Molly!

I know its been a while since I posted anything.  Not sure if Im going to restart this fully, or just futz around with it for a week and forget it again.

Im working on a new hobby project for Malifaux.  I never really liked the paint job I did on my only metal Molly, and then when I saw the new plastic sculpt I kinda vowed to re-do a crew just for her.  Even when she was terrible Molly has always been one of my favorite parts of Malifaux.  So now that her plastic set is out, I feel like I have a chance to right a wrong to my favorite undead gal.

So here she is in all her adorable glory.

Next up will be Phillip and the Nanny.  I will be going through this crew 1 plastic model at a time.  I plan to buy the Red Chapel Box set at some point to set her up with Sybelle and some Rotten Belles.  Plus I will finally purchase a set of Dead Doxy's as soon as they release in plastic.

Gaming Done Right

Episode 1 is up, click on the LINK TO AWESOMENESS and enjoy

Moving... Kind of

Im moving a portion of my blog. Not all of it. I will still update here too. Likely with my same infrequent schedule.

But to see the new stuff as well as hear my sultry voice again on podcasts, head on over to http://guessingzero.com/

My second first game of Malifaux.

Last night Mike and I got in our first official game of Malifaux 2nd Edition. We have played plenty of games before, but this time we had actual cards and a real rulebook. Lets just get to it.

Mission - Turf War

Scheme Pool - Assassinate, Line in the Sand, Entourage, Deliver a Message, Distract.

Mike's List:

Zorida, Crystal Ball

Barbaros, Nexus of Power

Bad Juju

Slurid

2x terror Tots

Doppleganger

Dan's List:

Tara, Obliteration Symbiote, Dead of Winter, Kowledge of Eternity

Nothing Beast, Voiceless Words

Karina, Long forgotten Magics

2 Void Wretches

2 Death Marshalls

Turn 1:

Tara kicked things off nice and easy walking up the board, but letting herself reactivate. Zorida's Tots run up the edges of the board, away from all the hateful conflict. A Death Marshal activated and Boxed up the Nothing beast, then strode forward. Most of the the rest of our crews simply moved into place, until Zorida got a Slurid moving quick. He ran up into Tara and slashed at her a bit. Tara finally got the chance to use her reactivate and popped up the Nothing Beast. He then took the Slurid down.

Turn 2:

This began a nice string of Mike flipping 12's and 13's for Init. Zorida got Juju up into the Nothing beasts face and had him take a smack at the poor little guy. Tara went next and dropped out fast. She had to give it to Juju, but also got it on a Death Marshal, Void Wretch, and the Nothing Beast. Tara then proved she has the power to take as well as give, and removed Fast from Juju by making him slow. Juju went and put a hurting on the Nothing beast with Flurry. Nothing beast went and returned the favor smacking Bad Juju around. Both the big guys were at low health. Mike then made a bold and likely game saving move. He had the Doppleganger move around the Nothing beast, Copy Pine Box, and Burried Tara. This kept Tara from Reactivating, and me bury/popping the Nothing beast out for more play. Not pleased with this both of my fast models charged into her. Alas the Death Marshal who had her marked for death cheating in a 13 of rams to hit her got a black joker flip for damage leaving her barely alive.

Turn 3:

Again with a nice init flip he took the reigns and had Bad Juju end the Nothing Beast. I responded agressively and had my Marshal stab the Doppleganger down, and then shoot Juju square in the face. Barbaros made his presence known and started beating on my other Void Wretch. Zorida, took offense to losing her big lug and placed a vodoo doll on the offending marshall and then killed him. Tara and a Wretch both moved up to Zorida, but didnt do anything to her. Both Tots dropped some Scheme Markers, bringing him up to 4 on the center line. Karina took a nice shot at a Terror tot dropping him to 2. And the Last Marshal got a lucky Crit shot off to kill the other Tot. At this point our game was tied 2-2 each of us grabbing 2 points for Turf War.

Turn 4:

Dropping down from his usual 13, Mike flipped a 12 for Init and Had a Barbaros Kill Karina and drop a void wretch to 1 wound. The other Wretch delivered a message to Zorida for 2 points. I didnt realize that not announcing it lost me a point... grumble. We traded blows in the middle of the board, and when it was all said and done, Barbaros was staring down a single marshal, and Tara and Zorida were locked in Combat. No points for Turf war were awarded.

Turn 5:

Likely the last turn of the game. Tara kicked things off By running the heck away. She made it safely into Zoridas Deployment zone, and chilled. Barbaros did the same running into my Deployment zone. My last Marshal went and took out a Scheme marker, and zorida mostly just sat there staring into space. I flipped and the game Ended.

Final score:

Dan - Turf War 2, Entourage 2, Deliver a Message 2

Mike - Turf War 2, Line in the Sand 1, Entourage 3

So we ended up with a 6-6 Tie. Mike played very smart, but Tara was something he had never seen before so I was able to throw him off his game for bit. If not for a pair of ill timed Black Jokers, and not realizing I should announce my Schemes, I might have changed this from a tie to a win. Regardless it was a damn fun game.

Nightmare Crew

With Gencon over my ninja shopper returns with a few cool toys. I got the Nightmare edition Tara box set, Miss Step, and the Firefly Board game. I'll get to those last two things later. This is mainly to talk about Tara.

I've known I was going to play Tara for a little while. I even set aside my Undead Death Marshals from the Nightmare Edition Lady J box set for this ocasion. I even have some nice Micro Art Studio bases set aside for these guys.

I took some time to get painting last night and was able to base coat the Void Wretches and Karina. I went a step further with Tara and the Nothing Beast though.

The goal is to finish Karina and the Wretches before I head out ot game today, with the outside goal of also getting another Marshal painted. We'll see how it all goes.

M2E or as I now call it. Malifaux

I like the new edition of Malifaux. This is not something I have been keeping a big secret or anything. But for the most part I just haven't been talking about it. 1st Generation Awesome Mike put up a list of the big changes that we saw get implemented for the new edition and I wanted to take a second to talk about them. This way I can just hash out what I like and what I dislike about them.

Upgrades – This is pretty much the part of Malifaux that I am the most hesitant about. I like that they introduced a way to specialze a crew, I like the idea of optional complexity. My big concern is right now there appear to be auto-include upgrades, and never include upgrades. Not a whole lot of the sometime takes. I really like what this system could potentially be. But as its currently set up I feel like its lacking.

Pre-measuring - Might be my absolute favorite change to the game. No more, I was off by .021421 inches, and therefore my entire plan falls to crap.

Card Format - This is an asthetic change. The cards are now smaller, fitting into the standard card size for most CCG's. Im cool with this change as it means I wont have to go laminate my cards every month when I get a new model. I'll just buy a box of sleeves from my LGS and get to gaming!

Strategy / Schemes - I like them. It seems they took a lot of the best ideas they had over the past several attempts to make the missions and worked out a core few. Balancing 13 missions is really tough. I like that they have a "competative" pack of 5 missions that will more geared towards tournament and the like. Plus I like the feel of these missions. The Schemes are cool in my mind too. I grew to really like the scheme pool. Prevents Body-Guard / Kill Protege every game.

Extra AP - This is a mixed bag. Masters all just flat out get 3 AP now. That is nice and makes them feel more powerful as they should. But a lot of the higher stone Minion models no longer have bonus AP. Thats a bit of a mixed bag for me. In the early stuff Ressers never got extra AP, so to a career resser player this is just evening out the field. But overall I think this move kind of makes some of the more expensive centerpiece guys a little less cool.

Terrifying / Horror - In one fell swoop they made this stronger and Nerfed it. And I love it. They made Horror a lot more regular, then they made it so that its no longer just ignore by 70% of the field, and then they nerfed the penalty for failure. I am 100% down with this decision.

Ranged Attacks - Not really my thing. I dont play shooty crews. Ranges got kinda long. In some cases I feel like they are stupid long. But I also think their damage was dropped a bit. I think in the end Range is a bit stronger then it was in V1, but thats not a terrible thing since in V1 it had a lot of weakness.

Spells as duels - Good change. It was always odd to me that spells were randomly different from the rest of the games core mechanics.

Number of turns - At first I didnt think this would matter, but over the course of several games I saw why it was big. You no longer have the time to ignore your objective early, kill everything and snag them at the end. You have to focus on them all game. Its an interesting change and one Im mostly on board for.

Charges - They seem a bit skewed in powerlevel. Charging is a (2) action. But you get to move 1.5x your speed (on average) and then make 2 melee attacks. your spending (2) ap to get 3.5 ap worth of actions. Its strong. Not sure it breaks the game or anything. But it is one of the best and most efficient maneuvers in the game.

Soulstones - Overall Im a fan of the change to Soulstones. Im not sure I like how many Henchmen there are who can use them. But their uses are all good to me. I like that Master v Master fights dont really devolve into who flipped a better stone card anymore. And I really like the Draw 2 cards ditch 2 cards mechanic.

Effects - The fact that this wsa never defined in V1 always annoyed me. Now its been defined and everything makes a lot more sense. Well done Wyrd.

Model updating - This has to be the biggest change right? Every model in the game is now different. And at the end of the day I love it. You can feel free to disagree with me on this, but I came to feel that there were serious balance issues with V1. Im not saying issues won't crop up in the future, or that they are all gone now. But the big thing here is that we know what we are working with, and we know what is coming. Its rare that a game company is able to see into the future and balance a game to that level. This was a chance for Wyrd to do just that, and they did it. I play a lot of different masters over quite a few factions. And in my eyese not one of them has lost their old flavor. In a lot of cases, such as Seamus, Marcus, and Rasputina, they were able to keep their old feel, but also become competative and damn near playable. That is a big change to me, and one Im damn happy with

Mike did not include the new direction of Malifaux's art in his change list, but I want to talk about it. It is a mixed bag. Unfortunetly most of that bag is bad. Below is my prime example of what I dislike about the Art.

Seamus always struck me as the charming psycho. The guy who could lure someone to their death. Now he looks like the stung out junkie with a white panel van. A complete shift in the characters visual appearance and to me it changes who he is. I am trying to get down with the new art, but so far a lot of it doesn't appeal to me at all.

Last thing for me is the thing that surprises me most thus far about Malifaux. I had been focusing my efforts on Seamus, Nicodem, and McMouring during the Beta stages. I know them inside and out and felt I could help out a lot in balancing them. But as I moved away from testing games and more into just playing for fun, I found that the Master I enjoyed playing the most was Marcus. His new beast crew is just seriously fun! The best part is that beasts with blue boarders no longer blow!

Rockin Renegades

More stuff got some paint on it this weekend. Magnus' can't really be run without his super happy fun rockets. So I got the pair of Renegades painted up. I tried to paint smiley faces on the rockets, but at this point Im not happy with that part of them, so I might go back and just paint over them.