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!!

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......