Malifaux Musings

I want to take the time to recognize all the hard work and sacrifice to run events. Thank you to all of the judges and organizers for cramming this much Malifaux awesomeness into a 4 day window. Thank you to the sponsors and Wyrd games for their tournament support.

So last year before Adepticon I was more or less a casual player. I would play Adam on Vassal and maybe dip my toe in GenCon tournaments (since that is the first con on my calendar every year and I'm going to be there anyway). Then one day Curtis (a guy I never met until I got in his car to drive 13 hours to Adepticon) gets on our local facebook group and asks if anyone was interested in going. So we set up the trip kinda at the last minute and the Wandering River Dojo was born. Lifetime hours hanging out with Curtis 96ish (if you discount sleeping in a shared room and playing at different tables in an event) and more than half of those hours are driving to and from exotic events. I could use more friends like him and I'm sorry he couldn't make this trip.
Needless to say this trip was kinda of in a state of flux up until Curtis informed me he couldn't make it. I wanted to fly and I was almost willing to buy him a ticket so we didn't have to drive and time not in the car is time spent playing the games. I got to ration my time off to attend all the events I make it out to. So I got a hold of Chris and his room situation was kinda at capacity but he was going to make it work. I had this gut feeling I should just get my own room for this trip. Not sure what it was but it was kinda intangible and it felt good to come and go without worrying about other peoples schedules and such. Bonus is it helped me locate a 7-11 for my hydration needs.
Part of my decision for getting my own room is I would dictate how much sleep I would get. Or so I thought. I don't know what it is about this game we play but when I am done my brain tries to think of all of the things I can do to play the game better. Resource economy, synergies, how to handle tricks my opponent(s) used in the future... and so on. Needless to say restful sleep for the most part didn't happen until tuesday after I got home. Just the bare minimum to function. Better than getting up at 4 am and driving 6 hours to play since distance driving in itself is an endurance test so for the most part I was ready to play. Normally I will think ahead and bring snacks because it's better to have them and not be hungry than the alternative. But the convention center food service was 30 seconds from where we were set up so in between games if I wanted something it was right there. I bought tea and used the bottle for water the rest of the day. So what I am trying to say is it is better to know that these out of game basic human functions are covered because if your body is suffering from hunger, sleep, over or under dressing, and such it can sometimes subconsciously affect your personality or slow down your decision making. Maybe I'm just getting old and beginning to feel it but I figure I would pass along what little wisdom I have on such topics. Also con crud is a thing. If you have an 'I feel a cold coming on so I better get ready to attack it' plan be prepared to implement it at the first sign even if you are over reacting.
Arrive early if it is within your ability to do so. The flip side is have a list you know like the back of your hand that you can put on the table and be ready to play 2 minute after you walk in if you are pulling up at table announcements. Know who your TO(s) are and communicate any change of schedule. Being early gives you time to organize your thoughts and make sure you have everything you need to play. I recommend buying or making a tray. I always use to see people using them and thought they look nice but it is way easier to get to the next table if you put everything you need on your tray. Admittedly I got my tray for playing in the TFL and attending the TFL tournament (add link) but had I knew before I got mine for free how convenient having one was I would have bought one. When I say free I imply if I exclude the travel expenditures since I was going anyway. I feel you should have all the models you might possible summon or use within arms reach and ready to go as well as the cards to use them. I also just learned there is such thing as option overload. Example... while playing in a campaign terracotta warriors can flip an upgrade to any campaign upgrade legal for the target to start with at the beginning of the game much in the same way summoners can pull in model not in their arsenals. If what you want to do is not committed to memory make a cheat sheet. If I want to damage I want X and Y and what need to happen to do it. If I want to run schemes do A or B and need this and so on. Sometimes you will find making the cheat sheet is kind of like taking notes in class and the action of writing it down helps you learn it. The less time you spend reading your cards is the more time you can spend playing the game or finishing faster. Sometimes I find myself weighing options I don't have available trying to find a way out of a situation I might be missing. At the end of the game you ought to respect your opponent if they out played you. All of this rambling is basically saying is be mindful of time. If given the choice I prefer games that finish to games that get cut by the clock.

Without further ado...

Masters of Malifaux 2017 at Adepticon quick and dirty recap.

I did most of the lists with pictures. I will probably continue this method and try to improve it in the future. If there are any questions on any games I will try to answer to the best of my ability. I intended to save the names off the best coast pairings app but I don't know how to go back to a previous month for data or if that is even an option. I will remember to screen grab those next time.

Round 1
Headhunter with close deployment
Claim Jump, Eliminate the Leadership, Frame for Murder, Hunting Party, A Quick Murder

So my plan was to have Huggy tell Nekima to give me points for Frame and then Lynch would get me Quick Murder. I put the Effigy in for padding since Leader was a potential target. I figured if I could weather the potential assault I could counter punch my way to a win. I made Yin my 'quick' target so I could limit his scheme selection. I think he opted for Hunting Party if memory serves.
I put the Effigy on 1 wound probably telegraphing my Frame target. Nekima came in as predicted turn 2 and parked where it would bleed on Lynch, the Effigy and the Terracotta. So I sent huggy in to delete her knowing I was probably trading points but I was getting at least 7 (Quick, Frame by bleeding, and a head marker) to his potential 3 so I was good with the trade. The voodoo doll had a hard time landing hex on Yin. Spent 3 turns trying and it finally landed. Then Iggy did his thing but by then I had 3 heads and cruised to a 9-6 victory.

Round 2

Interference w/ Standard Deployment
Claim Jump, Accusation, Leave Your Mark, Covert Breakthrough, Hidden Trap

So McCabe vs Asami. I think this was my favorite game of the whole convention. I found a way to play vs a summoner, deny, and score interference all in the same turn with a non summoner. Granted this will become way easier when Sun Quiang finally gets a model. The plan fell apart when I tried to flip an upgrade into a second Badge of Speed after I moved the first one off McCabe. We called the judge and he ruled against me. I think the decision was fair and I played on but I now had a model out of position and I wasn't able to recover. It was a hard fought match but inevitably I lost 5-7.

Round 3

Squatters Rights w/ Flank Deployment
Claim Jump, Dig Their Graves, Frame For Murder, Recover Evidence, Search the ruins

Things that worked. Sadir shooting the bad guys and milling the deck to get all 4 aces. Beckoner showing McMourning the goods and made him come running. Pay for Blood 2 damage. Final debt 10 damage. 52 Pick Up 8 damage. No more McMourning turn 1.
Things that didn't work. Selecting the wrong Frame target on my side(but still scored 3). Sadir shooting all the bad guys and giving away Frame turn 3. Underestimating Phiona on a squat marker Steve was holding. My deck going cold so the nurse could more or less neutralize Lynch. Phiasco gaining evidence +2. Somehow managing to lose this game 6-9.
This game will change the way I approach the game in the future.

Round 4

Extraction w/ Standard Deployment
Claim Jump. Dig Their Graves, Eliminate the Leadership, Undercover Entourage, Last Stand

This was a bad match up for my opponent. I more or less ignore all of Yan Lo's defensive tech with Lynch so all I had to do was survive the punch and my counterpunch should take him out. I was able to peel a model every round with the beckoner and have Huggy eat it when it was on my half of the table. Then run Sensei Yu for entourage at the end. I won 6-3

Round 5

Collect the Bounty w/ Flank Deployment
Claim Jump, Accusation, Leave Your Mark, Tail Em, Inspection

I'm pretty sure my list was the same from game 4 and I was back on the table I played at round 1.

So Hamlin is a pain in the rear if you don't have an answer for the rats. Need to include long range blasts and/or Misaki. It was near impossible for me to maneuver to score Bounty. I did ok on my schemes but it wasn't enough. 5-7 loss.

Story encounters on Sunday. I was worried if I played all 3 games that I would possibly miss my flight and be screwed because I needed to be at work Monday morning. These games are generally a little chaotic but they almost always have optional rules for scoring so each story is more or less different in that regard. I went 1-1-1. I didn't take many notes (mental or otherwise) due to sleep deprivation but I will endeavor to do better in the future.

Adam and I will be hosting a 50ss tournament in Blacksburg Va. Saturday April 22nd. $5 admission. 9am check in, round 1 starting at 10.
I will be running a team tournament at Giga Bites in Marietta GA July 1. It will use the same format as the team event at Adepticon with only slight changes if any. It will likely be 3 rounds. Details will be posted to Georgia Malifaux and Southeastern Malifaux facebook groups when I have them.
plug our event(s)

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In the meantime, don't forget to visit our our sponsor's website Leodis Games. Pre-orders of Malifaux items are 20% off. They are one of the best distributors in the UK, and they'll do right by you, and kick a little bit of support our way in exchange. So go check 'em out!

We’ve already had one guest battle report this week from Phiasco, but now here’s a second one, featuring a new contributor to the blog! But first, some quick mini-musings.

Mini-Musings

-Act IV of the Through the Breach worldwide event, A Stitch in Time, launched on the 17^th. Will the Fated make it back to the present? And how much damage have they done during their trip to the past?

-Game Designer Lindsey is leaving Wyrd. That sucks, as she is lovely, brilliant, and nice. Go say goodbye to her, dang it!

-There was a small mix-up with the render for alternate Titania available from Wyrd’s Easter Sale. Turns out it has legs. Don’t worry, the one you ordered is this render, not the other one. And if you wanted the other one, they’ll give you a refund. Also, you’re weird.

-In case you missed it last week, I wrote the tactics article in this month’s Wyrd Chronicles. It was really cool to write for the company I’ve been supporting as a fan for the last several years, and hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to do so again in the future.

April Tournament at Gaming Underground

By John Fox

So this past weekend I loaded up my models and drove an hour to Gaming Underground in Highpoint, NC. I have been experimenting with Hamelin and Leviticus lately and so my Arcanist enthusiasm was down quite a bit and I was heading into things feeling pretty undecided all the way up until the start of the first round. Never the less, all of my Arcanists are painted and I haven’t slogged through the 16 models I need to have a fully painted Hamelin crew. Also, I’ve set myself on a personal achievement of a tournament win with every Arcanist master this year and as I’ve only gotten a win in with Marcus so far, I had a lot of work to do.

Round 1:

Standard Deployment

Guard the Stash

Claim Jump, Accusation, Leave Your Mark, Mark for Death, and Set Up

My opponent was Andrew McGrady from Bristol, TN. He called Arcanists and I knew it was going to be an interesting match. My list was:

Colette (Nothing Up My Sleeve, Arcane Reservoir)

Carlos Vasquez (Practiced Production, Stunt Double)

Joss (Warding Runes)

3 Oxfordian Mages with all the trimmings

Performer

Malifaux Raptor

My opponent ran:

Ramos (Arcane Reservoir, Field Generator)

Joss (Bleeding Edge Tech, Powered by Flame)

Brass Arachnid

Electric Creation

Howard (Imbued Energies)

Highlights from the game: We both took Leave Your Mark and Accuse. I knew I couldn’t beat Ramos in Guard or Accusation! with so many activations so I focused on Leave Your Mark. On turn 2, I paralyzed the soul stone miner. On turn 3 I seduced the marker with my Performer. Carlos Vasquez managed to take a full turn of Howard and survive, this was a theme that continued into game three. My opponent managed to blow up Carlos, denying my 3^rd Leave Your Mark. I managed a mage turn that knocked enemy Joss back to the edge of the board, effectively removing him from the game. On the last turn I didn’t have my Accusation! and my opponent had 2 spiders left with 1 AP each. Both spiders were engaged with Joss who was at 2 Wounds and had already gone. When he attacked my Joss my opponent was surprised when I cheated down so that his spider hit Joss. Joss got reactivate and regened 1 wound thanks to the nearby mage. I Accused his last remaining spider, who only had 1 AP and couldn’t kill joss thanks to the regen and hard to wound. Final score was Colette 8- Ramos 6. It was a very fun game and it’s always great to play someone new. The game really made me feel much stronger about Colette in GG17 after her Prompt cuddle.

Round 2:

Standard Deployment

Extraction

Claim Jump, Frame For Murder, Hunting Party, Eliminate the Leader, Recover Evidence.

My opponent in this round was my good friend Ray Flynn who I drove down to the tournament with. We’d played together enough that we knew what was coming.

I ran:

Rasputina (Shattered Heart, Cold Nights)

Wendigo

Snow storm

Arcane Emissary (Elemental Conflux)

December Acolyte

Silent One

Gamin

Arcane Effigy

He ran:

Kirai (Unforgiven, Absorb Spirit, Spirit Beacon)

Archie (Doc Found a Squid Today, Hulking Leap)

Datsue Bae (Spirit Whispers, Wronged Spirits)

Phillip and the Nanny (Haunting Cries)

Necropunk

Flesh Construct

Night Terror

I took Frame on the Acolyte and Hunting Party. I deployed to take advantage of a tree near the extraction zone to block LOS to Kirai. My goal this game was to use terrain and ice pillars to keep him off the extraction point. It didn’t go so well.

Game Highlights: I walled off his forces and got into position, making him have to come around the terrain to get to me. He moved Archie up and between Snow Storm and the Arcane Emissary. I killed him, scoring my opponent all his Frame Points. Archie killed my Acolyte as well, scoring my Frame. I got the first turn of extraction and a single Hunting Party. However, I placed Raspy very badly and when Ikirio came out she had Raspy pinned against a rock. Game went from being close to going downhill after that. Kirai 10- Rasputina 5.

Round 3

Corner Deployment

Headhunter

Claim Jump, Frame For Murder, Leave Your Mark, Search the Ruins, Last Stand

I was playing another good friend, Jim Oritz and as I wasn’t going to place with a loss I decided it was time to try for a Kaeris win and see what she can do with the GG17 scheme pools. I brought:

Kaeris (Grab and Drop, Arcane Reservoir, and Seize the Day)

Carlos Vasquez (Stunt Double, Practiced Production)

Mech Rider

Arcane Effigy

2 Performers

Firestarter (Imbued Energies)

My opponent took:

Colette (Cabaret Choreography, Nothing up my Sleeve)

Cassandra (Practiced Production)

Joss

Silent One

Performer

Howard (Imbued Energies)

Malifaux Raptor

Our board was a crazy mix of severe water terrain and buildings on raised walkways providing a lot of cover and hard to get through terrain. This game was a bit of fun for me as I have played Jim a lot and I knew he had Leave Your Mark and Frame on Howard. I took Search the Ruins to bluff frame and Leave Your Mark. Highlights of the game: Carlos tanked another Howard turn and didn’t die until turn 3 with a combined effort of Cassandra and Howard. Howard died to burning, denying Jim 3 points for Frame. Mech Rider scored 3 points pretty much by himself for Search the Ruins. I left a performer in the back that denied a few leave your mark points. Final score Kaeris 8- Colette 4.

I ended up coming in 6^thplace and got a foil Kaeris card (the best looking card) as a prize. I got 2 masters closer to my achievement for the year and got a recharge on how I feel about the Arcanist faction as a whole in GG2017. As always it was an excellent tournament put on by one of our fantastic NC Henches.

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Lastly, don’t forget that my tournament, NRVFaux, is this weekend. I’ve posted the scenarios for each of the three rounds here. Watch out for Round 3, it’s kind of a bitch. I hope I’ll see some of you there. And, when you’re registering for the event (registration starts at 9AM), say “Malifaux Musings” to me to get an extra raffle ticket for a drawing for fabulous prize(s) at the end.

No mini-musings this week, so let’s jump straight into the article, a brief story of running a tournament that didn’t quite turn out as planned.

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If you’re like me, you look at events like those run weekly in the UK or in the Southeasetern Malifaux Players Group (the greatest play group in the world, just fyi) and think to yourself “Hey, I want to run some tournaments like that.” Maybe you came from a place that had a pretty awesome player base that you helped build. And after watching all of these cool tournaments and remembering the good old days, you dream a special dream about running your own tournaments and building your own community in your new home. You join the henchman program. You submit a pre-event report to Wyrd. You coordinate with the local game store owner to get some extra prize support in addition to a standard Wyrd tournament pack. And when the time comes to run your tournaments…you get disappointed.

It happens, and I should have seen it coming. There’s a phenomenon that’s appeared in the age of social media where you get the idea that other people’s lives are much better than yours because what you see of them on their Facetwits or Instachat pages is always the very best, most photogenic and envy-inducing parts. The great gourmet meal they cooked once in between McDonalds outings. The awesome vacation they went on to a place they really can’t afford and will spend the rest of the year paying off their credit card. There’s something similar when you follow tournament podcasts and writings like I do, and I fell victim to it. So, to combat this, I thought I’d share what starting out building a community in a small-town part of the world can look like. Maybe it’ll give people a more realistic view, and maybe let you know you’re not alone in your struggles.

To provide some background, I live in Blacksburg, Virginia. I moved here in late 2013 from Omaha, Nebraska which, despite what you may think from its location in fly over country, actually counts as a relatively large city. Blacksburg, on the other hand, is basically Virginia Tech with a town built up to support it and a few other small towns within driving distance. It’s not that no one knows what Malifaux is, here. Indeed, one woman that lives nearby helped with the initial playtest for Malifaux 1.0. However, she and her significant other don’t play anymore (didn’t make the jump from 1^st to M2e.) I know another player in the local area who plays gremlins as a break from 40k. AAaaaannnddd….that’s pretty much it. I’ve tried setting up demo days that no one comes to before now. Other than playing games online with Vassal, there was a point in time after my daughter was born when I didn’t play a game of Malifaux for almost a year and a half. Since she’s gotten older and my schedule's become more free, I’ve dipped my toe into the Wandering River style of my blogging partner, Phiasco, and have traveled to some Southeastern Malifaux tourneys nearby. However, when I heard about a local gaming convention (NRVFaux, you might have heard me advertise it on here previously) I thought I would run a small tournament for it. The game store owner was happy to get me to join in and offered some convention money that people could use at the vendors. I did all the stuff I mentioned above to start promoting it. I traveled to other tournaments in the region and tried to promote mine there (and it’s a good thing I did, as the two folks that traveled from Bristol were the majority of my player base.) When the week of the tournament came around, I was expecting to have 6 people show up: two from Atlanta, two from Tennessee, and two locals (one of the locals was iffy, so I was preparing myself to ringer if necessary.) Not a huge tournament, but not bad for a start. If it went well, then maybe I could build from there.

However, the day before the tournament one of the Atlanta people dropped out, so it was just Phiasco making the trip, and I learned day of that neither of my locals were able to come either. So my tournament was cut in half, and I was basically going to have to step in and ringer to allow the people to have the full 3 games that they drove all the way to play. This was not great. I was not happy.

I tried my best to stay positive, however, and kept things moving forward. And the bottom line is, the tournament (such as it was) was a success. I had Andrew playing Arcanists (Rasputina each round,) Rich playing Ressurectionists (Seamus, I believe,) and Phiasco testing out Ten Thunders Brewmaster. The first round, one person who had traveled from Tennessee with Andrew and Rich sat in the Ringer’s chair with me coaching him how to play Andy’s Ramos crew (a bit of a joke, as I’ve never played that master before, but I think he enjoyed himself.) Second round I ran a demo with my own models for someone who wandered by and seemed interested before taking over the Ramos chair (might as well learn a new crew) and fighting to a draw against Jon’s Brew Crew (because that’s what happens when we play each other in tourneys, apparently.) Last round I squeaked out a win despite a near tabling by Rasputina (Rich looked down at the table at one point, saw no spiders on board, and said “Well that must not be going well.” But remember kids, just like we Henchmen tell you in every demo we run, Malifaux is a game you can win even when you lose the combats. Play the objectives!)

Winner of the tournament was Rich’s Rezzers, scoring him a mystery box with an alternate Gator in it. Andrew won 2^ndplace and got a Barbaros, as well as winning the painting for a very nice Malifaux Raptor which would be pictured at the top of the article, except my phone's SD card broke and took all my pictures into the cyber grave with it. And the raffle drawing for the Doctor Dufresne Phiasco had put up went to Rich also, which was great since he didn’t own McMourning and played Rezzers. Everyone seemed to have a good time, which is great. I learned a new crew (must…resist…urge…to…buy…Ramos…) And, best of all, Andrew let me know that his area wants to learn Through the Breach and at some point in the future we’re planning on having me go out and run a module game for them, which counts for my Henchman program requirements. Perhaps they’ll get to run through Bad Moon Rising, the module I ran at Gencon? We’ll have to see. So, while the tournament didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to go, it was an overall positive experience. I don’t think I really made any progress towards building an oasis in the midatlantic Malifaux desert, as no locals participated, but I had fun, and I put together an event for three other people to have fun as well. And, really, that’s what being a Henchman is all about (beyond promoting Wyrd, obviously.)

Mini-Musings

-Book 5 playtest is open, and you can be a part of it! Aaron is posting a file with the new models every Wednesday to this thread on Wyrd’s forum. The models in the file are Henchman, Enforcers, and Minions (notably, no masters. Hmm) for each of the factions, including the three Divergent Paths models. Go test them out and send in some feedback!

-A company called Dog Might is Kickstarting some cool woodenboxes to transport your crews, decks, and tokens for a Malifaux game. The boxes can be ordered with Malifaux’s faction logos on them. They’re pretty cool. Go check ‘em out.

-Kimberly and Kai have joined the Wyrd staff. Pop into this thread and say hi.

-A new Penny Dreadful One-Shot adventure, Til Death Do Us Part, has been added to DriveThru RPG. The Fated are hired to solve a murder…by the person that was murdered. It’s $5. Go give it a look.

-New Bios have been posted for some Book 1 Enforcers, Henchmen, and Minions for each of the factions on Wyrd’s website, along with some lore about the factions themselves.

-Finally, the last Monday Preview contained an image of one of the Divergent Paths characters, the orphan who ended up with Leviticus. And it looks like this!

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Since I’m not going to a ton of tournaments at the moment (I have a move coming up soon and I’ve been busy with some writing projects, more on this soon) I thought I would go through some of the new stuff coming in Book 5. Obviously, all of these are still in testing, so I’m not going into much detail, as they all can change. This week, here’s the Arcanists.

Paul Crockett-A henchman with some beast synergy/antipathy abilities. He’s immune to hazardous terrain, can give friendly beasts free attacks when he hits someone, and is terrifying and can trigger for extra damage against beasts. Fortunately, can turn models into “beasts” with a (0) action, so these abilities will stay relevant even when legitimate beasts are unavailable. There’s a pretty good chance he’ll be most useful for his gun, which does reasonable damage and ignores cover and randomization when firing into melee, but I imagine he'll have some nice use with Marcus.

Kandara-A henchman to run around with Banasuva. Kandara doesn’t take damage from the jealous firelord ability. Some decent attacks, a self-healing condition than can be applied when she is hit with blasts/pulses or flips severe damage on her ranged and melee attacks, and can shuffle upgrades with other Gamin (allowing you to remove some of the hindering upgrades from the models Sandeep summons, at the cost of Kandara having to hold it for a turn.)

Neil Henry-7SS Enforcer that synergizes with constructs (despite apparently hating them). He’s from the foundry, so he will play nice with Ramos and Mei Feng crews, among others. He has a decent melee attack, can gain free attacks when a construct hits something near him, and can put a “Fragile” condition on models that give damage flips a +. Finally, he can take a McCabe-esque reactivation, after which his heart bursts and he dies. I like the two folklorish characters joining the game.

Medical Automaton-5SS minion construct that grants some healing. Can grant a 1/2/3 healing flip to a model within 3” and give a model Hard to Kill as a 0 action.

Union Steamfitter-6ss minion. Most interesting ability is to draw the top card of the discard pile and then discard one when it activates and to grant a model that doesn’t have armor the Armor+1 condition for the rest of the game. Has an OK melee attack and can move scheme markers (not just friendly scheme markers) into base-to-base with him/her, so there’s some utility there, but still kind of a hodgepodge of abilities.

Ferdinand Vogel- 8ss minion. The end result of one of the Divergent Paths models. He has the Mimic trait now, so that means he can play with Lucius from time to time as well. He has a decent melee attack that can apply the red-tape condition. Can eat scheme markers within 3” of him after taking a walk to draw a free card. Probably the most useful ability is Censure to lock enemy models out of their tactical actions until after their next activation (there’s an option to lock them out of their attacks, instead, but they can discard a card to ignore it.) He can heal beasts, and use a trigger to give a non-beast living model the Beast characteristic and a free attack. And then, of course, at the start of his activation he can discard a card to turn into…

The Beast Within-0SS Enforcer. The beast is a somewhat fragile looking beater model that has a 3/4/6 damage spread melee attack. The fragility, of course, is offset by the fact that you can always sacrifice the Beast or Ferdinand on their activation to summon a full-health version of the alter-ego, but if you leave him exposed you could lose him pretty easily. There’s some decent triggers to bounce around and get a bonus attack or ignore armor. Finally, as a 0 action they can put a condition on beasts within 5” that basically lets them take a Stalk movement whenever an enemy model takes a walk or charge action, which has some interesting possibilities.

Just a couple of mini-musings this week, then we'll do a quick look at the upcoming Guild models.

Mini-Musings

-Wyrd needs volunteers for Gencon. This is always a ton of fun, and I'm very sad I won't be able to help out this year. More room for you, though!

-Just in time to be too late for my blog, here's the image of the Self-Righteous Man after Divergent Paths/in Book 5. Werewolves with top hats: always a crowd pleaser.

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As usual, all of these models are still being tested and are thus subject to change by the time the book finally comes out.

Jury-8ss Henchman-First mentioned all the way back in the fluff from Book 1 of 1st Edition Malifaux, The Jury finally joins the Judge and Executioner in the law sub-faction of the Guild. Has some utility by allowing models within 6” to discard a card and add a mask to their duels (like if, oh, I don’t know, you wanted to Riposte for instance.) He/she/it has an interaction with the fees condition through handing it out on defensive or offensive triggers and can force you to discard a card for each point of your Fees condition with a trigger on the ranged “Throw the Book At Them” action. Finally, the Jury can find you innocent, guilty, or libel as a 0 to put some nasty conditions on enemy models or give some healing to friendly ones.

Guild Investigator-6ss Minion-I’m a big fan of the idea of these guys: detectives that are investigating stuff that’s going on in Malifaux. Its attack is nothing to write home about (though at least the gun has a claw symbol so it can be used for melee.) However, it has some interesting potential in terms of denial of enemy scheme marker stuff, by eating one every turn (or a corpse or scrap marker) to draw a card, locking the enemy out of using any scheme markers near the investigator for their actions or to complete schemes, and by pushing models that are near where a scheme marker is placed. Cool.

Thalarian Queller-6ss minion-For non fluff-heads, the Thalraian doctrine is one of the many magical methodologies in Malifaux, in this case one that focuses on suppressing other spellcasters and creating enchantment/long running effects. This is embodied by this model, who can toss out markers to create a sort of mobile version of the “Removes suits from Ml, Sh, Ca, Df, etc.” effect that models like Hannah have. They can enchant friendly models weapons to make their damage unreducable, which is handy, and can use a ranged attack to reduce enemy’s attacks and possibly give them slow. An interesting tech piece, but time will tell if it's useful enough to see play in most games.

Monster Hunter-6ss minion-Reflecting presumably some members of the Latigo posse who also do monster hunting (how many Ortegas are there?), these guys interact with the Stalked condition (which they can apply with a 0). In addition to the free moves generated from it, models with the condition have to discard a card to cheat fate against them, the Monster Hunter can get a free attack on them after taking a “Stalked” move, and the Monster Hunter can heal itself and draw some cards after killing a model with the condition. In addition, they deal extra damage and take less damage from models with higher soulstone costs than them.

Domador de Cadaveres-7ss Enforcer-The real headline on this model is, obviously, the Special Dispensation ability that lets the crew hire a 6ss or less undead model for each model with the ability (so, you know, Rotten Belles. There are other choices but…come on.) They can hand out free attacks to a friendly living model within 6” of them that is dying, so that’s fairly thematic. They have a few attack actions, in that they can make the opponent discard a card, do some damage (and heal any friendly models that are beneath pulses generated by their ranged attack) or use an Obey-like effect on non-leader undead models. Handy and flavorful but, goodness, the new Governor General must have some interesting policies…

Riot Breaker-6ss Minion-So a new Guild construct that has been a minion in the Through the Breach roleplaying game for a while now (that's where the above art comes from), oddly enough, these guys seem to be peacekeeping models of some kind. They block models near them from gaining any extra AP from fast or casting expert, which could be situationally useful. They’ll probably be used mostly for their Riot Gun attack, that adds some cheap blast damage and gives models damaged by it Insignificant for the rest of the turn. Its Tactical Action seems like it could be useful for breaking up clusters of models, as a Wk duel of 13 requires a 7 or an 8 for most models to pass, but I’m personally not a huge fan of these type of abilities, as they tend to not do anything significant when I’ve tried them. Not sure on this model, but we’ll see.

I'm moving over the next couple of days, so you get your Neverborn preview early. Congratulations!

Mini-Musings

-The Monday preview was a model we're reviewing in this article (not a coincidence) so we'll get to her later.

-In lieu of any other news, let me give a plug to a newish podcast, High Fauxdelity. They have a unique take on the podcast format, selecting a Soulstone value and debating the best and worst models at that soulstone cost. Every host nominates a model, and the only rule of the debate is that the other hosts are not allowed to agree with any nominations other than their own. Other than their bloody April Fools episode, which tragically I started playing while driving and couldn't safely turn off, I enjoy their show very much. Check them out!

-And speaking of podcasts, Arcane Reservoir, the most consistent and longest running UK Malifaux podcast, has launched a brand new homepage. Check it out, too. They've done a great job of branching out into a full multi-media experience. The podcast is very much oriented towards competitive tournament play in the UK meta and are unapologeticly firm in supporting their opinions (I still smart from their assessment of Titania's abilities as a master, fair though they may have been), so it may not appeal to all listeners, but I'm betting the website should have something for everybody.

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Hinamatsu-9ss Henchman-Obviously a melee oriented henchman, as it has melee master to give it two additional AP for melee attacks. That means potentially four (4!) attacks per turn. Yowza. Has some armor and an ability that prevents Hinamatsu or enemy models within 6” from taking actions outside of their activation, so will not be Zoraida or Collodi’s friend, despite being a puppet. It gets a + to attack flips and initially does only a weak 1/2/3 damage spread. However, each hit also adds a condition that stacks on additional damage on additional hits until Hinamatsu hits them for at least 4, at which point the condition falls off. To keep from overextending him, you can snatch enemy models from 6” to him, and with its 0 action it gets to cheat fate on any attack with a + flip (like its melee attacks) face down. Df 5, armor 1 and 9 wounds isn’t exactly invincible, but Hinamatsu looks like he could put some hurt on the enemy in the right circumstances.

Cyclops-8ss Enforcer-A new Fae for the Queen! This one gets to pitch a card on its activation and gain either a bonus to its ranges with a mask or a small heal with a ram. It has frozen heart, which is usually handy, and the Santiago Ortega suite of “Hits you harder when it’s taken some damage and has hard to kill," which also has potential to be useful. Has a pretty decent melee attack (albeit with only a 5 ML stat, but what’re you gonna do) that can gain blasts off of a ram trigger (see also the Santiago abilities.) It has a very random 0 action ability where it targets nearby scheme markers (which Titania will likely be creating, remember,) flips the top card of the fate deck, and generates some kind of effect based on the card. Could be interesting with Zoraida or some other model that lets you know what card is there, but a bit too random for my tastes, particularly when its other 0 action is to summon Ice Pillars, which is always helpful. I’ll let you guess which one I’ll be using more often…

Bultungin-5ss Minion-A fitting introduction of the Abyssinian folklore (they’re about to become a big deal in Malifaux/The Other Side, after all,) the Bultungin is a werehyena from various East African cultures (presumably. It’s what came up from my Google search, anyway.) You’re going to need to be careful with these guys, as Df 5 Wp5 Wd6 and no defensive abilities doesn’t inspire confidence. Everything with these guys is built around trying to get off their 2 AP Savage Mauling attack. If the enemy drops a scheme marker within line of sight of them, they gain a condition that lets them move an extra inch per instance of the condition at the end of the turn. If they move into melee range through something other than a walk or charge action they can discard a card to take the Savage Mauling attack. Their 1 AP melee attack has a trigger to then take their 2 AP melee attack. So the 2 AP attack must be pretty great, right? Well, 3/4/5 Ml6 is not exactly overwhelming, though a 5ss minion doing it is alright. I guess it seems like a lot of set-up to pull it off. I could be wrong.

Adze-7SS Enforcer-Some more African folklore, the Adze is a vampiric sort of creature that can be either a firefly or take a humanoid form. They’re a 40mm incorporeal model that has a souped-up version of the Primordial Magic’s ability to count as a Scheme Marker, as you can discard a card to avoid having to discard it for the Scheme in question. It has a Melee 6 attack with a built in trigger to heal itself for the amount of damage dealt. It can also use the Will-o-the-Wisp’s Wisp call ability to dictate the enemy’s movement to them. Their 0 action can lock a non-leader model out of their 0 actions for a turn, which could be situationally useful. Finally, they have a tactical action that looks an awful lot like an attack action, a 2 AP Ca attack that forces the target to pass a TN12 WP duel or take a 3/4/5 damage flip. Something for the aforementioned Wisps to borrow and use, I suppose. 7SS for this guy might be a little steep, but I’m interested in the scheme marker ability and the synergy with other Wisps.

I am Grootslang.

Grootslang-6SS Minion-Yet more African folklore, this creature is truly unique, essentially being a creature created by the gods that is part Elephant and part Snake (realizing their mistake, the gods split them into the two creatures after their creation.) This model is built around using Terrain to its advantage, gaining a + to all non-damage flips when in contact with a marker that counts as Terrain (Waldgeist trees, Lillith forests, etc.) Additionally, they do more damage when in base-to-base with a Lair marker. What’s a Lair marker you ask? They’re a ht0 50mm marker that you place 3 of anywhere on your half of the table at the beginning of the game. Grootslangs ignore penalties for severe or hazardous terrain when moving, which is handy, and can hop from lair to lair as a 1 AP action (no interacting after they do so, of course. That would be pretty crazy.) They have a harder hitting rg 1 attack with their claws or a slightly weaker rg3 melee attack. When they take the lair to lair action they can use a mask trigger to take a free melee attack. And, finally, they can discard a corpse or scrap marker with which they are in base to base as a 0 action to make a new Lair marker. It’s an interesting model, to be sure. I’ll want to see it in play a bit more to be sure of what it can really do. The mobility seems handy, however, and 6SS is relatively cheap for all of these abilities.

Hey good lookin'.

Serena Bowman-7SS Enforcer-Finally, our second Divergent Paths model, the Trickster, joins the ranks of the Neverborn. The flaying she endured has resulted in her gaining Disguised and a Thick Skin ability that prevents her from taking pulse damage. Perhaps most eyebrow-raisingly, when she dies she doesn’t drop a marker and you resummon her in your deployment zone at the end of the turn. Wow! She has an ok melee attack with a fun trigger when she kills someone to put on their skin and make it harder to attack her with melee actions, but I have a suspicion this won’t see as much use as her other attack, Black Blood Tendril. This one lets her work as a sort of poor-man’s Reva or Rasputina, giving her a range 3 melee attack that she can have pop out of any model with Black Blood within 12” and LoS of her. She can give a Nightmare model Black Blood for the rest of the game, and with a trigger can then give it to a Non-Nightmare within 3” of the original target. Finally, she has a healing spell that needs a ram to cast unless she casts it on herself, which is handy if nothing else because Neverborn don’t have a ton of healing in-faction. I like her. I like her a lot.

Mini-Muses

-Wyrd has put together a Bundle of Holding deal wherein you can acquire pdfs of all of the Malifaux Miniatures game books for $27.88. Pretty good deal, and part of the proceeds go to the St. Jude's Children Hospital.

-May 20th to 21st was the date for the Malifaux International Team Competition, a really cool event put together by Mike Marshall for international competition ala the Ryder Cup in golf. This year's event ended up with the USA triumphing via team Trump Card.

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Big Brain Brin-7ss Henchman-A Gremlin support henchman, Big Brain Brin seems like some kinda great big smart Gremlin. She can clear conditions off of models, which is always helpful, and can hand out reactivate to another friendly Gremlin with WP 4 or less (which costs her a card from her hand, unless she’s ok with sacrificing said Gremlin at the end of their second activation.) Her attack isn’t exactly amazing, but has a tome trigger to hand out Insignificant. She lends some support to her allies against attacks that target WP, traditionally a weakness of Gremlins, and can cancel triggers from enemy models within 6” of her (albeit, again, at the cost of a card.) Her DF of 4 leaves something to be desired, however, so you’re going to have to be protective of Brin if you’re going to use her. She strikes me as more of a “tech” piece to counter Resurrectionists or Neverborn at first blush, but I could be wrong.

Gatraeux Bokor-6ss Enforcer-Despite having a nearly unpronounceable name, the Bokor is a fairly straightforward model. They seem to have two roles you can choose from in your group: handing out a condition reminiscent of Kirai’s curse that grants a + to Ca attacks from other Gremlins against the target or spending 2 AP to grant Reactivate to Enforcer or Minion Swampfiends. That, plus a 0 action ability to give another model in the crew the Faded trait, which lets them reduce the damage from the first attack that hits them to 0, with some triggers to add additional utility. These could potentially be useful in Wong and Zoraida crews.

Wrastler-5ss Minion-Little cousins of Mancha Roja, presumably, these guys continue the Lucha Libre tradition of Gremlin society. Tap Out provides an interesting defensive ability, allowing you to prevent them from being targeted by enemies for the rest of the turn after an enemy hits them for 3 in a single blow. They have Diving Charge, which is useful and charcterful (just gotta give them a turnbuckle to climb and leap off.) When operating on their own they have a relatively hard hitting melee attack that can use a ram trigger to replace the damage with placing Paralyzed on the target. If there’s another friendly model fighting the target, they can use Tag Team which has a lower damage spread on its base damage flip, but has a built in trigger to do an additional 1/2/3 damage flip as well. That paired with “Give em a shove” to push target models around and their ability to discard scheme, corpse, or scrap markers which they finish a charge in base to base with to add some additional damage make for an interesting cheap beater for Gremlins. Plus, they make me want to build a professional wrestling themed Gremlin Crew (Mah Tucket converted to Hulk Hogan? Trixiebelle as Ms. Elizabeth?) so that’s always a good thing.

Flying Piglet-4ss Peon-Well, it had to happen. We have flying piglets in Malifaux now. They have Diving Pigcharge, which is interesting, and can be summoned by models that can normally summon Stuffed Piglets. They have an incredibly troubling attack named “Drop Bowels” which, if you’re thinking “Maybe it doesn’t mean what we think it means,” does a little bit of damage and poisons the target. So, yeah, it probably does mean the flying pig is pooing on you. Jaw Dropping Amazement lets them hand out slow, which is pretty strong for a 4ss model. And, finally, it can do 2 damage to itself to drop a scheme marker. Putting a handful of these on the board and using them to strip AP off of enemy models gives these the potential to be relatively annoying, especially given the fact that they’re summonable.

Bayou Smuggler-6ss Minion-Probably the main reason to bring these is the ability to, when you use a soulstone to draw cards, discard an extra one to refund the soulstone cost. That’s potentially VERY useful. Longtime readers of Malifaux Musings know my affinity for card manipulation shenanigans, so the fact that they get to draw one when they’re in a duel where the opponent cheats appeals to me. Their smuggled goods lets them reposition enemy scheme markers. Their “The Swap” ability lets it change places with an enemy model at the cost of letting them place a scheme marker next to the enemy model prior to changing places, which could potentially backfire badly if the enemy is doing a “Detonate the Charges” style scheme but does have some interesting utility. There’s a forgettable attack with a paddle with a push trigger and an ability to discard all markers within 3” of them (at the cost of discarding one card per marker, which may be a little high.) I think the Smuggler may have a place in crews just for the Barter Economy, but it has some interesting utility all the same.

Gremlin Crier-7ss Enforcer-I’m interested in the fluff for what’s going on with these guys, as a town crier doesn’t initially scream Gremlin to me. They can take wounds to draw cards for each card a friendly model discards near them. They have the Lucius “Highest Authority” ability, which will help them survive when they use Gremlin Bureaucracy, which makes all enemy models and any conditions on models within 3” of it not count for schemes or strategies until the end of the turn. They can hit people with their bell and get a + to damage flips if you have more cards than the enemy, and have a short range lure attack that does damage if the target ends up in base-to-base contact after the push. And finally they have some interesting survival abilities, in that they can discard cards to heal themselves as a 0 action and, when they die, they summon a Bayou gremlin into base to base first before removing the Crier from the board (essentially the gremlin deciding that they’re tired of doing this job.)

I've had some personal life stuff going on lately and been grappling with a bit of burn-out, so I apologize for the lack of posts in recent weeks. To make up for it, I thought I'd give you a double-sized pre-preview article, this time taking a look at the Ressers and the Outcasts. But first, an art heavy segment of mini-musings!

Mini-Muses

-There've been a few Art Previews since last I wrote. One is the Bultungin, the Neverborn minion previously discussed. It looks like the image above. The other is the Lampad, whose image I put with the Ressers below. Finally, there's the Guild's Monster Hunter, pictured immediately below. I dig her.

-Meanwhile, The Other Side has started doing Friday Previews as well. Here comes Charles Edmonton and the Storm Siren.

-Ok, I lied, there's one more Art Preview. Nathan stuck it in a different place on the forums. It's Kandara, the Arcanist model coming out soon. And, if you follow the link, you can watch a video of Alyssa actually painting the image. Cool.

-Wyrd has another Game Designer job opening. Got what it takes? Send 'em an application.

-Finally, the Malifaux game rules are now available for free in French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish (as well as English, of course.)

Outcasts

Benny Wolcomb-8SS Henchman. A new friend for Hamelin, Benny seems like he might be another member of the rat catching brigade. If he takes damage, he can discard a card to summon a rat. Also, he has an important role to play in removing enemy scheme markers. His Rat Presents ability allows him to place a friendly scheme marker next to an enemy scheme marker within 3” of a vermin at the end of the turn and then remove the enemy marker. Rude. To help make this happen, several of his abilities have a tome trigger for “Drop It,” where you make them drop an enemy marker after damaging them. His greatest offensive potential in the late game comes from Bleeding Disease, but he has a melee attack from a knife and a 0 action attack that scales damage based on how many vermin are standing within 3” of the target. Finally, he can eat other rats within 3” of him to heal himself a point per rat consumed. An interesting defenseman model to confound enemy scheme efforts, and a pretty decent henchman.

Freikorps Engineer-6ss minion. A fairly standard Freikorps type model on the front of the card with relatively standard attacks on the back, the most interesting thing about the Freikorps Engineer is his ability to alter armor from targets. As a 0 action, they can increase the armor value of friendly models, with a couple of interesting triggers to add Rams to the friendly model’s attacks (only Outcast models for this one) or a Light Distorting Device which gives all non-melee attacks a – flip to hit. Additionally, a trigger on the melee attack lets the librarian reduce the target’s defense.

Prospector-6ss minion. This is an interesting minion. First of all, the Prospector’s “Spend Soulstone to Make Soulstone” refunds you a soulstone at the beginning of the game after your crew deploys, which is nice. Additionally, every time they discard an enemy scheme marker with an interact action, you get to add another stone (though this feels like the ability actually reads “enemy will not use soulstones near the prospector.”) If you don’t want to earn a soulstone for ditching a marker (for some reason) or want to stand back a bit from the one you’re discarding, there’s “Appraise” which discards a scheme marker and then makes you discard a card, draw a card, or nothing based on the result of a card flip. There’s a kind of Rg. 8 Lure spell called “I’ve struck soulstone” that has the bonus of letting you drop a friendly scheme marker. And finally, the tactical action with the groan worthy name “I’m just talking about shafts” turns the lure into an attack, because any enemy model that moves within 6” of the prospector and ends a move or push within base contact of a friendly scheme marker takes some damage. An odd little guy without a ton of offensive power, but the scheme marker manipulation and soulstone refund makes him interesting. And he’s a merc, so any crew can hire him. Could be silly with Collette, maybe.

Talos-8ss enforcer. A new toy for the Void crew, Talos seems to be some kind of construct/furnace that buries people and burns them up for his own benefit. It can heal itself for the number of wounds a model has when he buries them, but takes half those wounds as damage if the creature unburies. He does the burying with “Into the Furnace,” a Rg 2 attack resisted by WP which buries a nonleader model. His melee attack gains an inch of range while something is buried, and he can burn up a buried model for 2 points (take that, stupid Malifaux Raptors). Finally, he has a 0 action to force enemy models within aura 3 of him to make a Horror check versus a TN of 10+the number of enemy models which are buried. Seems like an ok beater (anything with a minimum 3 damage melee attack usually qualifies) though he has a lot of competition for his slot in non-Tara crews. The buffs from having models buried might make him better with his sub-faction than as a generalist.

Marlena Webster-8ss Enforcer. The orphan from the Divergent Paths event is apparently a Teddy and Orphan together in the same model, now. They can charge an enemy that drops a scheme marker near them, hitting with protector claws that do decent damage. It has a Squeel-esque mask trigger to push away from things that hit them, with the added benefit of smacking the attacker for 2 points of damage. There’s a vaguely nasty ranged attack that ignores hard to kill and wound and, with a trigger, can prevent healing for the rest of the turn. It can discard scrap markers to summon wicked dolls, which is interesting but probably not that useful, and most importantly can use a 0 action called “Soul Tether.” You make a Cast to beat a TN10 targeting a friendly leader. The amount by which you exceed the TN becomes the value for the “Tethered” condition and, if that leader is killed, they are immediately healed back to life for the value of the condition and Marlena takes the same amount as damage. The condition then falls off. Ostensibly this is designed to be thematic with Leviticus, but I could see using it on, say, Victoria before launching her up the board as a sort of insurance policy or wound buffer. I think she’ll see play, though again, the mid-high point enforcer space is crowded for Outcasts.

The Midnight Stalker-8SS Enforcer. From a thematic standpoint, I love the idea of another serial killer in Malifaux, especially one that has a massive inferiority complex towards Seamus. His front of card has an interesting balance of abilities that will make choosing when to activate him key, as models get a double negative flip to target him before he’s activated for the turn, but his respect for the art ability makes it so he can only attack models that haven’t activated yet. At the beginning of his turn he is reborn, healing all the damage he’s taken and placing within 8”. He gets fast if he’s on the opponent’s side of the board, which is new and different, and ignores intervening models when moving. His melee attack is a pretty standard ml 5 2/3/5 sword with critical strike, but he can use a 1 ap action to give himself a ram for every model with which he is engaged. And, finally, if he’s dealt damage that turn, he can force anyone trying to charge him to pass a TN14 Wp duel or the action fails. My first impression is that this model is fun and characterful, but possibly not that competitively viable due to the less than inspiring attack (the crit strike ability is nice, but swapping 2 attacks for one attack with more critical damage isn’t going to make a huge difference, imo.)

Resurrectionists

Asura Roten-8SS Henchman. A henchman with roots in the Through the Breach module A Night in Rottenburg, Asura is an interesting addition to the faction. She has a Sandeep-esque ability to hand out her melee attacks to undead models within 12” of her. She places a Quarantine Marker within 12” of her at the beginning of her activations, which boost the damage of the aforementioned melee attacks or can be used to summon a Mindless Zombie with a 0 action. These markers force enemy models that activate within 3” to pass a TN14 WP duel or take a point of damage. Finally, she can eat corpse markers within 3 of her to heal 2 per corpse. Probably the most interesting ability is the Grasping Hands, which reduce the target’s Df, Wk, and Cg by 1 point per instance of the condition. Seems she’s built to interact with mindless zombies and other less than stellar minions, handing out her melee attacks to either drag the enemy’s models to a halt or grind them down with her attacks. Could be interesting with a crew that has Mwahahaha or lots of smaller minions, like maybe an alternate spammy version of Nicodem maybe.

Kentauroi-8SS Minion. This is an interesting model apparently based on Centaurs (though, considering Ressers are involved, I have a suspicion the man and horse halves didn’t necessarily START attached to each other.) They have an ability to taxi models around ala Gracie or Iron Skeeters, so that’s automatically interesting. The model seems to be built around transporting models and then charging, as its lance attacks do the most damage on the charge and they can use a 0 action to let them charge when engaged, so long as the target is different than the one with which they are currently engaged. After the charge, their loose stitches causes them to take 2 damage and drop a corpse marker in base to base contact. The centaur can use its 0 action to pick up the corpse marker and heal the damage, or you can leave it for summoning or as an attack point for Reva. I think these will find a place in many crews.

Bone Pile-6ss Minion. This model seems best used as a higher point scheme runner. They take one point less damage from enemy attacks, reduce enemy damage flips with a negative flip, and are immune to all conditions that are non-scheme or non-slow. With a 2ap action, they can bury themselves and unbury at the end of the turn from a corpse counter somewhere on the board, which they can then discard to heal 2 damage. At the start of their activation they choose from a trio of buffs: One which increases their movement, one that grants a plus flip to their attacks, and one that makes the bone pile count as two models for the purpose of schemes and strategies. Their attacks are somewhat middling, so you’ll probably want to pick from the first or last option and use these guys to take care of some schemes.

Gravedigger-7ss Enforcer. An interesting utility piece, the Gravedigger’s job is to grab corpse markers and move them around the board. This is reflected by a condition, Corpsebarrow, which goes up by 1 for every corpse marker this thing discards with its varied abilities. The Gravedigger pushes to corpse markers that other models drop within 6” of it and discards them, giving it the condition. Additionally, the Gravedigger can use a 0 to discard a corpse marker within 2” to increase the condition as well. What do these markers do? Well, a model can target the Gravedigger like they’re a corpse marker, reducing the condition by one for each marker that would be discarded for an ability like summoning. Secondly, the Gravedigger can discard markers to fuel the damage on its attacks. There’s a little risk in doing this, as a model that can remove conditions gets rid of your corpse markers, but if the Gravedigger dies it drops corpse markers equal to its Corpsebarrow condition in base to base, so at least you won’t lose corpses that way. Finally, assuming any corpse markers are left on the board, the Gravedigger can make them count as friendly Scheme Markers with a 0. And, if none of that does anything for you, the Gravedigger can push enemy models around for a wheelbarrow ride and potentially slam them into terrain for some damage. I think the utility will have a place in many crews.

Little Gasser-4ss minion. An undead gremlin? Ok. Apparently it’s a gremlin’s corpse inflated with poison gas? ………..ok……… It moves over terrain and pushes an extra inch when something pushes it, and puts the Poison condition on any models within 2” of it at the end of its activation. It can do an AoE pulse forcing non-gremlins to pass a TN 15 WP duel or suffer damage as a 0 and then, with a trigger, push some more. Finally, it has a not impressive melee attack with the infect trigger, or a different trigger that, in the unlikely event the Gasser kills something (maybe you left a weak model on one wound for it to finish off,) makes it count as having been killed by the poison condition rather than by the Gasser. Potentially useful with McMourning describes that trigger and, potentially, this model in general.

Lampad-7ss Enforcer. Based on Nymph companions of the Greek goddess of witchcraft (two greek mythology things in Book 5 ressers? is this a theme?), this critter is based around burning. All of their attacks give burning. They have a ranged attack with blasts, all of which spreads more burning. Any model that ends their activation within 3” of them gets, you guessed it, burning. And they can even use their 0 action to float 6” and give burning to any model they pass through during the move. But why all the burning? Well, because any model which dies from Burning damage within 10” of them lets the Lampad summon a new Lampad in base to base for the cost of a card from your hand. Pretty good, but I’m always a little leery of something like this because it asks a lot of the model playing it and also relies on the opponent not taking steps to stop you (burning can always be reduced at the cost of their AP, remember, to say nothing of good old fashioned condition removal). I think the damage part is good, and the summoning should be considered a bonus. Getting a full-powered Lampad for one card is a pretty good deal, but it’s going to be tricky to pull off.

A heavy couple weeks of news and announcements, followed by a quick look at the new models coming for the Ten Thunders.

Mini-Musings

-OMG Gosh it's Book 5! We got a peek at the cover, as well as a description of what's coming inside, namely new upgrades for all the old masters! Hmm, where did I hear that one mentioned before... Ok, so before I get in trouble, let me reiterate that when I wrote that post, I WAS NOT on the playtesting team for Book 5 yet, and I did not, in fact, know anything. There's a reason I haven't mentioned the theory again since. Anyways, we saw a quick preview of a couple of the new upgrades that are coming, one for Lady Justice that gives her more of a hit-and-run style of play, and one for Seamus that takes his already impressive ability to manipulate Terrifying checks and turns it up a notch. More on these when there are more available to discuss.

-A new issue of Wyrd Chronicles came out as well, discussing some of the design process for Book 5 and what's coming. Also, there's a Through the Breach adventure published in there by one of my favorite authors, wherein you take a fellow he's afflicted with Black Blood to go get a cure, only to discover that the cost of this cure may be quite high.

-The cover of said Wyrd Chronicles features this year's Gencon Nightmare Edition box, which has been shown to be an alternate Hamelin crew styled like a Crazy Cat Lady. Not my cup of tea (I don't play Hamelin) but it's a funny idea all the same.

-Additionally, the issue of Wyrd Chronicles mentioned that this year's Miss Model is an alternate Taelor named Miss Deed, who looks like she'd look right at home in any Western themed crew. Additionally, an alternate Sybil was shown as well. You earn this one by spending $60 on Malifaux products during August (like, oh, I don't know, Gencon stuff or instance.) You fill out a form on Wyrd's website, send them a picture of the receipt, and you get the model. Couldn't be simpler!

-Are we done with Chronicles yet? NO! There's also a competition going on with the Gencon sales! Any time you buy something at Gencon or online during the convention, you get to vote for whether Nicodem or Lady Justice wins a duel of fate! What could be the consequences of this? Who knows!

-The art previews have continued to come, this time for the Cyclops from Neverborn in Monday Previews and two more commanders from The Other Side. I don't want to link them all, you can find them easily enough.

***

Ten Thunders

Gwyneth Maddox-8ss Henchman-A henchman Lynch has to pay for? Hard Pass! But seriously, she’s interesting. Seems to be an upgraded Beckoner with some interesting card manipulation abilities. Luck thief makes enemy + flips count as – flips against her and allows her to heal when models miss attacks against her, which should provide some interesting defenses. At the beginning of its activation it can stack the top 3 cards of the fate deck or throw them away, so some more card manipulation for the Ten Thunders, particularly when paired with her (0) Hit Me to draw some of those cards into your hand. And The After Party lets you get away with not bringing the Addict upgrade by just building it in to her from the start. Her gun is ok, with a built in trigger to spread more Brilliance which the Lynch crew has probably needed. And finally, her 1 AP Come Play At My Table works a bit like Bert Jebsen’s Cracker Jack Timing as a way to pull models into base to base with her, and can also hand out some more Brilliance with a trigger. Very interesting model.

Katanaka Crime Boss-8ss Enforcer-Finally, the alluded to mafia side of the Ten Thunders is getting some representation in the game. These guys seem like they’re designed to hold points in the game, as the front of their card is designed to resist shifting them from a particular spot and punish enemy models for dropping scheme markers near them. This is paired with a decently damaging melee attack on the back and a nasty one-two punch with the A Lesson You Won’t Soon Forget that boosts the Nagamaki’s mediocre Ml value to 5 and grants a + to the damage flip. It can heal with a 0 action with the familiar Calls Unto the Chi tactical action and can give itself an ability until the end of the turn to draw a card whenever an enemy model activates inside the Crime Boss’s engagement range. Interesting not just for the abilities, but because the Thunders don’t have a ton of “Hold this Point” type models.

Lotus Eater-6ss minion-Another defense oriented model, the LE has the same protection money ability as the Crime Boss and Bully, which makes an opponent discard a card to walk or interact within 3” of them. The Lotuses that the minion eats are scheme markers, and it can chew on one at the beginning of its activation to either heal 2 damage or take a 0 action (even if it has already declared one this turn). One of the model’s 0 actions lets it move and eat another scheme marker, potentially allowing for a chain of movement and making it pretty good at defending against Claim Jump. It has a middling melee attack that uses CA and heals the LE, or it can place a condition on an enemy model forcing it to discard two cards to be able to declare actions on its turn, which can be enhanced with the Aggressive Stance to force weaker WP models near the LE to take a – to all duels involving the LE. Could be useful as a denial piece.

Obsidian Statue-9ss Enforcer-A heavy beater for the faction, this model combines some defensive abilities with a relatively hard hitting melee attack. At the end of its activation, it drops a ht3 50mm marker in base to base with itself to create some mobile cover. It has armor, can’t be pushed, placed, or buried while the statue marker is on the board, and drops scrap markers every time it gets hit which can then be used to heal itself. The model is designed to set things on fire with its Spew Lava attack to give it burning and then land a melee attack with its obsidian fist, gaining a + to the damage flip if they have burning. It’s always tough to tell which beaters will end up being most effective when so many are already in the game. It isn’t very fast and the Df of 3 leaves something to be desired, but it could do some damage in a crew that can overcome these issues.

Charm Warder-5ss Minion-Another defense oriented model, this one punishes enemy summoning crews. Any model summoned near them gains the Entropy condition, which deals damage to equal to the condition when the model activates and can then be reduced at the end of the model’s activation, at the cost of discarding cards (which most summoning crews can’t afford to do.) They also block scheme marker placement near them, and can offer some protection to friendly models near them that have activated, granting them a + to Df and WP duels and by using its Charm of Vanishing (0) action to make attacks against the model have the chance to fail. They can also hand out Disguised, deal a little damage in melee (not the reason you would take a warder, but still handy to be able to switch between Ml or Ca for the attack and Df or WP for defense), and can add on Entropy with an attack.

Tanuki-5ss Minion-This model is an odd one, as tends to be the case with Tri-Chi. Any model that activates within 8 of it and in base to base with a scheme marker gets a point of poison, which can end up being slightly easier to set up than it sounds with its built in defense trigger to place a marker every time they succeed on a defense check and get a little extra movement or with its Gourd Bop attack, which also drops a scheme marker. It can force models to reduce their poison condition by half and take all that damage at once, which is potentially useful (or painful for a McMourning crew.) Alternatively, friendly models can reduce their poison condition by up to 4 and heal a point for each. If done to aTri-Chi for 3 or more wounds, it hands out Reactivate to minions or enforcers or Fast to Henchman or Masters. Finally, when they activate they can chose to immediately end their activation, drop a scheme marker, and then count as two models for the purpose of the strategy. So, they could be good as scheme runners, presumably, though Wk 5 and no mobility tricks other than the defense trigger don’t naturally suggest that. I’ll not pretend to be an expert on the Brewmaster, but this doesn’t immediately jump out to me as being amazing.

Mini-Musings

-Probably the biggest piece of news is, of course, the announcement of what will be available for purchase at Gencon this year. There's lots of good stuff there, more than I'm going to break down here. I know that the Malifaux Musings authors (particularly Phiasco) are giving the alternate sculpt of the Hungering Darkness an appraising look (now with 100% more face tentacles!) Take a look for yourself, and then prepare your con budget now.

-The other big news was the release of the July errata for Malifaux. As Aaron had previously stated, the plan is to have two Errata updates a year, with the early one being the place for major changes to the game while the mid-year one is for smaller tweaks and adjustments. As such, there are only a handful of changes affecting the Arcanists and Gremlins. All of them could be described as "nerfs" (cuddles, according to the Forums language filter) adjusting some of the parts of the game which aren't working as intended and giving too much of a tactical advantage. Wind Gamin can die now, which needed to happen. Practiced production can't be used on Malifaux Raptors anymore, which also probably needed to happen. I don't know as much about the stuffed piglets problem, but it must have been one for them to have increased their cost. I'm told (by internet comments) that people are still going to use them for Wong, so I guess they must not have been nerfed into the ground completely. Somehow Phillip and the Nanny escaped the nerf-bat, likely with Phillip whistling innocently to himself as they faded away into the fog.

***

Master of Puppets

Earlier this week, I posted a poll to A Wyrd Place and the Southeastern Malifaux Player’s Group on Facebook, asking for a suggestion for a crew to build over a series of articles in the coming weeks ala the old “Tale of Malifaux Bloggers” series that used to be in vogue for gaming bloggists like me. I threw out a handful of masters I owned already but hadn’t given the time they deserved including Hoffman, Marcus (I got him for free from Through the Breach’s Kickstarter program and like the paint job I did for him), and Ten Thunders Misaki, among others. What I didn’t realize is that you have to select an option to close a poll’s responses to limit them to those you put into the machine, and suddenly the write-in votes took over. Parker Barrows flew to the top of the list, followed by the puppet master Collodi and Jack Daw. Over the course of the week the three masters battled it out for first place, and Parker came out on top. Unfortunately, there’s an issue with me playing Parker: I don’t own him and I don’t have money to buy him right now (more on this subject in a later post.) I could have just theory-crafted him and played him in Vassal, but I want this series to include the modeling and painting process (plus who doesn’t like to have pretty pictures of painted models to look at,) so I’m afraid I have to put Parker on hold for the time being. If you voted for him, I apologize and I assure you that I will get to that crew in the future. Don’t worry, you’ll be getting Book 5 soon and you’ll forget all about my disappointing you. At least I hope so.

So that left me with Collodi, the second place finisher by 1 vote. I already play Neverborn, so I have a good pool of models to pull from to round out a Collodi crew. I own the metal boxed-set for the puppet master from back in the day, so you guys will get a bit of old-school-meets-new-school flavor with this one. I assembled and painted them once upon a time, but tbh I’ve gotten better as a painter since then and I feel like I should strip and restart them. That’ll depend on how much time I have available in the future, of course, but it’s a project goal. For the time being, however, let’s take a look at where Collodi started, who he is, and how people play him in Malifaux today.

From Workshop to the Stage

The story of Malifaux is really my favorite part of it, so if you’re her for hardcore crunch and battlefield analysis, you’ll probably want to skip this bit and move on to the next section. If you’re still reading, let’s step into the way-back machine and take a look at the story of this character and his origins.

Collodi is a construct from when humans first came through the breach from Malifaux. He was built to serve as an entertainer for children, creating puppets and putting on shows for them in the streets. And he was happy with that lot in life. Unfortunately, the Breach closed and humans were trapped earthside, and poor Collodi was left behind with no one to entertain (apparently Terror Tots aren’t that into puppet shows.) He built puppet children to watch his shows, but it just wasn’t the same. Thus, when humans returned through the second breach, Collodi rushed to them eagerly to resume his purpose. The humans didn’t understand his intentions, however, and drove him away with axes and torches, teaching the construct to hate. He returned home and determined to teach humans the loneliness he had experienced by taking away their children and using their blood to build his puppets. He now wanders Malifaux with his painted wagon, putting on shows and spiriting away victims in plain site of the world’s new human denizens.

He was introduced in “Rising Powers,” the second book released for Malifaux 1^stedition, and continued the strong tradition of literary allusions in Malifaux (Carlo Collodi being the pen name of the author who originally wrote "The Adventures of Pinochio." The puppet master has popped up from time to time in other stories over the years. One short story demonstrated one of his attempts to take over a town by infiltrating his toys into it, and another from M2E discussed his discovery of a Coryphee and adaptation for his own purposes. Probably the most recent use of him in the fluff is making a cameo in the most recent Through the Breach world event. One of the pregenerated characters was a construct built by him, and you could run into Collodi in the days of the first breach and potentially prevent him from becoming a horrible child-murderer.

So, all-in-all, there’s not a ton of fluff for Collodi in the game, and most of it is pretty one-note. It would be interesting to see him interact a bit more with some of the other masters or characters, though one assumes that he gets along pretty well with Zoraida (what with the puppets and being from the days of the first breach and all.)

A Tale of Old Malifaux

An image inscribed on a Grecian urn? A cave painting? What could it be?

It seems a little silly to talk about “old” Malifaux since Wyrd only passed its 10 year anniversary recently. Or course, then I went to a tournament and put my alt-metal Lillith on the board and was met with a look of “huh?” from my very young and very new to the game opponent, so maybe this is one of those “the 1990s were 20 years ago even though it seems like yesterday to you” things. So, come sit at old-man-Adam’s knee and he’ll tells ya a tale of olden days, when a model’s rules took up two 3x5 index cards (assuming you didn’t need a separate flow-chart for them) and soulstones added to your flip instead of giving a + modifier.

When Collodi was introduced he was a henchman, not a master, and could be hired into any of your Neverborn (or Leveticus) crews. Which, of course, you always did because Collodi was ridiculous in M1E. Every time one of his Marionettes took a walk action he could snap over into base to base with it, ala Hoffman, and then the Marionettes could snap automatically into B2B with him (jumping to the front of the base rather than the nearest edge to cheat for another inch of movement). They were pretty quick to begin with and he could make them Fast, which essentially meant Collodi could cross the entire board in a turn if he wanted to, and was often sprinting into the backfield for Breakthrough or something similar (remember, you picked your schemes from the full list in M1E, so it was always available). The little marionettes didn’t do a ton of damage, but his ability to hand out Fast meant that his little ball of puppets would chop through most things you would throw it at, one wound at a time. If that sounds like a bit too much, that’s because it was, particularly when you threw in that it gave you 4 cheap activations to improve your model count on top of everything else. Things would need to change before he moved to M2E.

Modern Puppetry

The biggest alteration, obviously, was his promotion to master along with all of the M1E henchmen. So, no more soul-crushing Pandora crews that just splashed in the Collodi package for scheme running/additional misery. Second, his movement shenanigans were sharply curtailed. When he was initially published, you could probably argue that he was one of the models that made the transition from 1^stto 2^nd edition by getting slightly nerfed (though it’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison), but that was probably necessary and allowed the game designers to introduce some cool, thematic abilities to replace what he lost. A stat line of 5(M), 6, 9, 5, -, 2 isn’t immediately inspiring, but that’s because Collodi’s job isn’t to fly into the middle of the enemy and wreck the crew, it’s to conduct from the mid-field. Most of his abilities operate within a 6” bubble, as do many of the effigies which he would employ, so he can’t hide in the back. If he gets attacked physically he has a built in mask trigger to push away 3” after resolving, so at least you can get away from physical attacks. For stuff that attacks WP, well, we might be in trouble…

I remember everyone being very excited about being able to hire things with Puppet from out of faction, especially since Coryphee have now been added to that club. Of course, then we read that only Arcanist crews can combine them into a duet, and we got sad again, but c’est la vie. He can apply “Personal Puppet” to a model within 6”, which allows those models to take 1 damage and then a 1 AP action every time Collodi takes damage, and/or sets them up to be sacrificed to let Collodi ignore an attack. Marionettes are the prototypical target for this, as they have an ability to ignore that 1 damage, but theoretically you could put this on an Illuminated or something like that to let you hand out free attacks, which could be handy. And, last but not least, you have Accomplice to allow for some chain activation shenanigans.

The back of his card is what really defines him. Collodi’s main (only) attack ability is “Pull the Strings,” which does a moderate amount of damage with a built in + modifier and has a number of triggers to make opponents unhappy. The built in trigger puts Slow on the target, which is potentially quite mean in and of itself. With a crow you can perform an Obey on an enemy model which, surprisingly, is arguably the least useful of the triggers, since it still leaves the target with both AP on their turn, but could win you the game in the right situations. Finally, the meanest one of all, A New String basically combines those two triggers, letting you declare what the non-leader model does with the 1^st AP on its turn. So rude, and with a 7 Ca on the ability you’re likely to be able to hit with it when you want to do so, and a Rg of 10 means he can screw with a pretty solid area of the board. His tactical actions help with manipulating your crew (are we detecting a theme, yet?) My Will is an Obey for friendly models which gives them a + to any duels while they’re performing it. Extra Thread gives you a limited summon to create replacement Marionettes or Wicked Dolls out of scrap counters, though at the cost of a moderately good card with a suit. So, from the base card, Collodi is a tactically disruptive model that can operate as either a force multiplier for your crew or an inhibitor of the opponent’s.

We’ll take a look at his upgrades next time, and maybe get an idea of what models I have that can be used with him right now, versus what I’ll be needing to acquire in the future.

Hello all. It's been a while. I was going to post on my experience a couple months back but I am at a loss for how I want to approach the topic in a constructive manner. But I did manage to collect third party data. At this time I will continue to collect data on the subject and maybe one day we may discuss it.

I will be at Gen Con for certain. So if you see me you are welcome to come say hello. Chances are good I will make it to Nova. And for those of you who are unaware there is a nationwide league (TFL) with sign ups this month and games run from September through November. Details can be found here https://www.facebook.com/groups/1081844208549627/ . The quick and dirty summary:
-If your meta has 6 people interested buy in is $30 per person.
-If your meta has up to ten the top player gets to play in the champion tournament in June. 11-20 send 2 players. 21-30 sends 3.
- I am uncertain to the logistics of why the tournament is held 6 months later in June. The tournament will be held in New Jersey again this(next) year.
-Prize support requires your meta to send someone from your meta to pick it up. I thought the prize support was excellent at $15 last year.
-The champion tournament will be run at a convention (hosted by Gadzooks I think) and will have non champion events that anyone can attend for an undetermined ticket price. I will attend regardless of if I am my metas champion or not.

-Everyone declares a faction at the start.
-You will get 6 pre generated 50 SS games to play in any order. Best record(s) is the champion.
-Tournament sounds like it will be a multi-day event. Last year it was 5 rounds in 1 day.
If you have any questions on the TFL I will do my best to answer them or you can get ahold of Chris Weinstein on Facebook.

So with that out of the way onto my up coming project. Parker Barrows. Adam just closed a poll where he asked what master do you want and in depth write up on. While he did not intend for write in answers Parker did manage to win the poll. So I decided I would pick him up in the near future and run him as a side project and see if I can figure out what makes him tick. I will probably run him at local tournaments until I have 30 games with him.
On the surface I can see why he won the poll. Why pick this guy if you have the other 7 masters available to you. Nevermind the in faction models are a hodgepodge hot mess of why are we allies?

So from what I can determine there is resource juggling that will be the first thing I need to get a handle on. I can see there is an order of operation in which upgrades I want to discard and which ones I want to add back. His attack is mediocre but can punch once for min damage 5. There probably is a little bit of hidden finesse in his attack but I suspect I will get more mileage out of his other abilities. It's obvious he will play different from every master I've already played. When I have played against him in the past there is nothing that jumps out on his card that makes him a threat that needs to be removed at first opportunity. So the focus shifts to the nasty items in the crew. In turn that allows Parker to score or deny victory points. The problem is I have beaten him all 3 times I have faced him by ignoring Parker. Thus making crew selection exponentially more important.

When I acquire the crew I will have a totem I'm not sold on. Might be situationally good depending on the opposing faction. Short range healing might be good if the crew is slow or stationary and able to survive an alpha striking model. Mad Dog looks good and will probably make it into most lists. Moderate range solid damage. He only lacks defensive tech. Bandidos look like cheapish scheme runners. But they don't seem to do anything I would need them to do. So I will maybe put one in to help with schemes (or to bluff schemes) but I doubt 2 or more will see the table unless it's a demo game. So beyond the crew box I already own the Wokou raiders. I need to paint some up for Misaki so they will be on the paint table this week. I like the deceptive nature of these models but I expect to be hosed by the fate deck. So I will report back on what I think of them after I play a few games with them. Dead outlaws look ok. Not sold on if I will buy them right away.

I own Tara and her box but not assembled. I have the metal Levi, Von Schill and Vic's Boxes. Misaki obviously but her crew is not outcast native (less the Wokou Raiders). The Torakage and Oiran are mercs but unlikely worth pulling into outcasts. I also have a handful of mercs to try out. Now to see about digging up some unwanted metal Ronin... I will update when I acquire the crew. With any luck wave 5 will help shore up his weaknesses.

I’m working on a lengthier review of the book, but to start out with I’d like to share my top 10 history lore reveals from the “World of Malifaux” chapter of the Through the Breach Core Rules. It should go without saying but, if you want that sweet, sweet Malifaux lore to remain unspoiled, this would be the time to turn around and go back. See you next week for less spoilery content.

These were answers to a number of questions that have been in the background of Malifaux’s canon for quite a while now. I’m a lore nerd and this stuff makes me excited, so I thought I’d share.

1) The First Undead

Titania is the very first undead creature in Malifaux. The energy she channeled to defeat the Tyrants killed her (probably explaining why she isn’t an unbeatable godling at this point, since she’s not alive anymore) and she arose as an undead creature after destroying the Tyrants’ physical forms. Her people locked her away after seeing what she could become inside of Nythera, a structure that echoed the Kythera gateway through which the Grave Spirit had nearly entered the world.

2) Path of the Dragon

The tyrant known as the Dragon was on Earth since shortly after Titania’s time. Her servants, realizing that the tyrants’ essences were still around despite their forms being broken, had started binding them away in prisons like the Red Cage or Plague’s prison in the Necropolis. Seeing this coming, the Dragon split itself in half and flung itself through the aether to Earth to escape. It landed on Mount Etna in Sicily, triggering a massive volcanic landslide and tsunami. He later took over a Cretan shaman to travel to Tibet and, realizing he would burn out the physical body of any but the strongest humans, he built a monastery there that would let him train replacements (eventually ending in the current iteration, Shenlong.) Meanwhile, the Dragon’s trip through the Aether weakened the barriers between the worlds, probably making it possible for the breach to be formed in the first place.

3) The Neverborn on Earth

Malifaux stuff has been on earth for a long time. Some Neverborn got into early North America and interbred with the natives, so Native Americans in this world are likely to have at least some amount of Neverborn blood in them. This, apparently, has some consequences when the Burning Man arrives later and awakens this latent heritage in them. The Amazon rainforest had a handful of Waldgeist wander into it in 220 AD. They thrived there and slowly wiped out most of the indigenous human tribes in the region, leading to rumors in Europe and east Asia that the deep forests are haunted with dangerous plant life. A valley in Mexico was the site of a portal, through which the Aztecs saw the blasted, burned ruins of a part of old Malifaux with still burning flames, leading to the creation of their god Huitzilopochtli in 1332 AD. The Horomatangi, a massive creature that served the Tyrant Meridion, was dumped near New Zealand and fed on the Maori for a while before being poisoned and sent into a deep sleep. And, of course, we know from The Other Side’s lore that the Abyssinians had their own breach into Malifaux for a short time and had discovered and reported on Soulstones long before the opening of the “first” Breach by the Council in 1780.

4) Shez’uul and the Masamune

The first of the Tyrants to escape its bindings happened a long time before humans came to Malifaux. Shez’uul was freed by a shaman of some kind, and promptly possessed him. This ended predictably (the shaman burned out) but he was able to sustain himself for a time by feeding on the blood of victims, ending in its becoming a creature of flowing blood. The Nephilim managed to beat him by turning their own blood into black ichor that would destroy red blood. Rather than let itself be bound again, Shez’uul hurled himself to Earth like the Dragon had previously done, landing in Kanagawa, Japan in 1293AD. It bound itself to a Samurai Lord and forced him to slaughter his subjects to supply him with blood. He was only then defeated when a sword was forged by Goro Nyudo Masamune, the Masamune Nihonto. The blade cut Shez’uul away from his host and bound him inside. That would have been the end of the story, but it was stolen decades later and proceeded to influence its wielders to greater feats of violence to feed itself. Eventually it passed into the hands of Kenshiro, the Weeping Blade, a hero of the first human entry into Malifaux. It played a key role in stopping December from escaping through the first Breach to earth (though it cost Kenshiro’s life to do so.) It was then thrown back through the breach and faded into the background of history before Zoraida directed Viktoria Chambers to recover it (not knowing about the Tyrant within, of course.) Though the Neverborn’s to kill her with a Doppleganger and claim the weapon failed spectacularly, Viktoria, her newly acquired “sister,” and the Masamune were able to foil December once again at Kythera. And they’ve been slingshotting across battlefields and murder your whole crew in one turn ever since.

5) The Council

This has been discussed before, but we learn a lot about the Council of wizards who were in charge of the first expedition from Earth into Malifaux. Earth’s magic was dwindling, and so a group of sorcerors, wizards, warlocks, shamans, etc. formed a group to try and restore it, travelling to the new world and to Abyssinia to work on the problem. Eventually, they realized there was a world beyond ours (probably because of the East African people’s experiences, in large part) and combined their forces to punch a hole through to it. They gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico for whatever reason and performed the ritual there, causing a massive explosion that killed many of them and supercharged the survivors. These newly empowered magic users travelled through the new Breach and were the first humans to enter Malifaux. They spread out, gained new Malifaux power, but became the ruling power for humans in the city.

6) The End of the First Human Settlement

The time of the first humans in Malifaux came to an end due to December’s first attempt to escape. Some of the Archmages from the Council went into the Ten Peaks and, because they’re dumb, broke the bindings that were keeping him sealed away. It then took over the strongest of them, who then either subjugated or ate those archmages that remained. He then went to Malifaux city because he wanted to feed on the energy of the breach to complete his ascension to godhood, using a massive blizzard to conceal his arrival. Lilith and Nekima arrived to stop him, defeating his followers, but December would have succeeded if Kenshiro hadn’t arrived with the Masamune Nihonto to kill his host body. The day was saved, but the two Nephilim sisters determined that the humans had to go. In less than a decade, multiple Tyrants were already freed, and the witch Zoraida offered to seal the place up with magic. Zoraida sealed the portal while the Nephilim went through the city, butchering all the humans they found. At the last moment, Nekima hurled one final corpse back through the gate after scratching the word “Ours” into its chest.

7) The Black Powder Wars

There are quite a few more details about the war that happened Earthside between the time of the two breaches. In a lot of ways, it’s like World War I broke out a century earlier than it did in our history, sparked of course by the sudden panic in the world when the flow of soulstones dried up. All the nations of the world signed a series of fragile treaties after the first breach closed, and a revolution in Eastern Europe triggered a series of these alliances to be triggered. This drew the nations into a war that would spread across the whole world. I very much enjoy the descriptions of how many of the nations fought in the war, including combinations of cavalry and musket lines along with magic, Spanish use of Necromancy, revolution in South America, and much more. There’s also a lot of information on the history of the Three Kingdoms (who, the book now explains, are Japan, China, and Vietnam. I always figured Korea was in there, but I was incorrect.) They stayed independent for most of the war but were eventually drawn in to attack Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Western US. When the dust settles, the world ends up underneath the Guild’s bootheels despite the war not really causing national borders to end up moving much. The Council imploded, fractionated, and ended up becoming the Guild because they could control the Soulstones everyone was fighting over in the first place.

8) Rise of the Union

When Book 1 starts (in M1E) all four factions are in place and ready for action. However, the story of how the unsafe working conditions in the mines led to the M&SU’s rise is interesting as well, particularly since it really should have been the story of “the good guys.” After all, the original workers in Malifaux were convicts, so the Guild really didn’t care that much for what happened to them. When more independent workers started to come to handle the unexpected workload, these new men and women banded together more out of a need for mutual safety than anything else. The Guild didn’t realize the danger this posed until they ordered a group of miners underground during a torrential rainstorm, leading to their being trapped for days as the mines flooded. Of those that escaped their leader was not Victor Ramos, but a man named Erick Ulish. He then went on to rally the workers around the idea of standing together in mutual support to demand safer working conditions and better pay. They formed…not the M&SU, but the United Miners Union. Rather than rely on the Guild to do the work, they used the money from membership dues to hire engineers who did the work of improving the conditions, including Dr. Ramos whose Hollow Marsh Pumping Station prevented another flood from happening ever again. Given how important the engineers were to the cause, the union was expanded to incorporate them (which is how they became the M&SU.) But, after that, an “accident” leads to Ulish’s death and Ramos’ ascent to the leadership. After that, of course, the organized crime part of the M&SU grows up, the Arcanists arise from under their cover, and basically things go really wrong really fast from there.

9) Rise of the Ten Thunders

I also enjoyed the discussion of how this faction secretly came to power in the shadows of everything else. The Guild had been forced to close the whole city off after the Event, meaning the people in Malifaux City needed food, water and supplies and the people earthside needed the Soulstones that had been cut off. The Arcanists made a good living smuggling stones home, but the Katanaka crime family was able to grow up in the shadows of the ignored district of the city, the Little Kingdom, and solidify their power there by helping people the Guild had neglected. They became the Ten Thunders to disguise their origin, bringing their people through a secret, second Breach of which only they knew or were able to use. They grew quickly, infiltrating the factions of Malifaux and insinuating themselves in the city. Their power reached its zenith when they saved the city from “a Necromancer” (read: Nicodem) who was trying to take advantage of the chaos following Governor-General Kitchner’s failed ascension to power. He had killed off a large number of the other Necromancers in the city, adding their undead to his own, and attacked the Guild Enclave itself. Things looked doomed until the Thunders agents attacked in the flank, scattering the Resurrectionist forces and saving the city. The Ten Thunders have, however, contributed to the instability in the city as well. Lynch’s Honeypot casino is spreading dangerous drugs with nefarious purposes. They’ve brought the Tibetan religious leader Shenlong with them, not knowing that he is currently possessed by the Dragon who is all too happy to return to his home.

10) Death of the Governor General and Birth of the Burning Man

After the Event was triggered by Hamelin, the released Aetheric energy from Cherufe’s red cage slamming into the ground gave a number of people the ability to ascend into avatar status. Some of these we know of, given that our masters were able to transform for several years prior to M2E’s release. The Governer-General, however, had the same ability, though he kept it hidden. He was hungry to push further and ascend to become a tyrant. He would have achieved this goal, but McCabe sabotaged the ascension ritual, substituting one of the relics with the bones of a Tyrant. When Governor-General Kitchner tried to draw on the relics’ power, these bones gave him too much power, and the ritual spiraled beyond his ability to control. Cherufe, sensing this, broke away from Sonnia Criid and combined with him, melding their two essences together to create the Burning Man. He travelled through space and time, arriving in Earth over San Francisco (there are more details about this event in the adventure “A Fire in the Sky.”) His arrival triggers the great 1906 earthquake, and leads to the creation of the fourth army in The Other Side, his Cult. He wakes the Horomatangi from its sleep. He triggers the Neverborn blood in the Native Americans to wake up, giving many of them shapeshifting abilities. And he weakens the barriers between the worlds, triggering the arrival of the Gibbering Horde in London. This chaos was the final straw for many of the nations of earth, who had already started pulling away from the Guild. While they have control of things in Malifaux, their authority earthside is waning significantly. India, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Abyssinia, and of course the British Empire are now breaking away, with the Guild only able to serve as advisors and facilitators for the coming war Earthside.

I don’t have a great way to end this post, so I hope you enjoyed some of these lore revelations as well. Next time, we’ll probably be talking about Collodi and tabletop crunch again.

Mini-Musings

-I mean, there’s nothing really going on this week, is there? Let’s just skip this section. Oh, no, wait, Gencon 2017 is happening, so Book 5 and Upgrade cards are flying into people’s hands! And you’d better get your damned Upgrade decks fast, because the webstore is already sold out. So, bummer if you didn’t get it, but don’t worry, because Malifaux Musings is going to break all the new stuff down for you. You’ll at least be able to see what your new models do as we make our way through the upgrades. In the meantime, Phiasco sent me some pics of Wyrd’s booth, so I’ll put ‘em here.

-Before we get to the articles, I'd like to point you to a way through which you can support our humble blog. Malifaux Musings is officially on Patreon! I love this blog and I love Wyrd products. Wyrd, however, still insists on trying to make money off of their products rather than just giving them to me (the fiends.) Additionally, I have kids who'd probably like to go to college some day or something. You can help make these things happen! If you appreciated the model break-downs or the forthcoming upgrade spoiler articles, and you think our efforts are worth $1 a month....well in the words of Dan Carlin, I'd love to have it. Thank you in advance for the support.

Ten Thunders Broken Promises Upgrades

Adam-Hey, Jon, while I wait for an upgrade deck to get here, you could send me pictures of the final upgrade cards so I can start breaking them down.

Phiasco-Cool, we can start with Ten Thunders.

Adam-Are you sure? I mean, they’re not the most popular faction. Maybe we should-

Phiasco-Well, you’ve got a point there. How about I send you Ten Thunders?

Adam-…But-

Phiasco-TEN THUNDERS!

Adam-Ok, ok! Geez.

*Disclaimer: Not representative of the actual conversation.

So, we’re breaking down Ten Thunders upgrades from Broken Promises first. As with all the factions, each master, including the new ones received a pair of new upgrades (with a handful of exceptions). Additionally, the Book 4 masters received a Conflux upgrade to attach to their respective factions’ emissaries.

Misaki

Holy heck, did Misaki get some cool stuff! Probably the one that will draw the eye immediately is The Storm, which allows her to place any blast markers that result from her attacks anywhere within 12” and LoS and makes the resulting damage from the blasts irreducible. Gross. Additionally, it gives her Thunder attack a crow trigger that allows the damage flip to be cheated regardless of any – modifiers to the damage flip. Which, jeez, imagine if Sonnia could cheat her damage flips regardless of any –'s. That would be ridiculous, right? It’s Limited, so you have to pretend that you must decide between her other Limited upgrades (cut to a shot of a Terracotta Warrior laughing uproariously. Also, possibly slapping his knees. Knees are being slapped, people.)

Second, and possibly the most broadly useful, is Risk and Reward. This upgrade lets you avoid the standard “Take the fewest soulstones possible” build with her. Instead, Misaki can throw any number of soulstones away at the beginning of the turn to give her the Risk condition equal to the number of stones. At the end of the turn, you heal a point of damage equal to the Risk condition. “Oh no!” you say, “There goes all my soulstones!” Fear not, her reward ability lets you put back any stones discarded to Risk. As such, you now can have lots of stones in Misaki's pool for the game and still take advantage of her built in abilities for being out of soulstones. This offers more flexibility than you would expect, even, as you get to draw your hand before you have to decide how many cards to ditch, so you can keep one to draw more cards. If you know that you’re going to need to go first, you can save another stone for that and, if you don’t end up needing it, throw it to buff one of Misaki’s flips later on to get back down to 0. Probably a must-take in every game for her. Am I excited for Misaki's new stuff? Well, there's a reason I spent my Guilders for the retro version of her model.

Shenlong

Shenlong got a pair of upgrades that tie together, in that you can’t buy both at the same time, but can flip back and forth between them during the game. Yin lets him lower his poison to increase his defense by one every time he’s targeted with an action. Also, it gives him the Butterfly Jump ability. Good, but was Shenlong really struggling to survive before this upgrade? I’m not sure he needed it.

Yang, on the other hand, boosts his offensive capabilities. When Shenlong charges, he can discard a card to make an additional melee attack as a result of the charge (so, it still must target the initial target.) Additionally, at the end of his activation, any enemy models within pulse one of him takes an additional 1 damage. So…this does improve his attacks, but not by much. I guess it encourages you to get him into melee with a lot of targets, but to take advantage of Power Unleashed you have to still be in Yang and so can’t take advantage of the defensive buffs of Yin. Time will see on this one, but I’m not convinced his upgrades will make it too often.

Jacob Lynch

Phiasco and I’s favorite master, Jacob Lynch, gets a couple of interesting upgrades. Burn Out gives him the option to summon Depleted off of any Brilliant models that die within 6” of Lynch by discarding 2 cards (at least one of which will likely be an ace.) It doesn’t come in on full wounds, though, starting with 3 points of damage or 4 if you used an ace (which you probably did.) Admittedly, damage on The Depleted isn’t such a big deal since they have Hard to Kill and you kind of want them to die anyways, but the fact that you have to get Brilliant on a model that’s within short range of Lynch (who usually doesn’t want to be that close to a lot of stuff) or Hungering Darkness AND you then have to kill it. All of this suggests this upgrade may be fool’s gold, but I do like Depleted a lot and summoning is very good. This card asks a lot (just think how hard getting Sonnia’s summon to work is, and that can be done from across the board.)

The second upgrade is Cheating Bastard, which gives him two abilities. One lets any Friendly Models within 6” of him or the Hungering Darkness always chat fate second, which is potentially quite good. The second ability, House Rules, potentially makes your life a little simpler by letting you reveal any number of cards from your hand and triggering effects for however many of them are Masks. If you reveal even one mask you can give an enemy within 8” Under the Influence automatically, which is great for Lynch’s action economy and takes a card flip out of the equation. The two mask ability lets you (in addition to the previous Brilliance distribution) drop a pair of scheme markers, one in base contact with Lynch and one off of Hungering Darkness. And the third lets every friendly model heal two damage. Sounds pretty good, right? Here’s the tricky part: Cheating Bastard is a Limited upgrade, so you have to choose between this, Endless Hunger, and Rising Sun. Right? (Again, cut to the Terracotta Warrior, who is laying on the ground with little Terracotta tears rolling from his eyes.) But seriously, with Lynch this is a tougher call because you need to have Rising Sun on him before HD dies, or he’s dead instead of buried. It does make the Brilliance version of the crew a lot more viable, however, especially with his new friend Gwynneth Maddux in the mix. So, you’ll have more excuses to pick up that fun, face tentacle-y alternate Hungering Darkness model in the future and get him on the board. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Lucas McCabe

Unsurprisingly, McCabe’s stuff plays back into his artifacts. One of them is a new toy, the Cloak of Invisibility. When McCabe has it, he gets Perfect Camoflage ala a Sillurid. When he throws it to somebody else, however, they get Don’t Mind Me and Disguised. Not as powerful as Saber or Badge of Speed, but still situationally useful. If nothing else, it saves you the trouble of hiring in a Performer for Headhunter games to go grab the heads out of melee.

His other upgrade is Loot Bag, which gives McCabe a version of a motif we’ve seen a lot recently: the flexibility of switching from one upgrade to another. Essentially, whenever McCabe activates, he can ditch any of his specific upgrades attached to himself and then attach a different one that isn’t currently in play. So, referring to the other upgrade, if you wanted to start with the cloak for the first turn to keep McCabe safe from range as he moved upfield then swap it for the Saber, you can do that. Or, alternatively, you could just attach the Loot Bag instead of the Badge or Saber, then swap the Bag for it on the first turn, saving you a soulstone. Not the most creative use ever, but if you don’t care about having the flexibility for the rest of the game there’s no reason NOT to do that.

Mei Feng

Press the Advantage is an interesting upgrade that allows Mei to declare a trigger on her attacks from any of her attack actions, rather than the specific attack to which the trigger is attached. I don’t know enough about Mei to say specifically what the advantage of this would be, but it reminds me somewhat of the old days of Mei when she had a massive flowchart of triggers for all her attacks. Additionally, all of her melee attacks gain a trigger to take the Railwalker action immediately after succeeding. More mobility is always a good thing, so I have a feeling that will be useful.

Speaking of mobility, her other upgrade is Rail Lines. This one gives any Foundry models that begin their activation within 8” of her +1 Wk. As the Foundry crew tends to be a little slow, this could be potentially useful. Moreover, her Railwalker action gains a mask trigger, Passenger Line, which lets her choose any friendly model within 3” of her and, after jumping, place that model in base contact with her. Good for jumping a model out of trouble (or into it.) Seems pretty good.

Yan Lo

The old man got some nice upgrades out of Broken Promises as well, and got one extra upgrade beyond what the others received. Follow Their Footsteps lets him gain a point of Chi every time the opponent gains a VP. Additionally, it essentially allows him to swap between Ascendent upgrades at the beginning of his activation (paying or gaining Chi to make up for the difference in costs.) That gives some great versatility and reduces one of the hardest parts of playing Yan Lo, figuring out which Ascendant upgrades to purchase given the board state. This should help quite a bit in getting him up the ladder and, more importantly, making sure he can save himself if he starts going down the wrong path.

Possibly more important, Awakening gives him Instinctual and turns his Lightning Dance action into a 0, essentially just giving you a free ability to Lightning Dance. Additionally, he gains a tome trigger on Lightning Dance that, if he is still in base contact with the target after completing the jump, inflicts 2 damage and puts Slow on them. Again, more mobility is always a good thing.

And, finally, he gets a new Ascendant upgrade. At a whopping 4 stones, it’s going to take some doing to attach Blood Ascendant. But in exchange for this, he gains Casting Expert and a new melee attack. This is a Ca attack that hits anything within 2” and deals 3/4/5 damage. This attack targets Willpower, so it lets Yan Lo have some flexibility on which defense to attack. It has a small heal for all ancestors if it kills a target, though probably not enough to make a huge difference. Casting Expert plus the Lightning Dance as a 0 action lets Yan Lo hop into the middle of the enemy and drop 4 attacks on fools (5 if you can make him fast) that’s going to be really tough to survive.

Asami

Bad Hair Day is a 1ss upgrade that improves her summoning and gives her a little versatility. Any time she flips a simple duel and fails it, she can discard a card to ignore the failure and flip another card. That’s helpful in general, especially for cheaper summons like the Yokai, and provides you with some Black Joker insurance. Additionally, she gains a range 8 melee attack which places a condition on an enemy model that prevents it from taking walk or charge actions.

Possibly more interesting, she has Borrowed Time. It prevents the enemy from removing conditions off of her, which is necessary given the fact that it also gives her Flicker +7 at the beginning of the game and turns Flicker into a resource she can use. Why in the world would you want to do that? Well a couple of reasons. First of all, she can reduce her flicker by one when taking an action to add a suit to the final duel total. Also, when she summons something, she can reduce her Flicker by an amount and then increase the summoned model’s Flicker by the same amount. She can get some Flicker back by killing an enemy model with a melee action. This isn’t likely to happen a ton (though she can chew up weaker models when given the opportunity,) so her totem may be necessary to help replace the Flicker that Asami is losing over the course of the game.

Finally, she gained the Orochi Conflux to add to the Shadow Emissary. It gives the Emissary the Oni characteristic and makes it so that, when an Oni model is sacrificed with 6”, you can place a scheme marker in base contact with it first. Additionally, the Emissary gains a 0 action, This Flesh is Temporary, which lets it cast a spell to increase a target Oni’s Flicker condition by 1 at the cost of making it suffer half of its total wounds. That seems a little fiddly, but I can envision a situation where an Oni is needed to hold a quarter or something and is far enough away from any enemy models that losing the wounds won’t be helpful. Not sure if this will be as useful as the generic conflux or another Recalled Training, but maybe I’m missing something.

I’m going through the factions in the reverse order that I did the models, earlier, so Outcasts are up next. Warning: I make a lot of mistakes when theorizing what is good and what isn’t when I’m talking about factions I actually play. The Outcasts, on the other hand, I don’t play at all. So, I’ll do my best, but expect me to be wrong…frequently.

But before that happens, did I mention that Malifaux Musings is on Patreon now? What's Patreon you ask? It's a way for people like you who are entertained by content creators like me to support our efforts. You sign up for a monthly donation to the pool and, if enough people jump in, it unlocks bonus stuff in the future. For instance, I want to introduce a monthly raffle for some limited edition models that we have lying around in the MM warehouse for my Patrons. I'm not asking for a ton of money from any individual, either. Have you got $1 every month? I'll take it! So go to our Patreon page and donate! And if you put your money in while I'm doing these articles, I can certainly be convinced to do my review of your faction first ;).

Von Schill

His first upgrade, Oath of the Freikorps, introduces the ability for V.S. crews to manipulate the Oathkeeper upgrade. Any model in the crew with the Upgrade attached gets a positive flip to duels against anything Von Schill damages with his attacks. Pretty sweet, but the real power of Oathkeeper comes from discarding it to gain fast. So, does this upgrade become useless later in the game? Not so much, because V.S. also gains a 1 ap Tactical Action to attach Oathkeeper to a Friekorps model within 12” of him as long as there are less than 2 of them in the crew at the time. Even without the plus flips, this Upgrade would probably be useful for reattaching one of the best generic upgrades in the game. A plus to all duels is almost like icing on the cake.

Nythera Aftermath is more designed to make V.S. an individual badass. Target Practice lets him take a shot with his gun against an enemy that places within 6” of him with a plus flip to the attack. Probably the most useful part of the upgrade is Practiced Ambidexterity that lets him take the attacks from a charge against separate targets. And, finally, it gives him an attack with his new robot arm that does a small amount of damage but lets V.S. knock the model 6” away from him after damaging. I don’t know V.S. well enough to say if this makes him a strong beater (or significantly stronger than he already is.) I think the first upgrade will be more universally useful.

Tara

Ah, Tara. The master I’m probably least likely to ever want to play. Surely they didn’t keep going with this “no control hand” thing, did they? *reads Out of Time.* Oh, well, n/m.

Out of Time gives her a + to all flips when Tara has no cards in hand, so likely in her reactivation at the end of the turn rather than at the beginning. It changes the 2 AP Void Maw action into a 1 AP action, allowing for them to do a bit better job of chewing up buried models. Finally, I’m at least intrigued by The Clock is Ticking, a new 1 AP attack action. It’s Ca 7 (Tome) and range 6. It does automatic damage, which I like (the fewer card flips, the better) equal to the turn number, and a built in Tomes trigger heals Tara for the same amount. You can only take the action once per turn, but I still think it could be useful, assuming Tara is still alive in the later turns of the game.

Emptiness is a bit more interesting. It’s a 0 cost upgrade that allows her to ignore the upgrade limit for any upgrade cards that are specifically for Tara (is it ironic that the Nothingness crew gets to attach the most upgrades? Possibly…) You may not want all of her upgrades in the game, necessarily, but even a junk one can be discarded later in the game to draw cards equal to the soulstone cost, turning running a Tara crew away from the “dump your hand” game and changing it to “manage the number of cards in your hand to match the situation.” Dump cards until your opponent’s beaters activate, then build it back up? I don’t know. In any case, Out of Time and Emptiness don’t really jive with each other, so that’s weird too.

Did I mention Tara’s not my cup of tea?

Viktorias

The Soaring Dragon improves the Viktoria crew’s ability to play a hit-and-run game. It can be attached to either Vik and allows that one to start the game buried. All friendly Sister models gain a 0 action to unbury a friendly sister and place them in base to base. They aren’t able to chain activate, so you’ll either want to bring them out somewhere safe or make sure you have activation control before you do it, but it can provide some interesting mobility. I don’t know that you would always want to start buried, since you can’t come back until turn 2. Instead, I think you’d want to do the standard Viktoria slingshot, throwing the model with this upgrade forward. After it kills a target you can discard 2 cards and bury her, improving her survivability significantly and making the Viks less all-or-nothing. Of course, it also means you could maybe do the slingshot multiple times in the same game, which would be unpleasant for the opponents one would think.

Sisterly Bonds is less about improving their offense and maybe giving the crew a bit more survivability. Any sister model heals 1/2/3 damage whenever they gain a condition from an enemy model, which is situational at best. Viktoria of Ashes can also use a 0 action to give a minion within 6” the Sister characteristic until the end of the turn. I’m sure this opens up some interesting interactions with the rest of the crew gaining synergy buffs, but I don’t know what they are. This one doesn’t seem as useful, to me. Which probably means it’s game breaking and I’m just not seeing it.

Jack Daw

Growing Injustice allows the Daw crew to exchange Guilty models for Cursed Upgrades, and vice-versa. Every time a Guilty model dies, you can attach a Curse that isn’t currently in play to Jack Daw. Then, if an enemy Tormented model dies with a Curse upgrade attached, you can summon a Guilty off of them first. Lather, rinse, repeat. Any time summoning is involved the potential for strength is there, but this is another very conditional summon. However, the fact that it doesn’t really require any resources from the Daw player other than playing Guilty means there is at least potential for this to happen incidentally.

Cursed Life is a bit simpler. Whenever he attaches an upgrade to something, heal a point of damage. Whenever a model with a curse on it dies, draw a card. Simple as that. These abilities are good, but as I understand it upgrade slots are at a premium for Jack Daw. Time will tell if these benefits are good enough to warrant a slot.

Hamelin

Hamelin’s first upgrade is Plague Pits, invoking the idea of the pits of dead bodies that the Guild had to create in Malifaux after the first outbreak of Piper’s Plague in Book…2? of Malifaux First Edition. After both crews are deployed, the Hamelin crew deploys a trio of 50mm Ht. 0 markers anywhere on the board that’s at least 3” away from the opponent’s deployment zone. Enemies that begin their activation or end an action within 3” of a pit marker gain Blighted +1. An enemy in base contact can choose to take a 1 AP Interact and discard a card to remove the markers, but they’ll gain at least one Blighted in the process. Finally, at the end of the turn Hamelin gets to move one of the markers up to 6” at the cost of one of his cards. Based on how these sorts of abilities have worked out in the past, they’ll be most useful defensively to try and restrict enemy movement. The fact that the enemy can send a throw-away model and spend a card to get rid of it gives me pause, but sometimes one activation can make the difference in a win or a loss. And my impression of Hamelin crews has always been that they win by stacking up these little hindrances until they snowball out of control and kill you.

Useful Vermin is maybe a bit more universally…useful. Essentially it lets Hamelin turn two Malifaux Rats in line of sight into Scheme Markers at the beginning of the turn. Seems good. Not much to add.

Leviticus

One of the methods of targeting Levi is to kill off his Hollow Waifs. This is often easier said than done, as he has a pretty strong incentive not to let you do that. If you can pull it off, however, he can’t get them back. That is, of course, until the Aether Shackles upgrade. It lets him spend 2 AP to summon one directly or, if there are enough scheme markers on the board within 8”, to get it out for 1 AP instead. Levi has to discard a card for each of the scheme markers, and there must be more of them than the number of Hollow Waifs on the board, but then you can ditch the scheme markers and summon the Waif. Oh, yeah, and it gives Levi a ranged ability to remove Scheme Markers. It seems like a good defensive upgrade, but I don’t know if the Waif summoning would be good enough to warrant an upgrade slot, given that most crews can’t go get the Waifs anyways. The scheme marker removal may put it over the top, however.

Untimely Demise gives Levi the Desolation ability. Whenever he would be buried by the Pariah ability he does 2 damage to everything with pulse 3 of him. Anything killed by this damage summons an Abomination. You’re planning on dying anyways, so this could be a good way to get some decent incidental damage into your crew. The summoning can be set up with Levi’s attacks, but that’s a lot of work just to get an Abomination.

Parker Barrows

Like the other wave 4 folks, Parker gets a pair of upgrades and a Conflux for the Emissary. Reminiscent of the Clint Eastwood western A Fistful of Dollars, Hidden Steel Plate can be discarded to reduce the damage of an attack Parker takes by 2 and grant a + Ml and Sh actions for friendly Minion models within 8 when its discarded until the end of the turn. Alternatively, he can use a 0 to remove a condition from a model. If it isn’t a Bandit you have to discard the upgrade, but that will trigger the buff action as well. Badge of Office saw play once upon a time and this is in the same vein, but the fact that Parker can pull it out of his bag of tricks as needed improves it quite a bit.

His other upgrade gives his shooting attacks a trigger to ignore armor with his pistol attacks, which is useful for him but not exactly lacking in a faction with the Viktorias. It also grants him a 1 AP ability to place a condition on a target called Dead Man Walking and discard the upgrade. This condition allows one opposing model to take a shooting attack at the model with the condition at the end of any activation where it takes a walk or charge action. The model with the condition can discard a soulstone to parker’s cache to discard the condition, which Parker can then immediately discard to reattach the upgrade to himself. The soulstone tax could be significant, but it puts a lot of the power to choose in the opponent’s hands, which I don’t like. Many crews get by just fine with no stones, and/or the model with the condition can just hide or something to keep from getting shot. Might be interesting with somebody like Hans or a Friekorps trapper, and like all situational Parker upgrades you can always choose to use or not use it as needed, but I’m not sure it will end up being a staple.

Finally, his conflux upgrade turns the emissary into a bandit, which should be helpful. He gains an ability to draw a card whenever he attaches one of his trinkets to a model, and it gains anew 0 action that discards an upgrade off of a friendly model to draw a card. If it’s a trinket, the model also drops an enemy scheme marker in base to base. I honestly have no idea how useful that is, but I’m sure when Phiasco builds a Parker crew and we play in the future I’ll realize why it’s good.

For discussion of Misaki, go to the Ten Thunders article, please. Next up, we’re heading to the graveyard to do the Thriller Dance. It’s Rezzer time!

For this next post, we're going to talk about the cool new upgrades for Rezzers. Before I do, though, I want to take another opportunity to encourage people to sign up as my patron on Patreon. I've really enjoyed all the positive response these articles are getting, but it isn't an insignificant amount of work to get them done. It would be amazing to get a little something back for the effort. I'm not talking a lot of cash, here. I would love for you to start at $1 a month just to let me know you enjoy the work as well.

McMourning

Ready for some weird science? Get ready for Dr. M, because stuff just got weird. To start with the more normal one, let’s go with Guild Coroner. It gives him an ability to, after killing a model with a melee attack, drop a scheme marker in base contact with a different enemy model within 12” and LoS (effectively, him pointing at them and saying “He did it!” McMourning is then allowed to use one of the 0 actions printed on the stat card. One lets him discard every corpse marker within 3” of him, adding a soulstone to his pool for every two corpses ditched in this way (I would think this would be 1 most of the time.) The other, corpse retrieval duty, lets you ditch a single corpse to draw two cards and then discard one. I like that they don’t cost you anything you wouldn’t be doing anyways (killing stuff.) Not sure how much the soulstone thing will pay off for you, but could be useful.

On the other hand FRIGGIN TEST SUBJECTS! *ahem* *composes himself* This upgrade allows Dr. McMourning to hire 4 non-Gamin beasts or academics from other factions into his crew. That is bonkers. Welcome to Marcus 2.0, but with Academics and potentially the Guild as well. There are too many options to go through all the stuff that could end up being useful here. Guild McMourning gets the most use out of it, as this lets him hire Rogue Necromancies and the University Transmortis stuff out of faction. I like that it lets him hire Myranda in, since they’re family and all. I’m just jacked to see all the things you can try with him now.

Seamus

Do You Know Who I Am? Enhances the fear based Seamus crew by punishing models for passing their Horror duel. Once per turn, an enemy that passes a horror duel within 6” of him can be forced to take a 2/3/4 damage flip. If the flip does severe damage, you can place a condition called Infamy on Seamus to increase the TN of his Horror duels by one, to a max of +3. If you’ve built yourself to be attacking Horror, I would have to think it’s worth the card to cheat in and move up the TN. On top of that, he gained a new 0 action, Boo! It forces all enemy models within 3” of him to pass a TN 12 horror duel. Making the opponent flip more cards when nothing good can come of it for them and plenty of bad can happen instead is a good thing. Plus, it has a built in trigger called You Can Run that lets you push anybody who passes the duel a number of inches away from Seamus equal to 2+ his Infamy condition. I think this upgrade is pretty strong.

Maybe likely to gather more buzz is AKA Sebastian Baker, which allows Seamus to hire Showgirls at the beginning of the game (what’s the deal with the Rezzers expanding their hiring pools this book? Can Nicodem hire Oni now too?) Additionally, when he uses his Arise My Sweet, he can sub in a Showgirl minion instead of a Belle. The Showgirls lose the Living characteristic and become undead whether they’re hired or summoned. The hiring is interesting as it grants him access to showgirls like Carlos and Cassandra (though you’d think Collette would have noticed the smell if Seamus had murderd and reanimated them.) Hiring a performer without the merc tax for games like Headhunter is ok. My thing is, Seamus only gets to summon once a turn, and if he gets the opportunity I would think he would want to summon a Belle. More flexibility is a good thing, I suppose, and he could potentially get an Ice Dancer, which would be ok. Oh, and he gets to use a 0 action to place a scheme marker in base contact with a piece of terrain somewhere within 12”. It’s not a BAD upgrade by any stretch of the imagination. I just feel like “Do You Know Who I Am?” takes an already pretty good Seamus build and makes it objectively better.

Nicodem

So, one of his upgrades is Their Last Breath, which basically lets him take a living friendly Rezzer model who dies anywhere within his LoS and buy you a few more turns with it. It isn’t killed and heals all wounds, but gains a Decaying condition. This makes them Undead, limits them to healing no more than the Decaying condition every turn (it starts at +2) and deals 2 damage to them when they activate that can’t be prevented, ignored, or reduced. Every turn the Decaying condition increases. I’m trying to think of who would be a prime candidate for this and nothing’s IMMEDIATELY jumping out at me. Mortimer? I guess that could be useful, since Morty is trading his wounds for corpse counters all game. (Also, why are there no Nic and Morty memes out there anywhere?) Vincent St. Claire? The new Assura Rotten henchman? I’m really not sure what the best application for this would be. I’m sure someone will point it out in the comments. Also, it’s worth noting that this works like Titannia’s Queen’s Champion where it goes off when the condition is met, rather than when you choose, except this one doesn’t have the ability to pay a cost and keep it from activating at all. So, whatever you’re going to do with it, it’s probably best if you only have one target in your crew that can gain it (so, no Vultures I guess.) This would, however, be pretty sick in a doubles event. Oh, you killed Seamus? Guess what, he’s still alive.

Speaking of Vultures, his other upgrade is Circling Buzzards. This one lets you discard however many cards you want at the beginning of the game to place one corpse for each card on the centerline, so long as they’re at least 8” away from any other corpses. Getting more corpse markers on the board is undeniably good for Nicodem, but I wonder if the cost is too high. They do have a lot of card draw in Phillip and the Nanny abuse, but if you drew a pretty strong opening hand it might be kinda painful to ditch four cards for 2 corpses. Also, Nico gains the ability to summon Vultures into base contact with a Corpse Marker at Range 8. There’s a Ram trigger to drop a scheme marker behind when you perform the summoning as well. Again, debatable if this is better than what Nicodem already uses, but ranged Scheme Marker placement without an interact isn’t terrible.

Kirai

Both of Kirai’s upgrades give her passive abilities, which I like for summoning masters. Their AP is usually pretty much spoken for every turn. The first, Ectoplasm, grants her the ability to place a scheme marker in base to base with any non-peon Spirit that she kills or sacrifices during her activation. This will typically be Ikiryo I would think, who you sacrifice to then resummon somewhere else on the board, allowing you to potentially generate an extra scheme marker per turn. Still, there could be some utility here. Second, Spiteful Wrath makes her Seishin count as Undead and allows them to be affected by the Malevolence Aura from her and the Lost Love. This could potentially make them very annoying for opponents to deal with.

Vengeance Will Be Mine gives her an aura that prevents removal of the Adversary condition from models within 6” of her. As someone who has played Beckoners before, this isn’t that big of an aura, and it will be difficult to plan on using this offensively in a game. On the other hand, enemies are likely to want to get up close to her to stop her summoning, so this could be a useful defensive ability. It just remains to be seen if that’s enough to warrant an upgrade slot and a soulstone.

Molly

I’ve secretly suspected that one of the unspoken design goals of this book and the upgrades in it are to give really strong options to masters that needed a boost while, instead, granting side-grades to ones that are already pretty good. One of Molly’s upgrades kind of flies in the face of this, though, as I consider her to be a Tier 1.5 master at worst, and her Back on the Job upgrade is one of the strongest tactical options in the game IMO. Embodying her new-old job in Malifaux as a reporter, Molly’s Thorough Investigation allows her to LOOK AT HER OPPONENT’S UNREVEALED SCHEMES AFTER CREWS ARE DEPLOYED. Now, go ahead and think about that one for a second. You don’t get to know the names or variables on the schemes, so you don’t have to say who the sucker is on Frame for Murder, but just knowing that this is what they’re doing is in-freaking-sanely strong, and lets you immediately move to block what your opponent is doing with the assurance that your guess is most likely correct. Wowzers. The Tactical Action to discard an enemy Scheme Marker and draw a card once a turn, which is pretty good in and of itself, is just icing on the cake.

Possibly overshadowed is Forgotten Items. Lost and Found allows Molly’s summons to prevent damage based on enemy Scheme Markers within pulse 3 when they’re summoned rather than enemy models (you get to choose which.) The flexibility is probably pretty good. And Things I Almost Remember allows her to draw 2 cards when she reveals a scheme. Card draw in a summoning crew? Pretty solid. I think Molly did pretty well with these upgrades.

Reva

As with all the other Book 4 masters, Reva gets 2 upgrades and a conflux for the Carrion Emmisary. Riders in the Sky allows her to force an enemy model to take a TN12 Horror Duel when she charges them. It also gives her a (0) action to place a Blast Marker touching every Corpse Marker in play, regardless of LoS. Every model touched by one or more blast markers must succeed at a TN 12 Wk duel or gain Burning +2. Additionally, there is a tome trigger that makes every model which gains Burning pass a TN 10 Horror duel (is it me, or if a dead body just exploded and set me on fire, wouldn’t the TN be higher than 10?) I don’t know that most players would be going near corpse markers in games against Reva if they could help it anyways, but often you don’t have a choice.

Specter of Death gives Reva something else to use as the source of her attacks: spirits. If you use them as the origin of the attacks they do one point less of damage, down to a minimum of zero. Additionally, it gives her a crow trigger on her Ethereal Reaping to summon a Seishin when she kills something. I can see the benefits of adding more things for her to attack out of, particularly when they can move towards the enemy. I think using spirits is clever, as they don’t drop corpses when the enemy kills them to prevent a positive feedback from the effects. It really just depends on whether this was necessary, ie if Reva was having trouble getting targets in range before now. I don’t think that was the case, but more tactical flexibility is never a BAD thing.

Her Conflux upgrade gives the Carrion Emissary the ability to count as a corpse marker. A 50mm mobile corpse marker could provide her with quite a bit of increased threat projection. Adding to this, the Emissary can discard a card as a 0 action to place themselves in base to base with a corpse marker. If the card is a crow, you can push the marker 3” in any direction after placing yourself, also potentially improving their placement. It does deal 2 damage to the Emissary when you use it, so you might not want to do it every turn, but I think it could be pretty useful for Reva. Given his Shards’ ability to summon Mindless Zombies which also function as mobile corpse markers, I think you’ll see the Carrion Emissary in many Reva crews (assuming you don't already).

Tara’s upgrades are discussed in the Outcasts article, and Yan Lo’s are in TenThunders. Next time we’ll be talking about the Gremlins.

Standard disclaimer: I don’t know Gremlins. I don’t play them. I rarely play against them (with one exception...curse you Wong...). So, there’s a very real chance this article will be more filled with inaccuracies than usual. So bear with me. Luckily, the Max Value podcast did their Gremlins episode on Sunday, so I at least had that to listen to and prepare. So if our opinions sound similar…there’s a reason.

Ophelia

Her first upgrade is Useless Junk. No, that’s the name, not my opinion of it *rimshot*. It allows her to dump a 30mm Trash marker anywhere in Ophelia’s LoS whenever she discards another upgrade. What’s a trash marker, you ask? Where would I be without you, my easily suggestible audience? At the beginning of any other kin model’s activation, they can push 6” towards a trash marker. If they come into base contact, they heal 2 and drop a scheme marker, but either way the Trash Marker gets discarded. An interesting utility tool for kin heavy Ophelia crews (which, let’s be honest, just means it’s a way for Francois to get some free movement.)

Metal-Lined coat seems decent as well. It gives her Instinctual, which is usually useful. Also, if you discard it for Plink! It prevents 2 damage instead of one. It costs 2 stones, which seems a tad steep, but since her little cousins can toss her stuff during the game maybe you can attach it later on. Not flashy, but decent.

Som’er Teeth Jones

Neither of Som’er’s (the rare double apostrophe) upgrades really blew me away. Insectophile adds a trigger to his melee attack to summon a Skeeter with a crow. Skeeters are ok, but a melee summoning trigger’s not great in general, and Som’er Teeth wants to summon Bayou Gremlins or shoot his gun. Hell, it’s even on the same suit as the piglet summoning, so it’s really just giving you a choice of summoning one or the other when most folks I don’t think really used the piglet summon anyways. Higher Proof is a little bit different, as it lets a friendly model in LoS that uses Drunk and Reckless gain a condition that increases it’s Sh value but prevents you from declaring triggers on your attacks. I guess if you wanted to do a gunline type list this could be good, but I just don’t see it. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.

Brewmaster

I’m glad to see that they gave Brewie some stuff to do besides just get the opponent’s crew drunk and try to lock them down all game. A Barkeep Never Sleeps gives him an ability to make poison tick for 3 damage rather than one ala Sebastian for any models within 6” of him and gives him a 0 action to resummon Apprentice Wesley. I don’t know how often Brewmaster crews would lose Wesley, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt as an insurance policy on your insurance policy.

The other upgrade is A Friendly Ear, and I think it has some interesting potential as well. When targeting a model with the poison condition on it, the TN for his duels (namely his Obey action) gain +Mask to the final duel total. So, if he does it to a friendly model with poison, all he has to do is hit the TN to succeed, which is huge. And it makes using the Obey on enemy models much more practical. Handy, especially for a control oriented master like Brewy. The other action, Explosive Mixture, makes all enemy models within 3 pass a TN 12 Wk duel or suffer 2 damage. Again, this one seems like icing on a good cake, but also again I’m glad to see Brewmaster gain some offense rather than just being a passive lock-down (even if it’s in the form of “lock you down and then blow you up.”

Ulix

His upgrades very much are what one would expect for a support master. Disembodied Sooey lets him target a non-pig model within 8 and have every pig within a 6” pulse move their Cg towards it. One of them that moved at least 1” gets to make a 1 Ml attack action against it. This is alright, but it seems like models that can charge for 1 AP and are within 6” of a target don’t really need this to get the job done. If it was longer range and worked like Mortimer’s Fresh Meat I could see it being really useful, but this seems more situational.

I was saying in the Resser article that an ideal upgrade for a Summoning crew is one that provides passive buffs, as their AP are mostly spoken for on the majority of turns. Pig Midwifery is a good example of this. Any pigs that are summoned within Aura 3 of Ulix don’t become slow, and any Living Pig that is killed or sacrificed within 8” of Ulix and 3” of another pig lets the other pig heal 2 points of damage (ostensibly by eating the dead one.) Simple, straightforward. If Ulix crews have the space for it and plan on doing some summoning, there’s no reason not to bring it along.

Wong

Ah, Wong, my old nemesis. What new tricks have you learned? Behold My Effervescence! gives him a 3 AP action to Lightning Jump every model within range and Line of Sight. They don’t randomize when shooting into engagements, which seems like the opposite of what Wong wants most of the time. Additionally, he gains a 1 AP action to flip a card for each model within pulse 6 of him, with a random effect based on the suit that flips. This is randomness, and the kind of randomness that would drive me crazy and lose me games. I don’t like it.

The other upgrade increases the benefits a model gains from being deemed “Magical” at the start of the game, granting them Don’t Mind Me and Agility and preventing the condition from being removed in addition to the normal buffs. If the Swinecursed didn’t exist, I’d be worried that this was putting all your eggs in one basket, as killing that one model would make the upgrade useless. Spreading it around to other models helps, but I wonder if Don’t Mind Me and Agility are all that useful to a Swinecursed model. Time will tell, I suppose.

Mah Tucket

I’m told that Mah Tucket isn’t very good in Malifaux. I’m also told that these upgrades make her a lot better. I can’t tell you for sure whether they do or not, as I’ve never seen this “Mah Tucket” in person.

Manifest Destiny seems to be the big one. It lets any models with “Get off my Land!” (Mah, the Little Lass, and Bushwackers, unless I missed something) use it every turn rather than just on the first one, and allows them to cross the center line with it on any turn after the first. Additionally, any time Mah discards a card outside of a duel she gets to then draw a card. The aforementioned Get off my Land is one thing you have to discard for. Also, her 0 actions. Card cycling is good, ya’ll. Finally, her melee attacks gain an inch of range. So this isn’t so much an upgrade card as a straight buff. Go ahead and staple it to her.

The other upgrade is Pit Traps, which lets you throw out three 30mm pit trap markers after both crews have deployed at the beginning of the game. Rather than Blight you, they force you to discard a card or become slow. They can also be removed in the same manner as the Plague Pits, but Mah gains a 1 AP tactical action to discard a card (and then draw one, since you’ll have MD) and place a new trap marker in base to base with her. You can’t take it while engaged (that would be mean) so it’ll take some foreplanning to make it work. It’s not as useful as Manifest Destiny, but it’s got potential.

Zipp

Zipp’s upgrades are a little all over the place, in that one I think I’d use most of the time and the other is…situational. Let’s get that one out of the way first. Supply Drop at least doesn’t cost Zipp any of his AP (you couldn’t pay me to use it if it did.) Instead, it allows Zipp to flip a card once per turn after he completes a walk action. Based on the suit, an effect happens. One drops a blast marker within 2” of him that deals 1 point of damage to everyone touching it. Another drops some blocking terrain within an inch of him. A third drops a scheme marker, and the fourth pushes Zipp 2”. Jokers let you flip two cards and resolve both. If you were able to cheat the flip, it would be a different story. As it is, the effects are all too different from each other, so you’ll never know what you’re going to get and it will often be the one you don’t want. Pass.

The Dread Pirate Zipp on the other hand is quite amusing. It gives Zipp a 0 action to summon a Bayou gremlin and then bury himself, called “I am not the Dread Pirate Zipp.” At the end of the turn, you resummon Zipp in base to base with any Bayou Gremlin you have on the board and sacrifice the Bayou Gremlin, as that one is obviously the “real” Zipp. While he’s buried, all the Bayous in play gain a 0 action to hand out Incite to enemy models, which is pretty cool. Playing this upgrade on Zipp is interesting and a good way to potentially get him out of danger, but may not actually be the best use for it. A lot of what Zipp does is annoy the opponent by being on the board and messing up their stuff. An idea I heard the Max Value fellas talk about (and one of them borrowed it from someone on the Wyrd forums, so citing sources gets even stupider…) is to instead put this upgrade on Sami. I think it’s Sami. That’s the one that can attach a master’s upgrade, right? Anyways, whatever that one is, put this upgrade on them. They activate at the beginning of the turn, do their thing, and then bury themselves. Meanwhile, Zipp still gets to flit around and mess things up for your opponent, and you have Bayou Gremlins with Incite that is incredibly obnoxious (you know, unlike the rest of this crew…)

Finally, his Conflux for the Lucky Emmisary lets it work like the giant death wheel that it really is. The model gains the Trample ability allowing it to move through Ht 1 and 2 models during any move or push. It also gains the Death Wheel ability which allows it to, once per turn, force any models it moved through on a walk to make TN 12 wk duel or suffer 2 damage. Oh yeah, and he gets Witty Banter to turn on a 4” Chatty aura as long as he has LoS to Zipp as a 0 action. Seems good.

So, that’s it for the Gremlins (Zoraida’s a Neverborn master, and I won’t hear any argument to the contrary.) You may have noticed there was no pitch for the Patreon account at the top. That’s because we got our first patron, and as a reward for being first in line, I let him pick the next faction to review. So, next out of the chute is going to be the Arcanists! If you want to pick who is coming after that, go to our patreon page and sign up. A $1 donation will at least get you a vote (assuming that this magnificent, inspirational reward gets the pledges rolling in that is. More likely you’ll be the only one to sign up and you’ll get to pick. Tough to argue with that!)

So for those of you who haven't heard Wyrd has opened Gaining Grounds 2018 for beta testing. Odds are I won't get around to updating this blog real time. So what I am thinking is I will update this once a month or so. I will endeavor to record the evolution of the document to it's final form.

I think this link will get you to the page where the link to the current iteration of the document can be found. Link to page with the current Gaining Grounds 2018 document.

If you wish to participate in the beta there are a few things you should keep in mind. There are likely things you might have strong feelings about. The best way to make sure your opinion is considered is to play games to generate data in a battle report. From what I understand, if you send them I think this X scheme ought to be written as Y, and there is no data to support it, then odds are good it will be ignored.

Things that I have noticed have changed in the general document:

-There appears to be a change to deck etiquette. But the language needs to be cleaned up as there is contradictory elements but it looks like players will gain the ability to refuse to cut your opponent's deck.

-Slow play has been redefined since it is difficult to establish it is intentional.

Strategies:

-Strategy conditions may Not be ignored in any way. This includes things such as condition immunity.
Initial reaction; Up to now there have been no strategy conditions. As such this has possibly been an issue for schemes where some crews just shut down condition schemes forcing the opponent into a smaller pool. Looking at the document I am happy with strategy conditions sticking to all models. If we are lucky the handing out condition based schemes will not fall on suits or doubles and then worse case scenario is there are 3 viable schemes verse Hamelin.

-Summoned models do Not count for strategy purposes.
Initial reaction; McCabe's horse reclaims its Master status. In all seriousness this is something the game probably needs regardless if this iteration makes it or not. In the end it changes the function of summoned models to screen for scoring models or to go run schemes. I have a feeling this will cause the greatest gut reaction but I think most players will adapt and a few will abandon summoners instead of embracing the challenge of slight alterations to play style. To be fair summoned models in most cases feel like cannon fodder I care less about then the peons in my lists. So thematically it doesn't make sense for them to score. I expect there might be a tweak to this condition but I do expect it to make it through to the final document in some form.

- Ours (masks); Basically reconnoiter but you add up SS value of all of your models per quarter vs the SS value of your opponents models.
Initial reaction; I have a feeling this will be clunkier than intended. I know people who have trouble adding their acting value to the flipped card in a timely manner to the point I have started to memorize the acting values of most of the common models. I will attempt to play test it as is when I get a chance.

- Ply for Information (tomes); I read this wrong in the late hours of last night. Your model interacts with an enemy model to gain the condition on your model. Then you try to keep the condition until the end of the game.
Initial reaction; Your crew will want to be able to hit, run and survive. Or just have a ton of activation control. Very interesting in any case.

- Public Executions (crows); Kill a non peon bad guy and prevent the bad guys from capturing the flag it drops. Score if you have more friendly flags than your opponent.
Initial reaction; Summoned models won't drop flags, they can make the enemy drop them, and claim them (the turn after they are summoned). Lure and anti lure tech will be big for this strategy. I like the idea but something feels off and I probably won't see it until I play it a few times.

- Symbols of Authority (rams); Place 4 flags (2 on each side). Score VP for flags you remove from their side and flags remaining on your side at the end of the game.
Initial reaction; Chatty, Don't Mind Me, Lure, Anti-Lure, push, anti-push, and probably a couple other abilities will be big. It will probably play a lot like Rock, Paper, Scissors depending on if your crew trumps what your opponent crew is trying to do. I like strategies where there are only 4 VP total to be had.

- Put Out a Hit (jokers); <I realize this is in programmer speak> place 2 30mm strategy markers, one on each side not in deployment. Discard a card a the start of any turn to hand out a condition nested in another condition to an enemy model. Then kill the enemy model to collect the nested condition. Bring the nested condition to either marker to score VP.
Initial reaction; So basically my crew discards a card and selects super beater model in the other crew. Then I kill that model to get the payment condition and try to get the model with the payment condition to either strategy marker to score. If the other crew kills or sacs the model after it is targeted then I score a VP. There are a few moving parts to this but outside of Ours it seems the most straightforward new strategy. Can't wait to play it to have some constructive feedback.

I will run the new Schemes in the next blog which I ought to have out shortly.

Took a little break (silly jobs that insist on my doing things besides writing about Malifaux) but we’re back to talk about the Arcanists.

First, however, let me remind you about our Patreon page. For those who are unfamiliar, Patreon is a way by which fans like you can help content creators like me turn our ideas into reality. It cuts out the middleman of having to put ads up on my blog and lets you lend support to me directly. But what am I going to do with this money, you might ask? Well, one of the things I had in mind was to do product reviews of each of the Malifaux, The Other Side, and Through the Breach books when they come out. I would put the money you use towards it directly. Another idea was to acquire prize support to run a Vassal Malifaux league. I have some more thoughts as well, but you get the idea. The more successful the Patreon is, the more I can build. Additionally, I've thought about having Through the Breach adventures written exclusively for my patrons. And I just like interacting with the patrons directly. Today’s article topic, the Arcanists, was picked by Rich, who was our first patron. The next article will be Neverborn because of our second patron’s preference. Anyways, enough with the pitch, but if you’ve got a dollar to spare per month, I’d love to have it.

Ramos

It may surprise you that the words “Spider” “Arachnid” or “Construct” do not appear anywhere on Dr. Ramos’ upgrades for this book. Instead, it appears that his new options are designed to improve his ability to do things other than summon the four-legged spiders onto the board. Given the deemphasis of the role of Summoning in the new GG2018 (which Phiasco wrote about in this post) that may be a good thing. The first, Leviathan Power Core, gives Ramos a buff based on how many Soulstones have been used by models during the game. Every time this happens, he gains the “Powering Up +1” condition that extends the range of his electrical fire an inch per point of the condition. Additionally, when he activates he can lower his powering up by an amount he chooses and gain buffs based on the amount it is reduced. These range from giving him a + modifier to the first duel of the turn for 1 point to giving him Fast for 4 points. You can’t control how your opponent is going to use their soulstones, so you only really know what you’re going to do during the game. It may be interesting to try it from the perspective of using Ramos to summon on the first couple turns of the game, discarding stones to increase the condition, and then transitioning him to a ranged combat master for the late game. I’d have to see it in practice to gauge for sure.

The other upgrade represents his position as (former) leader of the Union, Vox Populi. It gives Ramos a 0 action attack against WP that can make a model count as a Peon for encounter purposes and block it from taking Interact actions until its next activation. Additionally, his Strike! Action lets him throw out a pair of 50mm markers not touching any models or each other. Enemy models treat these as 3/4/4 damage Sever Hazardous terrain. They only last for a turn and don’t provide any cover, but they could be useful to block a choke point. Turning a model into a Peon is useful, but only being able to do it once a turn limits this. Overall I’m kind of “Meh” on Ramos’ upgrades. They’re not bad, but they don’t leap out at me either.

Marcus

Apparently Marcus and McMourning have been collaborating, given that now the good Doctor can bring beasts into his fights and Marcus has learned some of his former pupils’ poison tricks. Venomancy gives him the standard Infect trigger to his Shillelagh attacks. It lets him use a 0 to pulse poison off of one of his beasts to put a point of Poison on any model within 3” of it, or 2 points of Poison if the beast has the Infect trigger on one of its attacks. And, finally, it grants Marcus and any of his Henchmen with Beast the Virulent ability to make models take 2 points of damage per tick of poison rather than one. The big thing that’s missing, of course, is McMourning’s ability to force models’ poison conditions to tick at the beginning of their activation, which improves the conditions’ ability to actually kill something in a timely fashion, so it remains to be seen if this will be enough to make Poison Marcus a thing. But they’re sure trying to get there, aren’t they?

The other upgrade for the Beastmaster is a new Limited, The Gods Path. This version seems to lean him towards a defensive tanking and support role, as it automatically gives him Wicked on his attacks and allows you to discard tomes (as per the other Limiteds) to gain Armor +2, +1 Ca, and/or an ability that forces models to take 2 damage if they end their activation within his engagement range. The Trail of the Gods upgrade is really good, and the silliness it lets Marcus get up to on the board is one of the reasons people like him so much. This upgrade lends itself to a much different role which may turn some players off, but I think could be effective in boards that are particularly dense with terrain or otherwise won’t require the big movement buffs. Armor +2 will help improve his survivability, but he's still Df 5 without other significant defensive abilities. I don't know if it will be enough, but I'm curious to see.

Rasputina

Obviously, one of the advantages of these new upgrades is the ability to introduce a new playstyle to old masters. One of the biggest examples of this would be Enveloped in Ice for Raspy, which increases her Walk, gives her a point of armor, and allows her to perform a 1 melee action once per turn on a model that ends its turn in her engagement range. “But wait!” you say, “Raspy doesn’t have a melee attack.” Oh ho, my friend, do I have news for you…she does now from this card. Ok, I guess that wasn't as dramatic as I built it up to be. I mean, it’s Ml6 2/3/5. That’s not amazing, but it can’t be reduced by models with the Slow or Paralyzed condition and has a Tome trigger to give that condition out. She still has no charge and this only makes her Walk 4, so it would more likely be useful as a counter-attack action for when opponents try to engage her to cut off her ranged attacks. Still, Melee Raspy…that’s just hard to picture…

Maybe more interesting is Frozen Servants, that gives her a limited ability to start pretending to be a summoner. For the cost of a 7 of tomes she can summon an Ice Gamin out of a scrap marker and, upping the cost to an 11 and two tomes (meaning you need an 11+ of tomes and a stone) you can summon an ice golem. They both take about half their Wounds in damage when they come in, but considering they explode when they die this might be more of a feature than a flaw. Finally, any Living models with Frozen Heart gain a 0 action to eat corpse markers to gain a healing flip with the unusual requirement of making a WP duel to do it. Cut to a shot of the newly summoned ice constructs giving you a “Hey, what about us?” look. Because, apparently, I don’t hate playing against her enough, so now she can be a summoner too. I guess if she’s doing that, she’s not blasting my crew to ribbons…

Ironsides

The M&SU’s new president (no word on whether she’s vowed to make the M&SU great again) gained the ability to manipulate her Adrenaline condition a bit more by electing not to reduce it and heal at the end of the turn. Additionally, a (0) Tactical Action gives her a Challenge ala Barbaros which fits well with her “get into the middle of things and mess stuff up" ethos. From my times playing Titania I can tell you that these Challenges are more disruptive than you think (the look on an opponent’s face when they realize they have to pass the test to target their own friendly models is usually worth the price of admission all by itself.) Complementing it, her other upgrade lets her increase Adrenaline at the beginning of her turn by 1 and gives her a ram trigger on her Brass Knuckles to heal an amount of damage equal to the damage she causes. These two are pretty complementary, so I’d imagine you’d take them both in tandem, step to the middle of the opponent’s crew and dare them to move you.

Collette

Audience Participation, her first upgrade, has some fun concepts on it. The first, “Add an Extra Flourish,” gives her an 8” aura wherein any Showgirl Minion models that activate gain Focused+1. This would be cooler if there were more minion showgirls to choose from (and I’m certainly not wearing my Seamus hat while typing this) but as it stands, will mostly help her Performers and Coryphee more than anything I’m thinking. She also gains a 0 action, “I Need a Volunteer” that allows her to do a version of Collodi’s hated “I use your first AP for you” trigger after winning a Willpower duel. You need a 7 of tomes at least to cast it, but it could be quite irritating.

Her other upgrade alters The Dancing Blade, her 0 AP melee attack. The upgrade allows her to discard one of her scheme markers within 8” to perform the attack as a (1) action. If it hits and does damage, it also Slows the model. To offset the cost, she has a Mask trigger on the attack to also discard an enemy scheme marker. I don’t know about this one. Maybe if the trigger had allowed you to place one of your own scheme markers instead I’d like it more.

Kaeris

The Guild’s #1 most wanted terrorist (arsonist? I guess they’re not mutually exclusive…) picked up a number of things related to heat, fire, burning…you get the idea. Heat Wave (and yes, if you play this upgrade you’re required to sing the Martha and the Vandellas song) puts Burning +1 on a model when it activates and/or when it ends an activation within 3” of her. Yes, that means you get Burning +2 if you start and end next to her, so you probably don’t want to do that. Interestingly, she also gains a 0 action to apply the condition Heatstroke to enemy models within pulse 6 of her. Heatstroke starts out at 0 but can be increased by reducing the Burning from any models within the pulse 1-for-1. Why would you want to reduce burning? Because Heatstroke reduces final duel totals by an amount equal to the value of the condition, to a max of 3. That’s actually pretty significant. Imagine if you were DF 5 and then effectively changed to DF 2. You won’t want to do it all the time (as a model that dies from burning has its duel totals much more significantly reduced, you might say) but it could be pretty decent, I think.

The other upgrade, Flaming Angel, is a bit more intuitive. It gives her a 1 AP action to push up to 8” in any direction, ignoring intervening models. At the end of this, any model she moves through during the push gains Burning +1. This has some utility for movement as well as offense, as her walk is normally only 6. Additionally, a second tome on her Immolate action lets her spread Burning to other models within pulse 3 of the original target. More movement plus giving her a pseudo AoE that fuels her other abilities=good times.

Sandeep

So, the undisputed king of the Arcanist tournament scene. What can we give him that won’t make a tilted faction become even more tilted? Well, how about letting him borrow spells from other Academics the way they borrow them from him? Oh, your favorite Ca action is on a model that isn’t an Academic? No worries, he has a Rg6 (0) to give them a + to Ca actions and makes them count as an Academic until the end of the turn. Admittedly, he has to discard a card to use the cast from these pseudo-Academics, but still, there are opportunities here. I’m not sure there’s anything in particular Sandeep was missing that this fixes, but versatility is Sandeep's strength. Giving him more options isn't a bad thing.

His other upgrade is a new Limited (thank god) that tries to turn him into a melee master. His melee attacks gain Burning +1 or Burning +2 if Banasuva isn’t on the board. It also allows models with the Toss ability to treat him as being Ht. 1, which is at least an amusing mental image. He also gains a Tome trigger to summon Banasuva into base to base with a model he damages with said melee attacks, ignoring its Jealous Firelord ability. If big B is already out on the board, the same suit can activate a different trigger to push him 4” towards the enemy model and give them Burning +2 if he engages them. This would be a very different version of Sandeep than what we already see, obviously. Again, GG2018 deemphasizes summoning, which may make up for the loss of his other Limited upgrades. And, honestly of the summoning masters, he's probably the one that is least reliant on his summons. But still, my knee-jerk reaction is “He was good the way he was. Why would I change to something completely different?”

His Conflux upgrade turns the Emmisary into a Gamin and gives it the ability Teaching Assistant which allows other friendly models within 6” of him to use his casting actions at -1 Ca once per turn, much like Sandeep. For those of you who (like me) forgot what its Ca action looks like, it’s a Ca6 (so they’ll have Ca5) Rg 6 or Melee 2 that does 2/3/5 and has a trigger for each suit. As with the initial examination of Sandeep himself, this ability is kind of average on its own, but spread out to other cheap minions could be pretty cool. The thing is, the Arcane Emissary has this Ca action and doesn’t see a ton of play as is. Will this be enough to change that? I’m not sure.

Our next faction break-down is going to involve taking a look at the good-guys of Malifaux, the Neverborn (you heard me. Look at the facts, sheeple.) But first, a word from our sponsors.

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Collodi

I figured I’d start out with my community mandated master, the Puppet Master Collodi. Dreamer, Lucius, and Collodi are probably the masters with whom I have the least experience in faction, but I’ve at least started a game with C at this point. I do, however, know enough to be aware that his main attack action is probably one of the best in the whole game, so anything that’s going to try and replace it would have to be amazing. Four Arms takes on this job, and it’s questionable if it achieves it’s goal. It’s a pretty standard Neverborn melee 6 2/3/5 damage attack, with the bonus that it lets you draw a card when you do moderate or severe damage. The built-in mask gives you a trigger to get Hold Still, which allows him to increase his final duel total by a point for each puppet within 6” and LoS, which certainly raises an eyebrow. The other trigger, a crow, gives the target a condition until the end of the turn preventing it from declaring walk action. Interesting, but there are so many pushes in the game anymore that this is easily overcome and probably not worth cheating or stoning to accomplish. The thing is, Collodi’s brittle. His defense trigger is designed to get him out of combat, not in it, and his WP is mediocre at best. And let’s not forget, he has the most unpleasant attack in the game. Obviously Four Arms lends itself more towards the Bag of Props “Collodi’s crew makes him better” build rather than the “Collodi makes his crew better” version, which makes sense. That version could probably use the help. I’m just not sure if this does it.

Doll Collection instead opts to add mobility. It gives Collodi a 1 ap action to place a 30mm Doll marker anywhere within 8” and LoS of him. Then, at the end of the turn, you can choose any number of Puppets, discard a card, deal 2 damage to them, and then move them into base contact with a doll marker (one puppet per doll). You then ditch the doll marker and place a scrap marker. This could add some interesting mobility tricks to Collodi’s crew, but it’s very resource intensive. The fact that it activates at the end of the turn means it will be most useful to do some Malifaux Raptor-esque tricks (albeit with much less range.) I’m not too jazzed with this immediately either. We’ll have to see if either of the Puppet Master’s upgrades have some hidden juice we’re not seeing.

The Dreamer

One Gencon long past, when the first sculpts of the Carver were coming out as part of a story encounter, I asked Erik if there were plans to make rules for it and release it as a mini for the game. His response was “Well we wouldn’t make the model if we weren’t going to put it in the game.” Using the same logic, when I saw the picture of Dreamer as a more grown up, cricket bat wielding little bastard, my first thought was “They’re going to find a way to bring that out in the next book,” which led to my guess that new master upgrades were coming. This comes in the form of the Limited Upgrade “Growing Up.” He gains the ability Adolescence, which probably has the most sub-abilities tied into it of any ability in the game. It gives Dreamer +4 Wd and Cg 7, prevents him from being damaged when Buried, and gives him an extra AP per turn to take an extra Melee action. It also gives him the (1) Cricket Bat attack. I just got done calling Ml6 2/3/5 an average attack for Collodi, and it’s just as true here, but the importance of this attack is the fact that it lets Dreamer increase or decrease his Waking condition by 1 per successful attack. Additionally, it has a mask trigger to do a short range Tangled Shadows between Dreamer and another Nightmare. Cool stuff all around, but what’s the point of this?

Well, Sleep Cycles, his other upgrade, completes the picture. Falling Asleep lets Chompy activate as a Chain Activation when Dreamer buries. Yeah…shades of old school M1E Dreamer crews, here we come. Additionally, the chain activations can go the other way as well (Chompy buries, then Dreamer goes.) Now we’re talking. When the Dreamer/Chompy engine rolls into your crew, people is gonna die, folks. Additionally, Sleep Cycles adds a little utility to your Daydreams, giving them a melee attack to deal 2/2/3 damage. Not great, but they’re cheap totems you summon. I mean, you can’t have cheap little peons getting cool attacks, can you? (Looks at Assura Rotten.) Sleep Cycles is probably the MVP out of these two, as it has uses for all 3 builds of Dreamer (assuming there are still uses for Shooting Dreamer rather than going straight to Adolescent, which I don’t see.) I appreciate that they brought out a new playstyle to rival “hide and summon” Dreamer and have tried to give Chompy Bits a chance to be the scary boogie man he’s SUPPOSED to be.

Pandora

The master everybody loves to hate (keep doing it, she feeds on your tears,) Pandora’s upgrades are…interesting. Rile Them Up is the most intuitive. It gives her the Mania ability, which lets her discard a card to take Incite as a (1) action once per turn. This is reminiscent of old school Pandora, who could keep casting the original version of it over and over as long as she didn’t target the same model more than once. The days of her circling the board in one turn and Inciting the entire enemy crew are long gone, but this does give her some good mobility options to get out of (or into) trouble, which is important for a relatively fragile master. Additionally, she gains a mask trigger to her Self Loathing and Harm attacks (both of which have the suit built in) to replace the enemy’s damage track with 2/3/4 and prevent its being reduced. While this will help her to hurt masters/henchmen/armored things, the main idea here is to improve the efficacy of these attacks vs. models that don’t HAVE a damage track for their Ml or Sh. Pandora can be a little bit hungry for Upgrade slots, but I think this one is worth the space.

I won’t lie. When I first saw Woe Is Me, my thought was “They’re giving Pandora summons now? I’m never going to be able to play her again.” Then I stopped and thought about it, and it’s not that bad. In fact, a question exists as to whether this is actually any good at all. I don’t mean to poop on it right out of the gate, because it legitimately could be a strong build for her. But it could also be terrible. But what does it do? Well, first of all, it lets her have infiltration Woe, so she can hire Field Reporters (I figured this was coming) and any future non-NB woes. Additionally, if a model dies from Misery, you can summon a Poltergeist off of it. This really doesn’t happen often enough to rely on, but I understand wanting to increase Poltergeist's table time, especially given that it has such a cool model. Finally, the point of all of this is the ability to summon a Sorrow for a 10 of masks or higher. The model has to be summoned next to an enemy model which has a condition on it, and it allows the enemy to end any conditions on the model after the summons. At first blush, this doesn’t seem like a good trade. If you spend an AP to give something Paralyzed, let’s say, you don’t want to then spend one of Pandora’s AP and a high card AND give them the chance to remove the Paralyzed just to get a Sorrow, do you? Well, first of all I should point out that Sorrows can be quite good. Some people know that, some don’t, so let me make sure you know I’m in the first camp. Second, it doesn’t specify what type of Conditions the enemy model has to have. You can use Focused, Adrenaline, Defensive, etc. etc. etc. just as well as the ones you’re putting on them. And even if you need to use one of your own, sometimes you don’t need Incite on a model anymore, especially if you’re putting it on two models a turn as a way of improving Pandora’s mobility. And this is one of the few summons in the game where the new model comes in at full wounds. I’m not saying this is game breaking or anything, but I’m just saying it might not be terrible either. Let’s give it a chance and see.

Also, this is the one that should have been called “The Box Opens,” since we know that Sorrows come out of there. But hindsight is 20/20.

Lilith

Hey there Mama Monster. How you doin? You likin’ those new upgrades? I know you are…

Excuse me. Sorry you had to hear that. Forgot you were there for a second…

*ahem* Lilith received one general use and one specific crew build Upgrade. The one you’re going to see all the time is “The Song of Blood.” It gives her a couple of abilities that aren’t as important as the tactical action: One to place a scheme marker when an enemy model is killed by Black Blood (situational at best) and Blood in the Air, which lets you draw a card when one of your Black Blood models dies (better.) The (0) tactical action The Blood Heals is why you’re bringing this, as it gives her the ability to heal another friendly model with BB within 6” for 2. So, you know, Nekima and Graves. There are others, but...Nekima and Graves. She now has 3 0’s on her instinctual build, but the turns when you’ll need all 3 are infrequent. This is just good. The only way it would be better is if she could heal herself, but that might (probably would) be too much.

The other upgrade is The Land Consumes. I have a confession to make…I want this Upgrade to be good. I can’t be impartial about this. I want the “Fill the board with terrain” version of Lillith to be a thing. Problem is…it just isn’t for most games. Don’t get me wrong, the Mysterious Emmissary’s markers plus Lillith plus some Waldgeists is going to be a crap load of blast markers getting in your opponent’s way, but there are too many ways to get around them and…well why don’t I tell you what the upgrade does first? It gives her melee attack a ram trigger to summon a 50mm marker of hazardous terrain within 1” of the target. Ok, nice if it happens but maybe not worth cheating to pull off. Additionally, she gets to summon one within 3” of her at the beginning of her activation. She puts out a 6” aura letting her friendly models join her in being immune to Hazardous Terrain, which is also vital (and improves her synergy with the ME.) And, finally, if an enemy model is killed by Hazardous Terrain, she gets a 2/3/4 healing flip. It’s all good stuff, but you just can’t get enough terrain on the board (in my experience) to completely jam the opponents up. Or they have incorporeal or flight and ignore it. Or maybe you’re just lazy and summoning 3 different types of marker terrain on the board with different rules for each gives you a headache. They’re all possible reasons to leave this one in your card binder, especially for tournaments where terrain is (on average) more sparse. I’m sorry to be a bummer, and if I’m wrong and this build works I’d be delighted, but for now I’m not sold. I think it's just a meme list. That said, if you play on a very congested board (I’m looking at you, most of the Vassal maps) it can be brutal. And now, to move on seamlessly to the next master, like the professional Bloggist that I am.

*whispers* Later, girl. Hit me up on my DMs.

Zoraida

Big Z is a master that needed help, so she got it. *thumbs up* Powerful Control gives her Obey action a trigger on 2 masks to let the model she targeted take a (2) charge action instead of a (1), which was absolutely required. It was bologna that Zoraida’s whole shtick was using Obey on models when she was arguably the worst Obey master in the game. Being able to declare a charge with the enemy should make a huge difference here, as you're effectively exchanging one master AP for about 2.5 AP from the enemy model. Additionally, her Bewitch gains a double mask trigger as well allowing her to use Obey on the target immediately. It would be a whole lot of masks to pull off both triggers in a turn, but it could be very rewarding if it happened.

The other upgrade is a little more situational and ties in thematically to her Voodoo Doll interactions. Poisoned Fate makes any enemy models with conditions on them take 2 damage whenever they cheat fate. That’s…a lot of requirements, but I just got done pointing out how many conditions are in this game up above. It doesn’t have to be the Voodoo Doll’s stuff that would be triggering this, it could be Focused. It also gives Zoraida a decent way to do some direct damage, a Rg 18 attack vs. WP that deals damage to them based on the number of cards in their controller’s hand. Damage that doesn’t require a flip is always a crowd pleaser, but it requires them to have a condition first. There’s an incidental Crow trigger to put slow on a model (not saying Slow is incidental, but it seems like Zoraida’s gonna need her stones for masks now, so you’re maybe not gonna want to work too hard for this trigger.) This seems like a lot of work on its own, but remember that you can do these attacks through the Voodoo doll. This gives you some added flexibility, as 1) there’s nowhere the hemmed model can hide to keep you from hitting them and 2) since you control the Voodoo Doll, you can use this on him while you have lots of cards in hand to spike up the damage. This will probably mean you need to activate Zoraida early in the turn when you’re going to use the attack (we can’t all be Lynch and just refill our hand on the last activation,) but it’s a versatile attack that’s useful with or without the Voodoo Doll. The first upgrade is an every game take. The second is a good option for a specific type of crew, but not necessary every time.

Titania

My queen! *bows* What? No, of course I wasn’t flirting with Lilith. I wouldn’t presume to disgrace the Autumn Queen in such a way. I…*gulp* please stop looking at me that way…Hey! Let’s talk about your upgrades!

Titania also needed some help….uh…I mean she needed no help, but her overwhelming power has only grown as she’s recovered from her exile in Nythera. *phew, that was a close one* She gained a couple of Limited upgrades from Broken Promises. The first, Pact with the Grave Spirit, represents Titania’s ability to break leader models, as she did when she destroyed the Tyrants’ mortal forms. As such, her first ability, Death of Tyrants, lets her add a suit and deal +1 damage on any attack actions she takes against enemy Leaders. Additionally, she gains a version of Decaying Aura (I like the thematics of this) that extends out to aura 3 from her and prevents soulstone use to prevent damage or healing. Finally, she gets The Rot Within, a Ca action that requires a Crow on its TN, but deals an amount of damage to the target equal to the damage they’ve already taken, up to a maximum of 4 (or 5 with Death of Tyrants.) Additionally, a built in trigger lets you place a scheme marker in base contact with the model before removing it. So, obviously, Pact with the Grave Spirit is a much more offensively minded upgrade designed to have Titania go master or high point model hunting, setting them up with her other attacks (or her crew’s attacks) and then turning them into compost to finish things off.

Her other new limited, Royal Indignation, goes the other direction and lets her punish modes with lower Stations than her while giving her a limited ability to enhance her own crew. First of all, it changes any living minion or enforcers she hires into Undead Fae (for insight in how this is accomplished, see the Nythera module of Through the Breach. Or, alternately, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.) There isn’t a ton of built-in synergy to this other than the Taproot upgrade, which doesn’t see a ton of play anyways, but it does make the models no longer subject to Terrifying: Living tests…which is good I guess. The meat and potatoes of the upgrade is the Royal Indignation ability that reduces damage from an enemy model by an amount equal to its station, 2 for a peon or minion and 1 for a henchman or enforcer. On top of her Impossible to Wound and healing from scheme markers, this gives her what she needed to be the tanking Master she was designed for in the first place. Finally, she can use a (1) action to give another Fae without the Armor Condition (so they can have Armor built in) the Armor Condition. This is a way to boost up her minion Fae mostly, I’m thinking, as 2 armor hard to wound models are going to take a disproportionate amount of AP for most crews to remove, but it could also be some synergy with the converted models from the top of the card. So, essentially, Titania’s Limited upgrades offer you a choice of playstyles (as most good Limiteds do.) If you want her to tank and support, go RI. If you want a smashier crew, go with the Pact.

Finally, her Conflux is pretty solid, too. It allows the M.E. to add a suit of its choice to its duels whenever it’s within 3” of a Hungry Land Marker (which it wants to be most turns.) Finally, it adds a 0 action (because it doesn’t have enough of them to choose from, apparently) to give some buffs out to friendly Fae ranging from the Armor condition, healing a couple points of damage, burning+1 to any enemies’ they’re engaged with, or a scheme marker. It’s a shame he isn’t Living so Royal Indignation would turn him into a Fae and he could do it to himself, but you can’t have ALL the buffs I guess. As an unapologetic Mysterious Emissary apologist, I’m excited to try it if only for making his Changeling summons a lot easier.

Phew. Home stretch, folks. Lynch was reviewed in Ten Thunders. Lucius will be in Guild, who are the only faction we’ve got left to review. See you next time!

This blog will cover the evolution of the scheme portion of Gaining Grounds 2018.

Jumping right in...

The Always and doubles schemes appear unchanged from 2017. Currently Claim Jump and Eliminate the Leadership respectively.

All four suited schemes are currently new and all four can be accomplished even if the enemy crew is immune to conditions. If this holds and your event is run in a 50 SS standard format then you ought to have bare minimum 3 schemes your opponent can't deny with crew selection. Furthermore there are currently 0 schemes that hand an enemy a condition. I don't know if I expect that to remain until the end of beta but I would happily take the compromise of not having the hand out condition schemes suited. But I do like the strategy where you interact to acquire a condition and that gets neatly around condition immunity. Or Wyrd can extend the can't be immune to scheme conditions as well. But I suppose that is what beta is for.

- Smuggled Across (masks); Once per game your crew can reveal this scheme to score a number of VP equal to the number of minions on the enemy half of the table and not within 6" of the center.

Initial reaction; First I'm not entirely certain they didn't mean centerline because on flank deployment this is probably scored 3-3 at the end of turn 1. Gremlins will, more likely than not, auto score this after turn one if there is a pigapult present. In the current iteration most summoners can also probably be up 3 at the end of turn 1. I predict there will probably be a change to this scheme in its current form.

- Charge Soulstone (crows); Kill an enemy model within 6" of a master or a henchman and then discard a Soulstone to score 1 VP.

Initial reaction; Most crews I run that don't summon can get by on 3-4 SS. With that said odds are if you run a summoner and think you can kill 3 models in 1 activation you might catch someone by surprise since very few would expect a summoner to use SS in a non summoning function. This scheme will certainly foil the (current)mask scheme to some extent if you want to expose your minions in that fashion. I find this scheme interesting and I hope it makes it in some form.

- Buried Treasure (tomes); At the end of the game score 1 VP for each scheme marker that is both more than 6" from your deployment zone and more than 6" from all non leader models.

Initial reaction; This is 3 VP on corner deployment. Outside of that gut reaction this will be relatively simple for the masters and their crews which drop schemes everywhere as a byproduct of what they are already doing. Sensei Yu in most cases will get 3 easy VP as well. Ranged scheme removal and solid models that tank well will help defend this.

- Collect Evidence (rams); use interact to remove enemy scheme markers to reveal scheme and score a VP. If revealed you also score 1 VP at the end of the turn if there are 0 enemy scheme markers outside of 6" of its deployment zone.

Initial reaction; I love this scheme. I love that it is a foil for the tomes scheme if they both end up in the same pool. Chatty models will see a lot of work in 2018.

The number schemes appear to be a grab bag of book schemes, 2016/2017 schemes, and a hand full of new schemes. I won't list the numbers because there is a chance these will end up shuffled from where they currently sit.

- Hold Up Their Forces; Use no more than one model to engage more than one enemy model and maintain through the end of the turn. Score 1 VP at the end of each turn after the first if the requirement is satisfied.

Initial reaction; I'm not sure how I feel about this scheme. It punishes lists that rely on auras. Also peons currently count. So raptors can drop in end of turn and catch a bad positioning by surprise.

- Challenge; reveal the scheme at the start of a turn and then select one of your models and an enemy model as challengers. If the enemy challenger is killed by the friendly challenger score 1 VP and unreveal the scheme. You may discard 2 cards to unreveal the scheme and remove all challenge tags assigned by this crews scheme.

Initial reaction; this is basically the same thing as Vendetta (with Vendetta currently in the pool) only Masters and 0 cost models can be involved and you can aim for peons with 13SS models if so inclined. And if the enemy wins initiative then he can kill his model and you have to discard 2 cards to try again next round. So right off the bat cheating initiative is huge on both sides of scheme. I predict some form a change or possibly a full replacement of this scheme.

- Take One for the Team; Basically Frame for Murder with different scoring conditions.

Initial reaction; I prefer this to Frame For Murder because I can deny a point by using a cheaper model to land the killing blow and go about what I was doing. As an aside moving it to a numbered scheme will have less people complain when it does show up. I liked Frame and I think I like this version better. If anything makes it through unchanged this will probably be the first thing I would bet on.

- Don't Leave a Mark; when you scroll to the description it's Leave Your Mark.

Initial reaction; I'm probably not the first to catch the error. reserve initial reaction for the correction when I find it.

The other nine schemes are unchanged from what I can tell from their previously released versions.