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.

Cost Comparison: WWX vs Malifaux vs Warmachine

Recently a friend of mine was discussing new games and general mini-wargaming topics with me and caught my attention with a semi-random comment. His claim was that the new Wild West Exodus (WWX) models and game were "awfully expensive" for what you get. This intrigued me, as I was involved in the kickstarter and had not really thought about the larger release cost of the game. Furthermore, I had picked up a couple random figures and did not feel they were overly expensive. I did realize I had no real idea how WWX compared on price to other games, so I thought I would go do some research (as I tend to do).

I wanted to compare somewhat similar games which is how I settled on Warmachine, WWX, and Malifaux. All three are using plastic or plastic and resin figures currently. Malifaux is aiming to replace thier metal line with plastic so I thought that was a good comparison. Beyond that, all three have what I would consider "reasonable" starters which should be able to get you to a playable level of force with only the starter box. They are also all within the Skirmish to Squad based game size, which I believe makes them comparable.

Having my choices limited down and the approach I wanted to use for comparison in mind I set out to gather some information and compare away.

Starter Sets

All three game systems sell single player starter sets. Warmachine and Malifaux contain all plastic models in their starters while WWX contains a mix of plastic and resin. I ranked them cheapest to most expensive with commentary.

Malifaux

Malifaux has a range of prices on their plastic starters, running from $35 through $45 in price. They all contain generally the same number of models with the count coming to 6 models in the starters. The Guild Judgement starter that I selected has 6 models and is at the top of the price range, coming in at $45. The models are all "man sized" models on 30mm bases and can be fielded in a Malifaux game for 33 points (including SS Pool but not counting the additional upgrades). The basic Malifaux game for M2E is recommended to be played at 50 points, so this comes in a bit shy. It can probably be brought up to snuff by adding in an additional model or adding a couple upgrades overall. However, it is likely to be in the same points limit as other plastic starter boxes.

Warmachine

Warmachine uses a single price for all of their starter sets, $49.99 (essentially $50). I did find it interesting that through the different starters the number of models in the starter ranged from between three plastic models and five plastic models. All the of Warmachine starters had at least one and often more large base (40mm or 50mm) models and only one to four "man sized" 30mm model in the set.  The Cryx starter had the largest number of models in the starter set of all the Warmachine starters, totaling up at 5 models. This starter totals up a 14 point force by the Warmachine system. Warmachine is commonly played at 50 points, leaving a tremendous amount of room to add more models before getting to the general "playable level". Once again, starter to starter box games will generally be at the same point level (within a couple points overall).

Wild West Exodus

WWX uses a single price for all thier currently released starters in the same fashion as Warmachine. This comes in at the most expensive starter set, ringing up to a total of $69.99 (essentially $70). All of the WWX starters have the same number of models in them, totaling 13 plastic and resin models. They are generally man sized (30mm) with the one current exception the Warrior Nation. The 13 models are the same profile across the available factions, including a Boss, Sidekick, Infantry Light Support, 5 Long Ranged hired Hands, and 5 Close Combat Hired Hands. The set pictures comes to a total of $595-points for hiring your posse. WWX is played at a number of defined levels, with $500-points and $750-points laid out as the skirmish levels and $1250-points currently being discussed for the tournament level. This leaves you in fairly good standing to play the game at a skirmish level and all the boxes are fairly well balanced against each other, with Enlightened as the aberration at $450-points for the starter box.

Groups of Models

All three game systems sell sets of multiple models for thier game which are produced in plastic. In all cases that I looked at I aimed to compare small based (30mm) models in sets.

Malifaux

Malifaux has set's of 3 models for some of thier repatable characters in the game. The Rotten Belle's are not only iconic Malifaux models but fit the theme of undead-like models across the three game systems. Malifaux had the cheapest set for a "group of models" box, but also had the smallest number of models. This was a tough comparison as they would be the most expensive if the numbers were similar. For this 3 model set Malifaux runs $21, coming in at a total of $7 per model.

Wild West Exodus

WWX came in the middle of the pack on a "group of models" purchase with a fairly standard price of $45.99 for 10 models. WWX had the most standard pricing and selection across their "group of models" selection, with $45.99 as the price across the factions. The Hired Hands set's for all factions come with 10 models in the box, bringing the per-model cost to the lowest point of $4.60 per model. The set pictured stuck with the undead theme, although the other hired hands set's are more detailed than the undead abominations pictures.

Warmachine

Warmachine had the highest price for a "group of models" purchase, coming in at $49.99. This is also a set of 10 models, bringing the per model total to $5.00 per model. This places them right in the middle when it comes to a per-model cost comparison when breaking up the group of models. Warmachines plastic squads are very detailed and compare equally with both other game systems.

Single Model Comparison

There was no simple way to do a direct single model comparison between the three games. Wyrd is currently not remotely started with converting their metal single models over to plastic, throwing the overall price comparison off. Warmachine still uses a mix of metal and plastic across thier range and Wild West Exodous is solidly using resin or plastic for their single models. Looking through the websites for all three games it appears that the general cost of a single man-sized model will range between $11 and $20. The price ranges and selections are fairly consistent across all three games, with nothing jumping out wildly as out of "the ordinary".

Conclusion

When comparing the three game systems I have come to the following conclusion (for myself).

Cheapest (kind of): It appears to me that Malifaux is the cheapest game system to get started in and pay at a basic "community" level. It certainly has the least models and fills in truly as a skirmish game. The rating as cheapest comes directly from the reduced number of models necessary to play, as on average Malifaux has the most expensive models when looking at the cost for a "general man sized model". Malifaux's starter set averaged $7.50 per model, their "group of model" single model cost stayed consistent at $7 per model,  then their single model was in the same range as the other games.

Middle (essentially): WWX comes in the middle of the road overall. While thier starter box was more expensive overall in raw dollars spent, it's per model cost of $5.38 per model was the lowest. The "group of model" single model cost of $4.60 per model dropped that average even lower, and the single models stayed in the same range as the other two games. WWX came in fairly close to being able to play at an acceptable level straight from their starter, and seems to be only slightly more than Malifaux for the least expansion necessary to get to a "regular" play level.

Most Expensive (really): Warmachine is pretty clearly the most expensive game of the three games compared. While the starter set rated in the middle for raw dollars spent, the per model cost was the highest at $10 per model. This price gets even steeper if you choose the 3 model starter set, bringing the per model cost to almost $17 per model. The $5 "group of models" single model cost goes a ways to balancing out the starter set costs, but then single models still sit in the same range with the other two games. What makes Warmachine so much more expensive is the simple distance of expansion necessary to get to the "publicly common" play level of 50 points. It requires a lot more buying in Warmachine to get to that level than either of the other two games.

Final Thoughts

Overall this was an interesting exercise for me, especially since I started without a strong expectation of what I would find. I hope that it's helpful for everyone reading this as well. I believe that over time players will spend similar amounts on miniature games regardless of the initial costs. The big question will be, what is the "bang for your buck" for that money spent. This is one of the motivators for my departure from GW games, as I no longer felt a positive "bang for my buck" in those games. I think in all three of these systems players will find once they reach a pretty common level they will gain the same "bang for their buck" regardless of the system.

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.

Views and Surprises from Gencon regarding Malifaux / M2E

What an long title this blog post has, but I am a bit lazy to change it and it is fitting for my article. Yup, I am delving back into some views and thoughts on Malifaux and M2E, so if your already bored with those then move along. At this point I am picking up new games but still very interested in watching the whole Malifaux spectacle unfold as well. Apparently I am not the only one as there are reports from Gencon that I (little ol' me) was still a primary topic of conversation originating from the Wyrd employees. I find that both flattering and a little surprising, as I was not even there and yet there are people who still enjoy discussing the topic of me. Strike that, I find it very flattering....

Anyway, this is not an article to talk about me, but instead some of the other news and discoveries that came back from Gencon. Let's start by talking about Malifaux Terrain. There was a fair amount of talk about the "increase" in terrain requirement in M2E from Malifaux over the past couple months. Most people felt this was a good move, although there has been some concern from and about LGS's having enough appropriate terrain for the new requirements. Malifaux has always been a fairly terrain intensive game, especially when compared to the "typical" tournament set-ups for WM/H and some of the GW games. Terrain plays an important role in the game and as a TO for a variety of large events I have been on the recieving end of "Not enough Terrain" complaints.

I was very excited when I heard that this year Wyrd had tasked Mack and Justin with building the boards that would be used at the Gencon events. I am confident that it was the whole office who spent time building out the boards, as even 16 boards is a lot for 2 people to build in a couple weeks. This was great news because the Malifaux Community could be confident that the boards would be built to specifications for the appropriate amount of terrain on a tournament board, as viewed by the developers of M2E. Even more exciting for event organizers, there would be some definitive answers for what the appropriate amount of terrain would be for future tournaments. The past 2 years Gencon has always been a scramble to build out as much scatter terrain as possible from Terraclips sets provided to volunteers and employees the day before the convention.

This is a picture of one of the Gencon boards, described as typical for the Malifaux tables at Gencon 2013.  It's not a bad looking board, keeping with both some terraclips and having a Malifaux feel to it with the train tracks and some scattered trees. Overall I am a fair bit surprised that this is the typical board for a Malifaux game however. I truly expected more coverage on the board overall, and more terrain provided to block line of sight and firing lanes across the board.

On comparison to previous years Gencon boards, I think this strikes somewhere in the middle of what was built in 2011 and 2012. In 2011 the Gencon boards were pretty sparse in coverage overall, which drew some fairly critical comments from the players and the spectators of the events. I grabbed one of my pictures from 2011 for comparison, this being a board I actually played on during the Masters of Malifaux tournament. You can see that some effort was put into creating interesting terrain from the terraclips but there was no where near enough to really meet the requirements for Malifaux.

The boards at Gencon 2012 are on the other side of the spectrum from what we have at 2013. There is more scatter terrain and a couple of larger pieces that blog LOS across the board. The concerted effort to increase and improve the terrain coverage from Gencon 2011 can be seen here, although these tables still drew some criticism overall as being too sparse in places and providing a few too many firing lanes for ranged crews. The criticism was more of a mixed bag from the participants, down to a couple boards where players in earlier events had moved terrain and the judges had not caught it. In the picture you can get a look at two of the boards, one with a bit more terrain on it constructed from a large center piece and then smaller scatter terrain, and then the second board with a greater number of individual pieces.

The boards this year (Gencon 2013) are a further surprise to me when I compare them to what we use at Adepticon. To be fair, Adpeticon is regularly complimented as an event with generally spectacular terrain, and Adepticon 2013 continued to strive to improve the Malifaux terrain year over year. The picture to the left is one of the "typical" tables of terrain at Adepticon this year, specifically one using more scatter terrain and less themed board. Compared to the new "official" Malifaux boards, Adepticon appears to use approximately twice the amount of terrain that the developers feel should be in the game.

There is certainly the consideration of travel required for Gencon, which may have impacted the types of boards that Wyrd provided. I have considered this, but have to discard that as a limitation that may have influenced the boards at Gencon toward less terrain. Over a third of the boards at Adepticon were brought to the convention from half way across the country (similar distance as Wyrd offices to Gencon) so the distance constraints are similar. I think the more important consideration is the Gencon boards compared to the "typical" board in a LGS, as thats where most players will be playing. I can only provide my own boards or pictures from other LGS hosted tournaments as comparison. I grabbed a "typical" board from one of the Victory Comic's events as comparison here.  That also appears to have more terrain than the recommended amount.

Overall, I expect that this change in the expected terrain will impact the game in a couple ways. First, I expect that overall players will just ignore the Gencon 2013 set-ups and continue to set-up the boards they want to play on. The second impact is a bit more insubstantial overall, as it will impact the development and balance of the game going forward. I think the most important aspect for future Malifaux players is that we (the community) now have a glimpse into how the developers feel the tables should be set-up, so we can gain some more understanding on how that terrain should/will impact the game and model balance. The board I see above has distinct advantages for ranged crews while minimizing some of the impact of both "swarm" crews and melee centric crews.

Recent Gaming and a Ramble about Playtesting

Overall gaming has been different for me lately. I like portions of how that has gone while I do feel like there are parts of my gaming experience that are missing. I have been able to get more gaming in with my family, which is a very cool thing, but is not the same as gaming with my "regular gaming group".

Malifaux

First up on the roster was a great game with my daughter. She has been playing Malifaux off and off since earlier this year and has really been getting a good handle on her Colette crew. She has discovered through a series of games that she really likes Colette's swapping ability and looks to Cassandra and the Corypheee Duet to do her heavy lifting on the strategies and schemes. I found it interesting to hear her tell me on multiple occasions that the performers were pretty much useless and the mannequins were just there to take damage for Colette. I knew there were a couple combo's that she was missing so we decided to have me play Colette and she would grab and start to learn a different crew. Her choice was Lady Justice and I helped her put together a fairly well rounded 35ss crew to play. We had the Gaining Ground Shared Treasure Hunt as our strategy, and Bianca brought the following to the table:

• Justice, Miss Terious, 2 Stalkers, Santana, Guardian, 2 Guild Hounds, 8 stone pool

I brought:

• Colette, 2 Performers & Mannequin, 2 Coryphee, Cassandra, 3 stone pool

There were a couple things I noticed Bianca prefers to use and not use when she plays Colette, and I wanted to show her some differences in how she plays. Bianca really like to use the 12 inch ranged Discharge Soulstone, while I prefer Magicians Duel (to not burn so many stones). Bianca does not often discard cards for soulstones, while I do. Bianca also does not hold onto tomes for her defense trigger, while I rely on it heavily. By the same token, Bianca relies on her soulstone healing with her Slow to Die more than I do.

So, when we got into the game I helped her understand how the Guardian's protect spell works and how to use it to boost Santana. I then showed her the trick of using the Mannequin to bash Colette to help Collette move without burning her own 1ap to do so. I also held several tomes (often mid or low tomes) to use with Colette's defense trigger and Bianca gained a much better understanding of how hard Colette is to pin down. The game was really close, and Bianca got to see two major turning points (against me and for her) when she was able to run Justice into both the Coryphee Duet and into Cassandra and cheat in a Red Joker on a damage flip, deleting both models from the game. She also had some eye opening moments when my performers were far from useless. Between the two performers I was able to shoot down a witchling stalker and Miss Terious with their pistols, Lure a dog out of position to make the other dog insignificant (so it could not pick up the treasure), and steal one of Justice's soulstones with expensive gift.  Bianca came out of the game with a better appreciation for the performers, although she still sees the Mannequins as damage sponges. Surprisingly she did not enjoy playing Justice at all, and wants to go back to playing Colette more.

Netrunner

My wife and I have been playing Netrunner, and she is enjoying it as much as I am. I have had a couple chances to head out to the store on my normal Tuesday night to get games against the wider community, but we are also enjoying just playing against each other. We have a single core set, 3 expansions (What Lies Ahead, Cyber Exodous, Humanities Shadow), and the Command and Control new expansion. This has been good and bad, as I am trying to keep 2 corp and 2 runner decks built at the same time without swapping cards between decks. We have it down but I think my runner deck is not as strong as it should be, while my corp deck could probably use some help as well.

Julie is playing Chaos Theory with what she calls her "Dinosaur Deck". This is a fun shaper deck to play and is tweaked to be pretty damn efficient. I am very happy to find her enjoying playing the corp and runner sides of the game equally, as it lets me also switch up between my corp and runner deck. On the runner side I am playing one of the Criminals (Gabe). Julie's deck is built heavily focused on getting her 3 Ice Breaker's out and then making repeated runs against R&D (the draw deck). My deck is based on generating a lot of money then making repeated runs on HQ (opponents hand). There are a couple cards that could be swapped between the decks to make them run a bit smoother, but overall they do fairly well.

On the Corporation side of the game we have a Jinteki deck and a HB Next Design deck built. Julie is exclusively playing the Jinteki deck which works pretty damn well. It's based around "flat lining" the runner by trying to simply do enough net damage to take them out of the game. The term "Jinteki Shell Game" has been tossed around at the store when others see the deck. My corp deck (Next Design) has been a lot of fun to play and was built primarily out of cards from the C&C set that just released. Next Design lets me install up to 3 pieces of ice from my hand before the game begins, then draw back up to a full hand to start the game. This can be a real benefit by giving me a 1 turn jump start to the game. I am also building it around getting out some really monster sized ICE that do a fair amount of brain damage to the runner and then Rezzing (activating) them for cheaper than thier normal cost. I am still tweaking the deck but it has been run to play overall.

Play Testing

That brings me to the last thing I have been doing lately. I am going to write in more general terms about this since it's still fairly hush-hush at the moment. I am involved in play testing a series new games for a game company that will remain nameless for now. I really enjoy play testing games and have been involved in doing so for a longer time than I had realized. I touched on some of why play testing and game development interested me in an earlier post but figured I would ramble a bit about it here in a more focused area.

I had my first experience play testing a game when I was in high school, something like 25 years ago (or so). I had been sneaking out to play D&D with a group of friends for years (throughout late elementary school and early highschool) and had met a new group of players through my group of friends. The new group invited me to try out a game they were in the final playtest of, a game called Shadowrun. I loved playing the game and the GM for the group sent all our feedback back to the writers and then we kept playing once the game was published. I have to admit that Shadowrun was one of my favorite RP settings and games to play, and I imagine part of that was being involved in the playtest for it with a good group. Overall the playtesting was not too intense as only the GM was really taking notes and providing feedback.

Years passed and I went on to graduate high school and join the US Army. During my time in the military I did a lot of gaming but no real testing overall. I did get involved in developing my own online MUD, fully customizing the available DIKU MUD software available through both the in game world and by teaching myself to code. I had a lot of fun running Towers MUD, and had a pretty solid set of players who logged in and enjoyed the world. This was a very different experience since instead of "play testing and providing feedback", when I saw something I wanted changed I would just change it, test it, and then fix what didn't work. There was as much to look at in the actual "how it works" on the code side as there was looking at balance of the components in the game.

As Towers MUD started to wind down a military friend of mine got invited to play test a new type of online game, an MMORPG.  He was able to get me invited to the beta play testing for Asherons Call and it was a blast. The Beta Test was a fairly late beta and was focused on balance testing the classes and monsters in the game, along with doing everything possible to try and "power level" through the classes to see if they were unbalanced or leveled too quickly. This was a great deal of fun and I was able to bring some of my MUD development experience to providing feedback for the game. This testing was very different from the other two areas of playtest as most of the interactions were monitored by the server so there was very little requirement for written feedback. We both logged into forums and provided our thoughts but most of the feedback was tracked through the debug code the developers had access to.

Asherons Call beta testing led me to become involved in a series of MMORPG testing including Asherons Call 2, Eve Online, Anarchy Online, and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. All of these were very similar while having distinct elements of the individual games that worked differently. The longer time went on with my involvement with new games, and the advancement of the underlying architectures meant that less and less interaction with the actual developers was required from the testers. This culminated in a point in time when I was testing W:AR and found that while there was a forum available, much of the testing was really refining the code throught he debug information as the game vision and overall direction was well in hand and the developers were looking for a massive "bug scrub" more than anything else. This is not a bad thing, but it really created a situation where the play testers were primarily getting advanced play experience with the game instead of helping guide the direction through testing feedback.

As more time went on I moved from computer gaming to table top gaming as my primary hobby. I became more involved in Mini-Wargaming and moved through a variety of games as has been somewhat documented on the Gamers Lounge podcast. After playing Malifaux for a while I was invited to become involved in play testing with Wyrd. I have talked about this a bit on the podcast, with an entire episode dedicated to the play testing experience for Twisting Fates and Storm of Shadows. I was involved in other play tests for Wyrd as well (for varying lengths of time) including Puppet Wars, PW Unstitched, Showdown, and Malifaux 2E.

So, why is all this rambling so new in my mind and why do I want to write about it? As mentioned above, I am involved in a new set of play testing for a set of games for a new gaming company. Getting to sit down and play some new games, especially as the games are in early development stages. I have found that game development for both the new group and for Wyrd are run in a very similar style, which I have come to understand if similar for other Board/Tabletop/Card games. Basically there is a mechanism (form/email list/etc) to provide feedback and interact with the game developers very directly. This is helpful in not only refining how the game is played but also helping to test and provide insight/input into the game mechanics along with the "balance" of the individual game components. I am really enjoying getting a glimpse at the development and growth of new games while still bringing some of my experience to bear in helping refine how those games come together.

So I am sure at this point at least some of you want to know what I am testing currently. I will leave you with these couple snippets. First, it is a game that I have been able to play with my wife and daughters and we are all really enjoying it. Second, think euro-style board game. And lastly, Ants.

I will share more when I am able to.

Models Painted

Taking a break from the variety of strife circling through the Malifaux community lately, I decided to get some more painting done. On finishing up some of the new models I slipped onto my painting tray I set-up a small photo station in my office to grab some pictures of the new models. A couple of these were actually painted during July, with only two being completed this past weekend.

It makes me a bit sad to paint up models that I am very unlikely to use in games, but C'est la vie. I now have 3 Riflemen, Sirdar, and my last Wastrel painted up and ready to join McCabe or a variety of other guild crews. I am pretty happy with how the white came out on Sirdar, building up to it in a couple levels. I ended up starting with GW Space Wolves Grey, followed by a thin coat of Bleached bone. This will then covered with P3 Menoth White base, then highlighted with two layers of P3 Mentoh White highlight.

On painting up the Riflemen I went with the same scheme I used for my guild guard. I figured that the grey would work out well, and stippled the coat with some lighter and darker greys to add in some of the "camouflage" that I infer from the Rifleman fluff.  I am pretty happy with how they came out, and I suspect they will look very good in a crew with my guardsmen. I am considering putting together a quick picture of Lucius plus some dogs, guardmen, and riflemen.

So far in August I completed two large models, Snow Storm and aDreamer. I do like the way Snow Storm and aDreamer came out overall however. I still have a fair number of models sitting in my unpainted to-do box, and plan to continue to get them painted up over time. This is part of my plan to fill time until I find a game that I want to play.

Snow Storm looks really good when standing with the rest of my Rasputina crew. This is another picture I am thinking about taking, with the whole Raspy crew set-up together. There was some small gap filling required on Snow Storm, and I was actually surprised when I saw what flash needed to be cleaned up. When I originally looked at the pieces I did not think the flash was as bad as I had heard from others who built this model. This was one of the few resin models that Wyrd released, and there was some complaints when he was first released. The flash does not look bad on a glance, but upon actually cleaning and assembling the model it is found between many of the hair strands and fur on the Yeti. This ended up being a lot more work than I expected to clean up.

As a last picture here is a look at Avatar Dreamer. I love my Dreamer crew and never really looked at aDreamer as a competitive model, which is why its taken so long to paint up. I didn't see him as competitive due to redundancy more from any other reason. I very much believe that once you get to the point you would want to manifest aDreamer you likely have the game in hand and he would not bring much to winning a game. I do believe he could be a lot of fun for a casual game and plan to use him in future Malifaux Classic games I will play with Dreamer. Overall on the hobby side he was not bad to assemble or paint. I would have preferred that the Nightmare Chompy head have been used instead of the strange crocodile head that was actually sculpted. Overall the scale and sculpting is a bit strange, especially considering the lower jaw is so much larger than the top jaw. That said, I do not think the model looks that bad at all. I'm a little sad to see the light in the light tent washed out to the whites and skin tones on Dreamer himself, as I love the pose he has at the end of the bed. I am pretty happy with the white highlighting I was able to achieve on his night gown.

What would WRabbit37 do different in Malifaux V2?

This is a great article from Mike. If you read my blog but do not read his, go there now and read it!!!

http://wrabbit37-legendaryblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/malifaux-m2e-how-i-would-have-done.html

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 Gencon 2013 Nightmare crew art leaked?

While I took French in high school I was not very good at it and with the exception of possibly 3-5 words it has completely fled my brain. That's a shame as I am now digging around for a website translator to read what FredRaider Adventures has to say about the fantastic picture above. Trying to piece together the English words on his blog post it appears that the picture above is the soon to be released Tara, Herald of Obliteration. I saw a question about this on the Wyrd Forums and read the mention that it had been leaked. A little diligent google searching (Google Image Search: wyrd malifaux tara obliteration) showed the art above was posted back on June 12 of this year. Posting the link on the Wyrd forums quickly got my post disapeared, so I can only take that as confirmation that the art is accurate.

I will say, the art looks interesting. Despite not being a resounding fan of Malifaux V2, I am looking forward to seeing what this crew does. As Wyrd is listing this as the nightmare release at Gencon 2013, I expect it to be a lot of fun!

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.

Picture Week - Kirai Commision

During 2012 I traveled up to Manhattan NY for one of the Warmonger club's Malifaux tournaments. I have spoken about what a great group of gamers this club is and I always enjoy catching up with the guys in the club. Typically there is a full day of games followed by drinks and food at a local Manhattan Irish bar. On the particular day in question my wife had also joined me and spent the day out at a Broadway play. At the bar after the event I got into a conversation with one of my favorite Warmongers, Brooklyn James (Foe Render on the Wyrd boards). James is one of the couple amazing painters in the Warmongers group and at dinner/drinks he mentioned that he really wanted to paint up a Kirai crew, although he did not want to play one. This really peaked my interest, as I had a complete Kirai crew that needed painting. In addition, James is dedicated Guild player and not a henchman, so he was really interested in how to get his hands on one of the Santana models that was going to release at the end of Summer 2012. Through a series of negotiation we came to an agreement that included one of the multiple Santana's I was receiving and I sent off the models for painting.

James did some amazing work on my Kirai crew. We had agreed that he would assemble and paint up the models, then ship them back to me for basing and sealing. I had an awful lot of spirits to send his way and he was able to deliver an amazing set of painted models back to me. I am really impressed with how they came out overall. My final Kirai crew contains Kirai, her avatar, and her totem along  with Ikyrio and Kirai's five Seshin. Dantsu Ba, six Gaki, and two Onroyo join a pair of Shikome who bring some heavy hitting power to the crew. I then added in a Desperate Mercenary, Canine Remains, Jack Daw, two regular Hanged and to Nightmare Hanged which Jame's did not paint to flesh out the overall crew.

One of my favorite models in the range which James painted up is Jakuna Ubume. This model is a fantastic model that comes with its own sculpted base from Wyrd. I love the look of the model and the color's James was able to pull out in the painting. She is a little fiddly to get working well in game and I have not had much luck making her compliment my crew. With that said, I aim to summon her whenever I remember to put the model in my bag. The only downside to the model is she is oddly shaped so does not fit well with my Kirai tray in my bag.

One of the other models that is a challenge to fit into the bag is the Avatar. This is the one model in the crew that I have not gotten on the table yet. The Avatar was a surprise last minute addition to the painting commission and unfortunately the card did not join the models when they were returned to me. This is one of the areas I am a little frustrated with Wyrd on, as the Avatar cards are not available to order via the Wyrd store. This means that in order to get a copy of the stat card I need to purchase a whole new Avatar model. Looking back on the positive side of things, James did an amazing job painting up the Avatar and matching the collapsed Kirai on the base to the standing Kirai he painted up. Knowing how I would be putting together and painting my bases (using Wyrd's graveyard bases), he also did a little converting to add in a similar fence to the Avatar base so it matched. This was a great touch for a great looking model.

I have played around with the crew a number of times last year, getting a handle on it. While I love the look overall I never felt like I was enjoying my games as much as I thought I would. Kirai is a fairly complicated master to play, but with practice she is incredibly versatile and works really well. I'm not sure exactly what it was about her play style that did not fit my taste, everything she does seems like it would work wonders with how I approach Malifaux. Regardless, I enjoyed playing her enough to keep her in my collection and still plan to roll her out from time to time for games.

The Onroyo deserve a special mention when looking at the models in the crew. As you can see from the picture, James did some research and looked up the characters to spell out Gamers Lounge in order to paint them onto the models. This is an incredibly cool touch and while I am unsure if they actually say Gamers Lounge or say something else, it looks cool and I trust James. In addition to that cool touch, the Onroyo actually get the model play of all the models in the crew. Yan Lo has become one of my new favorite Master's to play, and he has the ability to bring Onroyo to the table in his own crew. For this reason and the synergy they bring to his crew I have moved the models over to my Ten Thunders tray.

I am a little disappointed in myself for not getting pictures of the Gaki or Datsu Ba in the picture set I did over the weekend. They are as beautifully painted as the rest of the models and deserve pictures to be posted. They are near the top of my list for the next time I get the light tent set-up and pictures rolled out. At this time, please enjoy looking at the great job on these models!