Maklar the Silver Prince's Customs

[IshMEL]

Does Yelvin get caught in his own Trip Wire? If a figure is flying, does it trip the wire?

[Maklar the Silver Prince]

Originally Posted by IshMEL

Does Yelvin get caught in his own Trip Wire? If a figure is flying, does it trip the wire?

Yes, he can possibly be caught. And good catch, I should change it to "non-flying figure", right?

[IshMEL]

I'd probably go with "A figure is not affected by Trip Wire while flying." If it lands, it should be fair game, right?

[Maklar the Silver Prince]

Originally Posted by IshMEL

I'd probably go with "A figure is not affected by Trip Wire while flying." If it lands, it should be fair game, right?

Right you are. Thanks.

[Maklar the Silver Prince]

Another rogue, this time the sneaky, knife-throwing, Mellaine the Silent:


The figure is Sharn Cutthroat, from D&D's Aberrations.

Melaine the Silent

Elf
Unique Hero
Rogue
Tricky
Medium 4

Life - 3
Move - 6
Range - 1
Attack - 3
Defense - 2
Points - 50

Throwing Knife Special Attack
Range 5. Attack 2.
If Melaine the Silent is attacking a small or medium figure, that figure figure rolls 1 less defense die.

Concealment 14
If Melaine the Silent is targeted and receives one or more wounds from an attacking figure who is not adjacent, you must roll the 20-sided die. Count the minimum number of spaces between the attacker and Melaine the Silent. Add this number to your die roll. If you roll a 14 or higher, ignore any wounds Melaine the Silent just received.

Stab in the Back
After you take a turn with Melaine the Silent, you must roll the 20-sided die. If you roll a 1, choose an opponent. That opponent now controls Melaine the Silent. Remove any order markers from this Army Card, and then give the card to that opponent.


And, you get a 2 for 1 from me today! The Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, none other than Kelasho Ull, updated to:


Karsite Fighter, D&D Blood War

Kelasho the Brutal

Human
Unique Hero
Rogue
Merciless
Medium 5

Life - 6
Move - 5
Range - 1
Attack - 4
Defense - 4
Points - 200

Thieves Guild
After revealing an order marker on Kelasho the Brutal, instead of taking a turn with Kelasho the Brutal, you may take a turn with up to 2 different Rogues you control. Kelasho the Brutal cannot be one of the 2 Rogues. Any Rogue that is taking a turn instead of Kelasho must be within 10 clear sight spaces of another Rogue.

Brutal Strikes
When Kelasho the Brutal attacks an adjacent figure, he may attack that same figure 2 additional times.


I've also decided to update Yelvin the Crooked with Stab in the Back for uniformity.


The wording for Brutal Strikes is awful, but it will do for the time being.

Thieves Guild allows your Rogues to be very flexible with the figures you use, so long as there is another Rogue nearby. It can even be an opponents Rogue. The Thieves Guild altogether isn't that strong, so they'll need every advantage they can get.

Kelasho, Elaria, Cormin, Yelvin, and Melaine make up the basis of the Guild. I'll probably make some more Rogues, but not necessarily Guildsmen or women, like Darrak.

What do you think?

[IshMEL]

I love the idea of a Thieves' Guild that ties together the Rogues. (I recently acquired Cormin!) A couple of thoughts:

Melaine: Maybe it's just me, but I can't read this name without thinking it's "Melanie". I like both Concealment and Stab in the Back for her.

Kelasho: It should be "Thieves Guild" (you've switched your i and e there). And my suggested wording for Brutal Strike is:

When Kelasho the Brutal attacks an adjacent figure, he may attack that same figure 2 additional times.

With 4 attack, that's pretty Brutal!

I really like the theme of the Thieves Guild power -- Kashlo as the boss can send his Rogues out in pairs, and they're making silent signals to each other across the crowd, etc. The figure doesn't scream "Rogue" to me but as a Brutal boss-type it works OK. I'm guessing that armor is why he's stayed alive to rise to the top of the guild...

BTW I have done cards for both these figures (not my unit designs), so it would be pretty easy to make cards for Melanie Melaine and Kalsho. Let me know.

[Maklar the Silver Prince]

Originally Posted by IshMEL

Melaine: Maybe it's just me, but I can't read this name without thinking it's "Melanie". I like both Concealment and Stab in the Back for her.

Huh, I've been having the exact same problem. Melanie isn't a bad name, but it doesn't exactly fit. Perhaps Manel? Melly? Molly? Mira? Something beginning with the letter S to tie in with the title " Silent"?

Originally Posted by IshMEL

Kelasho: It should be "Thieves Guild" (you've switched your i and e there). And my suggested wording for Brutal Strike is:

When Kelasho the Brutal attacks an adjacent figure, he may attack that same figure 2 additional times.

Thanks for the wording. And man do I feel stupid. Looks like I've been spelling it wrong for a while now.

Originally Posted by IshMEL

I really like the theme of the Thieves Guild power -- Kashlo as the boss can send his Rogues out in pairs, and they're making silent signals to each other across the crowd, etc. The figure doesn't scream "Rogue" to me but as a Brutal boss-type it works OK. I'm guessing that armor is why he's stayed alive to rise to the top of the guild...

This was exactly what I was going for. He's not necessarily a thieve-y Rogue, but more of a rule by fear crime boss.

Originally Posted by IshMEL

BTW I have done cards for both these figures (not my unit designs), so it would be pretty easy to make cards for Melanie Melaine and Kalsho. Let me know.

The units are far from finished, and I prefer to hold off from cards until the unit is just about perfect. Thanks for the offer, and I may take you up on it later.

Originally Posted by IshMEL

I recently acquired Cormin!

Thats great! I hope he's tons of fun to play with. I'd love to here how you like him once you give him some use.

[Sir Heroscape]

I like the customs. To be honest my favorite is the centaur. I do think though that it would have been better suited as an uncommon (or just common) hero. As a unique hero at 50pts it would only ever be a filler and you can't expect much...but as an uncommon hero they still act as unique Heroes according to the rules, the only difference is you can have multiples of uncommon heroes. And truthfully, I think it'd be really fun to use about 3 of those in an army build...would make things a lot more interesting. You ought to consider sending this in for C3V approval I think a Centaur would be a good addition to a new wave. Where did you get the figure anyway? D&D?

[Maklar the Silver Prince]

Originally Posted by adoney

I like the customs. To be honest my favorite is the centaur. I do think though that it would have been better suited as an uncommon (or just common) hero. As a unique hero at 50pts it would only ever be a filler and you can't expect much...but as an uncommon hero they still act as unique Heroes according to the rules, the only difference is you can have multiples of uncommon heroes. And truthfully, I think it'd be really fun to use about 3 of those in an army build...would make things a lot more interesting. You ought to consider sending this in for C3V approval I think a Centaur would be a good addition to a new wave. Where did you get the figure anyway? D&D?

Swaysil is a Centaur Archer from Pathfinder's Reign of Winter. It's a very nice looking figure, and quite solid. I've actually stepped on it (accidentally) and no harm came to it, though I wouldn't suggest stepping on your miniature.

While uncommons and commons are nice, often figure availability is a problem, and it would be so for this figure. While there is a good number of figures for a unique hero, I wouldn't want to be buying multiples of the figure, as it is recently expensive as well (about 4-6 dollars).

Swaysil is actually quite good in the endgame, so expect more! At 50 points she adds a fast, cheap, ranged hero that has offensive punch, though very little survivability. She can be a big problem for little squadling, and while making her uncommon wouldn't necessarily make her too much stronger normally, it could have a drastic effect on the endgame. I'm very confident with her right now, in fact she is going through the SOV at the moment, and if accepted she will be part of VC, so I'm one step ahead of you, though I'm honored to hear that you think she would be VC worthy.

Thanks for the comments!

[Sir Heroscape]

Originally Posted by Maklar the Silver Prince

Swaysil is a Centaur Archer from Pathfinder's Reign of Winter. It's a very nice looking figure, and quite solid. I've actually stepped on it (accidentally) and no harm came to it, though I wouldn't suggest stepping on your miniature.

While uncommons and commons are nice, often figure availability is a problem, and it would be so for this figure. While there is a good number of figures for a unique hero, I wouldn't want to be buying multiples of the figure, as it is recently expensive as well (about 4-6 dollars).

Swaysil is actually quite good in the endgame, so expect more! At 50 points she adds a fast, cheap, ranged hero that has offensive punch, though very little survivability. She can be a big problem for little squadling, and while making her uncommon wouldn't necessarily make her too much stronger normally, it could have a drastic effect on the endgame. I'm very confident with her right now, in fact she is going through the SOV at the moment, and if accepted she will be part of VC, so I'm one step ahead of you, though I'm honored to hear that you think she would be VC worthy.

Thanks for the comments!

All good points. I hope it gets approved...well done!

[Maklar the Silver Prince]

After a *short* hiatus, I am back, and super excited to work on some customs. @superfrog mentioned my custom Swaysil of the Northlands, and got me thinking. Back in the day I submitted Swaysil to the SoV. I was fresh of having Cormin the Dark admitted, and although that was awesome I wanted to go ahead and do something a little different. Cormin has some neat abilities but at the end of the day was a little niche (although VC seems like it's building up a contingent of rogues that looks pretty awesome, between the Merry Men and Kha going through the SoV currently). With Swaysil I really wanted to put forth a custom that pushed the envelope, was strong and competitive and would be on the short list of units that you'd really consider adding to a competitive army.

Swaysil turned out pretty good! But not quite good enough to crack the SoV. The custom accomplished what I had wanted: Swaysil makes for a great filler endgame unit with at just 50 points along with low survivability and offensive tools that requires you to pool your order markers on her once you get her going. She was very powerful on the attack, with a pretty reliable auto wound ability that could be combined with a powerful attack at close range to take out a couple of squad figures or pile on some wounds. I loved the fact that this encourage bold and quick play, making the endgame fun and keeping things from dragging on. Unfortunately, Swaysil was just a bit too powerful in these scenarios.

Now that I'm here to make some adjustments, there are some things I don't think I want to change.

• I want to keep her at 50 points. Its a nice round number, and it's a price that allows me give her enough oomph that she's exciting to fits my goal of creating a really useful competitive custom.

• I like her movement and range.

• I also like the number of attack dice she can throw, although changing around their arrangement might be possible (ie, having a base attack of 2 and then having PBS add 2 attack).

• I also like her survivability, although I could be swayed to give her 3 life. Maybe.

With that in mind, the big thing I thought that could be changed is the likelihood of Rundown. At a roll of 9, it almost has a feel of "it should work and when it doesn't you're like, huh, can't believe that didn't work". Raising the number to maybe, 11? 12? 13? would change this dynamic, and make it more of a gamble. Do you risk getting your centaur tied up in combat for the chance to go for a double kill? Probably. But I think having less than a 50% success rate changes things enough to bump down Swaysil's dominance in endgame situations as well as increasing the tension that occurs when making the decision to run in for an autokill or go for a less powerful ranged attack (with her lower range of 6, Swaysil is in danger of a lot of melee figures if she fails a peripheral shot).

One last potential problem is Swaysil's figure. I'm unsure what its availability is like, some 3 (?) years after I submitted it to the SoV. I'll definitely take a look around, but I'm a bit curious if there was anyone who went ahead and got the sculpt and tried Swaysil out, as it seemed like it was a pretty decently liked custom.

[superfrog]

Both reviews were very positive about the unit but just a little gunshy about a few scenarios where Run Down was proving overly strong. I think nudging the roll up to 12 or 13 would be enough for the design to have a great shot at going through again.