be 45ss I believe.  Gencon order should get in soon!

Ah, yes.  Thank you.  With everything else I was trying to understand, I simply didn't think about using it outside of the activation between activating and end phase, but that makes sense now.  Euripides seems like a lot of fun, but is going to take several games to wrap my head around his particular tricks. 

On 8/10/2019 at 7:01 AM, Gaston said:

essentially allows for 2 free uses of The Old Ways a turn

Doesn't shielded get removed at the end of a turn?

@Caedrus The shiny is rather an effect off of one of the contrast paints interestingly enough.  It works like a glaze kinda. I have a few that I drybrushed over, but most have a slight shine from the greenish blue color.  They are indeed amphibious reptilian and crustacean type monsters that started appearing as breaching portals from Malifaux's seas opened into those of Earth circa 1906.  Now they are coming ashore...

4 hours ago, Humphrey said:

2:30 doesn't seem that long. I have a long way to go before achieving this speed for a 50SS, 5 turn game.

Tournaments make you play faster.  Even if you're a slower player (like myself) because of the limit you inevitably find a point in the game where you simply must focus on objective scoring and stop worrying about "the perfect move" (my usual problem).

Potato picture but I've finally got some on display now I'd get better, but can't get to the store before next month so here it is.  A few left to do and I want to go back over the bases to make them a bit more uniform but 4 x 21ss = 84ss at tabletop level for the remaining skulkers now based I didn't get to last month.  One more set of skulkers and krakinoi remaining for starter.   Whew.

16 minutes ago, Adran said:

There are two possible problems with fixed boards. Firstly, storage/transporting them places, and secondly they may get repetitive.

I agree fully on these parts.  If you can store/transport a fixed board then most of your trouble is out of the way.  The second issue is easier to deal with if you make sure you build the board from all angles.  Even with modular pieces, I've had issues with some boards because they were set up from a standard deployment perspective related to the way the board was placed on the table.  That can be fine for a quick match, but it is always more enjoyable when the layout is a bit challenging here and there and not tailored for certain access routes. If one area of the board has great territory advantage if held, see that access isn't only from two starting deployments or that it also has a disadvantage (a large amplitheater with 3 points of egress may be great for a tanky brawler crew to take the territory and lure enemies in, but if there is a 2-story building or overhead walkway that allows concealed shooting, they might become fish in a barrel).

Additionally, I've found that nice scenario pieces are really fun to play, but can lend towards certain crews having advantages that can't be altered in the table pieces now.  For a friendly, I want to build/play on a table where both crews can benefit from the terrain.  I don't want it barren and empty  for gunlines to mow people down, but I don't want a packed warehouse of boxes either where every move is divided into bits to get around obstacles.

My last piece of advice is that while building, use your models of different base sizes to move around the board.  That will help you keep scale, and get a feel for how it might play as you build it.  Other than that, make sure to have fun with it. It will be cool to play and even if it gets old after a while, you can bring it out on occasion between more modular games and it will breathe new life into the musty crypts.

On 5/4/2019 at 9:29 PM, Aner-Dyfan said:

I'm working on planning some ToS demos in the future myself, would love to form a local community for the game. So how did you go about it in the end?

My first demo used a load of small pieces of blocking+impassible and concealing+difficult terrain. Felt it was a mistake as made it almost impossible to not get -2AV for actions. As such I think a few large pieces of terrain would be better. This would include things like a long fence/wall/river crossing most the table.

Sorry for not getting back to you until now.

I just had another game with the starter boxes again so I can talk a bit about how things have progressed and keep progressing.

Between GH and KE it is very much a battle for KE to keep distance and tackle the objective.  I played GH each time we've played and next time we are swapping factions to get a view from the other side (heh, just noticed) the next time around. 

This last game we had three large terrain features around the center of the map. Game mode was the one where we place Objective Markers (score 1 vp per OM) for 2 tactics tokens on upkeep and can remove an OM within 3" outside of engagement for 1 tactics token (1vp per removal). We had standard deployment. Two were elevated (Hills with small building on top) so were LOS blocking a bit on top, and completely for non-titans from across the hill. The third large piece was actually two LOS blocking rock formations with a small gap not big enough for a fireteam to pass through, but allowed some vision at a specific angle (not towards middle of map).  Additional terrain included a pond, ruined building, and two forests. All were difficult, conceiling, with ruins and forest to be blocking also. Finally, with the stormsiren I had 3 tide pools placed roughly along the midline.

As GH I knew I needed to rush forward and with skulkers to hug terrain (to get that bonus card flip in opposed duels from active camo (maybe too strong, I forgot it worked in offensive duels too!)

With instantly glorying, I got into engagement turn 1 (Banner teleporting + Rush), but then got that fireteam shot off the table. Stormsiren gloried and pulled riflemen into a tidepool and they for some reason didn't run away (liked their reinforcement tokens more?) the whole game.  When  I finally got endless numbers, I used the conch shell to spawn near and rush back into the frey so tying them down, or removing his OMs as I needed.   This told me that we need more linear terrain, maybe fence or barbed wire.  Difficult, but without other benefits.  Something that GH can't ignore.  

After my first turn, I only had a fireteam left for each skulker squad and 2 left on the krakinoi, but reinforcing with Healing magic asset on stormsiren is really easy.  This was only a 25scrip game, but I felt because I could reinforce and get in his face without difficulty, he had a lot of trouble turn 3-5.  

GH has a lot of maneuverability and of course, the attrition game will heavily help them.  I think I was playing a bit higher level than my opponent in the objectives game, but if I wasn't able to move around so easy it would have helped KE more.  Not necessarily more big terrain pieces, but some more neutral challenges that KE could exploit. Instead, only I was able to make use of the terrain for benefits.

Blocking LOS from stormsiren to other fireteams would have been a big challenge for me to deal with also. but she was only challenged once by Charles and her AR 9 and tactics tokens (to use via Conch shell asset) kept him from trying again.

I'd say all in one order, but you could possibly get your very friendly LGS to make you an itemized receipt of your monthly purchases if you have bought things at various times, thus turning several receipts into 1 receipt.  But they'd need to be extra nice cause that is kind of a pain to do.