So! Here we are, the first post of the blog. The post that will define the others, the one lynchpin of it all...
Nah, that's far too organized. Let's start with a Hello! This post is by Graeme (tend to go by Tayne on forums and discord) but will feature posts by other members of the Refauxgees. I've no doubt we'll do a proper, dedicated introductory post sometime but for now, this is what you get.
Anyhoo...
Explorer’s, huh? I figured I’d whitter on about them a bit, try and organize my thoughts and maybe, just maybe, go to an event with some semblance of a plan. Not a bad idea, right? Couple of limiting factors to it:
1) I’ve played maybe five games of M3E total
2) They were over two years ago now (aside from one game ten days ago, mostly for a rules refresh)
3) That event I mentioned? That’s Haul of Eggs 9, this coming Saturday
Still, I’ve got the models assembled and at least undercoated, so at least I’m ready in some respects. Well then, where should I start off my ramblings? I guess a little about me. I’m Graeme, and I played fairly extensively in M2E. Back then I bounced between Neverborn, Arcanists and Gremlins (as they were). I had a lot of fun for a couple of years before fatigue set in. Then the final M2E book came out and the power creep it brought was the final nail for me and I moved on to other games.
A few months ago, I had a clear out and listed the whole of my remaining collection as a job lot (along with many other things). And, of course, my dumb-ass brain decides one month ago that it’d be good to get back into ‘Faux again, so here I am.
I poked around a bit, evaluated my choices based on an arbitrary criteria I set and have settled on starting back with Maxine Agassiz and the crew of the Exploration Vessel Superior, maybe lugging the odd Emissary along.
That almost brings you up to speed, the final piece of puzzle for why I’m writing right now is the current level of content available for Explorer’s Society players.
There’s not a lot of it.
At least, not that’s current. There is what seems to be an excellent, in depth exploration of the Seeker keyword over on the YouTubes by the Danger Planet channel. Other than that the best I’ve found all dates from before the November 2022 patch*. Said patch did bring some cuddles with it for the Explorer’s, dating a lot of the content and limiting it’s value.
As for the EVS Keyword, I’ve found very little that’s less than 2 years old or talking Maxine, Monomaniacal pre-nerf, leaving me bereft of the very content I want to consume.
There, no you’re up to date. Let’s talk about the EVS, and see if I can figure out something ready for the weekend.
The EVS:
The EVS have two unique abilities tied to their keyword and both of them work with the your hand and cheating fate. They are Deep Discovery and Reconfigure. I’ll tackle them in opposite order, as Deep Discovery has some nuance I want to drill into.
Reconfigure - This ability is tied to a specific suit (except for Maxine 1, who can pick her suit each round), and allows the model to treat any card it cheats fate with of that suit to be treated as a 9.
Probably goes without saying, but 9s are good. They are only 4 less than a 13 (why yes, maths is my strong suit), meaning that your stat has to be two lower than your attacker’s before you would be taking damage at a straight flip, assuming no focus. That’s sweet.
Pondering this a bit more, it means we probably want to aim our crews to have a mix of the suits, that’ll help us maximise the benefits for our control hand. Let’s take a look at that how the crew breaks this down by suit:
Rams: Only Beau Fishbocker
Crows: Kiya Manimi, Machinist and Harata Ngaatoro
Masks: Tidecaller and Harpooner
Tomes: Dr Beebe and Maxine 2
Maxine 1 can choose her suit each round thanks to her Polymath ability, so she can either take a spare suit if we don’t hire to cover that, or adapt to each situation. The only crowded slot here is Crows, but Machinists are not going to be a high priority target most of the time. Honestly, given game size limitations I can easily see hiring one for each suit (Beau, Harata/Kiya, Tidecaller and Dr Beebe) for most games before taking a versatile model or two. Nice. Almost like Wyrd planned it.
Deep Discovery. I’ll just copy the text here before discussing it:
“Once per activation. When this model would Cheat Fate, it may discard a card to Cheat Fate with the top non-joker card of the opposing player’s Discard Pile.”
First thought - Awesome, pitch a low card of the wrong suit, use a good card they’ve just used.
Second thought - How does that breakdown with how timings for duels and discarding cards. To the rulebook!
We want page 8 for this next part. First off, we have “The Conflict”. The Conflict contains cards that are currently in use. So a model attacks an EVS model, both flip a card off their fate decks. That card is in The Conflict. No problem there, but what if multiple cards are flipped as part of the duel?
We need the third paragraph under Flips here: “If multiple cards are added to The Conflict as the result of Fate modifiers, only one card is placed in the Conflict: the other’s are discarded.” Remember here that a negative flip means the worst card is picked for the duel, a positive leaves the decision to the controller’s choice.
If more than two cards are flipped, page 8 covers that - the controller gets to choose the order they enter the discarded pile.
Page 9 covers cheating fate: “After flipping a card, a player has the opportunity to Cheat Fate by replacing the card they flipped into the Conflict with a card from their hand.” Or, for EVS models, the top card from the opponent’s discard pile.
So why have I gone through all of that? Well, I wanted to nail down that timing sequence as it is an integral part of the EVS game play. Let me demonstrate with an example.
Kiya Manimi gets attacked. My opponent has the Red Joker on the top of their discard pile. Now, if they are charging on a straight flip, I can use Deep Discovery, discard a card and claim that Red Joker for my cheated card.
However, in the same example, if the attacking model has a positive or negative flip to their attack then the whichever card is not selected to go into the Conflict is discarded before deep discovery kicks in. My choice will be whatever is not chosen.
As a final side note before I sign off, I may have to prompt my opponent to discard their cards at the right time. I say this because I think I’ve been guilty in every single game I’ve played of not discarding the additional cards from a flip until the end of the action, where I then gather them all up and discard them.
*There may well be other content out there that is current, if I missed your video/blog/podcast then I apologise and please tell me where I can get my greedy hands on it to consume.
