Malifaux General

Got a henchman hardcore tournament coming up later this month. Only problem is that I mainly play gremlins and I can't really think of a good list for it. Well and it doesn't help im still pretty new. Anyone have any ideas?

I'd recommend Francois with dirty cheater

Trixiebelle, Lenny, Burt, and a Bayou Gremlin. Trixie can make other models make attacks, which makes Lenny and Burt that much more dangerous.

Francois, slop hauler, and 2 roosters would be nice and mean. Win or lose, the game goes by quickly.

What all do you have?

Sammy Lacrois is surprisingly good despite having low damage. Silly high df and the ability to shut down charges and triggers at will on. Enemy models is amazing. Take cranky and you're also cycling out two cards every turn and have 9 points left over for your other two models and upgrades.

Off topic, but I'm wanting to start playing this game, do I need to purchase all the books or are there alternative cheaper options?

You don't need to purchase the books. All you need is the rules (there's a rules manual that runs ~15 bucks, iirc), and a box for a crew you like. Similar to warmahordes, the box contains rules cards for all of the models inside of it.

You can get the basic rules for free on drive through rpg. If you want a physical version you can get the rule guide for under $15

Rules are free from Wyrd's site. Models have their rules and cards with them. Also, op has all the books for download.

Thanks for the input guys! Right now I have Brewmaster's box, Somer's box , and a set of a rooster riders.

I was going to pick up Mah Tuckets box tomorrow (pretty much just for Trixe) but the snipers look like they could be fun. Been mainly playing Brewie and losing, BUT having alot of fun regardless.
Might pick up a second box but i'm really not sure who to grab next. The masked wrestler dude looks good for henchman hardcore too but maybe getting the Lacrois is a better move. I want to get a whiskey golem but I don't know if they are worth the points/money.

>Burt Jebsen
>The fucker is both killy and very unusually resilient.
Last time I played the Gremlins I nearly lost Howard first turn to that little fuck.

Right now Collodi is my main master, so it's really a revolving door of the effigies.
Anything killy = Brutal Effigy for the healing and card draw + Stitched
Anything with one spot (guard the stash, turf war, etc.) = Hodgepodge for the smoke screen and Beckoners to pull their models out of position.
Scheme heavy (plant explosives/line in the sand/etc.) is an auto-take of two Corophryees.

Really lacking stopping power though. I'm hoping the new Bunraku's help that a bit, but other than swapping in out of theme models, the puppets don't pack much punch.

Mancha Roja is a huge pain in the dick at that level of game size.

Whiskey has issues with being shot up is all

>Scheme (marker?) heavy
>Really lacking stopping power though.
...
>Coryphee

Really?
Everything I've heard and seen of them is that they are incredible finesse murderers.
Neither of your points make sense to me.

Burt and Slop Haulers are your friends. Brewy can do horrific things with the Trixie/Lenny/Burt trifecta.

I like the Whiskey Golem as an annoying tie down model that can hurt people every so often.

They're the best in the current crew, to be sure. But you compare that to something purpose built (Burt, Cerebus, Killjoy, Mature Neph) and they come up real short. Jack of all trades, master of none, etc.

They're annoying as hell for the opponent, they can get across the length of the board in a turn and a half if they're not engaged, but they also can't put down a canine remain or guild hound in less than a full activation and a charge most of the time.

Usually their life cycle in my games go:
Turn 1-3: Position and drop markers. Tie up anything preventing that goal.
Turn 4: Charge one model as a team and hope to take it down.
Turn 5: Eat up the opponents hand and die horribly.

My point isn't that they're useless. It's that compared to other beat sticks, they come up short and there's no dedicated Enforcer Puppet to fill that role (except for Collodi I guess, but most Masters can smack people around, so it doesn't stand out.)

I should make a note that by the time they get stuck in, most high cards have been spent making sure Stitched connects or Collodi Obey'd whatever needed Obeying.

Maybe they'd fair better with a dedicated hand to wipe something.

I'm open to advice/stories of using them well.

I'm playing the Child scenario against 10T today. What do you think?

50 SS Neverborn Crew
Zoraida + 5 Pool
- Animal Shape (2)
- Hex Bag (1)
- Aether Connection (1)
Spawn Mother (9)
- Protect the Young (1)
Bad Juju (8)
- Eternal Fiend (2)
Tuco (7)
- A Thousand Faces (1)
Waldgeist (6)
Waldgeist (6)
Sorrow (5)

For the scrap generating game, you'd probably want to try the scrap engine with Will o'the Wisps. Widow Weaver and Bad Juju with Fears Given Form can net you 2 scrap per turn from Zoraida summoning a doll and a Wisp doing the same. Instead of summoning a Teddy, just collect scrap and walk it up to the child marker. Grab a doppelganger for interacting while engaged, too.

Unrelated, but I'm getting Zipp when he comes out. I'll have him, Brewy, Wong, and Z for Gremlins. Burt, Slop Haulers, and Cocks are on my list, but is there anything else you folks can recommend.

Any recommendations for making Tara playable? I only have Bishop, Hannah and the nothing beast as big beaters since my flgs doesn't have Killjoy. I have some drowned for Karina to summon and Johan to deal with constructs.
I also have ashes and dust but he can't be buried so he doesn't get fielded often and scion on the void is very fiddly so I need some more games under my belt before I can use him properly

Scion is definitely hit or miss. Aionus too, from my experience.
If you use her with Dead of Winter the Marshalls can help even out her performance.

She seems to thrive more in hit and run or avoidance, like a more beefy and less tricksy Collette.

What models do most people use when they summon a ton of gremlins as Somer? I was thinking about getting a set of the old metal gremlins because I really don't want to have two of the same posed gremlins.

I hate the Wp-damage bubble from Pandora.
It's maybe not as immediately frustrating as paralysing two models per turn, but holy shit is it rough when something like
>failing 3x WP tests and taking 12 instances of 1 damage from Sorrows/Pandora.
happens to stuff.

I presume Hannah did some heavy lifting against all those Wp attacks?

>Killed of Baby Kade right out because he got hit by 2 blasts
Separate attacks, presumably?
I think you only ever take one blast's worth of damage per attack, even if it generates two blast markers.
Either way, that's one of the surprisingly few stories I've read of people using the Specialist effectively.
Are they actually that bad/swingy, or just difficult to get that high damage out of?

>Kingdom Death
>models in that are noticeably larger than Malifaux stuff
Taller, chunkier, or just at a >35mm scale?

I guess I'm just used to hearing about them in Arcanists - I know really very little about how Collodi plays, other than that my local Collodi player doesn't play him at the moment due to a lack of good/interesting puppets to play with.

The built-in positives to everything must do some good work though, no?
What do you usually go after?
From the card, they look perfect for cleaning up the edges of engagements - wounded or cheap models should be splattable easily enough.

>Taller, chunkier, or just at a >35mm scale?

I'm pretty sure the scale is a bit larger and the sculpts are all really tall. I've been giving them away as gifts though so I haven't got an assembled one around to check.

Can't you get your FLGS to order Killjoy?

Either way, I've heard/read that Ashes & Dust is decent - is it really necessary that he be buried?

>Kingdom Death
Yeah, the scale is a bit off for Malifaux, plus the style isn't quite right.

I guess you could maybe get away with running them as Outcasts or Guild if you've got generous opponents, but it'd be a stretch.

I was originally thinking of running the Wet Nurse pin-up as a Nurse, but then I saw the non-front angles - it's way beyond "a bit too lewd", even for Malifaux.

I spent enough to get Dr. Dufresne(sp?) last Black Friday. It's my nurse now.

>Dr Dufresne as Nurse.
That's a nice idea, yeah.
One of the things I'm a little less keen on in the Malifaux line is the necessity of mixing 'serious' models with schlock-horror and cheesecake for certain crews.

sup nignogs, I've been putting together my marcus crew to be a part of my Dark Carnival, but I have a few questions before playing him.
#1 what is the raptor+ cassandra trick I keep hearing about so I can abuse it?
#2 other than the "Turn something big into a beast then control it and wreck stuff" what neat tricks are there with a marcus crew? It seems very straightforward.
#3 what are some good out of faction beasts he can bring? I was thinking about spawn mother until I remembered you can only lay an egg a turn.

I was thinking more of the less overtly lewd miniatures, just so aI have an excuse to use them. Is there a faction breakdown/guide? The only other game I play right now is Infinity.

IIRC Malifaux is 30mm? so 25mm would be very small next to it, putting them in an akward spot between the generic fantasy miniatures and KD right?

Yeah, Malifaux is 'heroic' 30mm I'm pretty sure. Certainly a much larger scale than Infinity.

pullmyfinger.wikispaces.com has information about all the factions and most of the models for those factions, if that's what you're after

Just ordered Shenlong's box, 10T's brothers, and the emissary. Any suggestions on what to go for next? I'm probably gunna stick with shen for awhile while I get used to him and the faction.

Kat Snipers are great with Shenlong

Low River Monks are also excellent now that their new upgrade is out.

Cassandra with practiced production, the raptor unburies where it needs to go, Cassandra activates and drops a scheme near the raptor with trap doors, you drop a scheme anywhere else with a spare ap which is discarded at the end of the turn.

He is pretty straight forward but when he can put all enemy beasts in los at negative flips, then turn an enemy into a beast, triggering a free attack from smell fear, which because they are now a beast means they are defending at negatives, then still have his 3ap plus melee expert at min damage 4 to wreck your shit he doesn't really need all that many tricks.

Silurids are good, Rogue Necro to carry the smell fear upgrade and just smash shit, and canine remains to hand out rabies, a condition that gives the beast characteristic and -1 wp.

Just played a game against my brother. Viks vs his Brewmaster. We ended it 10-9 my way, but I gotta tell ya, Binge with Sun Quiang's bullshit is terrifying. DUde kept walking up into my face and picking up heads or exhausting people and he didn't die until turn 6 when blood finally got a turn (performer paralyze and him winning initaitive made me sad)

Jack doesn't kill masters all that well. Viks get the job done way easier, but are pretty squishy. Misaki is a bit more survivable. If it's actually Assassinate, Leveticus is the tits. If it's neutralize the leader, he's awful.

Johan is the answer. Condition removal is very helpful, and he's a good stick too.

Her box plus those models sounds great. All you might want to add is Johan and Hans/Trapper. Tara is tricky to learn but rewarding to master, so just play her a lot.

The old metals are good, I've also seen kitbashes of Bayou Gremlins for slight variations. One of my friends just paints the similar poses in different colors.

#1 Give Cassandra/Anglica/Carlos Practiced Production. Lets them drop a marker off any friendly model when they activate, so they drop a marker of a Raptor that buried and unburied in the enemy deployment zone. It's stupid and broken, but that's Arcanists for you.

#2 Turn something into a beast and put it on neg flips, be a guy with min damage 4 and 4 AP to attack with, never die with your jackelope and Df trigger, turn models into beasts with canine remains/raptors to save AP, stuff like that.

#3 Dawn Serpent (blasts, heal, counterspell, good all around), Rogue Necro (blasts, good damage, rather fragile), Canine Remains (cheap, quick, significant, can turn things into beasts), Waldgeists (tough, makes terrain), Silurids (top schemers), Rougarou (pounce)

Lone Swordsman is a good melee model, bit of a scalpel rather than a hammer. Izamu is a hammer. Snipers can shoot very well with Shlong's buffs. Low River Monks can heal and clear conditions.

Based 10T Brewy. So underrated.

For sure, I wish I brought him. But I was going for a gun line build...and was admittedly relying on Hans for support. Still it was an awesome game and I think I've inadvertently created a brewmaster player. Should have heard how much fun he was having.

As Arcanists, I find Ramos automatic in a lot of situations: guard the stash, extraction, turf war, interference, and reconnoiter are basically free points for his crew. He's perfectly playable in the rest, but for those five he's got no real competition. You can make a reasonable case for pretty much every master in at least one of the other strategies (except poor Kaeris, in desperate need of some love) but the old man has the other five on lock.

Outcasts is my secondary faction and I honestly can't make myself hire Hans, even just to try him out in a friendly game.

That 8 points could be Sue.

It is a tough choice to be sure. But I find Hans works just fine in interference with Scout the Field. Mostly, the turn one sniper shot is there to put folks on the back foot. But nine out of ten times Sue comes out the box.

Return Fire is just too insanely good even without his other bonuses like Man in Black in a meta filled with casting crews.

With return fire, he becomes absolutely insane. I've been running that in enforcer brawls and it's been nigh unstoppable.

Once you add in scout, Hans is fighting for slots with strong arm, nothing beast, bishop, Alice... Heck, I generally get better results out of a trapper for two points less, AND the trapper isn't at risk of getting one shorted by anything looking in its direction.

The reason you run Hans is for removing upgrades or Scout the Field to remove some essential cog people usually hide. It's expensive, but killing So'mer's Slop Hauler or something similar can be worth it.

That sounds like a good fuck you to gremlins.

Honestly, gremlins are complete bullshit

It's mostly So'mer and cocks. The rest are generally fine.

You've never had a pigapult score six points unanswered first turn, huh?

Or had 3 point models kill henchmen because "dumb luck is balanced, I had to lose a model to kill your 10 point investment

Or lost whatever your opponent wanted to kill because they drew a red joker and Glowy McTavish ignores every rule in the game.

And you get out activated every game because outcasts can't have rats, but stuffed piglets are fine for some reason.

You can tell it's bad when every single list starts with the same henchmen, as the faction has zero internal balance. Like, really, everything is either on top or completely worthless. And any knuckle fucker can win with a couple badly timed Rams.

All so faggots can model poop on their base and chuckle about being fucking morons.

(Side note: Ulix and Zipp are cool. They can hang with their reasonable, non idiot random chaotic stupid play style)

Anyone have any experience with Through the Breach? My current campaign is coming to a close and a few players have shown interest in Through the Breach for our next game. None of them actually play Malifaux though.

Outcasts can't have rats anymore? When did this happen?

How is pigapult scoring anything?

It's a Peon and peons can't score shit.

They were errata to only be hired by Hamelin

They launch gremlins anywhere on the board

Reckless was a mistake.

Yes it was.

Their movement shenanigans are too much, too. They can completely out activate you, then deliver Burt and Francis anywhere on the board to erase two models.

The best part is swine cursed. Reckless and regeneration, it's better than swift

While we're all complaining about gremlins and I'm considering them, how is Zipp? And what models would I want to start with him?

I ran with this anyway. Schemes were Convict, Exhaust, Show of Force, Mark, and Public Demonstration. My buddy ran McCabe.

I picked Show of Force and Mark. He deployed heavy to one side, I went heavy on the other apart from a Waldgeist.

That Waldgeist locked up his dogs, McCabe, and a dawn serpent before dying. Meanwhile, the swordsman and shadow ememissary went hard on Z who survived with stones. Swordsman went down to the voodoo doll hemming him. Later, the shadow emissary would spend the rest of the game paralyzed thanks to the doll/sorrow team.

Juju killed or tied up everything forever, and I kept throwing gupps in when he dropped.

Notably, Juju popped up in hazardous terrain, took a RJ damage flip, walked out and took a severe damage flip to bury him again.

Won pretty handily, though my m8 is just learning McCabe.

I know how character creation and the like go. If you need to read up on the rules we've got the mega for the rpg

What I continue to hear is that people like taking Zipp with one iron skeeter, the first mate, earl, sparks and a mechanized pig

>Miss Terious in Sky Pirates box
FUUUUUUUUUUUCK I NEED TO TRACK THIS DOWN.
I don't even want to play gremlins but i want that Miss Terious and i was planning on getting Brewmaster/Akaname for Thunders anyway.

As says, from what I know Marcus just crushes face, feeds activations to Beasts and Beast's enemies.
It's more than good enough.

The Cassandra trick, as that guy also said, is very simple.
It's just also very, very effective - for a lot of schemes it's practically a free 3vp.

>Hans
I fall on the Trapper side of the debate - that extra two or three stones is too much for the (hideously resource intensive) Upgrade popping ability.

Hans is for utility, Trapper is for damage

Exactly. Nothing says love like zapping an enemy jorogumo with a broken arm.

It's fun. More narrative based skills than you'd think.
Summoners feel a bit gimpy to me, because I don't think that summoned creatures get to flip like fated do, but they do get hordes of summons.

Through the Breach is a lot of fun. Character creation is neat and I enjoy the slower leveling system. Ran two games of it so far and it is definitely narrative heavy.

How does that tend to work? I like him in concept, but I'm trying to wrap my head around him.

I don't think Pigapults are unanswerable, and they are a huuuge chunk of a crew - Pigapult + Pigs + Launchees is a big investment that will leave the rest of the crew lacking.
It also requires them to bunch their crew into a very tight area, which is pretty restrictive for board coverage - if you can force their hand so that they have to throw those models at your stuff, instead of where they were planning on landing, then the Gremlin player is pretty boned on board control.
I do think that the launched models not taking damage is pretty bullshit though - Paralysed is something though.

The Stuffed Piglets I do pretty much agree on.
It's straight bullshit that they don't have Explosive Demise - Bacon Bomb is a .may. take, which is shit, and the Concussion condition is shit.

As for most of the rest of your complaints, I think you just need to man up a bit.
Find a way to mitigate losses or kill more of their stuff faster, and McTavish is supposed to be a beast.

I do agree that it's telling that there are such clear, head and shoulders better (necessary, even) parts of the faction.

Necessary to stop Ractivation ruining the game in any vs Outcasts game.
I think it's a fantastic idea, since it's a shitty and boring exploit in a game built around interesting precision exploits - the whole point of the Viks, say, is that they are high-risk set up. Rats take all the fun out of that for both players.

It is balanced well by a Wd stat so low that you can seriously punish them for using it more than a couple of times a game though.

I let my opponents Reckless for positioning, then pop two models with my Trapper.
No other crew you can do that with anywhere near as reliably, and for all that they can re-summon (or just soak those losses), it will become telling pretty quickly.

>Mechanised Porkchop
Explain?
I don't see the synergy.

Obviously yes, but it's so expensive to pull off, and, as was said earlier, he's even less sturdy than the Trapper.

Pardon but Rogue Necromancy already has smell fear. What would this upgrade do?

>Slower levelling system
>You gain a level every session
Shit what games are you playing that have it faster than that?

I mean more about raising skills since you typically raise one skill every session. Leveling in a pursuit is pretty much "get a talent or ability".

Point is, most sessions will see two things change on your sheet, which is a rate I enjoy.

Newbie here, what does it mean when a suit icon is printed next to a statistic value in the character sheet?

Thats waaaay faster than shit like D&D or gurps though most of the time, unless the person running it is giving you particularly fast progression.

I'll grant you that. Comment rescinded.

So in concept Zipp likes having a mobile crew that has plenty of synergy with each other Earl can heal the pig and so can Sparks same goes for the skeeter. Sparks can hand out armor to the first mate getting him to +2 as well as having chain activation, the robot pig generates scrap tokens so that Earl and Sparks can make use of it. Something to note about Zipp is that he likes to burn up the enemies hand and soul stone usage depending on the upgrade you take with him but he'll also burn through his own cache if need be to survive. Plus Zipp himself can produce scrap markers to help out.

Yeah, i love TTB because of its FAST levelling system. Plus you can really feel power gain quckly if you choose to specialize, after just 3-4 sessions a melee character can be AV 6-7 with a + flip and 4/6/8 damage spread or other ridiculous shit.

Unfortunately i only know one host in my local area, though i might look to get into his next campaign. I host a campaign for my friends though, speaking of which I've got to come up with a new session, my old plans were spoiled.

Some models have triggers on defense/willpower ect. The suite usually allow the trigger to go off always.

So wait, in Justice's case, in the description it says you need Ram and Mask, but the DF number only has a Ram next to it. What is it then?

Means you need to use a soulstone or flip/cheat what you need. Also means stuff that strips suites on the card makes it very tough to get off.

Uh, I don't think I understand. It means you can only do it if I use a soulstone? What if I flip a ram and a mask in DF, isn't that enough?

Talk about spoiled plans. I came in for my first campaign with everyone helping a mutual grandmother who came to a town to save them when they were children.

It became murder hobos burning down Ridley and starting riots after using Gremlins to sell drugs for them.

I don't even know where Granny went wrong.

The ram is built-in, so to get Riposte you need to flip a mask, cheat one in, or use soulstone to add the suit before flipping.

Ah, I see

Isn't that kinda unnecessary, though? Why not just make it so you need a mask and that's it?

Because of abilities that strip suits. There are some things in the game that make it so that suit isnt in there.

Abilities that remove suits and probably flavor reasons.

Oooh right

Okay, thanks!

Would Zipp and Brewmaster boxes alone make a decent Zipp/Gremlin brewie crew? How about with Proxied akaname?
If not, what would i need to add to make this work? NO TRIXIEBELLES ALLOWED.