Painted Hamelin

Yesterday my wife finished off Hamelin and I now have the entire crew painted and ready to go. I'll be buying the Obedient Wench and the Ratcatchers later this month, but for now, meet the gang!

Straight from a 4 Year Old

My wife just sent me this link to a site where a man is letting people send random questions to his four year old son and he'll type, without editing, the answers back. Some of these things are hilarious! For example:

Q: "Now that you are one year older, what do you wish you knew when you were 3?"
A: "I wish I knew how to flip over. Actually I already knew that. Never mind, I already knew that."

Q: "Heya Kid, why do earthquakes happen? I mean, what's down there?"
A: "I think there's just meteorites that streaked and hit other meteorites back and forth and then I think it stops."

Q: "What's the scariest thing ever?"
A: "A green man changing into aliens who can shoot things out of his mouth and throw up and the throw up can turn into guns and start shooting people."

Q: "If you had a whole day to do whatever you wanted, anywhere in the world, how would you spend it?"
A: "I would be the king! And I would kill everybody else except my family."

So yeah, clearly some of them get a little dark, but still. Really fun to see what a kid says to random questions. Enjoy!

My Abusive Relationship with Spartan Games

I have a full Dindrenzi fleet for Firestorm Armada, including two Battleships, six Cruisers, twelve Frigates, six Escorts, a Carrier, three Heavy Cruisers and three Gunships. At least one full squad of everything available for Dindrenzi.

I love the game. I think it has its flaws (I don't believe the fighters mechanic works right, I have specific issues with the Dindrenzi carrier, I think it works better with missions which are not provided by the company), but overall I think the game is solid and it fills a niche in my collection. It's my sci-fi fleet-sized game, and I love it for that.

But more and more I feel like the company that puts the game together, Spartan Games, is dropping the ball. They have too many games they're trying to support, and in the end, the only one that gets any love is the game that's out most recently. In this case, Distopian Wars.

Spartan Games promised the Firestorm Armada players that they would not be left behind in 2011. They promised updates to the website (the disorganization of which is another issue) in January, pdfs of the new "Alliances" in February, etc. Here we are in March and we're still holding our breath for the scenarios they promised in January. Word on the pdfs is that "It's not ready." No clue when it will be, or what we'll be seeing.

In the meantime, they continue to push Distopian Wars and essentially neglect anything else.



I've taken a look at Distopian Wars. It looks like a good game. It looks like the next evolution of the mechanics that have gone from Uncharted Seas through Firestorm on to Distopian Wars. If Distopian Wars came out before Firestorm Armada, I would probably have a fleet of them instead. But the thing is that now I've spent enough money on Firestorm to build the fleet I want, and I won't start that all over again.

In our playgroup, we have a few players with Distopian Wars fleets and a few with Firestorm Armada. Neither wants to play the other game. Those with Distopian Wars feel it's the superior game (and I can't really disagree - it looks like the rules are more refined). Those with Firestorm Armada don't want to abandon this fleet only to jump to DW and have that game stall and stop when Spartan Games comes out with their next big game. As such, Spartan Games just doesn't really get played.

I love the game Firestorm. I want to play it more. But I'm faced with a company that does not support it to the level that I would want, and constantly slips with release dates and promises. That's not how I want my game of choice to be treated. I wish Spartan Games would stick with Firestorm Armada, but even if they picked it back up again, I would be hard pressed to jump back in with both feet. Been burned enough by it.

Facing Down Justice

I got a game in yesterday against Big Jay of the Gamer’s Lounge (a great podcast – if you don’t listen, head on over and give it a once-over). We used to play Warmachine quite a bit back in the day and while we’ve both been playing Malifaux for a while, we rarely sit down against each other.

The new rulebook has been out for about a week and our group is still slowly digesting it. Several points during the game things popped up where one or the other of us was confused and largely we were able to resolve the rules with a quick look in the book, so that’s a plus. Still, it’s going to take a little time before we’ve got all the rules set away.

Jay was trying out a new list for Guild he’s been wanting to give a whirl and I asked him who he wanted to face. His list, apparently, has a lot of good tools to combat the Dreamer (ways to get rid of Slow and Paralyze, and ways to get bonuses against Morale duels which are my bread and butter when playing the Dreamer) and he wanted to see how the matchup would go, so out came Lord Chompy Bits and the Dreamer.

We played 35 stones.

Dreamer, Daydream x2, Lilitu, Lelu, Coppelius, Stitched Together, 8 stones
Lady Justice, Lucius, Drill Sergeant, Guild Guard Captain x2, Guild Guard x2, 4 stones

We flipped for our scenarios. I got Claim Jump and Jay got Treasure Hunt. For our schemes, I announced Bodyguard and kept Kidnap hidden (with two Guild Guard and the Captain) while he announced both Bodyguard (Lady Justice) and Break Through.

The first turn was mostly maneuvering around and positioning with Jay getting one of his Guild Guards up to the treasure but not yet picking it up. I pulled the trick I learned from Bill, putting Terrifying 13 on all my Nightmares, then burying them so that the turn they pop up they could do some shenanigans.



On turn two, I won the initiative and moved the Dreamer up to pop out my Nightmares. They call came out a couple inches away from the treasure, putting the Guild Guard in melee with Lilitu’s massive reach. As soon as he went, he’d have to worry about that Terrifying 13. Instead, Jay decided to pull a really cool trick. He managed to get three or four models linked together, toss up a bubble that granted bonuses against morale duels, and then flip Lady Justice from his deployment zone all the way up into my line of models. Then she activated, had to ditch a few cards and stones to keep herself from being frightened off a few times, and promptly killed off Lelu. Ouch!

I retaliated by Paralyzing Lady Justice and moving Coppelius into range of several other guildsmen. Lord Chompy Bits came out to play and put a hurting on Lady Justice, but didn’t manage to kill her. My Stitched Together Gambled with her, then Gambled his Life. He failed, and Jay flipped two Severe damage flips on his (-) flip, killing the Stitched Together. Damn! He went again and dropped Lady J down to two life left. All in all, a poor showing from my Nightmares. Though I did have the benefit of scaring away the one Guardsman near the treasure. He was near Coppelius when he fled, so he took enough damage from that to kill himself.

Turn three, I went first. I didn’t realize that Jay could un-paralyze his models (though he had told me earlier in the game – it just slipped my mind) and started with Coppelius instead. He attacked three times and triggered “Remove Eye” twice. One of the Guild Captains ran, but the other and a Guardsman stuck around. Coppelius used one of his eyes to make an Alp. Jay went and strung out a few models again. He had to cheat some more to keep himself from running away from Coppelius and by now his hand was very depleted. I’d say mine was strong, but I had yet to draw a card over a 9 in the game, so while I had a lot in my hand, it wasn’t all that great.

Lady Justice was un-paralyzed and then promptly swung a few times at the Dreamer after moving in such a way as she was only engaging him. I had stones and he did not, and he couldn’t cheat, so I was able to keep Lady J from hitting the Dreamer either time. Lilitu went and finished off Lady Justice, but she was down to 3 life left. She’d be dying pretty soon.

Lucius moved up, started ordering his men around, and ate the fleeing Captain in order to get a reactivate. He reactivated and ordered the Guild Captain to attack again, hurting Coppelius. The Alp went and healed Coppelius, but I only flipped weak and he healed only one life. Lord Chompy Bits, meanwhile, moved up and hit the farther away Guild Guard a little then turned back into the boy while one of the Daydreams buried Lilitu in case I could find use for her later.



Turn four was a clutch turn where things started going better for me. The Guild Captain killed Coppelius with three more attacks, but the wound Coppelius does when you kill him plus the wounds the Alp does when you do Strikes and Walks near him put the Captain near dead. Jay realized he should have moved Lucius closer to sacrifice the Captain to get Reactivate since he probably was not going to survive anyway. The Alp finished off the Captain, the Drill Sergeant killed off the Alp, and Lord Chompy Bits killed the Drill Sergeant and the Guildsman.

At this point on turns five and six, Jay moved up to his treasure while I ran for the Claim Jump. Jay killed one of my two remaining Daydreams and came towards me, but unfortunately just did not have enough models to do everything he needed to win. I had four points already from my schemes and Jay had none. He could take the treasure to my deployment zone to get 4 points (2 for Treasure Hunt and 2 for Break Through), he could take it to his deployment zone to get 4 points (4 for Treasure Hunt), or he could go for my Claim Jump and try to block that with the treasure in hand getting 2 points, but blocking me from getting 4. He opted for the latter and ended up being an inch or so too far away and I won 8-2. If he hadn’t gone for killing one of the Daydreams with one of his actions, he might have been able to pull out a 4-2 game instead. I did try to get Lilitu to lure Lucius away from the treasure, but with the (-) flips, I wasn’t doing so well. I did manage to get an 18 against him but he flipped a 13 and resisted. Oh well.



Anywho, a very close game, and an interesting list by Jay. I look forward to seeing it in play once he’s got a little more practice with it. I can see it being a quite frightening play what with pulling Lady Justice pretty much anywhere near Lucius. Good deal!

Falls Flat

On Saturday I managed to get my first game in with Hamelin. Dan and I hit Huzzah with our new crews - Hamelin for me and Colette for him. We agreed to play the main box as our starting crews (though both crews can summon other models, and we decided to let those summons happen just as normal).

Hamelin, Nix, 3x Malifaux Rats, 2x Stolen, 6 stones
Colette, Cassandra, 2x Performer & Mannequin, 6 stones (I think)

I took only two of the Stolen rather than 3 so I could get additional soulstones and since I would just be summoning a new one soon enough anyway.

We flipped for Strategies and neglected to pick Schemes. Pretty much as soon as strategies were flipped, I realized I had no chance of actually winning the game and the best I could hope for was a 0-0 tie. Dan flipped Destroy the Evidence as his strategy, and I flipped Slaughter. By turn three, Dan had already killed 8 rats and had 16 slaughter points. Poor Hamelin - doesn't really have much of a chance against that kind of mission.

Hamelin did manage to turn all of Colette's crew Insignificant save Cassandra (I got a shot off at her, but flipped a Black Joker to make her Insignificant). In the end, Cassandra and Colette managed to leap around enough that Cassandra tapped two points on the last two turns and pulled out a 2-0 victory over Hamelin.

Things I learned:

Hamelin really needs Rat Catchers to function well, at least with the strategies as they were. I needed to keep the rats within 6" of Hamelin or they would all die pretty easily (especially given that a Mechanical Dove popping Detonate Soulstone essentially kills every rat within 2" of it). So I could effectively protect only one location.

Hamelin's way of drawing cards is very unusual. I guess I had learned that when reading the cards, but seeing it in action was pretty interesting. Early in the game I had a very solid hand as I was able to sacrifice my models to draw cards. But once we moved into the mid- and late-game, I didn't have the time to draw more cards and my hand really suffered.

Without rat catchers to help protect swarms of rats, Hamelin and Nix have to do all the lifting. This became problematic when Colette managed to tag Nix and turn him into a mannequin early on in the game before the poor dog had done... well... just about anything.


Overall, an interesting crew. Very frustrating to try to get to work without Rat Catchers, but I'm not ready to shelve him yet. He has a lot of tricks I was not able to get working yet, and I'd like to see how they roll first.

There's a New Sheriff in Town

When Rising Powers came out, I looked through all the new masters and pretty quickly decided who I wanted most: the Dreamer. After that it was a little more hazy. When Colette and Kirai first hit the stores, I thought I wanted one of them. Lucius has looked pretty sweet too. But within a few months after the book came out, I decided on the second crew I would pick up from Rising Powers. Hamelin.

I settled on him mostly because the picture in the book was fantastic (it's not the picture above - that one was just funny to me). Like most Outcast masters, he has a very different play style, both for the person playing him and the person opposing him. He can't be treated as just another melee-styled master, or another spell-slinger. He's got a lot of tricky interactions to him. He does a little summoning, a little control, a little damage, and a whole lot of weirdness.

So yesterday I headed out to my local store when I got the word that the models had arrived. I picked up Hamelin's box and six additional rats filling out everything I think I'll need for this release. I will, of course, need to get some Rat Catchers and that Obedient Wretch when they come out, but for now I'm just going to talk a little about the initial box.



The plague-carrier himself. Poor Hamelin was caught in the sewers by an ancient evil, his body was hollowed out, and he became the vessel for one of the Tyrants. Now wherever he goes, disease and death follow him. The rats of Malifaux flock to him. The unfortunate forgotten people follow him. He gets along with the cast-offs.

Hamelin can only build his crew from Soulless, HT 1, or Insignificant models, though he can draw them from anywhere. He also makes all the Insignificant models in his crew (of which there are a lot) ignore the Insignificant trait. He's unable to be targeted by Insignificant models and there are a few tricks up his sleeve to make opposing models Insignificant.

Hamelin comes in with a pretty solid set of wounds, the most I've ever had on a Master. He's got great Willpower, good casting, good melee and good ranged. His stats are, generally, just better than most.

Now a lot of this comes because he does not get to cheat fate as easily as others. He gets his initial starting hand on turn one, but after that, he no longer draws card normally. Instead, each time your opponent plays a Control Card, he can draw one. So the more your opponent plays with Fate, the more you can.

Killing Hamelin can be a bit tricky. Once you kill him, he can be placed near a Stolen model and essentially get a free life. Every turn he can summon a new Stolen, so he'll be hard to pin down.

Whenever models near him are killed, he starts summoning more rats, and soon his horde of the dirty things will sweep across the table, biting and gnawing at anyone they can find.

There are a few more tricks to him, but suffice it to say he has a number of different tools he can use in any situation. Want to do a lot of damage? Toss some Fate is Meaningless and hit your opponent with your staff. As long as you hit, you can cheat in a Severe card for a nice 9 damage. Need to move your opponents around? Zap them with your Pipes or use Obedience to move them where you like or have them attack their friends. So much goodness!



Nix, Hamelin's faithful dog, was caught in the transformation under the sewers and his rotting corpse was reanimated. Now he's a very tough to kill spirit of a dog that runs around spreading the plague too. He'll be the main damage dealer in a Hamelin-themed list.

Strangely, his damage profile is in reverse, so he does more damage with Weak flips. That means any negative flips will actually not hurt him as he's probably going to take the low card anyway. He tacks on Blight counters which in turn increase the damage done to models in the future.

He's a spirit, he has Magic Resistant 2, and he heals whenever someone nearby loses a Duel, so he'll be hard to pin down. He can sacrifice friendly models nearby to Heal himself as well. He can summon more Rats if he does Severe damage with his weapon and triggers the right suit. He can help move your rats and Stolen around, giving you a little more control over them. And he can debuff non-Soulless models near him, helping to lock down his opponent. All in all, a great addition to Hamelin's crew.



These are the children of Malifaux that have been left behind. They have been caught by Hamelin's lure and follow him around.

They have no attacks and essentially just follow around giving Hamelin a way to survive an attack against him. They can Sacrifice themselves to try to force opposing models to become Insignificant (which means the opponent can no longer attack Hamelin, among other things), and if they're killed or sacrificed by non-Soulless models, the opposing model can become Paralyzed and they debuff nearby Willpowers. Finally, when they are killed or sacrificed, you get to bring a new rat to the table.

You can keep summoning new ones using Hamelin, so he's almost always going to have a couple hanging around.



Finally, there are the hordes of rats that swarm around with Hamelin. Individually, they're remarkably uninspiring. They're always slow, they can't make disengaging strikes, and other models can walk over them. They are hard to hit with ranged strikes since they're so small, though, so their size does give them some bonus.

When one activates, all rats within 4" must also go, swarming ahead. When they attack they add Blight counters doing more damage to the opponent. They can mess with Scrap and Corpse counters around the table hindering some lists.

But the real fun comes when you start combining them with Hamelin and the upcoming Rat Catchers. More and more of these rats keep being made, and eventually they'll start piling on the damage. If a Rat dies near certain models, it will just spawn a new Rat, so getting rid of them all becomes more and more troublesome.

The Rat Catcher takes this to a new level, as he has an ability that kills all nearby Rats. So you can move your Rats up, attack with them, then they'll all be killed and spawn new ones that can start attacking again.


I'm really excited about giving this crew a try. It's been a while since I've tried learning a whole new way of playing Malifaux and I think this guy is a tremendous shift from any of the other masters I've played. Hopefully I'll be able to figure him out and get some games going soon.

Two on Tuesday

Last night I hit up Huzzah and managed to get a couple of games in - first time I've done more than one game in a while. Not entirely understanding the Dreamer's new way of working yet and awaiting response to the rules question about his activation I posted on the forum, I decided to steer away from him for the time being.

My first game was against Ryan. The last time we had played was back last April, so it's been quite a while. We hit the table and asked each other if there was anyone the other wanted us to play. He plays Guild and I had never faced Lucius before, so he fielded him. My two least-used Neverborn masters are Zoraida and Pandora, and he didn't have a preference between them, so I went with Pandora, by far my least-used.



We played 35 stones.

He took Lucius, Governor's Proxy, Ryle, Guild Guard Captain, Austringer, Guild Guardsman x3, 5 stones

His strategy was Deliver the Message and his schemes were Raid and Grudge, I think? I don't remember the second one.

I took Pandora, Primordial Magic, Lilitu, Lilu, Coppelius, Stitched Together x2, 5 stones

My strategy was Reconnoiter and my schemes were Bodyguard and Kidnap (I selected two of his Guild Guardsmen and his Guardsman Captain)

The game was mostly a learning one for Ryan. This was only his second game playing Lucius and he was still trying to get the hang of it. While Pandora's my least-used Neverborn master, I've still played her a fair number of games and have a few strategies down with her.

I moved my Stitched Togethers up and popped smoke keeping my models hidden from everyone but the Austringer. On turn two, I was able to drop a triggered template on Ryle, the Austringer and the Guardsmen Captain and they all turn and ran away. The trigger counts as losing a Morale Duel and at the time we forgot that the Governor's Proxy would have immediately killed all three of those guys. As it was, Ryle ran to the edge of the table and Pandora moved up and frightened him again, scaring him off the table. The others had taken damage not only from failing Willpower duels but also from failing Morale Duels near Coppelius.

He managed to move in a bit and even the field by taking out Coppelius. With some crazy moving tricks, he got one of his Guardsmen next to Pandora and gave her the message netting four points. I responded by poisoning two Guardsmen to death with Lilu and scaring away the Austringer and the third Guardsman with Pandora (this is when we realized that they would auto-die from the Proxy). We called the game there since he was down to Lucius and the Proxy against my entire crew minus Coppelius.



The second game was against John, one of our regulars and a really strong opponent. I opted for Lilith, wanting to try a new list I had been tuning that used the twins instead of the Mature Nephilims. He pulled out Colette, a master I had only faced once before. I was looking forward to seeing how she worked since last time I faced her, she had only just come out and there was not much available for her.

He took Colette, two Doves, Cassandra, the Performer & Manequin, and 3 Molemen, 5 stones
His strategy was Plant the Evidence and his schemes were Kill Protege (Lilu) and Sabotage

I took Lilith, Primordial Magic, Lilu, Lilitu x2, Terror Tot x2, 5 stones
My strategy was Slaughter and my schemes were Kidnap (Performer, Manequin, and something else...) and Bodyguard

This was a tough game. There were about 8 pieces of terrain on my side of the board and he had to get to four of them. Two pieces were on my far right and one was on the far left, and five were bunched up in the middle. I decided that since Colette's crew can move pretty much however it likes, I would let him take the two on the right and concentrate on defending the one of the left and the batch in the middle. Lilitu's 4" reach in melee would really help because he could not activate locations if he was in melee.

As expected, by turn two he had already activated his Sabotage and the two points over on the right. One more activated and he'd be up to 4 VPs, and two more activated and he'd be up to 6. I was defending the terrain in the middle and on the left pretty successfully, and managed to kill three Doves (he kept making more) to give myself six Slaughter points already. I also used my Lilitus to heal up any damage the Doves were doing. Colette popped up a little to zap one of my Lilitu's but only managed to drop her to one life left before I pulled her back to safety. She was healed back up pretty quick.

I was running around the back opening doors to buildings so that he could not just hide in the buildings and attack me at will. One of my Terror Tots ran up to a building on his side and opened the door forcing Colette to abandon the window she had been using to attack through without the worry of retaliation. With the threat of Lilith rushing into the building now, she headed off to another side. The Performer and Mannequin stayed behind which was fine by me - I needed them for Kidnap.

I pulled a Moleman into my circle of death (two Lilitu's, Lilu, a Terror Tot and the Primordial Magic) with Lures and slaughtered him with poison and massed attacks. Cassandra waited until my activations were out and rushed into melee. She took two wounds from being too close to Lilu at the end of the turn, and on the next turn I won initiative. Lilu and one of the girls went together. Lilu poisoned her and hit her twice, but she used a stone to prevent damage, dropping her to three life. Lilitu failed to wound her at all.

Cassandra went and breathed fire, but she had to do it from melee making it a melee attack. My Terror Tot bled his Black Blood all over her and finished off Cassandra. To make things worse, he flipped only moderate damage and did not do enough to kill even my Terror Tot.

Meanwhile, my other Terror Tot smacked around the Mannequin a couple times. I flipped the Red Joker for damage but even with all that, Object and Armor reduced all the damage to one. Lilith finished off the Mannequin, then moved around the building and killed the Performer as well. She debuffed Lilith to prepare for an assault from Colette. Sensing danger, my Primordial Magic jumped up and Transposition-ed with Lilith, putting himself in danger and Lilith back to safety. Colette moved up to the Primordial Magic but ran out of actions to do anything.

On turn six, I won initiative again. Lilith went first and (0) companioned with one of my twins. The twins then all companioned together. So Lilith Transposition-ed back with the Primordial Magic and swung twice at Colette, draining her of stones and good cards. One of my Lilitu's lured Colette back in and managed to trigger Double Take twice, bringing her into melee with Lilu. She attacked for minor damage. Lilu went, poisoned Colette, and dropped her to three life left with no stones and no hand to speak of. My last Lilitu lured her into melee with three Nephilim but failed to hurt her.

Colette was in a spot of bother. She dropped to one life left because of poison, then swung out and died from the Black Blood. With only two molemen left, neither of which could reach any more points to activate, the game was over.


My thoughts on both Colette and Lucius are fairly similar. They both look like a lot of fun, but I feel like they both - Lucius especially - lacks any kind of punch to him. They can do a lot of movement and activation tricks, but beyond that they have a hard time really bringing down their enemies. I hope Lucius gets more to back him up, and I wonder how Cassandra and a Duet would fair as the melee punch for Colette. Either way, very interesting games that required me to figure out new ways to pin down crews that are even more maneuverable than my own.