Maniacal_cackle

One thing worth bringing up here is how damage is resolved. I think that if the damage happens during the damage step of the attack, it is pretty clearly part of the attack (in the same way damage from triggers is part of the attack). As the burning damage happens during the damage of the attack action (see page 34), I'd interpret this as being from the attack. To use the obey > falling damage or the hazardous marker example, both sets of damage occur AFTER the attack action is resolved (and thus the model that attacked can't claim the kill IIRC). So the precise resolution of the damage step makes me lean strongly towards it counting as damage from an attack: the damage occurs during the attack, not after.

@Ludvig solid advice for any crew!

Played some more games with Philip & the Nanny, and I'm definitely sold on the model. Anytime you need a tarpit P&N fits the bill. My opinions: Plant explosives is pretty much an auto take for P&N. Claim Jump, Harness the Leyline, and any other scheme that involves the centre makes me likely to take P&N. Turf War also makes me at least consider P&N, and a little bit the same for corrupted idols. Either of these strategies with one of the above schemes basically makes me autotake P&N. That is just about 55% of games where I auto take P&N, and I sometimes might for other combinations as well.

Neat list! What do you use Molly's AP for? And have you experimented with same list/different master? I wonder how McMourning would fare there.

Yeah, that looks like plenty! Another angle to consider is trying to swap crews. A good way to rule out player skill discrepancies is swapping crews and seeing who wins after a few games (although of course this doesn't account for learning curves of the crew, or some other factors).

Fair enough. I'm not really fully satisfied with your explanation, but I'm definitely not fully satisfied with mine either. I'd be happy for an opponent to play it either way, and hope we get some official clarification eventually. Just feels wrong a model can die, explode, and heal from exploding.

That's a fair point! Although the design of Misery seems slanted towards preventing abuse by chaining a whole bunch during one activation. This just seems consistent with that philosophy of 'only one misery per activation' (plus sometimes an extra with particularly good positioning). Although I've only theory-fauxed Pandora so far, so don't have any play experience to back up this being balanced. But if Pandora needs a buff, this wouldn't necessarily be what stands out to me?

Does it matter which aura affects it? If the opponent doesn't have a condition on one misery, I don't think they can pick that one. All that happens is the opponent gets one (and only one) misery occurrence, which you then choose between damage and movement, right?

Honestly for competitive play, the first thing I'd like to see is some kind of terrain guide or generator. Poorly placed terrain has decided some of my matches before they started (for instance, one time I flipped attacker and chose a forest that basically shut down my opponent doing anything to my support master Molly). So it is a problem if too much and a problem if too little! Would definitely like more guidance on terrain.

@Flippin' Wyrd George, how much terrain do you use? This edition is heavily balanced around terrain it seems, and when we haven't included enough, it ruins games. Nightmare needs to see you to make you fail willpower duels at long range, tormented needs to see you to drag you into whirling death ball. Don't know about Yan Lo. One factor to keep in mind for any discussion on balance, though! Severe terrain buffs some crews, and some crews are hindered enormously by blocking or dense terrain.

Just ordered my Dreamer crew! I'm looking to give a bit of a summary of the crews strengths and weaknesses to my club since not everyone has the time to read up on new crews. Would an accurate summary of weaknesses include: * hand vulnerability/resource intensive. I often will have to soulstones to summon and discard cards to keep my leaders alive, so pressuring these can hurt. * mobility. Many of the beaters in the crew lack mobility, and you can only daydream so many moves. * surgical strikes. The crew relies on some key synergies, and the master's 7 health relies on special abilities. If you can zip in and deal with those, it weakens me substantially. * lucid dream count makes me snowball hard. Either prevent the bonus actions early, or avoid me late game? * ruthless: terrifying is a key part of my survival strategy, so negating it hurts. * willpower: I can only summon models upon failed willpower duels, so be careful where and when you fail them. Thanks for all the tips so far! Anything else I should include?

On the recent announcement, they gave this info for the current boxes. Preorder box contents are subject to change, so I suspect they don't want to announce until the things are in boxes at the factory?

Also any chance of a "horsemen" henchmen that can take riders from every faction? If has been my wild prediction for the faction.

What info do we have so far? xD

Of course, ultimately I think play groups will have to decide which interpretation they accept and we'll need some sort of official ruling. What form does that usually take? Wyrd does FAQs, right?

Putting my interpretation aside for a moment, how do you reconcile this with the part of Timing right before damage: That's not even part of the sequential events section, it's just general ability timing. I'd see this as black blood 'happening' after all the damage applied to Nekima has been completed. Or are you suggesting that the wording of damage implies it is an exception to this general order? I see section 5 and 6 of damage merely providing some guidance on what order all the effects will happen in after damage is complete. It's a way to take a bunch of things that trigger from the same damage (black blood, demise, corpse marker) and sort them into sequential rather than simultaneous APNAP order.

@santaclaws01 thanks for that. To clarify, are you saying that the damage is resolved simultaneously (and they alternate between steps 1-6 for each model), or the damage is resolved in a nested fashion (that is, damage to the second model, which occurred after the first damage, is resolved first)?

@santaclaws01 perhaps it would help if I understood your interpretation. Can you give a detailed rundown of each stage interacting with the demise (explosion) and heal on kill? Edit: or point to an existing post, if you think an existing post covers it.

I think it is hard to tell. Skill is such an overwhelming factor in Malifaux games, I imagine it'd be very easy to not realise a crew is under- or over- powered. Particularly at such small sample sizes/so early in the life of the game, as noted above. "Balance" is also strange in Malifaux. A crew might be overall strong, but still has weaknesses. A 'weak' crew might still be the best pick for some strategies or opponents. So rather than looking at "balance", I would ask if every crew has something meaningful to contribute. And so far, I'd say yes. There is at least some combination of opponent/strategy/scheme that every crew I have seen is good against (for instance, Kaeris and her burning crew is good against things with damage reduction that doesn't stop burning, like hard to wound or incorporeal).

A key issue here is that multiple "resolve" instructions have been issued. Yes, steps 6a and 6c instruct you to resolve demise abilities. However, at this point you have also been instructed to resolve the damage that already happened. How do we manage multiple instructions to resolve different things? The sequential effects rule from page 34 (sometimes an effect creates additional effects. Finish resolving the first effect, and new effects resolve in the order they were generated). Also, an ironic side note: if we were using Magic: the Gatherings complex stack system, it would work out that a model could explode then heal. With the stack system you can add stuff to the top of the stack which causes all sorts of funkiness. While my interpretation is a little bizarre, I find the interpretation that requires resolutions within resolution a much deeper rabbit hole.

Also note... I think my system says that if Nekima dies, but black bloods something and kills it... She is still dead (she has damage in the queue, but no heal). If there is an official position that black blood will heal up Nekima from death, I think that'd be solid evidence I'm wrong. The initial question seems to accept it as fact that it works this way, so maybe I don't know something from earlier in the beta?

@Kharnage, I think the queue is self-evident from the sequential rules. If a crooligan triggers fading (remove a scheme marker) by teleporting, you don't remove the scheme marker until after the teleport. The fading doesn't happen until the current ability finishes resolving. As for demise (explosion), it works perfectly fine in the situation I described above: at 6c you measure from the demise model, figure out who it hits, remove the demise model, then apply the damage. Which is not to say I'm necessarily right. Just that my interpretation can resolve demise abilities, which seems to be the biggest objection. Although it raises the question of the crooligan and measurement (does measurement happen upon the discard, or upon applying the effect?). So if one accepts my system, there is room for ambiguity there (although I suspect it works out fine due to no directions to resolve fading before moving the model, unlike demise). And again demise (heal) abilities would not work under this system except 6a specifically includes language that makes them work. If an effect would heal the dying model such that it won't die, it is no longer killed (negating 6b-c). Note the language is future tense (if the model would be healed by an effect, not IS healed by an effect). If a heal is waiting in the queue already, you know it is going to live, so don't kill it yet. So again, I don't think there is a way to categorically say I'm right. But the demise objection doesn't really hold water, unless Im not understanding? Edit: to clarify with your example. You measure demise distance at 6c, and apply the damage at 1 (your 7). There is no 7, it loops back to 1. Well, technically I think it would go 6 > Nekima heals > 1 for damage to Nekima. APNAP order applies, I believe, so the heal happens first if Nekima is active (though on phone, so can't see rules for this one).

@santaclaws01, you're correct, I contradicted myself and found more errors. Hopefully this most recent working is cleaner and a better interpretation.

At a quick glance at how I worked through that, it seems like a good general distinction: There are modifiers, and things that affect numerical calculations. These apply as soon as relevant in my interpretation. There are effects (such as blacker blood dealing damage to something). These get placed into a resolution 'queue', and happen in a sequential order if the damage happened at different times, or in a simultaneous order if the damage happened at the same time. Note the implication: you don't actually know how much damage blacker blood is doing while sitting in the queue (this part surprised me until I wrote the last post, I expected you to know the number as soon as it was put into the queue).

@Adran thanks for that! Right, so I'll create an example scenario and run through that. I have no idea what the final answer will be, but let's work through it using my interpretation from above. We'll assume land mines, and a made up ability with a 1/2/3 damage flip following the Black Blood rules. Let's assume a few models involved: Model A hits models B and C with one attack action, which is going to kill them both. Model B is Buffed Nekima: has blacker blood and heals after a friendly model kills someone. Model C is something with landmine and an ability that heals it after it kills someone. Model A is going to die from the damage from the other models dying (will this then heal up model B or C?) So what happens? First up, we have the attack action of model A. It is dealing simultaneous damage to both model B and model C. That's all that is happening so far, so we start resolving those. How is simultaneous damage handled? "If multiple models suffer damage at the same time, resolve each step below on every model being damaged before moving to the next step." Begin working our way through the damage process (NOTE: each step occurs for model B, then model C, or vice versa). Models involved may spend soulstones to give the damage a - to the flip. We'll assume this to be irrelevant here - assume the models will die even at minimum damage. Flip for damage (again, whatever the result, we're assuming the models are killed here). Here the damage flip isn't an 'effect' or anything, it's simply checking a number. "When resolving" triggers that increase or add damage resolve at this point. Essentially, anything that determines what the actual damage number is applies here. Apply damage reduction - soulstones can be used here (again, the flip isn't an effect here, it's just checking a number). When resolving triggers that reduce damage apply here. Essentially, anything that takes the number from step two and then modifies the final result. NOTE: This may give two different numbers. This step is repeated for model B and model C at this stage. One might have armour, etc. The model lowers its health by an amount equal to the final damage amount. Again, note that this stage has to happen twice. Once for model B, and once for model C. Any effects that happen after a model is damaged or after a model is reduced to a specific health resolve. Blacker blood triggers. Damage from it goes into the resolution queue. Go through the killing steps a-d. I'm unsure if you do 6a for both models, then 6b, or 6a-d for one model, then 6a-d for the next. However, it shouldn't matter. At 6a, no heals happen yet (they haven't killed model A yet). Resolve any after killing triggers (neither model has an after killing trigger, just after killing abilities). This stage is meant for if model A has a trigger, I believe. At 6c, resolve any effects after the model is killed. Model C goes through this stage, and starts demise (explosion). At 6d, both models are removed. And so we have resolved the first set of damage. However, during the resolution of that damage, we gained other effects to resolve. Model B has blacker blood left hanging, and model C has demise (explosion) left. <EDIT> These both should probably be treated sequentially (since one happens in step 5 and one happens in step 6), but treating them as simultaneous here doesn't affect the end result. Thus, we start the process again. Model A may use a soulstone to give a minus to the blacker blood flip. The damage flip now happens (with a -, if applicable). There are no applicable triggers here, as no suits are involved with the blacker blood or demise. Apply damage reduction as before (again, no triggers apply, but this would be the stage for 'when resolving" that affect damage). Lower model A's health (for damage from both abilities). Any effects that happen when a model is damaged occur at this point. Now the four steps of step 6. Resolve anything that heals THIS model (Model A). Model A has no effects available to heal it, so nothing gets placed in the resolution queue (if it did have something, such as an ability that heals it off B and C's death, it'd get saved here). Resolve after killing triggers (again, no triggers in this scenario, so not relevant). Any effects that resolve after the model is killed (model B and C are dead and off the board, so they no longer get to heal at this stage). Model A is removed (unless 6a ended the process). I hope this helps clarify how I think it works!