Friday, June 2, 2017

Book 5 Pre-Previews: Gremlins

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.)