Rufess

Explorer does not have a general healer like other factions, instead most of the keywords have their own healer. If you are specifically looking for a healer for Ivan, then I would recommend Winston or Lamplighters. Winston is a solid henchman that works very well in many crews. Arcane Reservoir is always good and Fortune's Favor can set up some good flip for next duel(attack or defense). As a healer he can only heal at most 2 per activation, but Dirigible Ride is a good tool that can use for repositioning opponent into bad position as well. Lamplighters are a more supporting model. As mentioned above, their healing are affected by accuracy modify, which means that they need some cards to heal more than 1. They however can provide another source of concealing terrain. A Lit Lamp Marker can give ++ to any non-melee attacks in the crew.

Who's the Beatdown It is an old MTG article and not directly relate to Malifaux, but I think some, if not most of the theories are still hold true in Malifaux. And it is definitely worth a read. To summary it and apply to Malifaux: No crew is absolute Aggressive/Defensive since it should depend on the match up and game flow. To elaborate it more, most of the keywords in Malifaux falls in between Aggressive or Defensive. With different list building, they can play either side or other. Some keywords, Nephilim for instance, lean toward one side way more, but one can always find a way to play it in another side. Especially after the release of master titles. And even in a Nekima 1 mirror match, it would hardly be an Aggressive vs Aggressive game at all. Based on the crews structure and playstyles, one of the player would be Aggressive and another would be Defensive. And it could be shifting around during the game. the Aggressive player might play more defensively after received a big hit on the important model, or the Defensive player might took the lead in VP and wanted to press the advantage. With these in mind, here are the characteristics I think a Defensive keyword should have(but still can play in Aggressive if needed): Reducing Efficiency: Maybe the most core part of the Defensive playstyle. By reducing opponent's efficiency to doing anything, their choices and options are limited and, usually, not bring the largest benefit to them Terrain Marker, Damage reducing, Distracted/Stunned Example: Hoffman, Pandora, Titania, Toni Resources Attack: Not as good as card game, but attacking opponent's resources is still a good way in Malifaux to disturb their gameplay. Discard, Deck Manipulation, Force movement, Slow/Stunned Example: Jack Daw, Youko Recovering Power: Most of the time the Defensive crew would be in more passive position. Recovering the damage dealt from the Aggressive crew is the key to maintain crew efficiency and capability to fight back. Healing, Summoning. Example: Jedza, Nexus

Updated the full stat of all models in case(a very rare case) that anyone is interested to play with them.🙃 Had a game with them last weekend. They are annoying but not unbeatable. I think they are good enough for causal game if both players want to try something new.

Glad that you like it. As much as I wanted to add the "I'm a Teapot" trigger, I just cannot think of the profile for a teapot. And you guessed it right that my inspiration partly came from Beauty and the Beast (The other part was from my TRPG character who can summon animated object to fight).

Had a discussion with friends that there are too many humanoid models in Malifaux. So I start thinking about is it possible to design a keyword has no (or with minimum) humanoid models at all. And here are my ideas. Haunted: It is a keyword of different household items that possessed by spirits. All models in the keyword are floating objects surrounding by ghostly effect. The main mechanism is disappearing and reappearing to surprise the opponent, like a old school horror movie. After an enemy has attacked them, the spirit inside will flee away and leave over the object, and later on it can go back and ambush the enemy. In game-wise the keyword has 2 common Abilities: Both Abilities are not optional, so they could sometime hurt the crew. For instance the opponent can attack the Haunted model to force it burying and remove it from a scoring position. And the keyword has 4 boxes: The Core Box: Cabinet: It is the support title of the master, who mainly focuses on the bury and unbury mechanic of the keyword, but cannot bury itself. Floor Mirror: A toolbox model with drawing and Mimic. Furnace: The main combat piece. It can drop fair number of Scrap Marker for others to Rehaunt. Phonograph The core box minions who mainly support the crew by duplicating the Rehaunt effect. The Title Box: Iron Maiden The combat title of the master, who has a min 3 melee and a bury attack, which similar to Grave Goo with a bury upgrade. The buried enemy will be released once this model is buried. Bloody Maiden Spanish Donkey Dual keyword with Tormented. Mainly focusing on dragging enemy around. Iron Sculpture: Knight Armor The main tank of the keyword, whose main job is to protect other friendly models. Will summons smaller models when killed Gauntlet A tarpit models similar to the Clockwork Trap. Greave A scheme runner Table Manner: Dining Table Supporting model as a healer. Has a sub-theme of Poison Tableware The base combat minions. Good at doing multiple ping damage. Please let me know how you think about this.😀

I think the gamin and the bird are very obviously and the Toad Twin is most likely belong to Kin, so the Mad-Max car can only be Big Hat. The only issue is that the gremlins are not wearing any hat.

It depends. If you are playing in Wedge or against alpha crew then you would like to hold back Justice to counter the upcoming attack. Otherwise she can go first to hands out Focus before other friendlies spreading out. Marshal have no unpacking trick other than Walk so they are quite flexible regrading activation order at the first turn. Though there is a little trick that cheating a weak card in the initial flip and then activate the Scale first to draw one back.

I am not sure if Scorch the Soul is that similar to Another Round. Scorch the Soul does specify to deal damage, which is not following the condition rule. While the what Another Round does is to resolve the Poison following the condition rule, without dealing damage from the Action. The corresponding counterpart of Scorch the Soul would be Blood Poisoning. A more appropriate example would be Life of the Earth from Jedza. It is also resolving a game effect but not dealing damage directly. Will Jedza get the credit if a model failed the duel and killed by the Hazard effect?

Had a discussion with friends about the next errata, and suddenly came up a reworking idea for Mecha-Mah so would like to share here. Disclaimer: It is a crazy idea and by no mean a well-balanced design. So please do not take it seriously. So the new Mecha-Mah is: Df 5/Wp 5/Mv 5/Sz 3 12 Health Has no Action and only one Ability: And has access to the following Upgrades Arm Part Upgrades: Body Part Upgrades: Legs Part Upgrades: Please let me know how do you feel about it.😉

Family under Perdita2 are surprisingly fast with Family Value, A Por El and Trick Shot. And with Sly they can do Breakthrough as well. If I was playing the game, I would take Breakthrough and Death Beds(Strategy Marker), aiming at first 2 point of Strategy while more focusing to stop opponent scoring. Remember that Guild Mage, the honors member of Family, can drop Scheme Marker from any kind of Marker. Justice2 and Marshal are different story. 33 is a decent runner for Ley Line so they can plan for full point from Strategy. Lone Marshal can score the 1st point of Breakthrough pretty easy, but may struggle at the 2nd point so I would just forget it. They can as well hire Guild Mage for Scheme Marker dropping, as well as turning Shrug Off into a healing Action. You can hire the Pale Rider as a runner of Ley Line or Breakthrough, but do not plan for both.

A large part of Som'er being in slump is because of the current Gaining Ground. Playing in GG1, I believe, they will work just fine. The current GG is not friendly to bubble crew nor killy crew, thus Big Hat is double suffering from it. They need Strategy like Recover Evidence, which allows them stay at one point and shoot, to shine. And the change to summoned models and Strategy Marker is not helping them neither. The most reliable schemer of Big Hat was the Skeeter Obeyed by the Crier. In GG2, however, once Som'er lost both initial hire Skeeters he will just struggle a lot in scoring. So if the GG3 keeps going down the path of punishing summoner and slow crew, Big Hat then needs to rework to either break the bubble playstyle or have a better way to run scheme.

I used to run the web app in half of the screen which will show a single side of cards. In previous version I was able to use ←/→ key to switch between the front side and back side. However it no longer working recently. I found that the state of showing side has been change but is not refreshed immediately. Using ↑/↓ to go to previous/next card will show the correct side. Hope this can be fix soon.

Anya, unlike some other masters, does not have a "regular step" or "routine". She is an all-rounded master with vary toolkit that can accomplish different tasks based on the situation. And yes she is very squish as a master, so you would need to be very careful on those threats that can kill her in an Activation, which are almost everything. Always using Reposition or Union Buster to disengage before ending her Activation(unless you are playing against a range crew). Also keep at least one escape plan to rescue Anya out of danger. Winston, Emissary or Mikhail are my usual safety net. The tomahawk is good for sure, but Anya is not Nekima, and she does not need to swing her melee thrice a turn to become impactful. And Bleeding Edge is not necessary an offense tool(actually it is more a scheming tool to me). It is nothing wrong to use an Action to Disengage rather than attacking and then jump away with the bonus action.

Firstly I do agree with you that Anya and Syndicate is the best choice within your collect to play in Symbols. Anya is a speedy master with all-rounded capability to do every Strategy and Schemes. There is a great thread in this sub-section discussing the keyword that you may want to have a look. As for playing against Zipp, the most important thing to note is that Zipp is a control master who is mainly to disturb your plan and drain your resources if you trying to deal with him. So your best move would be ignoring him and going after the rest of his crew if you have cannot hardly counter him. Luckily Syndicate does have enough mobility to trace after the First Mate or Iron Skeeter. And if you really want to keep Zipp honest, then Sovereign is you best bet. Zipp cannot attack it with Up We Go because of Flight, and his moderate damage gun is not the best attack to deal with Armor. Sovereign also has high Wp to bypass the Simple Duels generated from Zipp, and high Mv plus Fly with Me can help tracing him after the Df trigger. Another point is that the main damage source of Anya is actually the Hazard effect instead of her Tomahawk. It passes through Df trigger, Stealth and Armor. And remember that even the Infamous models using Free Loot to remove the Scheme Marker, they will still suffer the Hazard effect from moving into it. Lastly, controlling and denial masters are always frustrating to play with. Especially when you are a new player that might feel you can do nothing against him. So sometime it can be useful to ask the opponent how to deal with him or what can you do to limit his game plan. You may even ask him to swap the crew with you. Playing the keyword yourself can help you understand it more and discover strengths and weaknesses that you would never found out in the opposed side of the table. I believe most friendly players are happy to help you improving.

You seems like to use LoL(which is not very good at balancing imo though) as an example to support your point of small adjustment. But even Riot would not release the balance patch they just made up in the meeting room to the public. Instead they setup a testing server to have players testing before release. And Wyrd is actually doing the same thing. The main difference is: There are more LoL games played a day than Malifaux games played a year. With a way bigger data and more simple way to gather it, Riot can make change more rapidly and precisely. Wyrd, with a smaller player base, would need a longer period, usually 3~4 months, to doing so. If they were decided to have 2 errata a year, then they would have only a month or 2 to gather feedback since the last errata before starting the next one, which is way too short for players to provide opinion without noises and biases. And don't even think of doing errata without testing. During a beta test, a model would usually be changed multiple times and in very different directions. You mentioned you like the Barbaros changes in this errata, but what you don't know is it took him 10+ versions before finalized to the current one. If we were releasing errata without testing, then expect seeing the folloing situation: 1st Errata: Yasunori changes to 9ss to improve its performance. 2nd Errata: Yasunori changes to 10ss because 9ss is too efficient. 3rd Errata: Yasunori slightly tweaked to increase competitiveness. 4th Errata: Yasunori reworks to becomes a high-end scheme runner to distinguish from Emissary and Dawn Serpent. 5th Errata: Yasunori changes to 9ss. 6th Errata: Yasunori is rolled back to the beater role because the schemer role did not work at all.

Another issue that more often errata would bring is it could change players' attitude to the game. Using my previous playing miniature game as example, where players used to discuss meta at the start of the game just released. They tried everything to make the underpower models work, as well as look for counters and solutions to overpower list. But things got changed since the compony started a testing cycle scheme, where they released new models and buffed existing models for a faction in every month. Players stopped thinking and instead just calling for buff and debuff afterward. Why make effort to beat a top tier list if is guarantee to be nerfed in next month? Why practice with the bad models if they are likely to be changed and become completely different in next few weeks? The player base of that game is quite different so I don't 100% think this would happen in Malifaux. But it is total a thing to consider imo. I don't want to see the community became something like "How to beat Kirai?""Wait for the nex errata."

If it was the case, then a model could move into an impassible terrain and end inside since it was not "moving through" the terrain.

To be honest I have no idea if it is an overlook or an intended change. Unlike the "another" one, this one effects only Geode Marker of Surveyor for now. Seeker has multiple ways to interact with the marker. While Syndicate does not, I think it makes prefect sense for a dual keyword model having some effects favoring one keyword over another. And given that Corvis and Winston have control effect to force enemies to take action when in base contact with the marker, there is, very limited but still, some synergy with the markers in Syndicate. The more important is that, I do not want to use these kind of "uncertainty" for own benefit. Union Buster with 2 hazard aura for irresistible 2 ping damage is already a powerful move, adding another hazard source would just make it worse for the opponent. Hence I would never play this way when I am playing Anya.

It's very true that killing a master with equal ss of minions is highly impossible. But even a master can hardly kill another master within an activation, isn't it? Assuming Von Schill is attacking another Von Schill. The accuracy is about 53.85% with stat 6 vs Df 6. Von Schill is doing 2.33 on his melee with Critical Strike, and 2.46 with his rifle per hit. So he is about doing 3.76 ~ 3.97 damage on the target Von Schill in an activation. Comparing to you math, I think the minions are doing a relative good job, and can be even better when they are against a lower Df and non-armored target.

I hate to tell you that, but the Geode Marker does not work this way. It is impassible so a model could never move through it, and a model only suffers hazard effect when it actually move through the terrain. Which means pushing a model into base contact with the Geode Marker would not trigger the damage. It would, however, if the model resolves an action when b2b with it.

I believe you would enjoy playing Ivan2 more if you like Colette. He plays more independent and lean toward the moving and scheming game rather than brawling. You can minimize the number of Umbra models in the crew as long as you don't use the summoning Plan (you still want Mr. Mordrake who is half of Ivan's mobility).

Isn't it too early now to talk about 2023?

They are quite straight forward that I don't think there is any "gotcha" you cannot read from their cards before the game. The most surprising moments my opponents had were almost when I tell them Ophelia can do 3/5/6 damage with Tar Bomb, plus maybe recently when Rami shooting with Clean-Up Duty at 22" ignoring LoS.

You would like to hire the Captain before any other models. Middle of the Storm is the best way to protect your models before engaging, and the Relic Hammer can pass through the keyword defense ability. Condition removal is also high on the list since the biggest damage of Kin does rely Burning on your model. And you would want to play Colette 2 over 1. Since Ophelia has a Mv attack that gives out Stunned. As for the schemes, your opponent probably would pick Breakthrough and Let Them Bleed. So you can plan ahead for it.

He is the buffer/amplifier in the keyword. Go Hog Wild is his linchpin. With the to the damage flip, the Wild Boar can complete with War Pig in the damage aspect. Means that you have an option of growing 3 Wild Boars instead of 1 War Pig. Giving to Gracie and Sow also makes them 3/5/6 beaters. Nudge 'Em On is also a decent tool. Giving to Wild Boar and War Pig for counting Armor, or to mess up with bubble crew. And, the most important part to me, his Good for a Laugh trigger is the most reliable card draw in keyword. I like attack Gracie with him for drawing card in the first 2 turns, where you can easily heal her back before the combat happen. All in all the Old Major is not an auto-include, but is very high on the priority list. And if you are considering Gracie to handle the frontline fighting, I would strongly recommend Old Major as well. At the very least he can be the back up beater when other Pigs were killed in late turn of the game.