Everyone loves playing Pandora right?? Anyone?

Old metal sorrows hanging out with the replacements in dayglow green

Favorite Baby Kade sculpt

    So lets talk about everyone's favorite Neverborn, Pandora.  Now you will have to bear with me a little, as I have had a bit to drink and am writing up my Pandora blog.  Not that I am trying to be a malibro, but I am having a Red's Apple Ale with a shot of caramel vodka in it.  A Red's caramel apple, and it tastes great.  I might have to have a second one.....but I digress. 

   I have always enjoyed playing Pandora, because she was my first master.  It wasn't for her, not that she didn't look great, but it was Baby Kade that drew me right in.  I am sure that I uttered the phrase "That kid's got a knife" when I first saw it.  The second model that I wanted was Teddy.  Now he is a great addition to the Pandora crew since Kade had a skill called "Where's Teddy" that will allow him to be placed into base contact with a Teddy within 15 inches of him and them move Teddy 6 inches.  So this moved Kade's threat range up and gives Teddy a free move with a cost of two.  Now this is expensive, but it is a nice way to get Kade out of a sticky spot, or give Teddy a little more threat, sense they both have abilities that give them a free attack if they are within 6 inches of a model that either ends a move that isn't part of a move action, or lose a willpower duel.

My Teddy Bear Collection

   Without Baby Kade and Teddy I might not have gotten started in Malifaux at all.  Once I got a good look at the Pandora box set though, I liked all the models and just as importantly how they worked.  I like the death by a thousand cuts style of play.  I like the lack of direct confrontation in this crew also, I could do damage from far away based on my opponent just failing a test.  Now my usual opponents are guild players, so I end up facing a lot of Lady J and Perdita.  Now any Neverborn player will tell you that those are just about the worst masters you can face, as they counter most of your strengths.  In 1.5 the biggest problem I had, was the insurmountable number.  Now Perdita could ignore the Pandora rule about needing to take a willpower test to shoot her, which means her standard shooting attack of 7 against my defense of 2, with a soulstone for a second card, getting into the 30s as a target number, when my best possible number would be 13+14+2 with the same soulstone and the best cards in the deck.  It would be relatively easy to take me out in a shot or two.
   So for most Pandora players, it would surround yourself with sorrows would could take a hit for Pandora, and then move up the board with some push trick she had, hit whoever you wanted for a few points of damage and then get back under cover.  I was ok at that, but it was never anything that I excelled at, so I ended up losing more games with her then winning.  That was usually not a big problem for me as I enjoyed playing the games, even the ones I lost.  This is not the experience that most people have against Pandora, but now who cares because there is now a new version, and she is both more fun to play and more fun to play against.
   So now lets talk about Pandora in 2.0.  This is my typical 50 stone build:

• Pandora - Aether Connection, Fugue State - Cache of 4
• Primordial Magic - Totem for Pandora
• Candy - Best Behavior
• Baby Kade - His 7 defense is usually enough to keep him safe without upgrades
• Teddy
• Sorrow
• Sorrow
• Sorrow

  
   In version 2.0 Pandora can substitute her willpower stat for her defense (df:3 vs wp:7) in any opposed duel and she considers it a willpower duel.  Now if she wins the duel, she can push herself 4 inches in any direction.  This means she can choose to either move up closer, and with a 3 inch threat range she can engage a lot of territory, or she can move away possibly getting out of the range of the character attacking her.  Now all of Pandora's attack actions have a willpower resist and that means if she is within 6 inches of the model she is attacking, the model will take damage from the attack, and also take a separate point of damage from Misery.  You also do another separate point of damage for each sorrow within 6 inches.  Now I like this better than the 1.5 version because in the old version while Pandora's Misery range was 12 inches, each sorrow's range was only 3.  Now, they are all even at 6 inches, so the potential for more damage stacked up is even better.  So this is why it is such a good idea to take sorrows with Pandora.  Now we already talked about what Teddy and Kade can do as a pair, so I am not going to repeat that here.

  Pandora's henchman is Candy and she is just as sweet as her name suggests.  Candy carries both sweets and sours in her little basket.  This means she can both heal and harm depending on what you need.  Healing in a crew is always handy to have, and her damage profile is normal for neverborn.  She  is much more useful to control your opponent's activation order.  She has sweets/sours that either give her control over a model, or can paralyze a model depending on how the model is activated.
   The way I usually use this crew is in three groups.  I like to keep a sorrow or two around Pandora, and then Kade and Teddy are a group, Candy and a sorrow, with the Primordial Magic as a floater.  The sorrows are not as good at being hard core objective grabbers, however, they can do damage to the enemy crew without spending any AP to do it.  With the Misery ability, just being within 6 inches will add that point of damage every time Pandora hits something so they can spend their time moving and placing scheme markers.  They can also be useful to tie up opponents models.  They have a 1 action that will put them in base contact with a model for a 5 or better card, and then they have an ability to do 1 damage just from being within a inch.  Like I said, it is all about little bits of damage over and over.
   This is also a good crew to take against a high armor opponent.  All the damage that you deliver is considered a separate damage point.  What this means is that if you get him by Pandora, and you lose the willpower duel, with the setup I talked about, you will actually do 3 points of damage to the model even if he has an armor value of 8.  Pandora and each of her sorrows do a point which armor reduces to 1, but since you are only doing 1 anyway it doesn't matter, and that big bad construct takes 3 damage in that single action. 
   So now lets talk about her avatar.  I do think that it is interesting that they have created the avatar for Pandora based on the model that was created.  I wonder if the version of the avatar would have been different if there had been no model made for her.  Either way, I like the upgrade, although I am hoping that the numbers on the Premanifest side move up a bit.  Target numbers of 11 and 12 against the standard WP of 5-6 seems a little low, but I have never had a lot of luck with those kinds of tests, usually just being a nuisance to my opponent.  But it is always good to force duel and use cards, and if you happen to get a 6 or 7 out of your opponents hand, that can be useful too.  Once you manifest, you not only get to keep the Paranoia ability, you can Anathema so removing immunity to a number of effects, and you gain a new attack.  Another nice 3 inch melee attack at a 6, which is nothing to sneeze at, plus a 2/3/4 damage track, and force another horror duel, so a possible paralyze.  Then there is the trigger which forces all of the opponents models within 4 inches of the model you hit to pass another horror duel.  Since that is a 1 action attack, you have the chance to pass out quite a few horror checks all in the span of a single activation.


   I need to get a few more games under my belt with Pandora in version 2.0 before I feel really comfortable with her on the table.  I did pick up the green glowing Pandora crew in plastic, and I would love to get them built, but I will probably just field the green sorrows, because I like the old metal Kade better.

  I was going to try and go back and chat about each of the masters that I had already reviewed if the avatar changed, but because of the length of this already and how much some of them could change, I am going to hold off and revisit once somewhere in the middle.

  I hope you have enjoyed the read, and I hope to hear if you did or didn't.  Thanx for reading!!

So lets start with Von Shill........

   I have to start with the fact that I got Von Shill as an accident.  Two years ago for Christmas I told my lovely wife that I would like a new Malifaux crew for Christmas.  Now I could have sworn that I told her I wanted Som'er Teeth Jones, the Gremlin master, however when she got to my game store, The Game Room, she talked to my friend Bruce who was working there and he told her I wanted Von Shill.  When I opened it Christmas morning, I was surprised but happy and starting working on putting it together.
   Once I had everything together it sat in my bag, getting occasional play, but mostly just primed  for a while.  Once I decided I wanted to paint them, I started talking to my friends, Chris Borer and Brian Sobb.  They are both very good painters, with Chris winning something like 23 golden demon awards from GW and if you remember back a bit to a few Rotten Harvests ago he painted the Grateful Dead teddy pictured here.  His website showing all of his best work is at Full Borer Miniatures. 
   Brian has won two silver golden demons, a gold rogue demon (adepticon before it was crystal brush), and a bronze rogue demon.  Sobb has done a lot of good painting work and always has a good tip or two that helps me a bunch.  So you can understand how it can feel to be working with my skill next to some really great painter/sculpters.  So they helped me with any number of things, starting with color schemes and painting tips, on to using washes to get all the lines between everything.  Of anything I have painted I believe that Von Shill and his crew have been the best work I have done.  I also need to thank Chris for putting Von Shill's eye patch on, the librarian's book mark and other small items in the crew that I know I am forgetting.

   Now lets talk about how he and his crew play.  Not really a tactica, but just how he plays for me.  My typical 50 stone crew looks like this:

• Von Shill - The Shirt comes off, Engage at Will - Cache 3 stones.
• Steam Trunk - I use a metal mimic trunk from the old AD&D miniatures, and I call it luggage.
• Hannah - Scramble, Spoils of War - Proxied with the Librarian on a 50mm base
• Freikorps Specialist - Flamethrower
• Freikorpsmann
• Freikorpsmann
• Freikorpsmann
• Freikorps Trapper

   This is a crew that definitely needs to be together in a tight group.  With Freikorps armor you don't have to worry about blasts, so you can keep them clumped up without worrying about losing the whole crew to someone like Rasputina.  Since you are moving them in a group, the order that you move them in is important.  You need to keep as many people as possible within the 4 inches around the Steam Trunk.  Anyone within 4 inches of the trunk can use its 3 zero actions as their own.  The steam trunk's zero actions are all condition removers, so you can get rid of poison and heal, remove burning, and removing corpse/scrap markers.  This along with the blast protection protects you from crews like Sonia and McMorning that rely on handing out conditions to remove your crew from the board.  With them being set up in a 4 inch bubble around the Steam Trunk, you are going to have trouble with your objective grabbers.  You can always send out the odd Freikorpsmann out on a run to drop an objective marker or get into position out of the bubble, because of their unimpeded ability.  Since they can ignore severe terrain, they have the ability to get their full 10 inches of movement in most situations.  Nothing worse then seeing a freikorpsmann rushing through a big piece of forest terrain through to the other side, out of your range, and you can't even follow.  At 5 points they can even be lost if needed.
   You might want to keep 1 in the bubble though, since with Spoils of War upgrade you will get 2 soulstones each time your Freikorpsmann can kill a Henchman, Enforcer or Master.  It is a handy way to bump up your cache, even though he is no where near as stone intensive as he used to be.  I find the main use for soul stones is drawing those two extra cards after you look at your control hand, and the odd damage prevention flip, but with the healing flip you can get from the trunk, that is only occasionally needed.
   Now for his avatar upgrade.  This will be based off the 2/17 update for the avatars.  Von Shill turns into the avatar of conflict. During the premanifest he gives his crew a bump as he often does by increasing the change by 2 inches and melee by +1 if the crew member is charging a model that Von Shill is engaged with.  Now with his engagement range of only 1 inch, it isn't a huge advantage, but nice fluff of a soldier rushing to the aid of his commanding officer.  He also gets another way to heal with a 2/3/4 and a place effect within 8 inch.  It being a place effect rather than a push means that intervening terrain doesn't matter and you place Von Shill anywhere in base to base with the friendly model (doesn't even have to be a Freikorps model).
   Now once he manifests he get a nice bump, mostly going to his crew rather that helping himself.  He grants all his Freikorps Companion, if a Freikorps dies within 6 inch Von Shill gains reactivate, and finally he gets a pulse within 8 inches that will cause his Friekorps to pass a willpower duel and heal 1/2/3.  All handy things in the middle of the game to help the crew with any troubles they are having.  This is a good example of an avatar I wouldn't want to manifest until turn 3 or 4 when my crew is starting to get a bit hurt.  I like how Von Shill's avatar helps his crew more then himself and reenforces that bubble concept of his crew.  He already has so many attack options, that having those kind of healing options is a nice change.
   With all the teamwork and options I find that this is a great crew for a starting player, who wants to learn the rules of the game without a lot of difficult choices at to what they want to do.  It also helps that it is a hard hitting, good armored crew that will last long even against another hard hitting crew.  The Von Shill crew is a lot of fun to play and I highly recommend it as a good fall back crew for anyone to play.

   So this has gone on longer then most of my blogs, I feel like I got out everything I wanted to say...which is just about a first for me.  I hope you enjoyed reading, and in the next I think we will talk about Pandora and how I play her crew.  Thanx for spending some time....have a good one.

So avatars are out but, lets talk about my masters list first.......

  So lets start with a little chat about avatars.  To be honest I have never actually played an avatar in the game of Malifaux.  I know, I know, here I am writing a blog about a game I love, and I have never actually played an aspect of the game.  Speaking as a fanboy, I just never got into spending that much on a single model no matter what it did.  40-60 bucks a model is out of my price range for a game.  But the actual idea of getting to replace your current master, with a different way to play them just sounds like another interesting aspect of the game.

   Now as something that should have been talked about a long time ago, what masters do I own.  Here is the list along with a little about each master.

• Pandora - My first love.  She is the master who will kill you with a thousand little cuts.
• Lilith - Pandora's sister.  She works with terrain to get you with limbs and branches striking at you.
• Zoraida - The crone - She will take over your models and make you kill your friends.  She is both Neverborn and Gremlin.
• The Dreamer - The kid and the monster - The dreamer is a small child, and Lord Chompy Bits will appear at his call to fight for him.
• Collodi - The puppet - A dark Pinocchio who controls dolls and puppets
• Jacob Lynch - The card shark - A card player who with luck and this totem Huggy owns the board.  He is both Neverborn and 10 Thunder.
• Von Shill - Hulk Hogan - He is the leader of the Freikorps, a tough group and one I like to start new players with as the whole crew is very straight forward.
• Dead Justice - Only guild - Lady Justice is the normal version of the guild team box, but every year Wyrd does a "nightmare" crew, and a dead version of the Justice box was from 2012.  Couldn't resist.
• Ophelia - Gremlin lady - Ophelia is a gremlin version of another guild crew, Perdita's family box.  They are a very shooty crew and are dangerous from range.
• Som'er Teeth Jones - Another gremlin master who controls his Bayou Gremlins by damaging them to get more damage on attacks.
• Jack Daw - Hanging Tree - The hanged man on the hanging tree,the patron spirit of Malifaux.
• Tara - Newest Nightmare - The Herald of Oblivion with burying tricks.

   That makes 15 masters out of 49, if you consider the masters who are multi-faction, like Lynch, Tara, and Zoraida. Now not only will I have how those masters play with and without upgrade, but now I will also have an alternate avatar for each of those masters.  You can see how the game can begin to get VERY complex for something you play one day a week at best.  As I have said before, it is why I am very thankful that they reduced the complexity of the game with the new edition, while giving you more character options of ways to play.  Now that I have written that, it has been the best way of saying WHY I like the new edition more then the old.
   The next master I want to pick up will move me into a new faction.  Once the plastic crew box comes out for Ironsides, the new arcanist master, she will be my next new master.  I do say that not knowing what the new nightmare model or crew that will come out at Gencon, so that could change based on that.  I can also say that if the Brewmaster comes out for the Gremlin faction, I might need that one as well.  The idea of a whiskey golem is just too cool not to pick up.  But I digress, Ironsides is another strong female malifaux master, who also happens to be the Miners and Steamfitters Union knee breaker.  I really like the idea of a woman in that position, and when I get around to painting her, I am going to make sure to get a couple of nice pastels on her just to show that mix that exists for her in my head.
  Strong female characters will be another good topic for a blog post here in a while.  As usual I am coming up with more ideas then posts.  I included the one big shot of my master as I didn't want to throw each individual shot, but as I continue to chat about my masters I will get those shots up also.

   The next few blog posts will be a discussion of each master I have played and how they work for me, along with a discussion of the current avatar upgrades for that master, along with some discussion of any changes to the avatars I have talked about previously.  You will have Von Shill to look forward to as I have played my last few games with him.

   Let me know in the comments what master your have/are playing and how you feel about their avatars. Chat at you again later!!  Thanx for reading.

Games, Books, Music and everything fun....plus a little Malifaux........

   So first of all Happy President's Day.  If you are lucky enough to have the day off, let me be the first person to say you suck, because I am at work. And now on to your regularly scheduled blog.

   So while I enjoy talking about Malifaux (and I will again before the end of this post), I also like to chat about what I am listening to both music and book wise, along with any other gaming.  Now there is nothing that I like better then sitting down with a good book and spending hours just reading and enjoy the feeling of the paper in my hand, the smell of the pages, but with two kids and a wife, I get to do that about as often as I get a weekend alone to relax.  So instead of sitting and doing nothing but reading, I am very much into listening to Audio books.
   I get my audio books through Audible and by borrowing them from the library.  The number of audio books the library has to borrow surprises a lot of people.  Many of the most popular modern novels are available almost from the day they are out in print as audio books.  If you don't have a library card, you are really missing out on a big resource for free entertainment. 
   Right now I am listening to The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel.  This is the Earth's Children series which started with The Clan of the Cave Bear.  There was also a movie of the same name with Daryl Hannah, which was just OK.  Interesting movie in that there was almost no dialog except for some grunts and hand signs, and it was subtitled.  As normal the book is much better then the movie since they can show how a character is feeling and thinking.  This is the story of a young Cro-Magnon that is adopted by a clan of Neanderthal.  It is written from her perspective, and how she both adapts to and changes her relationship with the Neanderthal, called Clan.  It is also written with an anthropological understanding of both societies and the interaction by the end of the first book, and through the series is excellent.  If you have an interest in ancient history or the beginnings of man I would definitely recommend it.  The Mammoth Hunters is the third book in the series and Ayla has left the Clan and gone with her people the "Others" and in this book comes to live with a clan of Mammoth Hunters, hence the title.  I am sure by my description the books sound pretty dry, but I would say since they are told through Alya's point of view it is a lot more interesting then a more technical book would be, but the level of information in the book stays very true to the science.  The books are holding my attention and are well read.  That is the one extra piece to an audio book that you really have to think about.  The reader can really make or break a book.  A reader like Jim Dale, who read the Harry Potter books, is amazing and makes a great book jump off the page even more.  As time goes by I hope to get more of my favorite books into the blog.  I listen to a lot of audio books, so I expect this list to get a bit long.  Just giving you fair waring.

   I know I forgot to put it into the title, but I just got to see the Lego Movie with the aforementioned wife and kids, and it was great.  One of the better movies I have seen in quite a while.  The technical aspects of the movie aside (even the explosions were made of Legos) it was a good story and the ONE song used through the entire movie was a lot catchier then it had any right to be.  We were even joking how could there be a soundtrack when there was only 1 song in the movie (turns out they combined that one song, with two remixes and the score....but bought it on iTunes right after we got home and it was worth the 8 bucks). I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, so I will just say that the ending felt just right and I wouldn't change a thing.  I hope that once the blue ray comes out I will be able to chat more about how much I liked specific things.  I will also tell you, kid or adult, get out there and see it.  Worth every penny.

   Music is going to be pretty thin.  Like I said I am listening to the Lego soundtrack with a bunch of other little favorites slipped in.  Lily Allen, Jonathan Coulton, Garfunkle and Oats, The  soundtrack to Rent, and Phantom of the Opera among other selections.  My music taste is odd, but I always enjoy a funny story telling song over just about anything.  If you want to know my taste, just select Jonathan Coulton as your Pandora seed and let her rip.

   For Valentines my loving wife bought me the Firefly game.  This is a game that I have wanted for a while and was hoping that I would get as a holiday gift, if i didn't just find a way to pick it up some night.  One of the things many people who don't game might not know, is that there is a single player option in this particular game.  This means I don't have to wait for game night to try this out.  As soon as I get a couple of games in, I will try and throw together my first game review and let anyone who has not played, or does not play games, know what I think about it from a player's perspective.  Maybe I will even force my wife to play and make her write a little blurb about what she thought.

   Finally a bit of Malifaux.  Unfortunately I missed gaming night, as happens to everyone on occasion, so I got no gaming in this week.  Overall though it was a great week for Malifaux in general.  The final wave 2 beta cards came out this week.  As I said before, they are switching over to a new version of Malifaux, and I am a big fan of the new edition.  Up till this week the models in the original first book were the only "official" models out.  Monday they released the official wave 2 models, which covered the models and masters in books 2, 3, and 4.  now the only piece that is missing are the avatars, and the first beta release of those came out on Tuesday this week.  Nothing more exciting then seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and knowing that now ALL the models cards are out.  This means that my Dreamer and Collodi crews can come out to play.  Now saying that, my next game will be a little odd.  I have a game scheduled with Mark from the Through the Breach and I am going to put a Von Shill crew together for him, and he is going to put together a crew for me.  I am not sure exactly what I will be playing, but it will be one of the Neverborn masters, unless he surprises me and puts together a outcast or gremlin crew.  I am looking forward to the game since Mark always plays a good game.  I can only hope that I can top deck with my foil deck against Mark like I did against Matt.
   My next blog post will be about the different avatars.  While I am not a huge fan of having to get the models to "replace" your current master, I am a huge fan of the upgrade system to manifest an avatar.  I am also looking forward to going through the file and seeing what kind of avatar Collodi will get, although when I start playing I would think we could get rid of the "replacement" models to start.

   Thank you all for reading again and I hope you enjoyed a little more insight into who I am.  I hope you have a good one and talk to you again soon......

So why do they call it top decking.......

   The first thing that I need to say to everyone is Thank You.  The reason I say this is because of the huge jump in readers in my last blog post.  I added a few sites to tell more people about my blog, but I think the big jump was because I added some pictures.  I would love to hear more about both what you enjoy about the blog (if anything) and what you would like to hear more about.  Post in the comments and let me know what you think, but whether you do or don't, enjoy the blog.....  
 

Von Shill

   I got to play another game of Malifaux 2nd edition on Thursday night, and lets talk about another unique aspect of Malifaux.  In the community it is called Top Decking.  So this means not just getting great cards in your hand, which we consider to be nice pre-made hand full of re rolls, but flipping cards off the top of your deck when you need and what you need.  Now in Malifaux, just in case you don't know, both the number AND the suite of the card make a difference.  The number is what is needed to compare against your opponent's number (along with your skill) and the suite can be used to get off a trigger, which can add a bonus damage or extra condition.  Many times those triggers can be a lot more important then the damage that you do, because they will cause more damage later, or give a condition that will help with other attacks in the future.

Specialist with a Flame Thrower

   Now the reason I am talking about top decking right now, is because I had a great game of second edition on Thursday night, and I top decked like I never have before.  So it was about 9:30 on a Thursday night and I am hanging out at the game room just like normal.  I have just finished another in a long line of games of Discworld, which I happily won again, and Matt asked me to play a game of Malifaux.  I have not played since wave two came out and I was feeling a little.....iffy about playing.  In the good old days of first edition, he was asking for a good three hour commitment and a bit of work to get through the game.  I hate to turn down a good game, so I said sure, but how about smaller, so we will go with 35 stones.
   Now a normal game of Malifaux is 50 stones, but for that game I wanted something a bit smaller, so we agreed to 35 stones.  Now a 50 stone game usually leads to about 8-10 models,except for gremlins, which would be closer to 15, but they take a LOT of little guys.  At 35 stones it ends up being around 6 models for each side.

Librarian proxy for Hannah

   I was playing against my friend Matt who was playing his guild as usual.  I picked outcast, as I was looking for something simple to play.  Since with Malifaux you pick your faction first, that is all we had to tell each other, then we started getting ready by picking deployment type, strategy and scheme pool.  Once we had all the prep work done, then you announce your crew.  Matt was playing Lady Justice, and I was playing Von Shill.  Now here is where we can really start talking about top decking.
   As we talked about a little earlier, Malifaux is a card based game rather than a dice based game.  Because of this, there are only certain numbers of each number of card in the deck.  There are only 4 aces, just like there are only 4 13s.  With dice, especially me, I can roll 1s all night. So when you pull a great hand, like I opened with playing with Matt, and you have 3 or the 4 13s in your hand, you usually assume that you will be flipping worse, and then playing those cards out of your hand when you "cheat".  In Malifaux, "cheating" is when you replace a card that you flipped, with a card in your hand because you need a higher number, or a better suite if you are already winning.  Well against normal luck, even with 13s in my hand, I was flipping 11s and 12s for the duels I was having with Matt.  It just seemed like every time I was flipping a card I was getting the cards and suits I needed, and on the occasions I didn't get that card, I was able to cheat in the card I needed.
   Fighting is not the most important part of Malifaux, because it is VERY objective orientated, but the scheme we had was Turf War.  That means starting from turn 2 we both had to have 2 models within 6 inches of the center of the board.  When you have models moving in to a small location as quickly as you can, there is going to be fighting.
   So Matt and I both moved models up in turn one, taking the odd pot shot or two at each other, but it was in turns two and three that we really got into it and because of my great cards, I ended up killing a couple of Matt's guys before he could do a lot to stop me.  Once he was down a few guys, it became harder to keep going with the mission and I ended up outscoring him 5 to 10.

Freikorp Front

   10 is the max score you can get which was 4 points for the Turf War, 3 points for bodyguard, and 3 points for assassinate.  Bodyguard is when you keep your henchman alive, which I did, and assassinate is when you kill the enemy master.  It was a good game, and with my flips I did make achieving the mission much easier.

Freikorp Back

   So by the time the game was over, it had been 90 minutes, which was about and hour less then a 1st edition game would have taken and I had a really good easy time playing.  It just seems so much easier and more intuitive when we play even though not a lot has changed about the game.   I am going to try and play a couple of my more difficult masters over the next few weeks and see what kind of difference that makes to my game playing experience.  So far with all the book 1 masters and crews, I have enjoyed the game every time I have played it.

   So a quick explanation of the pics sprinkled through this blog post....the cards are the new foil deck that my wife bought me as part of my Christmas gift this year.  It was a nice treat they offered on Black Friday and I was excited that I got it.  The models are my Von Shill crew.  Von Shill is the man with the eye patch.  The Librarian is the thin girl on the weird base (I am using her as my Hannah proxy and I just threw her on a 50mm base.  The guy with the Flame Thrower is the Freikorps Specialist, and the last two guys are both just Freikorps men.  This is the whole crew I played against Matt in my last game.

  I hope you enjoyed the light battle report and my discussion of top decking.  Let me know what you thought.

Thanx!!

Wow those figures looked great.........

   So when you are talking about miniatures, you always end up talking about modeling and painting.  Just about every model that you play these kinds of games with (Malifaux, Kill Zone, Blood Bowl) start as gray metal or plastic pieces attached to a sprue.  A sprue is just the plastic or metal piece that the model parts are attached too.  Sometimes as many as ten pieces even for a normal model that might measure an inch or two high and an inch wide.  All those pieces have to be removed from the sprue, the flash and mold lines have to be removed, then you figure out how the pieces attach to the main section of the model.  For plastic models, there are usually posts the will only insert to a specific hold in the model, with other plastic models there are just two flat plains that have to be attached.  Instead of super glue for a plastic model, there is plastic cement you can use that will fuse the plastic pieces together.

   With metal models it is a little different, there are almost never posts in the metal, so you create those posts yourself, typically you use a pin drill and part of a paperclip or wire.  Once you drill out the top of the arm for instance you insert a part of the paperclip and then drill into the body until you can  sink the other half of the paperclip and superglue the whole thing together.  The paperclip works to make the attachment that much stronger then just trying to stick the arm on with superglue alone.  After you have the arm attached, then you take a look for any gaps or misalignments between the arm and the body.  There is always something that shows a gap.  Then you get putty out and work with a couple different tools to get putty into the gap, and smooth it out, so that once you do prime and paint them, you wont see the gap.  Depending on how much work you want to put into cleaning and puttying, it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 4 hours to clean a model properly.

  
   Once you are done with this step, you already have a lot of time into a single model.  While this doesn't sound that bad for a smaller game with 7-12 models, in larger army sized games, there can be hundreds of models to clean, prime, and paint.
   As you have looked at the pictures throughout this blog post, I wanted to give you an idea of what I am working on right now.  This was a special order Malifaux crew that was released in green dayglow plastic.  It is my new Pandora crew.  The first model I am showing is the Poltergeist, it is Pandora's totem, so it is connected to her and only she can use it in the game.  I have never had one, so I was happy to get it in the new plastic crew box.  The little kid is Baby Kade, the model that first drew me into Malifaux when it first came out in 2009.  That little kid, sitting there with his diaper and knife drew me right into the story.  The little plastic piece shown below is his right arm that I am having a friend of mine Chris help me to set just right.  Usually when you put a model together you can fudge connections and leave little gaps because you will putty the gaps to fill them in, and then paint the whole model  so it covers all those little "indiscretions".  In this case there will be little to no paint on the model at all, so the fit needs to be pretty clean.  I will post pics after I finish getting it assembled, and maybe tell you a little more about Chris once I ask him if it is ok.

  This is one of the things I really enjoy about gaming overall.  Gaming encompasses more then just playing the game.  You can play, or paint, or sculpt or any combination of the three.  You can spend as much or as little time on hobbying as well, while there are tournaments that require all models have 3 colors on them (the minimum standard), very few players will required that for normal play.  I have never told anyone that they couldn't play against me just because of how their models looked.

   This is one of my first posts with pictures.  At least of Malifaux models.  I hope you enjoy it and I hope to hear if you liked it.  I am going to play around with the formatting a little and see if I can make the page look a little better too, especially if I am going to keep posting more pictures.

   Thanx for the reading...

So lets get back to Malifaux...

   So it was another good night at the game room......who am I kidding they are all good nights.  What is better then hanging out with good friends playing games and at the end of the day, that is what we do.  So this week it wasn't even playing Malifaux, I played Kill Zone and two games of Discworld, but I did get some new Malifaux models.
   There have been A LOT of changes to my favorite game over the last year.  They have added whole new factions to the game and altered the rule set dramatically.  Although there are MANY opinions about the new rule set, I enjoy the new game.  If I was asked, which I have not been, I would say it is much easier for a casual gamer can play.  The old ruleset was more complex, and each individual model had many rules that were not often used.  Because of this, you would have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what you should do versus what you could do.  Many of those options would never be used, as there were always better things to do, but that was a good part of the problem.  Those extra unused options just got in the way on the card and made it that much more confusing to the casual player.  It stopped people in our game group from even trying to play the game.  In the new version, more of the lower level have one or two things they are good at, master have more, but less then they used to.  They also added upgrades which allows a player to add more options to their master, enforcers, and henchmen.  As is usual during these chats, if you want to know more just head to www.Wyrd-Games.net or ask me for a demo game.
   There are seven different factions in Malifaux.  The seven factions are Guild, Arcanists, Resurrectionists, Neverborn, Outcast, Gremlin, and Ten Thunder.  I, like most players, have a primary faction, and collect what I like out of the other factions.  My primary faction is Neverborn.  The crazy creepy models are the best of what Wyrd makes.  After my Neverborn, first master Pandora, I got my first Outcast, Von Shill, followed by my second Outcast master Ophelia, then followed by my first Ten Thunder, Jack Lynch.  He only kinda counts as a Ten Thunder model, since he is a dual master between Ten Thunder and Neverborn.  Every year at Gencon, a big gaming convention, they release a "nightmare" version of a crew.  That is where I got my Guild master Lady Justice.  Then since the new version of Malifaux came out, Ophelia became my first Gremlin master.  Then last night at The Game Room I got Somer Teeth Jones.  He will be my second Gremlin master and one I have wanted for years.  I would like to thank my friend Max for the new semi painted models.  I will enjoy playing with them.
   Somer Teeth Jones is a master who usually play with Bayou Gremlins.  These little guys are a fun mess.  They have an ability to double their damage output as long as they damage themselves by half.  So it makes them die pretty quick, but old Somer Teeth can just summon more.  Makes them a lot of fun to play, and I cant wait to hit the table with the new models.  I am sure I will not get them painted before my first game, but since they ARE assembled, I will be able to play with them soon.  There are a couple of people that I get to play Malifaux with.  One plays primarily Zoraida, so I know that match up will be coming soon, another plays Guild, and I am also looking forward to someone who I have not gotten to play against, Mark from the Through the Breach Podcast.  He will be playing Pandora, and I look forward to facing him with either Von Shill, or Lilith.  I have not gotten to play Lilith at all in second edition yet, so it could be fun to pit those sisters against each other.  But just so it is not a single faction game, I might play Von Shill.
   If I were going to talk about the best thing about the new edition, it would be this.  I could pick ANY  of the masters, get them on the table, and enjoy a game with them.  Almost the same thing with any model that I chose to pick up.  Between reducing the number of things it is possible for a model to do and streamlining the ruleset, they made it FUN for the casual player and that is the biggest change to the game I love.  I can BE casual and still have fun not having to spend hours going over and over my cards to see what they all can do.

   I am going to stop chatting as usual, and wrap this up now.  I am going to work on some pictures for the next blog post so I can start showing modelling and assembly of my crews.  I would love to hear any comments about the blog good or bad.  Thanx for reading...