Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Ripples of Fate Review: Resurrectionists


1.       Corpse Candle: There’s actually some cool fluff behind these, where they’re the souls of a pair of zombies Reva took in and sheltered who feel so loyal to her that, even with their physical forms gone, the spirits move from body to body animating them and burning their energy out to help her. They can count as a corpse counter for friendly models and must be summoned by Reva, not hired. They have a pitiful melee attack which you will never use for anything besides perhaps disengaging strikes. They have two abilities that will see any use. One is Light the Way which pushes all corpse markers within (3) of her up to 3” in any direction.  The other is The Essence Remains, wherein you sacrifice the corpse candle to either give a friendly target Disguised, give you + flips to attack against an enemy model, or allows a friendly model within 8” to draw a card then immediately activate as a chain. You'll use them with Reva, obviously.

2.       Vincent St. Clair: Reva’s henchman is the exorcist that rescued her from her parents’ house, where they had her sedated and restrained. He believes in her, but has begun to question whether that belief is real or just another byproduct of the devotion he’s seen her inspire in others. He is a 9ss living/revenant henchman. He heals a point whenever a model is killed within 8” and draws a card every time a corpse counter is discarded within 6”. He has abilities to do those things on his own, but will also definitely make certain other Rezzer masters have a bad day with those two abilities. He is himself able to burn corpse counters to add a suit to his flips during his turns (only one specific suit per turn.) Finally, he can push 3” in any direction after resolving a defense or willpower flip with a trigger. It’s built in for defense, but not for WP. So yeah, the front of his card is pretty hefty. His profane crossbow doesn’t include spirits when randomizing into melee combat. Its built in trigger adds damage for corpse counters within 3” of the target, or he can repeat the attack with a tome or add 1 soulstone after killing a model with a ram trigger. He can attach a condition to models to make his damage unpreventable with a (0) action. Finally, he can blow up a corpse counter and place blast markers off of it to force models beneath the blast to take a Wk duel or take damage. Vincent has a lot of cool abilities, but you’ll have to be careful to keep him protected from ranged attacks from which your defense trigger can’t protect you. He's sort of the uncola of Rezzer henches, which makes sense as he is still alive and up to recently was employed by the Guild. 

3.       Archie: This guy is hilarious. He was made by McMourning to be a companion for Mollie. As such, he’s a henchman Horror. You have to compare him to Nekima because he has a 13ss cost, and I think he does well side to side with her. 12 wounds, terrifying all 12, and hard to wound 1 means he won’t be falling down nearly as easily as she does. He can only heal 4 wounds per turn from the humorous ability "He's dropped his ice cream", the reason for which will become apparent shortly. Thankfully he also has Attack Expert to get an extra AP for melee, as his walk is not very good off the base card (though this is fixable). I’m going to break from format and point out his upgrades, as they’re vital to understanding how Archie works. He has 3 upgrades which represent odd…augmentations to his body. One can grant him +1 armor. Another can give him leap, which will help add some mobility to get him into the thick of things. The last is Doc found a tentacle, which will give him a (0) action to pull an enemy into melee and gives him Focused when its discarded. How do things get added and removed? Well, his ranged attack requires him to discard an upgrade or a corpse marker within 3", effectively reflecting him picking up a dead body or pulling bits off of himself and throwing them at the target. It does reasonably good damage and places a corpse counter in base contact with the target (Nicodem will then likely turn that into a punk zombie and mince you.) He can reattach a new upgrade specific to him with a (0) action. Doing so damages Archie unless you discard corpse markers. That’s a mouthful, but there’s also always his brutal 4/5/6 damage melee attack as a baseline, so I think he’ll see some definite use.

I don’t know why all these henchmen are so much more complicated in this faction. The write-ups will be shorter from here, I promise.

4.       Shieldbearer: These guys are the frontline fanatics that serve Reva. Their gimmick revolves around, when they are killed, attaching one of three soulbound upgrades to them, healing all damage, and dropping a corpse counter. Effectively, this is meant to reflect their instantly reanimating as a murder ghost and flying off to attack the enemy. This essentially means you have to kill them twice, which explains why they only have 4 wds. Cool. You actually want these guys to eat a red joker flip for your crew, as there is effectively no cost (the soulbound upgrades are also minor buffs for the models.) Their shields and swords are so ridiculously big because, in the fluff, they’ve looted them from Guild Guardians and are able to wield them because their fanatic devotion gives them supernatural strength. They gain fast whenever a friendly model near them uses a soulstone, and they have armor+1. Their salvaged sword has a reasonable minion damage track and triggers to drop corpse markers or deal a point of damage on a miss. They can also push enemy models with the shield slam. And on top of that, they can spend their (0) every turn to give themselves either a + to damage flips or a +2 bonus to DF. If you want to use them to hold a point you’ll want to do that early to take the most advantage, but I like these models. They seem fairly solid, particularly with Reva's ability to push them with one of her upgrades adding mobility.

5.       Draugr: Some people who come through the breach have a magical ability that doesn’t awaken until after they die. These are Draugrs, which are reflected in the game by an 8ss minion/revenant/horror. At the start of their turn they choose their Ht (1,2, or 3) and gain a variation of abilities based on which they choose. At ht. 3 they have Hard to Wound, can hand out soulbound upgrades to non-leader non-peons if they’re ht. 1, or can take their Trollskap ranged (0) ap casting action if they’re ht. 2. Trollskap forces the opponent to discard a card and applies a debuff based on the suit (which I don’t love, since your opponent gets to choose.) Draugr give a + to attack flips of models within 6” with soulbound upgrades, so they’re a decent anchor model in Reva’s lines, and they heal a damage whenever any non-peon dies within 8”. The damage track for their melee axe is interesting, as its damage flip is 0/1/2, but you add your ht. to the damage. So yeah, weird. I can’t tell if they’re good, if I’m being honest, but they are definitely interesting.

6.       Goryo: These are strong willed warriors or lords who martyr themselves in battle. It’s a spirit/retainer minion. Incorporeal as expected, and a pair of new abilities on the front. When another friendly model dies within 3” he gains Fast and he can charge for 1 AP versus models with Adversary. I think Kirai will like them for that, though a 7ss minion is a bit of a pricey summon. Their sword ignores armor with a decent damage track and can hand out slow with a trigger. They get a final little sting attack as a (0) ap action to help you polish off hard to kill models which can, if the thing lives through it, give them adversary with a trigger (so you could also use it to set up a 1ap charge.) Also, as a 1 ap action, they can do 2 damage to themselves and summon a seishin in base to base. I don’t know Kirai crews from personal experience, but this seems like it would be a pretty strong summon minion for her. Wk 6 incorporeal means it can get where it needs to, I suppose, but we’ll have to see if its good enough to get into other crews.

Upgrades: Reva-She has two limited upgrades. One lets her attack out of corpse counters even when she’s engaged and lets her summon a corpse candle on the opponent’s half of the board (not within 8” of an enemy model) at the beginning of the game. The other helps her melee abilities, granting her regeneration+1 and a trigger for her melee that lets her deal no damage and then charge a different legal target. I prefer the ranged upgrade for its flexibility, personally, but time will tell. One of her other upgrades, Blood Mark, gives her a ranged push for friendly models that grants them a free (0) ap action (useful to get both of the buffs on shieldbearers, among other things) at the end of the push. With a trigger, she can also count them as corpse markers for her abilities. Finally, her Litany of the Fallen puts a built-in trigger on her melee attack to make the damage irreducible. Usually useful. I don’t know why you would take Vincent without his upgrade, as it grants him From the Shadows and a (0) ap push action to get him out of melee. Maybe you might decide he has too many things to keep track of already and he makes your head hurt. Finally, the soulbound upgrades can either make the model explode when it dies, gives them finish the job, or gives you a refund to grant you a soulstone if the model dies in exchange for a card in hand.


General: I already discussed Archie’s upgrades, so we’ll skip along. Wronged Spirits is a rare 1 upgrade which makes all friendly Onryo within aura 12 gain +1 wk and cg. The model carrying it can discard it to give all Onryo in play Focused+1. Not sure this is enough to make the Onryo playable, but I don’t have firsthand experience to know for sure. I was personally surprised to see Phillip and the Nanny getting a free buff upgrade, as I know lots of people use them, but perhaps the idea was to give them some abilities besides “walk down the board, eat scheme markers, draw cards.” The upgrade in question gives him Haunting Cries, a range 12 Ca v. Wp action that does 2/3/4blast damage. A tome trigger grants a TN 10 horror duel. Again, Phillip players can tell me whether they’ll actually use this or just keep drawing cards with them, but I suppose it’s a free upgrade so why not take it. One of the Rezzer generics is Admiration, which allows a model to push to any summoned models that arrive within aura 6 of them for the cost of a card from hand. It’s costly, but I could see putting this on a slower model like Izamu to give it some added mobility in a summoning crew. The other is My Little Helper, which allows you to summon a Mindless Zombie off of the upgraded model if/when it dies and, once per game, makes the model untargetable by any actions more than 3” away and lets them use two (0) actions for that turn only. 


Monday, August 8, 2016

Ripples of Fate Review: Neverborn

     


      I'm back home from the convention, so I should be able to crank these out sooner. If you want to order a copy of the book, make sure to get it done today before the webstore closes pre-orders. 

1.   The Gorar: Titania’s totem is a symbol of death and rebirth among the Fae (note the egg that the snake is cradling in its coils.) Its main function is to get to the center of the board (within 6”) so that, if a minion you care about is killed, you can sacrifice the Gorar to resummon it. This is important, as the knights and Rougarou are all minions and this is a way to protect them from being killed. It has unimpeded to help it get there through terrain, which is good because it doesn’t have much else in the way of defense. Its melee attack creates a scheme marker and does a little damage and its ranged turns a slow condition into paralyzed (this will make more sense in a moment,) but that’s not why you would be taking it. It’s going to attract a lot of fire and you'll have to work pretty hard to protect it, so I’m a little worried how much use this model will see when Primordial Magic exists.

2.       Aeslin is the Dryw (old English for Druid) that serves as a sort of major domo for Titania. She has Curse of Autumn (as do the knights) which force targets that begin their turn engaged with Aeslin to make a TN 13 WP duel or become Slow. She will get less use out of this than they will, I would assume. She’s a spellcaster with casting expert and the ability to dump a scheme marker to fire into combat without randomizing. Her two attack actions are the same A Wicked Silence melee as the Gorar, but you’ll more often use the Rot and Rend ranged spell. It has no TN, Ca 6, and a pedestrian 2/3/4 damage spread. The real strength of this spell comes from triggers, which can discard scheme markers to do more damage, drop another scheme marker with the ubiquitous A Trophy for the Queen trigger, push a model, or hand out slow. Her (0) actions can either inhibit the opponent’s casting flips or prevent them from moving, pushing, or being placed within a short range. Overall, Aeslin is a short range caster with ok damage and some interesting triggers. I question how much staying power it will have in the crew, but Titania’s ability to tank for her should help.

3.       Tooth, Claw, and Thorn: The three autumn knights are essentially the same theme with variation. The front of their cards are the same, with ok defenses and stats, hard to wound, armor+1, and curse of autumn. All of them also have the (0)AP tactical action A Clear Path to push towards scheme markers within 4”. The differences come with their attacks and their challenge actions. The tooth has a melee sword which automatically drops a scheme marker as a trigger and can hit a different one to get a + flip to damage. Her challenge forces an opponent to move into base to base with the tooth, gives them a free attack at a -, and then gives her a free attack back. The claw (possibly my favorite) has a spear which works as a ranged or melee attack, has the same triggers as the tooth but with the other trigger built in instead, and has a challenge which pushes an enemy model into base to base and can, with a trigger, give them a – flip to defense for the rest of the turn. Finally, the Thorn lashes you with vines that do slightly worse damage but has the + flip to damage trigger built in as well as a separate trigger to let you draw a card if the enemy is close to a scheme marker. They seem tough but not quite as tough as Illuminated, but they’ll probably be necessary to get scheme markers out for Titania.

4.       Bandersnatch: This creature is cool. It’s a Rare 1 Nightmare minion that jumps into your shadow and can attack others from there. This is represented mechanically by the (0) Crawl Into Shadow. If successfully cast against a target, the Bandersnatch buries itself and places an “upgrade” on the target which does damage to it every turn and allows the buried Bandersnatch to use it as the origin point for its attacks. In effect, it acts like the Bandersnatch is attacking out of the shadow at other enemy models, which then allows it to drag the enemy models into melee with the poor sucker and even has a trigger where the second model might attack the first one out of confusion. The 2” melee range of the Snatch is increased by the height of the model. The “upgrade” falls off after the second time it ticks on the original target for damage, so it will be important to activate the Bandersnatch right away to jump back into a shadow and avoid getting hit back, but I think this model is very cool and thematic.

5.       Will o’ the Wisp: These guys are rare 3 spirit swampfiend minions that are incorporeal but also insignificant. Any model that fails a WP duel within 3” of them lets them place a scheme marker in base to base with the enemy. Their attack isn’t very good, but with a cost of 3 they’re not really expected to hit hard. You’re really taking them for 2 reasons. One is The Wisp’s Call, a ranged spell that places a condition on the target which forces them to take walk actions toward the wisp with one of their AP and prevents charging. It has a possibility to disrupt enemy movements, but seems somewhat situational. They also have a tactical action to use a (2) action off of another Neverborn model within 10” for (1) AP. The immediately obvious use is to summon Voodoo dolls for Zoraida, which allows her to use her AP for other things. There is a lot of careful wording to make sure you can’t abuse this (you can only target a single model one time with this per turn and can only be taken once by turn by the Wisps) but could, over time, end up becoming even more useful as new models are released. I'm interested to see these guys in action with Pandora, Zoraida, or Titania for three entirely different reasons. 

6.       Rougarou: If you watch Supernatural you already know that this is a sort of wolf creature which, inexplicably, all the recurring characters are always off hunting to explain why they aren’t in the episode. They’re 8ss fae/beast/undead minions (so hurray for Marcus, I guess.) They’re melee beaters that don’t have a ton of resilience off the card. Hard to Kill is decent, but they could really be scary if they had been given Hard to Wound as well like the rest of the knights. Instead, they have the ability to eat a scheme marker within 3” at the start of their turn to either heal 2 wounds or push 3”. Their claws have a high severe damage and a ram trigger that gives the damage flip a + so its more likely you can cheat for it. Its tactical actions are a pair of (0) actions that either force a target to make a TN 13 WP duel and, if it fails, gives the Rougarou a free melee attack or can push all enemies with pulse 4 into base to base with the Rougarou if they fail the same WP duel. There’s also a fun trigger on this action which lets it jump into base to base with one of the model who succeeds the WP duel after the others push in. Not sure how strong this one is, since it may be a bit too fragile to stick around. There are probably better options at 8 points.

Upgrades: Titania-The Queen has no limited upgrades, so they can be used in whatever combination you prefer. One puts a mask trigger on all of her attacks which forces an enemy to discard cards to target anyone besides Titania. Another gives her the ability to place an enemy model into base contact with her and can place a scheme marker with a trigger. Both of these add to her ability to tank for her crew. The Forest Claims All seems like one which should be used in most games, as it allows her to change all corpse or scrap markers placed within 4” of her into scheme markers unless the opponent discards a card. This seems good for not just disrupting Rezzer, Ten Thunders, and Aracanist summoner crews, but also for getting scheme markers for Titania when the opponent doesn’t care about those markers at all. Finally, The Queen’s Champion is an upgrade which you place on Titania until one of her models kills something. The upgrade then jumps to the new model and grants them Armor+1, a + flip to attacks, and placing a scheme marker every time they damage an enemy. This one seems most likely for me to leave off simply because the cost of controlling which model gets the upgrade (discarding a soulstone if you don’t want it to jump) is pretty high, and I don’t like things I can’t control directly. The general Fae upgrade gives them a 10” aura which grants all Fae the ability to, with a trigger that is built in for the knights, discard a scheme marker and push 3”. This one might also get left behind unless the knights really get a lot more use out of it in play than I'm imagining.


Generalist-Lelu gets Satisfying Punishment, which increases his DF+1 and gives him an ability to deal itself 1 damage at the end of its turn to cycle a card. Iggy gains a melee attack with a 2/3/4 damage spread and the Hide in Shadows trigger. The generic upgrade A Thousand Faces has to be used on a Non-Master and is Rare 2 but allows a leader to take a (1) action if the model with the upgrade dies and may be swapped out for a different upgrade at the start of its activation (paying the difference in soulstone cost, if its higher.) If you choose to switch to Pact, you also get to draw a card. I think I like the other upgrade, Malifaux Provides, better (although I suppose you could always start out with the first one and then switch to the second one when you need it.) It allows a model to discard a scheme marker within 3” to heal 2 and, when the model would gain a condition, allows the model to ditch the upgrade and ignore it as well as drawing another card. Now that I think about it, you may as well start with the first one in case the enemy does something you don’t expect and kills a model early on, but then later switch to the second or any of the other Neverborn upgrades as you feel necessary. 


Saturday, August 6, 2016

Ripples of Fate Review: Gremlins (and some stuff from Gencon)


I haven’t had the time I expected to sit down and crank these out, but a promise is a promise so here’s the Gremlins crew from Ripples of Fate. More to come, as you would expect. Enjoy!

 1.Earl Burns: Burns was the lead engineer on the Infamy (before that became its name) but has now been forced into slavery by Zipp and his crew, since they don’t know how to fly it properly and would likely have ignited the hydrogen inside and killed them all by now if he didn’t stop them. Earl is a significant minion totem which can be towed along by a friendly pirate similar to Hoffman. He has decent ability to heal constructs with his melee attack or smack enemies, but I think his best ability is Regular Maintenance. For an easy cast and a discard, you can add a suit to all duels for friendly leaders and constructs within 6” of him and, with the right trigger, grant them + to their attack actions. Pretty good totem. He also can grant some mobility to pigs or swampfiends in the list, at the potential cost of a wound to himself.

        2.The First Mate: As advertised, he is a Silurid that ate the previous first mate and earned himself the job. He’s a 9ss hench with ok defenses and no defensive abilities to keep himself upright, so he’s going to be a bit fragile. This seems odd, as he seems to want to get in and mix it up in combat. He has a pretty standard melee attack that can poison or turn slow into paralyzed, which comes in handy for his next ability, swallow you whole. If you discard enemy scheme markers within 8” of him he cycles a card.He also has a pretty good maneuvering ability called Menacing Croak that lets you push enemies up to 6” and has some good triggers, including the ability to hand out slow (unless you give the Mate fast, he can’t slow, paralyze, and swallow whole in one turn.) And, of course, he has leap. He seems to be better at maneuvering and positioning than combat, but he still seems a little fragile to me. (Correction: the Mate can slow with a trigger from leap, paralyze, then eat. Card intensive, but possible.) 

        3.Iron Skeeter: These guys seem pretty good. They’re 6ss enforcers that count as living and construct, so Earl gets to tag along with them. When they take walk actions, they can choose to flip a card and, on anything but a crow, place a ht 5 blocking terrain smoke counter adjacent to them. With Zipp throwing around his terrain counters too, a sky pirate crew might be pretty rough on enemy shooting attacks. Their ranged attack has some interesting triggers that can push the enemy or give them slow, and their melee can throw out some poison or, with a different trigger, attack twice if you’re hitting someone who is slow. I’m getting the impression that getting some reliable slowers into a Skeeter crew will be money. Probably most memorable for them is the (0) action “Hop Aboard” wherein they can designate a ht. 1 model near them and then let them move along with their flight for the rest of the turn. The caveat is that you have to declare a trigger for the ability, and half of them are bad. So you’re taking a risk, but Iron Skeeters can bring some real mobility and utility to even non-Zipp crews.

      4. Akaname: Your token brewmaster minion is essentially a filth demon that is an Oni and Tri-Chi and lives in gremlin communities, wherein they eat the pig mess and help defend the town. They have the ability to transfer poison from models around them to themselves once per turn, gain a point from the uncomfortably named “Lick their Corpses” ability when someone drops a corpse or scrap marker, and don’t tick damage every round or reduce their poison condition normally. They gain a bonus to their Ml equal to their poison value (up to +3), can spray poison onto other models by transferring it from himself, and can turn poison on itself into scheme markers as a 0. I don’t know brewy well enough to say whether this plugs a hole for him, but the fact that it doesn’t have a Sebastian or McMourning-esque extra poison effect, so it seems like the most effective use for them.

       5. Banjonista: Is what it says on the tin: gremlins that specialize in playing the banjo. They have a ranged attack that ignores armor, which is probably something gremlins need. They are, however, fairly squishy with 5 df and wp and 6 wounds. Probably the most interesting ability is “Pluck the Strings” which lets them apply a Paranoid condition which forces discards or damage in a sort of pseudo-AoE effect and can trigger to allow other Banjonistas to perform their own Dueling Banjos action. Not sure at first blush how much use these will get, as Arcanists can probably squish them before the armor negation becomes a problem, but I could be wrong.

      6. Swine-Cursed: So…these are a failed experiment by Wong to combine the strength of pigs with the…intelligence of Gremlins? In actual effect, you get a werepig version of gremlins that can switch back and forth between being either type gremlin or type pig as a (0) action. Which state they’re in changes a trigger on their melee attack. The crow trigger when they’re a gremlin makes it so the target can’t declare walks while engaged, while the ram trigger when they’re a pig lets you get a free charge on another target nearby. Every time they switch states they get a healing flip. And, of course, there’s the fact that they gain the Magical condition at the start of the game which lets them ignore armor, hard to kill, and incorporeal. I think there’s some potential here, but they can get knocked down with a concerted effort from the opponent, so they may not be too dangerous.

Upgrades: Zipp’s upgrades: His two limited upgrades alternate in theme for what you want to punish the other crew for doing. One makes them discard to use soulstones. The other makes them discard to use 0 actions with their master or henchman. They both give an ability to clear conditions off of Zipp, though one requires a card and a soulstone so that would take some decision making in game. And, both let you attach one sky pirate upgrade to an enforcer for free. His rambling diatribe upgrade could be crippling against certain crews, as it lets you name a suit and then force your opponent to discard all cards of that suit and redraw them. They sky pirates seem to have a sub-theme of benefitting from discarding opponent scheme markers (fitting, they are pirates after all.) Treasure map is another example of this, as you get to do a draw and discard to get a bonus from which suit you pitch. There are two upgrades that represent the airship getting involved, one with pianos dropping from the sky and the other with a very bright spotlight. Both have a number of amusing triggers. And, finally, the First Mate can give himself armor by removing enemy scheme markers, and gains a trigger to his leap ability which lets him do that for free.

Gremlin Upgrades: The two “fix old models” upgrades are for the Whiskey Golem and the Warpig. The former gives the Barrel to the Face action a ram or tome trigger to follow up with a free Smokey Finish. The Warpig upgrade A) lets the warpig attach the upgrade like it were an enforcer and B) acts like a super recalled training, letting it ignore Set’er off, gain +2 wp, and a + to all flips for the turn. Scary. The two new generics can make certain gremlins more useful for a pig style crew by giving them pork whisperin. The other lets you reflip for random targeting when shooting into a melee once per turn or, if that doesn’t end up being useful, can be pitched to draw two cards.

Bad Blood Statistics

                At this point, I’ve run the module 3 times, once as a shakedown cruise with my friends on Wednesday night and twice with players here at the convention. It’s gone pretty well, I have to say, and it’s been cool running it at a table adjacent to Mason, the head writer for TTB, as he comes over after the game and asks how the players did and looks for cool moments. The shakedown cruise was a darned good idea, because I found a couple of things about encounters which I had misinterpreted while reading (which unfortunately led to a party wipe, but c’est la vie.) Some stats from the game thus far:

Players killed: 1
NPC Mercs killed: 16
Peacekeepers Fixed: 2
Peacekeepers Subsequently Destroyed: 1
Mature Nephilim Evolved: 1
Average length of survival for hooded rider: 4 turns.
Times Mary Finnegan has been stabbed by a doppelganger: 2 (nobody was playing her the third time)

                This adventure rewards players who make good use of the (1) Order action to better utilize the mercs, which I also discovered the first time through. The 1st convention group managed to keep the Peacekeeper alive through to the fight with the Hooded Rider and then use its chain harpoon to keep it from escaping in combat, and it’s so beefy that not fixing it is definitely a mi

Monday, August 1, 2016

Gencon Countdown

               About a year ago, my darling wife was in Indianapolis for non-Gencon related reasons during the convention, and went to dinner with some of my friends form Nebraska. We used to go all the time, but budgets had prevented it from being a possibility in more recent years. Meanwhile, I was at home watching the BoardGameGeek livestream showing stuff that was premiering at the show with the sad Incredible Hulk music playing in the background. I was fine with this. I wanted to go to Gencon, but as a younger professional with a family sometimes sacrifices have to be made. However, my wife decided while she was in Indy that next year I was going, no matter what. And, as it is now the week of Gencon, I am excited and incredibly grateful that its almost time to make it happen.
                Part of why I can do this is because I volunteer with Wyrd whenever I’m there. I recommend doing this for people that want to attend but can’t afford it, as they cover the cost of my badge and let you work for booth credit and goodies as part of helping. In previous years, I had run demos of Malifaux in the event hall and the exhibit hall as well as working on the floor of the Wyrd booth, but this year I’m in for something quite a bit cooler: running a Through the Breach Penny Dreadful for convention-goers! I’m very excited, as GMing for RPGs is probably my favorite form of gaming and I've never gotten a chance to run at a convention before. I’ve even been fortunate enough to be able to help design the pre-generated characters that I’m then going to do my damndest to kill horribly.

Try to read the title and not start a CCR song in your head. I dare you.

                The module I’m running is called Bad Moon Rising. It was written in response to some feedback that combat wasn’t dangerous enough in the game, and as such this is a module designed to be quite deadly. I thought that it was a fine choice for a convention game in that the original convention games of Dungeons and Dragons were designed by E. Gary Gygax for tournaments and were intentionally designed to be treacherous, deadly, and sometimes borderline unfair (I’m looking at you, Tomb of Horrors.)

Pictured: Just a door. Probably.
                If any of my readers happen to be players in my games, I look forward to meeting you and then trying to murder you. Please be sure to introduce yourself as a Malifaux Musings follower, and maybe you might get a little boon in exchange. I want this to be a no-holds barred, Fatemaster versus the Fated throwdown. If you survive to escape, I want you to feel like you've really done something. So bring your A-game kids, because I'll have mine.
               The characters I’ve built are a mercenary company from a contract town who are responding to a call from the Guild to disrupt a Neverborn invasion of one of the Quarantine Zones in Malifaux. Their leader is an overseer of a failed contract town, trying to rebuild his fortune and make remake his name. His long-time companion is an old campaigner, son of a Texas Ranger, and adventurer with arthritic hands who is looking for one more big score before he retires. One is a convict laborer with a power for channeling sorcerous fire. One is a deadly lady bandit and gunslinger with an old connection to a member of the party. And the last is a gravedigger who occasionally speaks with his very special shovel.  This group of misfits, plus a handful of other nameless mercs (the redshirt company) will venture into what they think is a simple sweep and clear operation, and will rapidly find themselves in over their heads trying to save their skins and protect Malifaux from an ancient evil. I've been painting frantically to get the crew (and one of their antagonists)  ready as well as a few Malifaux models to play with Titania. Right now all of the slots in my games are full, but its always possible that people will drop or fail to show up so feel free to check in with me at the Marriott Utah room to see if a slot opens up or, if I got a group of five people, I could possibly be convinced to run it for you off the clock (bribes are always appreciated.) I’ll be keeping tabs on the blog of various statistics from the game (number of people killed in a particular encounter, number of times I’m cursed out by my players, number of times I make someone cry, etc.) So, look forward to that. Or, you know, look forward to posts about what’s in Ripples of Fate.

*walks away*

                What was that? Oh, yeah, the other Malifaux Musings news from Gencon. You might not have seen my various posts on the topic, but there’s this new Malifaux book coming out. Ripples of Fate? You may have heard of it. Anyways, we know who the new masters are and what they can do, but we only know the names of what comes in their crew box, and we know nothing of the rest of the new models in RoF. I’m going to do my best to change that (and, perhaps, drive a few online book sales for Wyrd in the process) by going through the factions individually (ok, probably in pairs) and discussing the models. I’m not going to tell you everything about them (because otherwise why would you buy the book) but I’ll give you the general idea of what’s coming and my quick (probably inaccurate) take on what they’ll do on the tabletop. And the best part is: YOU GET TO DECIDE THE ORDER! Just go here and vote in this poll. The leaders at the times when I’m writing the post get spoiled first, the rest have to wait for the next day (I do occasionally want to go do things at the convention, guys. Games won’t play themselves.)
                Finally, the contest. Who knows if anyone remembers, but I mentioned in my last post that I was going to give people the chance to win some prizes from Malifaux Musings! To do it, all you have to do is find one of the writers from the blog (myself, Mr. Adam Rogers, or the roving reporter Jon Goulbourne) and play us in a game of Malifaux or Through the Breach. If you mention that you’re a blog reader and we write down your name and email address, congratulations! You’re in the drawing! You have a shot to win…something that we get from the con. I don’t know for sure what it’ll be yet, and it’ll probably depend on how many entries I receive, but I have a strong inclination to include this year’s Miss Model since I don’t play Arcanists. We’ll see, but it doesn’t cost you anything to enter and you get a game out of it, so come and find us!

                Until later this week, happy playing and rejoice! For the Queen is risen!

She is risen indeed!

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Ripples of Fate Previews M.2: Sandeep, Parker, Asami, and Zipp

Time to carry on with the reviews! If you missed the first half, here's a link!


Sandeep Desai




                From the fluff, we learn that Sandeep was born in Guild occupied India and learned magic at a temple when he was adopted as an orphan. The knowledge he mastered was totally against Guild law, and as such his master was killed and Sandeep was set on his path. He has since become a teacher of rebel mages and spellcasters, with a mastery of Gamin and holding secret classes on Earth and now, after being invited there by Victor Ramos, in Malifaux. It could be my academic background, but I like the flavor of this dude.
                He summons his big totem, Banasuva, to provide a threat on the board that could be interesting for Collect the Bounty. On the card (likely modified from upgrades,) he has a not so strong melee attack from his big Gada mace. His ranged caster spell has a respectable 2/4/5 damage flip with a ram trigger to give it plus flips for damage. He can teleport as a (0) or perform an interact action. As written, he feels like a kind of generic master, but that makes sense because any of his abilities that are casts (the ranged attack, teleport, and interact) are usable by the other academics in his crew. As such, you wouldn’t want them to be too overwhelming or that could get really out of hand. His melee attack is enhanced by which of his limited upgrades he chooses. He also picks up the ability to summon gamin from his limited upgrade, and gives different buffs to them based on which upgrade he chooses. The other upgrades aren’t detailed to any degree, other than to state that they let him hire academics regardless of faction and gives him the ability to enhance their abilities…in some way. Perhaps fittingly, Sandeep remains probably the most mysterious master at this point, but I’m very interested to see how he operates on the tabletop.


Parker Barrows



                Parker was screwed over in court by a brother long ago, which took all of his money and left him to a life of banditry. He now runs a gang out of the Northern Hills and robs people. They aren’t loyal to anybody, so anybody is a target. And…that’s pretty much it for fluff.
                Parker sort of strikes me as being reminiscent of the game Othello: you can learn him in minutes, but it will take you a lifetime to master. He shoots stuff, unsurprisingly, and has a trigger to make an enemy drop…one of their scheme markers? That will likely seem weird, until you get to the tactical action Five Finger Discount which lets him discard either his own soulstones or the enemy’s scheme markers to attach one of Parker’s upgrades to him. This makes sense when paired with his Empty The Chamber trigger on his shooting attack, which increases his damage from ditching upgrades, and the fact that he has 7 different upgrades which allow him to do different things on the board. So, Parker ditches an upgrade that may or may not have outlived its usefulness in the game (IE it’s a combat upgrade and the game has shifted to a strats/schemes/movements phase, or vice versa,) does some extra damage on an attack (3/4/6 for the cost of one upgrade,) and gains a soulstone back for Limited Supplies. He can then either ditch that soulstone or an enemy scheme marker and attach something better from his massive pool of personal upgrades. So, he could be a swiss army knife, with a different tool to fit whatever job you need. He also can toss out some pushes to his crew to help get slowpoke models into position for added utility. So, to all appearances, he is a scheme denial master (sort of,) who can switch between strategy or combat mode in mid game. My brother used to joke that, if I went to a fast food place, I would tend towards the “one of everything combo” because I like having options. Parker gets more tempting to me all the time. I do worry, however, that most Levi and Vik players may look at him, shrug, and move on past because they already have a very strong combat master and Parker doesn’t explicitly fill any of the things they’re missing.

Asami Tanaka



                I wasn’t sure if Asami would have been an Oni from the start or a former human who had been changed into one. Her backstory reveals that she is the latter. Asami was locked up (seems to be a theme with the women of this book, I just realized) as a child because she could see the lights twinkling in the Beyond and longed to call them to be her family. She and Reva should sit down for coffee sometime. I think they’d have a lot in common. Anyway, her temple was raided and she was wounded and left unable to have children, ensuring she would never be able to create said family the old-fashioned way. As such, she accepted an Oni into her and gained the ability to call them, as well as a big shiny new smile (on the back of her head.) The Thunders have recruited her to take advantage of her talents but, who knows, maybe she isn’t so inclined to being under their control.
                Let’s get the big thing out of the way, Asami’s a summoner. She calls any Oni type minions with a similar version of Nicodem’s summon, but with a twist. Rather than losing wounds when the new Oni enter the board, they have a condition called Flicker+1 that ticks down at the end of the turn and, if it is removed from the model, results in their being sacrificed. So, Asami’s summons have a timer essentially, which can be spiked up by sacrificing corpse and/or scrap markers when she calls them and (presumably) by her totem which has the ability to increase conditions. They still can’t interact when they appear and are slow, but they can tick her for 1 wound and then charge as a (1) so that mitigates a bit of the speed problem. She also has the ability to grant an Oni or minion Focus+2 for the cost of an AP (she is an Oni herself, don’t forget) and her melee attack is no slouch on its own. That said, she has only 10 wounds and only Hard to Kill to protect herself, so keeping her safe while taking advantage of that attack is going to be tricky. Her upgrade A Heavenly Design sounds, on the surface, to be a must-have due to granting her a placing effect for better positioning and by allowing her to drop a scheme marker next to any models which are sacrificed near her (granting them a kind of pseudo-Finish the Job trick similar to Molly’s.) 
                I think that, of the new masters, Asami has the potential to be the most difficult of the lot, but there’s a great deal of potential power here. Playing her as a dedicated summoner and ignoring her own offensive capabilities may end up being a trap, but summoning is one of the most powerful mechanics in Malifaux. Plus, you know, Amo No Zako charging for 1 AP is scary, ya’ll.

Zipp



                Zipp is pretty much what it says on the box, Captain of a crew of sky pirates. He and his band stole an experimental airship and have been raiding and pillaging ever since. His ship is called the Infamy. He has a jet pack and a lightning gun. I think that’s more or less covered it.
                I like to think of him as having more in common with a certain other captain from Futurama whose name begins with Z. His strength is in A) Aggravating the people around him, B) talking a lot and C) Winning because the competent people around him go complete the mission for him. He’s insignificant, we already knew, and specializes in disruption. His two forms of attack are the lightning gun, which can drop the enemy’s walk down or push someone around on triggers. Or, he can lift you up in the air and drop you, leading to the very unique Melee versus Height duel with a pretty decent damage spread and the ability to reposition Zipp and the target 5”. This attack also has the greatest trigger name in Malifaux, “My work done, I race triumphantly into the clouds,” which lets you move Zipp away after doing the drop on the enemy. I think the most powerful thing he might be able to do is summon clouds of smoke to redefine the terrain on the battlefield and screen his troops. And, he has a semi-reliable ability to reposition his own people. I don’t think we can see the real full strength of his model at this time, since he gains power from upgrades which also allow his enforcers to attach Sky Pirate upgrades as well. These give you the ability to bring the Infamy into the fray by having his people drop pianos out of it on people on the other side of the board. It's tough to know for sure what Zipp is going to do, but I'm sure we'll see a ton of it just for the humor value (which could be said for most non-Wong Gremlins, but I'm editorializing again.) Good luck building those Iron Skeeters, though. 

                 So, that’s the whole sorry lot of ‘em that’ll be available at the Con. Before the show starts, I’m hoping to put together a post with some pre-Gencon plans that I’m orchestrating, some information about the games of Through the Breach I’ll be running there, and a Malifaux Musings challenge which will gain you entry to a drawing for some Gencon lootz. So, tune back in for that later this week!


Friday, July 22, 2016

RIpples of Fate Previews M. 2: Nellie, Reva, Titania





So, surprisingly, Wyrd actually released quite a bit more information on the Ripples of Fate box sets prior to Gencon. I thought it would just be the images of the box sets and, by the way, bravo to them for having ALL SEVEN of the new box sets as well as all of the remaining Book 3 models which haven’t been released available for the show. The sculpting staff at Wyrd deserve a lot of kudos for this. This will be the first time since M1E (possibly the first time in the history of Malifaux) when they’re completely up to date. So, cheers for that. However, mid-day on Thursday the 21st, they released some crew summaries and the backside of the master cards to the public. Therefore, since the previous preview posts (yay alliteration) were so popular, I thought it would be time to go back and revisit the previews. There’s only 2 weeks left to the show, however, so we’re gonna have to pick up the pace a bit. On with the show!

Nellie Cochrane




                Fluff-wise, Nellie has been confirmed to be the leader of the Guild run newspaper in Malifaux city. As such, she serves their purpose by not exposing their corruption while digging into everybody else’s (though the story suggests she’s not crazy about this arrangement, necessarily.) She’s got a crew of journalists that work with her as well as her companion, Phiona Gage (a reference from a famous historical medical case of a railroad worker who took a metal spike through his brain and lived, but with an altered personality.) She’s a crusader of truth and, at least from the blurb, is possibly the only truly good person in the entire game of Malifaux. That said, I haven’t read her short stories, so she’s probably secretly kicking puppies or something.
As predicted, Nellie is very different from your average Guild master (IE she’s not going to smash you in the face.) She has a few options for attacking between 1) Scathing Review: an attack that attaches a condition which deals damage every turn unless they perform an interact action (which will then give Nellie more Evidence,) 2) Propaganda: an attack which does a smallish amount of damage but which has a number of triggers which can push the model, let something else take a swing at it, or give it slow, or 3) Hot off the Presses which pushes a model to a scheme marker and gives them burning 3. Propaganda is probably the most interesting, since the additional text lets you drop your evidence condition by 1 to declare more of the triggers off the attack. She can chew up the scheme markers she drops at her feet to get a free 6” push as a zero action as well. She has upgrades which will allow her to hire up to 4 mercenaries without paying the mercenary tax (which will, likely, necessitate taking multiple mercs, since it’s unlikely to be a free upgrade.) Misleading headlines grants her the ability to avoid being out-activated by the enemy crew (a frequent problem with Guild crews) and gives her the very powerful Incite action. Delegation lets her heal models or give them fast (!) which has some interesting interactions with those big, scary mercs you might be hiring or, you know, all the big scary things the Guild already has. So, essentially, Nellie is a big bag of tricks and aggravation for your opponent. I can see her essentially following along with some big gribbly like a Peacekeeper, healing it or giving it Fast, and handing it free attacks with Propaganda. Feels a bit Hoffman-meets-Pandora-meets-Collette to me. She will be mine, someday, but she may stay on Vassal for the immediate future. School supplies have to be bought for my kids this month.


Reva



                Reva’s not at all what I thought she would be in the story. I was with everybody else on thinking “death nun,” based on her appearance, but apparently she is a girl from a rich family who could speak to dead people. They locked her up in the attic, but she escaped with the help of a fallen Guild Exorcist. I’m usually a bit more PC about these things but, based on what I’ve seen so far, *yawn*. I kind of liked the idea of the Resurectionist Nun, I’m not going to lie, so I’m disappointed in this. But, this is just a blurb rather than the full stories from the book, so I’ll reserve judgement until I know the full tale. She seems to have kind of a “Joan of Arc” for the Resurrs, as it mentions that she’s attracting a sort-of death cult that is fanatically loyal.
                The best analogy I can get from my impressions of Reva’s role on the table are “Resurrectionist Rasputina,” only not really. Her main attack comes from Ethereal Reaping, a 1 AP attack that will target anything within 3” or her (and she’s on a 50mm base, so that’s a big range) or a corpse marker within 18”. The attack does pretty strong, Perdita-ish damage with some decent triggers, so this could mess opponents up pretty badly. You won’t want to overlook the Drain Life ability, however, as it has the potential to damage an opponent and heal Reva for up to 5 damage depending on the margin by which she beats the defender in a duel. We all know how fond I am of non-damage flip attacks, after all. Her tactical actions let her teleport to corpse markers or discard corpse markers to add friendly scheme markers. Her upgrades feel toolbox-y, though the one that gives her a corpse candle starting on the enemy’s side of the board and allows her to use Strength of the Fallen while engaged seems pretty strong for her. She’s described as being a quick master who pops around the board, does damage, or perhaps prepares for a big final charge at the end of the game.


Titania


                Ah, my Faerie queen. How we all prepare to revel in the glory of your return. Titania’s fluff we already more or less knew. She’s the resurrected former leader of the Fae who, upon defeating the titans and destroying their physical forms, was locked away by her followers (the current-day Neverborn) and forgotten. She’s back now, and this time she’s pissed. Part of what I want to see story-wise from the book is which of the Neverborn’s masters fall on her side versus which are going to be opposed to her. I can’t imagine Lillith bending the knee, especially given her people’s hatred of the Undead, but I could definitely see Nekima aligning herself with Titania as a means of getting revenge. We do know that she considers humanity to be a scourge of vermin that need to be wiped out, so that would suggest that Jacob Lynch, Zoraida, and the Dreamer are not going to be on her friends list.
                The attack action A Wicked Silence and A New Harvest result in the scheme markers she needs getting dropped. Her main attack is Bloody Command which can discard scheme markers to spike the damage up, heal a friendly model, or forgo Titania’s damage and call in a beater to smash the target (speaking of Nekima.) Finally, she can use her (0) action and discard scheme markers to push herself along which, if she combines it with a triple walk, will give her up to a 21” move in a turn. Sexy. We don’t know which, if any, of Titania’s upgrades are Limited (and, thus, which can be combined,) but we know a few of them. One forces an opponent to discard 2 cards to attack her after she hits a trigger. Forest claims all lets her convert corpse and scrap markers to scheme markers (seems like a pretty strong choice.) And, finally, there’s an upgrade which lets her name one member of her crew as a champion, which gives them some manner of buffs. This lets you apply some flexibility to who gets the upgrade and prevents them getting taken off before they can make use of the abilities, presumably, which tends to happen to me whenever I bring a new shiny to a game. She’s the crew box I’ll be picking up at Gencon, but that’s been the case since the Nythera event, frankly, and that didn’t have anything to do with the rules. I can’t be unbiased with Titania, is what I’m saying, but I think she’s great.


Check back next time for the remaining 4 masters. 

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Sometimes a Draw Can Feel Like a Win

             
I realized, after writing this post, that it was basically a cat poster. So, here you go.

                 I’ve played a couple of games recently where I’ve basically been fighting the deck the entire time. I’m not sure what I did to make the Malifaux Gods angry (but I’m totes sorry. For realz.) but the bottom line is that in the last two games I haven’t flipped a Red Joker that hasn’t been for something like initiative or casting Brillshaper on an Illuminated and have, in the meantime, cost myself as many as 6 VP in differential by Black Jokering a flip in a critical moment that I had previously set up for a win. One turn I drew a full hand of cards, plus two rush of magics, plus 3 cards from a Wings of Darkness soulstone…and ended up with one face card in my hand. It’s been a rough week, is what I’m saying. Also, I’ve not had that many games with Lillith in my time, but I had the impression that most games Tangled Shadows is a very effective ability of which many players are afraid. In my hands, however, my opponents seem to intuitively know which master I’m bringing and either Merc in Anna Lovelace to shut it down almost entirely or have Sidir nearby to jump in front of it and block me. These games have left me pretty salty, and I apologize to the opponents who’ve dealt with my grumpiness while playing me. It’s a character flaw that I fight against almost every game with mixed success. On turn 4 of the most recent game I was honestly contemplating just calling it quits. But…I plowed through, and both games ended…in draws! And in a way, I’m almost prouder of those draws than I would be of wins.
                One was against Rasputina in a game of Interference with Search the Ruins in the pool. This was another of those subterranean Vassal boards with small tunnels that just scream “Put a hungry land marker here and the opponent is screwed.” Weirder, it also had close deployment ensuring that we were going to be right on top of each other from the word go. In retrospect, I probably should have brought Nekima and tried to pounce on the opposing master, but A) I’m still determined to find out why everyone hates the Mysterious Emissary so much despite the fact that it’s played a role in the outcome of every game I’ve used it and B) I didn’t KNOW that my opponent was going to bring the one Arcanist master who is absolutely the worst for close deployment. So yeah, the crew purchasing phase was basically a shit show for both of us, and worse of all it became a slog in the middle with Anna and Hanna Lovelace putting up an 8” aura of “No Tangled Shadows here” over the opponent’s entire crew (if you’re struggling in your local meta with a Lillith crew, Anna’s a merc and she’s basically a hard counter that turns Lillith into a mediocre melee master who can summon trees). So, that’s great. Then I made it worse by trying to use Lillith to tie the Lovelace siblings up for a turn, which ended in Lillith getting turned into paste. For some reason, my hungry land markers think Lillith is super tasty, as my opponents have Red Jokered her twice in three games now, so that didn’t help, but all that armor and some less than fabulous flipping to attack meant I was sans master after turn 3. At this point I started to get a little desperate, and was basically assuming a loss, but I knew three things. 1) Lillith’s Illusionary Forest was placed in a way that meant Rasputina was going to be doing dick for the rest of the game 2) I had 2 Waldgeists hiding well away from the Lovelaces to go hide from them and score the strategy and 3) Mr. Graves was tagged as the chump for Frame for Murder, and he was ready and able to charge in and get beaten up by the aforementioned armored ladies to score me some points, which he promptly did. In other words, I evaluated the situation, made myself calm down, and found a way to score enough to stay in it. Hell, if not for the black jokered damage flip of my ME on the last turn, I may have even won by denying my opponent search the ruins (it has a tome trigger on its attack to blow up all scheme markers within 4” of the target.) So, the draw was earned, and I learned some hard lessons about not using Lillith like I would use Perdita.
                The next game was even worse, luck wise. My opponent was playing a Jacob Lynch Ten Thunders crew and taking the “Only bring one minion in Hunting Party” gambit. They can get away with this, though, when that one minion is a Ten Thunders Brother who are notoriously difficult to pin down, let alone kill. To counter, I had brought Nekima for this game and given her Retribution’s Eye to negate the awesome defensive triggers and give me an opportunity, when I was ready for it, to pounce and kill it. I jammed the center of the board up with more forests and Hungry Land, forcing the action around the perimeter of the board (again, how can a model that affects the game this much be bad? I really don’t understand.) Sidir had again managed to jam up most of my transposition antics with Lillith by bouncing in front of the target with Broken Promises turned on to block that as a tactic all together, but eventually I got the TTB pulled into melee. Nekima walked up, had two AP and a hand full of pretty good cards to finish him…and damage flip is a black joker followed by a second attack that misses. Curse words ensue. Then Nekima fails three defense flips against Lynch, dies, and brings Hungering Darkness back into my backfield. The TTB escaped, and then Sidir stepped in the way to protect it for the rest of the game from any more Tangling of Shadows. And, as I said, I was honestly considering packing it in at this point. But, I looked closely at the board and saw that A) I was set up well for scoring max on Search the Ruins B) No one was going to score much of anything from the strategy (Headhunter) and my opponent had kind of tipped his hand that he was playing Search the Ruins as well, while my Emissary was poised to blow up his scheme markers, and C) He had only scored partial points from Quick Murder. The door was open for me to at least make a respectable showing. My Doppleganger and Primordial Magic managed to complete Search the Ruins, despite Hungering Darkness’s compelling argument that the PM needed to feed itself to some Hungry Land on turn 5. Hell, I even had a chance to win the thing if I had thought to get an exposed Illuminated back behind cover to avoid getting finished off by the Ten Thunders Emmisary to score an easy head marker for the opponent.
This one, of course, is a bit dicey since my opponent was playing a crew that was not optimized for the encounter, but the point is simply this: Don’t give up in games. If you get frustrated as easily as I do, step away for a second and pull yourself back together. Get off of tilt, and get your head back in the game. It doesn’t matter how bad you’re getting stomped if you’re playing the scenario effectively. You can still get a good result in a game when you basically bet your butt handed to you in the combat portion if you can outrun the opponent’s schemes and strategy efforts.