Nekima: a birthright to rule

[Sybaris]

There's been a few threads started lately about Nekima, and her pseudo ability to lead crews.

Fluff:

Nekima had her debut in Malifaux since first edition. She was a minion (!) brought in the Rising Powers book. In the stories we learn that she used to rule the Nephilim, albeit quite brutally. Her sister Lilith got the better of it and now bears that crown. This means that Nekima, at one point in her life, certainly qualified as a leader. She's is actually working to get her position back from Lilith, and from the looks of it, has started to "recruit" humans into the fold under the good care of the Black Blood Shaman. She is also said to have her own fortress near Latigo. All in all, she's great material for a stereotypical bloodthirsty, very powerful yet flawed, villainess.

Rules:

I've always wanted Nekima to lead my crews and while Henchmen can do this at 40ss, i feel Nekima is above the generic henchmen when it comes to leading capacity. In fact few other henchmen can boast to have been victim of a coup from a Master and lived to tell the tale. Her birthright trigger is very cool in terms of fluff, but has very little applicability in the game itself. 

So here's what i've been using so far in case others would like to do so, put into upgrade form for simplicity.

House Rule suggestion:

A birthright to rule

Upgrade

Restriction : Nekima

This model may act as leader for games over 40ss and counts as a Master. It may take up to 3 Upgrades. This upgrade does not count toward this limit.

This model generates 2AP per activations and may not use the Birthright trigger and replaces the Melee expert ability with the following:

Melee Master : This model generate up to 2 extra AP during its activations. These actions may only be melee attacks .

 

Basically it's exactly what nekima becomes once she activates Birthright, with an extra upgrade slot to allow for more diversity and to get in line with master's level of flexibility.

[ringsnake]

This might set a bad precedent of doing 'epic' versions of henchmen in place of creative new ideas. So instead of anything new and interesting we get a current master, but with a few rules swapped around. I don't want to see Malifaux get stagnant by letting themselves create lazy masters this way.

[Fetid Strumpet]

*shrug* It's a house rule that helps this particular player enjoy the game more. That's fine with me, even if I would never agree to play against it. Seems that it would just be easier to just ignore the rule that prevents henchmen from leading areas above 40SS but to each their own. He wasn't advocating for an official printing of the above upgrade. If it helps them enjoy the game more for their personal group I don't see the issue.

[Sybaris]

@fanboy: There's also a limit to how many new concepts you can introduce in the game, at least in my opinion. How many more masters/henchmen can this game support?  This house rule, emphasis on house, is just there to use an existing concept into a broader scene... and it does work for us. Obviously, only people who are intestered in Nekima will consider trying this.

The result is a very focused "master", and much less flexible too with 2 general AP, but i think it represents Nekima's concept quite well as a brutish leader. Basically, the only things she brings more than her henchman version is an extra melee AP and a potential extra upgrade. Wrath gains an extra AP and upgrade in the same way as far asi i know. She's not going to kill Lady Justice, she will die to Ironsides's DF trigger, she won't catch Colette and will freeze over vs Rasputina...etc.. Keep in mind that with this house rule, you do not have a master to help...which is kind of a big deal with how she performs atm. As strong as her attack is, she still isn't master material in her henchman form (a simple confrontation with any combat master shows this).

I am not enforcing this on anyone, but it's a very simple way to use the model and...it just works (to our taste). Also keep in mind that many henchmen from first edition were upgraded to Masters (Collodi, Molly, Von Chill, Misaki, Hamelin, Kaeris, etc) , and fluff-wise, none were described as leader as Nekima was. The issue, at the time, was simply that she competed too much with Lilith in theme, but these days are over imho. So rather than calling it lazy, i'd call it long overdue.

This thread was also in response to someone who posted about Nekima being used as leader. Fetid and I pretty much have opposite stance on Nekima since the dawn of her M2E iteration (and my posts are typically followed by a Strumpet in a form or another ), but house rules don't hurt anyone...at least so i thought until today lol.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Huh? I wasn't knocking your house rules, I specifically said if it helped you enjoy it I didn't see the issue since it was a house rule.

[necroon]

It should also probably state that it replaces Melee Expert with Melee Master as currently, at least to me, it seems that she would generate 3 extra AP for ML actions. Unless of course that is the intent. 

[Sybaris]

@necroonIndeed it should, thanks! Edited in.

@Fetid Strumpetoh i know, i was just referring to the old ping pong we had about Nekima

[Rabbitknight]

To be fair a number of the masters in M2E were henchmen with Special Forces back in M1.5E I can think of a number of Henchmen who would be interesting when elevated to Master level.

[Adran]

Nekima was just a minion in 1st edition. I think Sybaris probably lead a campaign to turn her to a henchman, and she was expected to be errata'd and then we changed editions. 

[Sybaris]

Nice memory, thanks Adran. You're both right: at the time Henchmen could lead crews tied to special forces, but Nekima was not even that. I had devised rules to allow her to lead Nephilim at the time, and there was quite a decent following if i may say so. Also consider that Nekima was both the tallest (HT4) and largest (not heaviest) miniature that Wyrd had produced at the time, and also the single most expensive model to field (ss cost). So she was in a much greater spotlight than she currently is. Her artwork was superb but her rules were...difficult to put to good use.

Wyrd did an amazing job at bringing her into M2E when it comes to making her useable. The new model sadly was a dwarfed version of the original (making no sense to give her HT3), but the main part that i think was missed, is that she wasn't brought into a master level. For a character who "all but ruled Nephilim" only 100 years ago (from a Nephilim point of view) i felt that something was amiss. While she may have "bent the knee" to her sister, it doesn't erase leadership abilities...and she was still described as leading her own cadre of loyal Nephilim, and few other henchmen have a fortress of their own near Latigo. Tongue-in-cheek, i am pretty sure there is more than 40ss of nephilim in there...less Perdita hides a gentle heart full of black blood. So in my humble opinion, Nekima is master material in fluff, and it's even so in the rules with her birthright trigger, but in such a clunky way that it becomes a frustration over time, especially when Wrath just got the ability out of the blue.

My goal is simply not to have to field a Master that i don't want in the first place in order to play with Nekima as a leader.