Ripples of Fate Review: Resurrectionists

1.       Corpse Candle: There’s actually some cool fluff behind these, where they’re the souls of a pair of zombies Reva took in and sheltered who feel so loyal to her that, even with their physical forms gone, the spirits move from body to body animating them and burning their energy out to help her. They can count as a corpse counter for friendly models and must be summoned by Reva, not hired. They have a pitiful melee attack which you will never use for anything besides perhaps disengaging strikes. They have two abilities that will see any use. One is Light the Way which pushes all corpse markers within (3) of her up to 3” in any direction.  The other is The Essence Remains, wherein you sacrifice the corpse candle to either give a friendly target Disguised, give you + flips to attack against an enemy model, or allows a friendly model within 8” to draw a card then immediately activate as a chain. You'll use them with Reva, obviously.

2.       Vincent St. Clair: Reva’s henchman is the exorcist that rescued her from her parents’ house, where they had her sedated and restrained. He believes in her, but has begun to question whether that belief is real or just another byproduct of the devotion he’s seen her inspire in others. He is a 9ss living/revenant henchman. He heals a point whenever a model is killed within 8” and draws a card every time a corpse counter is discarded within 6”. He has abilities to do those things on his own, but will also definitely make certain other Rezzer masters have a bad day with those two abilities. He is himself able to burn corpse counters to add a suit to his flips during his turns (only one specific suit per turn.) Finally, he can push 3” in any direction after resolving a defense or willpower flip with a trigger. It’s built in for defense, but not for WP. So yeah, the front of his card is pretty hefty. His profane crossbow doesn’t include spirits when randomizing into melee combat. Its built in trigger adds damage for corpse counters within 3” of the target, or he can repeat the attack with a tome or add 1 soulstone after killing a model with a ram trigger. He can attach a condition to models to make his damage unpreventable with a (0) action. Finally, he can blow up a corpse counter and place blast markers off of it to force models beneath the blast to take a Wk duel or take damage. Vincent has a lot of cool abilities, but you’ll have to be careful to keep him protected from ranged attacks from which your defense trigger can’t protect you. He's sort of the uncola of Rezzer henches, which makes sense as he is still alive and up to recently was employed by the Guild. 

3.       Archie: This guy is hilarious. He was made by McMourning to be a companion for Mollie. As such, he’s a henchman Horror. You have to compare him to Nekima because he has a 13ss cost, and I think he does well side to side with her. 12 wounds, terrifying all 12, and hard to wound 1 means he won’t be falling down nearly as easily as she does. He can only heal 4 wounds per turn from the humorous ability "He's dropped his ice cream", the reason for which will become apparent shortly. Thankfully he also has Attack Expert to get an extra AP for melee, as his walk is not very good off the base card (though this is fixable). I’m going to break from format and point out his upgrades, as they’re vital to understanding how Archie works. He has 3 upgrades which represent odd…augmentations to his body. One can grant him +1 armor. Another can give him leap, which will help add some mobility to get him into the thick of things. The last is Doc found a tentacle, which will give him a (0) action to pull an enemy into melee and gives him Focused when its discarded. How do things get added and removed? Well, his ranged attack requires him to discard an upgrade or a corpse marker within 3", effectively reflecting him picking up a dead body or pulling bits off of himself and throwing them at the target. It does reasonably good damage and places a corpse counter in base contact with the target (Nicodem will then likely turn that into a punk zombie and mince you.) He can reattach a new upgrade specific to him with a (0) action. Doing so damages Archie unless you discard corpse markers. That’s a mouthful, but there’s also always his brutal 4/5/6 damage melee attack as a baseline, so I think he’ll see some definite use.

I don’t know why all these henchmen are so much more complicated in this faction. The write-ups will be shorter from here, I promise.

4.       Shieldbearer: These guys are the frontline fanatics that serve Reva. Their gimmick revolves around, when they are killed, attaching one of three soulbound upgrades to them, healing all damage, and dropping a corpse counter. Effectively, this is meant to reflect their instantly reanimating as a murder ghost and flying off to attack the enemy. This essentially means you have to kill them twice, which explains why they only have 4 wds. Cool. You actually want these guys to eat a red joker flip for your crew, as there is effectively no cost (the soulbound upgrades are also minor buffs for the models.) Their shields and swords are so ridiculously big because, in the fluff, they’ve looted them from Guild Guardians and are able to wield them because their fanatic devotion gives them supernatural strength. They gain fast whenever a friendly model near them uses a soulstone, and they have armor+1. Their salvaged sword has a reasonable minion damage track and triggers to drop corpse markers or deal a point of damage on a miss. They can also push enemy models with the shield slam. And on top of that, they can spend their (0) every turn to give themselves either a + to damage flips or a +2 bonus to DF. If you want to use them to hold a point you’ll want to do that early to take the most advantage, but I like these models. They seem fairly solid, particularly with Reva's ability to push them with one of her upgrades adding mobility.

5.       Draugr: Some people who come through the breach have a magical ability that doesn’t awaken until after they die. These are Draugrs, which are reflected in the game by an 8ss minion/revenant/horror. At the start of their turn they choose their Ht (1,2, or 3) and gain a variation of abilities based on which they choose. At ht. 3 they have Hard to Wound, can hand out soulbound upgrades to non-leader non-peons if they’re ht. 1, or can take their Trollskap ranged (0) ap casting action if they’re ht. 2. Trollskap forces the opponent to discard a card and applies a debuff based on the suit (which I don’t love, since your opponent gets to choose.) Draugr give a + to attack flips of models within 6” with soulbound upgrades, so they’re a decent anchor model in Reva’s lines, and they heal a damage whenever any non-peon dies within 8”. The damage track for their melee axe is interesting, as its damage flip is 0/1/2, but you add your ht. to the damage. So yeah, weird. I can’t tell if they’re good, if I’m being honest, but they are definitely interesting.

6.       Goryo: These are strong willed warriors or lords who martyr themselves in battle. It’s a spirit/retainer minion. Incorporeal as expected, and a pair of new abilities on the front. When another friendly model dies within 3” he gains Fast and he can charge for 1 AP versus models with Adversary. I think Kirai will like them for that, though a 7ss minion is a bit of a pricey summon. Their sword ignores armor with a decent damage track and can hand out slow with a trigger. They get a final little sting attack as a (0) ap action to help you polish off hard to kill models which can, if the thing lives through it, give them adversary with a trigger (so you could also use it to set up a 1ap charge.) Also, as a 1 ap action, they can do 2 damage to themselves and summon a seishin in base to base. I don’t know Kirai crews from personal experience, but this seems like it would be a pretty strong summon minion for her. Wk 6 incorporeal means it can get where it needs to, I suppose, but we’ll have to see if its good enough to get into other crews.

Upgrades: Reva-She has two limited upgrades. One lets her attack out of corpse counters even when she’s engaged and lets her summon a corpse candle on the opponent’s half of the board (not within 8” of an enemy model) at the beginning of the game. The other helps her melee abilities, granting her regeneration+1 and a trigger for her melee that lets her deal no damage and then charge a different legal target. I prefer the ranged upgrade for its flexibility, personally, but time will tell. One of her other upgrades, Blood Mark, gives her a ranged push for friendly models that grants them a free (0) ap action (useful to get both of the buffs on shieldbearers, among other things) at the end of the push. With a trigger, she can also count them as corpse markers for her abilities. Finally, her Litany of the Fallen puts a built-in trigger on her melee attack to make the damage irreducible. Usually useful. I don’t know why you would take Vincent without his upgrade, as it grants him From the Shadows and a (0) ap push action to get him out of melee. Maybe you might decide he has too many things to keep track of already and he makes your head hurt. Finally, the soulbound upgrades can either make the model explode when it dies, gives them finish the job, or gives you a refund to grant you a soulstone if the model dies in exchange for a card in hand.

General: I already discussed Archie’s upgrades, so we’ll skip along. Wronged Spirits is a rare 1 upgrade which makes all friendly Onryo within aura 12 gain +1 wk and cg. The model carrying it can discard it to give all Onryo in play Focused+1. Not sure this is enough to make the Onryo playable, but I don’t have firsthand experience to know for sure. I was personally surprised to see Phillip and the Nanny getting a free buff upgrade, as I know lots of people use them, but perhaps the idea was to give them some abilities besides “walk down the board, eat scheme markers, draw cards.” The upgrade in question gives him Haunting Cries, a range 12 Ca v. Wp action that does 2/3/4blast damage. A tome trigger grants a TN 10 horror duel. Again, Phillip players can tell me whether they’ll actually use this or just keep drawing cards with them, but I suppose it’s a free upgrade so why not take it. One of the Rezzer generics is Admiration, which allows a model to push to any summoned models that arrive within aura 6 of them for the cost of a card from hand. It’s costly, but I could see putting this on a slower model like Izamu to give it some added mobility in a summoning crew. The other is My Little Helper, which allows you to summon a Mindless Zombie off of the upgraded model if/when it dies and, once per game, makes the model untargetable by any actions more than 3” away and lets them use two (0) actions for that turn only. 

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: Reva

Continuing with the Ripples of Fate previews, this week’s sneak peek reveals a master from the Resurrectionist faction. Reva appears to be a woman wearing what resembles a nun’s habit, riding a horse. I know I, for one, enjoy the mounted characters, so that’s always fun. I wish I had more details to share on the character’s background, as I did with Titania last week, but alas Reva hasn’t appeared anywhere to give us some information on who or what she is (at least, not that we know.)

So, let’s take a look at the stat card, shall we?

We have the first appearance of the Revenant keyword, so apparently Reva will come along with her own new type of creatures. With 13 wounds she has some survivability, but perhaps not as much as we’re used to seeing from Rezzer masters since she is only Df 5 and has none of the usual defensive keywords (armor, Hard to Wound, Hard to Kill, etc.) This appears to be less of an issue for Reva, however, as she is able to cast her spells out of any corpse markers she can see within 18”. As such, it seems she’s going to want to stay back a bit rather than leading from the front lines. Her horse seems to embrace the “Slow and steady wins the race” mantra, as it only has walk 5, though with Unimpeded and a charge of 10, I wouldn’t exactly call her slow either.

Reva definitely seems to draw power from the dead a bit more directly than the other Rezzer masters, both from her ability to use corpses to draw line of sight and her The Final Veil ability, which lets her heal whenever a non-peon is killed within 8” of her. She can summon a corpse candle (whatever that is. Probably some sort of dead totemy thing like a daydream or a marionette) by discarding a card at the start of her activation.

"Careful now! Or Hobbits go down to join the dead ones, and light little candles of their own."

Looks like a cool model, and potentially a new flavor for the Rezzers (wait, we don’t want to get the corpse markers back up again?). I’m quietly hoping she doesn’t have an awesome (0) action, as Maniacal Laugh to turn corpse markers into Mindless Zombies creates some interesting possibilities to give her Rasputina-like force projection abilities. Of course, we don’t know what the spells she would be casting out of these corpse markers will be, but I doubt they involve cuddling the enemy and giving them a nice box of candies. In any case, as a sort of sideline fan of the Resurrectionists (I’ll get around to playing them some day) I’m interested to see more of who Reva and her Revenants are and what they do on the battlefield.