Book 5 Model Pre-Previews: Arcanists

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.