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!)
No comments:
Post a Comment