First Leader for a Friend

[Democritus]

Hey all,

I've played Malifaux for a while, but my friend is hoping to get into the game and had a few questions about the other (non-Gremlin) factions. He doesn't have a lot of experience playing wargames, but has played a lot of MTG. His first preference would be leaders/factions that play like combo decks, such as Storm. Storm in particular works by spending the early turns setting up a combo, and then suddenly winning the game in one turn once you get all your pieces in order. I'm guessing there isn't anything exactly like this in Malifaux as its not very interactive with the opposing player, but are there any masters that really rely on spending the early game, say, buffing themselves so as to blow the opponent away late game?  Or if that's still too specific, what would you recommend as the more combo-heavy masters? 

Thanks for the replies!

 

 

[Ogid]

mmm... Malifaux is a very dinamic game; there is no style that spend most of the game Haka Dancing and then suddenly you win, but there are probably some mechanics related that he may enjoy:

• Summoners: They bring extra models to the table, so each turn they gain more power.
• Scaling masters: Weak early game, but they gain more power than the average master each turn (usually summoners, but not always)
• Masters that use conditions/tokens to deal damage: Less straightforward and require set up, but it hurts when the set up is done.
• Keywords that rely in inner synergies and complex interactions: Individually not the most powerful models, but when all is working together it's an opressive machine.
• Keywords/Factions relying in conditions: Buffs for your models or debuff theirs.

For what you said, the top 3 masters in these factions for that:

• Thunders: Asami (summoner), Yan-Lo (Scaling master, minor summoning) and Lynch (inner synergies and damage through tokens).
• Outcast: Tara (summoner and inner synergies), Jack Daw (inner synergies, conditions), and Hamelin (inner synergies and damage through tokens).
• Resers: Jack Daw, Yan-Lo, and a few summoners (Kirai is the standard summoner of the faction tho).
• Neverborn: Dreamer (Summoner and scaling master), Pandora (inner synergies, conditions), Marcus (buff through upgrades)
• Arcanists: Marcus, Ironsides (inner synergies)m Sandeep (summoner and inner synergies)

Those are the more fitting with what you say; the strongest scalling masters are in my opinion Yan-Lo and Dreamer (but that means they are also weaker than average early in the game and have some other disadvantages). It's also worth to note Riders who are powerful models with an scaling mechanic, those are in RES, NVB, ARC and GUI (the Guild one is the one with the most powerful pulse attack, but there are few strong scaling mechanics in that faction). Another point are the non-master summoners, not as powerful as the master summoners but they can still add an extra scaling mechanic to any crew; those are in RES (Toshiro, forgotten marshal and all the zombie summoners: Asura, Mortimer, Rider, Emissary...), NVB (Widow Weaver, Vasilisa), TT (Minako).

I've agruped it by factions because the game encourages to play masters from the same faction (versatile pool, out of keyword hires...); so I'd consider both the masters he likes and if there are also other masters in that faction he enjoys.

I'd say RES has a higher number of these mechanics, and they have also Yan-Lo; so I think that faction is the best match for him. But any of the above would work as long as he likes the faction.

Hope it helps!

[Maniacal_cackle]

I suspect the answer might be "every crew in Malifaux". It is seriously impressive how many combos and synergies every crew has that I've played so far.

Molly: you have loads of discard synergies, and there is a lot of hand management (similar to Storm having to manage its cards/counts). You can also do things like attack your own models, cheat both cards, then discard a card, then use Molly to draw six to cycle out your whole hand if you want.

Dreamer: You ramp up in power massively every turn, since you filter the bad cards out of your deck. Also rewards people who can count cards/calculate stats on the fly - potentially appealing to a Storm player. Can combo all sorts of abilities from the whole faction for his willpower duel summoning.

McMourning: you stack a bunch of poison on yourself, then can transfer it to others and nuke them.

Pandora: you can combo Kade and Pandora to spam executes, or attacks, or whatever. Also takes setting up conditions. Very 'setup' oriented crew.

Also bonus shout out for Hamelin, since you work to stack blight tokens and then nuke people for it.

[Jesy Blue]

You want to set yourself up, then roll?

McMourning:  you spend the first turn or two poisoning the crap out of all your own models, then let slip the dogs of war!  

Okay, it's a chihuahua, but still....!

[Mycellanious]

Imo it sounds like your friend would be interested in "board warping" crews, that is, crews that spend turns changing the board into a favorable state for the rest of the game. I view it as kind of similar to "engie building," and I love it for the "puzzle box" aspect, ie: "I move this model here, which allows this model to do THIS which allows that model to do THAT"

Most crews in Malifaux do this to some effect, but the crews imo that really focus on it are:

Foundry (Mei Feng)- this is the crew that I play. Early turns revolve around placing Scrap Markers around the board which your models can then teleport to. I definitely dont consider them a "late game" crew, but once you get your Railways up you can pull off some crazy stuff.

December (Rasputina)- creates Ice Pillars to physically block models as well as Slow them and empower their own models. Raspy can use Pillars to increase her own range.

Savage (Euripides)- also uses Ice Pillars, but Savage models use them to heal and move themselves around. Euripides can teleport between them. 

Other big combo crews are:

Family (Perdita)- which focuses on models generating out of activation Actions from other models

Elite (Lucius)- which focuses on using Obey chains to draw cards and abuse Agent 46. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

Thinking about this more, any token based crew may be a close analogue to Storm.

Plague Hamelin stacks tokens on enemies, and then does damage equal to those enemies. It is very similar to getting storm count racked up then doing one massive hit to wipe something out. The other crews with tokens also have similar mechanics, and they are a lot more consistent than McMourning for example (as you can remove conditions, you can't remove tokens). There are several other token-based crews, but I don't know them very well.

[Trample]

Hmmm, the first master I thought of when I read this was Ironsides. Her crew has a lot of synergies and Toni herself is designed to build up adrenaline and use it in game-altering combos. Shenlong is a bit of a build up and destroy guy as well, is maybe a bit more effective at it, but certainly does not have the keyword synergy or build-up feel that Ironsides does. 

The other one folks have mentioned is Lynch. He does a bit of the token stacking in a similar manner to Hamelin, although the effect is different. 

There are several good suggestions here, but I would take a strong look at Ironsides (M&SU / Arcanist).