Thedeadclaw

You know, Marcus's activities are pretty tame compared to the rest of Malifaux, but honestly the Cult of December isn't terrorist, it's just a fanatical religious group which while bad isn't terrorism. I will absolutely concede that Ramos uses terrorist tactics, but the definition for terrorism has to be threefold. One, they're doing something to intimidate or terrify someone into doing what they want. Two, what they are doing to accomplish that result is illegal. Three, the person they are intimidating has to be a citizen, not associated with a police force, military, government or rival syndicate. So a lot of the things Kaeris and Ironsides do isn't terrorism for missing one or more of those points, and even Ramos is pretty inconsistent with whether he'll use those tactics. Ultimately I can concede that Ramos was probably a terrorist, but the Arcanist group as a whole? I don't think there's enough evidence to suggest other people in the organization were willing to use those tactics in pursuit of their goals. Honestly I don't remember the 10T story involved so I'll reread before I say something one way or another, but while I remember the 10T doing a lot of intimidation, but very little if any of it hit all three criterion if I'm remembering right. I did read the whole lore in about two months; I'm doing a more thorough read through now because I realized I completely forgot about huge swathes of events trying to cram that quickly lol, so it's honestly possible I'm just not remembering the things you're talking about with both of these groups, but I wouldn't by the whole call either terrorist groups based on what I remember of the lore and what I've gotten through so far on my more thorough read through.

I totally agree, Hoffman is great, but some of his choices have been questionable and unsympathetic at best. I actually really think he's trying to do what's right, but his own brother even hated the office he ended up working as the head of which isn't exactly a glowing commendation. I think he's definitely the most sympathetic Guild master though, for sure, because he genuinely is just trying to help people not get hurt. The Ortegas are kindof just... entirely unsympathetic to me. A lot of the Through The Breach modules suggest the Ortegas don't do much to help the homesteaders even when monsters attack (Amphibious Assault's story encounter comes to mind, but I'm pretty sure there are more). And like, they still gleefully kill off innocents for money. The gremlin hunt started because the gremlins were harassing carriages passing through their own settlement, which isn't entirely unreasonable. Regardless of what the Neverborn have done since (which is monstrous, admittedly, and part of the faction's intrigue), the Ortegas attacked them first. We have every reason to believe the Neverborn would have attacked anyways, especially the Nephilim, but the Ortegas established Latigo and attacked without provocation. This makes a lot of sense. I like definitely understand all of these, but for most of them there's another master with a similar theme I just like more. I think I get why people would like the guild at least though. That's just untrue lore wise. There's definitely a dark underbelly in the Aracanist smuggling ring, but it's absolutely not a terrorist group. They profit off of their group's own labor since they were the ones who mined the soulstones, and they use Colette's crew to make smuggling easier, sure. But there's nothing they've done to mark them as terrorists, unless I'm missing something. Sure, Rasputina has a weird cult, which is pretty dark. Yes, Ramos is a greedy slime ball. But overall the workers just want better wages and safer working conditions. There's a syndicate, but it's not a terrorist group for having protests or breaking smuggling laws. You can definitely argue that the Arcanists aren't good people by and large, and while I disagree I could see where you're coming from, but even if they are bad they're nowhere near what the Guild makes them out to be and they're certainly not terrorists. The Ten Thunders exclusively deal in organized crime and espionage, which is about as far from terrorism as you can get while still doing crime. Moreover like I said, the draw to the Ten Thunders is that you're playing a crime group. It's immersion so I get the appeal. I can't reconcile what the Guild canonically does with the idea of them enforcing the laws though, which makes it harder to place myself where I can see where they're coming from. I definitely can see what might draw some people to the Guild from a lore perspective, and once the new TTB modules drop maybe there'll be lore to change my mind, but I think it's just not a faction for me maybe.

As much as I want to like all of Malifaux, I've read most of the lore and can't see much to endear the Guild to me. Every time I start to care about Lady Justice and her righteous quest I'm reminded that the guild enslaves people and puts some of them to forced prostitution; every time I almost root for Nellie I remember the current GG wants to kill all people in Malifaux with magic. The other factions have a hook, you know? Neverborn lets you play as monsters trying to protect their home; Resurrections generally start out trying to save their loved ones from death or just survive as an undead themselves; Arcanists are mostly fighting for their right to exist and in some cases workers' rights to safer work conditions; the Outcasts have a variety of playstyles but are just people who don't fit in with society; the Ten Thunders let you play as a crime syndicate; the Gremlins are comic and fun and aren't as serious as most factions. But what do the Guild have? The description page for them even calls them a fascist organisation, they don't even follow the laws when punishing people (even ignoring how arguably unjust some Guild laws are), the profiteer off of the deaths of millions, they actively hunt down any opposition to their political order and they kill anything that already lived in Malifaux so they don't have to deal with it. So I guess I'm wondering why I'm supposed to want to play them. I have masters in four factions right now, and I'm hoping to branch into Arcanists and Outcasts with the Black Friday sale if they have the nightmare kits I want, but as much as I keep trying I just can't see what people like about the Guild to draw me into it. Of course, I realize some people don't read the stories and only pick based on aesthetics or gameplay, but for me I pick my masters based on the lore and then pick the models to support their style of gameplay the best.

I personally like to have a Teddy at the ready to summon against highly aggressive matchups. I just played a game last night where I barely kept Dreamer alive long enough to pull out Chompy Bits and win, and if I'd had Teddy with me summoning him would have blocked LOS and given some better protection early on. I only won by sheer luck as is, lol

I got my spouse the Nightmare Ulix box kit for their birthday last Saturday, so we hadn't opened it til then, but it only came with stat cards, no upgrades. Is that normal for Nightmare editions? If so, how can we get the upgrades without needing to buy the original box? I plan on getting (if they're available this year) Curiosity Killed the Cat, Winter Wonderland and Nightmare Tara during the Black Friday sale, so it'd be great to already know what I need to order if the upgrades just aren't included in Nightmare editions.

There are oceans mentioned in 1E book one when they go to the Kytherea Dow Ruins, but it's unclear exactly how far apart the Ruins are from the wilderness Marcus lives in. It's referred to as the sea though, so we can expect since it took about a day and a half to cross in a steam engine that it's only maybe the size of the Meditarianian at its smallest point. But there's no canon answer to overall size of Malifaux that I've found.

Hey! I haven't been playing the game for long but since starting in late July I've devoured most of the available lore and still haven't seen anything for Rocinante Benoit, the Ulix nightmare from Gencon. I don't know when the Caitlyn Abernathy lore was released last year, but I was wondering if anyone knew if there was any Rocinante lore yet or when we might see some? Obviously she won't be part of the main cast or books, but the lore for Mr. Cooper was one of the best stories, and I'm really curious how they'll make Rocinante fit into the lore!

Is that explicit confirmation that they aren't canonically together?

It's always down for the week before a sale. It should be back up late tonight or early tomorrow morning, prominently featuring the sale. It's been down since Sunday

Not at all to start a fight but the writer for Tara's story has on multiple occasions explicitly confirmed that they're together and Colette and Cassandra, who both confirm that they're both into men and women, kiss each other in a TTB module and iirc they do in one of the main stories too, which isn't really just friendly behavior, so they've both been pretty spelled out and are both confirmed to be lovers. (Just wanted to let you know because it's one of my favorite parts of the game and I wanted to be sure you knew they're both explicitly together, although I suppose Colette and Cassandra could have broken up offscreen at some point theoretically!)

It's also of note that there's at least two canonically gay couples in the game as characters you can play. I know it doesn't sound super important, but it's a big part of what pulled my spouse and I into this game! We hadn't ever seen a minis game do that and it means a lot to see a company make characters like you, especially when no one else does. Wyrd's been great from what I can see for a long time, and I hope they keep up the good work for years to come!

Honestly if that's an amount of money you don't get upset about I think you're fundamentally in a different situation than those of us who are miffed about it

If they'll be well balanced for competitive play what's the point of not including them automatically outside of the worldwide lore events?

No, I think that the people who are paid to design the game know what's best for the game and I trust them I've also seen enough games stagnate to know that they probably have a better idea what they're doing than we can and I can see what some of their reasoning would be for removing these specific characters from the game. If you want to actually talk instead of picking fights I'd be happy to but I don't think inane fights are really what this thread should be for so if you just want to be angry here I'm just going to let you and ignore any of that

I literally spent all morning upset because Collodi was going to be my first master. You get to be upset but lashing out at people isn't okay. I'm optimistic because I realize this is for the best; that doesn't mean I like it. Don't be a jerk.

That reads to me that it's a "if you know your friend only wants to run Nicodim let them run him, but as a TO be aware he's not balanced for competitive play" to me. I've done tournament organizing for other games and generally that's how things like Dead Man's Hand work, and even if it's not what you want it probably is the best option to make them playable without making them automatically playable.

There's a difference between supporting for casual and competitive play though. Lilith left the story for a while, and she's consistently dominated competitive play. The same happened with Nicodim. Removing them from ccompetitive play opens up more design space because the meta will be more open without a clear "best" master for their factions. We don't know what happened to Collodi yet, but I'm betting they're going to be changed into something else and reintroduced in another faction in a future wave, since change and growth seems to be the theme for this edition. (See Marcus and McMourning as the biggest examples.) And Ramos is rough, but it allows Toni to get a lot of his signature abilities tied lore-wise to him running the Union, and will make for some interesting choices for Wyrd! They could let him be played in The Other Side, and they can eventually bring him back with an entirely different playstyle. I get why you're upset, but it's just a change. It's not good or bad yet; we won't know until it releases. You can be upset and vent as much as you want, and you're more than justified, but at the end of the day you might end up liking this edition more and you just won't know until you try it.

I'm also curious if you'll update the Nightmare boxes and alt characters! I love Dr. Dufresne and Catelin Abernathy, and I'd hate for them not to get the new pretty card treatment! Otherwise this edition looks mostly great from what we've seen! (Can't say i'm too excited about Dead Man's Chest, but I'm sure my LGS will just make Dead Man's Chest legal anyways so I guess from a lore perspective it's nice!)

What happens to models that are masters now but won't be with release? I'm just about to buy into this game and want to make sure I don't pick a soon to be obsolete box set 🤣