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Here's my question: if a master can take a model will it have a use?
I'm thinking of getting the plastic Rasputina crew + December Acolyte and am wondering if the Metal Gamin I'm looking at would be a useful or if I'd be better off looking at more obviously icy Arcanists.

 ChaoticMind wrote:
Here's my question: if a master can take a model will it have a use?
I'm thinking of getting the plastic Rasputina crew + December Acolyte and am wondering if the Metal Gamin I'm looking at would be a useful or if I'd be better off looking at more obviously icy Arcanists.

Not necessarily. Metal Gamin traditionally work well with Ramos, as they provide scrap counters, as well as Mei, as she can use them to rail walk and they provide defensive boosts to the Rail Golem.

Raspy generally runs with ice stuff so she sets up Ice mirrors and whatnot. I don't really know much about her in M2E. Synergy is pretty important though. Don't just take models because you can, read up on them first. If they're in the beta, download the files!

Metal Protection is pretty useful for Rasputina's low DF crew, other than that there's not a lot they offer.

Devour (on the Hoarcat pride) has notable synergy with the ice guys' paralizing abilities, which isn't immediately obvious.

Not a lot of advice I an offer past that, not extremely familiar with her crew.

First I want to thank both of you for your responses. I am a total beginner, all I know is you have a crew with a master, the plastic Rasputina crew looks awesome, and according to the free crew-builder on their site I can theoretically put cool looking non-ice arcanists in her crew.

That said it sounds like I should hold off on the Metal Gamin for now and only pick them up once I understand how I could use them with Rasputina.

More questions: What is the M2E Rules Manual? A condensed rule book or something else?
Is 30 soul stones a good level to start at or should I start smaller?

In order,

Sure, of course

Yes, Malifaux is very flexible regarding crew building. There are some pieces that will only work with one master, but masters aren't often limited to a specific selection. However, in most factions (guild is a fairly notable exception), you'll often do best mostly sticking within a theme, with outside of theme pieces filling in gaps.

I'd suggest sticking with the starter crew for at least a few games, esp. with the upgrade system giving options within a crew. Most choices are fine to buy, but I'd suggest not doubling up on minion packs b/c there's rarely a good reason to spam guys.

The rules manual is the same as the main rulebook, minus fluff and model entries. Basically, the gamer's portable version.

30-35 is a good place to start, 50 will eventually be what you want to hit as it's considered ideal/balanced.

Thanks, being a college student I'd rather not start by spending more than necessary or buy myself into a skew list or synergy that requires a solid understanding of the game yet.

Sense you also appear to play warmahordes how would you describe a 30 soul stone game? like a 15pt WM/H game where its unbalanced but you can learn basics or 25-35pt WM/H where it evens out some and you can start to play around but there will still be several possibilities you can't bring a counter for even in a good take all comers list.

If gaming on a budget, I'd recommend getting a couple starters, as that'll give you a couple more serious pieces and plenty of numbers, then look at what you're missing, and start filling gaps.

I'd say that it's closer to 25-35 points, where it feels like a regular game but with very few pieces and usually missing a couple of options. The difference is, it tends to have less to do with not having counters for your opponent than it has to do with being able to allocate forces to both fighting and objectives. I feel like at 35-ish, I'm about 1-2 guys short of what I want (for either redundancy or variety), and that's with pretty sparse use of upgrades.