It’s the strategy article this
week, and it’s going to be an extra-long one. Why? Because you asked for it!
Or, specifically, because one of our patrons asked for it.
Patreon user CobalttheUnicorn
requested an in-depth tactica for Pandora, so that’s what we’re going to do.
Hopefully your recovery is going well, Cobalt. We at Malifaux Musings wish you
the best, and let’s get on with the misery!
Background
The Mistress of Sorrow, Pandora
carries a mysterious puzzle-box which contains one of Malifaux’s Tyrants, Despair, who
grants her power while slowly corrupting her mind. She can use it to release some of her
minions, spirits called Sorrows that inflect negative emotions on those around
them. Her own powers amplify this, prying the insecurities, fears, and mental
derangement from the depths of an enemy’s mind and using it to drive them mad.
In 1st edition Malifaux, Pandora was probably the poster child for
“This is why everyone hates Neverborn,” as she could chain together unlimited
strings of her Incite action, giving her nearly unlimited movement on any given
turn, and would take advantage of the way Terrifying used to work to
essentially sweep enemy models off the board without letting them react in any
meaningful way. It’s somewhat fitting that a master like Pandora would be a negative
play experience, using her Misery ability on opponents, but a slightly reduced
version was necessary in M2E to improve game balance.
There are a number of short stories
featuring Pandora in the Malifaux canon, too many to mention here. One of my
favorites is The Malifaux Orphanage for
Sick Children from Storm of
Shadows, which describes Iggy’s transformation from a normal (albeit
troubled) young boy to become a Woe like Candy and Kade. She’s conspicuously
absent from the action in Book 5, which may tell more about her allegiance in
the Neverborn Civil War than is immediately apparent.
Base Abilities
Outside of her Willpower of 7,
Pandora sports one of the least impressive stat lines of any master in
Malifaux. Df of 3 is just pitiful. 10 Wounds is average (possibly slightly
below, as Wd totals on Masters have started to bloat as the game’s gotten
older). Wk and Cg 4 is pretty sad, too. But, as is often the case with the
Neverborn, it’s what’s below the surface that counts.
Her abilities are what really
define her playstyle. Misery creates a 6” aura around her where, any time an
enemy model fails a WP duel, they then take 1 point of damage. This
“death-by-a-thousand-cuts” ability is significant because it counts as a
separate damage source than the action that initially triggered the WP duel
and, as such, the damage isn’t reduced by Armor (as Armor can’t reduce damage
below 1) and gets around Hard to Kill (as the initial action’s resolution would
do the damage to put the enemy model on 1 Wd, and then Misery finishes them
off.) This becomes more significant when you add in other models with
overlapping Misery bubbles, as we’ll mention later, but it can add up more
quickly than you would think. Because of Misery’s limited range, many Pandora builds
revolve around bringing enemies within short to medium range to maximize the
number of failed WP duels over the course of the game.
Her next two abilities work hand in
hand in many cases. Expose Fears allows Pandora to resist with her WP instead
of her DF in any opposed duel. Thus, her sad DF of 3 is much less significant,
as any attacks your opponent throws your way will let you use the better stat.
However, any Simple Duel will still require the use of DF, so watch out for
those in the enemy crew. Additionally, she considers the duel to be a WP and,
thus, succeeding at resisting an attack triggers the next ability: Fading
Memory. Whenever she wins an opposed WP duel against an enemy model, Pandora
immediately pushes up to 4” in any direction. So, if an enemy charges her and
misses the first attack, you can push out of basically any model’s engagement
range to prevent the rest of the attacks. If she’s getting shot, she can use
the ability to get out of LoS or at least behind some cover for any subsequent
attacks. Basically, if an opponent is going to come at the Queen, they’d best
not miss. Her final ability is Martyr, and it doesn’t come up quite as often.
It lets her pull a point of damage onto herself if it would affect a friendly
Woe within her 6” bubble. She isn’t exactly overflowing with excess wounds and
her crews typically don’t feature an excess of healing, but this can end up
being a lifesaver for weaker Woes like her Sorrows.
All of these abilities combine to
create a master who is very interested in getting to medium-short range,
pulling as many enemies as possible within her sphere of influence, and
inflicting Misery upon them (literally and figuratively.) Expose Fears and
Fading Memory make her hard to hit, but brittle. Thankfully FM isn’t a trigger,
so it can’t be negated by abilities like the Executioner’s Certain Death ability, but
if an opponent can hit her she’s going to snap and break quickly.
Pandora’s two main Attack Actions
are Self Loathing and Self Harm, both of which cause a target that fails a WP
duel to inflict the damage of a melee or shooting attack on themselves after
they fail (plus one additional point for Misery.) Self Loathing is slightly
better with a Ca of 7 as opposed to Self Harm’s 6, which is of course off-set
by the latter’s longer range. On the base card you’re stuck with the damage
track of the target’s attacks but, with an upgrade, you can at least ensure
that you have a 2/3/4 available in-case theirs is worse. Her (0) action Incite is
one of her main mobility tricks, as it is an opposed Wp duel and succeeding at
it counts for Fading Memory to give her an upfield push. Additionally, it
places the condition Mood Swing on the opponent, allowing you to select that
model to activate whenever it is able to do so, in place of the model your
opponent chooses to activate. Being able to dictate your opponent’s activation
order to them is very powerful, and can allow you to get away with leaving the
Doppleganger at home from time to time, as forcing a sub-optimal model to
activate first will often be even better than being able to cheat to go first. If you can
flip a Tome for the Mass Hysteria trigger, you can immediately take the action
again, giving you more mobility. Finally, she has a (1) Tactical Action called
Inflict which forces all enemy models in a 4” pulse to succeed on a TN 14 WP
duel or suffer 1 damage (plus 1 for Misery.) This one isn't utilized as frequently,
but can be put to good use against clumps of low WP models to, at least, drain
some cards from their hands.
Upgrades
The
second defining factor in Pandora’s playstyle comes from her choice of Limited
upgrade. She will almost always bring one of them, and will more often than not
fill all three of her upgrade slots. I’ll go through three common Pandora
load-outs and describe how they’re typically built and played.
The
first Limited option is The Box Opens. This upgrade lends Pandora towards what
has been described by many as her “melee build,” which focuses on taking her
Misery aura and adding on more and more things to make it a bubble of bad for
the opponent. TBO gives her Terrifying all 13 which, given that her melee range
is a respectable 3”, lets her tie up a number of models in it at once. Often
this upgrade is paired with the generic Neverborn upgrade Fears Given Form
which forces any model that activates inside the bearer’s engagement range to
take a TN 14 DF duel or take 3 damage
immediately. You do have to be careful with this one, though, as friendly
models have to take the same test, so Pandora will often be running around on
her own when this upgrade is equipped. You may want to pair it with something
like Aether Connection to give her some added damage prevention to offset the
isolation, though this may fall under the category of “a good idea for newer
players, but not necessary for the more experienced.” Often, you’ll find models
working to fan out and stay out of her bubble, only feeding her non-essential
models or those that are able to stand up to her punishment while the rest of
the crew scores VPs, so pairing it up with something like Nekima or another
heavy beater to support where she can’t go is typically a good idea.
The
next, and probably most hated, option is the Voices build, or Paralyze-Dora.
Most of the M2E “negative play experience” commentary from Dora comes out of
this build (for more on this subject, see the April 1
st episode of
the
High Fauxdelity podcast.) The upgrade gives her the relatively innocuous
ability “There is no shelter here” that makes the damage from Misery
irreducible. That’s not such a big deal. However, it also adds a crow trigger
to Self Harm and Self Loathing that reduces the damage to 0 and applies the
Parlayzed condition to the target instead. In order to make this trigger more
reliable, you also include the Depression upgrade, which gives her a (0) action
to discard a card and add the suit to all of her duels for the remainder of her
activation. Thus, for a low crow, you can now paralyze 3 models a turn. Players
will often pair this with Fugue State, punishing models that take Interact
actions within 8” of her by forcing them to succeed at a hefty TN 15 WP duel or
take a point of damage (plus one from Misery, if they’re within 6”.) This is
probably the safest of the builds for her, as Paralyzed models are incapable of
hitting you back, but it can be vulnerable to crews with efficient condition
removal like Ten Thunders Low River Monks and Sensei Yu or, if you’re unlucky,
a turn where you fail multiple duels and only get a small portion of the enemy
crew locked down. It is not, however, a great way to win friends among your
play group. Most folks that bring their little plastic toys want to actually
play with them, not activate and pass because you keep beating them at WP
duels. Definitely not a friendly thing to do to someone who is just learning
the game.
The new
Limited Upgrade Pandora got from Broken Promises, Woe is Me, lets her act as a
summoning master. Because we Dora players weren’t hated enough already,
apparently. Ok, it’s not that bad of a summon, as it “only” lets you call in
Sorrows. Moreover, it can only be done by placing the Sorrow next to an
enemy model with one or more conditions, and the enemy can subsequently choose
to end any of those conditions they wish. On the plus side, this upgrade gets
around two of the weaknesses of the Sorrow, their slightly-too-high soulstone
cost and their limited mobility. Now you can just drop the nasty little
blighters in the middle of the action where you want them and call it a day.
Moreover, unlike most summoners, Dora’s Sorrows come in at full health, which
is not insignificant. Base contact with an enemy is where a Sorrow wants to be,
as they can then pull a Wd off of that enemy model when they activate with Life
Leech. And, of course, there’s the fact that Sorrows bring their own Misery
aura which stacks with Pandora’s, turning those little 1 damage
slaps-to-the-wrist into 2, 3, or 4 damage wallops every time the enemy fails
against Incite. This is even more significant when you consider the other
ability from Woe is Me, Growing Woe. Any time an enemy is killed by the Misery
Aura while the upgrade is in play you can summon her totem, the Poltergeist,
for free. Any time you can swing 4 AP like that, it’s a good thing, and the
Poltergeist is an underrated totem that didn’t see a ton of play due to the
relative ease with which it can be killed and it’s relatively high cost (who
ever heard of a 5SS totem, anyways?) You’ll probably want to bring Depression
with this build as well, as the summons require an additional Mask. Moreover,
it gives other friendly Woes within Pandora’s LoS (read: the Sorrows you just
summoned) an attack targeting WP (meaning it triggers Misery) that can force a
model that fails to activate last. Good stuff. It’s still pretty early in the
Broken Promises era to come to any conclusions, but the limited testing I’ve
done with this so far leads me to believe I may have initially underestimated
Woe is Me. There are a lot of conditions in Malifaux. I mean, a WHOLE LOT of them. this upgrade doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative conditions, either. An opponent who spends an AP to give a model Defensive or Focus has now provided you with a summoning battery. It’s
possible my experience with this isn’t typical (Phiasco typically plays 10
Thunders and they’re notorious for throwing Focus around like it’s candy,) but I've had no trouble having good targets with positive conditions they don't want to remove availabe. Two of the new strategies from Gaining
Grounds 2017 place beneficial conditions on models that can’t be removed by
actions, even if the model WANTS to remove them. And you can always use your
Incite or condition applying actions to put them out yourself in a pinch. Iggy
would be pretty clutch for this (more on him later.) And we already know how
potent an effect summoning can have on the game. So, to be determined, but
there may be some real meat to be found in this version of Dora. Time will tell
if it’s good enough to replace Voices as the go-to Limited.
In
addition to these, she has a handful of other upgrades as well. Cry for Me
gives her a (1) Ca 7 attack to hand out a condition imposing a negative flip to
WP duels on enemy models that fail until the end of the turn, with a
double Mask trigger to place a blast marker and spread it around. This used to
see a little bit of play, particularly if you thought you were going to go up
against something that had a decent chance of resisting your attacks, but as
more upgrades are added to the game and slots get tight I’ve seen it fall out
of favor. Her other new Book 5 upgrade, Rile Them Up, has a few more
interesting possibilities. It costs 2 stones, which is a little hefty, but it
gives her the ability Mania to discard a card and take the Incite action an
additional time using one of her general AP. I could see this being useful for
games where mobility will be at a priority or, if you’re feeling feisty, where
you’re going to try for a late-game Undercover Entourage run for the
opponent’s deployment zone. It also adds a Mask trigger (so, built in) to
Self-Harm and Loathing that lets you replace the attack’s normal damage track
with 2/3/4 and makes the damage irreducible. Potentially, this could be useful
for any of the Limited builds, though the most obvious synergy goes with
Melee-Dora (who could have some odd hiccups killing models that don’t have good
attacks for her to steal) and Woe is Me (who can use the additional Incite
either to throw out some more conditions for summoning or because she had to
use her (0) for Depression to gain masks.) This one may end up being scheme
pool dependent, where you bring it for the aforementioned Entourage run or to
give her a better shot at Master killing in Neutralize the Leadership. Still,
it’s got some decent utility.
Support Models
Obviously,
anything with Woe under its characteristics has potential to be added to her
crew and used effectively. Her box set is one of the few that you can pretty
much open, assemble, and run and have a relatively effective crew. Candy finds
her way into a lot of Pandora crews to this day, mostly because of the potency
of combining the Mood Swings condition from Incite with her Sweets ability to
paralyze an enemy model. Kade falls in and out of favor, mostly due to his
fragility. If you bring him and he can get a couple of his damage buffs
running, his Carving Knife can dish out a horrific 5/6/8 damage track. If you
can afford it, equip him with Depression instead of Dora to let him pitch a
crow and make one of his triggers built in. Also, if you’re bringing Kade,
bring Teddy. You wouldn’t make a sweet little baby go out without his Teddy,
would you? What kind of a monster are you?
 |
| Oh, right, the kind that plays Pandora. Never mind. Forget I asked. |
We
already talked about Sorrows a bunch above, so let’s move on to other stuff to
hire in. First of all, it’s the Neverborn, so I’ll just point at Nekima, the
Doppleganger, and the Primordial Magic and assume you already know why you
might want to bring those. Moving on.
Besides Candy and Nekima, there are
a couple of other henchman options that can play well with Pandora. The Widow
Weaver would be an interesting henchman to bring along if you could ensure her
safety, as the Web Marker Willpower penalties can be devastating. The problem,
of course, is that she can only place them within 6” of her and a stiff breeze
will blow her over, taking her Webs with her. She’s not my favorite option, but
if you’ve got some amazing defensive tech to keep her alive then by all means,
bring her out. Barbaros is a little bit pricey, but I don’t think he
gets the praise he deserves. I’ve written about how rude challenge is before,
but that WP duel to target anyone but Barb is just disruptive as hell. I think
he could be particularly useful in a Woe is Me build to help protect your newly
summoned Sorrows. And if they fail the WP duel to target anyone else, their
action fails AND they take damage. That’s just rude. Plus there’s something to
be said for not entirely focusing your crew on WP attacks, as the wrong
opponent will end up laughing at you since WP is, on average, higher
throughout Malifaux than Defense. Opposing Nekimas, in particular, will be
thrilled with your choice. So Barbaros and other DF targeting models can help
broaden your focus a bit and offset some of those bad matchups.
The minion pool is actually a bit
more shallow from a Pandora-oriented focus than you might think. Normally one
would think Beckoners would be a natural fit, and they can be under the right
circumstances, but their 7 stone cost puts them in direct competition with the
enforcer Lillitu, and Lillitu’s just better in most cases. Some people don’t
care for them due to their relatively low wounds, but I think Insidious Madness
makes for a pretty good scheme runner that can change gears and support your
offense in a pinch when necessary. If you’re playing Woe is Me Dora you can
hire Guild Reporters, who have obvious synergy with Dora. It’s kind of your
choice which scheme runner you prefer, and in some cases it may depend on the
job you’re asking them to do, but the reporter is a stone cheaper and is better
at removing enemy markers than the IM. And performers are solid mercenary hires, as Siren Song and Seduction both play well with what a Pandora crew is trying to accomplish. Not to mention we could all use a bit more "Don't Mind Me" in our lives.
There’s a lot for Pandora to like
in the Enforcer slot, by comparison. I already mentioned Lillitu, who has the
Rotten Belle level Lure spell available on a sturdy enforcer’s body. Lure is
especially important for melee Dora, as you need to draw models into her bubble
so she can be fully effective and they’ll likely be trying to stay as far away
as possible. Iggy is a workhorse enforcer that, for a measly 5 stones, gives
you another source of Martyr, another (0) Incite, a Rg 12 attack to hand out
Burning +2 (hurray for more conditions to use for summoning), and/or a pretty
decent WP penalty on enemy models within 6 of him that haven’t activated yet.
Having 2 Martyrs gives you a great deal of ability to manipulate wounds, as you
can either pull 2 wounds off of a Woe and split them between Pandora and Iggy
or chain one single wound down the line (IE if you can afford to put the wound on Pandora
but she’s more than 6” away while Iggy is closer but on low wounds, Iggy can snatch
a wound off with Martyr and then pass it on to her.) Teddy is a sentimental
favorite that would see more play if he was a little faster and a little bit
tougher to hit. He’s good for a themed crew and fun to use with Kade. Plus, if
you’ve been playing as long as I have, you probably have at least three sculpts
of him lying around. And Bishop can be an interesting Merc to hire in, as his melee attacks can target either WP or DF.
The last few books have been kind of a desert for new
Pandora crew members, but the Crossroads Seven enforcer Lust is an exception. Nine
stones with the merc tax is a little steep, but she brings a pretty solid suite of unpleasant abilities when combined with Pandora. Her “Now, Kiss!” Attack Action
can potentially force the enemy to make 3 separate willpower duels in exchange
for 1 single AP from Lust, which is some potent Misery activation on top of
potentially disrupting the enemy’s plans and positioning. Pair two uses of that
with her (0) action which also triggers a WP push, that’s a grand total of 7 potential damage per Misery bubble in which the targets are trapped when doing it. That
can get nasty. Book 5 doesn’t have anything specifically
for Dora outside of her new upgrades, but there could still be some useful
tools here. One of the things you see often with most Pandora builds is a
tendency by the opponent to spread out and stay away from her auras. Adding a
Grootslang or two to your crew gives you a way to rapidly redeploy to counter
this. I envision Pandora and team deploying in the center of the board with the
two lair markers deployed in what you think will be high-traffic areas on the
flanks, allowing your Groots to deploy rapidly to them and cut off the enemy’s
retreat. Bultungins have interesting potential to serve as low-stone beaters
and potentially to avoid shoe-horning your crew into being all WP all the time,
but they’ll likely have more synergy with other masters like Titania or Collodi
who can better exploit their abilities. There are a couple of mercs as well,
though none immediately trip my trigger. Soulstone Prospectors have to compete
with other 7 stone positioning models, and I don’t think they do well versus
Lillitu. Bayou Smugglers are interesting as well, as 6SS is relatively low,
can grant you some abilities to manipulate your hand, and their The Swap attack
targets WP and either gives you a card or lets you screw with positioning. Don’t know if it’ll be an amazing addition at first blush, but
there are possibilities here as a defensive flank holder to grab and position
markers to mess up scheme completion.
Harvester of Sorrow: Putting it All
Together
Pandora is a tough but brittle
master that lives off of projecting auras of sadness and badness to the enemy anywhere
near her. There are three main builds defined by which of her Limited Upgrades
you bring along, and all of them are effective in their own way. The Melee
Pandora wants to get up close and personal and force the opponent to take
incidental damage for doing the things that they want to do in an average turn
anyways. Voices Pandora is going to try to paralyze models at range, and it
actually says on the Voices upgrade card that your opponent’s soul takes a
point of damage every time you do this. And the new Woe is Me upgrade lets her
summon her small Sorrow minions and, potentially, her Poltergreist totem off of
models with conditions on them. Her crew has never historically had a set of “in
every Pandora crew include X” type models outside of the standard Neverborn
staples of Nekima, Doppleganger, and the Primordial Magic who, in several
cases, have alternatives which can even make them dispensable. But it’s really
more about building a crew to exploit the area of denial that she creates by
her very presence and ensure that you can run down and foil anyone who tries to
fan out to escape her wrath. Pandora really isn’t as nasty of a Master as
everyone thinks she is (though don’t tell people that. 1) they won’t believe
you and 2) it’s more fun to keep the mystique in place) and can be fun to play
if you enjoy her style. So give her a try, already!
