Story Encounter for Tara

[eaglebach]

Hello all,

To celebrate the long-awaited preview for Nightmare Tara, I just made a story encounter scenario exclusively for her crew, using M2e rules.

This encounter takes place right after the event of Dead of Winter when Tara and Karina escape from the void prison of Obliteration. The scenario pitches Tara starter box crew (with all the stat cards and upgrades from Wyrd Chronicles vol. 7) against Lady Justice starter box + Nino Ortega. Being surrounded on all sides by death marshals, Tara and Karina must break through the thick formation of their enemy in order to reach the vicinity of Malifaux city. On ther other hand, Lady J is bent on eradicate all undead from Malifaux.

Could you please play-test and comment on this scenario? I try to balance the SS cost on both crew but since I'm neither professional game designer nor expert Malifaux player, issues are bounded to occur. I also select the scheme pool that makes the most sense and, hopefully, has no interference with the main strategy.

Any comment and advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you all.

Edit: I came up with a new scheme for Tara where you can earn VP by burying models. I also changed the scheme pool where each crew has access to different schemes. Also, I adjusted the upgrades and made Lady J's crew completely outnumber Tara's. This should be a good challenge for Tara player, I hope

Malifaux 2E - Tara Scenario.pdf

Edited August 7, 2013 by eaglebach

[Adran]

2 quick things that came to mind on reading it.

Why have you given Tara 4 upgrades and why are you giving upgrades to a minon?

I would look to giving Justice and the Judge some upgrades, rather than Nino. I'm not sure why you picked him.

The random effcect I would have being flipped by the start player rather than a random player as there might be an advantage to being the person to flip.

[eaglebach]

Thanks for the reply. On the upgrades, I thought u can take as many as you want. Will check back the rule for this. And the Nothing Beast isn't a minion, it's an enforcer so it can take on upgrades.

I pick Niño just because I love him. Also, his range attack can be a good complement to Justice's melee oriented crew. Niño can be used to pick off Tara from distance. Just like in movie/real life, as you run from the spec ops, u need to watch out for their sniper

Yeah, may be I'll look into giving Justice more upgrade and make the encounter entirely in LJ's favor. I'll also think off some crew specific scheme that's not from the book

[Fetid Strumpet]

Masters can take 3 Upgrades, Henchmen 2, and Enforcers 1. Also, as a note, a model may only have 1 Limited upgrade. So, for example, if you are running Rasputina, she cannot take both her Shattered Heart and Armor of December upgrades at the same time, as both are Limited, and she is therefore only allow one or the other.

[eaglebach]

So I just fixed a few things in the scenario. I hope this should be a fun experience for all Tara player. Comment and advice are greatly appreciated.

[Adran]

I'm going to preface this post by saying that this is just my opinion, feel free to ignore it.

I'bve also not actually played what you have written, just read it.

If I were writing a story encounter I wouldn't try and break the rules of the game. Especially for a new system.

I like the concept you are goign for, but I have a few issues with it.

1 Unbalenced sides - Whilst this isn't intrinsically bad, I don't like your special rule to resolve it.

2 Deployment - You actually have made it possible for some of the guild crew to deploy in the enemy half of the table. That can make it very easy for them to get soem of the schemes - prehaops just using Flank deployment

3 Upgrades - Sicne you haven't announced the faction of Tara, and you are just using the starter box, I personally wouldn't bother with the Dead of Winter Upgrade. If you are going to use it, then I would add at least 1 death Marshall to her crew.

I'm not sure I would bother with long fogotten magics for Katrina in this mission. The only affect it could have on the game is stopping the Death Marshalls finishing the job.

From the Guild point of view you have added an upgrade to a minion (Miss Terious is a standard Death Marashal who are minions and so can't get upgrades normally) for no in game reson I can see. You've not filled the upgrade slots on the Judge or Lady Justice so you could put the Flames of the pit on one of them. Its not going to have a huge efect in the game, as there is only 1 undead model that it could cause horror on, and only one model on the opposing crew that causes horror.

Whilst I personally will pull models from all over a faction for my crew, it I am writing a story fixed list, I probaly wouldn't have drawn from such a wide pool of Minis for the guild. And if you were going to use Nino because you like him then add in more of the family. Maybe Justice, Judge, Niino, Saniago and Fransico?

Whilst I like the idea of escape and survive, I think it might be very easy for Tara to achieve (at least in theory) in that she can easily be buried, and then not come out until something is killed. I would run a group of Void wretches up 1 flank to try and get them to kill or be killed in the last turn or 2 near the guild deployment zone.

The Tara specific scheme seems very hard to do, as most of the burying ability in the crew can only be done if there isn't anything already buried.