Wolfpact

Magic! Also, I love how Vogel's look turned out. So very much do I love the entire aesthetic.

So, hello fellow Wyrdos! I entered a story in the Storied Soundtracks contest - Debts Unpaid . I am releasing my first novel tomorrow, available for preorder now on Amazon. Children of Babylon is the novel in question, and while not in the same steam/dieselpunk-horror-western vein as Malifaux, it does share some common genetics in Dystopia and the use and responsibility of power, and perhaps a note or two of black humor and snark. It is my love note to the science fiction and pulp post-apocalyptica of my youth, an my attempt to turn my craft into a living. So if you enjoyed Debts Unpaid and want to see what my writing is like when I'm not rushing a deadline, or enjoy super-powers, dystopia, post-apocalyptica, snarky protagonists, and/or the struggle of finding a place in society as an outcast within it? I would be exceptionally grateful if you would give Children of Babylon a chance.

The only downside to the Vulture I see is that my usual opponent has realized what it does and wants that bird dead as soon as possible when the game starts.

Yes, but the connected blog is relevant here, more so than the podcast: https://schemesandstones.wordpress.com/ And specifically, these two articles: https://schemesandstones.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/quick-reference-neverborn-v1/ https://schemesandstones.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/building-on-a-budget-neverborn/

Mother of Monsters (Lilith) - $50 The Queen's Return (Titania) - $50 Dark Debts (Lynch) - $40 Doppelganger - $11 Lelu & Lilitu - $18 Mr. Graves -$11 Primordial Magic- $11 Teddy - $18 Stitched Together - $21 Nekima - $25 $255 USD, Wyrd Store prices - you can likely find lower from other vendors. Titania likes Barbaros, Lilith and Lynch are both recommended as accents to her on S&S. You want a Dopper. You just do. You also want Mr. Graves - how I played Neverborn so long without him I willnever know. Primordial Magic is great with Lilith and honestly, the GOrar (Tania's totem) is.. not impressive. The rest of the way is filled with generally useful models. The two Upgrade Decks come to $28.00 USD store price, and are also worth having.

Nothing quite as sweet as a six-stone Johan and an eight-stone Sue, is there?

Which is honestly one of the best parts of the setting. Fairy-tale black-and-white morality is for fairy tales. The rich moral ambiguity and good people fighting for bad causes and groups and bad people fighting for good causes and groups is a good part of what makes Malifaux a fantastic setting.

Actually, all this talk of souls.. I can't think of any actual major lore examples of Neverborn using soulstones... gameplay/story segregation aside. Seriously, the Guild are literally invading, slaving soul-merchant war-profiteer fascists. But what's worse? They're also comically inefficient and compromised - Lucius and his Mimics have infested the ranks, every horror McMourning lets loose can be blamed on them putting him to studying necromancy, arguably the most powerful necromancer is the city undertaker, the Acanists are operating right under their nose and the can't stop them due to P.R. nightmares because they've made themselves so utterly despised by everyone. So while the Neverborn are rather vicious - though not nearly to the mustache-twirling level you want to suggest - the basic fact is that for everything they do, the Guild and humanity does something equally heinous or worse. Factor in who the invaders are here.... And that being honest, the behavior humanity in the Malifaux-verse has demonstrated with industrial-level magic and the fact we've survived decently enough in ours without it shows 'but magic is dying on Earth" is a bit of a thin excuse for the cost - both to the invaded world and its denizens, and the human one. Plus, remember that the residents of Old Malifaux were, essentially, human as well - and that Neverborn do have humans in their ranks. 'Neverborn' being a pretty broad human-assigned label for several races.

Yeah, so there's no shame in backing the invading soul-stealing world-looters. I mean, some people just gotta root for the Empire

Yeah.. may want to read the lore a bit better. You're welcome to your opinion on who is in the right here.. but I suppose you rooted for the aliens in Independence Day, then?

I love my outlaws and bandits... but if you like sneaky and flexible, yeah, you're best off picking up the Viks and Vanessa as a one-off and going Neverborn. I have (now!) seven - actually, I just realized 8 -Masters across four (five) factions - Lilith, Pandora, Lynch, Titania, Rasputina, Parker Barrows, and Nicodem / Amelia Bathory, and my arrived-today Titania box had Doc Dufresne in it so I'll be buying McMourning's box in the future. Of those Factions, I consider myself a "Neverrectionist" - A Neverborn / Resser player where Faction loyalties are concerned. I'll probablypick up Daw and Tara at some point, but Parker was a gods-send for me because I actually liked a lot of one-off Outcast models more than anyof the Masters until the Old West outlaw arrived to provide a cowboy Master. Rasputina is an even narrower case - the only other Arcanist I have any true interest in is Marcus, and he's not a high priority; both of them are their own sub-factions as well. With the Ressers, I decently like most of them, but its more that Nicodem wants almost the entire Faction and that I really have come to enjoy Nicodem / Amelia. If you like multiple Masters in a Faction, go with that Faction and ala-carte the Masters you like individually.

So, let's break this down! After centuries or more of horrible war and enslavement, the battered survivors of the world pay an awful price to earn their freedom, but in the end it's rather Pyrrhic - the world's destroyed mostly, death has come, the golden age has fallen, and their own bodies have been warped by the magical fallout. But you won. You have peace, and you stay away from the old ruins of you previous life, fearful of waking old demons and very likely, not wishing to deal with the pain of what you lost to win the right to live in peace in this post-apocalyptic hell that was once golden and beautiful. Then one day, minding your own business, you encounter an alien thing that looks remarkably like you once did. Then more. They are ransacking those abandoned ruins for their power, they're not there a day before they start killing each other over these relics.. and then more come, in droves, through this hole in reality they tore open to invade your world. They've sucked the magic out of their own, blown themselves up out of greed, and start stealing land and taking it for themselves. Worse, some of them start experimenting with the forbidden arts born of the Grave Spirit, and others start poking at the prisons of those ancient gods who enslaved you. You hate to do it but there's only one solution - you cut off their hole in reality and put them down before they wake up something they can't put down. Then, a century later, the hole opens again. The invaders return - only this time they're armed heavily, and lead by a group of fascist, imperialist slavers who pay for your hides as proof of death, work their own people in conditions of bondage and worse to rival the Tyrants' excesses, clamp down on those with abilities in their number as the Tyrants did.... Then others rebel against them.. but are violent criminals as much in it for profit as the 'lawmen'. Then more of them begin to build kingdoms on the backs of necromancy, then they show the gremlins whoa re psychotically violent and always hungry how to use weapons so they are no longer being held in check by the predation of their rival predators enough to counteract their explosive birth rates, Then another band of rebels who are violent, magical criminals come in, through another reality hole and start setting up for more invasions... So, who wants to roll over and die to let these alien invaders rape our world that we paid so desperate a cost to defend once before? Show of Hands! *Crickets* Show of hands, who wants to repel this invasion and drive these world-ravishing would-be Tyrants back to their own world before they doom both? *HUZZAH!* Humanity are the villains of Malifaux, on the organizational level. The Guild are imperialistic, slaving, soul-selling fascists. The Arcanists and the Thunders may look out for the common man but are, at the management level, driven by the same greed. The Resurrectionists mostly want to rule Malifaux with dark magic. Every Faction, even the Guild, has its heroic figures. Actually, a lot of the Guild Masters are actually genuinely heroic - Lady Justice, Perdita, even Sonnia - hell, SOnnia especially is a very nuanced protagonist who is sacrificing her own reputation and worse for the greater good as she sees it. But taken collectively, and at the leadership level, there really are no 'good guys' in the setting on the human side. And while the Neverborn are the 'good guys', they're not particularly nice or moral either, at least to the alien invaders.

Perdita is rather beginner-friendly, for what that's worth. As for Ophelia, my regular opponent plays Gremlins but doesn't own her. But he swears by Burt Jebsen and Gracie, and one does not play Gremlins without having Slop Haulers available.

Well, not all. Titania is, to my understanding, fairly tanky and more a blocker for her crew than a hit-and-run type, and if you're willing to buy Lynch's box to get them there's no denying the hateful resilience of the Illuminated. Pandora can also play a 'control' game, though to my experience her box itself is pretty fragile - and I don't rate Candy much outside a Control playstyle - the suit for her heal not being baked in hurts. I do like Kade, however.

1) I'd not say he's that useless. Definitely very niche, however. 2) SnowStorm can also really help with the mobility.