Help choosing a first crew

[Xystophoroi]

Hello, I am an experienced wargamer (mostly 6mm historicals and some Bushido, the GCT version) but have never played (or even really looked at) Malifaux before. I've been flicking through the characters on the main page and come up with a short list of ones that looked interesting to me and was wondering if you could talk me through the choices, bit more info into how they play, are they 'dead ends' for expansion, key things I should know about then etc.?

I liked the look of

Neverborn - Titania : described as tanky and with cool terrain control elements, the autumn knight models looked cool, she's probably the one I am interested in the most

Neverborn - Pandora : sounds like control heavy playstyle interfering with my opponents models and the abundance of ghostly/spectres looked cool (do I have to use the baby model though?)

Ressurectionists - Reva : corpse candle models looked cool and they sounded like they could get tough with a Shielded ability and their Pyre markers

I probably consider Story = Mechanics > Models in order of importance

When I play games I like to play really tough tanky stuff and control heavy stuff - ideally both if I can and Titania seemed to do that from her description. I have no issues with complexity or not being 'competitive', I just really like having my funky combos working every few games so if they're too difficult to get to work in a real game with a resisting opponent then I'd rather avoid the frustration.

One other factor in making these three stand out was that they eschew the 'steampunk' aesthetic as that's not something that appeals to me (only zombies and post apocalypses appeal less)

Are there any other characters you think I should be looking at? Why them in particular?

If you have any advice I'd love to hear it. Thanks

[dannydb]

Titania and Pandora are both realy cool models. Both offer control in different ways and Titania is one of the more tanky crews in neverborn 

 

Reva is realy in an odd position this time around, her mechanic IMHO is realy clunky and her guys are not as tanky as they come accross as they shielding is needed to prevent the burning damage and for reva to bounce her attacks through 

 

I think if your looking for board control raspy and the new neverborn cyclops guy also do it quite well with ice pillers while the new TT lady does a lot of hand control would be the other ones I'd surgest looking in to 

[Xystophoroi]

Ah good to know about Reva then, thanks.

Which one is Raspy? And the Cyclops is Euripides? His set seemed like a giant bruiser, how does his control work?

[CD1248]

15 minutes ago, Xystophoroi said:

Ah good to know about Reva then, thanks.

Which one is Raspy? And the Cyclops is Euripides? His set seemed like a giant bruiser, how does his control work?

Raspy is Rasputina from Arcanists. 

Euripides' control comes from blocking movement by creating Ice Pillars, which his crew can then use for various effects (making even standing near them dangerous).

[dannydb]

Raspy is the ice queen from arcanists. 

 

Both her and eurpides work with ice pillers that are impassive terrain. A lot of their game play is putting them in the opponents way to disrupt their game plan creating choke points and slowing the opponent down where needed 

[Xystophoroi]

Cool, thank you both.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Caveat: I have only played one master (molly) and have just picked up the Dreamer, but have researched the crews a bit.

You can take any model from within your faction at +1cost (or +0 if it is versatile). As such, I'd avoid resurrectionists altogether if you hate zombies. You don't want to start a crew and realise that mechanically you really want some zombies if you hate fielding zombies (which I infer you do from your post?)

Otherwise, your playstyle would be a good fit for Molly, so having a look at her could be worthwhile if you do end up going resurrectionists. As an ex-journalist turned undead liberator, she has a neat story, and her control style of gameplay is pretty nuts. She excels at denying everything to do with objectives and schemes. And her lethe's caress punishes people for taking the same action twice, anywhere on the board in LOS.

For super tanky and durable, I believe McMourning's crew is pretty high up there for ressers, and ressers in general are pretty tanky is my impression. Neverborn are a bit  more 'glass cannon', but Titania/Nekima can still be horrible balls of death to anyone who come close and are reasonably tanky.

Pandora seems awesome, and for a ressurectionist equivalent I suggest looking at Jack Daw. He is a very similar mechanic-style, but uses swaggered (limits enemy movement) over  stunned (limits enemy bonus actions and triggers). If you like control heavy play, you may prefer the use of swagger/limiting mobility.

Also be aware that double master is considered quite strong, so it's possible you may end up finding there is some synergy where you play a Titania crew + a master borrowed from elsewhere. Titania definitely appeals to me, but I have steered away from her as I definitely favour the control style over the combat monster style.

You may end up wanting 2-3 crews overall. In Malifaux, you get to pick your faction/master/crew AFTER you know what the objectives and table look like, so you will sometimes want to tailor your choices to the situation. That said, you don't want TOO many options, as you really want to be an expert in every model you own, and they each have a lot of unique abilities.

If you like Titania, maybe give her a go! Here's how I would recommend going about starting the game (assuming people to play with), and after research and settling on a first pick:

1. If possible, proxy up a crew.
2. Buy up JUST the core crew box for your desired crew, and play some demo games with it. You'll get a playstyle down pretty quick.
3. Once you know the game, plan your next purchases. You may decide you want to swap crews (or even factions).

My purchasing pattern went: Molly's crew box, two more boxes for Molly... Then realised ultimately I loved Molly but didn't like the rest of ressurectionists that much, so have started to swap to Neverborn and bought the Dreamer's crew.

[Xystophoroi]

6 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Caveat: I have only played one master (molly) and have just picked up the Dreamer, but have researched the crews a bit.

You can take any model from within your faction at +1cost (or +0 if it is versatile). As such, I'd avoid resurrectionists altogether if you hate zombies. You don't want to start a crew and realise that mechanically you really want some zombies if you hate fielding zombies (which I infer you do from your post?)

Otherwise, your playstyle would be a good fit for Molly, so having a look at her could be worthwhile if you do end up going resurrectionists. As an ex-journalist turned undead liberator, she has a neat story, and her control style of gameplay is pretty nuts. She excels at denying everything to do with objectives and schemes. And her lethe's caress punishes people for taking the same action twice, anywhere on the board in LOS.

For super tanky and durable, I believe McMourning's crew is pretty high up there for ressers, and ressers in general are pretty tanky is my impression. Neverborn are a bit  more 'glass cannon', but Titania/Nekima can still be horrible balls of death to anyone who come close and are reasonably tanky.

Pandora seems awesome, and for a ressurectionist equivalent I suggest looking at Jack Daw. He is a very similar mechanic-style, but uses swaggered (limits enemy movement) over  stunned (limits enemy bonus actions and triggers). If you like control heavy play, you may prefer the use of swagger/limiting mobility.

Also be aware that double master is considered quite strong, so it's possible you may end up finding there is some synergy where you play a Titania crew + a master borrowed from elsewhere. Titania definitely appeals to me, but I have steered away from her as I definitely favour the control style over the combat monster style.

You may end up wanting 2-3 crews overall. In Malifaux, you get to pick your faction/master/crew AFTER you know what the objectives and table look like, so you will sometimes want to tailor your choices to the situation. That said, you don't want TOO many options, as you really want to be an expert in every model you own, and they each have a lot of unique abilities.

If you like Titania, maybe give her a go! Here's how I would recommend going about starting the game (assuming people to play with), and after research and settling on a first pick:

1. If possible, proxy up a crew.
2. Buy up JUST the core crew box for your desired crew, and play some demo games with it. You'll get a playstyle down pretty quick.
3. Once you know the game, plan your next purchases. You may decide you want to swap crews (or even factions).

My purchasing pattern went: Molly's crew box, two more boxes for Molly... Then realised ultimately I loved Molly but didn't like the rest of ressurectionists that much, so have started to swap to Neverborn and bought the Dreamer's crew.

Yeah not a fan of zombies so would avoid taking them. I'll have a read through on Molly, thanks for the heads up

I looked at the cards for Titania/Fae and in general they seemed to have an ability to add a '-' to damage checks and a few had 'armour+1' is this what makes them tough and durable? I don't really have a reference point for what is considered a poor/average/good/great stat yet!

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 hour ago, Xystophoroi said:

Yeah not a fan of zombies so would avoid taking them. I'll have a read through on Molly, thanks for the heads up

I looked at the cards for Titania/Fae and in general they seemed to have an ability to add a '-' to damage checks and a few had 'armour+1' is this what makes them tough and durable? I don't really have a reference point for what is considered a poor/average/good/great stat yet!

Attack actions basically happens in the following order:

• Sometimes a preliminary check to see if you can attack, like with terrifying. Flip a card, hit a high enough number, cheat a card from your hand to pass if you want.
• An opposed duel, where both you and your opponent flip and add your stat. You can both cheat, and this is the most important duel to win.
• If that succeeds, you get a damage flip (usually with some - modifiers if the above duel was close, or if you add it via an ability like Hard to Wound on Titania).
• This damage is sometimes reduced (for instance, armour X reduces it by X, to a minimum of 1.

Another thing to note is that a - can be really important, because if a duel has a minus, you can't cheat on it. This is a critical way to stop people from doing maximum damage by cheating a high card. Any minus means they have to live with the cards they flip.

So ways to be 'tanky', listed in order of effectiveness, I would rate as:

• Mobility, large engagement ranges, and other methods of simply being too far away for them to actually attack you.
• Anything that gives a minus to hit, like concealment against ranged attacks or built in abilities. These are rare.
• Anything that gives a minus to the damage flip. Stopping them from being able to cheat on the damage flip is important (if someone is hitting you for 3/4/6 damage, it sucks to take the 3, but you really want to stop it from being a 6).
• Large health pools coupled with good regen/self-healing.
• Various reduction abilities (incorporeal, armour, etc).
• Large health pools.

Titania brings to the table: mobility, concealment (from markers), hard to wound, cruel disappointment (damage is moderate instead of severe), and armour you say?

So as you can see, there's a lot of ways for her to mitigate damage built in, and if you play her well, it mitigates even more damage. With move 6, flight, and 3 actions per activation (because she's a master), she's really only being engaged if she intends to be engaged or the enemy has super mobile hitters. The ability to pick your battles (made even stronger by her concealment abilities) will be a potent combination.

NOTE OF CAUTION: The game isn't only about combat, and Titania is fantastic for a control-style for combat, but keep in mind 'control' in malifaux often means denying scheme markers, strategy actions, and scoring victory points. Titania's main method of doing that is killing stuff as far as I know (someone else may know better).

So make sure when you say you want a 'tanky and controlling' master, the style of control suits you. But it sounds to me like you're pretty confident about Titania. If I were you, I'd buy her core box, take her for a spin, then decide if you want to commit to her and buy more models or buy a different core box. The great thing about Malifaux is it is super easy to trial a crew by purchasing the core box.

[Xystophoroi]

3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Attack actions basically happens in the following order:

• Sometimes a preliminary check to see if you can attack, like with terrifying. Flip a card, hit a high enough number, cheat a card from your hand to pass if you want.
• An opposed duel, where both you and your opponent flip and add your stat. You can both cheat, and this is the most important duel to win.
• If that succeeds, you get a damage flip (usually with some - modifiers if the above duel was close, or if you add it via an ability like Hard to Wound on Titania).
• This damage is sometimes reduced (for instance, armour X reduces it by X, to a minimum of 1.

Another thing to note is that a - can be really important, because if a duel has a minus, you can't cheat on it. This is a critical way to stop people from doing maximum damage by cheating a high card. Any minus means they have to live with the cards they flip.

So ways to be 'tanky', listed in order of effectiveness, I would rate as:

• Mobility, large engagement ranges, and other methods of simply being too far away for them to actually attack you.
• Anything that gives a minus to hit, like concealment against ranged attacks or built in abilities. These are rare.
• Anything that gives a minus to the damage flip. Stopping them from being able to cheat on the damage flip is important (if someone is hitting you for 3/4/6 damage, it sucks to take the 3, but you really want to stop it from being a 6).
• Large health pools coupled with good regen/self-healing.
• Various reduction abilities (incorporeal, armour, etc).
• Large health pools.

Titania brings to the table: mobility, concealment (from markers), hard to wound, cruel disappointment (damage is moderate instead of severe), and armour you say?

So as you can see, there's a lot of ways for her to mitigate damage built in, and if you play her well, it mitigates even more damage. With move 6, flight, and 3 actions per activation (because she's a master), she's really only being engaged if she intends to be engaged or the enemy has super mobile hitters. The ability to pick your battles (made even stronger by her concealment abilities) will be a potent combination.

NOTE OF CAUTION: The game isn't only about combat, and Titania is fantastic for a control-style for combat, but keep in mind 'control' in malifaux often means denying scheme markers, strategy actions, and scoring victory points. Titania's main method of doing that is killing stuff as far as I know (someone else may know better).

So make sure when you say you want a 'tanky and controlling' master, the style of control suits you. But it sounds to me like you're pretty confident about Titania. If I were you, I'd buy her core box, take her for a spin, then decide if you want to commit to her and buy more models or buy a different core box. The great thing about Malifaux is it is super easy to trial a crew by purchasing the core box.

Thank you for that detail, very helpful. I’ll probably take that advice and pick up Titania.

but before I do can someone explain how Pandora, Euripides and Rasputinas style differs? 

a lot of the talk has been about the named character specifically but how much can your supporting crew members let you diversify or reinforce?

Far has the autumn knights and trees that seem tough while also having wolves which seem to bring a faster and different dimension, Schemes for example seem to be their order of business.

[Adran]

Hello and welcome

M3 has just started, and people are getting used to it, so I would expect a wide range on answers, some that seem contradictory to other answers, because no 2 people play their crews the same way.

As you have seen most people talk about the leader as a general code for their Keyword crew. So People talk About Titania, they are probably talking  about the Fae crew lead by Titania. You can often build crews that don't fit the description that people give (As you have pointed out there are slow and durable fae as well as fast fae. A list built around Knights and Waldgiests will play very differently to one built around Bultungin and Rogarou despite them both being a Titania list.

Titania herself is fairly durable, and fast moving. She makes life around her good for her crew and bad for her opponents crew. I'm not sure  I would have described her as controlling, but others might. Hers crews main trick is to make Underbrush markers around the board, which slow down most crews trying to walk through them, and also can block line of sight. The crew often will also use these markers to increase their damage output. There is also a little amount of enemy movement tricks which help control them as well.

Rasputina (arcanist) and Euripidies both make use of Ice pillars, but use them in different ways, even though they are the same impassible and blocking pillars.  

Rasputina uses the pillars to make models near them slow, and she can also use them to draw line of sight and range for her actions, allowing her to attack large amounts of the board whilst remaining safely hidden. Her box crew is Ice gamin and golems who will also make use of the ice pillars but are very slow. She does have some faster moving models in her keyword.

Euripides I've not seen used, so this is just the reading of the cards. He is more about Deck manipulation, and can re-order the top of his deck as well as potentially use the cards in the discard pile again. the Ice pillars get used as weapons and mobility boosts. The crew looks to be filled with giant beaters.

Pandora . Her crew plays around with conditions, with Stunned being the main condition that prevents triggers being announced, and restricts bonus actions performed. She can move the enemy wround as they gain these conditions, and use the conditions to help her crew win duels. Pandora is relatively durable, but her crew less so from what I've seen. You don't have to use Baby Kade

Reva. From what I've seen I would have said she is quite durable, and her crew can also be. Her crew all heal from other models dying, and her corpse candles are good at dying and she can bring one back each turn. She makes use of funeral pyres, which set fire to  any model that moves through them, or takes actions whilst in them. You havev  to be a little careful as the pyre markers can also set fire to you ., but the crew has several ways to mitigate this burning damage, meaning that in the battle of attrition, it hurts them less that the opponent.

 

I assume you've looked

https://www.wyrd-games.net/titania for a brief summary on the master and keyword models.

You can also hire outside of the keyword models using models of the faction at a slight extra cost, but it can lead to some interesting and slightly unexpected combinations. (My regular opponent likes taking Anna lovelace in his Reva crews because she can blow up the corpse candles with one of her actions, potentially causing damage and debilitating conditons to several enemies at once, and the corpse candles are a fairly renewable resource to allow her to do this every turn. )

[Xystophoroi]

2 hours ago, Adran said:

Hello and welcome

M3 has just started, and people are getting used to it, so I would expect a wide range on answers, some that seem contradictory to other answers, because no 2 people play their crews the same way.

As you have seen most people talk about the leader as a general code for their Keyword crew. So People talk About Titania, they are probably talking  about the Fae crew lead by Titania. You can often build crews that don't fit the description that people give (As you have pointed out there are slow and durable fae as well as fast fae. A list built around Knights and Waldgiests will play very differently to one built around Bultungin and Rogarou despite them both being a Titania list.

Titania herself is fairly durable, and fast moving. She makes life around her good for her crew and bad for her opponents crew. I'm not sure  I would have described her as controlling, but others might. Hers crews main trick is to make Underbrush markers around the board, which slow down most crews trying to walk through them, and also can block line of sight. The crew often will also use these markers to increase their damage output. There is also a little amount of enemy movement tricks which help control them as well.

Rasputina (arcanist) and Euripidies both make use of Ice pillars, but use them in different ways, even though they are the same impassible and blocking pillars.  

Rasputina uses the pillars to make models near them slow, and she can also use them to draw line of sight and range for her actions, allowing her to attack large amounts of the board whilst remaining safely hidden. Her box crew is Ice gamin and golems who will also make use of the ice pillars but are very slow. She does have some faster moving models in her keyword.

Euripides I've not seen used, so this is just the reading of the cards. He is more about Deck manipulation, and can re-order the top of his deck as well as potentially use the cards in the discard pile again. the Ice pillars get used as weapons and mobility boosts. The crew looks to be filled with giant beaters.

Pandora . Her crew plays around with conditions, with Stunned being the main condition that prevents triggers being announced, and restricts bonus actions performed. She can move the enemy wround as they gain these conditions, and use the conditions to help her crew win duels. Pandora is relatively durable, but her crew less so from what I've seen. You don't have to use Baby Kade

Reva. From what I've seen I would have said she is quite durable, and her crew can also be. Her crew all heal from other models dying, and her corpse candles are good at dying and she can bring one back each turn. She makes use of funeral pyres, which set fire to  any model that moves through them, or takes actions whilst in them. You havev  to be a little careful as the pyre markers can also set fire to you ., but the crew has several ways to mitigate this burning damage, meaning that in the battle of attrition, it hurts them less that the opponent.

 

I assume you've looked

https://www.wyrd-games.net/titania for a brief summary on the master and keyword models.

You can also hire outside of the keyword models using models of the faction at a slight extra cost, but it can lead to some interesting and slightly unexpected combinations. (My regular opponent likes taking Anna lovelace in his Reva crews because she can blow up the corpse candles with one of her actions, potentially causing damage and debilitating conditons to several enemies at once, and the corpse candles are a fairly renewable resource to allow her to do this every turn. )

 

Thank you for the breakdown.

I'm going to go and see if I can find a V3 version of the crew box

[Mycellanious]

On 7/29/2019 at 2:00 AM, Xystophoroi said:

Yeah not a fan of zombies so would avoid taking them. I'll have a read through on Molly, thanks for the heads up

I looked at the cards for Titania/Fae and in general they seemed to have an ability to add a '-' to damage checks and a few had 'armour+1' is this what makes them tough and durable? I don't really have a reference point for what is considered a poor/average/good/great stat yet!

For some reference:

Statwise, 4 is poor, 5 is average, 6 is good, 7 is great.

For damage tracks, 2/4/5 is solid / average. A term you will see thrown around a lot is "min 3," which just means if the model hits it will do a minimum of 3 damage before reduction; the damage track would look like 3/4/5. Models with min 3 attacks are powerful, because 5/6 wounds (max hp) is average in this game. Min 3 models can kill many things with 2 actions (so 1 activation) as opposed to 4 actions

[Xystophoroi]

On 7/31/2019 at 6:23 AM, Mycellanious said:

For some reference:

Statwise, 4 is poor, 5 is average, 6 is good, 7 is great.

For damage tracks, 2/4/5 is solid / average. A term you will see thrown around a lot is "min 3," which just means if the model hits it will do a minimum of 3 damage before reduction; the damage track would look like 3/4/5. Models with min 3 attacks are powerful, because 5/6 wounds (max hp) is average in this game. Min 3 models can kill many things with 2 actions (so 1 activation) as opposed to 4 actions

Also good to know, thank you.

My crew arrived in the post. If I used 30mm/40mm/etc. different bases rather than the ones provided would that cause issues?

[Yew Arcane]

4 minutes ago, Xystophoroi said:

Also good to know, thank you.

My crew arrived in the post. If I used 30mm/40mm/etc. different bases rather than the ones provided would that cause issues?

As long as the base size is the same, it doesn't matter. I've used resin bases as well as metal inserts.

[Xystophoroi]

13 minutes ago, Yew Arcane said:

As long as the base size is the same, it doesn't matter. I've used resin bases as well as metal inserts.

Good to know