ToMB Month 2: Fun with Poison

At the end of the Month I ran a Malifaux tournament through my local club. It was a small event, with 7 entrants but with an odd number of people it also meant I had to be the ringer. Needless to say, I saw this as an opportunity to pull out Bayou McMourning for four games! The list I took was as follows;

McMourning
- Plastic Surgery
- Evidence Tampering
- Decaying Aura
Sebastian
- Transfusion
- Corpse Bloat
Zombie Chihuahua
3x Guild Autopsies
Rotten Belle
Student of Sinew
Bishop

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire... Bishop.

By the math this is a 44SS crew with a Cache of 7, so I was playing a little below the 45SS limit. Since this is for the ToMB I didn't want to take models I hadn't painted specifically for Bayou McMourning. The only exception was Bishop, who I threw to make sure I was at least somewhere near the SS limit (I'd have been 11 under otherwise)! Since I wasn't too interested in seeing how Bishop performs (I already know he's amazing), his job was mostly to tie up an equivalent value of models while the rest of my crew handles everyone else.

Other than that, the lack of Moonlighting upgrade meant no summoning, which seemed like a pretty big disadvantage for me. As it turned out though, the list wasn't nearly as bad as I thought...

Lured by a Belle, surrounded by Autopsies with no room to place the summoned Ashen Core. Turns out it's a pretty decent way to kill an Ashes & Dust!

Death by Poison
So long story short, I won three games and lost one during the tournament, unofficially coming second overall. I'll admit this made me a pretty terrible ringer, something I need to rectify the next time I run an event! Moving on though...

Over the course of the four games I got a good handle on how to move poison around. The Guild Autopsies were great sources of Poison for Sebastian's Transfusion early on, and the Zombie Chihuahua helped keep those Guild Autopsies topped up. As expected, the Rotten Belle was amazing. Her Lure was instrumental for pulling in targets for my crew, after which the McMourning/Sebastian tag team would tear it to pieces with Expunge, McMourning's Scalpels and generally just lots and lots of poison damage.

Ramos and his spiders didn't fare so well either!

The Student of Sinew proved to be a dependable minion for McMourning, especially with Plastic Surgery giving him lots of undead targets to wallop. He was never outright amazing, but I feel that for his cost he performed well enough. For now he'll stay (I've barely enough models as is!), but the fact that he needed to hang around McMourning to be fully effective didn't sit right with me. Between him, Doug and Sebastian that's alot of my crew that wants to stick together. That might be fine in some games but I do feel like some slightly more independent pieces wouldn't go astray.

You know what happens when you fail to kill the Viks? 

This was my first game with Guild Autopsies and I must say... they're pretty damn useful! In the games I played two of these usually ran up the flanks while one more hung around to support the rest of the crew as a poison battery/dealer. They need some help if they're faced with killing anything half decent though. So in the future I think they'll need some support, probably in the form of Canine Remains or whatever else might benefit from the Poison they hand out.

This. This is what happens. :( I came very close to killing them both...right up until bloody Vanessa pulled out her heal spell after McMourning's Decaying Aura was gone! 

Doug's got a Wish List

So based on my games thus far, I'm starting to get a better idea on how to fill out the crew in subsequent months. I think what I have now gives me a solid core to the crew. But I do need some faster and more mobile elements that will better allow me to deal with threats on the flank.

Of course I still need some models for summoning, specifically Flesh Constructs, Canine Remains and Mindless Zombies. Although now that I've played without Moonlighting I'm a little more comfortable about going without it a while longer - Decaying Aura has proven to be a more than adequate replacement for time being!

So what's on Doug's Wish list? Well at the moment it's the following;

- Canine Remains (Summoned, plus should pair well with the Autopsies)
- Flesh Construct (Summoned)
- Mindless Zombies (Summoned by Autopsies...probably only need ~2)
- Nurse (More poison, plus some incredible support/disruption)
- Rafkin (Haven't looked too hard at him, but I hear he's good for a Poison crew)
- Shikome (Poison synergy, plus she should be a good, hard-hitting flanker)
- Rogue Necromancy (same as the Shikome but bigger, better and more expensive!)

The Necropunks have fallen off the list for now. I don't doubt their usefulness but between the Guild Autopsies and Canines, I feel like I have enough cheap flankers for now. Besides, I'd rather be spending my budget on some more high cost crew members before I consider adding Necropunks. 

Anyway, that's it for now. Next time I should hopefully have my month 2 model/s to show you! 

Adrian