Because
of [reasons] I’ve been struggling to get some Malifaux in recently, and have
temporarily sidelined my drive to play each of the Guild masters a certain
number of times to master the faction. That’s the reality of kids, family,
work, and all that other stuff. Truly, there is no Tyrant who poses a greater
threat to the good folk of Malifaux than the home life. I have received a Miss
Step from my buddy Jon that I’ve assembled and will look to use with Hoffman at
some point in the future, but I’ll post that when it gets some paint on it.
In the
meantime, we had a night recently when we sat down as a family and all painted
minis. My wife had an m1e Miranda that she’s going to use as a TTB character.
My kids had their own models. And, mostly because A) I have a few m1e avatar
models which I can theoretically use as Emissaries and B) I’ve been playing a lot
of Arkham Knight on the ps4 and Poison Ivy gave me a bit of inspiration for the
Neverborn’s walking angry plant creature, I decided to dust off the Avatar
Zoraida I built long ago and get it in ship shape. As such, I whipped together
my new proxy Emissary, and it looks a little something like this.
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| You know you can't resist her |
I like it, though the old GW brown
wash made the tree way shinier than I had initially intended and, of course, a
black crow with a gray beak isn’t exactly distinctive. It’s missing some basing
that I think will be pretty cool (I saw someone who had used pistachios to
essentially create the piranha plants from Mario to simulate “hungry land” that
I just have to steal.) But, this is the general idea, and I’m fairly happy with
how it turned out. Now time to drop it off the table the first time I go to use
it and break the thing, I suppose.
Of course, as soon as I decided
“Cool, I’ll paint up this Emissary in a theme that I like and get it on the
board,” I realized a couple of days later that it is widely considered to be
the worst of the lot (explained by UK no. 1 Greg Piskosz in this podcast http://arcanereservoir.podbean.com/e/arcane-reservoir-10-conflux-of-discussion-part-2/)
The tl:dr version is that Neverborn’s main advantage is maneuverability and
speed, whereas the Emissary summons hazardous terrain that project an aura
around them that restricts movement. Also, they have a short range summon spell
and a desire to sit on top of said hazardous terrain, meaning that the
Changelings have a very limited safe space where they won’t get eaten when they
appear. Greg refers to it as being essentially “anti-synergy,” which is a
bummer. But I painted the thing, so I’m by-god gonna get it on the tabletop.
Period.
So how to make use of this possibly
clunky thing? Their suggestion is to go with one of the two masters that grant
strong conflux upgrades to the ME (I’ll use that abbreviation from here forward.)
Pandora’s conflux is kind of crazy, as it lets the Emissary copy abilities from
other models within a certain range of the model. For those not aware of what “abilities”
means, flip to the front of your stat cards. The stuff written under the stats
are the abilities. So, you can borrow things like regeneration, terrifying,
armor, the Hooded Rider’s triggers or ability to add masks, etc etc etc. There’s
got to be something in there that’s broken, and it’s one of those abilities
that will only get better the more models come out in the future. The other one
is Collodi, because picking up buffs in response to summoning the Effigies
works out pretty well and can help the whole crew. However, I’m the kind of
nerd that is bothered by crews that aren’t at least pseudo-thematic, and my plant
lady ME doesn’t quite fit with those two dazzling-urbanites. So, let’s broaden
our thought process a bit, shall we?
This, plus some news I’ll share as
we get closer to Gencon, inspired me to shift focus to a new theme: Wrath of
Nature. The Neverborn have a lot of models that involve channeling plants and
the land itself to destroy the human invaders, and I wanted to combine this
idea with the ME. Waldgeists are sort of the marquis minions of embodying this
idea, as they’re essentially animated trees which can summon severe terrain and
lash out over a massive area with their vines. The masters which play most
closely into the theme are Zoraida and Lillith, IMO, where Z likes her
Swampfiends and Lillith can summon an additional tree and see through the
bushes to the enemy. Neither have particularly impressive Emissary upgrades, so
I imagine I’ll be using the generic one that buffs minions (like, say,
Waldgeists.)
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| I mean, I guess you could say Lillith has some thematic synergy with nature... |
Lillith I think is a very
interesting combination with this crew, as she gives you increased maneuverability
and manipulation of the terrain that I think combines interestingly with the
summoning of forests she can do along with her minions (I’m aware that the
Waldgeist’s markers don’t block LoS, but go with me for a moment.) She can see
through them and use Tangled Shadows to shift models into/around/out of them.
This can also solve another ME problem, namely its not being particularly
mobile. Walk 6 isn’t bad, per say, but we’re the Neverborn and we can do
better. A walk 6 model is in danger of getting left behind, and dropping the ME
forward on the board to start projecting its dangerous terrain into the enemy’s
face might help improve its efficacy (assuming, of course, it doesn’t just get
killed. I’m realistic.) So, here’s my first stab at a list using this concept.
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| For some reason the pictures I took of my Lillith are very pixellated. Its not an amazing paint job, but it isn't this bad... |
Wrath of Malifaux Core Crew
Lillith-Beckon Malifaux, On Wings
of Darkness
Doppleganger-Mimic’s Blessing
(because why wouldn’t you)
Mysterious Emmisary- Mysterious
Conflux
Cherub- (I figure if we’re going
with the theme, might as well go all out)
Waldgeist x2
This puts us at 35/50 soulstones. I think you fill in the
rest of the crew with either Sillurids for scheme running scenarios or
something that can hit hard (Nekima? Illuminatedx2?) for more killy stuff. Illuminated
getting + just for being within aura 4 of the emissary seems good (of course,
that also likely puts them close to the severe terrain. Ugh.)
Will it work on the board? I don’t know. I think it would be
better at scenarios like Turf War where you’re going to pile into the center of
the board and you can just castle up and hold points, but I could be wrong.
Likely am, if this blog’s history is any indication.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
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