Returned Thoughts and Discussion

[Arlos896]

So after looking through the Madness of Malifaux book and seeing the last remaining keyword models that weren't spoiled, I wanted to get a discussion going and start off with some initial thoughts and maybe get some discussions going. 

First up is Kastore, Fervent and he seems very mobile with Faith in the Flesh and Towering Figure.  Defensively only things he has going for him are hard to wound and terrifying 12.  He can get shield from Faith in the Flesh as well.  Other tricks are that he can reduce damage from all friendly models and black blood to zero and once per activation heal from it. This allows for a lot of angles of healing him. Offensively he is a 2" melee attack and stat 7. He's meant to be punching things. He also gets a bonus on his charge attack that lets him double blast and place into base contact with any model damaged. Another 2" non melee attack let's him damage a model for 1 and push himself up to his mv in any direction and place the target in base contact with himself. It has a stagger and a necrotic decay trigger. His bonus action lets his totem charge with a trigger to then have it place next to him after resolving the charge action. 

My initial takes is that he is very combat oriented and enjoys getting focus to really get the benefit of charging and spreading around a lot of damage. It will also be incredibly difficult to prevent him from charging as he can reposition himself during his activation with the bonus of having his totem charge himself or another friendly model. It hits and then heals him and with Gwyll in line of sight to his sz4 stature he can move two inches. He can position friendly models to get aggressive or help navigate around troublesome terrain. Also has a serious potential of kidnapping models and then staggering them to prevent the rescue. He can also be a friendly punching bag for friendly attacks that have useful triggers. The ones that immediately come to mind are Athorak and his Reward the faithful trigger on ancient words and the Unseelie Engine with the survivalist trigger.

Next up are Urnbearers. These were a huge piece of the puzzle that were missing to make this crew work. They have a once per activation aura that when a friendly returned models ends a move they may heal 1 and that same area is hazardous to opponents.  They get a shielded if they would take damage from black blood or whenever a friendly model within aura 4 heals above max hp. The only defense they have is shielded, they are very frail support models with 6 health. Attack actions is a melee that ignores hard to kill and they have a stat 6 lure. Two amazing bonus actions, one is down to the last drop to aoe ping damage as well as trigger black blood on say a blood vessel, Barbaros, or a Cavern Nephilim (more on them later).  The other is empty the urns which requires you to lower your shielded by 3 and the target model heals 4 and gains a focus. I think this will mostly be an early game way to get focused out on key models.  Seems like the plan with them is to get a model out of position for the crew to dive on or let Kastore/Barbaros pull it even further out of position. All in all a solid support piece that will die if looked at wrong. 

Cavern Nephilim the ranged counterpart to their brothers mature nephilim. They have stealth and Regen 2. Their biggest weakness is their low wp. They have expert getaway along with faith in the flesh and ambush. So these guys will get to where you want them to be. They have a unique gun attack that ignores line of sight that is once per turn with some cool triggers, they also have a great melee attach that had pick the bones built in for more interaction. Their last bonus is forage for anti scheming tech. Overall these models will be absolute work horses for the crew. I've been trying grave spirits touch on them for terrifying 11 and Regen 4 it's been fun thus far. Also giving them access to blasphemous ritual for some early game focus stacking on the rest of the crew is nice. 

Last but certainly not least is the Unseelie Engine. A big durable model that has armor 2 and the potential to get shielded and heal itself and allies. He has icon of life that lets him pass any healing he would receive to another friendly model within aura 4". Ancient Technology on the front is a greatly appreciated ability that allows for some great counter tech. Also this crew HATES guns. This guy helps with that problem with one of two different bonus actions. The first let's him reduce the duel total by 1 of any non melee enemy action that targets a friendly model within aura 4. The other is that it removes stunned on friendly models within 4" and they can't gained stunned while within aura 4. It can deal itself 2 irreducible damage during the end phase to keep an aura going into the next round. It has a spikey melee attack and a tactical that it can pulse out damage in an aoe 4 with a failed test. Now that friendly models can relent to this it makes this amazing to splash black blood around and also heal them back up as it heals for each model damaged by the action. Overall this guy feels like a major tech pick and dependent on match up, but I'm glad it's a tool available to the keyword. 

 

The crew feels like it wants to be a bubble brawl crew with it's durability coming from healing and using tricks on the way in to avoid damage. It has the potential for great scheming as well with Kastore, Fervent being a big distraction piece. 

Gwyll to me is an auto take every time. They enable so many shenanigans with the crew it's just a given. A single urnbearer is also a forever hire into the crew for me. They enable a lot of of the tech of the crew and can reposition enemy and friendly models. After that it really feels like you can go with anything in keyword with Unseelie Engine and White Eyes being specific tech pieces to deal with problems. 

My ramblings of first impressions are complete and I would love to get more feedback from everyone here.  I'll chime in later on down the road as I get more games in with them!

[TimH]

23 minutes ago, Arlos896 said:

 Gwyll to me is an auto take every time. They enable so many shenanigans with the crew it's just a given. A single urnbearer is also a forever hire into the crew for me. They enable a lot of of the tech of the crew and can reposition enemy and friendly models. After that it really feels like you can go with anything in keyword with Unseelie Engine and White Eyes being specific tech pieces to deal with problems.

Gwyll very much felt like an auto include when we initially saw the Kastore reveal but with the full book out I'm less sure. With some of the big single target heals and various incidental heal pings it feels like certain models should be keeping on high health/overheal without Gwyll's help, plus with the whole faction to look at most of the overheals don't feel quite so impactful that I'd want to always spend those 8 stones on him. I think he's a very attractive option in Kastore Awakened depending on how you intend to run the list as you could pump out some nasty damage by getting Marathine into the enemy lines and then activating Insatiable several activations running.

White Eyes looks very efficiently costed for what he has but I'm honestly more excited about trying him in Lucius than in Kastore.

Unseelie Engine combined with blood vessels "on guard" trigger feels like it could make Kastore (or another model of your choice) very hard to hit with ranged attacks. The heal trigger on its damage pulse combined with its ability to redirect its own heals feels like it will be very useful combined with the Shielded that Urnbearers and Athorark (which incidentally easily gives the engine its tome trigger for free) for getting 2 heals to hand out instead of one big heal.

Knowing what everything does now Athorark feels a lot more like the auto include to me than the 'distinctly average' model I initially thought he might be. His Eta Kithae really looks like it will help stack up the shielded condition on Urnbearers , his wall gives another defensive measure against ranged attacks, his ancient words are a respectable combat attack and having black blood is surprisingly relevant in the crew.

Urnbearers feel like their hazardous aura will be useful not just for setting up shielded on the crew but also for getting free 2'' pushes early on. I'm definitely seeing a possibility of using the urnbearers and Kastore2 to launch something like White Eyes or a Cavern Nephillim down the board to start harrassing the enemy from behind or scheming in the backlines, not being easily answerable without sending something to fight them on account of stealth.

Not sure about bringing Barbaros to the crew, he is in keyword but his own version of Faith in the Flesh is much more selfish and makes it so he is harder to maneuver around than the rest of the crew is.

Do we know if Marathine can be healed/overhealed? My gut says no as lacking a health stat it has nothing to heal.

[Arlos896]

2 minutes ago, TimH said:

Do we know if Marathine can be healed/overhealed? My gut says no as lacking a health stat it has nothing to heal.

It cannot be healed or damaged per the FAQ. It can still have blasts off of it though. You still do the flips but it doesn't suffer the damage or gain the healing. 

[Arlos896]

Well I'm a die hard Resser player so that's reason number one haha! I think the resser upgrades also offer some good reasons with the extra regen of grave spirits touch along with killer instinct to add in ruthless if needed on a cavern nephilim. Then there is the whisper goes well on Kastore and with Gwyll as well letting you know which card you're about to draw when he activates. Ressers also have some great versatile models and out of keyword picks. 

Why to play Returned versus any other resser master? I think the keyword is more of a generalist than most of the other resser masters. So if you are up against a faction certain masters you favor have a hard time against(Daw into Bayou or Thunders) you can pick Returned safely as they can play scheme, keep away, or aggro as needed. They don't do any one thing better than another resser master, BUT they can do most anything. 

Another personal reason is that I enjoy monstrous models. So a group that is almost entirely not human and plays with the powers of necromancy has me hooked. 

[Arlos896]

I'll say that I have a rough idea for how to unpack the crew and a few variations to account for issues, but after that I do struggle with the potential for half the engine being scattered across the board.

 More games may help with how to handle the later turns and seeing if I can keep the shielded stacking. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

12 hours ago, Arlos896 said:

I'll say that I have a rough idea for how to unpack the crew and a few variations to account for issues, but after that I do struggle with the potential for half the engine being scattered across the board.

 More games may help with how to handle the later turns and seeing if I can keep the shielded stacking. 

Usually there's two potential answers to this I think.

One option is to keep the bubble together, and send stuff out to a flank as needed.

Second option is to get your unpack launching your stuff, then the original support swaps to scheming.

Not sure which is correct here, but I'd start with one?

[TimH]

I'm primarily going to be running the crew as neverborn which loses out on the health regen but does gain ancient pact. I don't see myself running much NB OOK stuff with the list so I don't think the ressers will be missing out too much on the loss of black blood. Hayreddin has some tempting abilities but at 10 stones he feels like too much of an investment when you have cheaper infaction ways of getting decent healing. Possibly the Black Blood Shaman? His end of activation blood clot ability would be good for pulsing some early movement and fly with me would be alright for helping maneouver Marathine down the board early... Will need testing. Honestly within NB the model I'm most interested in trying with the Returned is probably going to be Hildegard, her anti focus aura feels like it could be handy for helping getting the crew safely into melee, though with any OOK or versatile pick your always going to need to be careful of black blood.

When it comes to the bubble I feel as though this will vary somewhat between the 2 Kastore's. Kastore2 I can easily imagine ditching any bubbling turn 1 and sending Cavern Nephilim flying off deep into the board with visceral rampage before flying into the thick of things himself. Kastore1 on the other hand feels like he may want to bubble a bit harder with some of his main crew and send a couple of models off to scheme, try forcing the enemy to engage him while Marathine sprints ahead to try and wear down or kill enemy targets through pulses. I'm already reassesing Gwyll as it now occurs to me that Gwyll might belong more in a Kastore crew that spreads out than one that bubbles. Most of the other models have auras but his Cling to Death only needs line of sight, meaning he can enable your overheal triggers from any distance so long as he can see you.

[Plaag]

kastore1 is unplayable

he have just bad actions and not solid front of a card

[Mindbadger]

I'm a bit less high on the urn bearers. They seem a bit too awkward. They need to be close to the action to get their shielded, but they will most likely get killed. Your models need to move towards them to get the heal, but most of the time they will not be up front, so that is hard to get. I see them being good turn 1 for unpack and a bit of set up, but then a bit tough to use after that.

I could see Kastore 1 working with 2 Cave Nephilim, can put out decent damage with lots of scheming potential. 

I'd be tempted to put Barbaros with Kastore 2, have them run in and smash stuff whilst being supported by your other models.

Gwyll and Alorak seem solid for support, White Eyes as a solo on the side. The Atlas guy seems like a decent tech piece but I'm worried he might be a bit slow.

I think the benefits of running them in Rezzers will definitely be the upgrades, which are much stronger imo. Neverborn has some good versatiles though (I'm thinking staggered synergies for Kastore 1).