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After a one year absence from Malifaux, the new format, Hardcore, has been a great starting point for me to get into M2E. If you are unfamiliar with the Hardcore format here it is;

20 soulstone game

Henchman leader
no more than 4 models
Assassinate (henchman) and Turf war

Here is my Ortega list: 6 soulstones

Fransisco w/ Wade in
Nino w/ Diestro
Santiago w/ Hair trigger

Let me know what you think.

I'm trying to get people to try Malifaux with this format.

I'm not too keen on one aspect though: do you pay for the Henchman in charge of your warband or not? I've also seen sources saying that the cache and any extra soulstones are forfeit.

I'm asking because most lists I come up with Ten Thunders are 2 models, 3 on a good day, as each model is rather expensive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Finally had access to my Guild cards. Figured out your points cost. You were efficient, man.

Everywhere I've seen the rules posted its exactly 4 models, no more no less.

Mathieu, the henchman leader does not cost any soul stones, as he is your leader, and yes you are correct, any unused soulstones are forfeit, so you want to spend all 20.

For 10T I would be tempted to go something like this:
Toshiro the Daimyo -- 4 Pool
Dawn Serpent [10]
Komainu [5]
Komainu [5]

or

Ototo -- 3 Pool
+Call the Thunder [1]
Sidir Alchibal [9]
Ten Thunders Brother [5]
Ten Thunders Brother [5]

Ah, see, I only have the "pure Thunder" minis so far. I have no dual factions, so my bad, I actually took out the cards from the Arsenal deck.

Then does that mean Martin74's list would have been off because he didn't have the right number of models?

I was wracking my brain last night, came up with these:
Ototo
+Call the Thunder
+Smoke and Mirrors
3x Torakage.

Yamaziko
+Smoke and Mirrors
2x Thunder Archers
Torakage

I'll take a look at the rest of the deck and the Wave 2 stuff, even if I have to proxy. Also, Monks of the Low River... not useful at all in this format.

I saw this on the Wyrd forum. Evil stuff. I think Ortegas lend themselves to this format fairly well.

Mathieu, you should look into the new TT archer upgrade; lets each archer take a (2) action at the end of the turn, and you can discard the upgrade to give them all defensive.

So I had a mitigated success with Hardcore last night.

I had made 6 lists from my available models (only a single proxy for the Lone Swordsman) and told my victims... errr, friends, to choose a list. I gave them vague descriptions so they'd go by feeling rather than bog the decisional process down. I had a slightly bigger board set up because we'd be three players, as a frontier town, complete with massive Cthulhu idol in the middle of the board. First player The Judge, 2 Death Marshalls and a Guild Guard with a few upgrades. Second player chose Datsue-ba, Izamu, a Gaki and an Onryo, with the summon upgrade for Datsue-ba. (He won, hands down, no contest) I had Ototo, 3 Torakage, Smoke and mirrors and the Thunder upgrade for Ototo.

Aside from the physical reflex to play a card from their hand instead of flipping from the deck at first, I thought things were going great. We slowly got to cross the board towards the centre, and then one of the players started flipping out about the cards being so full of text that he couldn't use all of his abilities all the time because of the 2 AP per model, and the rulebook being so slim and the cards being so full of special rules meant the game was badly made.

He also objected to the game being one of purely counters, on which we disagreed. He chose the example of the Neverborn, saying that if anyone played Guild, or Family, then the Neverborn player had already lost. From what I've read here, it seems the Neverborn are indeed "alive" and well, but he wouldn't believe me.

He then levelled the objection that the game's creators are "in it for the money" and their objective is to sell miniatures. I didn't see it as a problem per se as, hey, Capitalism and it's a hobby. truth is, I struggle with DBA and other small-fry games because they, imho, lack variety or have very bad editing of the text. Two very separate complaints, but I don't feel any special love for a ruleset specifically because it is a single guy in a basement, is my point. He then argued that the 7$ pack of cards for the switch to M2E is extortion and exactly the same as GW selling you a 60$ codex when they change it, because they'll eventually raise the price of cards in the future... I thought this was a bit of a slippery slope fallacy, but eh.

All of this rant to say, I felt I had done everything right to prepare the evening, but I'm bummed I got such an extreme negative reaction. Can anyone help me maybe present things better next time?

Anyone who thinks the Neverborn aren't competitive has never met collodi.

Well, after a further debrief, it appears evident that you can't rely on the maximum damage number on the weapon's spread as you often have a negative twist on damage (at least we did last night) and things like HtW, Armor, Bulletproof, Incorporeal and the such are more prevalent than we thought.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
So I had a mitigated success with Hardcore last night.

... Second player chose Datsue-ba, Izamu, a Gaki and an Onryo, with the summon upgrade for Datsue-ba. (He won, hands down, no contest)...

I may be misunderstanding you, but I thought Henchman Hardcore's were no summoning. Just a straight 4 v 4.

He also objected to the game being one of purely counters, on which we disagreed. He chose the example of the Neverborn, saying that if anyone played Guild, or Family, then the Neverborn player had already lost. From what I've read here, it seems the Neverborn are indeed "alive" and well, but he wouldn't believe me.

Yeah, in a henchman match Nekima is an absolute beast. In full games Lilith and Pandora are monsters, and in prior editions Dreamer was so tough he was OP. Neverborn aren't hurting. As for being a game of counters, he's correct to a point. Because you don't make your list until the very end he is not correct because if you've got four or five masters, how is he going to know who to counter? But where he is correct is when you're just starting out (ie 1 master). If you know your opponent only has one or two possible masters and you wanted to be that guy you could easily outmaneuver him. Example, I mainly use Lady J so the last time I faced Ressers I use this upgrade that makes Death Marshalls immune to horror duels, I've usually use four DM's (Lady J, The Judge, & 2x Death Marshalls) as a core force. I didn't need to know which master he was using, it's a 2SS gamble on whether it'd be useful and it was worth it. So my Resser opponent was stifled a bit, but it didn't break the game for him.


And $7-$15 for a new pack of cards once every three years is better than $45 for a new codex. Game editions evolve for all games, your buddy has to deal with it. If your friend doesn't like new editions or rules or models, then reason with him that they're are board games. FFG games, chess, checkers - board games never change, miniature games do, it's part of the process and how those companies stay in business.

All of this rant to say, I felt I had done everything right to prepare the evening, but I'm bummed I got such an extreme negative reaction. Can anyone help me maybe present things better next time?

It's sounds like you did a lot right, but your guests aren't ready for something new. If you want to get them into Malifaux keep going over some of the refreshing and positive points.
-It's not the same old dice mechanic. It's as random as dice to start, but a little bit better because of the control hand mechanic.
-It's got a cheap entry point. $13 mini rulebook and $45 starter sets you can actually use. All made cheaper on eBay and secondary markets. I've spent more on a date.
-Tightly written rules and a large, large variety of scenarios.
-Great background material that's cheap to get ahold of, or free (Chronicle downloads on their site).
-The company is actually involved in the player base. I've spoken to Wyrd employees several times on Facebook. One of the Wryd employees (Aaron Darling) spends the first hour of his workday going over social media to get a pulse on the player base.
-They beta test rules using the player base, taking in player feedback to help them figure it all out. In about 4-6 weeks you'll see a live example when they start doing the Avatar beta test. It will start with their henchman and move over to the player base.

Sorry you had a tough night. Don't give up. I don't know if your on the Facebook page, A Wyrd Place, but if you're not I suggest you join up. A hugely helpful player base, and you can get a lot of positive feedback to questions you may have. I like the that Facebook page better than the Wyrd forums myself.

Good luck!

I couldn't find supporting evidence to rule it either way. Some tourneys do no summoning, some do with it. I couldn't find an "official" Wyrd list of dos and donts for Hardcore.

Wat he was arguing was that, from his uninitiated perspective, an ability that can be used to counter a specific segment of the population but is useless against many others makes it too rock-paper-scisors in his mind. But the truth of it is that, as you said, Horror Duels aren't the be-all-end-all of ressers. And if you do manage to buy the 10ss of upgrades necessary to block more and more tricks, you end up with many fewer boots on the ground.

He mentionned chess and checkers too. I offered to run throughall the decks of cards with coins if he objected to buying minis (which is a ridiculous assertion, he loves painting and buys many more minis than me) and I would gladly play with him...

And then he emails me this morning and says he's bought the cards, looked them over, has trundled through his bits boxesssss (no joking) and has enough stuff to make over 100ss of zombies, canine remains, constructs, betes noires for his old metal Nicodem crew (which he had bought to paint about 3 years ago). I'm at wit's end. It's like being married.

Sounds like you're winning to me. Keep at it.