grim_stoki

December's Wrath is a 50 Soulstone, Gaining Grounds 2 Malifaux 3rd edition event (https://www.wyrd-games.net/s/M3E-Gaining-Grounds-Season-2.pdf). Scheme and start pools will be announced closer to the event, but we will be using a combination of CaptainCon and LVO pools. 12 spots available. Sign ups below. Purchasing a convention badge is required: https://tabletop.events/conventions/polar-vortex-2022/schedule/3 FB group for the event where I plan to post most of the updates and announcements: https://fb.me/e/23g4EPIaW

I'm actually kind of bullish on showgirls post GG2: They are one of the cheapest Magical Training mules. Seduction went from a good action to a great action, with the potential to burn 3 net focus. Changes to presto-change mean low cost performers work better with the crew in general.

I'm in favor of this. Per GG1, the player with the higher standing should be the attacker, except rd. 1 where it is random.

I signed up. Anything else I need to do for now?

I tend to keep my tokens for damage reduction / revel, so I've never tried the big draw with ritual. Between arcane reservoir and soulstones, I don't find myself needing to fish for cards too often. It is nice when you have the odd tome to drop. I agree min 2 is just too low for a 11 stone model. And I'd much rather put focus or fast on Joss.

I've been messing around with Hoffman lately. I don't own any of the Guild constructs, so it's been an Arcanist heavy crew: Hoffman Mechanical Attendant Soulstone Miner (Magical Training) Steam Arachnid Swarm (Soulstone Cache) Mech. Rider Joss Watcher Mobile Toolkit I absolutely wrecked Wong with this crew, took a loss to Shenlong and Molly and managed a draw vs. Parker. Here's what I've found: This crew has a lot of high TNs you need to hit, 5s and 7s are very precious and hard to come by. I think you can expect Hoff to put fast on one, maybe two models per turn. Fast spider swarms are disgusting. 20" threat range is absolutely insane Mech Rider is meh. I initially took her to pull Hoffman around with ride with me, and serve as a damage soak for his protected. In practice, people very rarely target Hoffman, and there's enough pointless constructs in this crew (attendant, toolkit) for his protected. It's nice she can score Detonate on her own with Revel in Creation, but I'm going to leave her out except in very specific pools. I may experiment with using her as a scrap generator. Joss is a murder machine, with a potential min 4 irreducible damage.

It was ressers Yan. I'll try and remember the list best I can: YanLo Soul Porter Chiaki Manos Izamu Komainu Sun Quiang What was so hard was all his stuff was tougher, faster, and hit harder than mine. Between all the pushes from Yan and Chiaki and his leap, Manos was in my half of the board on his first activation. The table was set up such that I had a narrow alley that I tried to funnel his crew into, all while taking potshots when I could. Of course, Yan's ash upgrade gives his models insta-concelment and Sun would just heal everything. I ended up resorting to focused shots with my fire gamin onto Izamu so I could cheat in severe blasts, that was the only way I could get any damage on his dudes, and all I managed to kill was the Soul Porter.

I went and had a good time. One thing to keep in mind is roughly half the field was fairly new to the game, so I'm not sure how much of a representative sample is for the sake of evaluating the competitive scene. I didn't play the winning list, but I did play a Yan Lo list that was hella bent. I had no answers for anything in his crew, and thank my lucky soulstones I escaped with only a 2-3 loss. I'll need to start teching into that matchup hard in the future if I'm going to stand a chance.

It seems like she'd be good at Ply, where her mobility isn't such of an issue and her ability to hand out slow and paralyzed would be very useful.

I was referring to Collodi's attack, and that a cast 7 is guaranteed under certain (not uncommon) circumstances. Maybe I've lost track of this "thread?"

Barring an enemy red joker, you're guaranteed a success on a wp 5 model with an 11, wp 6 on a 12. You'll probably be cheating for the suit anyway. You have Corphyee too. It's too bad Assassin's gift is a (2), I think Oiran could really benefit from free focus. My experience with this upgrade is the delayed Obey is too situational to be used.

I took another look through her cards tonight. Most of her triggers are designed to do small amounts of damage to multiple targets, which in general is a recipe for disaster. Mei-Feng seems to have a bit of an identity crisis. She doesn't do damage reliably enough to be a beater, and her support abilities are not good enough to be a support master. She kinda does two things sub-optimally, and I think that's a tough problem to engineer with tweaks to her card / upgrades. I think you'd see her more if her attacks ignored armor / damage reduction. That way, the 2 damage she is typically doing is actually 2 damage and spreading that around multiple units becomes a slightly better play. It would also make opponents slightly more afraid of moderate damage coming from her.

Count me in

I usually take a single performer to help push Colette around. Manipulative can be a card sink for your opponent. They can really benefit from Colette's upgrade to hand out free focus, as their Hairpin attack has a nice severe damage. Mannequins are a bit more niche. If your opponent has a hard time dealing with armor, they can be a real nightmare. Their ability to throw scheme markers was much better in GG 17 when you could throw a scheme marker right into the middle of an enemy crew for Detonate the Charges. Oiran are very expensive and very difficult to use. It can be fun to get unbeknownst off and make it so a single model can't attack anyone in your crew 🤣 Ice Dancers, funny enough, I tend to avoid in Colette crews. I feel as if it's pretty easy to deal out scheme marker's with Colette and I don't need a dedicated scheme runner. She also tends to be too fast for an otherwise pretty static crew.

There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the universe. Chess will never be a solved game. Still, expert chess players starting moves are similar, because there are only so many openings in chess which result in a strong position later in the game. Malifaux, and miniature games in general are similar. The opening moves (crew selection, scheme selection) are going to be the similar from game to game. Certain crews and masters are going to give you an advantage. But the decisions that happen after that are far from perfectly known.