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Rathnard

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Everything posted by Rathnard

  1. Religion is definitely featured in Malifaux. For instance Sandeep is pretty clearly Hindu, and Asami's backstory has her growing up at a Shinto (?) temple. Furthermore, the supernatural myths of those religions are quite real and play a significant role in the story - Sandeep deals with an Asura bound to his weapon, while Asami was groomed and manipulated by Oni for their own ends. In fact the Oni look to play an even bigger role in the future, with Yan Lo & Asami's hunt for Linguizi (sp.) and the previewed Kimon faction for TOS. I suspect the Abyssinian's spirituality is based on pre-christian beliefs in Ethiopia, though I'll gladly admit that's a total guess based on zero research (sorry, Ethiopia)! There's numerous references to ancient/dead religions too, including Norse and Aztec mythology. Wyrd has regularly drawn from various religions and mythologies (the two are linked, after all) to create their universe. So maybe a more accurate description of Wyrd's approach to religion in Malifaux/TOS is that they steer clear of overt references to the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam & Judaism). I don't think I need to elaborate on why they've avoided that! That said, I suppose you could argue a fictional explanation to the absence of these religions? Maybe in the universe of Malifaux, circumstances conspired to prevent the worship of the "God of Abraham", from which these other religions eventually developed? Perhaps these beliefs simply failed to spread in a world where magic was still commonplace? The only catch is that I don't recall if there's been any direct references to Christianity etc in the fiction. If it has, then maybe the Abrahamic religions did develop, but failed to become as dominant as they are in our world due to the prevalence of magic and soulstones?
  2. @Caedrus 15SS finished for now. I got badly distracted by Stellaris (PC game) this month, so I didn't paint anywhere near as much as I was hoping to. I did, however, at least manage something - this fancy fellow; My Abyssinian Lord of Steel! The head and spear are conversions, but I'm most proud of the cloak.
  3. @Caedrus 46SS done for May Well I finally managed to finish my Electrocutioners! ...and one Dead Outlaw... I painted one of the electrocutioners in April, hence the 46SS total. I didn't manage to do anything for the basing challenge - I'll just have to promise myself that I'll properly base my Abyssinians once I've got a 1-commander company painted up.
  4. Short Version: Get (in order) 1-2x Raving Madmen, an Immolated Rhino and the Doomseekers. After that it's down to personal preference. Long Version: After the core box, the first thing I'd recommend is a Raving Madman or two. They're cheap enough to fill gaps in your company (the starter is only 24 scrip if you max out Adeo's assets) and they make it much easier to flip your own units to Glory. After that, you want to look at what you'd need for steadily larger games. For instance 1x commander +5 scrip, +10 Scrip and eventually 2x commander. For those slightly larger games the Immolated Rhino is a great buy, not only because it's a borderline OP unit, but also because it's cheap (once again letting you fill out companies). After that, I'd personally recommend Doomseekers, followed by a Goryshche and/or Broken. @Metalhed already covered why these units are great. Both Horomatungi and Fenton are great choices for a second (or alternate) commander. Horo will fit in with whatever else you take, but the chance to ally in some Gibbering Hordes units can present some fun options. If you want to go down that route, I'd recommend Speckled Crawlers and possibly an Egg Clutch. Striped Skulkers are also great value, but at that point you might as well start a Gibbering Hordes army too! If you take Fenton, I'd recommend including Broken and at least one (possibly 2) units of Twisted Horrors with him. All three units synergise very well together, since they're great for rapidly flipping through your deck and eventually giving your Gloried Twisted Horrors a second activation! Finally, at some point I'd recommend picking up a Breachling. It's rarely a good hire for the Cult, but Doomseekers can summon them and there's a Cult stratagem that lets you summon three Breachlings out of portals! So having one (and the Breachling tokens it comes with) is not essential, but certainly good to have on hand. Beyond that, every unit in the Cult list is great, and has a purpose in your lists. So you can't go wrong with making sure you have one of everything in your collection.
  5. I was backing the Council, mostly for background reasons. I really liked the idea of the "original" top dogs coming back to rival the Guild again. For now though, just seeing the game get a new book & Allegiances would be nice!
  6. Back during the Kickstarter, Aaron (the lead designer for TOS at the time) said that the plan for expanding the game was to go wide. If that's still the plan, then we could certainly see Wyrd regularly delving into the Malifaux factions for additional syndicates. Also you mentioned Sandmen - they were intended to be a universal syndicate for TOS (ie. available to both Malifaux and Earth forces). That said, this is all from about 4 years in the past. Aaron's no longer working for Wyrd and we've heard nothing about the Sandmen since. It's entirely possible that Wyrd has since decided to take a different approach to TOS. Thanks! It occurred to me after posting that I hadn't even considered what you'd put on the Syndicate card. So there's an opportunity to differentiate the Syndicate even further through universal triggers, abilities and how they flip to glory.
  7. I imagine they'd be superficially similar to the Abyssinians, with well equipped and well armoured troops. Given that they're trained for the small-scale skirmishes common to Malifaux, I expect a company scale force would fight in a similar way. In practice, I'd say a squad would generally be a core of "common" infantry (ie. Scouts or Freikorpsmen), supplemented with an adjunct from their more specialist divisions (Engineer, Librarian, Drachen Trooper). Squads might also be smaller, like Fireteam (80mm / 3x30mm), Squad (2). Thinking about it, this looks like the makings of a really cool and interesting Syndicate. You could have two squads (Scouts and Freikorpsmen) with three adjuncts as above. Then add the Strongarm suit as a single model unit (or a 2-3 model squad?), some new character as a champion and Von Schill himself as a commander. That's only a bit more variety than the current two syndicates (Guild and Co2), and the focus on adjuncts gives them a unique gameplay niche within the game. I think it's entirely possible that Von Schill would expand his operations back Earthside. He's smart enough to see the potential for profit, or maybe his sense of national pride would encourage a return to his homeland (Prussia?). He also has a core of very loyal and capable officers to rely on, so I don't think he'd have much trouble sending some of them Earthside (or leaving them in Malifaux while he goes Earthside) to lead a Freikorps mercenary company.
  8. 80mm bases have a 73mm inner diameter. 100mm bases have a 94mm inner diameter. 120mm bases have a 116mm inner diameter. I'm least sure about the 100mm base. I only have a painted version of them so I had to measure over basing materials.
  9. I love Swinecursed, but unfortunately you need Piglets and/or Bayou Gremlins to make use of their demise ability. So unless you can get them second hand, you're looking at also buying Deliverance and either Makin’ Bacon OR Mudlight Whispers. As for Wong on the whole, I agree with the green options. They give you a 50SS crew and cover all the bases you need to get full use out of Wong. For Yellow, I'd recomend Creative Taxidermy and the Pigapult. Taxidermists are surprisingly dangerous and their summoning can prove very useful. The PIgapult opens up alot of mobility options for the crew, including the ability to hurl those taxidermists across the board to assassinate enemy models. For orange, I'd go with When Pigs Fly and Copycats. Flying Piglets from the former are great potential summons for the Taxidermist (though admitedly less so with GG2). Sammy from Copycats is a great inclusion for Wong, but she's just not cheap when you consider the three other Kin that come with her box. Hence why I'm ranking her lower. Swinecursed are Orange too. Hell, they should be Yellow but like I said above, you still really want that pair of Bayou Gremlins and Piglets for when they die. Beyond that, the Red are all pretty much as I'd expect.
  10. This month I'll be aiming to paint my Electrocutioners and a Dead Outlaw. I'm excited to get the Electrocutioners finished, since it'll leave me just 3 models short of having a fully painted Abyssinian company. The Dead Outlaw is the last model I need to finish my Parker crew. So he's an easy way to complete another crew from my collection! As for the Basing Challenge, I guess I should use it as an excuse to actually base one my my existing Malifaux crews. I tend to be very lazy on that front - usually I'll leave my model bases as plain dirt, until I'm motivated to pretty them up for a tournament or something.
  11. @Caedrus That's 78 SS for April. *** Well, I think that's me done for the month; A squad of Barbed Crawlers, the Devouring Eel (please ignore Parker, he'll be gone shortly...) and (finally!) an Electrocutioner! I'm not completely satisfied with the Electrocutioner. I'll probably change his piping to something else. But for now he's finished, which is a massive relief considering how long this mini's been sitting, half finished, on my desk! Anyway, for the last few days of this month I'll probably put some time into my Goblins for Kings of War/Age of Sigmar. Then after that I'll need to figure out what to paint for May.
  12. Ha! I actually really love this idea! Limit it to Friendly Sz 1 models and i think that'd actually be a really solid buff, without making it too overpowered. Anyway, I haven't played Wong in a good year or so, but I did play him pretty solidly for the year before that. And honestly, he's still my favorite Master. It's just that his complex mechanics require more brain-power to play than I'm willing to devote to your average game of Malifauix these days (hence why I've been playing the Viks alot more lately!). Back to the OP, I think the biggest factor holding Wong back is that it feels like you are always building his crew to make up for his weaknesses. So you take Gracie or Alphonse to push Wong out of melee, Guille Suit for the +1Sz to see over low walls and friendly models, and Bokor to heal the damage you'll inevitably inflict on your own crew. With all those pieces together, a Wizz-bang crew can actually be really good. But it takes alot to set up, and is at risk of falling apart if your opponent can disrupt your complex web of synergies. Basically then, if I wanted to boost Wong up to "Tier 1", I'd want to do it by addressing his main weaknesses - Sz 1, vulnerability in Melee and the reliance on healing. Also, I'd want to do it as simply as possible. So small changes for maximum effect. The first fix is an easy one - increase his Sz to 2. With just that, his Guille Suit is no longer mandatory (still good, but not an auto-take), saving the crew 2 SS. For the second fix, drop the projectile icon from his Fzzzap attack. Yeah, it might be a bit much, but it at least means he no longer feels like a wet blanket until you get him out of engagement. You could also/instead mess with his Iron Fan, probably by changing the Reposition trigger to an "after resolving" push. Or go with @Thatguy's suggestion and give him Gunfighter. The only issue with that is his front of card is already pretty crowded. I'd be reluctant to add anything more if I could avoid it. Finally, there's his healing. I think the simplest way to fix this is to add a "Friendly models then Heal 1 (or 2?)" effect to The Glow. It's not huge, but it should help offset the damage he does to his crew and take a bit of pressure off the Bokor. As for the rest of the crew, I think most of them don't really need changing, with a few exceptions though... Olivia is perfectly fine with some good crew synergy, though there's room on her card to add some basic healing if necessary. I also really like @Adran's suggestion for the Lightning Bugs. The damage-heal has some great synergy with Hard Knock Life, and having a way to remove Fast from friendly models feels really important for the dreaded Tara matchup. Bokor - yeah, that heal action is just way too good. At the very least I'd want to swap the Deja Vu trigger to Discard a card, Draw 1 card. That alone might be enough to bring them in line. Pigapult - maybe just drop Insignificant? Lets be honest - at 7SS it's slow and limited enough in its usefulness as is. Giving it a chance to drop the odd scheme marker doesn't feel like the worst thing in the world... Actually one more thing - I'd love to see the Fast effect on "Hard Knock Life" become optional. This is purely because mass-Fast, while powerful, seems like a really bad thing to have vs Tara's Obliteration crew!
  13. Aww, thanks @Caedrus! That's very kind of you to say. Anyway, here's a progress update on the Crawlers; I worked out the scheme for them months ago, when I painted the Morphling (ie. basically both Crawler types squished together). So far they're looking pretty swish for a 4 scrip trash squad. I especially love some of the faces. Like this one - Grumpy Cat's distant ancestor;
  14. I'm still in a bit of a rut when it comes to painting Malifaux, and my attempt to paint Abyssinians last month failed miserably. So instead, I'm returning to a favourite; Yep - it's time to get back to the Gibbering Hordes! I've just got these guys (Barbed Crawlers and Devouring Eel), plus some Yarazi to go before I've finished the Allegiance. The colour scheme have for them is both fun and easy, so these should be a blast to get through.
  15. @Caedrus Just 7 SS painted this month. Good thing I only pledged for enforcer level this year, because my painting progress for Wyrd stuff was pretty minimal over March - just one Iron Skeeter; Not ideal, but at least I have a basic scheme sorted so the last two shouldn't be too difficult. No progress on the Electrocutioners, unfortunately. They'll have to wait for another time!
  16. I've often tried single commander games with an extra 10 scrip, which I think strikes a good balance between the standard 1 commander and 2 commander games. For us, it's not felt unbalanced, and the commanders still feel relevant. If anything it's been better than playing a 1 commander game, especially for an elite army like Abyssinia. One thing I would recomend though, is adding Samantha Thrace or Binh Nguyen for those larger games. Those extra Tactics tokens help alot.
  17. You're right - you definitely need a plan for Binh otherwise in a Cult list, he's at risk of being left behind while everyone else dives through the portals. That said, he's not as hard to protect as you might think. For one, pairing him up with Doomseekers and advancing toward a centerline objective is a good way to go. The range and teleportation tricks inherent to the Doomseekers mean they're often a good unit to advance on foot, shoot something and then teleport another unit (eg. Warped, Twisted Horrors) in front of them. Binh is fast enough to keep up with them, so it's an easy way to keep him safe, while remaining useful in later turns for claiming objectives or murdering fireteams. Also, keep in mind that Binh is fast enough to reach portal markers located near the centreline if he needs to. So even if his bodyguard teleports through a marker, that doesn't mean Binh won't be able to stay close enough to a friendly squad to remain safe.
  18. So here's what I'm planning to paint this month... I've been somewhat inspired by the Wrastlers I painted last month, so I'm adding 3x Iron Skeeters to finally complete my Zipp Crew. As for the Electrocutioners, they're the next step for my Abyssinians. It took me ages to paint my previous Abyssinian unit (Mehal Sefari) so I'm not entirely convinced I'll manage to paint all nine this month. But if I can at least get the scheme nailed down and paint a few, I'll consider it a win!
  19. You know that never even occured to me but now you mention it...yeah - they definitely give a strong Dwemer vibe! Well I'll leave that to Caedrus. I'm fine either way since... ...I just managed to finish the Wrastlers in time (sorry for the poor quality pic)! I wasn't too excited about getting these boys done but now they're finished, I'm pretty satisfied with the overall aesthetic. Anyway, @Caedrus - you can put me down for 15 SS this month, or 78 SS if you feel it's appropriate to include the 21 improperly based steam arachnids!
  20. So I've got a bit of a good news/bad news situation today. The good news is that I've painted a tonne of stuff his month! The bad news is that none of it is Malifaux/TOS... Yep - that's a full Dwarf army for Kings of War, about 3/4 of which i painted this month. Granted, it includes 21 Steam Arachnids, but i don't think they'd count! Anyway, i have made *some* progress on a trio of Wrastlers, so hopefully I'll be able to finish them off in the next (looks at clock)... 5 1/2 hours. 😬
  21. No news yet. The only thing we know for sure is coming is the Guild vs Co2 box, and presumably Samantha and Binh (the only unreleased units from the core rulebook). Also expected are two more allegiances listed in the core rulebook (Kimon and 3-Kingdoms). There's been art and prototype sculpts for both shown at conventions back in 2019, but no official announcement or timeline. Finally, there's Dr Watson, along with the Nytemare-themed Sandmen Allegiance. Both were the result of online campaigns for TOS and Malifaux respectively. But outside of those campaigns, we've heard nothing else. That's not to say they won't happen, just that we have no idea how soon they'd pop up.
  22. First thing's first - GH are the kind of army that benefits from sprinting up the board ASAP to take objectives early, deny your opponent territory and generally just get in their face. They are, after all a melee focused army that take up a ton of space on the board - not taking advantage of that would be a mistake! Thus, I wouldn't recommend spending Turn 1 on Focused effort to generate Reinforcement Tokens (henceforth known as RTs) for Turn 2 onwards. Instead, save the Focused Effort for when your units are already in position and don't need to move that activation. The only exception to this is Karkinoi. In turn 1 I'll generally keep these guys still, to gain a RT and improve their chances of pooping out 2-3 Eggs. Those Eggs can then be eaten by your key units to flip them to Glory (with a 50% chance to gain a RT themselves). IMO the Karkinoi's egg-spawning is so important to setting up your first turn that it's worth holding them back for this reason, and advancing later as a second wave. As for how else to generate RTs, I've already mentioned the Egg Clutches, and liberal use of them should net you a steady, if unreliable trickle of RTs across your army (remember they can be re-summoned with Endless Hordes). The other key tech piece are Speckled Crawlers. When flipped to Glory, they'll generate two RTs per activation, and units that activate nearby can take one of those RTs for themselves. So if you want to load RTs onto one of you units, make sure they're escorted by a squad of Speckled Crawlers.
  23. So I don't think I'll be painting all that much this month. I've got a Kings of War tournament on the 6th March, so I'm attempting to paint up a dwarf army in time for that! That said, some of the units I'm using might look a little familiar... I don't think they'd count for the challenge, but there you go. That all said, I'm still planning to paint at least *something* for Malifaux/TOS... I was planning to paint this cheerful bunch in January, before I got distracted by all these Dwarfs. So I'm hoping to paint at least a couple of these in between Dwarf regiments. The February challenge is very tempting...I might see if I can pull out a mini for that one too. Burning Man knows I've got enough unassembled minis around. @Caedrus One question though - does it have to be Malifaux, or could I paint a TOS model instead?
  24. @Caedrus 15 SS this month. I didn't finish anything more than I showed previously, so it's just Abuela (5) and Avatar Pandora (Counts as Emissary for 10SS)
  25. So... you know how I said I was going to paint the rest of Parker Barrow's crew this month? Well, I *kind of* accidentally finished them all in December... ...and a house... ...and I repaired a Lone Swordsman too... ...Whoops? So I've been on a bit of a roll since christmas. Fortunately it hasn't stopped over this first week of January, so I do at least have something to show for this month! Two horrible ladies - Avatar Pandora and Abuela. Both of these had been sitting, half started, in my cabinet for years. So it's nice to finally get them done! I'm working on some Bayou stuff next so hopefully I'll have yet more to show within the week.
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