10-T Misaki: Head Removalist

Damn, it’s been a while since my last post! I make no excuses (real life… whatcha gonna do?) so let’s dive straight into the update on my Ten-Thunders adventures…

As of writing this I’ve had games with Misaki, Jakob Lynch, Mei Feng and Yan Lo. Lynch has only seen one game thus far, in which I took a pretty standard Brilliance-heavy crew. It did okay but it wasn’t super-exciting for me – not quite mobile or flexible enough for how I like to play. I’ll need to try him outside of his core models at some point (specifically to pile in any model who discards for an effect! ;) ), but in the meantime I’ve got other Masters to play.

Mei Feng has also only seen one game thus far, in which I found out how horrible she can be with Misdirection! One game isn’t enough to truely appreciate her though, so she’s going to need to wait as well…

Yan Lo is a Master I’ve disliked for a long time, but after some intense study and a few more games, I’ve changed my tune. The tale of my Yan Lo adventures deserves a post of it’s own however, so for now I’m talking about the fourth Master I’ve been messing with – Misaki.

Out with the Rats, in with the Ninjas…

Having used her regularly as an Outcast last year, I have a pretty good handle on how Misaki works. As an Outcast I came to enjoy her playstyle, which basically seemed to involve burning her upgrades and soulstones fast to Assassinate a bunch of models, then playing more evasively while the rest of her crew gets the job done. But playing her as Ten Thunders means I lose some of the tools I was using almost every game with her, specifically Oathkeeper, Scout the Field and the Obedient Wretch w. Rats. I’ve been forced to rethink how I approach using her. Fortunately, the Ten Thunders Faction offers plenty of new tools to take advantage of.

My standard Misaki crew is currently something like this;

Misaki

- Stalking Bisento 2

- Misdirection 2

- On Wings of Wind 2

Sensei Yu 9

- Low River Style 2

Shang 3

Shadow Effigy 4

Mr Tannen 6

- Smoke Grenades 1

Yin 8

Samurai 8

- Favor of Earth

At the moment the last three models (Tannen, Yin and the Samurai) are the ones being swapped out between games, depending on the strategy/schemes but also so I can just try new models.

Game 1: Turf War vs Colette

The only difference between the list above and what I took this game was swapping the Samurai for a Lone Swordsman. My opponent went for a pretty standard Colette crew, with Howard Langstone, a Coryphee Duet and Cassandra being the primary hitters.

With an Airburst and (0) push from Shenlong, Misaki was able to charge and kill significant chunks of my opponents crew from turn 1. Howard Langston was the first to go, followed by a Performer and in subsequent turns, Cassandra, a Mechanical Dove and I think one more performer. By that point the Lone Swordsman managed to finish off the Coryphee duet, leaving Colette on her own and sealing the game for me.

Game 2: Reconnoiter vs McCabe

In this game I swapped Yin from the above list for a Katanaka Sniper. My opponent Kyle went with a minon-heavy crew with various hounds, Wastrels a Witchling Stalker and a Peacekeeper to make things go dead.

In turn 1 I got a little too close with Misaki, giving McCabe a chance to Paralyse her and then push an upgraded Peacekeeper close enough for a Flurry. She fortunately survived and after winning Initative on Turn 2, managed to heal, remove Paralysed and push her back to safety with Sensei Yu. Not wanting to deal with her while in range of potential Misdirection targets, the Peacekeeper instead went for the more isolated Katanaka Sniper (killing him easily) and Misaki went straight for McCabe, managing to kill both him and his horse by Turn 3.

Pushes from both Misaki and Sensei Yu got the Samurai into a commanding position on a hill in turn 1, allowing him to let lose with his gatling cannon on most of my opponents minions. With no Black Jokers flipped he killed 5 minions over the course of the game, eventually finishing off Luna in melee and single-handedly securing a table quarter on his own.

Game 3: Reconnoiter vs the Viktorias

This was a 40SS game so I was forced to cut my list down. Basically this meant swapping Yin for the Katanaka Sniper (again) and dropping Misdirection, Mr Tannen and Shang for a pair of Tengu. My opponent took a standard Viks crew, with Ronin, Void Wretches, the Student and Vanessa.

Once again Misaki got way too close to my opponents crew, this time copping a charge from Blood Vik in turn 2. Once again Misaki just managed to survive, which sealed Blood Vik’s fate and enabled Misaki to start tearing up the cheaper minions trying to sneak up the flank. The Samurai and Katanaka Sniper helped take out the void wretches, eventually making it safe for the Tengu to leap-frog their way up the board and start taking table quarters. Eventually Ash Vik also fell and there was little left of my opponent’s crew to claim VPs.

Misaki eyes off an angry-looking Peacekeeper...

What I Learnt – Misaki loves her Crew

Back in my original post about Outcast Misaki, one of my main impressions of her is that she tends to run independently of her crew, and doesn’t really need their help to do her job.

I know now that I was wrong. So, so wrong.

Maybe it’s the new options available in the 10-Thunders, maybe it’s the wisdom of age, but I see now that her crew composition can make a HUGE difference to how she performs on the table. On her own Misaki is a decent, if fragile melee beater. She can play evasive with Disguised or use Stalking Bisento to sneak up and wallop one model at a time. But her biggest strength by far is her Assassinate trigger. Being  able to wipe out enemy models with a single swing is brutal, but to do that well she needs three things;

1. She needs to get into melee with her target with a minimum of fuss

2. She needs her opponent to have spent most of their cards

3. She needs to survive the potential counter-attack.

With Diving Charge and a good Wk and Cg value, Misaki’s pretty capable of getting into melee under her own steam. But unfortunately her threat range is also easy for your opponent to predict and ideally, you want to spend as much of your AP charging and attacking, rather than walking into range. This is where push effects from the rest of your crew (such as from Sensei Yu…) can really help, since they reduce the risk of her actually having to walk and make it much harder for your opponent to predict her potential threat range.

I could write a whole article on emptying your opponents hand (and probably will at some point…), but it goes without saying that Misaki’s Assassinate trigger becomes much more dangerous when your opponent has no cards to discard and prevent the insta-kill. This is the job of Misaki’s crew, and they can do it by either using discard effects (eg. Tannen’s Cooler) or making attacks as early and often as possible that your opponent will want to cheat.

I think one of the traps you can get into when using Misaki is treating her like the Viktorias – charge in, do as much damage as possible and hope her imminent death was worth the model/s she killed.  As an Outcast I used to use the Obedient Wretch and Rats to at least out-activate my opponent before sending Misaki in, but with 10-Thunders I rarely seem to have the luxury of out-activating my opponent. Misaki’s Wings of Wind upgrade (for the end of turn push) and Misdirection (just read it… it’s practically an auto-take ;) ) can help a lot with this, as can choosing your targets intelligently (ie. don’t throw he into the middle of your opponent’s crew). But otherwise it’s once again up to the crew to ensure she doesn’t die an early death. Once again push effects have their obvious uses here, as do models that can buff or heal Misaki directly, like the Shadow Effigy and Misaki’s totem - Shang.

Thanks to her upgrades and a certain friend, Misaki pracically lapped the board in this game. :)

Misaki’s Upgrades

Thus far I’ve been pretty consistent with my choice of upgrades for Misaki, generally going for Stalking Bisento, Wings of Wind and Misdirection. Stalking Bisento mainly just reduced her reliance on having a good hand and helps you get that moderate to damage flips when you don’t have the Assassinate trigger. Wings of Wind gives her some much needed mobility, not to mention Sensei Yu can copy the (0) action to push Misaki or other models around. Misdirection is, well, amazing. So long as you have another enemy model nearby it’s got the potential to empty your opponent’s hand, which your opponent is less likely to oblige with if you’re threatening them with that lovely Assassinate Trigger.

Of the other upgrades, I’d like to try out Recalled Training (for a turn of positive-flip insanity) or Disguised (to play super-evasive). Cutpurse might be another option – I’m not sure it will ever work but it does add yet another must-win duel to help empty your opponent’s hand.

Recently finished off this fellow, so no more proxy for me! :)

                                                                                           

Misaki and Sensei Yu are BFFs

The problem with Sensei Yu packing Low River Style is that he’s 11SS of pure support, and as a support piece he doesn’t contribute much to emptying your opponents hand. The thing is, while Sensei Yu might not be a fighter, he’s one hell of a support piece. Between Airburst and using Disciple to access Misaki’s Wings of Wind upgrade, Yu offers some tremendous mobility for your crew. Then with Low River Style he’s tougher to kill (gaining Defensive +1 every time someone whiffs an attack on him) and can heal and remove conditions from either himself or the models around him (or both, with the trigger).

The other great thing about Sensei Yu is that if Misaki’s taken Stalking Bisento, he can use Disciple to give enemy model the Stalked condition, saving Misaki the trouble of doing it herself and essentially giving her an extra attack with her (0) action! I’ll admit I only realised this in my third game with her, but I definitely plan to abuse the crap out of it from now on.

Lately, I’ve been thinking I might move away from Low River Style and try Wandering River Style instead. Up until now it’s looked a bit redundant on Sensei Yu, but Mighty Gust can stack with Airburst to push Misaki twice (and give her Fast?!), not to mention that using the trigger to hand slow out to enemy models might encourage them to cheat some cards on those duels!

What?! You mean I can't outactivate my opponents crew with 10SS of models??

Misaki misses her Rats

As an Outcast player the Rats/Obedient Wretch Combo became a staple in my Misaki crews. The activation control it offered was great for Misaki and more or less guaranteed she got the jump on the opponents crew (especially when combined with Scout the Field to charge from outside LoS).

Unfortunately, 10 Thunders have no such super-cheap activation chewers. Even worse, I’m quickly finding that there’s a lot of amazing, yet costly 10-Thunders models I want to take with her, which means I’m regularly finding myself out-activated. This in itself has proven to be an interesting learning experience for me – if nothing else I’m seeing the value of thinning out my opponents models early with shooters like the Samurai and Katanaka Sniper, as well as playing to anticipate the inevitable counter-attack once my key models have done their thing. The mobility I’m giving Misaki (see above) helps a lot though – she can reach places my opponent might have trouble responding to and I can potentially get her out of tight spots if she ends the turn in danger.

Shang...oh and a Nurse I painted. 

Shang

Shang’s model is god damn awful. It’s way too large for a 30mm base and trying to fit it in my Malifaux bag is a challenge in itself. That’s why I use an Air Kami from the Bushido range instead. :)

I use to hear a lot of talk about how bad Shang is for Misaki, but I honestly don’t understand why. I’ve found Rush of Magic to be invaluable for a Master who relies more than others on having a decent hand (being so light on soulstones and all…), and his heal action has helped Misaki recover from imminent death at least once in my three games thus far (when she was beaten up by a Peacekeeper on turn 1). Still, I’m left wondering whether those 3SS are better spent elsewhere. At the very least, three damage prevention flips might be just as effective. Or I could upgrade him to a Tengu or Wastrel (both of whom can heal Misaki), or possibly just replace another minion with something beefier. I’m undecided right now, but it’s certainly something to think about.

There's been no official model until recently. Fortunately, Puppet Wars pulled through. ;)

The Shadow Effigy

So I’ve been taking the Shadow Effigy for three reasons – he’s a cheap resilient activation, he can help place scheme markers with Remember the Mission and he offers some protection to Misaki with his (0) action. Ironically however, the crews I’ve taken have been very light on minion models, leaving few useful targets for Remember the Mission! That said, even if his only valid “Mission” Target is himself I’m still happy taking him for his other strengths. If nothing else, Misaki really appreciates that (0) action when your opponent is trying to take her down!

No decent pic of my Katanaka Sniper, oddly, so here's some filler!

The Katanaka Sniper…

…is great. :) Given how much I’ve heard about him that’s not exactly a surprise either! With the immense range on his rifle and From the Shadows, the Katanaka Sniper has consistently been a major thorn in my opponent’s side. I love that he’s also very capable in melee, but his general amazingness has also meant that he’s been a priority target for my opponent in almost every game I’ve used him. He’s rarely made it past turn 3, but he also seems to get a disproportionate amount of attention. A lot of the time my opponent has sent their Master or something equally chunky like a Peacekeeper after him. The end result is not pleasant for the Sniper, but the distraction has been quite welcome while the rest of my crew does its business.

The closest Yin & Tannen actually got to the enemy vs Colette. :P

Yin

I’ve only taken Yin in one game with Misaki (my only game that wasn’t Reconnoiter), but at the moment I see her as my go-to anchor for the crew. Enemy models with positive flips to attack are her kryptonite but that’s not really been a problem for her as of yet. Depending on the mission I might not need her either, in which case I’ll replace her with someone a little more pro-active. Maybe a Samurai or Lone Swordsman, perhaps?

Mr Tannen

Okay, so on paper this guy seems like a really great choice for Misaki thanks to his Cooler ability. Misaki wants her opponent to empty their hand so if you can get Tannen up in their business, they’re faced with the tough choice of either not cheating their flips, or emptying their hand and risking an Assassination run.

In practice this hasn’t worked quite how I imagined. In my first game against Colette (Turf War) my opponent kept away from Tannen (who was hanging with Yin in the centre). It helped me score Turf War but, his contribution to emptying my opponents hand was mostly absent. In my next game I played Reconnoiter, which turned out to be not the best choice for Tannen. In that particular game Misaki retreated back to within Tannen’s Aura after being nearly beaten to death by a Peacekeeper (armed to the teeth with McCabe’s adventuring gear). Tannen’s Cooler aura then encouraged my opponent to chase after the Katanaka Sniper instead of Misaki with his Peacekeeper. So once again Tannen proved to be a deterent, but still without any actual discards.

After that I dropped Tannen from my list for the next (latest) game, which was another Reconnoiter. For that particular Strategy I don’t see myself taking Tannen again (there’s better and more mobile options at 6SS IMO). In more centralised Strategies however, I still want to see how he actually performs when he’s in a position to force discards!

Mr Samurai eyes off his many targets...

Samurai

My first game using the Samurai was possibly the first time in years in which I put an unpainted mini on the table. Having recently assembled one I really wanted to try him out. However I didn’t want to paint him yet since I’m planning to use them for the next Tale of Malifaux Bloggers, along side Shenlong and a whole pile of other 10-T stuff I bought from Gencon.

Anyway as per my McCabe game with him, I didn’t regret including this guy at all. Killing 5 minions (even relatively fragile ones) is no mean feat and while I’ll admit this was probably an unsual game for him (lots of targets to shoot, plenty of rams for extra attacks and no black Jokers flipped), I think the potential is there for him to be a great inclusion.

Given I was using his Gatling Gun almost exclusively, Favor of Earth (+3 Wds) might seem an odd choice over Favor of Jigoku (immune to damage in own activation). The potential to take 4 wounds after missing with the attack is a definite concern, but I think the Risk works in the crew’s favour. As per above, part of the aim of this crew is to force my opponent to cheat as often as possible before Misaki activates. So if they think they can cause an easy 4 wounds to the Samurai by cheating their resist flip, let them try! With the Samurai’s many positives to attack I’ll usually be cheating second, and at worst he’ll take 4 damage (which is mostly counteracted by the +3 wds).

For now I’ll probably keep playing with the Samurai to see how he goes under more normal circumstances, and might even add a second one with Mark of Jigoku to help fliter out the Black Joker before the Earth one activates. I suppose there’s also the option of adding a Wastrel to heal him up if things get dicey. Wastrels are a model I’m really loving at the moment, so you can be sure they’ll feature more often in my games!

 Mr Samurai after a successful hunting expedition. :)

THE FUTURE!!!

Okay, so what’s next for Misaki? Well for one I still think I can fine-tune the core list a little more to maximise its hand-emptying potential. I also want to mess around a little more with Misaki’s upgrades. Now that I have Shifting Loyalties on hand I’d also love to give the Shadow Emmisary a run with Misaki, as well as Lust and possibly a few more of the Crossroads Seven (there’s a lot of discard tricks in there…).

My only other thought with Misaki at the moment is how she seems to have become the focus of the crew. As I said above, I seem to have gone from treating Misaki as a separate entity to her crew, to designing the whole crew around what she does. So what happens when Misaki dies and the rest are left to fend for themselves? Does playing Misaki like this make her the lynchpin of the crew, or can the rest do their job even when Misaki has bitten the bullet? At least for now, this is definitely my most pressing question about her so at some point, I’m going to have to get her killed… ;)

Until next time,

Adrian

NEEDS MOAR THUNDER! (Rathnard's new Faction)

So after quitting the Ressers and asking for advice on the Wyrd forums (here), I finally decided to switch over to Ten Thunders for the foreseeable future! Now that I've thought about it I'm feeling pretty confident about this decision. Aesthetically some of my favorite crews are from the Ten Thunders, and I really like the variety in playstyles I'm starting to see within the Faction. Not quite as insanely varied as Outcasts, but I'm pretty sure it's enough to keep me interested for a while!

Anyway, over the next few months I'm aiming to post up my experiences with the Faction as I get in some games. But for now, I thought I'd start with some initial impressions of the Faction's Masters;

ADVENTURE TIME!!!

Lucas McCabe
While I've only used him as a Guild Master, My initial experience with Lucas last year was positive. I like how he works as a support/generalist type Master, and throwing upgrades around gives me the chance to do fun things like getting a Low River Monk to beat someone in the face with a Glowing Sabre!

My core McCabe crew is pretty much done. I even have most of the Guardsmen he could hire in fully painted and based, with the exception of a Warden and Pathfinder (and the Wave 3 models, but nobody's counting those!). The negative is that all those Guardsmen take up alot of space in my Malifaux Bag. So as I paint more of the generic Ten Thunder models I'll probably need to start rationalising just which Guardsmen I actually want to regularly use with McCabe. 

Yeah...still don't love them. :(

Yan Lo
Ugh, Yan? Well I guess I can't escape the Ressers completely. ;) To be honest I'm actually interested to give Yan Lo another try as a Ten Thunders Master. If nothing else I'd at least like to figure out how to make him feel like a Master, rather than a half-baked amalgamation of 2-3 support minions! 

I still don't like the models I have for his crew though, so at this point I'll almost definitely replace, repaint or at least rebase some or all of them. I have a few ideas in mind as to how to do that, so hopefully I'll have something to show later on... 

CAKE TIME!!!

Mei Feng
Since my game with her last year I've paid very little attention to Mei Feng. Until, that is, last week when I started pulling out her cards and seeing what I could do with her. As a Ten Thunders Master she loses access to alot of good Arcanist constructs, but from reading her rules it shouldn't be a problem to have only a few such models in her crew. Still, I definitely feel like she'll need some experimenting to get a feel for what balance of models is going to work best with her!

Model-wise, my Mei Feng cake crew is easily one of my top two in the Faction (it's her or McCabe). I've got all the Foundry models she can take, but I'm still not exactly sure what to prioritise painting for her from the 10-T side. Well, except for Komainu of course! So that'll at least require a little more thought and plenty of experimenting. 

Jakob Lynch
Jakob Lynch intrigues me. On one hand (and like most Neverborn) he's got some pretty specific synergy with a certain subset of models (ie. Darkened/Brillianced models). But the potential is definitely there for him to mostly ignore that specific synergy and play with a more diverse crew. My game with him last year proved to me that the latter approach was at least viable. 

As of writing this I've already played one game with Jakob Lynch, just this week. I'm hoping to talk about it in more detail in a seperate post, although I'm already starting to see how I could better utilise him and his crew. For instance I probably need to take better advantage of models who can discard cards (like Aces...) for effects. 

Flying Ototo still ranks as one of my favorite conversions. ;)

Misaki
I played Misaki as an Outcast for a while last year, and quite liked her too. Switching her over to 10-Thunders will be VERY interesting though. Two of my three standard upgrades for Misaki were Outcast only (Oathkeeper and Scout the Field), so I feel like I'll have to shift my playstyle with her a fair bit now that I'll be using her as 10-T. The plus is that her new Faction has quite a few great options to force my opponent to discard cards, with both Tannen and the Misdirection upgrade coming to mind. So I suspect Misaki's Assassination trigger will be getting a bit of a workout. 

Like most of the other Masters here, Misaki's core crew is ready to go. I even managed to repair the staff pieces that broke off Misaki and Yamaziko when I went to Gencon 2014, so they're all looking super-awesome again. :) 

No models, so here's a stock photo...

Brewmaster
I've heard horrible, horrible things about Brewy's ability to pin down swathes of enemy models with his free booze. So naturally I'm keen to try it out for myself, partly to see how broken it can be and by extension, its limitations and weaknesses for when I'm facing it. To be honest Brewmaster is the 10-T Master I'm least interested in trying at the moment. There's alot of people out there saying it's not a fun playstyle, and that's not really something I want to inflict on my opponents. Still, he's probably still at least worth trying out for myself.

While I do have two Nightmare Whiskey Golems in their boxes (one regular, one translucent), I don't yet have a Brewmaster crew to play with. I'll pick one up this year of course, but I'm still secretly hoping they do a translucent Brewmaster crew to sell on Black Friday. If nothing else that'll make it much easier to get them up and ready for some games. ;)

My proxied Sensei Yu & Friends

Shenlong
I've always really liked the Monk archeotype. In a world dominated by magic, swords and guns, there's something seriously bad-ass about a guy who wanders around beating people up with his bare hands. So it's probably not surprising that I've been looking forward to Shenlong ever since I saw him in the beta. 

In terms of gameplay, all I really know about Shenlong is that he's decent with scheme markers and good at boosting his crew. He's got some chops in melee too, so I guess he's a little like McCabe in that he's a bit of an all-rounder (assuming I'm even right about McCabe!)?

While I don't currently have a Shenlong crew, I do have some proxies from the Bushido range for him. I did make a start on the crew a few months back, having assembled and partly painted a small Sensei Yu crew for a few campaign games (above). It shouldn't be hard to get the rest of the crew together, but the real challenge will be figuring out an interesting theme for them. Right now they're mostly black and white, which is pretty different to my other crews but not really that interesting. It needs...something, but I honestly don't know what that something should be...

The Problem with Ten Thunders...
I really like what I've done with most of my Ten Thunders crews thus far. Unfortunately and as you can see above, there are some wildly different styles between my Masters. This was something that's held me back from getting into the Faction until now. After all, how am I supposed to paint models to somehow fit into crews for Lynch or Mei in particular, without looking our of place in other crews?

If I think about it I can probably get most of the crews I have to match. If I stick with a scheme similar to McCabes for most of my new models (and assuming I replace Yan Lo) it's really just Mei and Lynch who will look out of place. The alternative, however, is to just embrace the diversity and paint the crews how I want. Sure, some models will continue to look odd when I take them outside their native crews. But it gives me the chance to continue painting the models how I want. And at least for the minions that come in 3's (Samurai, Archers etc), I could paint each in a different scheme to match multiple crews. I feel like that latter part is going to require some planning (eg. is it worth painting a Samurai for Mei Feng's crew?), so we'll see how that goes. 

But as I alluded above, my main concern at the moment is figuring out a theme for Shenlong's crew. Hopefully I'll sort that one out at some point!

Until next time,

Adrian

Rage Quitting – Die Crow, Die!

THAT’S IT! RESSERS SUCK AND I’M QUITTING THE FACTION!

…Okay, maybe it’s not that dramatic, but the point stands. After about 5 months of playing Resurrectionists, I’ve decided it’s time to hang up the… corpse bag(?), and move on to another faction. So why am I giving up on them? Well that’s a very good question. But before I answer that I thought I’d at least do a rundown of my thoughts on the Masters themselves;

Not a good end for Seamus...

Seamus

I had one game with Seamus this year, in which he died in short order to a McMourning to the face (note to self – don’t leave your Master next to three undead models when McMourning is nearby to spam Rancid Transplant and Expunge!). So I suppose my overall impression of Seamus is mostly based on one game turn with him this year, a game with him last year and, of course, the odd game I’ve played against him.

On the whole, I like the fact that his playstyle seems to vary between either stalking the shadows to pick off victims with his Hand Cannon, and just getting stuck in and taking advantage of his Bag of Tools and Terrifying to either kill or neutralise everyone in range. Of the Masters here, Seamus is one of the Masters I wouldn’t object to playing again – he’s not reliant on summoning, and his mix of mobility and disruption certainly appeals.

Molly    

Molly, was my first attempt at using a Master who actually summons models as a significant part of her playstyle. My only other game with Molly, from last year, was a three-way between Collodi and Ramos. So while I got a basic handle on how she works, it was hardly much of a test on how her crew performs in your average game against your average crew.

The point where a Fast Molly summoned 3 Drowned and a Hanged...

Anyway, this time around I managed three games with Molly, two with her Forgotten Life (Horrors) upgrade and one with Forgotten Path (Spirits). To save on space/time I’m not going to go into detail on the games (sorry battle report lovers!). But basically, my games were against Tara, Kaeris and Tara again and they all ended heavily in favour of Molly. I found that she offered a great mix of summoning, mobility and support to her crew. Whispered Secret allowed her to neutralise a problematic model each turn, Ones Left Behind gave her both summoning and crowd control and between her and the Necrotic Machine, she was able to move both herself and her crew around pretty well. Pairing her with a big Horror (or Spirit) like the Valedictorian was especially nasty, since she effectively gave them an extra AP each turn with the (0) Whispers… action on her limited upgrade.

On one hand, Molly seemed to offer alot of the things I like in Malifaux – crew support, debuffing in favour of outright killing and a degree of mobility. By all rights she should be a Master I’d enjoy. But in spite of all that, I still couldn’t get excited about her.

Yan Lo  

I decided to bring out Yan Lo after seeing people rate him so low in threads on the forum (specifically this one). At this point I’d lost interest in Molly so it seemed a good time to see if the concerns people were expressing had merit. The game I played was Turf war vs John Metzakis, who was giving Ironsides a try for the first time (which was also pretty interesting it itself!). Being only my second game with the old man I made my share of mistakes, but I did get a better feel for how he works.

The approach I took with Yan was to concentrate on his supportive side (Transcendence and Healing) as well as generating Seishin with Datsue Ba and Izamu's Spirit upgrade to get in the way and help generate Chi for Yan. In reality the Seishin weren't that great. They're not worth my opponent killing and in reality they just sacrificed themselves for a heal at the first opportunity.

I just didn't know what to do with Yan Lo this game. :(

As for Yan Lo himself, he did alright when I focused on support with him. Reliquary was awesome of course and between that, the Armour buff and his Heal, he was able to keep Izamu up and fighting throughout the game. Lightning Dance was good for sucking in an unsuspecting Essence of Power, but it required 2AP and at least one high card (because you don't want to fail that second cast and leave him stuck next to the opposing crew). Basically, a Rotten Belle would have been far more effective and less risky for pulling in models. So I think Lightning Dance has more potential if you're using Yan offensively, where you actually want to leave him closer to some other models where Terracotta Curse or Humpo Assault can really mess things up.

In any case, I can definitely see where people are coming from when they say he's just not as great as other Masters you could be taking. In fact, I kind of feel like I could just replace him entirely with a Nurse, Chiaki and a Rotten Belle and call it a day. Reliquary is pretty cool of course but again - if Yan Lo was more of a threat I wouldn't need to resummon his Ancestors.

It's a good thing the game ended here - Ironsides had like eleventy billion Adrenalin to spend. :P

So it then begs the question; if a bunch of minions can pretty much replace what Yan Lo does, why bother taking him? Maybe you really need to use his offensive abilities to get enough value out of him? It feels risky to throw him in with Lightning Dance and mix it up in melee, but I guess the positive is that he's not so essential to the crew that losing him would be any great loss.

I guess what all this boils down to is that Yan Lo is a puzzle I’ve still yet to solve. Sure, maybe he’s crap – the Marcus from Malifaux v1.5 if you will. I think with more time I’d be able to crack him, and at least make him feel like he’s worthy of his “Master” title. Part of me would love to dive into him and prove the nay-sayers wrong. But I’m just not feeling motivated enough to do it. Certainly not as a Resser Master.

McMourning

As the focus of my Tale of Malifaux Bloggers challenge, I managed to get more games in with McMourning than any other Master this year. As a result I feel like I got a pretty decent handle on the intricacies of how he and his crew plays. And on the whole, I really enjoyed my games with him! He was fast and dangerous, but still a glass cannon that you had to use carefully. While Poison plays a very major part in how he works, there’s enough depth to him and his crew to keep him entertaining. In fact in my initial games didn’t even use the Moonlighting upgrade. So while summoning flesh constructs everywhere is undoubtably good, it’s not actually a necessary part of McMourning’s playstyle.

But possibly my favourite part about him was the crew I built for him  - Bayou McMourning. It was a labour of love and I’m really, really pleased with the result!

Tara

I must admit, I was pretty apprehensive about pulling Tara out again after my last game with her. Fortunately, I learned from my mistakes and had two much better games with her this time around. My first game was 50SS vs the Viks, and saw me take a crew in which I basically spent the game Luring in my opponents models with a pair of Rotten Belles, then Unburying a Fast Killjoy with Decaying Aura (previously Buried with Pull the Void) on top of the target to wipe them out. It worked like a charm. I spent the first two turns taking his crew apart piecemeal (as well as giving my own crew Fast with Temporal Shift) while delaying the Viks with my Drowned and Crooked Man. Then when my opponent finally retaliated with the Viks, they were unable make enough of a dent into my crew to prevent Killjoy finishing them off, one by one.

My second game was a much smaller match – 35SS Squatters Rights against Perdita (with Fransisco, Pistolero, Santiago, Nino and Enslaved Nephilim). With so few points I decided to drop the Rotten Belles and see if the crew could work without relying on the old “Lure & Kill” combo. I also dropped Karina but Killjoy remained. In this game my opponents Perdita crew was just small enough to outactivate me, forcing me to drop Killjoy on Fransisco (who died!) before Perdita activated (who promptly slaughtered Killjoy in return). With the main beat stick and arguably the lynchpin of my crew gone I didn’t have high hopes for the rest of the game. However the rest of my crew were no slouches. The Crooked Man’s resilience to melee helped him take down Nino and Tara’s proved that her sword wasn’t just for looks, and she took down both Santiago and Perdita over the course of the game. Of course Tara’s near immunity to shooting helped a little! ;)

Tara and Perdita eye each other off across the board...

So at this point, I must admit I’m pretty satisfied with how Tara plays. Her ability to pull key friendly models in an out of play with her is great, but she’s got more depth to her playstyle thanks to Temporal Shift to easily boost her crew and a pile of AP from being able to Reactivate. Her weakness seems to be that her unbury tricks are less effective if your opponent can outactivate you, and especially if they can steal the initiative from you with models like the Doppelganger or a Seize the Day upgrade. I used to think that Rotten Belles were an auto-include for her. There’s no doubt they’re useful, but I’m not convinced they’re quite as necessary anymore. So if I play Tara again, I think I'll try her as an Outcast. If you can get over not using Rotten Belles, I think the Outcasts offer a lot more to her crew. Not just in activation control (Wretch plus Rats ;) ), but also in the array of solid, hard hitting choices for her to support.

Before you ask, no, Izamu didn't last long against Lady Justice at all!

Kirai

I’ve said before that I never liked Kirai’s background. The whole “my life sucks because my boyfiend was murdered” vibe is just really unappealing to me. Despite these reservations my game with her last last year gave me some hope; the nastiness of Ikiryo and the ability to just drop piles of summons (including cheap, expendable Seishin) was kind of neat to see. 

Unfortunately my recent game with her dashed those hopes. It’s not that she was bad, quite the opposite in fact. The game was against Lady Justice and even with all her killing power I was still able to summon like a mofo and take both her and her crew down through sheer attrition. The moment when I summoned two Hanged and a Shikome was great, but that was effectively all she did – summon, with a bit of healing on the side thanks to her Swirling Aether upgrade and the odd Seishin that popped out.

 Turns out Lady Justice was as good at killing as Kirai was at summoning. That's two Hanged and a Shikome summoned in one turn. ;)

Looking over her card again, the potential was certainly there for some spirit swapping and other mobility tricks, but none of it was necessary in this game – she was basically there to spew out spirits and keep them alive. So sure, I won the game. But with Kirai’s playstyle it felt a bit hollow for me.

Nicodem

As of writing this I haven’t yet played a game with Nicodem. But as a model who seems to concentrate mostly on summoning, he really doesn’t excite me. I’m currently painting him up and will at least give him a try within the next week or two, but I don’t have high hopes for him in terms of interest level.

I needed a spacer, so here's Dead Lady Justice. :)

The Problem with Ressers...

Okay, so onto the meat and potatoes; why am I quitting Ressers? Well for me it comes down to three main issues;

Aesthetics

Yeah, it took me a while to accept this, but I just don’t like the models as much as the other factions. That’s not to say that the models aren’t nice, but they just don’t excite me as much as those models from other factions. A part of this also comes from my inability to find a good theme for most of my Resser crews (with one exception…). I love theming my crews in various wacky ways, so with most of my Ressers more or less being the stock standard, unmodified sculpts, I guess it’s not surprising that the crews didn’t interest me. Probably the most telling example of this was that my favourite Master from this Faction was McMourning… who’s crew had been converted almost entirely out of models from another Faction!

Trading killing power for attrition

Resser models tend to be pretty tough, but that toughness usually comes a relative lack of damage output. There are the odd exception, but there’s not a lot so when it came to, say, picking a beatstick for Tara to unbury there wasn’t a lot of options. I guess what this all means is that I prefer my models to be cheap, fast and/or damaging. Resiliance is nice, but it’s pretty low on my priority list and unfortunately that’s one of the defining features of the Resurrectionist Faction.

Summoning

While part of this plays into the attrition aspect of the Ressers, the summoning playstyle has never been something I’ve enjoyed. Basically at the start of your turn you look at your hand, and earmark cards you’d want to use for summoning (usually the 11-13’s). For most of the turn you’ll then play with the rest of your hand and then when your Master activates, dump those high cards into summoning the models you wanted. Given those high cards could be otherwise used to attack/defend against your opponents models it’s a high cost (or at least it is if your opponent plays aggressively enough). In other words the whole summoning process feels a little like handicapping your crew for the turn, then playing Solitare when your Master activates.

Is it strong? Absolutely. In one game I managed to summon 3 Drowned and a Hanged with Molly. That was in one turn (Tara made her fast)! And then in my game with Kirai I summoned two hanged and a Shikome, again in one turn. When it happens it’s brutal, but it still felt somewhat hollow. Basically, I’d rather spend all those cards and AP actively engaging with my opponent, not putting out more models for him/her to knock over.

I have an ass-load of crews. :(

For my next trick…

So what’s next? Well for one I won't say I’ll never play Resurrectionists again. If nothing else I did find two Resser Masters I quite enjoy – Tara and McMourning. I’ve also never won a tournament with the Resser Faction (just them and Outcasts to tick off), so I still might pull them out for an event some day.

But as I said at the start of this piece, it’s time I switched to a new Faction. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea which one. Right now I’m swaying between Outcasts, Gremlins and Ten Thunders. I’ve been trying to settle on one for days now, but without success. Chances are I’ll stick up a thread on the forums about it, so stay tuned, I suppose!

Later,

Adrian

ToMB Month 4: The Full McMourning

Here we are, my Month 4 post for the Tale of Malifaux Bloggers!

Bayou Construct

One of McMourning's passions is grafting parts from different creatures together. He would do this regularly when creating his infamous "Flesh Constructs" back in Malifaux city, and he certainly didn't stop when he moved to the Bayou. Most of these creations proved even less useful than the creatures those parts came from, but one of his more notable successes are his "Bayou Constructs". 

Put simply, McMourning's Bayou construct is an undead waldgeist existing within an undead silurid. The symbiotic relationship seems to benefit both entities, with the Waldgiest lending it's resiliance and the silurid providing better locomotion with which to catch it's prey. The pliability of the Silurids brain is an added bonus for McMourning. It makes it easier for him to command them or at the very least, make sure they don't eat too many of his other experiments.

Porcine Remains

It was perhaps inevitable that Sebastian II would further emulate his employer and begin attempting some necromancy of how own. The Piglets were the natural choice of course. After all, the creatures were in plentiful supply and McMourning had long since moved on to experimenting on larger and more challenging creations. Initial attempts to raise piglets from the dead proved...messy, especially when he forgot to kill the piglet he was attempting to resurrect in the first place. But lessons were learnt and after some months he found himself able to resurrect piglets with relative ease. 

Another pic of the crew - I was so excited when I finished Silurid/Piglets that I just had to pull everyone out for a group shot. :)

Spending!

Below are my final month's purchases. As usual, prices are from http://elementgames.co.uk/

Allowance for Month 4: £15.00

Left from last month:  £13.08

3x Silurids: -£13.60

3x Piglets:  -£10.19

Money remaining: £4.29

You might have noticed that I technically had the money to buy the piglets last month. The problem however, was a lack of 30mm translucent rootbeer bases. Fortunately they arrived in my order for this month, along with the Silurid and Piglets. 

Nooo! I had to use non-Wyrd bits. :(

Modelling

Modelling and painting the piglets was a pretty simple affair. I'd already worked out the paint scheme from the piglet and warpig I painted earlier. So the hardest thing came down to converting them into looking undead, which basically involved me doing the same thing I did to Lenny - removing brains (or faces), drilling out eye sockets and cutting bits of them up.

The Silurid, of course, were a much trickier prospect. If you've read my previous blog posts you'll know that I was having trouble figuring out how to do flesh constructs for my Bayou McMourning crew. I eventually decided on using Silurids for the base model, since they seemed like the closest I could get to a Bayou-themed model that would look Ht 2 and fit on a 40mm base. 

Making the Silurids more like undead flesh constructs was another matter. I thought about bulking them out with modelling putty or sculpting some tentacles, but I'm really not convinced I'm good enough at sculpting to pull that off. So eventually, I relented and decided to cheat. I delved into my bits box and cannibalized some GW Dryads for waldgeist-type branches. 

To paint the silurid I wanted them to look like an undead version of their old colour scheme (green with purple fins), but I didn't want the green to match the gremlins. So instead I started with a bright green (GW scorpion green...blending up to yellow on the belly), then washed with GW agrax earthshade and drybrushed with GW elf grey. After I figured that out, the rest was pretty simple. 

Deployment vs Colette

Gaming

On writing this, I did manage to fit in a game with my full Bayou McMourning crew! The game was Stake a Claim against a Showgirl-heavy Colette crew played by regular opponent Chris. My 50SS crew was as follows;

McMourning

- Moonlighting

- Evidence Tampering

- Plastic Surgery

Sebastian

- Transfusion

Rogue Necromancy

- Necrotic Preparation

Zombie Chihuahua

3x Guild Autopsies

Nurse

Rotten Belle

Nobody fucks with John Carpenter...

So no Student of Sinew/Undead Lenny, but I finally had the models for McMourning to summon with his Moonlighting upgrade! I won't go into the details but basically, the crew kicked ass and took names! McMourning summoned just one Flesh construct but between the crew's killing power and the plentiful poison going around, poor Colette couldn't handle it and she was wiped out on turn 5. 

McMourning finally gets to use his Moonlighting upgrade. :)

To be fair, Chris is an experienced gamer but this was his first game with Colette. Her lack of killing power sort of exaggerated what McMourning could dish out, but it still gave me a taste of how brutal he can be. 

I think the above crew is more or less what I'd want to take in future games with McMourning. It's got a good balance between killing power and numbers, and a hell of alot of poison-centric synergy throughout the entire crew. The only change I might make is to add "Those are not ours!" to Sebastian, but otherwise it's a fairly solid crew.

Unfortunately for Colette, the green dice denotes their poison value. 

Reflections!

Being month 4 I suppose this officially ends my participation in the Tale of Malifaux Bloggers! I am, of course, EXTREMELY happy with the end product. Almost every model in the crew is converted, with the only exceptions being the Gremlinette (whom I couldn't bear altering) and the metal piglet. I also managed to use translucent bases for the crew which is also a bonus, especially when it actually fits in with the crew!

Overall, I had a blast building/painting the crew, and the huge amount of positive feedback on the models was really encouraging! 

Post-game crew shot. 50SS of OHMYGODTHEPOISON!!!

But if I learnt one thing from this experience, it's that Bayou McMourning is the only kind of crew I should bother collecting. I have alot of Malifaux - 33 painted crews in fact. But the crews I love the most are the ones that are completely different from the norm. Crews like Neverborn Perdita, the Mei Feng Cake crew, Jack Daw and now Bayou McMourning - these are all crews that I love because I put some real effort into making them look different. It's also a part of why I've had trouble finding a Resser master I enjoy using. After all, Bayou McMourning is the only one I have from that Faction who's "non-standard". 

So what does all this mean? Well I'm going to stop mindlessly painting crews. Completing my Malifaux collection is all well and good, but unless I can find some way of making them look unique then I might as well just not bother. Of course the flipside of that is that I'm now going to look for new ideas on how to make the crews I build genuinely unique. And hopefully for the next ToMB, I'll have something unique enough to at least rival Bayou McMourning. ;)

Until next time, 

Adrian

The summons...please excuse the bases, they were finished after my Colette game. :P