A guide for Dr. McMourning Insanitary

[KlausFischer]

Sources and Thanks

Julian Saviour
Kelto
OGs from the MWS Discord: Maniacal Cackle, Quickitt, QTpierogi
Reddit: Ven_Gard
Maniacal Cackle's Podcast features on Rage Quit Wire

If you find any spelling, grammar or capitalization mistakes, please reply, I will gladly fix them. Likewise, if you have something you would like to add or have a different opinion on, please let me know.

This guide has been posted here originally: https://gksk-malifaux.blogspot.com/2024/01/resurrectionists-experimental-keyword.html

27th of March 2024: A small section about the Corpse Curator has been added.

[KlausFischer]

Time of writing: 2024-02, GG4

Dr. McMourning Insanitary

Sources and Thanks

Julian Saviour
Kelto
OGs from the MWS Discord: Maniacal Cackle, Quickitt, QTpierogi
Reddit: Ven_Gard
Maniacal Cackle's Podcast features on Rage Quit Wire

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At first glance, Dr. McMourning, Insanitary, appears to be a supportive summoner that should be kept far from the enemy. There is some truth to that. But he is not as fragile as one might initially think and he has offensive capabilities that are not obvious.

Dr. McMourning, Insanitary is a powerful and complex all-rounder master that can play almost any encounter in GG4.

 

Defensive capabilities

This model's defensive capabilities are Df 5, 13 HP and Disguised. It does not want to be in the thick of things. It lacks Hard to Wound, which its non-title variant has, despite being a living model. Just like the other keyword models (apart from the Corpse Curator), this model does have Perverse Metabolism, however, meaning that it will be able to realistically heal back 1-3 HP at the end of a turn, depending on the level of its poison condition. Also, there are two ways to trigger this healing before the end of the turn: Sebastian's (or Rafkin's) Catalyst ability will make Dr. McMourning heal 1 at the start of his activation if there is poison on him. A more active and more effective variant is to use the Zombie Chihuahua's (or Sebastian's) Blood Poisoning on Dr. McMourning. This way, you will heal your master equal to the amount of his poison condition, up to five. You can consider using Blood Poisoning an emergency button that you can press if McMourning is running low on health. The totem also has Companion, so this emergency heal does not interrupt your planned activation order as long as the Zombie Chihuahua is within 6'' of the model that you wanted to activate initially. As always, you do lose activation control from this type of chain activation, of course. Another way in which you can heal up this master is if you target him with his own bonus action and use the Mend trigger. Dr. McMourning is susceptible ro ranged attacks, so keep him in a secure spot if your opponent has these. Keep in mind, however, that you will be safe from Run and Gun attacks, because of how Disguised is worded.

The bottom line is: As long as there is only one enemy beater getting to Dr. McMourning and as long as he is not getting kidnapped, he will survive for two turns or even longer. It might be necessary, to invest Soulstones to put focused attacks on a negative (no hard to wound) and sometimes to reduce damage, but usually that should be enough. As long as your opponent has a lot of threats, you have to play it safe with Dr. McMourning Insanitary. He will survive, however. Once your opponent runs low on threats, it's time for Dr. McMourning to move forward.

Don't Mind Me

Don't Mind Me looks like an oddity here at first glance. Given the role this models fulfills, the ability sometimes does not come up at all. Sometimes it can be very valuable, though.
One thing that Dr. McMourning can do with it, for example, is score Death Beds' first point all by himself (with Corpse Markers, of course).
Don't Mind Me should not be undervalued. It can come up clutch in the later turns of the game when a situation arises where you need to spend your master AP on scoring. This is particularly true considering McMournings Mv stat of 6. It's an ability that can be easily forgotten. Make sure you remember it.

Horrendous Corpse

Horrendous Corpse is a board-wide ability with its only requirement being that the killed model has Poison +3 or more. This means that it will happen anywhere on the board, on your models as well as on your opponent's. The base case is that your own model is the one having Poison +3 and that you will drop a Scheme Marker, not a Corpse Marker. In a GG that focuses on Scheme Markers to score, Horrendous Corpse is an extremely powerful ability. The fact that the marker can be dropped within 2'' of the killed model makes it even more powerful. In most cases, this means that your opponent's model won't be able to remove the marker right away, i.e. in the same activation. Also, you should be able to put the marker outside of 3'' of the opposing model, making it possible to score the first point of Protected Territory from it.

Your opponent will face a dilemma: He can invest resources to kill your model, take 1 poison in response and still risk that you might score a point regardless, due to the scheme marker from Horrendous Corpse. He can also not go for the kill, in which case, well, all the better for you. Consider this situation: Your Poison +3 model is on its own on a flank. What schemes can you score with that particular marker?

• Death Beds: You will have a Corpse Marker there (from your killed model), as well as a scheme marker. And unless the kill was due to a ranged attack, there will also be an enemy there for you to kill in return to score the first point.
• Power Ritual: Not as likely as Death Beds, but still possible, given your Mv 5/7/8 Flesh Constructs with 3 AP.
• Outflank: Possible, but you will need other models in place to score this.
• Espionage: Very possible. Given that the marker can be within 2'' of the killed model, you should be able to plan your positioning so that the marker ends up on the center line or in the opponent's deployment zone.
• Information Overload: The ability is merely helpful here. Consider it a free AP.
• Protected Territory: Very nice for the first point. Keep in mind that the markers must be completely on the enemy table half.
• Ensnare: You can rush a summoned poison+3 model into an enemy non-Minion. All of your opponent's options will be bad: He can kill your summon and risk Ensnare as long as you manage to place another Scheme Marker close (which is very easy for a Flesh Construct with an Spare Head appendage, more on that later). In order to avoid you scoring it, he will at least have to compromise his preferred order of activation and remove your Scheme Markers before he activates a non-minion close to the Scheme Markers. Or he can ignore the Summon and waste AP to get away from it.

It is crucial that you plan the positioning/movement of your models with Poison +3 with Horrendous Corpse in mind.

You can find a discussion on how to get poison on your models below ("The poison engine").

All this text was in regard to your own models having Poison +3. If you manage to get your opponent's models into that state, it's an entirely different situation: While it's obviously better to kill your opponent's models than the other way round, you will not be able to influence their positioning as much. That being said, it is very hard to get enemy models to Poison +3. Getting your own models there, on the other hand, almost happens coincidentally with the right setup.

What it comes down to is that Horrendous Corpse will almost exclusively apply to your own models, but if it ever happens that your opponent has a model with Poison +3, you should keep it in mind.

The option to drop a Corpse Marker instead of a Scheme Marker should come up rarely. If your backline models that supply you with Corpse Markers (the "corpse engine") have been killed, it can be better to get another Corpse for McMourning's Twisted Genius instead of the Scheme Marker.

You will often face a situation where your models drop down to Poison +2 or only ever go up to Poison +2. You can use Flask of Formaldehyde or the Zombie Chihuahua to get them back up to a poison level where Horrendous Corpse would trigger.

One last thing: If possible, keep your non-Experimental models more than 2'' away from dying horrendous corpses, otherwise they will suffer Poison +1 just as well.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

This ability can be used in two ways:

• To gain a benefit from removing a marker, most likely a Corpse Marker, without actually having to remove it
• To draw a card

Each of these benefits can be chosen once per activation. That means that, if you ever remove two markers in one activation, you will both redrop one of them and draw a card for the other.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is the ability that powers the corpse engine of the crew and that unlocks many models that, without it, would be difficult to get value out of. Be sure to make use of its 8'' range and think about where to redrop a removed marker: The Canine Remains need the marker to be in base contact with them for their Carrion Away action, for example.

Remember that Reduce, Reuse, Recylce also triggers when your opponent removes a marker. This can also happen when he reveals a scheme during the turn, such as Death Beds or Ensnare. It also works when you reveal one of these schemes.

As the value from Reduce, Reuse, Recylce comes in bit by bit, it's easy to undervalue this ability. Make no mistake, over the course of a game, Reduce, Reuse, Recylce will generate an immense amount of resources. You will draw at least three cards from it every turn and you will usually create three Corpse Markers from it every turn. It's an extremely powerful ability and you should always plan around it.

Twisted Genius

We are looking at one of McMourning's tactical actions first. Twisted Genius is the most powerful action on McMourning's card. You want to use it every turn. It has no TN, so it will never require you to cheat a failed simple duel for it. You will never run the risk of black joker-ing it. You will draw a card from one of the removed markers and place back one of the others through Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. You will be able to offset the Slow of the Flesh Construct immediately by using its Reckless bonus action. Even the point of damage that it takes from that will not matter most of the time because you usually give it at least two points of poison, i.e. it will heal back 1 at the end of the turn. The Distracted +1 on McMourning is mostly meaningless since models such as summoned Canine Remains can assist him to remove it. The only thing you need to keep in mind is the order of your actions: If you plan to use attack actions on enemies, use Twisted Genius only after these.
But how to get to three Corpse Markers every turn? The section "The corpse engine" below goes into detail about this.

The corpse engine

Note: This is a long section with a lot of details that requires you to know the models mentioned. You can skip over it and come back to it later.

There are multiple ways to supply McMourning with Corpse Markers.

Mindless Zombies with Poison +3

Killing a Mindless Zombie that has Poison +3 will result in three Corpse Markers: One for the dead model, one from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle because you removed a marker and one from Horrendous Corpse. Where to get the zombie from? You can hire one if you are running low on stones or you can use the Carrion Emissary's Exhumation or Asura Roten's Zombie Apocalypse. Ezekiel is also a very good choice for this job since he has Zombie Apocalypse and his Intuition can draw you a particular card from the top three cards of your deck through Debt of Gratitude combined with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

How to  get the zombie to Poison +3? There are many ways. Here are some: If you hired it, you can attack one of your models with Bloated Stench twice and get the last point from the Zombie Chihuahua's Horrific Odor. If you summoned it, you can get two points from the Nurse's Smashed Trigger and the last one again from the Zombie Chihuahua's Horrific Odor. Or you can attack it twice with the Zombie Chihuahua and get the last point from the aura.

How to kill the zombie? Through a Charge of one of your models that's got nothing better to do.

That is the theory. The ways described above will work, but they are not at all optimal, some of them have huge issues (using the Nurse's Smashed trigger, for example, is a huge waste since the effect of Bottle of Painkillers is useless on the zombie while it could be hugely beneficial for your other models. Also, it would require your Nurse to activate at a rather fixed point, giving up the flexibility to activate when there is a good card to pick up with Tools for the Job; she also loses the benefits of Manipulative activating early in this scenario).

In practice, there is a streamlined, very greedy approach for this type of corpse engine that usually is optimal. The very best players will realize when to deviate from this approach. Here it is:

The Carrion Emissary summons a Mindless Zombie. Doing so, he puts down two Coffin Markers, removing one. This will draw you a card from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The second Coffin Marker is placed within 1'' of a cheap model. During that model's activation, you can immediately spend one AP to remove the remaining Coffin Marker and again draw a card from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The Carrion Emissary then spends its two other AP. Next, you charge the Mindless Zombie with your Zombie Chihuahua. The Mindless Zombie relents. You will flip 4 cards for damage, very likely hitting it for 1 damage and Poison +1. Then you attack it again. In both of your attacks, you need to have one crow in the attack flip so that you deal 1 damage and Poison +2. This will bring the Mindless Zombie down to 1 HP and Poison +3. That is important because Poison +3 is the threshold for Horrendous Corpse. Of course, if you have a crow in hand, you will not cheat the first attack flip as you still have a chance to randomly flip a crow in the second flip. Next, use Blood Poisoning on the Mindless Zombie. The damage triggers first, which will kill the Zombie while it still has Poison +3. Thus, you get the three Corpse Markers you wanted from just two activations and you don't have to use another model to charge and kill the Mindless Zombie. Note that the placement of the Corpse Markers is a bit peculiar: One in base contact of the Mindless Zombie, one within 2'' of McMourning (from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), one within 2'' of the Mindless Zombie (from Horrendous Corpse).

This approach sounds very appealing, but it needs precise positioning and still is prone to failure:

• Horrendous Corpse and Horrific Odor will give out Poison +1 in a 2'' pulse. You do not want to have models that take damage from poison in that pulse.
• The Zombie Chihuahua will flip eleven cards in the process. You do this every turn. There is a high risk that he will flip the Black Joker at some time in the game. If it comes up in the damage flip (8 cards total) or the duel for Blood Poisoning (which has a TN), he will either not kill the Zombie or not get it up to Poison +3. Handling this is not too hard, but inconvenient: If you can get the Zombie up to Poison +2, you can use Horrific Odor to get the Zombie up to Poison +3 after the Zombie Chihuaha's activation. Alternatively, you can still kill it and be happy with 2 corpses. That is particularly true if you hired a Canine Remains which will then be able supply the third corpse for McMourning's Twisted Genius through its bonus action. It's still not ideal.
  If you run into a situation where the Mindless Zombie has Poison +3, but is still alive, you will need a different model to kill it. There is no good solution for this situation: You can use an Enslaved Spirit, which will put Poison +1 on the Enslaved Spirit. You can use a Canine Remains, but that is pointless, because you then will miss out on the additional corpse that it can create itself through its bonus action (why? because you can only use Reduce, Reuse, Recycle once per activation for marker duplication). Instead, you will draw another card from it. The last option is to invest 1 AP and a charge of a more relevant model in your crew that does not suffer damage from poison in order to kill the Mindless Zombie. I think taking 1 damage on the Enslaved Spirit from poison is the best out of these three bad options, but it depends.

Despite the fact that it will sometimes fail, this is the optimal approach and you should try it whenever you can, knowing how to handle the different ways in which it can go wrong and planning for these scenarios - they will happen sooner or later. Note that you will invest your Zombie Chihuahua's entire activation. Sometimes, that might not be worth it. Sometimes, you at least want to use Blood Poisoning on a different model.

Canine Remains

Another way to power your corpse engine are Canine Remains. They can use their bonus action Carrion Away to remove a Corpse Marker, which will trigger Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and redrop the marker. At the end of the activation, you will drop "the initial" marker again, effectively generating one Corpse Marker. That requires, however, that you have one marker to begin with.

So, if you have three Canine Remains and an initial Corpse Marker, you will produce three per turn.

What are your options for the initial Corpse Marker? Apart from using a hired Mindless Zombie (expensive), one can go for a Gravedigger, the Restless Spirit or the Corpse Curator. Each of these has their own benefits and which is best depends on the encounter/opponent and the rest of your crew. You could also use a model that summons Mindless Zombies, of course.

The Canine Remains based corpse engine also has a streamlined approach/model selection:

You hire one Canine Remains, Sebastian and a model to create your initial Corpse Marker. For the latter one, we pick the Gravedigger in this example and give him the Killer Instinct upgrade. Recent Funeral will give you a Corpse Marker straight away. You activate the hired Canine Remains and duplicate the Corpse Marker through their bonus action and Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. With their remaining AP, you can interact twice to draw a card or interact and walk. Then Sebastian summons two Canine Remains through Man's Best Friends. He might need to stone for a crow unless you have a 6+ of crows in your hand. For the first summon, you actually remove the Corpse Marker and draw a card from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This gives you the chance to draw a 6+ of crows for the second use of Man's Best Friend. For the second summon, you redrop the marker in such a way that it is in base contact with one of the newly summoned Canine Remains. The new Canine Remains will enter the game Slow and - as summons - will not be allowed to interact the turn they enter play. Thus, all you do with them is use their bonus action to create a new Corpse Marker and take a walk action (or concentrate, even though Focus is pretty useless on them). After you have activated both of the new Canine Remains this way, you will have three Corpse Markers.
The Canine Remains powered corpse engine has a few advantages over the zombie based one as well as a few drawbacks:

➕ You will have two additional models that can impact the game.

➕ Your corpse engine does not break entirely if you lose one of these models.

➖ Sebastian is arguably a slightly worse hire than the Carrion Emissary in most situations.

➖ You need three activations instead of two (if everything goes right) before you have generated three Corpse Markers.

➖ Going down to zero Corpse Markers really hurts, it requires you to get a Corpse Marker from the Gravedigger fist before the Canine Remains can start to duplicate them.

➖ You are hiring one more model that you might not want to hire in every encounter (either Sebastian or the model that creates the initial Corpse Marker, depending on how you view the situation).

That last point is, in my eyes, how you choose which Corpse Engine is best for you. It depends on the encounter and your opponent. If you can make good use of Sebastian and the other model that you hire with the Canine Remains based corpse engine, you should pick it. If you prefer the Emissary, Asura Roten or Ezekiel in the particular encounter, the Mindless Zombie based engine is better.

 

Why is the Gravedigger a good choice, not only for the initial Corpse Marker generation, but in general? His free 4'' push from Corpse Collector can not only be triggered from Grave Robber, but from all the Corpse Markers you are dropping. You can get quite some free movement out of that, especially during the first turn. After that, the Gravedigger becomes a very fast scheme runner that can even interact, push 4 '' from Grave Robber/Corpse Collector and interact again. Killer Instinct is a great upgrade in a McMourning Insanitary crew because Loot their Corpse will allow you to remove a Corpse Marker, give you a Soulstone and either draw a card or redrop the Corpse Marker as long as the Marker removal happens within 8'' of McMourning. Since the Gravedigger is a Minion he also gets Deadly Pursuit from the upgrade, making it even faster.

McMourning

The last way to generate Corpses somewhat effectively and, more importantly, reliably, is the Amputation trigger on McMourning's melee attack against one of your own living or undead models. Given that you are using a master AP for that, the other options are usually preferrable.

Now, back to McMourning's card!

Rusty Tools

His melee is a 1'' Stat 6 attack with an inbuilt Crow for the Amputation trigger. It's a rather weak attack since it is capped at causing two points of damage. On the positive side, it guarantees +1 Injured, even if it deals no damage (when attacking models with Shielded and Armor, for example). Since there is no damage flip, you cannot flip the black joker for that, either. It is, however, a quite versatile attack since you can also attack your own models to create a Corpse Marker. Giving the attacked model Poison +2 is a freebie which can be important because it can make your newly created Flesh Constructs reach Poison +4 during McMourning's activation. That again, is useful because they will heal 2 at the end of the turn and they will trigger Horrendous Corpse, even on the turn after. When attacking the Corpse Curator, you will be able to drop a Scrap Marker instead, which can be interesting for the appendages upgrades from Desperate Plot.

When attacking your own models, it's almost always best to use a charge action. This will give you free movement to either keep up or stay away from the enemy, depending on what you need. You need plan ahead so that your Corpse Markers are still within 4'' for Twisted Genius after the move from the charge. It's worth mentioning that Twisted Genius summons the Flesh Construct in base contact with McMourning. Thus, if you charge forwards first, your new Flesh Construct will be up to 6'' closer to where it wants to move.
Using one AP to charge every turn in the first few turns can result in McMourning staying rather close to the action, meaning that he will be able to influence the game much more in the later turns instead of having to take a couple of walk actions. It all depends on your opponent, of course. You do not want to rush your master into an opponent that can easily kill him.

While a damage track would be preferrable to 2 points of flat damage, Rusty Tools still works well for McMourning's overall role. Against aggressive crews, he will stay back near his corpse engine. If an enemy does indeed reach him, this attack will help McMourning to soften the - hopefully - overextended enemy up with injured, so that any closeby allies or a newly summoned Flesh Construct can take care of them. Alternatively, you can always use Plastic surgery (see below) to give your master a powerful attack of an ally.

Desperate Plot

This is a 8'' attack action against WP with a stat 6 and a TN of 12, i.e. it needs a 6 to go off, and has an inbuilt Ram for the Hidden Bombs trigger. As an attack action, it does suffer from concealment even when targeting your own relenting models. Targeting those that might have moved too far into a forest or dust cloud will give you a negative flip. Given that you need a 6 to succeed, a negative flip is a risk you don't want to take. So you will have to spend a stone or a focus in that case. Also, you cannot target McMourning himself with this action.

The action itself does four things:

• Poison +2
• A push of up to 4''
• Removes one marker of your choice in the path of the moved target
• If the target is an Experimental model, it can gain an appendage upgrade if it did remove a marker

The obvious use is to push one of your newly summoned Flesh Constructs to give them Poison +2 and an appendage upgrade. It is, however, also a great way to reposition enemy models to deny them from scoring or to move them out of melee range so McMourning or can walk away. Another use case scenario is when your opponent has has engaged one of your schemers to deny them from interacting with, e.g. a Strat Marker. You can move the opposing model with Desperate Plot and get your own model out of engagement range that way. Given that a lot of schemes in GG4 are scored when opposing models are near markers, Desperate Plot can also be helpful with that. Lastly, the marker removal can be clutch to deny enemy schemes. Does your opponent have a setup with two Scheme Markers for Ensnare near one of your non-Minions? Just push your own model over them, remove one and deny your opponent from scoring. Your own model gets a free Spare Head in the process (as long as it is Experimental and does not have an appendage upgrade, yet).

The 8'' range, combined with McMourning's Mv of 6 (odd that it's not 5) will give you a decent range to do all of that.

The Quick Reflexes trigger is nice since it only needs a 6+ of Masks, but it has limitations: You have to target a different model for the second push (no double pushes from one AP) and you will not be able to declare a trigger on this created action (no Hidden Bombs on either of the pushes).

The inbuilt Hidden Bombs trigger is a nice freebie that you take whenever it's useful. When you can push a Flesh Construct close to the enemy, you will certainly declare the trigger to force the Mv duels and spread some poison. When you can incidentally create more poison on your own Experimental models, you will declare it as well, of course. I've got a hard time coming up with how one could use this cleverly. It's a pulse, so is most effective against multiple opponents. If you plan on using a summoned Flesh Construct as a tarpit model, the trigger fits quite well: The Flesh Construct want to tie up as many enemies as possible, so Desperate Plot pushing it into a gaggle of enemies may be excactly what you want.
Being a pulse, the area of effect of Hidden Bombs becomes bigger with larger base sizes. Flesh Constructs, the obvious targets for this action, are on 40 mm, that's already decent. The Rogue Necromancy and Kentauroi profit even more from it due to their 50 mm base size. Still, you would never plan for that use specifically. This is the reason for the assessment at the start of this paragraph: Hidden Bombs is a nice freebie that you take whenever it's useful, but there is not much more to it.

Appendage upgrades

The type of appendage you can upgrade your model with depends on the marker you removed. Usually, you will keep McMourning in a safe spot and therefore have to create the markers for the appendages yourself, i.e. enemy models will be far away and so will be their markers. Corpse Markers and Scheme Markers are the ones that you can produce with little additional effort required, the Scheme Marker certainly being the easiest one. You can also go for a Scrap Marker if you use Rusty Tools' Amputate on a Construct such as the Corpse Curator. The Terrain Marker for Excess Fat is certainly the hardest to get a hold of, but it's possible to generate one from the Corpse Curator, too. Luckily, Excess Fat is the most niche appendage.

You should always keep in mind that this action can also remove an enemy marker. This can be anything from a welcome convenience to being incredibly valuable: If Mei Feng2, for example, has used her bonus action to create a bridgehead Scrap Marker and you can remove it before she can use Ride the Rails to move her models there, you will take a lot of wind out of her sails.

All appendage upgrades share the Grotesque Horror ability which allows you to reduce damage by 2 down to 0 and redrop the marker that you had removed when attaching the upgrade. It drops in base contact with your model. In the case of Excess Fat, you always drop a Sludge Marker. The free 2 HP are nice, but what is even more powerful is the free Scheme Marker that you drop with Spare Head. Whenever your opponent is attacking your upgraded model, he risks that you drop the Scheme Marker. Also, you can hit your own model to drop a Scheme Marker in a spot where you would not be able to interact. An example where this can be quite helpful is the Ensnare scheme. But it gets even crazier: You can also trigger the appendage discard and marker drop with damage from Reckless, Manos' Siphon Power or the Kentauroi's Stampede. This is what makes appendages broken. You can now go reckless to "interact" without spending AP while being engaged and drop the marker at a spot where there already is a Scheme Marker within 4''. This makes scoring Death Beds incredibly easy (you can drop both the required markers this way, albeit with two different models). Ensnare is even easier.

Spare Head (Scheme Marker): In the interact-heavy GG4, Chatty is very valuable. The +2 Wp is just the cherry on top.

Extra Legs (Corpse Marker): If you consider Spare Head protection against enemy scheming, Extra Legs is the opposite in a way, as it allows your model to reach the place where it can scheme much faster. But of course, +2 Mv is just good in general. Charge Through is particularly valuable on models with low min damage but high moderate and severe damage. So there is another reason to give this to your Flesh Constructs.

Metallic Arms (Scrap Marker): Flurry is powerful when you have attacks that require little additional resources. I see Metallic Arms as particularly valuable with the Rogue Necromancy. Its attack has an inbuilt plus flip and min damage 3, so discarding a card for an additional attack will give you a lot for very little investment. Also, the Rogue Necromancy will gain +2 Poison from the discard. This upgrade also works decently well with Sebastian, given his high base stat. +1 Df helps out both of them.

Excess Fat (Terrain Marker): This is the most situational upgrade, but potentially powerful if there is a large piece of terrain that your opponent cannot circumvent easily. +2 to simple duels could be nice for Sebastian's Man's Best Friend as you will only need a 4 of Crows. This is very situational, though. Other things that profit from it are all Shockwave attacks (Rafkin and Sebastian), Kentauroi's Ride with Me and the other ones are not worth mentioning.

The bottom line is: Plan for Spare Head or Extra Legs for your summoned Flesh Construct(s), depending on the situation, this is the scenario that will come up most often. Keep in mind that your other models can also profit from the appendages, in particular the Rogue Necromancy.

Plastic Surgery

This action offers a wealth of options. The one thing to always remember is that McMourning can target himself with it and therefore also heal himself by 2 with the Mend trigger. To get the most out of this action, copy a powerful ranged action of an expensive model onto a cheap model that would otherwise do nothing, such as the Zombie Chihuahua or a Canine Remains. The Zombie Chihuahua is a particularly good target because it allows you to go for a powerful double activation with Companion. Note: The two mentioned models might be rather unimporant or essential depending on the situation, your game plan and your hired crew. If they are essential, do not put them in a dangerous spot and choose a different target, of course.
Copying the action on a Flesh Construct is also a great choice since you will be able to use it three times. Good actions to copy are:

• Rogue Necromancy's Savage Bite (the inbuilt plus flip will help with Distracted)
• Archie's/Grave Golem's Huge Fist
• The Valedictorian's Dissectors 
• Toshiro's Balanced Sword
• Bête Noir's Paired Knives
• Bête Noir's Poisoned Fate: An action that you would rarely use if it costs you her AP
• Vincent St. Clair's Sanctified Crossbow: A ranged attack is particularly valuable for your backline bubble.
• Situational: Flask of Formaldehyde
• Anna Lovelace's Spirit Barrage (the Zombify trigger will be blank)
• Sloth's Rigor Mortis
• Carrion Emissary's Rot and Rend (the Zombify trigger will be blank)
• Dead Rider's Scythe
• Decay
• Sebastian's Rusty Bone Saw
• Gwisin's Threaten

If you copy the action onto a henchman, you will be able to stone for very powerful triggers such as Archie's Sweeping Strike or Rogue Necromancy's Pouncing Strike. Or you can stone for Bête Noir's One with the Night and never come back.

A sample activation

Before you activate McMourning, you need to have prepared three corpses within 4'' of him (or two and have the Corpse Curator within 4''). You need to have planned out which action you want to copy with Plastic Surgery, i.e. have both targets within 8''. Also, if you want to use a Scheme Marker in conjunction with Desperate Plot's appendage upgrade, that one should also be in place already. If you brought the Whisper upgrade for McMourning, you will have to arrange the top cards of your deck according to your plan.

You summon a Flesh Construct drawing a card from one of the removed markers. You redrop the other one, either below the Flesh Construct or in base contact with a Canine Remains.

Next, you use Desperate Plot to attach either Extra Legs or a Spare Head to your Flesh Construct, give it Poison +2 and push it 4''. Ideally, you have a 6+ of Masks for that so that you can do it again (but this time on a different model and with no triggers), maybe to give Sebastian Extra Legs so that he can get into action faster after having spent the first turn summoning Canine Remains.

With your last AP, you can charge the Flesh Construct and use the Amputate trigger to get a marker for next turn. This will also bring the Flesh Construct to Poison +4. It depends on what you want to do. Alternatively, you can go for another Desperate Plot.

At any point, you can use your bonus action. If you plan on charging, keep the 8'' range to both targets in mind, maybe you need to use it before or after your charge.

If you hired a Corpse Curator, you ideally perform most of these actions while standing in a Sludge Marker that had been created by the Corpse Curator to stack up on poison.

The poison engine

Like with Tri-Chi, the only approaches that are effective to stack a lot of poison on a large number of your models are hazardous terrain and shockwaves.

One way to get hold of hazardous terrain that spreads poison is hiring the Corpse Curator. He provides a 50 mm hazardous (Poison +1) marker for a 5+ of Crows on his bonus action. He can walk twice to Drag Behind and stack himself and the models close to him up on poison. During these walk actions, he will only move slightly. Himself going up to Poison +4 is really beneficial because Sebastian or the Zombie Chihuahua can then use Blood Poisoning to heal him back to full life where his Smybiotic Relationship would only heal him for 2 at the end of the turn.

There are incidental sources of poison in the crew, such as McMourning's actions and the Zombie Chihuahua's Horrific Odor. You take them whenever possible, but that's all there is to write about this. Maybe one thing to keep in mind is that Horrific Odor is usually not worth making concessions regarding the totem's positioning. Rather position it correctly and forfeit on benefitting form Horrific Odor.

Regarding the shockwaves, there is Flask of Formaldehyde, which appears on Sebastian and Rafkin. Both are bad models, but you might end up hiring Sebastian because he can summon Canine Remains. Although it is a potentially powerful shockwave, even with Sebastian, it's rarely worth it to use Flask of Formaldehyde. It's an action that usually only becomes worthwhile if it it's hitting 4 to 5 models. The one case where Flask of Formaldehyde becomes very relevant is when you use it to reach Poison +3 or more on your own models so that they can trigger Horrendous Corpse.

In conclusion, there is no active poison game plan with title McMourning. Almost all of the poison effects are incidental and while you try to benefit from all of them, you very rarely pursue them as an active game plan, except for Horrendous Corpse.

Summary

Dr. McMourning Insanitary is a powerful summoner and support master that creates an incredible amount of resources for your crew while barely demanding any resources himself, apart from the models for the corpse engine. The appendage upgrades give you ways to score your schemes that no other keyword has access to and they improve your models massively.

When building a list, you need to accept that you have to include a few models for your corpse engine that you would not hire otherwise. Getting use out of these models instead of only having them stay back and generate corpses and cards is a thing to strive for. Ingame, it becomes a challenge to position your backline in a way so that it is as close as possible to the action while still being out of reach for your opponent. Choosing the right moment when to move forward with McMourning and his corpse engine can be crucial for winning games.

A sample list

Instead of going through every possible model and then presenting a good basic list, I would like to handle it the other way round. So, here is the list:

Doctor's Orders  (Resurrectionist)
Size: 50 - Pool: 3
Leader:
  Dr. McMourning, Insanitary
    The Whisper
Totem(s):
  Zombie Chihuahua
Hires:
  Carrion Emissary
  Canine Remains
  Nurse
  Enslaved Spirit
  Enslaved Spirit 2
  Archie
  Manos, The Risen

These are the roles of the models (this is very simplistic and only to give you an overview):

A) Corpse Engine

This is the zombie corpse engine, powered by the Carrion Emissary as well as the Zombie Chihuahua. There is a Canine Remains to give you an extra Corpse Marker.

B) Scheme runners

The two Enslaved Spirits will do scheme running. Your summoned Flesh Constructs will do well in this discipline, too.

C) Counterschemers and allrounders

Manos and Archie have the job to kill enemy scheme runners while scoring points themselves. They are extremely flexible and can also work as beaters. The summoned Flesh Constructs also fall into this category, whereas they can pretty much do anything except for scoring strategy: They are decent beaters, they can counterscheme, scheme themselves (starting the turn after they were summoned), they can go for the enemy backline and they work well as tarpits.

D) Beaters

There are no hired dedicated beaters in this list. Anyone in the C category can be used as a beater, though.

E) Support

The Nurse is a solid support model that synergizes well with the rest of the crew.

What does the Whisper do on McMourning?

Intuition is nice in combination with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. You will draw a card during McMourning's activation when you remove a Corpse Marker from Twisted Genius. You simply stack the deck so that you draw the best of the three cards. Since you need a 4+ of Masks for Archie's Leap, that sometimes is the card you want to draw. Intuition is valuable for any activation, but I feel it's even more helpful for McMourning since he can also make use of very low cards: You can use these for charges against your own relenting models to use the Amputation trigger.

Research Specimens will come up rarely. But if you ever are in a situation where you are giving McMourning a powerful attack via Plastic Surgery, you will probably kill some models with him. It's important to remember it's there.

The models in our sample list

Now, on to some models themselves - some are described in detail, some in broad strokes.

A) Corpse Engine

The Zombie Chihuahua will attempt to kill the newly summoned Mindless Zombie each turn to provide you with three new Corpse Markers as outlined above. In a zombie powered corpse engine, this is all he does.

If you run a corpse engine that is powered by Canine remains, the Zombie Chihuahua assumes a whole different role, he becomes a utility model. In this situation, his most powerful action is to use Blood Poisoning on an ally with the poison condition to cause a heal of an equal amount. Given that McMourning can coincidentally pump Flesh Constructs up to Poison +4, this is a freebie that many opponents will not account for. The fact that the Zombie Chihuahua comes with Companion possibly allows you to use this kind of heal without interrupting your intended order of activation at the cost of sacrificing activation control. Apart from that, you can use McMourning's Plastic Surgery to give the dog a powerful attack action and thereby turn a low impact activation into a very dangerous one.

His Horrific Odor always works. It can be a cheeky way to score that one point of missing damage to an unsuspecting enemy. Alternatively, use it to stack up poison on your own models.

 

The Carrion Emissary will summon a Mindless Zombie from Exhumation most turns. He also immediately draws a card because one of the Coffin Markers is removed as a part of the trigger. Make sure to place the first Coffin Marker so that a cheap model (such as an Enslaved Spirit or Canine Remains) can remove it as the first AP during its activation, drawing you another card.

Other synergies with McMourning are The Flesh Crawls, which will give your Flesh Constructs up to Mv 8 (5 + 2 from Extra Legs, +1 from The Flesh Crawls). That, combined with 3 AP from Reckless, gives them an insane threat range of 25'' (8*3+1).

Lastly, Rot and Rend is an excellent action to copy with Plastic Surgery.

Apart from that, you will play the Carrion Emissary defensively. You need to identify the right time to go on the offensive. His 0'' melee can be abused easily, which is why it can be handy to have an Enslaved Spirit close. Chain Gang can get the Emissary out of a bad engagement.

Canine Remains will supply you with a free Corpse Marker from Carrion Away. You have to keep them somewhat close to McMourning for that (8''). Optimally, they will start their activation with a Corpse Marker in base contact so that they can use their bonus action right away. Since they are very easy to kill, you will keep them safe at first. During these early turns, they can drop Scheme Markers in your deployment zone if that is required for the schemes in the pool (regardless whether you have picked them or not). Alternatively, they can interact to drop a Scheme Marker, then interact to remove it, drawing you a card from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. They can also use assist on McMourning to lower his Distracted condition, but in this list, that's rather the Nurse's job. As pointed out earlier, you could use them to kill off the Mindless Zombie if the Zombie Chihuahua failed to do so. But that is usually pointless.

As with most of your models that you will play defensively at first, you need to recognize the right time for moving forward to make their AP count for scoring all the while keeping them rather safe. The later the game gets, however, the less valuable the Corpse Marker from Carrion Away will be since there should be plenty from dead models.

B) Scheme runners

Apart from Chain Gang being useful on a number of models in this crew, Enslaved Spirits have no synergy this crew, they are simply there because they are overpowered models. Your opponents will try to kill them as quickly as possible, so you have to play them safe.

C) Counterschemers and allrounders

Archie has little to no synergy with this crew. He is there because he's a very powerful pick in almost any crew. His Huge Fist is a great action to copy with Plastic Surgery. That way, you get around the restriction of not being able to use Focus in conjunction with it. That in turn will possibly enable you to cheat the damage flip which makes the Sweeping Strike trigger potentially do much more damage.

Note that Hurl Corpse does not work with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, because the marker is placed, not removed.

Given the very high amount of card draw with this crew, you usually will have a 4+ of Masks for Archie's leap.

 

Manos is here because he's a power pick. The only two synergies I see with this crew is that

1. you can use Syphon Power on models with Poison and Perverse Metabolism; they will heal up the damage at the end of the turn; and
2. models staggered by Divine Strike will be easy targets for Projectile Vomit

 

Flesh Constructs are often underrated. Their defensive stats of Df and Wp 4 coupled with Hard to Wound, Perverse Metabolism and 9 HP (or 10 to 11, considering the damage reduction from the appendage upgrade) usually result in you never having to invest cards for these models defensively. They will tank hits all the time, but these will mostly be weak damage because of Hard to Wound. You usually don't care because the enemy takes one poison in reutrn (Bloated Stench), they have to chew through a large health pool and you even heal back some HP at the end of the turn (or more from Blood Poisoning). As long as you do not lose activation control, i.e. unactivated Flesh Constructs, you will not even care if the opponent kills your Flesh Constructs. To summarize: Flesh Constructs are exellent tar pit models.

But they also work very well offensively. Puncture, combined with Charge Through from the Extra Legs appendage will give you two positive twists on your damage.

To me, their greatest strength is their mobility. As outlined in the section about the Carrion Emissary, the Flesh Constructs often end up having Mv 8. They also will usually have received a push from Desperate Plot before their first activation, which is another 4'' of movement. This, combined with their 3 AP gives them the reach to do almost anything. They can go into the enemy backline and kill of models your opponent believed to be in a safe spot. They can also go after the opponent's scheme runners. Ruthless means that the Flesh Constructs will chew through Manipulative and most Terrifying models. You will have zero regrets from running them into your opponent's backline: They were free summons anyway and they will cause havoc there.
You can also move them into position to score schemes the following turn. Keep in mind that, as summons, you can not interact with them during the turn they were summoned. If you gave them the Spare Head appendage, you can, however, go reckless, drop the upgrade to prevent the damage and drop a Scheme Marker within 2''. That works the turn they are summoned.

Projectile Vomit can be very powerful or underwhelming, depending on the situation. If you manage to give an enemy enforcer Distracted +1 or even +2 or +3, you will nullify the offensive potential of their next activation as long as there is no one there to assist the Distracted away. Henchmen and Masters can stone for a plus flip to get around Distracted, but it's still a cost.
Keep in mind that Projectile Vomit will only cause Distracted +1 and Poison +1 on damaged models. That, combined with it's 1/1BB/1BBB damage track means that it is useless against Incorporeal models or models with Shielded.
It's not a projectile, so it won't suffer from friendly fire or cover.

While it is possible to imagine scenarios where the 1 damage from Reckless is hurting you, the general rule is to use Reckless every time. Even if you only use it to concentrate, it's worth it.

E) Support

The Nurse is a solid support model that has some particular synergies with this crew. Assist can be used for free to get rid of the Distracted +1 that McMourning accumulates every turn from Twisted Genius. Bottle of Painkillers is particularly nice with a newly summoned Flesh Construct to get rid of the Slow. Any of the triggers are a great bonus, Preparations usually being the best of them.

The Daze trigger can be used on Archie without suffering Stunned. Archie will still take the damage from the attack, but you can potentially heal him up with Bottle of Painkillers or Fading (Brain Freeze).

Tools for the Job is somewhat more valuable in this crew as there are many Enforcers and Minions with powerful triggers, i.e. models that can not stone for them and that need the particular card. The Nurse can be used to get a high card with one of these triggers.

To be fair, while being a decent model, the Nurse is not mandatory in this crew and she only starts to really shine when you can also make good use of her Seduction ability (that is the ability itself, you will rarely get enough poison on an enemy in order to use A Small Favor).

A cool thing you can do with the Nurse is to give her the Killer Instinct upgrade. She will stay close to McMourning during the game, in particular during turn 1 and 2. That means that you will be able to make use of Loot their Corpse every turn. You remove the Corpse Marker, get to drop it again via Reduce, Reuse, Recycle or draw a card and you add a Soulstone to your cache. By the end of the Nurses's second activation, the upgrade will have paid for itself, from that point onwards, any Soulstone the upgrade harvests is a bonus. Ruthless and Deadly Pursuit for your Nurse is just the cherry on top. Deadly Pursuit is 4'' of free movement that can do anything: Get her out of engagement, ensure that she is in a safe spot, ensure she keeps up with the rest of the crew or even push her in position to score the next turn.

Why are only three spare Soulstones sufficient?

While the size of your Soulstone cache is dependent on the master you are playing against, I feel that three stones are enough in most cases.

This crew draws a lot of cards during the turn from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Therefore, you will use Soulstones less often than other crews to draw additional cards.
There is no need to stone for cards in turn one, unless your entire hand is cards with value below 8. You need an 8+ for the Emissary's Exhumation and you cannot risk failing this action. In later turns, stoning for cards depends on the situation, i.e. you need to consider both if your hand is good enough for the first actions of the turn as well as if you will need the stones for other purposes.

Stoning for suits is not required at all in this crew. You only have two Soulstone users, McMourning and Manos. Manos can add suits through Siphon Power, which almost always is the better option. McMourning almost never needs suits. The mask for Quick Reflexes can sometimes be clutch, but since the action only requires a 6+, you very often will hold a suitable card for that job or reveal one from Intuition. The same is true for Mend, albeit it requires a 7+. The one time where McMourning wants to stone for suits is when he himself starts attacking with an attack action copied by Plastic Surgery that has powerful triggers. This particular crew is not really built for that, but it can come up. If you want to go into that play style, copying the Rogue Necromancy's Savage Bite with its inbuilt plus flip and making use of Pouncing Strike or Puncture is the way to go.

Stoning for plus flips: The one situation where this can come up is if you need to use Desperate Plot on an enemy while having Distracted on McMourning. This is very rare in this list since you have a Nurse to keep clearing Distracted every turn. Since Desperate Plot is an attack action, you also sometimes need to stone for plus flips when the target is in concealment in order to get to a straight flip.

Stoning for damage reduction or negative damage flips can come up in this list. You need to play Manos a bit safer than you might with a stash of six stones. That said, both Manos as well as McMourning cannot be charged and have ways to get away or heal up, so I find going down to a stash of three stones is still reasonable. It also depends on your opponent's Master pick, of course.
One can argue that the inclusion of the Nurse and her ability to heal McMourning as well as her Bedside Manners takes pressure off of McMourning, even against aggressive crews, which in turn justifies three stones.

What suits to look out for?

Crows

• Zombie Chihuahua's Infect trigger on the melee attack needs any crow
• Flesh Constructs' melee attacks have the Infect trigger as well, so they benefit from high Crows

Masks

• Desperate Plot's Quick Reflexes: 6+
• Archie's Leap: 4+

Rams

• Flesh Constructs' melee attacks have the Puncture trigger, so they benefit from high Rams

Tomes

• Archie's Huge Fist has a Sweeping Strike trigger, so he benefits from a high tomes
• The Nurse's Bottle of Painkillers has a Preparations trigger: 4+ (it also works with any tomes that you discard through Tools for the Job, of course)

A few more models

The list above is very efficient and straightforward. It is a good list to learn the master and it will do well competitively, yet, it is not really "spicy". There are many more fun combos possible with Resurrectionists and McMourning2 in general. This section discusses a few models that can be played well in a McMourning Insanitary crew.

The Corpse Curator is a possible source for Corpse Markers. As described above, you will want to heal it up via Blood Poisoning after it has taken a bit of damage providing Corpse Markers since that is much more effective than using its Symbiotic Relationship. Symbiotic Relationship also has an offensive use case. If the Corpse Curator is in base contact with another model, he can transfer the damge it would suffer. This is unresisted. So, if you have moved the Corpse Curator in base contact with an enemy model (also possible through Desperate Plot), you can use the Zombie Chihuahua's Blood Poisoning  on your Corpse Curator to deal unresisted damage to the enemy. Blood Poisoning will reduce the posion condition by five, then Symbiotic Relationship will reduce it by another two.

Something that is easily overlooked (which I did) about Symbiotic Relationship is that, unlike Perverse Metabolism, the entire ability is a "may" ability. So the Corpse Curator can also opt into taking damage from poison if he wants to. When should you ever want to do that? One situation that comes to mind: If you have attached the Spare Head upgrade, you will be able to discard it in order to reduce the poison damage, dropping a Scheme Marker in the process. Since this takes place before scoring, you will be able to drop a Scheme Marker that your opponent most likely did not account for. This Scheme Marker drop is possible in a location where you would otherwise not be allowed to interact.

As mentioned previously, the Corpse Curator is a Construct, so McMourning's Rusty Tools will create a Scrap Marker from it, which can be valuable for the Metallic Arms Appendage Upgrade.

The back of its card has three actions that are not straightforward, but that can be very powerful. Ancient Injectors is mainly interesting because it's a source of staggered. The marker removal on the Crow trigger is there - it can also be used when attacking your own models, thus giving you reliable marker removal at the cost of suffering 2 damage. Given that Desperate Plot also removes markers, this might not come up often.

Dredge Up gives you the option to use attack actions from far away, increasing the range of your attack action to potentially 14''. You will very rarely get that much threat range out of it, but even with 10'', you can catch your opponent off guard. The dream scenario is to push a hazardous marker into base contact with an enemy for this action, but this will happen rarely. The abundance of Corpse Markers will give you plenty of options to make use of Dredge Up, however. Dredge Up only becomes threatening in conjunction with Dr. McMourning's Plastic Surgery. If you can hit the backline with a focused Archie Fist, it starts to get interesting. Dredge Up is particulary interesting if you can copy an attack action with a displacement effect such as the Heave trigger or Up We Go. You will teleport the enemy model a massive amount that way.

While the obviously powerful part of the Cursed Sludge bonus action is the Sludge Marker from the Leaking Fluids trigger, one should always keep in mind that it also can be used as a tool to disengage your own models or free them up to interact, which will have an even greater impact on the game if it comes to bear.

Edited March 27 by KlausFischer
A small section about the Corpse Curator has been added.

[rualoud]

One thing to ask, can Plastic Surgery learn actions with zombify or Weigh Sins? This action just like obey, it can't list a model by name so I don't know why can choose actions with zombify or why a learned Weigh Sins can use Wrongfully judge trigger.

And Ezekiel should be great in Mcmn2.

[KlausFischer]

There is an answer to that the FAQ. You can copy the action, but the trigger that attaches an upgrade or lists a model by name is considered to be blank and cannot be declared.

I'm also very much looking forward to playing Ezekiel 😃.

Quote

 

30. If an Action’s Trigger lists a model by name, Summons a model, or Attaches an Upgrade is the action itself considered to do those same things for effects such as Obey?

a) No. However, the Trigger which lists a model by name, Summons a model, or Attaches an Upgrade is treated as blank and cannot be declared if the action was generated by an effect such as Obey

 

[Stunt]

Congrats on the very comprehensive guide !

I've played a lot of Insanitary and have tried the summon plan but realised it is a trap. You say it yourself, you have to hire 10+ stones of models you don't want to summon a not so good 7 stones minion per turn with a lot of constraints and a high likelihood of being screwed by the black joker.

 

On the opposite, focusing on the Appendages upgrades to improve the keyword models has worked a lot better for me.

And for me, the Extra Fat on the Corpse Curator is the one with the highest ceiling. Consider that every time the Corpse Curator moves, it can move a Sludge marker and deal 1 dmg and Poison+2 to all enemies touched by the marker at the starting and ending position of the marker. If this move was caused by Desperate Plot, you get some poison on the Corpse Curator and a built in triggers for more damage and poison on enemy models. And finally, the Corpse Curator can choose to inflict the damage it would suffer from poison to a model in base contact (end of turn or bonus action from Chihuahua). That's a crap ton of unresisted damage.

And that's just one example of what can be done. 

Anyway, even though I disagree with your assumption that Insanitary should be played as a summoner. I salute the hard work that was put into building this very comprehensive guide. I just wanted to highlight that there might be different approaches to play Insanitary that maybe could better match the playstyle of some folks reading this.

Thanks again for your work !

Max

[Paddywhack]

15 hours ago, KlausFischer said:

One for the dead model, one from Reduce, Reuse, Recycle because you removed a marker and one from Horrendous Corpse.

I thought this was decided a while back that you'd only get two? Or still a point of contention? You only get to use RRR if you remove the MZ as a 'corpse marker' not just removing the model because it died I thought?

I have been MIA for a while though, so maybe I missed something. Or is this the common consensus and I've been short handing myself?

[Adran]

9 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

I thought this was decided a while back that you'd only get two? Or still a point of contention? You only get to use RRR if you remove the MZ as a 'corpse marker' not just removing the model because it died I thought?

I have been MIA for a while though, so maybe I missed something. Or is this the common consensus and I've been short handing myself?

I think you're right, if you're treating the zombie as a model for the action resolution (as the action can't target markers), then you can't switch it to act as a marker just as it is removed from damage. The FAQ doesn't explicitly say this, but does imply this by referring to what happens when you remove the zombie "whilst treating it as a marker". 

[KlausFischer]

Three Corpses is the way it's played by MWS. The FAQ has a part where it touches the topic, but does not answer it clearly. There are severl discussions on this forum.

[Paddywhack]

Ok - so still a point of contention then. Some play 3 and some play 2. Not a huge deal, but might be nice to get an official answer at some point. 

[SteampunkCake]

The Mindless Zombie interaction with RRR requires a deep dive into the resolution steps of a model dying. It drops a corpse marker for dying before it is removed, then it is removed, at which point it counts as a corpse marker being removed for RRR. Steps 6.C and 6.D I think

[Adran]

5 hours ago, SteampunkCake said:

The Mindless Zombie interaction with RRR requires a deep dive into the resolution steps of a model dying. It drops a corpse marker for dying before it is removed, then it is removed, at which point it counts as a corpse marker being removed for RRR. Steps 6.C and 6.D I think

I will probably regret this, but the problem I have with this is that the zombie can count as a corpse marker for the targeting and/or the resolution according to its ability. If you are counting it as a marker for the resolution, then the poisoning action doesn't do anything, because poison doesn't deal damage to markers, and markers can't be killed. 

So I don't think you can suddenly switch the zombie to count as a marker after the damage is dealt. 

(this is based on the view that markers don't count as models, and so if you are counting it as a corpse marker you aren't counting it as a model, which isn't expressly stated. I used to use a similar logic that if you were counted as an enemy model you by default weren't friendly, but the FAQ said otherwise in that case, so it could be faulty logic). 

[SteampunkCake]

On 3/1/2024 at 3:41 PM, Adran said:

So I don't think you can suddenly switch the zombie to count as a marker after the damage is dealt. 

Rulebook page 35 Detailed Damage timings:
Step 6 If a model is at 0 Health, it is killed, then resolve the following effects.
a. Resolve any effects that would Heal or Replace the killed model. If this effect would bring the model above 0 Health, it is no longer killed.
b. Resolve any After killing Triggers.
c. Any effects that resolve after the model is killed(such as placing Corpse or Scrap Markers)resolve at this point.
d. The killed model (its model, Stat Card, and any Upgrades) is removed from the game

Walking Dead - When declaring or resolving friendly actions or abilities, this model may be treated as a corpse marker. If the corpse marker would be removed, this model is killed and does not drop a corpse marker.

When the Mindless Zombie dies the effects happen in this order, step 6c drops a corpse marker for being an undead model being killed, step 6c Horrendous Corpse drops a corpse marker within 2", step 6d the model is removed, RRR is an aura that is always active so McMourning is the one treating it as a corpse marker not the attacking model, McMourning duplicates the removed corpse marker.

I think this should be clarified in an FAQ, but almost everyone I've spoken to about this agrees that this is how it works and its how it is ruled at tournaments all over the world. There are no rules that say a model can't be both a marker and a model at the same time, otherwise you could use hurl corpse on a mindless zombie and throw it into hazardous terrain and it not suffer the effects of the hazardous. It is a model and it was placed.

[mo11usq]

@KlausFischer Outstanding work! This sort of synopsis is exactly what returning (like myself) and new players need to get up to speed on the game, many thanks!