Musing on joining the Ten Thunders

            To continue with this series of…musings…I think I’m resolved to give the Ten Thunders a go. The way I put it was something to the effect of “as goes Lynch, so go I.” Is this a rational way to make a decision? No, probably not. But this is a silly game with murderous teddy bears and zombie hookers, so I think we’ve probably tossed out any requirement for serious consideration in our decision making.

            I thought this would probably be a good time to discuss my thoughts on the faction as a whole. My history with the Thunders is a bit of an odd one, as I never set out to actually play them. It just happened that, when the M1E book Storm of Shadows came out and introduced them, I needed Lynch and McCabe to continue growing my collection of Neverborn and Guild. Then I picked up a Misaki because ninjas were cool. Then I started adding bits and bobs and, next thing you know, I have part of a faction. The fact that Phiasco plays Thunders and we were frequent sparring partners made me hesitate to expand too much in that direction, as I like to have games be as diverse as possible. Additionally, as we were going through the last year of school and job searching, paired with the fact that I was a long way from a Malifaux community when I was living in western Virginia, and as a result I haven't bought very many models from Book 3 of M2E forward. As such my collection isn’t really at a point where I feel comfortable putting them out on the board competitively right now. Mainly, I’m missing two of the fairly key pieces that most Thunders crews bring for games: Yasunori and one of the Shadow Emissary or Sensei Yu. Without them, my Ten Thunders will be missing a lot of the things that give the faction their personal style and reputation.

            Which I suppose warrants a discussion of what that style is. When most people think Ten Thunders, there are a couple of things that come to mind. One is the Focus condition. The Thunders have a lot of ways to get it outside of taking an action. The old classic is through the Recalled Training upgrade, which allows one to discard it at the beginning of a model’s actions and gain a + to all flips for the rest of the turn, basically a super Focus that lasts for the rest of the turn. They’ve had this since the beginning of M2E, and it’s really defined their playstyle. Somehow, despite its ubiquity, its managed to escape each round of nerfs without being modified, so this is still very much the case. Most of the time, a model that’s planning on being committed to melee or placed in danger will start the game with an RT attached, which can add a lot of soft costs to crew construction beyond the cost of the models themselves. In addition, a number of Thunders models have actions to hand out Focus. The aforementioned Shadow Emissary and Sensei Yu both play with Focus, as well as a handful of other faction models. The overall effect is to create crews focused more on individual, punishing strikes rather than a crew of brawlers that want to dive in and start throwing blows around randomly.

            The other feature are the use of pushes to shove models around. Again, Yu and the Emissary are the usual suspects for this role. The increased mobility is a big part of what makes the “typical” faction crews work, and is a big reason why people play them. Generally, when you’re preparing to play against them, you have to keep in mind the realistic possibility that they can strike with their heavy hitters wherever they want to on the board by turn 2 (if not sooner.) Usually that comes in the form of a charging Yasunori lashing out with a series of brutal, repeated melee strikes, but the same methods can be applied to shove a master like Misaki or Shen Long down your throat as well. There are no safe spaces on the board, basically, if the Thunders want to attack it.

            Their weaknesses tend to come when they get bogged down. They aren’t as fragile as the Neverborn, but they’re going to be more successful when they fight in a guerilla style with specific targets rather than engaging in long protracted engagements and hoping to muddle through. Models like Yin the Penangalan or Gwyneth Maddox have some decent defensive tech, particularly with the Smoke Grenades upgrades or defensive buffs from Charm Warders, but glass cannons are more common than tanks. Additionally, they don’t have a preponderance of anti-armor abilities in faction. The Arcanists in particular can be tough for this reason, and you often have to either focus fire on a particular key target or try to avoid combat with them unless entirely necessary.

            So, right now this is what I have available.

Lynch Crew: Hungering Darkness, 2x Illuminated, 2x Depleted, Gwyneth Maddox, Mr. Graves, Mr. Tannen, 2x Beckoner.

Lucas McCabe: Sidir Alchibal, Luna, 3x Wastrels

Misaki: Shang, Ototo, 2x Torekage, 2x Thunder Archers, Yamaziko

Miscellaneous: Yin, Izamu, Oiran, Shadow Effigy, Ten Thunder Brother, Terracotta Warrior, Monk of the High River

            I think the Emissary is my first priority for new additions, as he’s flexible enough to work in most crews as a lynchpin and enabler but can dish out some offensive punishment when necessary, something that Yu can’t really do (also, I don’t have to buy a whole crew to get the SE, which is nice.) Hopefully by next week I’ll have some tabletop results to discuss, and maybe a break-down of what crew builds I’m looking at. Now I just have to figure out how I’m going to paint some Dragon Balls to put on my Shadow Emissary’s base.

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!