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Maxine Agassiz (EVS Keyword) Discussion


HomelessOne

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7 hours ago, SEV said:

Seriously, I'm a bit off topic, but I'm curious : how old are your kids? How do you approach the game with thems when you're playing new master as complicated as Maxine (as other say this keyword seem to be deceptively hard to play, with a lot of odd calculations involved).

Kids are never off topic. :)

Two 13s, one 8.

My short answer on gaming with kids is _flexibility_. Start simple - small crews, straghtforward mechanics. Keep games short. Handicap yourself (smaller crews or bad matchups - I've played a ton of ELITE into AUGMENTED in Reckoning...) and then play as hard/smart as you can - don't model bad tactics. Shake hands whether you win or lose. And they'll pick it up faster than grown-ups do.

Last year, my little one met me at the door - he'd been reading the rulebook [really] and he had noticed I'd been cheating by taking 7 cards. We discussed Lucius' Arcane Reservoir - and then he asked whether he could have it, too. And he was playing Blue Charlie - so with the upgrade, he could. They learn fast... 

The older ones went to their first M2E tournament at age 9. One plays only Dreamer (and is ranked higher than me in USFT), the other skips around and just claimed D.U.A./Umbra as his new main. The little one quizzes me on my cards and knows them better than me. He has claimed M. Rex (and Apex) as his new crew.

We overlook/forget a lot of our masters' abilities in the heat of battle, so some of the complexity doesn't come to the table. I study my cards, listen to tactics podcasts, etc., and my kids still learn their crews faster than me. I am determined to unlock Maxine, but I'm a long way from achieving it.

For the long answer, here's the podcast [https://anchor.fm/thirdfloorwars/episodes/Gaming-Round-Table-Parenting--Kids-and-Gaming---ep--83-eghafe].

:)

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19 minutes ago, Sudsy said:

Kids are never off topic. :)

Two 13s, one 8.

My short answer on gaming with kids is _flexibility_. Start simple - small crews, straghtforward mechanics. Keep games short. Handicap yourself (smaller crews or bad matchups - I've played a ton of ELITE into AUGMENTED in Reckoning...) and then play as hard/smart as you can - don't model bad tactics. Shake hands whether you win or lose. And they'll pick it up faster than grown-ups do.

Last year, my little one met me at the door - he'd been reading the rulebook [really] and he had noticed I'd been cheating by taking 7 cards. We discussed Lucius' Arcane Reservoir - and then he asked whether he could have it, too. And he was playing Blue Charlie - so with the upgrade, he could. They learn fast... 

The older ones went to their first M2E tournament at age 9. One plays only Dreamer (and is ranked higher than me in USFT), the other skips around and just claimed D.U.A./Umbra as his new main. The little one quizzes me on my cards and knows them better than me. He has claimed M. Rex (and Apex) as his new crew.

We overlook/forget a lot of our masters' abilities in the heat of battle, so some of the complexity doesn't come to the table. I study my cards, listen to tactics podcasts, etc., and my kids still learn their crews faster than me. I am determined to unlock Maxine, but I'm a long way from achieving it.

For the long answer, here's the podcast [https://anchor.fm/thirdfloorwars/episodes/Gaming-Round-Table-Parenting--Kids-and-Gaming---ep--83-eghafe].

:)

I started playing DnD at age 4, and was pretty into Warhammer by middle school.

I'd say my excellent arithmetic and reading skills were basically chalked up to my nerd interests.

Same with all my siblings.

So at least in my family, the kids would pretty much devour most game systems and learn them pretty fast xD

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44 minutes ago, Sudsy said:

Quick question - I hear that Kiya is Abyssinian and that she appears in TOS lore. Can someone point me to the right book?

Thanks

She is Abyssinian, the explorers book lore has that.

I don't remember her from the TOS book, but its been a while since I've read it. I'm not sure where else there is TOS lore, a little has happened in TTB, where Fire in the Sky and Obsidian Gate are adventures Earthside that I can remember, but I couldn't say if she was there. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So...

Matt & Kyle are very clever with the naming of abilities - but I'm stumped on "Strike Between the Lines." Is there a trope I'm missing? Literary interpretation? Bowling? Fishing? Proofreading? Baseball? Labor negotiations??

(I'm going to feel dumb when I hear the answer, won't I...)

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1 hour ago, Sudsy said:

So...

Matt & Kyle are very clever with the naming of abilities - but I'm stumped on "Strike Between the Lines." Is there a trope I'm missing? Literary interpretation? Bowling? Fishing? Proofreading? Baseball? Labor negotiations??

(I'm going to feel dumb when I hear the answer, won't I...)

I thought it was a play on "read between the lines"

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:)

The "between the lines" concept has me trying to connect the dots between the Intrepid Emissary (who is a concrete garden statue of a lion?) and the 1990s kids show "Between the Lions." Hmmm.

And "ships of the line" references the massive battleships that would exchange broadsides during this period - so would striking between the lines mean to take a black Zodiac full of marines through that cannonball-crossfire? It sounds bold - but out of character for our cerebral heroine.

I feel like something's going to click when it comes together. Not sure we've got it, yet. Still scratching my head...

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Forgive me if I'm overthinking this...

It’s a 1-scratch that targets Willpower. And it forces the target to discard until they drop a Polymath-suited card (which puts it on top of their Discard Pile for the next Deep Discovery, so if/when she cheats it, she guarantees an on-suit 9). And it has Touch of Madness (discard random card) on a mask trigger.

If it's a play on “read between the lines,” it must be related to her reading of The Flammae (full name: “The Contiones de Rege Flammae” (Caroland & Johns, 2017).

From WordSense (WordSense.eu Online Dictionary, 2021):

  • contiones (Latin). Noun. Contiōnēs. Inflection of contiō. Noun. 1. a meeting, assembly, 2. a speech, oration or discourse before a public assembly.
  • rege (Latin). Noun. Inflection of rēx.
    • rēx (Latin). Noun. 1. King, ruler.
  • flammae (Latin). Noun. Inflection of flamma. Noun. 1. Flame, fire.

So the book is the "Assembly/Meeting of the Fire King." [I know you all know that - I'm catching up...]

Maxine’s book is a “heavily abridged, excessively censored” version:

Quote

Acquiring the thin book had taken weeks of time, money, and manpower, hiring more than 200 individuals and paying them handsomely to risk their sanity transcribing each individual page. Peeling away the pseudo-religious gibberish and superstitious hearsay, dampening [sic] the memetic effects the book had on the mind until all that was left were some curiously informative notes on the nature of dimensional portals, the greatest weapon the Cult had against the rest of the world.

(n.b., how many Latin-English translators were there in the early 1900s??)

From Waldo's Weekly:

Professor Franklin Brandstätter’s lecture notes contain marginal/inline comments (perhaps “between the lines”) that clearly show his descent into madness over the course of his discussion of the history of soulstones and the Burning Man (Wyrd; December 5, 2018). Incidentally, the professor’s surname derives from element meaning ‘place cleared by burning’ (Ancestry.com, n.d.).

Perhaps Maxine’s attack is as simple as her explaining The Flammae to her engaged opponent, inciting their latent madness. “Strike” still seems a bit too on-the-nose for Wyrd, but that's my best guess for now.

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20 hours ago, Sudsy said:

Forgive me if I'm overthinking this...

It’s a 1-scratch that targets Willpower. And it forces the target to discard until they drop a Polymath-suited card (which puts it on top of their Discard Pile for the next Deep Discovery, so if/when she cheats it, she guarantees an on-suit 9). And it has Touch of Madness (discard random card) on a mask trigger.

If it's a play on “read between the lines,” it must be related to her reading of The Flammae (full name: “The Contiones de Rege Flammae” (Caroland & Johns, 2017).

From WordSense (WordSense.eu Online Dictionary, 2021):

  • contiones (Latin). Noun. Contiōnēs. Inflection of contiō. Noun. 1. a meeting, assembly, 2. a speech, oration or discourse before a public assembly.
  • rege (Latin). Noun. Inflection of rēx.
    • rēx (Latin). Noun. 1. King, ruler.
  • flammae (Latin). Noun. Inflection of flamma. Noun. 1. Flame, fire.

So the book is the "Assembly/Meeting of the Fire King." [I know you all know that - I'm catching up...]

Maxine’s book is a “heavily abridged, excessively censored” version:

(n.b., how many Latin-English translators were there in the early 1900s??)

From Waldo's Weekly:

Professor Franklin Brandstätter’s lecture notes contain marginal/inline comments (perhaps “between the lines”) that clearly show his descent into madness over the course of his discussion of the history of soulstones and the Burning Man (Wyrd; December 5, 2018). Incidentally, the professor’s surname derives from element meaning ‘place cleared by burning’ (Ancestry.com, n.d.).

Perhaps Maxine’s attack is as simple as her explaining The Flammae to her engaged opponent, inciting their latent madness. “Strike” still seems a bit too on-the-nose for Wyrd, but that's my best guess for now.

That is the kind of explanation that, if I was the game designer and read that (assuming it’s not what wyrd meant) I’d instantly switch to “oh yeah, you figured it out! That’s exactly what We were thinking!”

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On 12/15/2020 at 8:33 AM, HomelessOne said:

3) Their lore is too HAPPY, lol. Besides Maxine's brain now having a touch o' the Burning Man, as a friend put it everybody's bios are basically "they love science, but what they love more is their bond with the rest of the crew".

Honestly, this is one of the things that makes me love them as a keyword. Come to think of it, my favourite keywords tend to be the ones where people have had crazy weird stuff happen to them and just gone "ok, I guess this is life now. Moving on!" Tara, Molly, even McCabe, they approach the mind-bending horror of unknowable beings and their own twisted fate with a "yes, that's nice, and?" attitude that I find endearing.

You know, this:
43iv8l.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/17/2021 at 9:00 AM, Whut said:

Hey all, I just posted my in depth EVS First Impressions Review. Check it out if you're interested and let me know if I missed anything really strong.

https://youtu.be/XZdOwEgn9_0

 

I think the Bellhop Porter could be worth exploring in EVS. Not only can it turn Tidecaller into Sz 5 when it activates, so that it can still Toss Calypso, but it can also hand out multiple Shielded for Kiya.

As a Construct, it can also benefit from healing from Machinists and/or Beebe.

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2 hours ago, hydranixx said:

I think the Bellhop Porter could be worth exploring in EVS. Not only can it turn Tidecaller into Sz 5 when it activates, so that it can still Toss Calypso, but it can also hand out multiple Shielded for Kiya.

As a Construct, it can also benefit from healing from Machinists and/or Beebe.

This is amazing xD

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 2/17/2021 at 3:17 PM, Peturd said:

Box is in “Upcoming” now! Cool to see the renders!!

I’ll be honest, I’m really disappointed in the renders. Everyone is just so...static. I mean, Maxine has some of the most interesting abilities in the game IMO, but her model is SO BORING. I’ve noticed a lot of M3E models are really static, but these take the unfortunate cake for me. I can’t bring myself to play them when the models are so uninspired. It’s a huge missed opportunity to do something really cool with the first non-nightmare seafaring crew, could have been great. Maybe they’ll get a nightmare box someday that will change my mind.

Does anyone else feel this way or were my expectations just too high?

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5 hours ago, J4bberw0ck said:

I’ll be honest, I’m really disappointed in the renders. Everyone is just so...static. I mean, Maxine has some of the most interesting abilities in the game IMO, but her model is SO BORING. I’ve noticed a lot of M3E models are really static, but these take the unfortunate cake for me. I can’t bring myself to play them when the models are so uninspired. It’s a huge missed opportunity to do something really cool with the first non-nightmare seafaring crew, could have been great. Maybe they’ll get a nightmare box someday that will change my mind.

Does anyone else feel this way or were my expectations just too high?

This is probably the natural result of a large portion of the community expressing that the models are too difficult to build or attach to a base no? I think they look cool, except I expected Kiya's armor to be larger

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1 hour ago, Mycellanious said:

This is probably the natural result of a large portion of the community expressing that the models are too difficult to build or attach to a base no? I think they look cool, except I expected Kiya's armor to be larger

Yes, I expect so, I just think it's a shame. I really enjoyed building the complex, intricate models of M2E, and I thought one of Malifaux's big draws was having models with a sense of dynamic motion that no one else could touch. I won't complain about the game becoming more accessible, though.

I'm glad you like the models, I really hope they'll grow on me.

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They are posed more or less like their card art, so I can't say I was surprised.

I actually like the pose on Maxine specifically. Just a casual lean as she's staring down the field at a Rogue Necromancy, Lord Chompy Bits, or whatever other silly nonsense she has to deal with that day.

Personally, I think it fits, both in personality and still being a good looking model. That said, given that the personality in question has been criticized on this thread as not being interesting to some, I can see why not everyone would take a shine to that kind of blitheness in the models as well.

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She has legit swagger. A person who has Pandora open her box in front of her and says "that's cute ... I've seen worse" and goes back to doing her work. I like it. And there is definitely some dynamics in the renders uploaded now. A whole keyword of worth in the swirly bits around Harata (he at least took any dynamic excitement Beebe might have had)

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Man, I want to dive into this Keyword so bad now. But I gotta pace myself. I already overspent on getting my McCabe house in order and have set aside some money for Seeker when it comes. 

Looks like it's just back to proxies and digital for this one for now. Curious to see how people are doing with her st the moment though. Any good after action reports for my perusal?

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  • 1 month later...

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