Cathaidan

Exorcists are good, but expensive. If you're not going to be facing a Master that relies on something they can bypass, they aren't worth it just to ignore Friendly Fire. (I played against a Raspy crew a while back, and regretted it. Not because it was a bad piece, but because another Marshal would have been just as useful, and that would have meant more stones for Lady J.) Recruiters are nice, and I usually take one. They are a must have against Dreamer, Tara, Collette, etc. The more I play Lady J, the more I love the Doms. Marshals themselves are nice, but not amazing. (Unless you're playing against a Resser.) They're more sturdy than anybody else's cheap models, but they lack mobility and have nothing to help with schemes that don't involve killing someone. That said, they are very durable, and can get into scruffs with opposing models and come out the other end, which is nice.

Monster Hunters from Family. I activate them later in Turn 1 to get Creep Along, then get the push from Bravado, then walk, then Deadly Pursuit at the end of the round. Moves them 18" in one turn, and gain focus. They have the added advantage of being beefier than most scheme runners, so they can usually defend any bomb they drop as well. As for the Marshal Keyword, I generally give one to the Lone Marshal, just because he is so mobile and very survivable. With a 7" move, and Run and Gun built in, I don't feel like I'm losing much to have him Charge, shoot something, and then drop a bomb.

Another thing to consider about Karina raising Death Marshals is one of the core things that Tara continues to say about Karina doing anything, "Nobody thought to tell her it couldn't be done." It is possible that Karina is able to do things like, summon Death Marshals or any of the other crazy stuff she does, because she is able to somehow defy the "laws of magic" for Malifaux. Everybody else has these specific rules and ways that magic works. Karina does not, for whatever reason. Therefore, she can pull of things others cannot.

I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, but pistoleros and Abuela seem like they would be interesting to have Vendetta on. They are pretty low cost models, so they can take some fairly fragile targets, and Abuela's obey for other Family models means you can dish out some pretty high damage attacks. The pistoleros being able to have their low stats buffed by Abuela, and being able to get off plenty of attacks in a turn since everything but the totem from the Family can A Por El into them seems like it could put out a lot of damage against enemy scheme runners. The down side is that they aren't very survivable on their own, but inside a Family crew, with Frac and Santi being able to pull and push them around some if they end up in melee will help.

I like taking one of them because I can get more mobility from my crew, and they are a little more reliable stat wise than the DMs. 1 DMR, 1 Dom, and some DMs. They all form a little bubble around the recruiter. Activate a DM to walk forward. Then the DMR, Dom, and other DMs all get a free push at the start of their turn. The DMs act as a LoS shield for the DMR and the Dom while the Dom is getting extra shots out of the DMs. The DMR, or a bigger model, is there for the cleanup afterwards. I have only tested this around a little, but this combination put some hurt onto Bad Juju pretty early in a game against Zoraida, and only lost a single DM in the process. Lady J managed to fly in and drop Juju with a single min dmg attack, gave them all focus, and then took off towards another target. Granted, that is a lot of stones worth of AP to drop Juju, but the fact that I only lost a single DM in the exchange and ended up with a whole lot of focus meant the cluster of models was able to start putting some damage out with focus shots the next turn with some decent results. I did rather enjoy having one around against Bayou in other games, too. The DMs are not terrible at Pine Boxing Sz1 gremlins, who don't always have the best of WP to escape the box. The DMR then kills it. Rinse and repeat.

Papa Loco against Rasputina is almost an automatic buy for me. Takes no damage from blasts, can break destructible terrain at range, and removes cover, etc.

The thing that I am wanting to test out is Lady J with DMs and a Dom for this. The DMs move up to the marker and start killing anything nearby. The Dom uses their undead obey to have the DM toss the idol for 2" and then heals the DM for 2 if you've got the suit in hand for Corpse Command. Next turn the DM either moves to another marker or that same one before popping off attacks against the enemy. Dom obeys and heals. Rinse and repeat as long as you can get into your hand.

And I don't find many opponents relenting on an action that damages them and heals me if successful, no matter what I flip on damage.

That was our mistake, then! Although, in the end, this ended up helping me. Lady J was below the Assassinate threshold prior to killing Bad Juju and the heal from the Domadores. Stacking another 2+ damage onto her, and she might have still been beneath that threshold. lol

Game 6 - Lady J vs. Zoraida Strat: Cursed Idols Deployment: Corner Schemes: Detonate Charches, Breakthrough, Harness the Ley Line, Assassinate, Delivery a Message Crews:  Lady Justice, Lone Marshal w/ LLC, Judge, Death Marshal Recruiter, Domadores de Cadaveres, Death Marshal, Death Marshal, Scales of Justice, 4 ss pool Zoraida, Bad Juju, Doppledanger, Spawn Mother, Gautraeux Bokor, Will o the Wisp, Will o' the Wisp, Voodoo Doll, (Don't remember the upgrades) 8 ss pool Turn 1 - Cursed Idol spawns on my right hand side, 8" from the corner. Standard Turn 1 positioning craziness. The Lone Marshal and the Judge walk towards the Cursed Idol while the rest of the crew advances towards the middle of the board; moving slightly to the right hand side because of blocking terrain positioning at the dead center. Zoraida does all kinds of obey/lure shenanigans to move her whole crew towards the Cursed Idol except for Bad Juju who manages to swing around the blocking terrain in the middle of the board and approach my crew from the left flank and a single Will o' the Wisp that was following Juju. Turn 2 - Cursed Idol spawns in my right hand corner. Bad Juju storms into my crew and starts wrecking face, dropping one of the Death Marshals and putting the hurt down on Lady J. Additional attacks from obeys lead to Lady J sitting in bad shape and being buried by one of her own Death Marshals. The Marshals respond by having throwing all of the damage they can into Juju. Lady J then pops out of the box and starts swinging at Juju. She manages to bring him down to 2 health. Stone for suit on the leap to drop one more attack in, and Juju goes down without being able to heal back up. (Opponent didn't have the cards in hand.) Domadores then "shoot" Lady J to give her some additional healing. The Lone Marshal moves to stand on top of the Cursed Idol that spawned on Turn 1, and takes a pot shot at the Spawn Mother that misses. The Judge attempts to give me card draw, but 2 out of 3 cards were Tomes. He then limps into position within concealing terrain to back up the Lone Marshal. The lone Will o' the Wisp on my left side continues his advance while the rest of Zoraida's crew marches towards the two Cursed Idols on my left flank. Turn 3 - Cursed Idol spawns underneath the Lone Marshal, meaning he is standing on two markers. The Lone Marshal spends both of his activations throwing the Cursed Idols onto Zoraida's table half. The Judge attempts to bring down the Spawn Mother, but she butterfly jumps away (b/c of the upgrade card.) He spends the rest of his actions firing at the gups that had been summoned. Lady J spends her actions walking towards my left, before leaping onto the Will o' the Wisp on that side and whacking it for most of its health. The Death Marshal, Recruiter, Scales of Justice, and Domadore continue advancing towards the middle of the board, laying down ranged attacks against Zoraida and the Gautraeux Bokor once Zoraida moved behind blocking terrain. The Doppledanger moves into base contact with one of the Cursed Idols I had thrown onto Zoraida's half and throws it back onto my half. Then after much obey craziness she grabs the second idol and throws it onto my half as well. Turn 4 - Cursed Idol spawns on my right side, 8" from the corner. Zoraida, the Doppledanger, and Gautrauex Bokor bring down the Lone Marshal, and throw the new idol onto my table half. Lady J makes a break for it and starts dropping scheme markers into Zoraida's deployment area. The rest of the Marshals continue their advance, trying to get pot shots in at Zoraida when they can, or anybody else crazy enough to show their face. The Judge is charged by the Spawn Mother, but when he goes to return fire she eventually leaps away to save her life and prevent him from healing up. Turn 5 - Lady J concedes defeat.  Final Result: Zoraida wins 4(+){Sitting on 3 VP at the end of Turn 4, with an almost automatic 1 VP from the strat at the end of Turn 5}-1(+){At most, 3 points total}  Post Game Wrap Up This game was a problem for me across a few fronts. For starters, having never faced Zoraida before, and hearing about how strong her obeys were in Cursed Idols, I wasn't expecting what was thrown at me to show up. Now I know: Bad Juju takes a whole lot of work to put down, and Zoraida's crew is good at throwing him forward pretty quickly so that you have to deal with him. Additionally, while I had a good tactic for how I wanted to play the match, my execution was terrible. The plan was to try and control where the Cursed Idols were spawning using the Pass Tokens generated from Zoraida summoning Voodoo. Then to have most of my crew collapse on that location and fight for it, while the Lone Marshal moved around to flank, scoring break through and generally being a trouble maker in the backfield. Unfortunately, between Bad Juju crashing into me on Turn 2, and the first idol showing up on the side of my deployment as the Lone Marshal, with no way to move him through the cluster that was building on my left side, I scrapped by plan and didn't come up with a good enough substitute. My opponent commented after the game that he kept expecting me to Leap Lady J away from Juju, and instead send her barreling off to try and score points somewhere else. While this might have been a good idea, she had been roughed up pretty badly by Bad Juju, and was in need to the healing she receives from killing models, and the healing from the Doms before taking off. Plus, giving everything nearby Focused helped to try and stack some damage onto Zoraida for Assassinate, even though I didn't end up scoring it. All in all it was a good game, and I had ways that I might have been able to pull out a win, but for my own mistakes. Positioning wasn't as terrible as it has been in the past, as I always had something I could do with my actions, even if it wasn't always the absolute most efficient thing that could have been done. I feel like I broke up my bad habits of just shooting and killing things because I can, and had specific reasons that I was going for the targets I had chosen. (Bad Juju is just too disruptive in my back line to be left alone, Gatrauex Bokor was obeying too much of Zoraida's crew into completing schemes and strats out of activation, and Zoraida for the Assassinate Scheme.) All of that being said, The Lone Marshal ended up not doing anything for me this game. Not because he can't, but because I misused him. Which in turn caused me to misuse Lady J, just so I could score some points. The Judge was underwhelming because I didn't get him into the action quick enough. And the Death Marshal Recruiter was nice, but I'm not sure he's worth the stones. I used to be a big fan of them, but not in this crew and against this opponent. I think a second Domadores would have been better. Or a third Death Marshal and keeping a larger soul stone pool.

That being said, pay close attention to the keywords! Many models have keywords that you wouldn't necessarily expect them to have. (Soulstone Miners from Arcanists have Mah Tuckett's Tricksy Keyword.)

4-5 hours, generally. Then again, we're not competitive players, some of us take smoke breaks during the game, we all get distracted easily and will watch each others games while player, etc. Our groups is currently 5 strong with usually 1-2 people not making it to game days and usually another 1-2 showing up to try out Malifaux. With smoke breaks, beerruns, food breaks, poking in to see what the other tables are doing, someone getting funny videos sent to them, etc. our games tend to drag out longer.

On the top, there isn't too much of a difference, and you really only notice it if you're looking for it. The big difference is on the bottom of the base. The Wyrdscapes bases (the new ones) have the base sitting right about the surface you place the model on, so there isn't enough room for most rareearth magnets to sit. This means you have to drill out the base to fit the magnet. On the original Malifaux bases, the middle of the base sat about 3-4mm above the surface it was placed on and had small plastic supports, so you had room to fit a magnet under it. Just looking at my models on the table, the only way I can tell the difference is that my Wyrdscapes ones that I didn't drill out lean to one side because the magnets don't fit. Inside my magnetized carry-case, I can't really tell the difference.

I stand corrected. Still free movement!

Out of Family, I have been running the Monster Hunters. They get a 5" push towards enemy models as a bonus action and a free 4" push during the end of turn. Add that into the 4" push they get when they focus, and they can have 13" of movement without taking a walk action and have focus to use when they need it. Plus they've got decent base stats and a good number of wounds. They're very good at moving up and killing enemy scheme runners and then dropping their own scheme markers efficiently.