How to lose friends and make people not want to play you...

[Satyrwyld]

15 soulstones.

Escape and Survive.

Pandora
Jack Daw
8ss cache

Play down 2 stones

Watch opponent forfeit first turn.

The Henchman looked at it and walked away swearing under his breath.

[Kadeton]

I played a 25 SS Escape and Survive with the Viktorias, Von Schill and Jack Daw. My opponent was not overly pleased.

Escape and Survive is a mission that has problems, to say the least. Especially Shared.

[Rathnard]

Well aside form the fact that it uses two models that newer players have alot of trouble trying to understand how to deal with, it's really not very effective.

The key is to remember that you don't need to kill either model to win the game. You just need to score more VPs than your opponent.

Lets assume I face it with the last 15SS crew I took (it was a long time ago);

Zoraida
3x Silurid 15

Zoraida's Wp10 makes her all but immune to both enemy models, so her job is to use Hex, Bewitch and Obey to neutralise Jack Daw and cause trouble for Pandora. If Zoraida can remove Jack's Terrifying (and possibly Arcane Reservoir) the silurid can leap in to put a few wounds on Jack with Focused Strikes. However unless you can drain your opponents hand you're unlikely to kill him, so for the most part the Silurid will instead be acheiving your strategies/schemes and preventing Pandora's.

So it's a douchey crew, but it's also not very good. Honestly, I wouldn't bat an eyelid if someone put it across the table from me.

[Adanedhel]

JD and Dora, am I glad playing Leveticus there ;)
Or Colette for that matter

[magicpockets]

JD and Dora, am I glad playing Leveticus there ;)
Or Colette for that matter

LOL - love it

[Satyrwyld]

Schemes: Bodyguard and whatever looks good, maybe spread madness, maybe kill protege, maybe breakthrough. Once Dora can perform her Amazing Spider-Man act with Incite/Pacify, the two models should be nowhere near each other, meaning any given turn means only having to worry about protecting one of them. Seven cards and a full cache make that pretty easy.

Zoraida: How much terrain do you play with? Yeah, the Silurids can leap over it, and Dora and Zoraida mostly bounce off each other, which leaves Daw as Zoraida's target. With a reasonable amount of terrain, Zoraida should need to raven to get near LoS to Daw, which means no voodoo doll.

Yeah, Leveticus would give the list problems, but fortunately for me I'm the only Leve player in the local meta.

Collette at 15 has... a Performer and Cassandra? 2 Coryphee? Disappearing Act might worry Daw, but he's not leaving play permanently without a lucky trigger. With so few models, her ability to blink around the board is hindered as well.

Perdita wasn't mentioned, but we know she's Pandora's inherent bane, and frankly that combo scares me, personally, more than the though of any of the lists suggested here, including my own.

Mind you, a number of masters out there have enough synergy with Daw and/or independence from minions that they could be pretty scary with only him in a 15 point game: Perdita, Zoraida, Lilith and maybe the Viktorias or Leveticus (depending on your ability to protect the waif). This is just the variant that scares my local meta.

[Buhallin]

So basically the moral of this story is that the game doesn't play well with only a master and 1-2 models per side?

Who ever would have guessed? :P

Why is anyone playing at that point level in the first place?

[nilus]

Why is anyone playing at that point level in the first place?

Its a good stone level for demo games.

[Dustcrusher]

Its a good stone level for demo games.

+1

For the most part, stick to the starter box models and play at 15 points and it works well.

Also, I'm in the early stages of an alternative that (hopefully) will work well with most models at the 10-15 point range. It's a bit odd though- no masters and it might even have no henchmen, instead giving certain named minions the ability to lead a small crew.

[Lucidicide]

Its a good stone level for demo games.

Hello. I'm here to teach you about the game of Malifaux. We're going to play 15ss.

Because Guild can be a little easier to grasp early, you can use my Lady Justice crew. Here you go.

I'm going to be fielding Pandora and Jack Daw.

Now, onto the mechanics. Most models take Wds... well, one of my models doesn't, but other models do. Anyway, as I was saying. In order to do Wds, you have to attack... well, one of my models can give you Wds when you try to attack it, but usually you can't get hurt by taking your own actions.

Besides taking Wds, models can also die by runnning off the table... like so!

/Pandora kills everything

/Run off laughing