I’m not really here to talk about that right now, though. I’ve posted before about my feelings regarding Warmachine, so I’d head back to that thread if you’re interested in my thoughts about that. Instead, I’m here to talk about my chosen faction and, more specifically, one of the models in it.
Neverborn seem to fit my style of play very well and let me switch from being the good guys to being one of the bad guys (though with Legion of Everblight and Dindrenzi joining that pack, my bad guys are starting to outnumber my good guys of Cygnar and Eldar). The Neverborn are the stuff of nightmares and corruption. They have hosts of demons to make up the bulk of their army, but their magic is far more subtle. Lacking any spells that can actually do direct amounts of damage, they rely on manipulating their enemy into hurting themselves or putting themselves in jeopardy. Rather than blasting an enemy with an ice storm, the Neverborn may force an enemy to stab himself with his sword, or turn and shoot his partner in the head. They are very fast and very deadly, but have a significant lack of any ranged weaponry. To fight, these guys have to move cautiously through cover and engage fast.
There are three masters in Neverborn at the moment: Lilith, Pandora and Zoraida. The most straight-forward of these three is Lilith, and that’s who I’ll talk about first. If I feel like it, later I’ll come back and talk about the other two.
Lilith is the mother of the brood of strong demons in the faction. She was the first Neverborn to be recognized as something more than just a mindless brute. Play-wise, she’s as simple to understand as you can get with the Neverborn. See that massive sword she carries? She tries to stick that in the enemy.
She’s Fast, so she’s always getting three actions, and with her speed of 6”, she can cover half the board in a single turn’s movement. That lets her move fast and grab cover to keep her safer from enemy attacks. Combine that with her Defense of 8 (highest in the game) and she’s not that easy to strike. Additionally, if you miss her in melee, she can make it even harder for that model to hit her again and the shadows of Malifaux fold around her and conceal her.
Flipping around to combat, she’s going to be swinging at 2” reach with a solid 3/4/6 greatsword (so she gets a (+) flip on damage). She’s got a 7 to attack with already and if she hits with a second Mask, she can start cycling her hand. Often, she wants to get up in the face of the most deadly thing out there (preferably deadly with magic or ranged so she can keep him occupied). Then, if the foe tries to back away, she has the ability to actually damage them if they fail the disengage check. I had a game where I managed to move all the way into Rasputina’s melee range (she’s a powerful magic user who had just killed the entire rest of my army). Unable to cast her powerful magics now, she tried to escape my reach and after two failed checks, Rasputina was cut in two and dead.
She has several other abilities, including Black Blood, so she’ll be hurting people that hurt her, Rush of Magic, so she can cycle her hand even faster every turn, and Master of Malifaux, an ability that lets her ignore the terrain penalties for moving through rough terrain and lets her draw LOS ignoring cover. She can Companion a Nephilim near her as her (0) action, or, more often, she can gain a Blood Token after she kills a nearby enemy. Those she uses to feed her brood and have them mature into tougher monsters. She can ditch Soulstones for Blood Counters, which is horribly inefficient, but could help in a pinch, and she can use two actions to use her great sword to attack everyone around her.
For spells, she has four, but I rarely use them. Most times I want to use her actions to get her up the field faster. She has a Defense debuff that prevents models within 3” of her from charging as well, but from that close, usually I want to be chopping things with my sword already. She can cause everyone within 12” of her to slide 2” in a chosen direction. This spell I’ve only used in one game, but it saved me as I was able to move a number of people off the objective terrain at the end of the turn and win the game because of it. She can create a small forest which I do often early to give myself more cover heading in, but then I just leave it there. Finally, she has a spell that requires a 9 of Masks or better, but allows her to pick two models (she can be one of the targets) and switch their places. Not a bad way to bring an enemy over to you, or bring yourself to an enemy.
She’s a pretty straight-forward master. Usually I pack her up with a few other Nephilim to keep pressure on my enemy. When they’re looking towards one of them, I sneak her in the back and beat the tar out of a couple of guys. She can kill with ease and is pretty hard to take down, but she struggles against massed foes. Also, concentrated attacks can, and often do, bring her down. I like that she’s a melee monster who’s biggest asset is her speed and her ability to appear from directions you weren’t necessarily expecting. Makes for a little more fun than a basic beat-stick. But she’s the simplest of the Neverborn masters to understand, and next time we’ll talk about something a little more complicated…
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