WWHSD

With Hard Worker and Implacable Assault on the Rail Workers requiring a discard it seems like the extra card from Arcane Reservoir will almost always come in handy.

Oh Snap! I had assumed that Emberling was a construct like the Fire Gamin was. The order I had laid out didn't seem like it was particularly efficient but it seemed like a way to make something happen if you really wanted to Assimilate Railwalk.

If I'm reading "Assimilate" correctly it's a 0 action and the action you choose has to cost 1AP but Lazarus doesn't spend an AP on it. If that's the case then using Mei Feng and Sparks lets him Auto Fire at something 22 inches forward from where he starts. It costs other models 3 AP (4 if you count the Fast that goes to Lazarus instead of someone else) to get him there. Emberling drops scrap and moves 5 inches forward. Sparks makes Mei Feng a construct using the scrap dropped by Emberling and gives Lazarus Fast. Lazarus Railwalks to the far side of Emberling. Uses the AP from fast to walk into position. He discards a card and Auto Fires with his remaining AP.

Railwalking Lazarus seems like it would be most useful as a way to fall back while engaged as opposed to using it to close distance.

Lazarus doesn't get to declare triggers on Assimilated abilities so he only gets a single jump with Railwalk.

The 0ss Mage upgrades seem like they are probably better than Imbued Protection. Using Imbued Protection instead of one of the Mage wards is going to make the your weakest Mage the hardest Mage to kill. Is there any real advantage to taking Imbued Protection other than being able to say that you spent all of your soul stones? If you are discouraging your opponent from attacking the last model that they wanted to attack anyways, it doesn't seem like it's serving much of a purpose to me.

Mei Feng has Thunderous Smash which gives her Jackhammer kick a trigger that clears all corpse, scheme, and scrap markers in a 3 inch radius.

Yeah, I get that I'm handicapping myself a bit by not buying the optimal models in faction for a certain role. At least at this point, sticking to models I like is more important to me than always getting the most effective models. I'm planning on picking up Ironsides and Sandeep eventually so getting the Wind Gamin would make sense. Fluffwise they go with The Captain and Sandeep kind of wants the full range of gamin as options to summon.

Assuming that I never get any beasts or any showgirls other than Carlos, what models are going to be my best scheme runner options? I like MS&U and Foundry but I don't care for the rest of the Arcanist faction all that much.

I think the points can go under 20 but the number of models must equal 4.

In addition to what I have in that crew I have the Ramos Box + Electrical Creation + Arachnid Swarm. Would it make sense to drop a Rail Worker (or two) and run Steam Arachnids instead as scheme runners?

I'm just getting started and it seems like I'm probably going to be better off picking a fairly static crew and getting good with that first instead of trying to tailor my crew to the particular schemes, strats, and opponents that will be in each match. That said, I'd like to have an idea of what my chosen crew will be good at and if there's anything that they are so bad at that I need to have a fallback crew ready to handle. Mei Feng (Vapormancy, Seismic Claws, and Arcane Reservoir) Kang (Hard Worker, People's Champion) Emberling Sparks Mechanized Porkchop 3 x Rail Worker Mei is left with a 5 stone cache. I'm tempted to move Hard Worker onto Sparks instead of Kang just to spread the upgrades around but Kang seems like he'll usually stay on the board longer. The crew seems fairly straightforward to run without a bunch of fiddly stuff that needs to happen in the right order so that the crew can do its thing. The crew has 8 activations and every model is significant and able to interact. I'm not going to overwhelm anyone with an activation advantage but it seems like I won't be at much of a disadvantage against anything but spammy summoning crews. Kang and the Rail Workers seem like they'll be good at holding a position and in some situations they can be pretty killy but they are kind of on the slow side. Outside of Mei, there isn't a lot of movement schenigans that the squad is capable of. Sparks is able to put Fast on everyone but Mei and Kang (unless Sparks makes Kang a construct) so that mighy help out a little bit with the speed. Are there any GG2017 schemes and strats that this crew will be frustratingly bad at?

Throw a couple of upgrades on Joss. Warding Rune on Joss should almost be an automatic take on Joss since you have the mages. Then take either Imbued Protection or Arcane Resevoir depending on preference. That puts you at 18 points. Do unspent points go into the soulstone cache in Henchmen Hardcore?

All of the TtB products are just books, right? They aren't campaign box sets that come with minis and other stuff, are they? They minis were just available from special events. Is there a list anywhere of all of the alternate models in Malifaux?

I hope that there's a good reason to pay 11 points to use her a mercenary because I think she's got a cool looking model. I'd much rather use her than the dopey looking Johan. It's too bad that I can't use her model and his stat card.

Thanks. That makes sense. It seems like having Bayou Two Card is almost as good as having a + flip but not quite.

I just picked up Mechanical Porkchop and am not exactly sure if I understand exactly how Bayou Two Card works. If I'm reading Bayou Two Card correctly it works like this: - You can only use it when you'd normally be allowed to cheat. - You are stuck with whatever you flip if you do use it. Am I right about how it works? It seems like it's mostly useful when you've got a crappy flip and don't care about the results enough to cheat from your hand (or if you don't have a good enough card in hand to cheat with) but not something that you'd use if you really need to succeed.

Is that an alternate Joss?

Is there a Facebook group or anything for Malifaux players in San Diego? I'm in the San Diego area and would like to be passionately nurtured.

Holy shit, that's a beautiful paint job. I don't understand how you guys get that level of detail when painting. I'm just happy when I manage to keep the color that I'm using for skin off of the armor and vice versa. Thanks for the response. I'm just starting to mess around with mixing paints to get different colors so it's probably a little above my skill level right now but I'll give it a shot and see how things turn out.

I'm in the San Diego area.

Well, I hope I like her. I have yet to play a game of Malifaux. I've just been assembling and painting models and reading through the rule books. I guess one of these days I'll need to find someone to play with.

Is this sale at GenCon or is it on the Wyrd website?

I didn't realize that those were two different icons. Thanks for the clarification. Okay, that was my line of reasoning but wanted to make sure that my understanding was correct.

Looking at the different master boxes, I'm not that crazy about Marcus, Colette, or Rasputina so I'll probably avoid them (at least until I don't have anything better to buy/paint). It looks like they've got some mechanically cool things going on with some of their models but I'm not really into their theme or aesthetics. Sandeep looks like a cool master to play but looks like he'll be pricey to get into (I'll probably want Oxfordian Mages and at least a few other types of gamin). Ironsides looks like a master that I might like but it seems like there's a lot of overlap with Mei Feng. The rest of her box looks good to me though. The Mages seem like they'll be useful in most crews if I need range or a way to apply slows. The Captain probably gets beat out by Joss in most lists but seems like he could end up being fun in some schemes. Kaeris is a cool looking model. She's got gamin for Sandeep and Firestarter might see some use with Mai Feng but I'm not really excited about anything in her box. I'll probably get her once I feel confident in my painting. As for things that aren't in master boxes, Johan seems useful but I'm not crazy about the model. If I could find a Johana for a reasonable price it would definitely be my next purchase. I was browseing through all the Foundary stuff and am really liking the looks of Sparky and Mechanical Porkchop. They're useless to Ramos but I like the way they models look and mechanically they seem like they'd be fun in a Mei Feng crew.