Why Snow Storm?

[walruspride]

For a fun crew I run him with kirai. Being able to slingshot him and get all his actions can be devastating.

[Voldrak]

11 SS for him may be a lot, but I think he more than makes up for it.

What everyone usually does on turn 1 is move. He will help your entire crew move that much more on the board.

For subsequent turns he can actually cast ice pillars allowing Rasputina a use of her 3 casting APs for other spells.

He's also a very good bodyguard to her, with his height, no one will be able to attack her through him. Furthermore, any big hitters wanting to charge her or him, will have to contend with a potential 3 melee attacks at a possible +3 on the damage flips. Two severes from him will have almost everything in the game dead unless you are heavy on armor.

[Nephalumps]

Another important thing to bear in mind with Snow Storm is that Eat Your Fill is a very powerful ability on an Instinctual, Spirit model with Flurry that can hit hard in melee.

Between Bulletproof and Spirit, Snow Storm is extremely resistant to attacks, and even pretty resilient against spells. Spirit makes him resilient versus non-magical melee attacks (and there aren't that many of those floating around.) So, the primary thing he needs to worry about are non- damaging spells, and there aren't a ton of those around.

Moreover, he's a very nasty model for enemy "heavy hitters" to deal with. Most melee models will struggle to kill him in one charge activation (Spirit is a huge damage mitigation tool here.) In return, Snow Storm can activate, self buff for damage flips, Flurry, and then Eat Your Fill if he kills whatever charged him (which is pretty likely, given his solid damage on his weapons,) topping himself right back up.

Not too shabby, when you combine that with its other abilities.

[CubertFarnsworth]

Spirit makes him resilient versus non-magical melee attacks (and there aren't that many of those floating around.)

I am still trying to understand what melee attacks are magical.

Ex: Snow Storm's Icey Talon are regular attacks correct? Now if I give them To the Bone, do they then become magical attacks?

I know that for a weapon to be magical it states it like the Shattered Rune Blade that the Stalkers carry, but by altering it with some ability does it become magical or ONLY altering it with Spells does it become a magical (Do those even exist?).

[Calmdown]

I am still trying to understand what melee attacks are magical.

Ex: Snow Storm's Icey Talon are regular attacks correct? Now if I give them To the Bone, do they then become magical attacks?

I know that for a weapon to be magical it states it like the Shattered Rune Blade that the Stalkers carry, but by altering it with some ability does it become magical or ONLY altering it with Spells does it become a magical (Do those even exist?).

Magical damage is:

a) Anything specifically defined as magical (eg, Shattered Runed Blade)

Anything that comes from a spell (eg, a Rasputina or Sonnia nuke)

Buffing your melee via a spell does not make it magical.

Simples!

[CubertFarnsworth]

Buffing your melee via a spell does not make it magical.

Simples!

:paralyzedpuppet REALLY!!! :confusedpuppet

[Adran]

Likewise, Sammual Hopkins casting flaming bullets (Ranged attacks do +2 damage) does not make them magical.

Direct damage from a spell (the damage flip in the spells description), or from a weapon stated to be magical are the only magical damage. (And until the exocist came out, there was no way to add Magical to a weapon).

I'm trying out Snowstorm and an Ice Golem at the moment, and compared to Raputina without Snow Storm, the mobility is crazy.

You can move the Golem over 12" before it activates. And it can be sitting there to be an Ice mirror for Tina. Since its in Base contact with Snow Storm it counts as being in cover as well.

Adding Bite of Winter and North wind has given some very interesting possibilities, but its not cheap in soulstone, so you're probablyt lookign at 40+ games to make it truely worth while

[Nephalumps]

Yeah, magical melee or ranged is actually a pretty rare commodity in Malifaux. If you're not packing a Magical weapon, or standing next to an Exorcist, you're pretty much stuck swinging at half damage vs. Spirits.

This has resulted in much frustration on my part fighting Kirai, but it also makes models like Snow Storm pretty damn resilient. 8 Wds is kinda low for an 11 SS model, but I think they kept her wounds low to try and keep Eat Your Fill from making it too hard to kill.

Can't have an Arcanist model be too resilient now.

[DangerousBeans]

They're not a game winning piece, so I doubt you'd see them much at Tournaments (although all-December crews aren't really that competative anyway). They are, however, great fun and as you probably know, look awesome. If your opponent is used to the usual 'Tina "shuffle towards the goal" crew he can really mix things up.

Pick them up after you've got a good grounding for a December crew, but they're by no means essential (or cheap in SS or £/$) but I loves 'em

[CrouchingMoose]

If used correctly, snowstorm can make raspy crew speeds skyrocket.

Last game I played was Raspy vs Nicodem 30ss

Nicodem had reconitor, bodyguard, and breakthrough.

Raspy had slaughter, bodyguard, and holdout.

corner deployment

at the end of turn 4. Nico had 3 necropunks in the far corner edges of the board(1 in his dz, 1 in raspys dz, and last in a 3rd corner). Raspy and her crew were bunched up near nico's dz and easily 24 in away from the necro in her dz. Snowstorm was able to move them all the way across the board, allow raspy to get a soulstone back from the soulstone vein and back into her dz and within 10 in of the necropunk in the last 2 turns. She then had 1 stone, an essence of power next to her, bite of winter, and 3 available casts to hit the necro. She took a huge gamble trying to pull that off but because she did, the game ended at 8 to 0 with heavy damage taken but no losses. If she had not gone for it and went for the one in nico's deployment zone (which would have been a sure thing) she would have ended it at 6 to 2.

bottom line. Snowstorm makes rasputina move much faster than she ever could without it.

[Soulreclaimer]

I played my first game with Raspy and used the snowstorm. Even at 11 points I felt he was a very good model to take. The movement shenanigans it brings are fantastic.

Can the thing get taken down fast , of course. As in any games, we only know what is currently on the market. So where some feel it is overcosted, there could be things in the near future that make the 11 points where the model should be.

Between Raspy and ST, I kept my ST alive for the entire game by casting spells and making sure my BURSTS went off.

I LOVE THE MODEL.