Tale of Malifaux Bloggers (ToMB) March - Molly Purchases

The month of March has been an exciting month. Its the beginning of April and I just returned from Adepticon in Lombard, IL where I had a blast playing in the Cake match, Team Tournament, and Masters of Malifaux. This post is going to focus more on what I've learned the past 4 weeks playing with Molly. I've played a fair amount of games with her now, and have pretty much solidified how I am going to be playing her at the 50ss level. So what I'll introduce is my second months purchase, with some forethought on where I see her crew being by the end of ToMB.

Last month I had $1.01 left over, meaning I have $26.01, which puts me JUST shy of what I'd like to buy for this month, which is a necrotic machine and a punk zombie boxset. The old necrotic machine is $12 and the old 3 pack of punk zomibes is $15, so I'm $0.99 short. 

Since May we'll be seeing the release of the new plastic punk zombies ($21), I'll wait. For March I decided it's important for a Molly player to grab a necrotic machine and Bete Noire. Yup, that's right I said it, Bete Noire.

She is a viable entry in just about every crew and serves a fantastic role in so many situations being a staple in your Resurrectionists repertoire. Typically, I'd suggest saving the money for the punk zombies next month plus something else, but I think this is a good time to get another heavy beater.

She can help you accomplish some important schemes and strategies. She has 2 releases sculpts and a new plastic sculpt prepared to be released this summer, so you will have options with which model fits your tastes.

Original Bete Noire - $9.50

Bete Noire Alternate - $13.50

Bete Noire Plastic - $11.00

So I already have the original bete noire, which I will use for my cost putting me at $9.50 + $12.00 = $21.50. Leaving me $4.51 for next month. 

So let's first discuss the necrotic machine. This little guy may not appear to be anything useful, but it is a nice little totem who can be summoned. At 2ss, the only reason I could see hiring him with the crew is because you feel like you're going to get out activated early game. Otherwise, its best to summon him. Even so, I need to emphasis I have no plans to hire him. If you're looking for activation control I guess you could spend the 2ss, activate him to move up his double walk. Move your models with his (0) action. Then have Molly summon another one and have it activate and move your models up more. If anyone has another reason to hire him, enlighten me. He can be summoned 10" from Molly or her regular 6" and this is how I typically plan to use him.

I prefer the 6" summon, but when I need it the 10" summon is nice because it forces you're enemy to have to deal with him before dealing with Molly if you lose initiative and plan to summon a bunch of stuff. Now the necrotic machine is no slouch either, as it provides the ability to get a last push of belles, horrors, and spirits within range before a turn end. It's attack Ml is base 5Crow, but if you get lucky it does have a 1/1/6 dmg spread and some interesting triggers, most notably Infectious Fluid which has a way of potentially handing out paralyzed (especially if you opponent has no cards left). Again nothing fantastic, but just a little something to turn the tide if you get lucky and something to remember. 

With bete, you can use her in multiple ways. Having her pop out when one of your crooligans or other living/undead models die is great. You just need to ensure you unbury Bete Noire out near the model you want to kill because her movement isn't great. 

I enjoy unnerving or decaying aura on her. Usually its Decaying Aura, especially if Assassinate is on the list of schemes. Bete is pretty straight forward, with some solid Df of 7, and a paired attack (+ on attack flips). I enjoy her paralyze trigger as it is quite effective at shutting down just about any master. Now she has very low wounds so you'll want to keep a 10+ in your hand, because once she 'dies' she can take the "One with the Night" action for free and attempt to bury. If you can keep a 10+ in your hand the only thing that can cause her to fail this is a black joker. So as you can imagine a black joker and a 10+ is pretty powerful for you to hold if you're using Bete Noire. 

The other way to use her is have her unbury, kill something with 1 AP, and then choose to take the (1) One with the Night action to re-bury setting up for next turn. Again somewhat circumstantial but an option one should consider when fielding bete. With Molly she becomes incredibly mobile.

So I want to wrap this post up but I do expect to post a short writeup about using Molly at Adepticon before the end of this month. I used her for three games and find her to be incredibly powerful. Stay tuned for that. It won't be focused completely on ToMB as I threw in some other models, but it will be a glimpse of where I see her fleshing out to by the end of this ToMB journey! Until next time.

ToMB Molly: Month 1 Post 2 - A little Tactica!

Introduction

Well there is a lot that I've learned in the past few weeks of playing with my #ToMB crew. I have tried my best to stick to my guns, and have had good success. The only thing that 'put me out of my ToMB' is one summon of a punk zombie! Which means I know where next month's budget is going. Punk Zombies are likely (based on the upgrade "Forgotten Life") in my next month purchase. I want to fit a "Hanged" in, but I'm a few dollars short. The Punk Zombies have Hard to Kill, can be affected by Imbue Vigor (they're minions), and as well all know they just kill things DEAD (Oh plus I can use my NE Dead Justice box Judge model as a Punk Zombie)

Apologies

So before I continue though, I need to apologize for 'reading an upgrade' on-the-air incorrectly. I try and hold my self to a high standard of knowing the rules. I made a mistake in both playing (my first Molly game) and talking about my first Molly game on the podcast. Specifically, I mentioned that I was excited to use "The Philosophy of Uncertainty" on Yin. Well, it makes no sense because getting the trigger to go off puts the ability onto Molly NOT on the target which Molly casts "Whispered Secret" on.

My incorrect tacitca approach was to give some negatives to the model getting "Whispered Secrets" and then knowing that if that model is killed it will be sacrificing the model that killed it. Well this is straight up WRONG!!! My apologies. 

The correct tactica is to use her "Whispered Secrets" on an enemy model to give it the obligatory negative flips on all duels (on success), but the key is that if Molly (i.e. the one who casts this) gets the Tome to succeed on the trigger for "Philosophy of Uncertainty". So, if she is killed by another model, the model which killed it is sacrificed after resolving the current action. So, this makes Molly a less than stellar target to kill, especially coupled with her base ability "Masterful Dead" (Crow trigger on Df/Wp - After this model suffers damage, it may discard two cards to reduce the damage to 1). 

New (experimental) Tactica (i.e. lessons learned)

Ok, so 11+ of crows! Yup that's what Molly wants, any 11+ of crows and she is a happy camper. You can watch some vassalfaux between Joe and me (its mulit-part) to see how we use our respective ToMB crews. This game play isn't representative of how I usually play my masters, but it was an attempt to try something new. So to the point of the 11+ crows, my upgrades have consistently been "Spare Parts", "Terrible Knowledge", and "Forgotten Life" on Molly, and "Pack" on the Rogue Necromancy, and Yin takes "Unnerving Aura". So I'm going to specifically talk about what I tried against Joe due to the Corner Deployment and Reckoning style game. For those new to the game reading this, corner deployment forces more distance between the two players crews giving a little delay to the action.

With 4 corpse counters within 6" and a 11+ crow she can use 2 AP to summon a rogue necromancy in base contact to her. So how would we go about getting these 4 corpse counters. Up front I'd like to state that while this tactic is doable it uses far too many resources. A canine with an 8+ crow can use 2 AP to dig up a corpse marker, now if you get lucky and have 1 of the right cards that's great, but you still need 3 other corpses. So maybe you have 2 8+crows, and utilize Molly's (0) Imbue Vigor to give reactivate to the canine remains (i.e. minion); needing a 9 of rams. Then he can drop a second corpse marker during his reactivate.

Well, that's two. So how do you get two more in a single turn, to reach the 4? You can use Molly's (1) The Ones Left Behind to attempt to summon 2 crooligans, meaning you need two other 8+ crows in your hand. So for those following at home, thats 4 cards of 8+ crows to get 4 corpse markers. The reason the 2 crooligans generate the corpse markers is that they die as soon as summoned since on turn 1 I don't see them being anywhere near enemy models and just die (generating corpses). Ok so that's 2 AP from the canine, another 2 AP (if he gets reactivate), 2 AP from Molly to get 2 more potential corpses and her 0 to do reactivate.

So wow, 5 high cards all with specific suits. Hopefully, now you can see that this isn't the best use of her resources. I think that taking her forward and having things die and taking advantage of the corspes on the table is a better tactic and will be the norm for me going forward. This experiment was just that, to see how well it plays out. Molly has so much in the way of avoiding death that she can be near the fight and survive, between black blood, impossible to wound, masterful dead, and her upgrade to give the trigger philosophy of uncertainty, she is a hard nut to crack.

One lesson learned here, is that sometimes it may be worth summoning a model not near an enemy to see it die and generate her that final corpse marker (assuming you need for her to utilize corpse makers). Again, this is only necessary if she uses Spare Parts upgrade as she really doesn't need corpse markers to do her summoning well. I'm actually going to stop using Spar parts for some time because I see better uses going forward for the cost.

With all of this said, the biggest take away I've had with playing 4 games with Molly is that Soulstones are key for her and that I need to probably drop at least 1 upgrade to give me some more AP at 35ss.

All-Stars

So all-stars in my games have def. been the Crooligans and the Rogue Necro combo. Using their blistering fog to give out +1 damage from blasts the rogue necro can dish out is great. Plus their 'Creepy' to apply -1 Wp to enemy models within 1" is an amazing setup for Yin, other summons by Molly, any Terrifying checks, etc. What is so nice, is that Molly can summon them fairly easily and as long as Make them Suffer and Reckoning aren't the missions they are doing a good job of tar pitting, while killing enemy models with black blood.

Ok, so I need to mention Yin! Simply, because I want him to be my All-star and he just isn't. I mostly think that is because he is expendable AND he gets a big bullseye on his head (I mean that's all that is remaining of his body). He is an absolutely amazing control piece. No doubt, his "No Escape" trigger built into his "The Fear Behind the Eyes" is worth the weight in gold, but his 8 Wd are easily dropped with ~2 AP from any average to moderate heavy hitter. Even with his "Mass of Viscera" which forces negative on attack and damage flips. So with that said, I think he serves an important role in this crew. He forces the enemy to HAVE to deal with him, and during that process the rest of your crew can do what it does best. 

Crew I've Been Fielding

Resurrectionists Crew - 35 - Dustup

Molly Squidpiddge -- 6 Pool

 +Forgotten Life [1]

 +Spare Parts [2]

 +Terrible Knowledge [1]

Canine Remains [4]

Crooligan [4]

Rogue Necromancy [10]

 +Pack [1]

Yin the Penangalan [8]

 +Unnerving Aura [1]

Painting

Finally, I'll leave you with my painting progress for this month. I have to just base the rogue necro and then finish up my crooligans and Yin in the next 2 weeks. Pretty sure I can reach that goal :)

 

 

Model Goodness

Just a quick update of some things I've been working on the past few months. Much more in the foam bags, but here is a small example.

Infinity - Yaogat Strike Team for my Sectorial List

Malifaux - Izamu the Armor

A Journey Back to Metal Miniatures

So, in all the craziness of +Wyrd Miniatures release of their Malifaux plastics I ended up going back to painting 5 older metal models. This isn't at all because I have issue with the pastics, quite the contrary, the plastics are awesome.

The reason I went back to metals is because of the new 10T master Misaki! I have decided to call her the Outcasts new master for Book 4 even though she is not a dual faction master (i.e. not a Outcast/10T master). However, she can draw from the older outcast models, so if you're an outcast model feeling like you didn't get a master in Book 4, she is your best choice if you want a new Book 4 master, but don't want to go completely into the 10T faction.

So I grabbed a Desperate Mercenary, Taelor, and some 10T Brothers, and am waiting on some Ronin.

One of my goals this year is to try and get a little better at painting. At the same time I'd like to also bring up my speed in painting. For those who don't know Malifaux is my first miniatures game, and painting is still pretty new for me. These models were my first significant foray into thinning my paints, and boy did it help A LOT! One thing that was a little frustrating is that my skull white ended up a little chunky on Taelor, but I made best with it for Taelor's shirt. I did some significant blending on the 10T brothers, and the Desperate Mercenary.

Seriously, let me know what you think in the comments. Would love some constructive feedback. Oh to paint all these models probably took a total of 7 hours (including assembling, pinning, basing, priming, and painting), not great, but decent for me I think.

10T Brother #1

Taelor

10T Brother #2

10T Brother #3

Desperate Mercenary