Shopping List - Von Schill

In the second instalment of the Shopping List, a series of articles looking at expanding a starter crew box, I want to look at the leader of the Freikorps; Von Schill.





Some say that he is the only person to steal Joel Henry’s lunch and survive the experience, and that Javier Mascherano would think twice before trying to scythe him down on the football pitch.

All we know is, this is the hardest man ever to wear a handlebar moustache.

Von Schill is one of my favourite Masters, for the simple reason that he does everything well. He has a potent ranged attack. At close quarters he not only sticks a large knife in people but also cuts chunks off their armour to permanently lower their defence value. By his very presence he makes other Freikorps models better, boosting their willpower and giving them a slightly better version of Hard to Kill. Killing him is very difficult to do, and pinning him down is even harder because he can even charge out of melee.

In short, I use von Schill a lot and think the Freikorps have much to recommend them, not least of which is that you can hire nearly all of them into other crews as they’re Mercenaries, so they can stand as a crew in their own right or support other crews in your collection.





There’s not a plastic boxed set out for von Schill yet – his is still metal. But it does give you some good toys in there;
· The Tache himself
· Freikorps Librarian
· Freikorps Trapper
· 2 Freikorpsmenn
· Freikorps Specialist

In terms of expanding this, the first port of call for me is the Strongarm Suit.




This is a beast of a model. It shoots against Willpower, fights really well in melee with a trigger than can ignore armour and incorporeal, and has a zero action that allows it to buff itself. It also has von Schill’s rocket boots, meaning it can ignore models and terrain when it charges and can charge whilst engaged.

Armour 2 and a high wound count mean it’s difficult to kill, but it’s not as difficult as, say, killing von Schill himself. Throw enough stuff at it and the Strongarm Suit will go down. But if it’s allowed to run free then it will make a very big mess in the enemy’s backfield.

My next pick would be to add another Freikorps Trapper.




For the 6SS cost to an Outcast crew, these guys are no-brainer takes and in a pair they can be truly horrific. Their rifle has a 14” range and a built-in positive flip to attack. Focus and that range goes up to 28”, double positive on the attack and positive on the damage. They can also Critical Strike, and have a built-in Mask that allows them to take the Reposition trigger to push 3” after taking the shot.

When you think you’ve charged them to shut them down, their next trick comes to the fore. As a 0 action, you can discard a card to push the Trapper 4” in any direction. This leaves them free to shoot what tried to pin them down, or just keep running.

It’s not hard to see why Tyne and Wyrd, a very successful group of tournament gamers in the north east of England, make extensive use of these guys and I’m only too happy to do likewise. Trappers are a bit good.

For my third choice I’m going to be a bit controversial.

I’m not going to pick Lazarus, a very handy robot with a big grenade launcher and a spell to copy abilities from other constructs. He’s good, and a lot of people swear by him, but I don’t find him an auto take.

Instead my vote goes to the humble Steam Trunk, von Schill’s totem.




This is a model you’ll need to build yourself (mine is an old 40K Ork Warbike track unit with the chest from an Ogre Ironblaster mounted on top) or use a proxy of (Otherworld Miniatures’ Luggage model from their Discworld series is oddly popular, but not steam punk enough for me), but it’s worth the trouble.

I love the flexibility. It has three 0 actions that can be taken by friendly models within 4”; Discard a card to remove the Burning condition from a model within 3", remove all scrap and corpse counters within 4”, or take a 1/2/3 healing flip and remove any Poison condition.

Von Schill can take the Engage at Will upgrade that allows models near him to take two 0 actions in a turn as long as they’re both different, and that combos really well with the Steam Trunk.

Don’t get me wrong, the Trunk won’t feature in every game, but if your opponent enjoys throwing around Burning or Poison, or can summon from Corpse and Scrap counters, being able to simply turn those off for a zero action is fantastic. I was able to dismantle Sonnia Criid in a recent game because my opponent could not keep the Freikorps on fire long enough to gain any benefits from it, and Resurrectionist players that lean on Poison very quickly get sick of Freikorpsmenn hitting their von Schill induced Hard to Kill and then healing back up with the Poison condition gone.



Hopefully this will help any budding mercenaries get the most out of their moustachioed hero, and even if you don’t play Outcasts the Strongarm and the Trappers are very, very strong mercenary options to bring into your crew.

And, as ever, to prove I’ve already put my money where my mouth is, here are mine;




Cheers

Ben


- From the PanzerPad

Shopping Lists - Lilith

Aloha.

Hopefully this is the first of a series of articles, answering one of the first questions I'm asked by new players. It's the same question I ask myself and it normally comes once that first crew box is cracked open and some games played.

What next? What do I add to turn my starter crew into despoilers of Malifaux?




These should be taken for the suggestions they are. I'm no expert but I'm not entirely terrible, and am going through those growing pains that mean there's just enough to pass on!

First master on the list? Lilith. My favourite and one I was taught by Sensei Henry himself.




She is the undisputed mistress of movement, able to Tangle Shadows her way around the board, swap her crew around at will and even pin down the enemy crew. Whilst the big sword is very effective and very tempting to make the priority, if you want the best from Lilith then you get that from using her to dominate movement.

The first and most obvious addition to Lilith's crew box is the Nephilim box, giving you 2 Young Nephilim and a Mature. They fit fantastically well with Lilith as they are very mobile, enabling them to apply force in the right place. They also all have the Black Blood ability so they can help bring the pain without fear.




A Mature Nephilim is also a great pick as a beatstick. The main reason for that is that they are very difficult to pin down - as well as being able to fly over intervening targets, the Charge Through trigger is very useful. Hit a tome on the attack flip and you can choose not to deal damage, push the target, then take a free charge action against a new target with 2 new attacks. You can also take the Charge Through trigger again to keep moving through the opposing crew.

The next pick is not as obvious, but once you've used them they will find their way straight into your lists in the future.

Waldgeists.




These are awesome for so many thing but 2 stand out. First is that board control angle that Lilith loves. They can have a 4" engagement range with very little difficulty and summon further scenery to tie up the enemy.

A Waldgeist is also an absolute nightmare to get rid of. Armour 2 along with a decent defence value, combined with that engagement range and triggers on its own attacks that can tie models up. This makes them ideal for schemes such as Protect Territory, and the strategy Turf War.

The third recommendation is an alternative totem, the Primordial Magic (PMagic). This is the Neverborn's generic totem and as such can be taken by any master, but it works particularly well with Lilith.




One of Lilith's base abilities is Rush of Magic, allowing her to draw and discard an extra card at the start of the turn. Well it's an ability the PMagic shares. Take these two and every turn you draw and discard two cards, so by default you have what everyone else has to pay a Soulstone for.

PMagic also loves scheme markers. It can cast a ranged spell that prevents opposing models from interacting, and at the end of a turn it can be sacrificed to be counted as a scheme marker.

So there you have it. You want extra options for Lilith, go get a Nephilim box, a blister pack of 2 Waldgeists and a Primordial Magic.

Oh. And before anyone tells me to put my money where my mouth is... I did. These ones are mine.




Happy shopping!

Cheers

Ben

- From the PanzerPad

Flipped

So. This ‘beginner’s guide to Malifaux’ blog might have fallen a little behind. Well. Big behind. Mike Marshall big behind behind (love you really Mike!). Possibly even Panzer big behind behind.




Anyway. Aside from insulting the lovely man around whom the Malifaux scene revolves (no, it’s not another fat joke – this is an ‘all about him’ joke), the point of this entry is to highlight the differences between Malifaux and the other games in the marketplace that you might have played. As a newcomer it’s these differences that have really struck me and contributed to a game with a very unique feel.

First and foremost, there are no dice in Malifaux. You are not trusting your entire game plan to the roll of those cubed little sods, and the hope that enough of them will respond favourably to your pleas. The only use for a dice in Malifaux is as a wound marker.




You generate your numbers with a deck of cards. For every action you flip a certain number of cards from the top of your deck and use the numbers on those cards to work out the results. Better yet, you start each turn with a hand of cards that you can use to replace the cards flipped – this is called ‘cheating’ and, although you can’t use it all the time, it’s a great mechanism for taking out the extreme results. If you look after your hand well enough then you can have a couple of face cards ready for when you really, really have to have a particular action go your way.

Of course there are games where the cards will go against you. Flip a black joker and the result is invariably bad. However, that hand will still give you a fighting chance in all but the very direst of circumstances.




The duel is a fundamental concept in Malifaux. Take for example the act of shooting at an enemy. In the Warhammers, you take into account the skill of the firer to get a number, then have to hit that number with a dice roll. In Malifaux, both the firer and his/her victim flip a card and add their skill level to that flip. This takes into account that it’s easier to thump a cowering peasant over the head with a sword, or harder to shoot a highly trained martial artist diving behind cover all the time.

Beyond the duels is an extra layer – the trigger. Depending on the suits of the cards flipped, both sides can potentially unlock a series of secondary effects. These can range from additional attacks, to out of sequence moves, to creating new demonic babies, to catapulting piglets across the board.

I found triggers quite hard to get my head around at first as there’s nothing remotely similar in the games I grew up with. Now though it feels like second nature, and I’m starting to build plans based around those triggers. This can even give the impression to the casual watcher that I have half a clue what I’m doing…




We’ve all had those games. A game of Warhammer when one player, despite having been comprehensively outplayed from start to finish, wins by massacre by shouting the fateful words “6 dice Purple Sun!”, laying down a template and then removing half his opponent’s army. Hormachine players must know the pain of having spent a couple of hours in complete control, only to lose their Warcaster and therefore the game to a series of lucky dice rolls. How many times have hardened Magic: the Gathering players lost out at tournaments to a spoilt little git who has been able to spend the £100 to buy that card which is guaranteed to ruin your plan entirely?

Having played Malifaux incredibly badly against a series of the top players in the game, I’m yet to find an equivalent to the apocalyptic examples above. There is no killswitch you can throw that will wipe out the enemy in one shot. No scenario has an instant win condition. You can set up for a game pretty much knowing that it will go the distance and without worrying that in one shot your chances will lay in tatters. It takes a very special type of incompetence to be so far behind in a Malifaux game that there’s no point playing the final 3 turns, and if you’ve played really well then the odds are extremely good that you’ll be rewarded for that good play with one in the W column.




Following on from the above, the absolute fundamental thing to bear in mind when actually playing Malifaux is that you can’t win by just pelting hell-for-leather into the middle of the opposing crew and killing them all.

A competitive Warhammer Fantasy game, of which I’ve played (yeah, yeah, and lost – kiss my trophies Spedding) a great many, fundamentally boils down to how many points you get for wiping out chunks of the enemy army.

Malifaux is different again. Both sides have the same strategy, a kind of overarching scenario that they’re both trying to achieve at the same time. But at the same time they each have schemes available to them which score further victory points, and these don’t have to be disclosed to the enemy. You can literally spend an entire game not knowing what your opponent is trying to do until they reveal their schemes at the end of the game to claim the points.

This single factor is probably the one that drew me most into the game. I love nothing more than convincing my opponent for most of the game that I’m trying to hold an area of the board, only to reveal at the end that I was actually just trying to cluster all their models together so I can blow them all up. And that lone model they couldn’t quite finish off wasn’t running away to stay alive. It was running away to plant an objective in their deployment zone. The extra level of strategy that adds is amazing and I can’t speak highly enough of it.

And yes, it is entirely possible to lose a game having wiped out all your opponents’ models. Been there. Done that.




Along similar lines to the likes of Necromunda, Mordheim and Warmahordes, Malifaux is a skirmish game. It’s played on a 3 foot by 3 foot board and you have crews of 6 to 12 models instead of armies of hundreds.

This has a number of knock-on effects. The first and foremost one is cost. Only needing a handful of models makes Malifaux a cheap game to get into by the exacting standards of wargaming. The crew boxes produced by Wyrd are really good value as well which helps – for an outlay of between £25 and £30, a crew box contains a set of plastic models that are all you need to get started and will form the core of your crew as you buy more models. Increase that spend to £70 and you’ll have a crew big enough for competitive play with a ton of options to tailor it to the strategies. Compare that to the cheapest Warhammer armies at £300 to £400 for something to take to an event.




Painters and dedicated hobbyists will also feel the benefits. Being able to lavish all your attentions on a handful of models can result in some spectacular crews. Head out into the Twitter-verse and take a look at Maria’s (@MariFaux) Dr Who crew, Richard’s (@wrkbnchwarriors) Rail crew, Joel’s (@Joel__Henry) Goldilocks Lilith crew, and anything Ben (@ben__halford) has ever taken a brush to. Even the ham-fisted amongst us (*raises hand*) have enough time to focus on a model and do a decent job rather than having to rush. But if painting isn’t your thing, in most cases the minimum standard is undercoated.




Although by no means an exhaustive list, I hope this does give an insight into what makes Malifaux such an interesting game to play. It offers a lot to even a casual player and if you take the time to get into it there’s a depth there that a lot of other games can’t match. I haven't even touched on the incredibly deep fluff that underpins the whole game world - maybe another time!

Cheers

Ben

- From the PanzerPad

Pick a Card

Greetings.

In the hope that last week’s diatribe, which can be loosely summarised under the heading ‘why I tried Malifaux’, hasn’t put off too many people, I thought the next logical topic would be crew selection. This seems particularly pertinent given that the #ToMB thing seems to have taken off (spend a given amount of money per month on selected toys) but there’s not been much I’ve seen to give newbies a bit of help on where to start.

Item 1, the first thing you should go out and buy, is undoubtedly the M2E rulebook. Don't argue. Buy it. If you can’t find it (and there’s a picture below to help steer you towards the right one, through any attempts by eBay sellers to flog you the wrong one) there’s a full colour rules manual that literally contains just the rules, but seeing as the fluff is such a big part of the game I would really recommend you get the rulebook. I haven’t yet but that’s only because I’ve blown all my money on models (don’t do what I do, do what I tell you).




The next bit of advice is ‘read the rulebook’. Don’t buy any models alongside it, just get the book, sit down in a comfy chair and read it. Get a feel for the rules, and go through the fluff and the background. I can say this now they’re outdated – look around on the internet for PDFs of the old 1.5 books and just read the stories.

If you do this without having sunk any money into toys, then you can look at the various crews and models with a completely impartial eye and then decide what you like. This always works best if it’s an organic process. You will naturally find yourself gravitating towards one particular faction or another, and there might be a couple of models you really like. If you’ve already bought something else completely then that won’t help. It might even put you off finishing what you’ve already bought.




At that point, having done your homework and immersed yourself in the glorious backstories, you’re good to take the plunge.




My advice to my fellow rookies is to buy what you like the look of. Do not, under any circumstances, let yourself worry about playstyles, how good the rules are or what the stats look like. Because at this point most of that stuff might as well be written in Mandarin. It won’t mean much to you at all and if anything you might end up buying something you don’t really like.

What works for your mate down the club in his tournament practice will not, and trust me on this, work for you at all in the short term and probably not even in the medium term. When you’re starting out it’s best to let something hook you in.





From here a good starting point is the crew box you like the look of. They’re a pretty cheap way into a game system and for this hobby that’s a rarity. Starting out in the Warhammers or Hormachine requires a substantial investment in the hundreds. A Malifaux crew box is around £27. Buy the one you want, build it, paint it, and play a few games with it. If you decide you don’t like it, by that point you’ll have identified a better fit and be well placed to pick a different crew, and all it’ll cost to start you down that new route is another £27 and you’ll have the other crew handy for your mates to borrow if you want to give them a game.

What I’m basically saying is, that first crew box can be completely disposable. It’s not a major investment and if it turns out you don’t like it, oh well. You’ve been able to get into the game with something you did want to use and it’s helped you learn the ropes enough to pick up something else.

And if you do like them, then another £30-40 will see you add enough reinforcements for a pool of models you can take to events and play bigger friendly games with. Either way, we’re talking about the cost of a takeaway rather than the cost of a car.

If it helps I’ll give you my own route in. It’s not entirely stupid, which is a rarity from me, and might actually work for normal people too.




I’d decided I wanted to play Malifaux off the back of rave reviews from friends whose opinions I trust. At that point I went and sat in front of my personal favourite webstore, the fantastic Element Games (they’re not paying me and I still recommend them over everyone else!), and looked at the pretty pictures of Malifaux models. The factions meant nothing to me. At this point I didn’t know a lot about the background either. And I came to the conclusion that I liked ‘the ginger bint with the huge sword, pneumatic chest and leather kecks with all those warped kids’ and ‘that old bloke with the spiders’.

It took a couple of goes but with a little help from Twitter it turned out I was referring to Lilith of the Neverborn and the Arcanist Ramos. My unwilling mentor Joel Henry had a longstanding offer to give me a demo game so I contacted him for advice on the two. Lilith turned out to be a good beginner’s master – whilst starting you can go for plan A, which is tw*t things with a big f*ck-off sword, and then later develop a plan B around the spells she can cast and the effect she can have on the scenery. Ramos required a certain level of finesse that was going to take a while to develop.




For once I took some advice, and when I turned up for the demo Joel was kind enough to lend me his own Lilith crew for the game whilst he used ‘the ginger bint with the huge sword, pneumatic chest and blindfold’, or Lady Justice as the manufacturers would prefer. By the end of the game I was on my phone placing the order for Lilith’s crew box and a couple of extras, having taken Joel’s tips on what worked well, whilst we were still packing away.

From there it’s all gone rather well. I’ve painted up Lilith’s crew and the initial extras, and I hate painting. There is nothing I dislike more intensely than having to sit there with a stick of wood with some hair on one end, doing something to my models which halves their value. But I actually found being able to do one figure at a time quite therapeutic, and the plastic models in particular are really good to paint. More toys have been added and I’ve played games and watched some more.

Last night I even won a game for the first time (Aron Britchford, your name is forever entered on the Roll of Shame…).




Ultimately it was the gentle introduction with a crew of my choosing that got me started.

I know some fantastically good Malifaux players. At the time of writing the aforementioned Mr Henry is top of the rankings with a perfect score. Two other clubmates, Graham Bursnell and Hutch, are in Masters contention, and I’m a loose acquaintance of the reigning Master #fatcraig Johnson (nobody will ever admit to being his friend. If you know him you’ll understand). I could have gotten the latest uber-competitive lists that smash face. And knowing me I’d have been blasted off the table in short order and sold the lot.

Instead I picked the toys I wanted, took the early losses on the chin as I wasn’t expecting to win, and am starting to work this game out. It could be the start of something beautiful.

Slightly creepy romantic references aside, that’s the salient point I hope that people take from this.

Cheers

Ben


- From the PanzerPad

Opening Gambit

Greetings, Malifaux world!

Having seen a lot of buzz generated by the Tale of Malifaux Bloggers, or #ToMB for the etymologically disinclined, I thought I'd give this a go.




First, a disclaimer. I know virtually nothing about Malifaux. I'm studying, but as of this moment have played six games and won none of them. If you want pearls of tactical wisdom this is definitely not the place! I would instead recommend joelfaux.blogspot.co.uk for such endeavours, written by my good friend Joel Henry who also happens to be one of the best Malifaux players on the planet right now.

I also don't know the rules for this ToMB thing, and to be honest probably wouldn't keep to them if I did! When I decided to invest in Malifaux I went for it and bollocks to budgets and model limits. This blog is more for entertainment value, and to hopefully share the experiences of a rookie trying a new system.

A word about my background. I'm coming into Malifaux from nearly 20 years of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, starting out as a primary school boy throwing sustained fire dice at the cat and turning into a winner of 14 40K tournaments with my still-beloved if Codex neutered Ork Speed Freeks. Nowadays I'm a regular on the Fantasy tournament scene with my Ogres, where I'm known for an unhealthy love of Stonehorns, quick fire insults and an uncanny ability to blow up cannons or Slaughtermasters right when they need to do something useful. Dice are not friends of my big lads.




I've dabbled in the cardboard crack habit that is Magic: the Gathering but got out before bankruptcy, and tried Warmachine but really couldn't get along with it. The false corporate 'ethics' of the manufacturers and a number of players really didn't sit right, and ultimately I just didn't find the game itself all that enjoyable.

Malifaux though always drew me to it. Whether it was the background, the genuinely different rules mechanisms, or just the undead hookers and monstrous teddy bears I'm not entirely sure. The fact remains that Malifaux is in no way a ripoff of another game. It is entirely its own beast.





The best illustration is how you win your games. In the Warhammers, Fantasy in particular, the aim of the game is to dismantle your opponent's army like a fat lad takes apart a chip shop. You spend two and a half hours calculating which bits to slice apart and how many victory points you get for doing so. Warmachine is all about nailing that caster kill, and Magic likewise is a slugfest based around doing nasty things to an anthropomorphic personification of your opposite number. A simplification I know, but those are still the fundamental win mechanics. Take all your enemy's toys off, or make him eat his own Plains cards in frustration, and you win.

In Malifaux you can lose all your models and still win. Body count can be completely irrelevant, and don't let the fact that it's a skirmish game fool you. There is normally a pretty big dead pile at the end. But the aim of the game is to complete your schemes and strategies, and that's what you have to focus on. If your entire crew gets gunned down (and so far mine are getting extremely used to this experience) it may not matter if you've been able to hold your strategic objectives or gesture over the shoulders of enough enemies and exclaim "oh look, an eagle!".




Anyway. I'm gonna leave it here for now. Hopefully this has given you an idea of what this blog will be about. There'll be some pictures of toys in the next few days and some game reports, and maybe, more by luck than judgment, there'll be some lessons to take away from all this...

Cheers

Ben

- From the PanzerPad