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A kind kickstarter backer along with the good folks at GMG have been made a fully painted playthrough of Maelstrom's Edge. If you've been interested but waiting for more information, here's a great place to start:




The game and terrain sprue is also now available for direct purchase (no more pre-orders or kickstarter) from maelstromsedge.com

Hey guys, this is Travis (the guy who painted all these models). I drove from Boston, Massachusetts up to Canada to get this video filmed.

Please give me your criticism and notes so when I make my next trip, I can be sure to make a better video!

Heya Travis,

First of all major kudos for getting two armies painted up and driving all the way to get this up. Really great. The forces look great on the table too.

So as for improvements, here's some things I picked up on (and I hope I got all these right :p):

When discussing the force set-ups Ash seems to be under the impression selecting 2 core units allows '4 of something else' which isn't entirely correct; should be 2 of any other category up to a max of 8 total.

Then, Mature Angels are not Core choices: that's a misprint on the card. The book has the right info.

When you show the cards, what you call narrative mission cards are actually the objective cards. There are no narrative mission cards as of yet.

On discussing the Bloodbath mission, Ash explains how the 'full objective' points are usually awarded at the end of the game, which can be true, but in the case of Bloodbath, the Meatgrinder objective is scored every turn for both the partial and full completion.

Deployment STs are not equal to the winning bid minus the losing bid as Ash states, but rather the complete winning bid (so 3 in your case, instead of 1).

I'm not sure what Ash means with 'destroy tests every turn' when talking about the Foundation objective.

Orders are issued not when the command model is activated, but when the unit you want to order around is activated (and in range).

The effect of being Pinned on defensive fire checks is not a bonus, it's a penalty.

When you fire the Karist Troopers at the Fireflies (first shooting in the game), you explain SKL 4 vs EVS 5 requires a 5+, but it doesn't. 5+ is only when your value is half the opponent's or worse. So, in your case it would have been 4+ instead (had you not been wild firing, of course) (Same goes later on when Ash uses his PEN3 missile at your AV5 Angel, that should have been 4+ instead of 5+, and basically any VS roll all game where the ATT value is lower, but not half or worse). When Ash says 'say the Fireflies have MAS4, what would happen if they got 1 damage' you say 'nothing' which is correct from an 'injuries' perspective, but the 1 damage would still cause 1 additional ST to be placed. Ash gets this wrong later on as he says each point of Fortitude lost causes an ST. In fact, there seems to be some confusion between 'damage' and 'injury' on Ash's side.

I'm not sure what you agreed on terrain, but the trees seem to not have been classified as area terrain (otherwise you couldn't shoot through them as Ash does), so they're obstacles. In Ash's first activation, his Hunter shoots at your Angel. The Angel wasn't touching the trees, so would get no cover from them at all (in fact, large models cannot ever be in cover anyway), though the trees could have made him (it?) a fleeting target if they obscured at least 50% of the Angel.

Ash explains 'hover' means you don't have to climb terrain but can just measure vertically. This is incorrect, hovering models do not measure vertical movement at all (same for your Minnows). Also, the Fireflies would have gained +D3 STs for ending their dynamic move touching an obstacle.

The Mature Angel chooses its form when it activates, and this form is then used immediately, rather than next turn.

You confuse Explosive with Burst when shooting the Angel at the Spiders (oh, Ash mentions this later never mind ).

Winning the priority roll means you can choose to be priority player or not, rather than automatically going first.

Your Shadow Walker could have used his pistol as a secondary melee weapon when fighting the Fireflies, for 6 attacks instead of 5. Also, the Fireflies would have been in cover and thus a fleeting target (the cover itself is ignored because you're using a melee weapon), because half of them (1) was touching the side of an obstacle (that parapet) and from your starting position you couldn't see the base of that Firely.

When your Angel charges the Contractors, Ash says the Contractors can't fire defensively because they already did so earlier in the turn, but that's incorrect. You can fire defensively an unlimited amount of times during a turn, but any activation can only cause 1 round of defensive fire.

After you managed to bring back your Shadow Walker as reinforcement, Ash explains he can come on from either table edge, but in fact reinforcements can only come in from your player table edge, which is this case is the long edge.

A general thing I noticed was that most units on both sides were out of cover most of the time, which can be suicidal in MEdge.

And, finally, a question: did anyone at any point get to fire at someone's rear arc?

So, a couple of things there which is only natural with a new game. Thanks again for getting this up

 Sgt. Oddball wrote:
Heya Travis,

First of all major kudos for getting two armies painted up and driving all the way to get this up. Really great. The forces look great on the table too.

Thank you!

So as for improvements, here's some things I picked up on (and I hope I got all these right :p):

Oh man, I was waiting for this... haha. I'm going to respond to every point I can! I appreciate this very, very much.

When discussing the force set-ups Ash seems to be under the impression selecting 2 core units allows '4 of something else' which isn't entirely correct; should be 2 of any other category up to a max of 8 total.

We actually both grasped this. We may have misspoken during the video, but both of us were on board with this rule.

Then, Mature Angels are not Core choices: that's a misprint on the card. The book has the right info.

We noticed this half-way through the game. I didn't even think to check the rulebook and assumed the cards would be right.

When you show the cards, what you call narrative mission cards are actually the objective cards. There are no narrative mission cards as of yet.

This was actually something that confused both of us. We had no idea what the narrative mission cards were supposed to be.

On discussing the Bloodbath mission, Ash explains how the 'full objective' points are usually awarded at the end of the game, which can be true, but in the case of Bloodbath, the Meatgrinder objective is scored every turn for both the partial and full completion.

Again, I think this is something we both grasped but weren't exceptionally clear when speaking in the video! You'd be surprised how nerve wracking it is to be filming with a rulebook open.

Deployment STs are not equal to the winning bid minus the losing bid as Ash states, but rather the complete winning bid (so 3 in your case, instead of 1).

This was confusing in the rule book. Wording could use a little clearing up!

I'm not sure what Ash means with 'destroy tests every turn' when talking about the Foundation objective.

I don't know either actually.

Orders are issued not when the command model is activated, but when the unit you want to order around is activated (and in range).

The "Command Phase" really confused the hell out us when we were flipping through the rule book. Sorry about that.

The effect of being Pinned on defensive fire checks is not a bonus, it's a penalty.

Pinning really doesn't seem to be a penalty. Did we play it wrong? If so, how?

When you fire the Karist Troopers at the Fireflies (first shooting in the game), you explain SKL 4 vs EVS 5 requires a 5+, but it doesn't. 5+ is only when your value is half the opponent's or worse. So, in your case it would have been 4+ instead (had you not been wild firing, of course) (Same goes later on when Ash uses his PEN3 missile at your AV5 Angel, that should have been 4+ instead of 5+, and basically any VS roll all game where the ATT value is lower, but not half or worse). When Ash says 'say the Fireflies have MAS4, what would happen if they got 1 damage' you say 'nothing' which is correct from an 'injuries' perspective, but the 1 damage would still cause 1 additional ST to be placed. Ash gets this wrong later on as he says each point of Fortitude lost causes an ST. In fact, there seems to be some confusion between 'damage' and 'injury' on Ash's side.

The wording in the rule book on damage is confusing. I did a quick test game with a friend before driving up, anf we had the same issue.

I'm not sure what you agreed on terrain, but the trees seem to not have been classified as area terrain (otherwise you couldn't shoot through them as Ash does), so they're obstacles. In Ash's first activation, his Hunter shoots at your Angel. The Angel wasn't touching the trees, so would get no cover from them at all (in fact, large models cannot ever be in cover anyway), though the trees could have made him (it?) a fleeting target if they obscured at least 50% of the Angel.

Whoops! My bad on that. I was confused by the way cover was described as it seems that being behind it would give it cover according to the illustrations in the book. At the same time, you're right, that model is unable to get cover.

Ash explains 'hover' means you don't have to climb terrain but can just measure vertically. This is incorrect, hovering models do not measure vertical movement at all (same for your Minnows). Also, the Fireflies would have gained +D3 STs for ending their dynamic move touching an obstacle.

The image in the book says it does count the measurement vertically. Am I reading it wrong? Could you elaborate on that more please?

The Mature Angel chooses its form when it activates, and this form is then used immediately, rather than next turn.

That was my bad. We realized after filming everything.

You confuse Explosive with Burst when shooting the Angel at the Spiders (oh, Ash mentions this later never mind ).

That was take 2 of that and we both kept mumbling during the first one, haha.

Winning the priority roll means you can choose to be priority player or not, rather than automatically going first.

We knew this, I think it was a spoken rule error.

Your Shadow Walker could have used his pistol as a secondary melee weapon when fighting the Fireflies, for 6 attacks instead of 5. Also, the Fireflies would have been in cover and thus a fleeting target (the cover itself is ignored because you're using a melee weapon), because half of them (1) was touching the side of an obstacle (that parapet) and from your starting position you couldn't see the base of that Firely.

The melee rules really tripped us up. Felt a little bit clunky to walk through them. I was hoping the rules would have been clearer. We did a laserpointer test and the models were able to see one another.

When your Angel charges the Contractors, Ash says the Contractors can't fire defensively because they already did so earlier in the turn, but that's incorrect. You can fire defensively an unlimited amount of times during a turn, but any activation can only cause 1 round of defensive fire.

Must have misread the rule book on that one.

After you managed to bring back your Shadow Walker as reinforcement, Ash explains he can come on from either table edge, but in fact reinforcements can only come in from your player table edge, which is this case is the long edge.

I think this was a miscommunication. The book says "Table Edge" and displays the long L so we assumed that was the edge.

A general thing I noticed was that most units on both sides were out of cover most of the time, which can be suicidal in MEdge.

And, finally, a question: did anyone at any point get to fire at someone's rear arc?

So, a couple of things there which is only natural with a new game. Thanks again for getting this up

No one ever walked into rear-arc range, sadly. Also, I'm not sure how you can remain in cover with a 6x4 board.

After playing I really believe that this game has excellent potential. I personally LOVE it. I do believe that the rules need some cleaning up and clarifications. A lot of what you're saying makes sense, but dang is it hard to understand from browsing through the rules.

I plan on going up again and playing Ash a few more times, but we've decided to use an Infinity style terrain board that measures 4x4 instead.

I personally believe that the rule book could have used some "sample battlefields" to display cover better. Also I would be very happy if you could leave rulebook page citations and notes. The more I know and understand, the better the next video will be.

I'm actually the rulebook proofreader, so this will be an interesting conversation

StraightEdgeFTW wrote:
You'd be surprised how nerve wracking it is to be filming with a rulebook open.

Yeah no problem, I'm not having a dig at either of you at all. It's actually really great to see which rules make immediate sense to people and which don't.

This (deployment STs, SGT) was confusing in the rule book. Wording could use a little clearing up!

So the text on p87 says "During deployment, the defender gets to place STs onto the attacking force equal to the winning bid." Is this unclear because of the text itself, or because of other text elsewhere or the location of this information? I guess including an example would remove any confusion.

Pinning really doesn't seem to be a penalty. Did we play it wrong? If so, how?

So it's specifically the effect on defensive fire checks I'm talking about: "has the result needed for it to pass a defensive fire discipline check increased by one" (p61), meaning the check is harder to pass, not easier. Pinning does have positive effects associated with it, exactly like you mentioned in the video.

The wording in the rule book on damage is confusing. I did a quick test game with a friend before driving up, anf we had the same issue.

Yeah the concept will take a little getting used to. Each hit that beats the armour value causes a successful penetration, each penetration does a certain amount of damage and if that damage stacks up to a model's MAS, the model suffers an injury (or malfunction). For each injury, a point of Fortitude is taken. So, damage is what a single penetration causes and what you add up and measure against mass, injuries are the damage a model actually suffers in the end. STs are awarded based on damage though, not injuries. I think the wording is very precise, it's just that the procedure is new, but if you have suggestions for improvement we'll gladly take them!

(On terrain, SGT) Whoops! My bad on that. I was confused by the way cover was described as it seems that being behind it would give it cover according to the illustrations in the book. At the same time, you're right, that model is unable to get cover.

Cover is simple: "When a model’s base is touching the side of a terrain obstacle, or any portion of its base is within an area terrain feature, it is considered to be in cover." (p47). The confusion may arise from the related concept of being a fleeting target for being partially obscured: "When checking line of sight, if at least half of the models in a unit have their body partially obscured (even by just a tiny bit), then the entire unit is considered to be a fleeting target" (p54).

The image in the book says it does count the measurement vertically. Am I reading it wrong? Could you elaborate on that more please?

Sure, p51 states: "When measuring a model’s path of movement, hold the tape measure above all models and terrain and measure the path only from a top-down, two-dimensional point of view. In other words, any slight change in elevation a model makes as part of their move is disregarded. However, if a model’s path of movement takes them vertically up and/or down 2” or more, then the vertical distance the model moves (straight up and/or down) must also be counted." So, you do count vertical distance, as long as it's more than 2". However, hover models can make dynamic moves (though they don't have to), in which case: "they can move onto and off of vertical terrain features (page 51) without taking any vertical movement distance into consideration." (p47) You are right that the illustration on p51 shows a Firefly that counts vertical movement, but the caption clears up what's happening there: "Danielle is moving her Firefly Drone entirely over an obstacle that is 3” tall with a 16” double move. Moving completely over the crate (3” up and 3” back down) means the Firefly will have 10” of horizontal movement to work with. Alternatively, the Firefly could opt to fully engage its powerful engines and move dynamically, thereby ignoring the obstacle completely."

The melee rules really tripped us up. Felt a little bit clunky to walk through them. I was hoping the rules would have been clearer. We did a laserpointer test and the models were able to see one another.

Yeah, they're definitely different from what you may be used to. In the end they'll be simple as it's basically just shooting, but there's definitely some complexity there. The problem in this case was not so much that you couldn't see the fireflies at all (which, btw, isn't necessary to charge). Actually I really had to think about this one, because those Fireflies were inside a circle-formed obstacle (that parapet). One of the fireflies touched the obstacle, so was in cover. As he was half the unit, that made the entire unit in cover. However, cover granted by obstacles can be denied if the attacker can see the entire model and its base, because the obstacle is on the wrong side. In this case, the obstacle seems to be on the wrong side to give any protection, but as it actually curves round to the 'right' side again, this same obstacle is still blocking the view of the Shadow Walker (in its starting position) and thus the Fireflies count as in cover (this is really hard to explain in writing...). The cover itself, however, is ignored in the melee because the Shadow Walker's melee weapon ignores cover. Being in cover, however, also means the Fireflies are a fleeting target, which is nót ignored by the melee weapon. (4th bullet point on page 64). So that took a lot of 'however'. I hope I got this right, maybe Jon could chip in as well.

I think this was a miscommunication. The book says "Table Edge" and displays the long L so we assumed that was the edge.

The bit you need here is on page 89: "Each deployment type has player table edges, which are the table edges their reserve units normally arrive from. The other two board edges are the non-player table edges. A player table edge is expressed on deployment maps as a red edge."

No one ever walked into rear-arc range, sadly. Also, I'm not sure how you can remain in cover with a 6x4 board.

Sometimes you can't, in that case it can be good to go 'on the move' as I'm sure I heard Ash do at least once. I think part of the cause here might be some confusion between being partially obscured and being in cover (i.e. inside area terrain or touching obstacles).

After playing I really believe that this game has excellent potential. I personally LOVE it. I do believe that the rules need some cleaning up and clarifications. A lot of what you're saying makes sense, but dang is it hard to understand from browsing through the rules.

Great to hear that! We're very much aware that the way the rules are laid out is not primarily suited to learning the game. The priority was to to make them tight and well-organized in order to serve as a reference. This came at the cost of making them 'tutorial style', which hopefully will become easier as more people put up videos and experiences like you have.

I personally believe that the rule book could have used some "sample battlefields" to display cover better. Also I would be very happy if you could leave rulebook page citations and notes. The more I know and understand, the better the next video will be.

I hope this reply helped! Feel free to prod again when things remain unclear and to suggest improvements, we're grateful for them! The longer you're busy writing something, the harder it becomes to take a 'first reader's point of view'.

This reply definitely helped, and I definitely didn't think you were digging at me. I just wanted to get as much information as I could. I absolutely am trying to be an ambassador for this game in Massachusetts.

That being said, I still maintain that some of the rules could use clearing up. For example, the dynamic move rule could definitely be more clear. It's strange to use the example of a drone if the drone can ignore it. Both Ash and I struggled with that concept.

I am going to print out the summary sheets and play another game with my best bud down here in Boston. I'm hoping we can nail down the mistakes I made during the Let's Play and iron out some of the more intense math.

I did a quick tutorial with some local gaming friends after the LP, and they seemed very turned off by the complexity of close combat. I highly suggest more charts showing how to hit, etc. Clean examples are great for new games. Especially ones this complex.

Lastly, just to clarify a few things from a video perspective, as I feel like some people give Ash a hard time about Let's Plays. I brought the game and rules up to Ash personally, so he didn't actually have anything to prep with. We didn't have a ton of time together to sit down and walk through the rules, so the explanation and walk-through was all done by me.

Ash is a great guy and did his best with me. I hope to go back up if the video gets some interest. I think more accessible charts will help the game a bunch!

I'm glad it helped I"ll make sure Jon gets to see your remarks as well (if he misses this topic, which I don't think he will), we always aim to improve! Also, I'm not about to give Ash a hard time at all, you two did a great job of explaining the game.