From here to there: Deciding what to play on the way to M3E.

            So, the first bit of news is that I’ve finished my move to Iowa. It’s been kind of a long year, looking for a new job and helping my wife finish out her nursing school, but I’m glad to report that things will hopefully be settling down in the near future. With luck, that should also result in content from Malifaux Musings being a little bit more regular in the future. Maybe I shouldn't overpromise, but look for things to get a bit more involved soon. 

            Additionally, the move means I’ve changed regions for the upcoming Malifaux competitive season from the Capital Conference to the Central Conference. To be honest, I never played enough in VA for that to make much difference or to compare the two to each other, but what it will really mean is not having to drive four hours every time I want to participate in a tournament, which is a welcome change to be sure. My local area doesn’t have an active play group at the moment, but Des Moines has been going strong for a while now. As a matter of fact, I’m planning on attending the Central Faux Tour Kickoff tournament in a couple of weeks. Moreover, this gives me the opportunity to meet up with some of the folks from my original Malifaux Meta in Lincoln, NE from time to time as well. They’re some good folks, and I’ve missed them since I moved away. Admittedly, 6 hours is a bit of a long haul just to say hi, but I’m sure we’ll run into each other at the events from time to time.

            This leads into my current quandry, however. M3E is on the way, and my faction selection options are going to change pretty dramatically when it does. For almost all of M2E I’ve been a Neverborn player. I floated into Guild and Ten Thunders from time to time, but the Malifaux natives have more or less always been my home. The crews I played most often during that period were NB Lynch, Lillith, and Collodi. And, as you likely know, those three are either leaving the faction or going into the Dead Man’s Hand whenever that happens.

Which sucks.

So I’m in a crossroads at the moment. What faction should I play for this last stretch of time in M2E, heading into the new edition? Probably the most competitively sound choice would be to stay with the Neverborn for the time being. I know them best. It could even be a sort of going away party. The combination of crews I have overlap their strengths in a way that allows them to complement and cover for most different types of scheme/strat combos. And, there will still be some crews that interest me left in faction in M3E, at least thematically. I have a Nekima, of course. I like Pandora and Zoraida. Dreamer's always interested me, though that's as far as I've ever gotten with him.  And I was a big advocate for Titania before she went and broke my faction apart with her civil war. Sigh. I’m not gonna lie. It’s a little tough to get excited for them at the moment. Maybe it’s just fatigue from playing them for so long, or maybe it’s looking ahead and feeling some serious #notmyNeverborn vibes. The fact that I’m writing this is probably a good indication that it’s time for a change.

Do I go back to my first love, the Guild? The very first crew I ever bought and, indeed, the crew that brought me into Malifaux initially was Perdita. I had spent a week recovering from tonsillectomy as an adult (I don’t recommend it, btw) and spent a large part of that time reading The Dark Tower series. The Gunslinger definitely played a role in drawing me to the Ortegas, and I’ve had a soft spot for them ever since. Additionally, I have a full Hoffman crew, including an alternate Joss and Howard to include some of the new Arcanist flavor. I like the aesthetic of that crew quite a bit. I own Lady Justice and have a painted Sonnia crew. I’ve always wanted to get Lucius, and the fact that his M2E box set is going to be the best deal in Malifaux once M3E drops, since it contains two masters, makes picking one of those up pretty tempting. That plus various other Guild odds and ends mean I could play that faction pretty comfortably.

Or do I follow Lynch (my favorite crew) to the Ten Thunders? Another crew I liked a lot was Lucas McCabe, who has apparently been fired by the Guild and now works exclusively for the Thunders. And I have a Misaki crew, plus a few additional odds and ends from the faction, like a Ten Thunders Brother, Terracotta Warrior, and Monk of the High River. But that’s literally it. I don’t own half of the masters in the Thunders and am missing a lot of the key pieces people utilize, like Yasunori or the Mysterious Emissary. Of course, the new job also means I’ll have greater ability to actually get these things (hurray for no more paycheck to paycheck), but it also means more painting time before I’m fully up to speed, which is problematic for the remaining M2E period.

I’m inclined to go with the follow Lynch plan for the time period and just say damn the consequences. I'm playing him in the Malifaux Vassal league that's running right now, so I can get an idea of how I feel about him in faction. Plus, from everything we understand of M3E, having a full faction may be less important in the grand scheme of things, as the crew theme and synergy are being much more emphasized. The Honeypot crew have appealed to me from the first time I saw them, so that’s my thought for now. That, and Cheating Bastard Lynch is a lot of fun, so I can honestly see myself playing a lot of that during the time remaining. Whether that is for the old bosses in the Neverborn or the new bosses in the Ten Thunders remains to be seen. Maybe you have some ideas? There's a good chance that whatever I end up picking will get a lot of coverage on Malifaux Musings, so if you want to see me write about something in particular that'd be a good idea. Feel free to comment in the various places, and I’ll take them under advisement.

Oh, and did you see my article in the most recent Wyrd Chronicles? It's called Soulstones in the Rough, and It deals with some common themes to this post. More specifically, it pulls out some models that have been relegated to the M2E dust bins of some people and makes an argument for getting them back out and on the table, as well as discussing some of the changes coming to those models (and their theme crews) in M3E. A lot of that info is currently unavailable outside of the alpha/beta forums. You should go check it out.

Later, Wyrdos.

Gencon M3E Rumor Mill

               This last weekend was Gencon. The Wyrd booth had a set-up of M3E models and rule cards. Our undercover agent, the Sensei of the Wandering River Dojo, Phiasco scored some pictures of these cards. I know a number of people were disappointed that demos were not being run, but at least some information was available if you spoke to the game designers about it and/or took a look at the new cards/models. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

              These are rules reference cards, explaining the generic actions, cover and concealment rules, and accuracy and damage modifiers. There's a lot of stuff up there, and you can read, so I'm not going to go into it.

              Here are some scheme and strategy cards. All of the strategies have elevating difficulty in their scoring, meaning they get harder to score as you pick up points in them. For example, with Turf War, you score at the end of the turn if you have more friendly Turf markers than VP you've scored from the strat. IE, you have to keep flipping more and more markers as the game goes on to keep scoring. That's pretty smart. Schemes also cap out at 2 VP each, meaning games total 8 VP instead of 10, and the strategy becomes possibly more important to the overall game plan than in M2E, since it represents a greater proportion of the final score. I'm told that most of the schemes are easier to score one point but pretty difficult to score 2, which is also smart. 

              This is Rasputina's crew. The new sculpts of the models look pretty cool. Again, you can read. Take a look. 

              And here's Marcus. He gets super young, which is weird. I like old dreadlocks Marcus more, but w/e. Also, underneath are the Mutation upgrades which we've heard of, that give the Chimeras a suite of customizable abilities that Marcus can swap around among the members of his crew. I like it. Very McCabe-y. 

              In addition to these screenshots, those of us who weren’t lucky enough to attend in person were still able to get information by trolling through A Wyrd Place and Malifaux’s sewers (literally). The same Larry Mottola who would later go on to win the Gencon championship talked to the folks at Wyrd and managed to acquire the following rumors. I make no comment as to their accuracy, and as per usual all of this stuff is in Alpha/Beta, so keep in mind that things could change. 

All initiative can be cheated.

You get pass tokens based on difference in activations and it recounts each turn.

All models outside of the Keyword get the old merc tax penalty of +1ss.

Damage scaled down.

Engagement ranges scaled down.

Charges are 1 AP Walks plus a single attack. No more than 1 charge a turn, barring special rules like Cojo.

First Master hire is free, others pay the cost. Totems are free with their Master. No generic totems.

Each faction gets Versatile models, like the Effigy, Emissary and Riders, which don’t pay the tax with any Master.

              Peons are no longer a thing. All non minions are rare 1 unless specified otherwise

Also, Mason put up a pic with a size comparison of M3E stat cards compared to M2E. 

Some people are mad about how big they are, proving yet again that people will complain about literally anything.

So, what do you think of what we've seen of M3E so far? 

Malifaux 3rd Edition: A Malifaux Musings Special Report!

               Yesterday’s announcement of Malifaux 3^rd Edition set the world of the miniature game on fire, to no one’s great surprise. Many people are excited, as I have been since I learned the news that change was on the way. Many have been griping for quite a while about a number of aspects of M2E that have not aged particularly well over the last 5 years (Vantage Point, Model Bloat, etc.) An edition change is always big news, but Edition Wars!^TM are also a perpetual concern for game designers. No doubt they would like to create new rules to address problems in previous iterations (and, let’s be honest, having you buy new books/cards/models doesn’t hurt as an incentive either) every time they creep up but, inevitably, an edition change leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths.

Sonnia's got yer "bad taste in your mouth" right here.

It’s a fact of life. The same thing happened with the transition from M1.5E to M2E. And, of course, no one at Wyrd is surprised that this announcement of M3E has left to the inevitable vocal minority declaring that this is the last straw, and they’re going to go play something else. There’s a reason that the URL for Malifaux 3^rd Edition’s announcement is https://www.wyrd-games.net/table-flip (and I give them props for lampshading it from the beginning.) But before we all start looting and rioting, why don’t we take a look at what’s coming in M3E and go from there?

               First of all, M3E is not a “throw out the rules engine and start over” rewrite. M2E’s a pretty good baby with a few glitches, and the designers don’t want to throw it out with the bath water. M3E is more of a streamlining effort. Towards this end, the number of conditions in the game are being trimmed down to a core set of 11 (pictured below) rather than the numerous, never ending variety of conditions that came about over the course of the game’s lifetime.

               There are a lot of familiar things in there, as well as some new ones. For one thing, Burning is more like inverted Poison now, as it only ever does one point of damage, but your value of Burning goes up every turn instead of down. Shielded is obviously meant to reflect the Arcane Shield that started to become ubiquitous on Arcanists later in M2E’s life, with it reducing the damage a model takes by 1 and then reducing the Shielded condition every time you take a hit. Distracted, Injured, Staggered, and Stunned are new conditions that inflict various forms of debuffs on enemy models. It’s a lot to track for now, but I’m sure the more we play the more we’ll learn them. I think it’s a good move. To offset the loss of unique Conditions that some masters impose (Blighted, for instance) we’ll have tokens masters put on models that the crew can use as a resource. I think this is an elegant solution to one of the things that have bogged own Malifaux over time, and I’m excited to see it in action.

               Beyond the explicitly detailed rules changes, there are a number of less clear indications of rules streamlining. The cards and the art are being updated to look more like those we’ve seen from The Other Side. There will be new sculpts of the models coming, but the ones you have will still be legal and the full rule set and stat cards will be released for free at M3E’s release date, meaning all you’ll have to do is download and learn the new stuff and you’ll be good to go! Otherwise, there are simply vague references to “ironing out wrinkles in the M2E engine” and “adjusting deployment zones and threat ranges to get you into combat faster”. *shrug* We don’t know anything about these, so we’ll just see what we learn as time goes on.

               Another big change are the hiring rules. We’re told that M3E will focus on hiring more thematic crews, both through more Keyword synergy and by imposing a penalty on hiring models form outside the leader’s theme. I don’t know that too many people will be upset about that, as I know many people have wanted to see more thematic crews in Malifaux. Another big change, of course, is the revelation that M3E will allow for the hiring of multiple masters into your crew. This is one that seems to be bringing in a bit more trepidation from people, but I’m personally excited for the idea. I know some of the coolest pieces of Malifaux fluff stories are when a pair or trio of masters team up to take down a greater threat. One assumes Masters will be quite expensive to balance this. We’ll see what it looks like down the line, but put me in the “fan” column.

New masters: Benicio del Toro, Dave Bautista, and Mark Hamill from The Last Jedi?

               While we’re talking about Masters, there are some new ones coming! Nekima is going to get the M1.5 to M2E henchman promotion and take over as leader of the Nephilim. The Guild get a pair of newbies, in the form of a frontier lawman named Cornelius Basse and Captain Dashel (who has to have flown the highest in Malifaux from his humble beginnings as a totem to a full Master!) One that’s been in Malifaux’s fluff for a long time that is finally coming into the game is Albus Von Schtook, a necromancer who lives in the sewers in his "University of Transmortis" and broadcasts necromantic lessons to burgeoning Resurrectionists throughout the city. The Neverborn gain something apparently related to the Cyclopses we saw as Fae from Titania’s crew named Euripides and Marcus is becoming dual faction with the Neverborn. Hoffman will make his “one foot in the Arcanists” official and become dual faction, and Jack Daw will become dual Outcasts and Rezzers. Zipp is becoming dual faction in the Outcasts as well as remaining in the newly christened “Bayou” faction (aka Gremlins 2.0) Finally, the Qi and Gong’s proprietor, Youko Hamasaki, is joining the game as well, making the Ten Thunders now the faction with the most hookers by capita of any faction in Malifaux.

               Now, the flip side of this comes with the loss of some options. For one thing, some of the Masters who have been eliminated in the fluff are also being eliminated from tournament legality, namely Nicodem, Lillith, and Ramos who are, for various reasons, either dead or incapacitated and are now no longer going to be tournament legal. For whatever reason Collodi is also in that list (he’s not dead or in jail as far as I know. The only reason I can think of why he’d no longer be around is if the weird paradox from the Through the Breach: Stitch in Time story where Collodi never ended up becoming evil. He instead evacuated from Malifaux to Earth at the end of the era of the First Breach and became a popular performer there. That would be weird if it worked out that way.) All of these will eventually be available in a special “Dead Man’s Hand” pack at some point in the future which your tournament organizer will be able to allow at their option, so they’re not gone forever but won’t be tourney legal officially. Additionally, McMourning, McCabe, Jacob Lynch, Misaki, Brewmaster, and Tara lost their dual faction status, so that could also shift which factions you play a lot, potentially.

               Now, I get it that this sucks. I really, really do get it. Believe me. I’ve spent the last couple of years playing primarily Lillith, Neverborn Lynch, Guild McCabe, and Collodi, and I occasionally splashed in some Guild McMourning for flavor. Hell, when I was scrambling for extra money while my wife was going through nursing school and our finances got tight, I started selling off models from factions I don’t play, liquidating all of my Rezzers (so now I can’t even play my McMourning in faction as I don’t have the models to do it anymore) and a Marcus crew that was one of the paint jobs I was proudest of, who I could now use with my Neverborn if I still owned it. So, yeah. I have reason to bitch. But I’m not going to. I’m embracing the change. I’m probably going to give the Neverborn a rest for a while since my most played masters either aren’t in the game or aren’t in the faction anymore. I encourage you to do the same, and put your salt away for now.

               Ok, rant over.

               If you’re still worried about M3E, you can help to make it better! There’s a sign-up online for the M3E closed beta and, much like with voting, if you don’t like the result but don’t do your part to make things better, you don’t get to complain. Go sign up for the beta! The more people join, the more data the designers will receive and the better the game will ultimately be. 

               Going forward, Malifaux Musings will take a walk through the various factions and take a look at what we know regarding their changes, paired up with our usual slew of articles (there’s not really enough info for full blog posts at this point.) In the meantime, I encourage you to check out each faction's page to get a blurb about what's happening in the future. If nothing else, it's worth it to see the awesome new faction banner art on them (and kudos to whichever artist did those. They're great!) 

                I hope you’re as excited for M3E as I am and, if not, I hope you’ll keep an open mind going forward. This is going to be good, you guys. Come along with us!

Why we kill your characters (and some news for Gencon.)

-We’re a couple of weeks out from Gencon, so it was time for the annual announcement of the Nightmare and Limited Editions available at the big show. As a result of their victory in the Worldwide Malifaux Event related to The Other Side, this year’s NE box goes to the Gremlins. It features an odd alternate version of the Ulix boxed set with Unicorns and Winged Horses in place of the pigs. I, uh, well I don’t necessarily want them. You might like them. I’m sure it’s nice for you. I don’t play Gremlins, and I don’t love crews that break the verisimilitude of Malifaux. Feel free to let me know I’m dumb and wrong for not liking it. I will accept this.

-This year’s Miss model is not the male to female transition we’re used to. In this #metoo era, our Wyrd overlords have elected to go the other way and make a male Shikome. His name is He-kome, because of course it is. I dig this model. I don’t play rezzers so I don’t need it, but I dig it. Plus, all you Nico players are flocking over to Kirai after the nerf, so don’t say Wyrd never gave you nothin’.

-Probably the biggest info-bomb, however, was the revelation that this year’s Gencon will be the first since the game’s release where there is no new book (at least as far as I can remember.) So, no book 6. There are some kinda cool limited edition/alternate sculpt versions of models, and the usual slew of stuff from further down the release schedule will be available for your purchasing pleasure. I think the alternate Mr. Graves is kinda cool, though mostly as a Mature Nephilim rather than as the G man himself (bald is beautiful, ya’ll.) There’s some other good stuff in there. I definitely recommend the Through the Breach adventure Northern Sedition that they’re releasing there. It’s a continuation of the Northern Aggression adventure (though you can start with this chapter as well) that takes things to a whole new level and integrates some of Malifaux’s power players into the action. Also, the Guild sourcebook Above the Law is coming out. There's good stuff in there too. I like the sculpt of the alt Ototo better than the old one, but I don't play Ototo so it would just be a cosmetic thing if I got it. 

What this news about no Malifaux release means is, of course, a subject of much speculation. One assumes that the forthcoming The Other Side game and the departure of Aaron Darland from the design team likely has something to do with the delay in book 6. I’m not going to speculate, but it is certainly a bummer not to have anything new that I’m personally jumping up and down about. Probably better for my budget in the long run, I guess. On the other hand, the most traffic Malifaux Musings ever has comes from discussing Gencon previews, so that kinda sucks on a personal level.

***

 

I'll be taking your character sheet, please.

Those that follow RPG streaming online can’t help but have notice that, last week, something pretty significant happened. The whole RPG twitterverse was suddenly talking about character death all of a sudden. The Dungeons and Dragons stream Critical Role is a big part of why RPGs are currently undergoing a renaissance/golden age/other superlatives. The whole industry of streaming games comes from them. And, a couple game sessions ago, their Dungeon Master Matt Mercer killed one of the characters. The group was playing at half strength and made choices that put them in contact with a very dangerous group of enemies who were (in this GM’s view) probably designed to be fought by the full strength party rather than the partial group. 

One of the players used an ability that dropped them to 0 hps and knocked them unconscious. The adversary he was fighting made a choice to, rather than just wiping the characters out, make a Negan-esque example out of that character and killed him. It could have been avoided, though not without some obvious contortion from the DM to save him. Nevertheless, Mercer was not “Mercerful” as the audience often refers to him, and the character is dead now (disclaimer: I haven’t watched this week’s episode yet, but they’re too low level and have no cleric, so chances are they can’t fix it.)

It sucked. The character was cool and well-liked by the audience. He had an interesting and mysterious backstory that, most likely, will not be explored now. A certain amount of sadness is expected at this point. Lord knows I was a little bit shocked by it. However, as Mercer would suggest on Twitter in an address later in the week, some people got way more upset and were angry at him for not pulling his punch and saving the charcter.

To those people: you are wrong. You’re allowed to feel the way you feel, but you are wrong. Also, if you made Matt Mercer sad I’m not friends with you anymore. Just know that. I will fight you.

Seriously. You don't get to hate this guy.

Anyways.

The subject of character death is always a touchy one where RPGs are concerned. After all, your players build these characters. They invest their time and energy and emotions into making them unique and interesting. If they’re like me, they spend FAR too much time thinking about them when they’re supposed to be thinking about work or driving their car. And then, because some die rolls go awry, that character is gone. No more stories. No more adventures. Their tale is done, and sometimes they die in ignominious ways that don’t even help the story progress. We joke in my RPG games that my players are unbeatably dominant in important plot related combats, but random meaningless encounters are perpetually life-threatening.

Some suggest that this is an argument for finding ways around killing the character. Lord knows, in some games it’s nearly impossible to make someone permanently die as it is. Through the Breach doesn’t have this particular problem (no resurrection Magia, as far as I’m aware), but the inclusion of undead or augmented characters means that anyone with sufficient money or access to necromancy can’t really be killed forever outside of some very extreme circumstances. However, veterans of the game know that death can come on very fast in TTB, and is often quite gruesome. One thing the game does better than some other RPGs, in my opinion, is force characters to suffer mounting difficulties and disadvantages as damage accumulates, so that you tend to fall down very fast when things go awry. A few defense flips and/or a well-placed Red Joker can result in a character death coming out of the blue.

And I’m here to convince you: that’s a good thing.

Here’s why. Winning feels good in an RPG. Your game master creates a challenge, and you overcome it. Evil is smited. Loot is acquired. Fair maidens are saved. It feels good. But the thing is, if there’s no risk involved, it doesn’t feel as good as it would have otherwise. If the threat of death isn’t there, the damage your character is taking becomes abstract numerical transactions rather than the ever-approaching tread of doom. And as soon as your characters start to feel like they’re immune to those dangers and free of those consequences, their achievements don’t matter as much anymore.

The temptation for game masters is to try and protect their players for the sake of the story. Don’t do it. The story is what happens when your players interact with the situations you create, not a set plot you devise from the beginning that your players are only allowed to walk through and observe. If the choices they make in game or the vagaries of the fate deck result in a player dying, you’ve just been given some of the strongest plot fodder you could ask for. These are the things players talk about. These are the stories they pass on. Don’t go out of your way to kill them, but don’t go out of your way to save them, either. I often say that the best GM I’ve ever played for is a completely merciless tyrant (literally, he’s had conversations with me about how he prefers monarchies to democracy) who once had a villain throw one of my characters’ young children off of a cliff to screw with me. And I’ll never miss an opportunity to play in one of his games, because I know that any achievements my characters make there will be earned.

For the Critical Role crew, they played a game into the epic tier in the first campaign of their show, and were still playing their new low-level characters like the bullet proof near-immortals they used to have. That will stop now, I would imagine. And, as a result of this character death, a game that has thus far had no clear antagonist has a legit villain for the party to overcome. Even as an audience member, I’m anxious to dig into the next episode ASAP so I can see how the group carries on. These are the benefits of character death. So, Fatemasters, go out and kill your characters. Even if they never say it out loud, they’ll thank you for it in the long run.