M2E Ironsides

[retnab]

Speaking of Amina, she's finally coming out!  It's all the way in August, but she's nearly here to wreak glorious despair on our opponents!

[Mxbedlam]

Thank Gods, I've been using a really awful proxy for months now. 

[spooky_squirrel]

8 hours ago, Adran said:

I'm guessing its a safe way to do one damage to your models that you want Hand picked men working on. 

I do something funny and use the Malifaux Raptor for this purpose. It lets me peek at my own deck on a trigger (and with Shastar Vidiya Guard and cheating on defense I can then collect whatever I stacked to the top). If running two Shastar Vidiya Guards in close proximity to the Raptor, you can set up the trigger for the second guard as well.

[Adran]

On 2017-6-9 at 8:35 PM, spooky_squirrel said:

I do something funny and use the Malifaux Raptor for this purpose. It lets me peek at my own deck on a trigger (and with Shastar Vidiya Guard and cheating on defense I can then collect whatever I stacked to the top). If running two Shastar Vidiya Guards in close proximity to the Raptor, you can set up the trigger for the second guard as well.

There are 2 problems with this, firstly, you only get to hit 2 people for each Raptor, and secondly every now and then you end up doing severe damage on the Guard. 

If you're only going for 2 models that you want to damage, and don't mid the slightly increased risk of it not working, then you end up with a model you can use for the whole game rather than one which won't see the end of turn 3. 

 

[spooky_squirrel]

8 hours ago, Adran said:

There are 2 problems with this, firstly, you only get to hit 2 people for each Raptor, and secondly every now and then you end up doing severe damage on the Guard. 

If you're only going for 2 models that you want to damage, and don't mid the slightly increased risk of it not working, then you end up with a model you can use for the whole game rather than one which won't see the end of turn 3. 

 

There's always risks when I'm doing stuff with Ironsides. Last time I ran SVG/Raptor in Ironsides for deck peaking, Johan accidentally healed the SVG to full health with his Open Revolt (I did want to stay at 1 wound so that Hand Picked Men would be in effect). The risk of severe damage from the Raptor hasn't come out very often for me yet, but I also haven't had x turn up x severe cards very often.

The only real extra use I get out of this particular mix is using the SVG's ability to draw a card after cheating defense, allowing me to potentially cycle some off-suit or otherwise unusable cards to fish for cards. If I get the Rake The Eyes trigger and can peak at the top of my deck, it lets me stack for that card draw (or pitch the cards to cycle them out altogether). Outside of exploiting card draw mechanics and deck control? You're absolutely correct, the Electric Creation is a safer and much more consistent way to inflict some damage on everyone that happens to be near it.

[Sybarite]

On 2017-06-09 at 3:14 PM, retnab said:

Speaking of Amina, she's finally coming out!

Is she gay?

[Hot4Perdita]

Question about Ironsides: Her card says the Adrenaline +1 condition lasts for the rest of the game, however, it also says heal one wound and at the end of the turn and reduce the condition by one. Does this mean it is your choice whether to reduce the condition to heal or to save it for later?

[WWHSD]

5 minutes ago, Hot4Perdita said:

Question about Ironsides: Her card says the Adrenaline +1 condition lasts for the rest of the game, however, it also says heal one wound and at the end of the turn and reduce the condition by one. Does this mean it is your choice whether to reduce the condition to heal or to save it for later?

No. The condition (like all conditions) last until it says it ends or until something else says it does.

In the case of Adrenaline, it decrements by one at the end of each round and heals a wound. 

[Franchute]

It does not say "may heal". It is not a choice.

[Adran]

5 minutes ago, Hot4Perdita said:

Question about Ironsides: Her card says the Adrenaline +1 condition lasts for the rest of the game, however, it also says heal one wound and at the end of the turn and reduce the condition by one. Does this mean it is your choice whether to reduce the condition to heal or to save it for later?

The condition is not removed at the end of the turn it is reduced by 1 and she heals one. If she only had Adrenaline +1 then this reducing it by 1 to 0 will end it, but for higher levels they will stay. Its very similar to poison in typically only being removed by being reduced to 0 rather than an end time. 

[Hot4Perdita]

Thanks!

[Ka3aK]

Hey, guys! I've got a first run of Tony yesterday and it was tonnes of fun. But we've raised a discussion about has Tony use this ability to heal 1 wound and lower Adrenalin by 1 if she was unhurt and at full Wd at the end if turn? I said no, but what do you think about it? Thanks in advance.

[spooky_squirrel]

1 hour ago, Ka3aK said:

Hey, guys! I've got a first run of Tony yesterday and it was tonnes of fun. But we've raised a discussion about has Tony use this ability to heal 1 wound and lower Adrenalin by 1 if she was unhurt and at full Wd at the end if turn? I said no, but what do you think about it? Thanks in advance.

Looking at the wording of the ability, it is not optional. If she isn't wounded, she won't heal, but her Adrenaline condition will still reduce.

[Ka3aK]

1 hour ago, spooky_squirrel said:

Looking at the wording of the ability, it is not optional. If she isn't wounded, she won't heal, but her Adrenaline condition will still reduce.

Thanks! Sounds reasonable

[Treehouse]

Same thing with other actions across factions; for example the Neverborn upgrade 'Malifaux Provides' lets you discard a scheme marker to heal two; even if your not damaged, you can still discard the marker.

 

On Amina, I'm really excited to get her. Also, the new book will probably bring a new style for Toni. She might even go from underdog to the new hotness. 

[Douglas Scoundrels]

So Toni got ALL the presents in wave 5. Finally we have reliable Adrenaline management, squishy support protection, and a much-needed healing.

 

Steamfitters and the Medbot are welcome additions as well, providing a lot of much-needed defense to Toni's themed crews.

 

Initial looks at GG18 seem to be in her favor as well.

 

What are your initial thoughts? Build ideas? General excitement?

[retnab]

I think her HPM options weren't touched in the new upgrades, you're probably still going to want Frontline Leadership over Union President if she's staying in the back as that way you have the potential for discarding for Adrenaline if you want it.  The models on the other hand, wow!  Ox Mages getting Armor +1 is very nice.  Same with Cassie, Willie, Gunsmiths, Captain, etc.  Lots of our models can greatly appreciate a permanent Armor +1, and the Medbot is just a beautiful thing.  Code Red is so good for anyone with HtK it's amazing.

Her non-HPM options went through the roof!  Anyone who owns/plays vs Barbaros knows how insane that can be for area control, and with how hyper mobile Ironsides can be it's going to be pretty wild.  She's already super good at getting stuck into enemy models (hard to disengage from Ml 7) so Come Get Some from Frontline Leadership didn't add to that hugely in my experience, but getting Challenge off in range of someone with heals for example?  That's when we have some fun.  Vet Fighter is going to be basically stapled to her card.  I'm glad I'm not taking the Emissary in 100% of my lists just for the turn 1 Rush 'Em play, now it feels like a good option but not absolutely mandatory.

I think she came out way ahead this time, her upgrades aren't as flashy as Ramos or Rasputina's, but they're super good for her overall.

[Douglas Scoundrels]

Steamfitter is now coming in every crew. I think I'm going to run her with her two new upgrades and keep Runes. The mage trio is still great and I'm not a 'cruise missile' player. Emissary is probably going to be showing up because 4 Adrenaline on turn 2 activation is beautiful. Amina can make Challenge extra brutal as well.

[Mxbedlam]

I'm not sold on Steamfitter with her. It still needs scrap for the Armor +1 option which you have to discard 2 cards for but her upgrades really do make her much more of a threat on the board. I'm glad to see her "working as intended" now. 

[BFOmega]

Don't necessarily need him to generate the scrap, run Joss or a Arachnid and and a toolkit for 2 turn one (or Ferdinand/The Beast for 3), none of which are bad models, so it's like 3 stones for armor 1 on 2 or 3 people. Probably worth.

[Douglas Scoundrels]

Definitely worth it. Ironsides suffered pretty heavily from all the min damage creep. Now she's not going to get blended so easily.

[spooky_squirrel]

Ironsides with her Cache of 5 is definitely going to be a solid take into table-quarters strategies now. She has more room to hire (must spend at least 48 stones to use all hiring resources and flesh out cache; oh no!) and with her new upgrades and the Steamfitters she might be near-immortal. There will be very few things that will be able to tear her down in a single activation (assassination triggers come to mind), and her ability to issue challenges and control models on the table will make things incredibly interesting.

The upgrade that makes Adrenaline ticking optional is also a big deal. Now she doesn't need the Emissary along to get that going, but can still benefit significantly from it.

[Sybarite]

Must spend at least 48 stones? 

[Franchute]

On 26/08/2017 at 7:56 AM, Sybarite said:

Must spend at least 48 stones? 

I guess he means that, if you want to have 7 soulstones you cannot spend less than 48 soulstones on hiring and upgrades given that you already have 5. Didnt you @spooky_squirrel?

[spooky_squirrel]

For my intended tone "must" is a tongue-in-cheek, snarky thing. Oh no, I have 48 stones to spend to max my cache. It mainly comes about because there are some masters who only have a cache of 1 or 2, which means that if you're wanting to do anything with soul stones and them, you're choking down your recruiting pool a bit (44-46 stones on hires and upgrades to get a cache of 5-7). To play a 50 stone game with a leader that has an n stone cache, you can max out your cache while spending 43 + n stones on hires and upgrades. Obviously, if you don't care about maxing out your cache you can max out your crew. In Toni's case, she still has 5 stones doing that.

Looking at the wording in the core rules, it states that for encounter size it's an agreed upon limit; the maximum number of stones that can be spent in a 50 stone game is 50, but there's nothing that says you have to spend all of it. If you're looking for the full game and to get the most you can out of the scenario, however, it's a good idea to spend it if you have it.

So must isn't the right word if you're looking for a ruling, and I probably should modify the statement to make the snark a little more obvious and less dry.