Apologies for the delay in posts. Real life being what it
is, and my local Malifaux scene consisting entirely of me, there’s been a bit
of a gap since last I posted. I have, however, managed to get some games in
during the intervening period using Vassal, which I’ve come to enjoy quite a
lot. Additionally, the Wave 2 Beta files are out and have been updated a couple
of times, bringing us all the models that we owned prior to the switch over to
second edition as well as some new toys for the gremlins and a new Ten Thunders
and outcast master. The rules are obviously still in flux and subject to
change, but I thought I’d take a moment to return to Malifaux’s favorite drug
dealer and take a look at what new stuff may support the Lynch Mob on the
tabletop. So, without further ado…
First of all, I guess I can say that I was wrong about
Illuminated with the last post. They’re very good. I played a Squatter’s Rights
game where one sat on the center marker and withstood wave after wave of
summoned punk zombies from Nicodem and survived. They’re good, I was in error. Stop
throwing things at me, please.
Ok, with that out of the way, the three models added in with
this update to round out the Honeypot crew are Mr. Graves, Mr. Tannen, and The
Depleted. Of the three, I think the one I like the best is Graves. Maybe I just
have a thing for large, follicularly challenged men, but he’s always been one
of my favorites since the crew came out, and it was thus very disappointing that
he fell into the same category as a lot of underused Neverborn minions in 1.5,
i.e. “this is good, but there’s so many overpowered things in faction that you
will never have points for it.” The core of Mr. Graves has remained the same,
in that he’s a bruiser who can throw his weight around, reposition models in
the enemy’s crew, and be relatively tough. Armor 1 and Hard to Kill make him
not-trivial to remove. He has his fence post for clubbing the enemy and the
ability to do a lot of repositioning with his “Show you the door,” where you
can throw an enemy model 4” and follow along into base to base, getting a free
melee swing with a ram trigger. The playtest game I’ve played with him ended up
going in my favor in part because, at one point, I had gotten close enough to
Nicodem to throw him out through a doorway and away from his corpse counters, slowing
a summoning engine that had been grinding my crew down prior to that point. His
zero action is marginal, but it’s the only one you’ve got so you may as well
try to turn it on and catch the 5 or higher of tomes you need to make charges
difficult for your opponent. He’s solid, and he can use a different attack
trigger to attempt to tank for his counterpart Mr. Tannen if you include both
of them.
Unfortunately, as it stands, I don’t think Tannen is worth
including. His main gimmick is the cooler passive ability that forces models that
want to cheat fate when they’re near him to ditch an extra card first. He can
redraw your hand to catch up with your opponent if you’re a bit reckless with
cheating fate early in the turn. Unfortunately, his utility dips a bit from
there. Bore to Tears drops the opponent’s walk and charge by 2, which is
underwhelming given that the ten inch range likely means the enemy model will
be near to where they’re trying to walk by the time you can cast it at them
anyways. Leave it to Luck is a 0 that penalizes any tome cards you flip and
buffs any mask cards, which I can’t really see myself doing unless I can find a
way to look ahead at the deck and/or rearrange it to optimize the ability.
Aaaand, that’s about it. His melee attack isn’t impressive, he doesn’t have any
interaction with scheme markers, he’s just kind of there dampening your
opponent’s ability to cheat fate. He has very little survivability outside of
Manipulative (which Graves can turn back on for the rest of the turn.) He has
some interesting synergy with the Neverborn Fears Given Form upgrade, but
throwing more points onto an already expensive, fragile model doesn’t seem like
an optimal solution. This is a model I would give more consideration at 5
soulstones (but would still have hesitation,) but at 7 it just isn’t that
impressive. I always hesitate when it comes to models that don’t help you win
so much as make it hard for your opponent to win. If you deny your opponent all
of his victory points, you can still end up in a draw without scoring any of
your own. As such, a model like Tannen that is purely designed for causing an opponent
grief is going to be the first thing cut when it comes time to make room in the
crew, even if I was wanting to play him. Hopefully we’ll see some improvement
here in forthcoming waves.
Last is The Depleted. Prior to the release of the version
1.5 The Drowned I would probably have just dismissed The Depleted, as they seem
to be built around being a nuisance model with AoE damage when they die and
bonuses to disengaging strikes when in melee. This is what I thought of the
Drowned after first read (along with most of the Malifaux world, I hasten to
point out.) In the end, however, we discovered that this kind of cheap blocking
model that imposes a cost on the opponent to remove, in the form of a high
resilience model that will require more than 1 AP to remove, and killing them
means you get caught in a blast, take 2 damage, and become Briliant for the
rest of the turn. They’re basically walking Brilliance Bombs. At 4 stones each
they’re quite cheap and the bonus to disengaging strikes as well as some
unpleasant triggers on their melee means that the opponent will have a hard
time just ignoring/walking away from them once engaged. I forsee them moving up
board quickly to go squat on the parts of the board that are going to be the biggest
problem for the opponent, daring them to remove them. I wish that their push ability let them push
towards models with the Darkened trait as well as Brilliance, and I was really
hoping they would be significant when they were within range of Hungering
Darkness (as they used to be,) but I’ll be interested to see what they can do
on the table top.
Out of the rest of Lynch’s factions, there are a handful of
things that jumped out as having some synergy with his crew. Out of the
Neverborn, the Mysterious Effigy seems like a good way to get a version of
Lynch’s upgrades into the crew without having to use an upgrade slot for them.
It allows models within 3” of it to cheat face down and, with its 0 action, can
give back a poor man’s version of the Squeal trigger to Lynch. Not a lot of the
models outside of the effigy immediately jump out from the Neverborn as having specific
syngergy, but I do like Tuco if only to provide one of the things the crew
doesn’t have access to otherwise, From the Shadows. Plus, if you pair him up
with Graves you have a nice little block of Black Blood and repositioning
effects to perform some area denial. They can hold some Squatter Markers
together and throw people out of the center of the board in Stake a Claim.
The Ten Thunders, once again, provide some indirect synergy
that comes through Lynch’s ability to prevent discards. One thing I noticed was
a trick off of two of Yan Lo’s ancestors with the War Eternal Trigger. It
requires a tome on the attack flip, but with Lynch’s Ace abilities can allow
you to, if you were going to do minimum damage anyways, cheat in an ace, draw a
card for cheating, and then pick the ace back up for a little card advantage
bonus. Not a game winner by any stretch, but sort of a neat little trick that
may help out with deck cycling. I am more interested, however, in some of the
models introduced with the new Ten Thunders master Shen Long. Sensei Yu is intriguing
with Lynch. While he isn’t especially killy (although an attack that doesn’t
allow defensive triggers is pretty decent), his tactical actions all have a
built-in trigger to grant himself focused+1, which he can use in the
traditional manner for positive attack and damage flips or can be reduced to
throw down scheme markers. Yu also can do some nice repositioning tricks on
your crew or the opponent’s in the process of generating this focus. What
jumped out at me was the ability to ditch two cards (Aces, naturally) and use a
0 action off of the crew leader’s stat card. Lynch has some nice 0 actions, and I'm a big fan of being able to Mulligan twice in the same turn, so I’m very interested
to see what Yu can do with these. Along a similar line of reasoning, the Monk
of the High River can discard up to four cards to do a 1 AP melee attack per
discard. I get the feeling that, unlike when I’m using him as Neverborn, there’s
going to be a high incentive for Ten Thunders Lynch to hold some of those aces
through multiple turns to exploit these and previous discard-based abilities.
So, lots of ideas
paired up with a little bit of actual playtest experience is all I can throw
out this time. My Vassal opponent is probably a little tired of Lynch (or at
least Nexus of Power on Hungering Darkness) but I’ll have to see what I can do
to get more testing time in with the new stuff. In the meantime, I’ll leave you
with a quick public service announcement. When painting, if you find your
bottle of Vallejo paint has clogged up in the nozzle with dried product, do not
attempt to clear the clog by squeezing harder.
It can only end in sorrow.
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