Seventeen

Mine comes from a White Wolf Trilogy "The Horizon War" by Richard Wienberg. He was a Death Wizard before baddies captured him, wiped his brain, experimented on him, filled him with superchemicals and nanotech which heal him and give him super strength... His only identity was what the staff and other prisoners called him... Prisoner Seventeen.

here, here! Welcome aboard! it's a great game and a great community! Make sure you do a search on tactica for the crews you've got!

Thanks JMG. I agree... the Kris Kringle thing just provided the impetus to start writing. Book 1 makes a quick mention how Death Marshals "train in the dark art of necromancy, but are forbidden in it's use." Great excuse for a Marshal to become a Resser if that power awakens after the Event of Book 2. Appreciate the feedback!

The rhythmic shunk of a shovel and the soft sprinkling of earth has become more sweet than bitter to me lately. Bitter for I’ve become that which I loathe, that which I’ve hunted, that which I’ve studied. Sweet, for it’s the sound of vengeance – the tick of a clock—that justice is brewing. As strong as a dead body is, they can’t dig worth $$$$$$$$… they’ve forgotten how to get their weight behind the shovel. The handful of times when the four of us would stake out a Resser and watch his crew dig up a body, we’d wonder why he’d bother having them use shovels when clawing at the loose earth with their hands was so much faster. After a while, we figured it was because it was more human to use the implement – it distracted him from the reality that he was animating the dead. That and the fact the dead get excited and worked up into a bizarre frenzy the closer they get to the casket. They’re like kids tearing into birthday presents…weird. What I hate is the noises they make – the inhuman panting, wheezing, and guttural cackling. Tommy Gustafson’s the third boy we’re digging up tonight… well, I’m digging up tonight. I hear the thunk of metal on wood and start my way over to the grave. I pull a pouch of coffee beans out of my pocket, put it to my nose and fill my sinus’ with it’s scent for the smell of rotting flesh is something (I hope) I’ll never get used to. Damn, six months into my Awakening and I’m a still a freakin’ princess where it comes to this stuff. The bodies of Rich and Dylan had already clambered out of the hole by the time I get there. Grinch had the casket open and had already pocketed the coins from Tommy’s eyes. Bastard. Even in death, some things never change. In spite of his grisley, violent demise, Tommy’s bruised and scarred face was peaceful in the cold moonlight. Sherrif said the killers’ victims were bound and tortured before being strangled to death, then stabbed several times post-mortem, every victim missing their right pinky Soon Tommy. By this time tomorrow, everything will be put right. _______________________________________________ Everyone raises bodies a little differently. Contrary to what they teach you at Acadamy, it’s much simpler than the texts make it to be. They say that the body calls out to the Res. I look at a body and inside, all I get is a localized sense of “empty.” Alright Tommy, time to go to work. So here’s how I do it: Step 1: I close my eyes, take a deep breath and calm my insides from my chest to my belly, to where I feel just as empty as they body I’m trying to raise. Step 2: I calm my body and mind into total awareness. Lady Justice calls it the White Moment – that perfect moment during a fire-fight, that one-shot one-kill moment when all hell is breaking loose around you and everything just slows down. Gunfire seems muffled. You’re aware of each detail and movement around you… sheesh, you don’t even blink when your gun goes off. Step 3: When I get really centered and quiet, a purple light turns on right in the middle of my stomach. It starts as small as a quill-point and I will it to rise and grow. When it fills my chest, in my mind’s eye, I cup the swirling ball of energy in my hands and hold it out toward the body. Step 4: I blow, and like pixie dust, the energy billows and passes from my hands to fills up the cadaver’s chest and …. viola… … he’s awake. “Evening Tommy. Let’s getcha out of that hole…” _______________________________________________ It’s just before midnight the next evening and our carriage stops at the ranch fence, 100 yards from Jack’s house. You know how much easier it is to find a serial killer when all you gotta do is ask the victim? Crazy how most of them know the killer, his name, where he lives, the kinds of jokes he likes. It’s only a tad problematic when the victim’s throat is cut thru the hyoid – even then, the dead might not be able to talk, but they can still point. A wolf howls in the distance. Horses don’t mind… they’ve been dead for weeks. They smell better than people. Live horses won’t let zombies near them, let alone ride them, even if it’s an old master. When the crew first transformed, we tried mounting them and Rick’s mare bolted. Took 13 miles and 2 hours to catch up with that damn horse. Before any of them could run away again, I calmed them down with some oats and a cut up apple, then shot ‘em in the heart. Always wondered why no one else thought of that. Why Ressers insist on walking everywhere is beyond me. “Get up boys, we’re here. Time to pay Jack Connley a visit. He won’t be hurting anyone anymore…” ______________________________________________ I love my job, but it doesn’t mean it don’t have it’s downsides. Like how I can be surrounded with friends all day and yet be absolutely and completely alone. Since there isn’t anyone living to watch the next act in this play but me, I entertain myself. I hand each kid a new knife and to the smallest one, Gary, 25 feet of rope. Now for the coup de gras – for Justice’ Sake – I turn to Tommy and raise my right arm, “Raise your right hand.” Expressionless, he does, so as best I can, I attempt to put a smile on his face. I shouldn’t have even tried. A smiling mouth without smiling eyes just looks stupid… “Do you solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that you will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Office of the Govorner General, his heirs and successors and that you will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully defend the Governor General, his heirs and successors in person and dignity against all enemies and will observe and obey all orders set over you, even at the sake of your own life?” Tommy lets out a grunt in agreement. “Well done…,” and I pin a Marshall’s badge onto his raggedy brown and yellow flannel. As I proudly dust off and tidy his shirt, a wave of stone-cold aggression passes over me. In an instant, my soul hardens. It’s time to play and I'm aiming to misbehave tonight. The rest of the crew senses it too and I see the energy inside them turn from a misty purple to an angry, thick swirling mass of gory red. Jack Connley, make peace with your maker… The Dead Marshals are coming. ____________________________________________ The old crew and I each take one of the four sides of the house; Rich takes the left side, pistols holstered and cocked, the folds of his duster billowing in the soft breeze. Dylan’s on the right, rifle leveled at the window, ready to take out anything that comes thru. Ol’ Grinchy’s standing just outside the back door. In spite of being armed with a pair of standard issue Peacemakers and a knife, Grinch always loved using his bare hands in a fight. Out of all of us, he seems to have retained the most of his human-side. Our job is to make sure Jack doesn’t come out. If all goes to plan though, we won’t be doing anything at all. It’s the boy’s show. They’re lined up at the front door. It’s a perfect moment. A crazy thought goes thru my head: this would make a great painting. Too bad no one’s here to capture it. I make Tommy turn his head over his shoulder to look back at me. I give him a sleight nod of the head. He steps toward the door and knocks… ______________________________________________ Lady Justice wasn’t surprised by what she found at the Connley Ranch. “Kris Kringle strikes again,” she mutters under her breath. The place was a mess – turned over tables, parchment, books and odd knick knacks scattered over the floor. Jack Connley’s body was seated in the center of the cottage, hands tied behind his back, ankles bound to the legs of his chair. Two knives were protruding from his back, one from his chest. Both his pinkies were missing. The corpses of three boys in varying states of decay were lying around him. Following his modus operandi, Justice knew the wounds on Jack’s body would tell a story of what he did to his victims – every burn, bruise, laceration, and broken bone on the kids would have its perfect twin on Jack. Judge walks in. “Once again, Kringle got his man,” he says, tossing a gruesome necklace of pinkies onto the table. “Yeah,” Justice replies. “It’s amazing how easy it is to catch a killer when all you have to do is ask the victim…” ________________________________________________ Merry Christmas everyone! This is my first attempt at writing any fiction -- a testimony to how rich and inspiring the World of Malifaux is. I got the idea wanting to create some back story for Enigma Miniature's Bad Santa figure. I was google-ing Saint Nick and mulled over a li'l detail that stood out, "He is known for praying for three boys..." Comments Welcome!

Pm sent

Cool fig! Never though of going black with white lace and trim and white laces for the corsetry.

Great concepts and storytelling. Thanks for sharing this piece.

That's right... Seamus and Pandora took a while, didn't they?

Welcome to the fam!

Wow! Obviously a post from someone who's never run a small business before. RF, if you'd like to really find out how offensive your post on "inactivity" is, PM Nathan and Eric... Ask them how much time they'd LIKE to spend with their wife and kids (Eric has a newborn mind you...). Then ask how much time they actually do spend with them running Wyrd. The original post on Release Dates, and the New Encounter's link was a legit complaint, but the "inactivity" comment deserves you having your car keyed by someone. Being on the forums, reading/hearing interviews with staff, seeing how long it took Wyrd to fill all the orders from GenCon, you get a real sense as to how small a workforce the company has, and the sheer scope of attention and time it takes to manage all the duties that drive "hard" dollars. I've always loved how Eric or Nate always take the time to greet new forum members when they introduce themselves to our forum community. THAT is pretty freaking cool -- getting a greeting from the company owners and game creators in spite of how busy they are! Wyrd is more likely to piss me off more by not correcting a miss pack (where they already have my money but me not having all I paid for) than by not updating their site for extra fluff. But they've handled my personal miss pack situation stunningly. Regarding product releases: releasing stuff Late October is still October... No promises broken there in my book. Getting the link up with new encounters... it is mentioned in Rising Powers after all, but I don't mind as there are so much official in-book scenarios and encounters I haven't done yet with the masters I have or against other master's in my gaming group -- There's lots of rich game play I've yet to experience with the 18 masters without the web support. RF, you mentioned that you're (I assume) planning on becoming a henchman. Your "inactivity" and "and still they do nothing" complaint make it seem that your experience with Wyrd is devestatingly hindered because of the lack of extra encounters in web support. Considering how much fun I'm having without the support, makes me suspect the demos you're planning on doing and have been doing since April must really suck! Now I'm sure they don't because of the strength of the game. Because of how good the game is, the experience of the people you'll be demo'ing to won't suck either. Nor will the success of Wyrd hinge on weather or not web-supported extra content exists. Calling the company on delivering stuff that's in the book is one thing, but issueing a "warning"... like you're the TTG police, is absolutely unnecessary. Running a small business, I understand Wyrd's challenge of balancing 1) the desire to over-deliver in customer service 2) managing the transition from one business size to the next level of growth and 3) trying to get today's busness done today is a really difficult thing. The "business glitches" Wyrd's exeriencing is the price of success and putting out a great product, it's part of the business growth cycle. Minimizing consequences for the customer is ideal during growth pains. May Wyrd quickly find the right people to take the company to the next level, at least satisfy RF, but more importantly stay around and not become another gaming company that fell by the wayside... I'm able to look over all the 'periphery' stuff; I don't mind playing last years Holiday scenarios. After all, the people I'm playing with now didn't play those scenarios with me last year... plus I'm having a great time with the new scenarios in Rising Powers. I'm actually looking forward to Puppet Wars kicking off more than furthering the plot line/scenarios. The only legitimate glitch Wyrd's made from an admin perspective in my opinion is not releasing the Collette and Kirai totems the month or two after the boxed sets came out. So a figurative pat on the back to all the staff at Wyrd! You have my support at least!!!

Read more than a few threads saying that getting the Vic Blisters, a Ronin blister and a Mikasa blister is more playable off that bat than the Vik's boxed set. Does this still hold relatively true with the release of Rising Powers?

At 10 points for Daw plus a couple of hanged to maximize his abilities, he'll compliment your army theme-wise in a large point game or totally dominate a crew character-wise in smaller SS ones. I think thats the point with him... On top of terrain-building opportunities with a hanging tree, he adds an ominous, enigmatic, force-of-nature element to the game. Where the addition of certain models to a crew "tweak" your tactics, Daw is designed to be a paradigm shifter of sorts making for really fun unpredictable games for the player and opponent. Having Daw in the center with a hanging tree smack dab in the middle can keep a game from becoming a big pile of models in the middle... I like him for the fun factor and the unpredictability... Now using him as part of your bag of tricks in a viable tourney-winning faction is another story and u have to pick your battles but nothing new here: to lower risk of him draining your hand of cards, keep him out of LOS of ranged attack weapons and have a model screen to absorb melée attacks; take advantage of terrifying with non-masters; synergies with The Hanged to knock out half the masters' wounds then go in for the kill...

Always though it interesting how different people gravitate to certain factions... Candy/kade/Teddy concept was so cool to me I picked up pandora's box and teddy on concept alone and hen got the rule book... Made no sense to me whatsoever when people would be interested in other factions. At this point in the poll, quite interesting to me that main fact-wise, Arcanists are ahead.

Great reply! Made my day!!!

Wife wanted her girls to be dancing on tables. Here's the link to her first fig: http://s1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd492/achieve_more/Malifaux/The%20Showgirls/?action=view&current=4869aeef.jpg#!oZZ1QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs1222.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fdd492%2Fachieve_more%2FMalifaux%2FThe%2520Showgirls%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3D4869aeef.jpg%26 As cutting sticks then rounding them out to smoothly fit the bases was clearly beyond my modeling skills, I simply took a disc of balsa and scored the lines in. Just another idea...

If you try to go toe-to-toe with dreamer you'll be hard pressed. So don't let LCB play on his terms: set up screens with low point models to sacrifice for a counter attack; he thrives on crew synergies... So don't worry about the LL's or Cop-eye... Kill off daydreams, stitched and alps first; Dreamer controls the crew and the army thrives off the li'l snot. His game is to go in drop nightmares, change into LCB for a melée attack dropping a tome to trigger back into dreamer... So any tactics that drain cards give him less options...the point here is if he's denied tomes to change back to Dreamer, LCB is less likely to show up at risk of losing him in the inevitable counter-strike. Against LCB, you'll do best not pitting your strengths against his, but neutralizing his strengths so he never gets his game going. When new troop types come out there's a learning curve both in playing it and going against it. Funny that guys who haven't won with him yet gennerally don't post... Those who win do and laud the greatness of the model. Their opponents usually cry "broken!" (which in turn makes those who haven't won with him yet feel even more crappy that they can't win with a broken model...) In spite of you probably feeling pretty beat up from the replies, this is a really good thread ironically turning from LCB is Overpowered to "here's how to take him down"...

I'm not putting my runningbacks in games where they're playing against the best running defense, nor am I putting my wide recievers up against the best passing defense in the league. Common sense, right? What most people don't ask is which is the worst defense against the pass, then recruiting the WR from their opponents team... Even better. Point here is not to figure out how your strengths match up against your opponent's strength, but sometimes you win by simply taking his strengths away. LCB is squishy- he can dish it out but can't take counter attacks. He'll look for isolated elements of your army and play the 4-5:1 model ratio, kill your model then try to get out of there. So 1) bunch up your crew together less than 30 mm apart. At most if a nightmare bomb drops, ideally your models clog up the nightmare's effectiveness by only letting them bring 2 models to bear against mine. Or set a screen of witch hunters in front of your main guild force ( less than 8" away) if your opponent takes the bait, they're now vulnerable to counterattack (kill daydreams, alps, and stitched) I agree. I think LCB will initially be a tough opponent until we start thinking and getting used to how to take him down... So, no... I don't think he's overpowered.

Just got mine! Thanks again for the hard work (40 pages!?!?!?)

It's such a great sculpt it's almost hard to NOT produce a great mini. But yours is truly one of the best Seamus' I've seen! Awesome job!

Awesome collection dude! Love what you did with all your figures!

Love your format: general use of models then a strategy/scheme specific list and tactica. I think more crew-breakdowns should be done this way! Yeah... This post ain't fading anytime soon...'my daughter will find your info here very valuable!

Were we off topic?!!? Oh crap! You're right!!!

No need to be sorry! it gets us old geezers thinking about math again! At first blush I knew the logic wasn't quite right. The challenge was not only in figuring it out but being able to articulate it in an understandable way. All in all it was great mental stimulation... we need that every once in a while!

I drew mine out too but pics from my phone are too big to post here. Would've taken me an extra 2 minutes to upload to photobucket then link! Geckilian's the new Auto-CAD! By the way, anyone pwns my master in turn 1, you're buying the beer!

i disagree. the calculations are wrong regarding your geometry. If you actually measure it and draw the triangle out ( a 7" isosceles triangle with a 6" base); mark off a point 4" down the midline, then draw 2 vectors from the center point to the base corners, the range from the center point actually comes out to just over 3 3/4". Anybody out there with Auto-CAD that can post exact figures and diagrams? The principle here is you're starting with a 7" distance but taking a "detour" to get there. By virtue of taking any deviated path off that straight line, you will always add distance to get to the final destination. Conversely, as a Wide Receiver, I can run a directly diagonal downfield for a touchdown pass or I can run 20 yards downfield before I cut in. I will always make it there quicker if I run straight to the opposite corner... Neat thing with tabletop games, is it's easy to not quite keep track of distances edge-of-base to edge-of base, and at least in my gaming group, we tend to *-ish measurements all the time (except in tourneys where there's great swag on the line) because watching things blow up and firing off spells and triggering activations is more fun and valuable to us than being anal. Still, I think it's human nature to turn anal when your master gets pwn'd turn 1 :motz:... especially if you're a Levi player... In the end, just remember, we're not necessarily trying to prove you wrong, so much as just trying to protect ourselves and get great swag! I'd rather you be right, cause nailing multiple models at once always makes for great stories over a beer after a game.. EDIT: DOH!! Geck beat me to the punch!