Maniacal_cackle

What about the versatile models? Does anyone have good things to say about them? I've heard good things about Dead Rider (from the podcast), and I'm super keen on the corpse-marker minions for some niche scenarios (particularly 'dig their graves' or when you're taking Dr Mc, etc. Or both!). Also kind of like the idea of using the versatile person that removes insignificant on mindless zombies to deal with corrupted idols. Set up a summoning chain, and you could just dominate a table corner.

Some games are virtually decided at the list stage, so maybe you're justified in your concerns. Still, for a competitive game like this, I find it best to focus on what could be improved. You could have likely have improved at the list stage, but I'll ignore that as you may be model limited, and didn't know about the stats of your enemies anyway. Some suggestions/questions after reading your post: Were you taking advantage of terrain? Most boards should have plenty of terrain that lets you protect your guys from ranged by blocking LOS. Why did you move LCB forward so much? The enemy master got to use three of their activations on attacking! That is going to kill pretty much anything. Look at how you spent your resources the first few turns vs. how your opponent did. You spent a lot of AP moving and soulstones to prevent damage. Your opponent got to focus all their resources on attacking. The other day my friend put Dr Mcmourning (one of the tankiest master around) into melee range of my beater without any support. I activated my beater and dealt 6 damage to him, then next activation I moved my master and used two actions to deal 6 irreducible damage. That's what happens when you put your models in range of being attacked. They die. From looking over the Nightmare crew, they should be playing the long game. Lucid Dream means that you can be removing 5+ bad cards a turn? By turns 3/4/5, your deck is going to be insanely powerful compared to your opponent's deck. Your models have lots of regeneration, meaning that the longer they live, the more health they regenerate in a game. You should have been playing a game of cat and mouse, poking them down and forcing THEM to use their activations to move towards you. Your opponent literally couldn't score points without coming to you or crossing the board, so take advantage of that. The longer they screw around and fail to engage you, the more powerful your deck/crew becomes. Not to mention you had power ritual, so had a way to score points without going near them. Sure, the battle may have been slanted against you, and Titania might actually be a little bit overpowered compared to your crew (particularly for Reckoning, where killing power matters). But there's loads of stuff you can likely improve on. Games like Malifaux are all about positioning. Make your opponent waste activations walking towards you if they don't have a range advantage against you. EDIT: Another tip - in Reckoning, your insignificant models can be super useful. If you use them as a 'screen', such that they're in between the rest of your models and your crew.... Then your opponent can either waste activations killing them (which doesn't get Reckoning points), or they can ignore them and then you get to send them in and attack. Learning to use models to take the hits so the rest of your crew can surge forward and counter attack is an important skill.

Great podcast! Lots of great insights into Molly. I like the emphasis on securing objectives early, freeing up the rest of the game to disrupt. How do you deal with this against crews with superior board presence? For instance, against Kirai, I find she can cover a great deal of the board achieving objectives, and I get spread out a bit thinly trying to deal with her everywhere. Do you just hammer Kirai early and then clean up?

Sounds like Yan Lo is a good Master to pickup, in that he is good as a main or contributes a lot OOK. Toshiro in particular cracks me up!

A very interesting model! Thanks for that, I'll keep her on my radar.

Saduhem, thanks for the insights! I'll definitely try out P&N a bit more (seems especially potent in plant explosives for guarding explosives). Archie + P&N with one crooligan elsewhere on the table is pretty potent zone control. However, as a lot of those strengths are keyword-dependent, I'll leave them off the original list until more information is available. I'd hate for someone to pick it up based on this advice without a clear cut consensus!

Valedictorian for scrap/corpse markers makes sense. Also worth noting the entire Transmortis keyword is good for card draw, right? Nurse makes sense (for condition control/assist actions?) Manos and Datsu Ba for hating demise keywords? Is Manos better than Archie as a utility piece against other keywords? Or are the roles different? Archie's maneuverability seems superior (given he gets the mask on the stat, whereas Manos needs it from a card to leap?) Makes sense that a lot of the masters are strong enough! Are there any masters that are terrible out of keyword? And have removed P&N from the original post

Cheers! i've been meaning to listen to that. I'm just not good with podcasts xD Will listen to it this week, though

Have edited to correct that

Awesome, how do you suggest using him? Just as a beater? Fair enough! I haven't played them that much, but P&N have seemed quite weak to me so far. But their abilities seem pretty disruptive, I've been wondering if there's some solid applications for the model.

Cheers! I've only played her in keyword, so noted how much of her power came from her synergies. But if she's still solid regardless, that's great! I have edited the main post. Could you clarify where I'm wrong about Philip and the Nanny? You don't think they're potentially good out of keyword? Or just not as good as Molly?

The book gives examples: barbed wire, bridge, archways, walkways, buildings, fences and walls, fog banks, hills, obstacles, staircase, water, woods. I also want to design some like Soulstone mines (hazardous poison perhaps?), and other takes on hazardous terrain. As a related question, does anyone have a good method for determining what terrain to face? Different crews are vulnerable to different terrain, so 'by agreement' always feels a bit funky (though we're all amiable about it, I worry I unconsciously skew it).

Once you start considering going out-of-keyword, there's so many options it's quite easy to get lost! I thought it'd be helpful if we compiled a list of models we think might be useful out-of-keyword for other crews. I'll start with models from Forgotten I think will be useful out of keyword, since that's what I play. The good Archie: Archie is insanely good in some matchups due to being immune to conditions (for instance, against Kaeris he can't gain burning). He is also a hyper-mobile, hard-hitting unit. Throw a Grave Spirit's Touch on him, and he can regenerate 3-5 health a turn. He screams 'deal with me', but is hard to deal with. However, he does lose one major benefit - he is a great Crooligan beacon, which is lost if you don't have them on your crew. Needs plenty of cards in hand to keep its discard going. Forgotten Marshal: Can summon all of the Forgotten minions, and can give them a means of discarding cards to boot. Likely quite potent in some scenarios, but expensive (real $ wise), as you'd have to buy all three minion boxes. Rogue Necromancy: Similar to Archie, this is a mobile & hard-hitting unit that is a bit more specialised. Perfect to take against enemy crews that use poison, as the poison will simply heal up the RN. Needs plenty of cards in hand to keep its discard going. Molly: As FetidStrumpet notes below, Molly is a good option for card draw, marker elimination, and her triggers! The bad All the minions rely on synergies or discard or both to be full power, so are pretty bad (though could be taken in conjunction with some of the above, such as crooligans + archie, or Forgotten Marshal summoning them). As pointed out below, Philip & The Nanny are just a generally bad model. What are your thoughts on your own keywords? What can we borrow for other crews?

Molly (Forgotten) seems to be very good at corrupted idols. A crooligan with GST offers a high mobility dude for moving them around, and can easily do it first turn (move your other guys close-ish, crooligan teleports to it and interacts). Couple that with the fact that Molly is more willing to cheat cards/use up cards from hand on initiative, and it's pretty potent. Plant explosives I'm still struggling with. Getting the explosives in place is easy. Getting them in place and defending them while interfering with the opponent's plan is proving challenging (at least against Kirai). Turf War similarly I think she is likely good at, but not optimal. Getting the control points is easy; defending them is not. Molly relies on quite a few synergies, and spreading the crew over 3+ points can be difficult. That said, I'm going to try positioning myself in the centre of three points and see how that works. But I've not played that many games with turf war yet. I suspect she'll shake up to be good at it. Reckoning, Molly is decent at but not great. She can score points, but also gives them up pretty easily. The main combat unit (rabble risers) dies pretty easily. That said, there may be some exceptionally tanky lists that would be great at it. I'm thinking of trying something like Molly + machine, McMourning (out of keyword), Rogue Necromancy, Archie, and a few other units to round out the schemes.

I find this to be true, but for a different reason. On turn 2, your opponent still largely hasn't engaged you yet. Turn 2 is the last 'easy' score before every action has the potential to be disrupted by the enemy. So while you are likely only going to score 3 points anyway, scoring them early before your opponent can deny you is very useful. It also means that if you get an early lead (you get the point and your opponent does not), you can devote more resources to denying than your opponent can, creating a snowball effect. Yeah, the game snowballs incredibly hard! It is extremely punishing of mistakes. We end a lot of games on turn 3-4 concessions (largely due to time constraints). I'm not sure this is the case. Many games I play, the key is who is getting their strategy/scheme objectives off in a way that is hard to deny. Killing isn't that important in many setups, and so cards are less important as well. Killing is a means of achieving activation control (aka, stopping someone from activating), but getting your activations at the right time has been the central point of victory and defeat for me so far. I find that my opponent and I both set up for about 3-4 schemes that we MIGHT be going for (for instance, dropping a scheme marker in your deployment corner if you're on power ritual and can do this at low cost). There's quite a bit of back and forth, and often the second scheme is not revealed until end of turn 4. This means a lot of resources have to be used denying schemes that the opponent may not even be on. Bluffing is another thing that has been central to victory/defeat in my games, so I think if you're finding schemes are revealed this fast, your playgroup may not be considering the power of bluffing. Or your playgroup may not be very focused on denying (where you try to predict the ways they could score pre-reveal and then stop it when you can). Also consider scheme-baiting (have your first scheme be claim-jump and pretend to go for something like Outflank, but then when your opponent comes to deny you at the centre, you turn around and snag points for Assassinate). Overall, interesting hearing these insights into the changes! I've not played 2E, so enjoyed this post