Shadow and Void: A Death Marshals Story-Prologue

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good,” – Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 1-4.

“Trouble is, God forgot to ask the Darkness for permission first…” Death Marshall Burns

***

               

                He didn’t see me when he stepped into the office. The remainders of the rain ran in rivulets from the wide brim of his hat, dribbling down his duster to pool on the smooth knotwood floor. He pulled the gloves from his gnarled old hands one-by-one, tossing them carelessly at on the floor beneath his coat rack. It wasn’t until he’d finished removing his soaked garments and turned, probably already tasting the amber whiskey waiting in the flask hidden in his desk, that he caught sight of me in the orange beam of light streaming in through the window.

                “Christ, Burns!” he shouted, his back slamming back against the doorframe as he reached for the gun at his belt, “What do you think you’re playing at? You’re lucky I didn’t put a hole in your…” he drifted off as I leaned forward into the light, letting it fall on the maimed remains of my face. “Holy…what happened to you?’

                I smirked, or at least I tried. I suddenly became acutely aware of how many muscles it requires to create that facial expression, and how many of them I was now missing. The right side of my face angrily grimaced at him, the bottom row of teeth showing clearly through the ripped away portion of my lip and cheek. “I found the Butcher, Tom,” I replied, the hard B slurring slightly. “He didn’t go quietly.”

                His eyes widened, working through this new information. He ran a hand through the thin, gray hair on top of his head before finally scratching at the sandpaper stubble on his cheek. “Shouldn’t you be in a surgeon’s office?” he finally said.

“I suppose,” I answered, “But I’ve already been and went. There ain’t much they can do for me. The wound’s torn so bad that, even if I had the missing bits, the docs wouldn’t be able to sew ‘em back on. Besides,” I chuckled, “I didn’t feel like digging in the bastard’s belly to get them back.”

“Well, hell,” he finally answered, nimbly stepping past that particular mental image, “If you killed the bastard, then it sounds like reason to celebrate to me. You’ve been on his trail for, what, two years now?”

                “Three,” I growled, “He dropped fourteen bodies in all, that we know. Fifteen, now, I suppose.”

                Tom crossed the room, pulling open the drawer to his desk. He pulled out the amber bottle and two glasses, laying them out on the table and pouring us both a finger’s worth. He slid one across to me and we held them up into the beam of gaslight. “Well, they can rest easier now,” he said, “Well done. How’d you find him?”

                “The bastard really was a butcher, if you can believe it,” I replied, “The most recent victim, a girl from Ridley, had a receipt in her pocket from his shop.” I tossed back the drink, wiping away the trickle that leaked down my right jaw in irritation. “I showed up at his place near the Howling Slums last night and took him down.” My voice drifted off for a moment, remembering the horrors I’d found in that butcher shop, but I shook my head to scatter them. “Kind of hard to believe it would end that way, after all this time, with just some stupid screw-up.”

                Tom shrugged. “Sometimes we just get lucky,” he said, “Though in my experience, a lot of the time, these rippers want to be caught so the truth of their story can get out. Nothing makes them crazier than when the newsbills get the details wrong, you know. Why, I interviewed a man once who spent twenty minutes haranguing me for the amateurish way his crime scenes were photographed. Did I ever tell you about the Howling Slums Strangler?”

He stood up, pouring himself a second glass and swirling it thoughtfully as he started to pace towards the door. I could see the telltale signs of one of his lectures coming, and I moved to interject. “That’s the peculiar thing, Tom. They didn’t get any of the details wrong with the Butcher. Just this morning, the Tattler published a story speculating that the Butcher was taking the girls’ meat for use in food, based on the style of the cuts. Sure enough, there was hamburger in the cold rooms of this guy’s shop that…well it wasn’t beef. Thing is, we never released those details regarding the state of the victims’ bodies. How did they figure that out, do you suppose?”

                Tom shrugged again. “Who can say? That bloody Cochrane woman has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies. Maybe she heard something, or found some clue we missed?”

                “Or maybe she had a source,” I answered, voice turning to ice, “A source who knew who and what the Butcher was all along.”

                Tom’s footfalls suddenly stopped, his back stiffening. His free hand dropped down next to his holster before the ugly click of the hammer of my Peacebringer echoed in the silence.

                “How long, Marshall Vinton?” I growled, “How long have you been a goddamned Resurrectionist?”

                Tom craned his neck back, the fingers of his gun hand relaxing as he scanned the water stained ceiling for elusive answers. “Sometimes it seems like only a few weeks,” he finally responded, his voice haunted. He lifted the glass, taking one last pull of the liquor, and then gave a dry, raspy chuckle.

                “Sometimes it feels like all my life.” 

Ripples of Fate Reviews: The Guild

1.       The Printing Press: This is a pretty boss totem. It’s a mechanical press on arachnid limbs Nellie constructed and animated with a soulstone carried by her father. Its protectiveness has led her to suspect that it may have a portion of his soul inside. It has Arcane Reservoir+1, which is always a good thing. Df5 and WP6 are pretty strong for a totem, especially paired with Armor+2. Models that are pushed or placed in base contact with impassable terrain within 8” of it take a point of damage. Its melee attack hands out slow, which is awesome, and deals a little bit of damage if the target is already slow. And, for a (0), it can hand Nellie some evidence and let her go immediately after it as a chain activation. Very good. Don’t know why you would leave home without it.

2.       Phiona Gage: She’s a union worker who suffered a terrible accident, was denied work, and is now held up by Nellie as an example of the Union’s corruption (despite the fact that the Guild caused the accident that injured her in the first place.) She has ok defenses for a henchman, hard to kill, and goes up to 7 DF when she’s in terrain. Unimpeded helps make it so you’re essentially never going to want to walk her in the open if you can help it. She gets a smell-fear-esque free attack on enemies that fail a WP duel outside her activation. Her pick-axe does pretty solid damage and gets a + to attack versus models that have already activated (which Nellie can set up with Incite from one of her upgrades.) Probably one of her most defining abilities is calling up a 50mm stone pillar of hard cover blocking impassable terrain (we all know Adam likes summoning terrain.) And, finally, she has a Francisco-esque ability to jump into melee with someone who is engaging one of her friends and then push the friendlies away while gaining a free attack. She’s a pretty solid henchman who would be used all the time in some other faction. In this faction she has to contend with Ryle, Francisco, etc. in this point value slot so we’ll have to see how she measures up to them.

3.   Allison Dade: Hurray for Through the Breach characters in Malifaux! Dade is a reporter from the backwater contract town of Innocence who survived the chaos there and has relocated to Malifaux, joining the staff of the Tattler. She’s a monkeywrench henchman designed to basically screw up whatever the opponent is trying to do (very Lois Lane-ish.) Before she activates she penalizes enemy models for declaring attacks near her, and after she attacks she heals her friends when they attack, so deciding when to activate her will be important. She’s manipulative 12 and can gain fast by discarding a card whenever the opponent gains VP. Nice. Her attack hands out slow, deals damage if the target is near a guardsman, and has a trigger for each suit that hand out a variety of debuffs (Discard a scheme marker or take damage, push a target away, discard a card or take damage, or push a friendly into melee with the target.) She can put a condition on enemies for a (0) action that deals damage if they declare an attack action, and her tactical action forces an opponent to either discard a scheme marker or show you their hand. She seems incredibly annoying.

4.       Field Reporter: What can I say about these guys that Joel Henry and the Schemes and Stones folks haven’t already drooled about? 4SS earns you an unimpeded, disguised, manipulative 12 minion that can function as a scheme runner. They’re woes, which is odd since Pandora doesn’t get an upgrade to hire them (maybe some time in the future, fingers crossed.) Their attack action does nothing on its own but has an array of triggers including dealing damage every turn, slowing, giving a – to attack actions, or pushing the model 5” away. They can hop to enemy scheme markers and discard them with the same AP. And they can ditch a card for Reference the Field manual to let them choose the trigger on their attack. For the cost, these guys are pretty solid. Joel’s suggestion of taking Embedded on Nellie and hiring four ronin and three of these guys seems really aggravating, to be sure.

5.       Death Marshal Recruiter: These guys are basically what you think they are-Death Marshal veterans that go out into the world to find new Death Marshals. We need “Lady Justice Wants You” recruitment posters. They have DF/WP 6, 7 wounds each, and hard to wound 1 to help keep themselves alive. Apparently the soft life of a recruiter has caused them to forget how to finish the job, but they can now discard a card to keep friendly Guild Marshals within 4” from dying. If you can keep one of these near Lady J, they can keep her alive. Additionally, they can discard a card to target something that is buried. His recruiter’s sword has the ubiquitous critical strike built in to go with the 2/3/4 damage spread and can, with a tome trigger, use Glimpse the Void to bury the target. He also has a Peacebringer for…reasons. He can push 5” towards enemy targets with a (0) action and can, with a trigger, pass out attacks to another friendly model engaged with the target. Additionally, he can use a (0) to give a friendly non-leader model Guild Marshall for a turn. Shame it doesn’t last for the rest of the game like Shotgun Wedding, but there’s probably something exploitative about that. Still, I think they’re pretty solid, and the ability to keep Lady J or The Judge alive for the cost of a card means they should at least merit consideration.

6.       Witchling Thrall: These guys are rogue spellcasters that Sonnia gives…special attention. They’re 9ss minions that sit on a 40mm base and are essentially berserker dudes. They have 12 wounds and impossible to wound, so their defenses probably don’t matter (5/5 for reference.) They automatically pass Horror duels, regardless of the total and can, once per turn, take a melee action when a model places a scheme marker within 4” of them. Said melee attack does 3/4/6 damage and can choose between a pair of built in triggers to either heal the thrall for 2 if attacking someone with a WP 6 or more or force the opponent to discard a card if WP 5 or less. They have a range 8 Ca that adds a little more blast damage to a Sonnia crew and can push all damaged models with a trigger. Finally, they have a (0) action Yank the Chain to push into base contact with a friendly model. The last bit has a crow trigger you have to take if possible which results in your making a melee attack against the friendly model, so you have to be careful. They seem like they can do some hurting, so expect to see some play, particularly in strats like Collect the Bounty where high damage minions are at a priority.

Schemes

Nellie: Guild Funds give Nellie more things she can do with her evidence condition at the end of her turn, allowing her to dump evidence +2 for healing, Evidence+3 for giving a model Hard to Kill until the end of its next activation, or dropping Evidence+4 to gain 2 soulstones. The last will likely never happen and the third is only situationally useful, so the heal seems like the most frequent. You also gain a trigger to df/wp that gives her more evidence and gives her the ability to let you count a death from conditions near you as her kills for strat and scheme purposes. Embedded is the infamous “hire four mercs and don’t pay the merc tax” upgrade. It also puts a couple of triggers to add more utility to her Hot off the Presses attack. I like the Misleading Headlines upgrades, which gives her the very powerful Incite (0) action and lets her lower her evidence or discard cards to pass activations (no more out activating us, jerks.) Probably the upgrade I would use most frequently is Delegation, which gives her a Tactical Action to pass out Fast to friendly models and, at the cost of lowering her evidence, place a scheme marker in base to base with them or heal them. Finally, there’s a Journalist upgrade that makes all other journalists within aura 8 have an attack trigger, transparency, to drop scheme markers after succeeding.

Generals: Phiona’s upgrade gives her a + to damage flips when hitting models which have already activated, emphasizing her “activate me late” modus operandi. Captain Dashel gains a (1) ap cast action resisted by Wk to summon a Guild Guard in base to base with the model (a resisted summon spell? Weird) and puts a couple of triggers onto his pistol for critical strike or a tome trigger to discard an enemy scheme marker and push the target. The Executioner gains Ready to Work which gives him +1 wk and the ability to discard the upgrade when it declares a charge and take it for (1) ap. Curfew may as well say “take this when playing Gremlins,” as it allows you to give slow to all enemy models which haven’t activated when your crew has no one left to activate. It costs you the upgrade and a soulstone, but taking away that advantage for a turn could be pretty helpful I’m thinking. Numb to the World may as well be a Papa Loco upgrade, as getting to ignore conditions and being able to discard a card to keep your opponent from Obeying him to explode would be very valuable to him. Otherwise you'll have to chose if its worth the cost to protect your big beaters from these. Finally, A Debt to the Guild is the Guild’s answer to Show of Force. If the model with the upgrade is killed or sacrificed, you add a Soulstone to its pool. Also, once per game the model can draw a card at the start of its activation and deal an additional point of damage with all of their attacks. You don’t discard the upgrade, so it stays in play for the game. Nice. 

RIpples of Fate Previews M. 2: Nellie, Reva, Titania

So, surprisingly, Wyrd actually released quite a bit more information on the Ripples of Fate box sets prior to Gencon. I thought it would just be the images of the box sets and, by the way, bravo to them for having ALL SEVEN of the new box sets as well as all of the remaining Book 3 models which haven’t been released available for the show. The sculpting staff at Wyrd deserve a lot of kudos for this. This will be the first time since M1E (possibly the first time in the history of Malifaux) when they’re completely up to date. So, cheers for that. However, mid-day on Thursday the 21^st, they released some crew summaries and the backside of the master cards to the public. Therefore, since the previous preview posts (yay alliteration) were so popular, I thought it would be time to go back and revisit the previews. There’s only 2 weeks left to the show, however, so we’re gonna have to pick up the pace a bit. On with the show!

Nellie Cochrane

                Fluff-wise, Nellie has been confirmed to be the leader of the Guild run newspaper in Malifaux city. As such, she serves their purpose by not exposing their corruption while digging into everybody else’s (though the story suggests she’s not crazy about this arrangement, necessarily.) She’s got a crew of journalists that work with her as well as her companion, Phiona Gage (a reference from a famous historical medical case of a railroad worker who took a metal spike through his brain and lived, but with an altered personality.) She’s a crusader of truth and, at least from the blurb, is possibly the only truly good person in the entire game of Malifaux. That said, I haven’t read her short stories, so she’s probably secretly kicking puppies or something.

As predicted, Nellie is very different from your average Guild master (IE she’s not going to smash you in the face.) She has a few options for attacking between 1) Scathing Review: an attack that attaches a condition which deals damage every turn unless they perform an interact action (which will then give Nellie more Evidence,) 2) Propaganda: an attack which does a smallish amount of damage but which has a number of triggers which can push the model, let something else take a swing at it, or give it slow, or 3) Hot off the Presses which pushes a model to a scheme marker and gives them burning 3. Propaganda is probably the most interesting, since the additional text lets you drop your evidence condition by 1 to declare more of the triggers off the attack. She can chew up the scheme markers she drops at her feet to get a free 6” push as a zero action as well. She has upgrades which will allow her to hire up to 4 mercenaries without paying the mercenary tax (which will, likely, necessitate taking multiple mercs, since it’s unlikely to be a free upgrade.) Misleading headlines grants her the ability to avoid being out-activated by the enemy crew (a frequent problem with Guild crews) and gives her the very powerful Incite action. Delegation lets her heal models or give them fast (!) which has some interesting interactions with those big, scary mercs you might be hiring or, you know, all the big scary things the Guild already has. So, essentially, Nellie is a big bag of tricks and aggravation for your opponent. I can see her essentially following along with some big gribbly like a Peacekeeper, healing it or giving it Fast, and handing it free attacks with Propaganda. Feels a bit Hoffman-meets-Pandora-meets-Collette to me. She will be mine, someday, but she may stay on Vassal for the immediate future. School supplies have to be bought for my kids this month.

Reva

                Reva’s not at all what I thought she would be in the story. I was with everybody else on thinking “death nun,” based on her appearance, but apparently she is a girl from a rich family who could speak to dead people. They locked her up in the attic, but she escaped with the help of a fallen Guild Exorcist. I’m usually a bit more PC about these things but, based on what I’ve seen so far, *yawn*. I kind of liked the idea of the Resurectionist Nun, I’m not going to lie, so I’m disappointed in this. But, this is just a blurb rather than the full stories from the book, so I’ll reserve judgement until I know the full tale. She seems to have kind of a “Joan of Arc” for the Resurrs, as it mentions that she’s attracting a sort-of death cult that is fanatically loyal.

                The best analogy I can get from my impressions of Reva’s role on the table are “Resurrectionist Rasputina,” only not really. Her main attack comes from Ethereal Reaping, a 1 AP attack that will target anything within 3” or her (and she’s on a 50mm base, so that’s a big range) or a corpse marker within 18”. The attack does pretty strong, Perdita-ish damage with some decent triggers, so this could mess opponents up pretty badly. You won’t want to overlook the Drain Life ability, however, as it has the potential to damage an opponent and heal Reva for up to 5 damage depending on the margin by which she beats the defender in a duel. We all know how fond I am of non-damage flip attacks, after all. Her tactical actions let her teleport to corpse markers or discard corpse markers to add friendly scheme markers. Her upgrades feel toolbox-y, though the one that gives her a corpse candle starting on the enemy’s side of the board and allows her to use Strength of the Fallen while engaged seems pretty strong for her. She’s described as being a quick master who pops around the board, does damage, or perhaps prepares for a big final charge at the end of the game.

Titania

                Ah, my Faerie queen. How we all prepare to revel in the glory of your return. Titania’s fluff we already more or less knew. She’s the resurrected former leader of the Fae who, upon defeating the titans and destroying their physical forms, was locked away by her followers (the current-day Neverborn) and forgotten. She’s back now, and this time she’s pissed. Part of what I want to see story-wise from the book is which of the Neverborn’s masters fall on her side versus which are going to be opposed to her. I can’t imagine Lillith bending the knee, especially given her people’s hatred of the Undead, but I could definitely see Nekima aligning herself with Titania as a means of getting revenge. We do know that she considers humanity to be a scourge of vermin that need to be wiped out, so that would suggest that Jacob Lynch, Zoraida, and the Dreamer are not going to be on her friends list.

                The attack action A Wicked Silence and A New Harvest result in the scheme markers she needs getting dropped. Her main attack is Bloody Command which can discard scheme markers to spike the damage up, heal a friendly model, or forgo Titania’s damage and call in a beater to smash the target (speaking of Nekima.) Finally, she can use her (0) action and discard scheme markers to push herself along which, if she combines it with a triple walk, will give her up to a 21” move in a turn. Sexy. We don’t know which, if any, of Titania’s upgrades are Limited (and, thus, which can be combined,) but we know a few of them. One forces an opponent to discard 2 cards to attack her after she hits a trigger. Forest claims all lets her convert corpse and scrap markers to scheme markers (seems like a pretty strong choice.) And, finally, there’s an upgrade which lets her name one member of her crew as a champion, which gives them some manner of buffs. This lets you apply some flexibility to who gets the upgrade and prevents them getting taken off before they can make use of the abilities, presumably, which tends to happen to me whenever I bring a new shiny to a game. She’s the crew box I’ll be picking up at Gencon, but that’s been the case since the Nythera event, frankly, and that didn’t have anything to do with the rules. I can’t be unbiased with Titania, is what I’m saying, but I think she’s great.

Check back next time for the remaining 4 masters. 

Ripples of Fate Preview: Nellie Cochrane

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! It’s a new Monday Preview from Wyrd!

                Named for groundbreaking female journalist Nellie Bly (real name Elizabeth Cochran Seaman,) this new addition to the Guild has quite a legacy to uphold. For whatever reason, the face looks odd to me, but the render of the sculpt has a lot more of that Newsy “Golly-gosh-gee-whillickers” look that is so out of place in Malifaux and especially in the Guild, of all things. Wait, a Guild master that doesn’t just explode everything in sight or stab it with a ridonculous sword? Who’d have thought? I’m excited for this new theme for the faction where I initially started my journey through the Breach.

                Well, so that’s a tough master, right there. Df and Wp 6, 11 wounds, and Revisionist History to make it so that A) your opponent never gets to cheat a damage flip against her and B) you always get to cheat their damage flip regardless of any negative twists they may have. Wow! Now this is a crew that will be happy to draw their black joker into their hand! She has a Wk of 5 and no charge, so not going to set any speed records, but Nellie seems to want to be playing a support master anyways. She seems to revolve around a new condition unique to her, Evidence, that drops off of her at the end of the turn, resulting in her dropping a scheme marker. Strangely, evidence is a stacking condition (since it reads as Evidence +1) but the condition says nothing about reducing it by 1. So, that seems to suggest that you have more things for which you can use it during your turn, including using it to push models away which fail attack flips within 8” of her. Interesting.

                As a Guild master, she’s definitely something new in that she appears to interact with or generate scheme markers and acts through support rather than direct attacks (I’m aware Lucius exists, but, come on now.) I think Nellie’s pretty cool, and I want to see what she can really do. This is definitely one of the masters that’s tougher to gauge based on the front of her card. The blurb in the Monday preview suggests that she uses propaganda against her enemies and incites (note lack of capitalization, sad face) them to mess up in public, manipulates schemes, and even does something with the way the Guild hires mercenaries. Weird! I want more info! But that’s not what we’re going to get, next week we get to see what the Gremlins are getting. See you then! 

The Cavalry Is Here! (and a quick update on the Campaign League!)

Just a brief one today taking a look at a roster list I’ve been mulling over recently (Author’s note: I thought of this before the impromptu Malifools episode where Joel Henry brought it up. That said, Joel is smarter than me, and was likely thinking about this before Book 3 came out, or something, and was just keeping it to himself.)

Let’s start with the list:

Cavalry Charge!

Guild 50SS

Lucas McCabe-Badge of Speed, Glowing Sabre, Promises

3x Mounted Guard

Pale Rider

The Lone Marshall

6SS

So, obviously this list is built to capitalize on the Book 3 guild minion the Mounted Guards. Individually, these horsemen provide a lot of good abilities. They’re fast; relatively tough with armor +1, 8 wounds, and a 0 action to give themselves and everything near them a + to defense flips; and a Melee 6 saber and ever popular Guild Peacebringer (both with critical strike built in, of course) to dish out punishment. Their real value to the crew, however, comes from their interaction with other models in the crew. Whenever they declare a charge against a target, they can bring any other friendly model with a Cg of 7 or more that’s nearby along for the ride, placing within 2” of where the Mounted Guardsman ends up, creating the titular “Cavalry Charge!” effect on the game board.  This creates some awesome maneuverability, especially since their other front of the card ability, “Reinforcements” lets them push friendly models engaged with their charge targets away. This bonus movement is a key advantage for the crew, and can help overcome its lower model count.

So obviously this crew needs a mounted master to lead them, and that brings us to Lucas McCabe. He’s fast enough, and since Mounted Guardsmen are all minions, his upgrade tossing shenanigans grant them the full benefits of the thrown upgrades as well as "Promises." A glowing sabre being tossed to someone with a cavalry charge action could lead to some very injured faces. Also, its not like anyone doesn’t take Badge of Speed anyways, but its clutch for this crew as a means of overcoming their reduced number of activations. As for the rest of the crew, the options for staying within the Cg of  7+ theme are a little limited in Guild (there are more if you take Lucius with his upgrade and hire Mounted Guards into the Neverborn, but that’s for somebody else’s blog post.) Just to stay with the mounted combat theme, I went with Pale Rider and The Lone Marshall. Lone Marshal is no slouch in melee and can tank, but I sort of envision a bubble of McCabe and Mounted Guards taking the fight directly to the enemy while Lone Marshal and/or Pale Rider take flank sweeping duty followed by scheme running. Once you reach later turns, Pale Rider will be better suited to get into the mix and try to capitalize on his big-time damage outputs, but as usual with the Riders its best to keep him distant early on until he can protect himself. Also, his zero action lets him drop scheme markers rapidly as well, filling what is very obviously a gap in the crew. There are some other models you can take in their place that make the charge numbers (Lady Justice is one slightly terrifying option, surprisingly Sonnia’s Purifying Flame totem is a less frightening one.) McCabe has always had strong synergy with Guild Hounds using his totem, Luna, and they can charge right along with the Guardsmen as well.

Is it a great crew? I don’t really know. The only model I’ve ever used on the tabletop was a Lone Marshall once in the early days of Wave 1, and he got mulched by a Red Joker damage flip with Lady Justice that left a bad taste in my mouth. The big risk, as I’ve kept mentioning, is that you’re going to get out activated in most games so you’re going to have to make those activations count by having a plan, sticking to it, and executing it. Chances are, a more mixed force with some elements of the cavalry mixed with strong support models like Austringers will end up being more competitive, but I still think you could beat some people with this crew. Be the bullies (this is the Guild, after all), and pick on the weaker models to get them out of the way so you can focus fire the big-bads down as a team. Use McCabe to protect the other members of the crew, as he’s much more tanky and frankly if you start losing models your crew is going to fall apart in chunks. I think they’ll be very good for some scheme pool/strategy combinations, less effective for others where they have to split up to claim quadrants, but I love the theme, so I want to see what they can do.

You know, after I get done with this narrative campaign thing, that is.

Speaking of which, time for a quick update!

MMNCL Week 2 Standings

	Total
	TP	Diff	VP
Ryle's Retaliators	0	-4	13
Hannah's Hellions	6	9	18
Anna's Executioners	6	7	14
Wu Kang	3	4	14
Tokkun	3	-5	11
Rolling Thunder	3	-1	9
Big Hats	3	0	11

The Outcast and Restrictionist crews are both off to strong starts thus far, with both winning by healthy margins in the first two games. A lucky injury flip on a belle has resulted in a belle that drops multiple corpse markers when it dies, which is troubling since Anna’s bringing Spare Parts. The Outcasts have notably made it through the first two weeks with a clean slate for injuries, and Hannah’s suit currently sports a fearsome steam gatling gun for ranged support. Bringing up the rear are the brave forces of the Guild (clearly their defeats coming due to treachery and deceit,) but early reports from Week 3 suggest that Ryle’s Retaliators’ fortunes may have changed.

Cowboys v. Monks: Squatter's Rights 50SS

Friday night I was in my bed, having ushered the three kids to their room after watching part of The Dark Knight with my younger step-daughter (before you get on me, I warned her it was violent and to let me know if anything bothered her, earning me a "Come on, Adam, I'm almost nine now" look.) Jen was working until midnight and I'm getting old, so I went to bed by myself. An hour or so later, I was nudged awake by my darling wife and asked to come downstairs. I zombie shuffled obediently after her, and my old friend from the Omaha/Lincoln area Jon was there!

If you want to see comedy, surprise somebody after waking them up at 1AM and then watch them try to put together full sentences.

We hung out over the weekend, played some board games (Firefly is fun), and on Saturday Night drug out the old TerraClips terrain and my Mats by Mars to throw down for some Malifaux action, thus inspiring this battle report.

50SS Squatter's Rights
Guild (Perdita) vs. Ten Thunders (Shen Long)

The Good Guys square off with the gray armies of the Thunders

Perdita-Trick Shooting, 7SS
Francisco-Wade In
Nino
Abuela
Peacekeeper
Austringer
Enslaved Neph.
(Bodyguard-Francisco, Make Them Suffer)

Shenlong- some upgrades (I don't know Shenlong, and when Jon starts doing the Shen Shpiel on his activation, my eyes kind of glaze over. Sorry.) 2SS
Sensei Yu-Wandering River, Disciple
Amo No Zako
Hannah
Performer
Peasant
Maybe Some Other Stuff
(Line in the Sand, Make Them Suffer)

I wanted to get my big impressive arch/wall assembled and out onto the board, and in doing so may have basically added the main determining feature of the board. We tilted it diagonally and had the Squatter's Rights tokens running through the doorway. On a podcast I don't remember (please tell me which, if you know), I had heard a pretty solid gameplan to push the Ortegas (including the newly inducted Peacekeeper Ortega) to the squat tokens and push Nino up to the far right flank so he could see down the line and use spotter. The terrain plus the two fifty millimeter markers in the enemy crew was going to make it tough to lock him out of all the strategy points, but I knew how quick we were and planned to get through the door and lock down what I could with the Peacekeeper and Frank. Perdita was going to be back a bit, as Assassinate and Deliver the Message were in he pool. I had wanted to include Brutal Effigy, Hunters, and/or dogs but Make Them Suffer pretty much nixed front-line minions for this game. I was informed after the game that Jon hadn't really tailored his list to the scenario, but rather just wanted to get these models on the board and see what they could do.

Things pretty much went according to plan from the jump, with the Thunders shifting around and dropping some scheme markers and the Ortegas hauling ass up to go jump on the squat markers and hunker down. Tactically, I think we both had pretty good strategies, though my decision to jump out and try to delete scheme markers near Hannah with the Peacekeeper proved somewhat questionable since she deleted suits off of his cast and made it impossible. Jon's trick of the game involved Yu floating scheme markers into position, at which point Hannah would copy the Performer's Seduction spell and blow the markers up to pass out negative flips for Amo to exploit.

Unfortunately, the Jokers basically decided this one for me. We figured that on turn 4 we had seen six of them already, and I think I had caught four of those. The Peacekeeper should have been dead on turn two from the double negative defense flips, but kept hanging on from Red Jokers coming out or his hard to wound/armor combination. The whole combat bogged down on the archway, with the Ortegas scoring for the strategy and the Thunders being more or less locked down. Any damage I did to Amo or Hannah would be immediately healed away by Shenlong after I did it, so I had to drop them in one activation with companion if I was going to kill them and never quite pulled it off. PK was reduced to scrap turn 3 by Hannah, but Perdita and Franc still managed to lock down the archway through to turn four. One of the more important activations was when Jon sent his performer to go get a second squat marker on the left side of the board (Nino couldn't see her, as his view was blocked by 50mm bases) but my Austringer one-shotted her with a timely Red Joker damage flip before she could get it. I managed to score one for Frame for Murder when Perdita got a shot off at a peasant (Jon happily let it die so he could resummon it, do an interact, and net a soulstone) but otherwise I was playing cagey since I didn't know until turn five what Jon's hidden scheme was. Nino's job was to lock out interacts, so he did that but accomplished very little else due to the wall. Abuela did even less, and has me wondering if she looks impressive on the card but is perhaps not as good as I thought. I should have, in retrospect, used "Enfrentate a Mi" to hop out of combat with Amo and kill peasants/performers for Make Them Suffer points, but I did manage to keep him alive for Bodyguard despite being in melee with Amo No Zako from turn 2 forward.

I think the tactics of the game were sound, but I have a hard time gauging the combat results due to the Jokers swinging things all over the place. I didn't catch all of them, but I caught more than Jon and often in critical moments. At the same time, I made some very poor plays at points (Flurrying on a defensive Amo when Hannah was right there, etc.) which I'm going to chalk up to the late hour and helped out the enemy. So, I'm happy with the game, but not overwhelmed with my crew's performance. Knocking Amo or Hannah down to their last handful of wounds and then watching it all get healed back was fairly disheartening. The terrain wall really hurt Nino, and in Squatter's Rights he's invaluable for locking down the markers, so I'll give him a pass on this one. Abuela, on the other hand, did a whole pile of nothing, making this two games in a row. I might give her a rest for a little while and see what else can use those seven points.

At turn five it was 8 to 1. Jon had a few things he could do on subsequent turns (we flipped high enough to keep going) to get some points on the board, but we were both tired and didn't think it would be enough to get the win even with some unlikely flip results, so we called it. Chalk another one up for the good guys.

And, of course, the remodeling efforts have continued. The redrock basing is growing on me, though it sill needs highlights. I like the gray hat on Nino a lot, and Perdita's silver bling pants and hat. Skin tones are still not quite where I love them, but it'll do for now. Also, gotta live your height 1 effigy being almost as tall as your height 2 master.

Who you tryin' to get crazy with, ese? Don't you know we're loco?

Remodeling: The Guild

           

Pardon Our Dust

           As mentioned previously, the Guild was my first faction in Malifaux. Currently, I’m in the process of returning to them (and before you cry bandwagon, this process started before the good guys won everything at Gencon this year, so ease up.) I’m following the general theory of how to learn a master from the Mistakes Were Made podcast and aiming to play five games with each of them, with a side bonus to include as many of the models in the faction while I’m at it. If you want to follow my progress, I've added a link on the side to my hobby tracker spreadsheet, adapted from Bill Anderson's from back in M1E. Does that mean I’ll get to everything? Not likely, as I don’t own them all (though Vassal helps with that a bit.) Additionally, I don’t have Shifting Loyalties (yet) so it’ll be tough in the foreseeable future to include those. Hopefully I’ll manage to fix that as we get close to the date, but I can’t be sure.

            The first hurdle to overcome is the simple fact that, as my first faction, the minis I already own look kind of bad. My painting has improved significantly since then, and my Perdita crew is literally based on some yellow static grass that’s just piled on it like hay. Not exactly sharp looking, and we can do better. Additionally, I wouldn’t mind getting a bit more consistency in basing styles throughout.

            My Hoffman crew is already based on flagstones, and I don’t want to change that primarily because my metal Peacekeeper is pinned to one and I don’t want to risk breaking it by taking it off and rebasing it. The rest of the crew I want to get out of the city and into the badlands, mainly so they’ll jive with Perdita. I decided on how to do that some time ago, using Games Workshop’s Agrellan Earth special basing paint. There are a number of videos on how it works, but the basic idea is that this very thick paint will crack and break apart as it dries out, creating a kind of crumbly desert texture. I’ve seen it used for a lot of different basing styles, ranging from literally magma to frozen tundra. Inspired by the first of those, I tried to develop the magma bases by painting dark red, bright red, orange, and yellow on the base first, then adding the Agrellan Earth, letting it dry, and then picking some of the dried pieces to make it look more broken. A drybrush of black to make the earth look scorched, and we get what I put below. Not amazing, but I think it’s decent. I have some scrub that I’m going to drybrush with the black and some flame inserts I’m going to throw on to punch them up.

Going from this, I’m attempting to keep the theme similar for the Ortegas but sticking to the desert theme without the flames crawling up from underneath. So, off of the hay bale bases with pliers came the Ortegas (including my poor Nino, whose foot is long lost to the ages and will possibly need a greenstuff pegleg or something.) Onto some new spangly bases from the multipart kit that don’t have the slots to cover went some Agrellan Earth, followed by some GW Flesh Wash to bring the recesses out, followed by the minis. I’m not entirely sold on how this looks right now, and may end up switching to a more brown wash and drybrushing on some more of a sandy look (though that said, the Arizona Red Rocks thing is kind of cool also.) I’ll put up more photos as I get closer to it. I use Army Painter’s tuft basing tools right now, though I’m open to ideas if people have better ones.

Into the drying drawer, they go. Many works in progress.

Next hobby night is going to focus on getting some paint on the models. The Ortegas are all painted except for Papa, who has never gotten past primer (I’m looking to correct this.) What paint they have, however, is very flat, no shading or ink washes, just one color slapped on to get them to tabletop level. I’ve thrown some flesh wash onto Perdita and Abuela already (she has eyes and facial features rather than a flat peach color, who knew?) and will proceed to pick out details and get them looking sharp from there. I want to try and sneak red onto all the models somewhere if I can as a way of unifying them with a sort of color scheme, so look for that in the future as well.

Once I’m down with the Ortegas, I think I’ll try to get the rest of Sonnia’s people together. I’ve never been a huge fan of Sam Hopkins, but I don’t think I’d be doing them justice if I didn’t get him painted and on the board. I don’t own a Witchling Handler, but I’m curious if I could build one from the Multi-Part sprue. I feel like I have half of a Hoffman crew by only owning one of the old metal boxes. I’ll look to add in another Hunter and Watcher, as well as maybe some Wardens, in the future. The Watchers will definitely be a priority, as they’re huge for Perdita and Sonnia as well. I don’t currently own Lucius, which is kind of a crime considering my two factions are Guild and Neverbron, so I’ll have to figure out some way to get one prior to the end of this. I have all I need for a Guild McMourning painted and ready to go now, so that may see some table time while I get the others up to non-embarrassing status. And then there’s Lady Justice who…well…let’s just say there may be a surprise with her in the future, related to the good doctor’s ministrations…