Showgirls!!!

I should be headed back from Vegas today and thought it would be fun to schedule this post ahead of time. I was actually in Vegas for business, so the chances of me actually seeing showgirls was very very slim. That said, I had not posted this picture yet, so there she is. My completed Avatar Colette.

I really like this model and enjoyed painting her. I will have to find some time and an opponent to put her out on the table and actually get a game in with her, although I know her rules are not that great.

New Pictures, Short update

Thing shave been quiet recently, since the last go around with Wyrd and my continued compliance with Eric's .... requests. Gaming as a whole has been a lot slower for a number of reasons, not the least of which a lack of opponents combined with a dramatic increase in work. Even with Dixon back in the area (and his happiness to play most any game) I have only gotten a semi-regular set of Netrunner games and ~ 4 Malifaux games over the past 6 weeks.

I was able to swing out to Huzzah Hobbies over the weekend and grab the remaining Malifaux models in the case to get some pictures. As I was transitioning away from Malifaux I used much of my outstanding Henchman credits to pick up a couple random crews. Some of these are for my collection despite the unlikeliness of my every actually playing them. I wanted to pick up some models that others may be interested in playing under the Malifaux Classic rules as the game editions change. One of those crews was Von Schill. I have never been heavily invested or interested in the Outcast crews, and Von Schill has been even less interest to me as I played Malifaux. Despite this, I know several people who like the German soldier look to the crew and suspect some of those folk will be interested in grabbing the crew to play. Once I got them in hand I asked a friend of mine, John, to paint them up for me. John's painting style is more earthy and muted overall, which I felt would really fit the look of the crew.

We start out with Von Schill himself, the leader of the Freikorps. Schill has regularly shown up in a variety of crews due to his Mercenary status, to the point that I rarely see him leading a crew himself. I love the colors John was able to pull together here, allowing the Hulk Hogan face and hair really jump out contrasting against the more muted uniform. The small splashes of color are great tools to draw the eye when the crew is on the table.

Next up we have the Freikorps Librarian. Dixon will take her form time to time in his Viktoria crews. Her healing is a nice little boost, although I have rarely found myself in a situation where she was a deep concern in a game for me. As you can see, John used the red sashes to create some unification on a model to model basis.

Mentioning the red sashes, we immediately move to another model where they disappear completely. Despite that I really like the overall look of how the specialist is painted up. Despite not being tightly drawn to the crew as a whole, the model's paint job looks really good.

The overall Freikorps releases can be split out into single models, double models, and the group. The last of the single models is the most recent addition, the Strongarm Suit. I imagine that somewhere someone has painted one of these guys up to look like Iron Man, but that's not the way this went. In this specific case I am happy with the muted earthy tones matching the overall crew.

Now we dive into the multiple models I picked up in the crew. To be honest, I cannot remember why I doubled up on the trapper aside from half remembering seeing trappers in pairs on the table previously. Regardless they came out nicely, with a really smooth muted white on their cloaks.

That brings us to the grunt line troops in the crew. I grabbed a second blister of these guys simply to flesh out my order and make sure I had enough Freikorpsmen to built out a decent stand alone crew.

And then we come to the end of the post with the group shot. Here are my Freikorps all together. They look great and will sit nicely in my mini cabinet. It's nice to have them on hand for anyone who may want to borrow them for a game of Malifaux.

As a last note, I grabbed some more pictures to fill in some of the missing links on the Malifaux Crew list. Check out that page (linked at the top) for some of the new pictures.

Be Careful to READ forum posts non-disruptively

**** This post seems to have caused an awful lot of disruption. One who "Once called me a friend" advised it should come down. Following his advice it has been removed. *********

93 Malifaux pictures - Mostly New Art!!!

The public Beta of Malifaux V2 brought more than just rules and changes to models to the Malifaux community. The Public Beta brought some early looks at some of the new art for the upcoming models. Wyrd is updating all their art, presumably in preparation for the transition for models to plastic. This is further supported when you consider that the art for the current Storm of Shadows models has not been changed from what we saw in that book.

Part of the draw Malifaux has for me is an art style that I find appealing. I find that the majority of the art used for the game is in a style and has a look that I really prefer. Wyrd has done a fantastic job in transferring a very accurate representation of that art into the actual models that are produced. I have not found this to change at all with the move to plastic. If anything, some of the new plastic models better represent the art than the metal models do. In some cases this makes me very interested and excited to see some of the new models.

As with many of the decisions Wyrd is making lately, I am also disappointed with the direction of a fair amount of the new art. I want to first say (and wanted to start out this article) by pointing out the positives. There is a fair amount of art that I really like, even with the changes and evolution of the individual pieces from its V1 art. There is a nearly equal set of art that I just do not find to my liking. This is certainly a disappointing situation for me, as there was so much of the aesthetic that I previously enjoyed and appreciated which now has moved in a distasteful direction. Nino Ortega (pictured to the left) is one example of this move in art style. The first edition art had some fantastic style to it that is now completely replaced by what I consider a pretty bland looking gunman.

There is other art that is certainly nice art despite my dislike for the asthetic. Joss (pictures to the right) is one of these pictures for me. Joss used to be "Injun Joss" in the early sculpts, an American Indian in Malifaux who works as Ramos's enforcer and is wielding two powered axed linked to a generator on his back. The new art for Joss looks (to me) like a reject from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. He has a real "meld of machine and man" look combined with a strong post-apocalyptic feel to him.

I won't dive into a deep critique of all the new art, but I wanted to post a small article about it and my thoughts. Gaming on Tuesday evening it was mentioned to me that some people had not been able to get a look at the full art that was used for the new V2 stat cards. The cards were not "flattened PDF's", which made it fairly straight forward for me to pull the pictures out and save them off for upload. Now there is a whole archive of the art in my flickr account linked here. Enjoy poking around and looking! This is all the art I could find in the Stat cards except the 10 Thunders cards, which do not seem to have changed.

Malifaux V2 and the Rose Colored Glasses

I mentioned this article in an earlier post and now have come back to write about my thoughts. I want to be clear up front, this is a heavily opinionated article. This is my opinion and I am confident that there are several people out there who do not / will not agree with me. I am a little amused writing that since I am not really aiming at convincing anyone of anything in particular. This is an observation from my little corner of the internet, a commentary if you will.

At the time of this writing Malifaux V2 is a month into the open beta playtest, and four and a half months into the closed beta. The open beta forums reveal a great deal of interesting tidbits to anyone who goes digging through the hundreds of posts. One of those tidbits is something that was also claimed adamantly during the podcast interviews Mack and Justin did to introduce Malifaux V2. This claim is that the update is being well received overall and that its a vast minority who are unhappy with the changes. I both agree and disagree with this sentiment overall.

I will step back a second before diving back into my observations of the current state of satisfaction/dissatisfaction that I perceive. I was aware that Malifaux V2 was on the calendar for development and release a long time before the bulk of the community. Due to a variety of discussions and conversations with my own network of Wyrd employees, I learned very early in the process what was coming. I agree that Malifaux 1.5 needed some updates and clarification and was excited to see where things were going. I even had some inside track on the ideas that were on the figurative "docket" on how to improve the game. One of the big concerns for any game company is when the right time for an update occurs. Key people within Wyrd knew that they would inevitably lose some players and customers with a version update. The goal is to offset these losses with significant growth, aiming to replace each lost customer with 3 - 4 new customers. Those same key people knew that updating and balancing the entire system would take a fair amount of time on both the development and play testing front. Time estimates were assumed, a goal was picked, and key "gating factors" were determined. The development team was given thier marching orders and they struck out to update the game system.

We jump forward to today and look at our current V2 Open Beta test. As I read through the posts I can pretty easily pick out the members of the community who are really positive about and defensive of Malifaux V2. There are a handful of forum members who seem to go out of their way to attack and be abrasive to anyone who has something the least bit critical to say about V2. I am a very big advocate and fan of Malifaux Classic and have spend a lot of time on the Wyrd Forums. I have even become involved in some back and forth discussions with a variety of forum members over time. I never felt I was attacking another forum member with my posts, but I allow that this is merely my own opinion and others perception could be different. Based on this perspective, I would like to assume that these current V2 advocates do not see the aggressive nature of thier posts. Then again, we all know what happens when you assume.......

Another things I notice are the posts from Wyrd employees that are specifically written to minimize the perception of unhappiness among the Malifaux community. I do not read these types of comments as just a minimization but more as a concerted effort to refute the perception that people are unhappy with the change. Some quotes in threads such as:

"Despite being really really loud, it has become incredibly clear in the last 2 days that the original poster in this thread is in an even smaller minority that I already thought."

and

 "That said, for every one looking to leave right now, I know another six or seven knocking on the door saying 'hey, lemme try this' and turning in their henchman applications - a fair number since the announcement and showing of M2E."

 and

"So far we've had four henchmen resign, which is less than when we switched to plastic."

strike me as very interesting comments.  I certainly do not want them taken out of context, so provided the links where they are available (the middle comment is not on a public forum) so people can go read the threads for themselves. Minimization or concerted effort, it seems to me that the questions about unhappiness have really gotten under the skin of some Wyrd employees.

Then we come to Henchmen and Podcasters departing the game or displaying unhappiness over how V2 is developing. I group these two together as they are both significant portions of how word about the game get disseminated. In addition, there is a level of dedication to being a fan of the game that both of these require that tends to surpass the "normal" expectations of just people who play the game. I find some interesting points in these two communities when it comes to V2. The quote regarding henchmen resigning that is referenced above was posted on June 20, 2013 and comes 20 days into the open beta for V2 starting. On the henchman front I will be curious to see how many henchmen actually resign versus just become inactive. I also believe the number of henchmen resigning will not truly be a good measure until after Gencon 2013 when the actual V2 rules are released. I personally know of several henchmen who are sticking around through Gencon but are unhappy and considering quitting. On the podcasting front, there was always a limited amount of Malifaux podcasts out there. Of those podcasts that were still actively broadcasting when V2 testing began, there has been an interesting divide. Two of the podcasts are still actively discussing V2 and show a great deal of enthusiasm for the update. Two have gone on hiatus due to fracturing between the hosts at least partially due to V2. One other appeared to be favorably supportive of V2 but has recently shown some dissatisfaction in the direction of the game. Then at least 1 other has decidedly changed their focus because they are not happy with the game. Just looking at that spread is kind of interesting, 2 for / 3 against / 1 waffling on V2.

I think the last interesting note I have picked up lately is a look at the activity from key forum members. Keltheos, NerdElemental, and Ratty are all Wyrd Employees and have been heavily involved in the development of Malifaux until the current V2 activity. Each of those has been heavily involved with posting on the public forums and the private testing forums in the past. I find it interesting, disturbing, and curious to see what their current activity has been in regards to the Forums and new version testing. At the time of writing this article, Keltheos had not even logged into the forums in 4 weeks, and all three have been pretty significantly absent from the open beta. I want to say that these gentlemen are just busy or off on more important tasks, but I just do not believe that. The flurry of activity across the board demonstrated by the rest of the company (EricJ/Mack/Justin/even Nathan) in regards to V2 makes the absence of these three particularly noticeable, especially in light of their past involvement.

So what does all this mean? It's entirely possible that I am just grasping at shadows and conspiracy theories because I am unhappy with the direction of Malifaux V2. I am not of the opinion that V2 is going to bankrupt Wyrd or even be a necessary failure overall. I do suspect that the dissatisfaction with the new V2 direction is much larger than is being portrayed. I think that the militant defense by the V2 Crusaders has driven away or discouraged the bulk of people who will say something contrary to the company line. I hold the opinion that there are a number of Malifaux Classic fans who just cannot be bothered to post their thoughts or concerns on the forum due to the response from both Wyrd and the Crusaders.  I think that the V2 transition is not going to go as well as it could/should have, but hope that it goes well enough to be considered at least a minor success internally.


Now is a great time to disregard my opinion and go check out what Wyrd's EricJ has to say about the play testing process.

Through the Breach episode 29

I really wanted to put the word out to those who may or may not have downloaded the latest Through the Breach podcast episode. I really enjoyed the most recent episode, especially the opening Hodge Podge section. TTB has presented a very positive face in relation to the new Malifaux V2 since their interview with the Wyrd developers. The Hodge Podge opening this episode reveals that not all is cheery in the TTB cast. I found the discussion to be very enlightening and interesting.

To say the least, there are several of Josh's opinions which I agree with very much. That said, Mark provides some counter points that are well presented.

Overall its very much worth the listen. If you don't know where to go to grab it, check out thier website.

Find Through the Breach Podcast here.

Check back here around noon today for some new pictures!

Evil Baby Orphanage Kickstarter - Review

Wyrd released their party card game Evil Baby Orphanage (EBO) at Gencon 2012, where I was privileged to provide the early release demonstrations. This card game was Wyrd's first foray into using Kickstarter to fun development of one of their games, and it was successful overall. They were able to get the base game developed in time to bring a number of copies to Gencon, and for the second year in a row I was able to grab copies of Wyrd's new game to demo to people the Wednesday before Gencon actually opens to the public.

While at Gencon my wife and youngest daughter also got the chance to play EBO and all three of us really enjoyed the game. We picked up several copies of the game at Gencon and knew these were in addition to the copy we would be receiving through our Kickstarter commitment. Since then we have given away nearly all our extra copies and have seen several of our friends become interested in the game as well. All of this provides a little background to my excitement in finally recieving the fulfillment of the kickstarter items from the campaign.

The EBO kickstarter ran from July through August 2012, ending just prior to Gencon 2012. There were multiple funding levels that people could pledge at, with the $55 level being the ideal level to receive the most swag for pledge. This was the level I pledged in at and the rewards with all the stretch goals were listed as:

• Copy of the game
• Print and Play PDF version of the game (and 2 expansions)
• 2 Limited Edition promo EBO cards (Nero and Himmler I beleive)
• Crayon Manifesto EBO expansion
• Nerd Fighteria EBO Expansion
• EBO Poster
• EBO Limited Edition Case (box)
• Multipart Baby Jack the Ripper model plus 2 Malifaux stat cards
• Multipart Baby Lizzie Borden model plus 2 Malifaux stat cards
• Multipart Baby Eric the Red model plus Malifaux stat card
• Adorably Evil EBO coloring book
• Littlest Evil History Book
• Plastic EBO playing card/fate deck
• Plushie 

Earlier in 2013 we received our EBO kickstarter deck in the mail. This was nice to receive as it came around the same time the game was released in stores. I have to admit I was disappointed to find out that our copy was shipped in the cheaper boxes used for packaging at Gencon, while the copies sent to distributors and stores were in much better constructed boxes.  This was one of the areas where Wyrd started to slip on the commitment to quality that they have previously demonstrated with their games. This move surprised me at the time, but hindsight shows that it is one of the early cracks in how they have moved in 2013.

That brings us to last Tuesday, June 18th, and the arrival of the remaining kick-starter rewards. Wyrd had sporadically updated backers that there had been delays due to issues with the plushie and the metal limited edition box. Delivery of the rewards was originally predicted for January 2013, and the delays had only pushed the delivery back ~5 1/2 months. I hear from some kickstarter regulars that this is not too bad, although we (my wife, daughter, and I) were certainly frustrated. That said, let's see what showed up!!!

Promo Cards and PDF's

I did not grab pictures of the promo cards but they did show up. My wife had gotten Justin and Mack to both sign copies of the promo cards at Gencon, but we happily put the two EBO promo cards in our remaining "give away" copy of the game. These will be a nice addition to the game for anyone else we get interested. As a nice bonus Wyrd sent along two additional promotional cards of EBO Time Nannies. These were a lot of fun to read and we look forward to playing them. Overall, the promo cards and PDF's were well received, positive marks here.

Expansions

We received both expansions for the game and they are a lot of fun to read through. The boxes they shipped in are very nice, in line with the box used for the distribution and store release of EBO. The expansions add a couple new rules to the game, including a new behavior for evil babies and the addition of Time Nannies. We are really looking forward to playing with Time Nannies, as they add new win conditions to the game and shift the overall feel of the game. We are excited to sit down and play the expanded game, which we are keeping all together as one large expanded game. This reward gets good marks!

EBO Poster

We received the poster, which is a small poster that can be unfolded and hung up. The art is the same art on the boxes, which we like. This was not a real decision factor for us overall, so it falls in line with our expectations.
Nothing overly exciting but then again nothing negative about it. This reward gets average marks.

Limited Edition Card Case

We are fairly mixed in our family when it comes to the limited edition card case. This was an area Wyrd admitted to struggling with, although I have no insight into what those struggles were. The card box is a metal box with EBO art on the outside and a nicely snug cover. All of this is good, and it provides a great place to hold all of our EBO cards. With the top closed and on an initial look, the box appears to be really good and a nice reward. Once you start to sort your cards into the box there are a couple small things that start to jump out as issues. First, the box has rounded corners which keep the cards from fitting snugly against the side of the box. This also means that any pressure within the box will force the cards to bend as they come against the sides of the box.

After that the box is not deep enough to place the cards in "standing tall". This may not seem like an issue, as the box is wide enough to store the cards as shown in my picture. It would have been nice for the box to be taller however, as standing some cards "tall" would help separate the different types of cards in the decks. EBO is played with 3 "decks" of cards, the Baby Deck, the Toy Deck, and the Nanny Deck. I would have liked a way to better separate these along with the quick reference cards while stored inside the box. Lastly, the rounded lip at the top of the box holds the cards in nicely but scraped the edges of the cards when you remove them from the box. This can be worked around with a little fiddling while removing the cards, but it could have been handled better. As this is one of the items that delayed the shipment of the kickstarter rewards, I would have been happier if these small bits were not problems.

It would have been nicer if the box was large enough to play 2 decks flat in the same fashion as the cardboard EBO box that was shipped to distributors. Making that type of box in metal and then adding some additional depth for expansions would have been a much nicer reward than what we received. We give this only an average grade since we do like the box but it could have been done so much better.

Miniatures

As a Malifaux player I was very excited to see that I would be receiving 3 multipart models for Malifaux as part of my kickstarter rewards. In addition, these models would be able to be used as 5 different models in the game, with official stat cards for those 5 different models. The term multipart was something Wyrd has been using to indicate not only multiple options on models, but also that they would be plastic models. My wife called me while I was out at the game store to let me know the box of EBO rewards had arrived. During that conversation she also told me I had not received any models, which initially concerned and frustrated me. I was relieved when I got home to find out that I had indeed recieved the models, and that she just did not realize what the box was that they were packaged in. Looking at the models themselves, they have some nice detail. I am happy with the models, but I have to admit that I am struck by the false advertising in the kick-starter campaign. Baby Jack is a multipart model, but Baby Lizzie and Baby Eric are clearly a single piece. Now, being fair, I am very happy that Wyrd chose to make them a single piece in this case.

My daughter is incredibly frustrated with the multiple pieces used in her Puppet Wars Unstitched models, and I cannot imagine how frustrating it would be if all three of these models were split apart. It would have been nice if Wyrd had communicated what we were getting in a more honest and clear fashion. This is something else that could have been handled much better by doing something as simple as providing a preview of the models prior to sending them out. All things considered, I still give this positive marks and look forward to painting up the models.

Coloring Book / Little Evil History Book

We received two small books in our box of kick-starter reward. One was the coloring book which we had picked up at Gencon (I believe). This is a cute little coloring book and one we like. It's something we will probably toss on a shelf for when friend bring over their small children. The second book is one that we found to be a very nice little reward. The Littlest Evil History book is a lot of fun to look through, with its illustrations and a small blurb about the history of the included Evil Babies. The blurbs are longer than they are on the cards and its a nice bonus for those of us who ended up googling the babies after games. These two books have been a real hit in our house and thus receive very positive marks.

Playing Cards / Fate Deck

As we dig toward the bottom of the box we come to the plastic Playing Card/Fate Deck. This was billed as both a Malifaux Fate Deck and as a deck of playing cards containing EBO art on them. Wyrd have done a good job creating alternate fate decks with thier Retro-Fate deck and the Puppet Deck. Lot's of others have replicted the fate decks with custom art and delivered really nice decks as well, especially when you look at the 2013 Adepticon Fate Deck from Through The Breach. I was looking forward to a new fate deck with EBO art on it, and was very disappointed to see what was delivered. The art is nice and clear on the cards, but this will not work well as a fate deck or as a playing card deck.  Looking closely at the actual symbols, the suit or the card is buried in the corners and is very small and not easily read.

In addition, there is no correlation to the Malifaux suits, forcing a player to either memorize or refer to the conversion charts to track which playing card suits match which Malifaux symbols. This is disappointing to me and really delivered far below what Wyrd is capable of. Anyone can go take a look at the excellent job Wyrd did with the Retro Fate Deck and see that they are capable of doing a far better job linking the Malifaux symbols to the suits while keeping them readable and playable in either scenario. This was a disappointment, and gets poor marks overall.

** It was noted and confirmed that the 4 Malifaux suits (Rams, Tomes, Crows, Masks) are included on the card but are very hard to read. 

Plushie

Wow, I do not even know where to begin with this one. Wyrd added in a "surprise plushie" when they reached the $100K level of the kickstarter. This was a nice little stretch reward that I thought had a nice touch. The art for the babies in EBO already lent itself nicely to stuffed animals, and sending out a small plushie would be a nice way to really show the quality of the art. Wyrd sent out a couple updates letting backers know that they were having issues with the plushie, but that it was coming along.

There was even a picture sent out showing some of the issues and where the delays were. Then the piece of crap pictures here showed up in the box. This is an incredibly poorly made plushie, consisting of very cheap material and such poor quality workmanship I would expect something higher quality from a high school sewing class. Giving this an F mark is unfair overall to the other items that received poor marks above. I am unsure why Wyrd decided to send this out at all, as it is not at all in line with the standards they have set in the past. This toy is an embarrassment.

Conclusion

That brings us to the end of the EBO Kickstarter review. Looking back over the review we have 4 A's, 1 B, 2 C's, and 2 F's. That still leaves the overall grade in the A/B category, even if you cancel out multiple A's because of how poor the plushie was. I pledged $55 to the kick starter and feel that even without the plushie I received my moneys worth and then some.  I think Wyrd could have generated some good will with this campaign and they missed a number of opportunities, but overall it was worthwhile. I know that on the actual game front, my family and I have really enjoyed EBO and think its a great party game. If you can sit down to play a very light hearted game, drink some wine, and just relax while playing then EBO certainly hits the right tone. As a final grade I would go with a B+ for the Kickstarter as a whole!

Here is a closer look at the miniatures for those who are interested: