Malifaux on a Budget in Action - Part 1

So as I recently mentioned I managed to sell my self the idea of a lady Justice crew. So after a few days acquiring a few extra parts (one of which I will admit now is both cheap and expensive at the same time).

 So this is the crew in it entirety. I decided I wanted only death marshal models and that I wanted to extend the coffin theme through the whole force.

For my master I chose Lady J's alternate sculpt as I just prefer how she looks. The coffins and bases are from Fenris Games, who's resin casts I highly recommend.

Judge is largely unaltered but I may revisit him as while I like the model I'd like it to be a little more dynamic.

Next up is the exorcist, a nice model if a little plain, but out of all the models I've added coffins to I think it suits him the best.

To the right is Miss Terious, a limited edition death marshal model. Gmort gave me this model as I'm due one later in the year for pledging for the "Through the Breach" Kickstarter so technically the model is free as she was a pledge goal but tracking one down will not be cheap.

The core death marshals are pretty much as they come I simply altered the pose of the one on the right as I dislike his staple pose as its too precarious. Even such a small change has made him into one of my favourite models.

Over the next few weeks I'll be going through how to paint and how I'm using this crew in game both here and on our new sister site The Hobbynomicon. Any of you who've not stopped by the page yet please do, we're combining all our local hobby talent into what we hope to be a cross media hobby heaven. 

Thanks for sticking with me once again, theres no "Board Games for Kids" tomorrow due to Hobbynomicon work but the weekend will see some product reviews and hopefully and in depth look into one of our games nights.

Malifaux on a Budget - Horde Crews

So we know by now I'm sure that I love Malifaux, one of the things I love most is how accessible it is to all new players because of its relatively low cost compared to most miniatures games. However I know not everyone has a huge budget which is why I began these articles, not as a way of telling people what to buy because it will win, but because its a good option for the price.

There are some crews (as a few have pointed out in emails) I have left suspiciously alone. This is because some crews are going to be more expensive to start. Many of the ressurectionist crews and a few others summon new models mid game or change a model within the game (such as Lilith). I have devoted a lot of time to working out how to choose cheaper models to make these crews work or work out the minimal models required to make it at least feasible for a new player to start the crew (such as my Kirai suggestions).
In the end I have come to the conclusion that some crews just need a lot of models to work in the way they're intended so the next few MOAB will be looking at alternate models to use in horde crews to lessen the cost.

Now I must mention before I begin that I still believe the official wyrd miniatures look better than most of the alternatives and obviously come with the rules cards but with so many resources for fan made cards (see Ratty's page in the side link) it is possible to make cards for alternate models.

This week we'll be looking at one of my favourite masters, Nicodem, and how I made my horde of undead for less money but still in the style of Malifaux.

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The Box

Price - £17.50

Soul Stone amount -22

Nicodem's box is one of the cheapest crew boxes and comes with a great back bone for a crew. Mortimer allows Nicodem to gain more corpse counters and it not to shabby in a fight. It also contains 3 Samurai punk zombies, which with paired weapons and cb7 all for 5ss are for my money the best combat troops in the game.
Nicodem's main ability however (like many ressurectionists) is the summoning of more undead, which he does better than any other master as for a (0) action he can summon as many mindless undead as you have corpse counters within 10". Now you may notice no mindless undead come in the box.

 Now it'll cost you £9 for three of these, which isn't too expensive, but when you consider that in a standard game I usually end up with 8 or so running around the costs mount up very quickly.

This is my Nicodem crew, and at the side (left) you can see my mindless zombies. I have the three wyrd zombies but when I found I needed more I used Mantic games ghouls box. Now its about £12 for twenty of these and they look suitably Malifuax-y anyway but I added Wyrd's hats and guns sprue to tie them in a little better. There are of course hundreds of plastic undead kits for a similar price so choose the one appropriate for you.

Now this together will give you a pretty solid 25 SS crew with mindless undead to summon, they joy of Nicodem is that once you have your Mindless undead you can add ANY undead models and Nicodem can buff them and as long as their not spirits re summon them!

Games for Kids - Tsuro.

So yesterday I left my nerd comfort zone and travelled to Burton and visited a fine store called "Spirit Games". A simply wonderful trove of all sorts of roleplay and board games, needless to say I over spent but it does mean I have some interesting new games to show you over the next few weeks.

However I digress. Once we were home from Burton I broke out my current favourite casual game (i.e. one that takes less than half an hour) for my sisters and I to play.

One of the Dragons.

In Tsuro players take control of ancient dragons as they find their path through the oriental mists. players take turns playing tiles that have line patterns on them and moving their dragon along these lines. Players are eliminated when they are forced to leave the board on their path, or when they collide with another dragon. The last dragon on the board wins. 

On the left is one of the Tsuro tiles. Players choose a starting location on the board that lines up with one of two lines that exist per space. The lines on these tiles then match up with these to form the "path" as shown below. 

So we began playing, both of the girls picked up the concept of playing tiles very quickly and seemed to be doing well in the early turns. Inevitably in every game of Tsuro however dragons will get closer to each other. This is where they seemed to struggle as the visualisation skills needed seemed forgein to them.
My girlfriend, who was playing with us, eventually won and my youngest sister and I dropped out first in an epic crash.

Once we were done I asked the girls what they thought, "boring" and "a bit confusing" were my answers. I'm a little disheartened as I thought Tsuro would make a good family game but I think the higher levels of play are too difficult, certainly for younger children.

Hobby Week - Day 2

So yesterday I spent another full day at my FLGS. The Malifaux tutorial I had booked in the morning went really well, then my voice started to give out. I played my second game of Malifaux where I got a good pasting at the hands of an old adversary.

So after my intro game, the young guy I taught found an opponent so borrowed my Freikorps crew and delivered a sound thrashing.

After all the Malifaux we moved on to Zombiecide, which I've spoken about before. The game pits 6 survivors against a malicious board that throws wave after wave of the undead at you. It's usually a good laugh if a little tense.

After lunch I was invited to play my first game of Arkham city. With glee I grabbed my Batman crew and Joker crew and set about reading the set up rules with my opponent. Half an hour later we'd set up. The rules it seems are very basic, however through name changes, misprints and bad translations they're a little hard to read through. We played one 300 points (game standard) game which I just won by shooting Nightwing and gang stomping Catwoman. 

After my larger game I was thrown a nice guy who also wanted to learn the game but only had two models (see below) so I took Batman vs Bane and Talia Al Ghul. Having read that the League of Shadows models were pretty damn hard I used Batman in a stealth capacity which worked amazingly well as I took out Talia just before the final turn and unfortunately for my opponent bane fluffed all his attack rolls. Still a great game system which I hope to play more of. 

Hobby Week - Day 1

So a whole day in my FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store) today.

Had a blast though my henchman duties led to less time to paint than I would have liked. However I set out to make a start on my Batman figures, which I got done (no pics of those until they're finished though.)

 
Ok, maybe one.

In addition to some painting I decided to pick up a Malifaux crew I managed to sell my self in the first of my "Malifaux on a Budget" articles. The Death Marshals, and Lady J her self.

I've posed the crew a little differently to how they're normally seen. I have an exorcist on order with my FLGS as well as the alternate Lady J (it's just prettier) and I have acquired a limited edition Miss Terious to bring the crew points up. All models will have the Death Marshal trait and I want EVERY model to have a coffin (even the brutal effigy I plan to add in). I'm hoping this makes for a unified and striking looking crew primarily for intros as my usual two crews (friekorps and Kaeris) feel and look a little stale now my skills have improved. 

Lastly I played a 50 point game of Warmachine against my old friend Chris (Crystal to those in the know). He used Trolls against my planned 50 point list. I squeaked a win mostly thanks to Caine's (my caster) sheer wait of fire power but learnt a lot on the way. I think a few tweaks are in order but I'm happy with how the list works and how the models are progressing (even if they're not quite done yet).

The progress on my Cyclone 'jack.

Tomorrow sees another day in my FLGS with two games of Malifaux planned (one intro and one for fun) and a second warmachine game, not sure if I'll have time to paint but I will certainly give it a go.

Until tomorrow, stay nerdy.

Update

So it's been a couple of weeks due to real life but you don't want to hear about that. I know I don't do many project updates on the blog any more but its half term (so working in a school I have a week off as well as he kids) so I figured I'd start by documenting my week of geek.
Never fear any fans of my regular series, both will be appearing in their usual slots (MOAB on Saturday and Games for Kids on Thursday) but also there will be daily updates on new board games I've been playing, painting I've got done and anything nerdy that takes my fancy to have a rant about. This is mostly in an attempt to diversify what I'm writing about, I love Malifaux but it's beginning to dominate my life a little so I want to show that there's more out there.

However all this start tomorrow So for now you can see the little hobby I've managed to do since my disappearance.

I apologise for the picture quality, My cameras broken so for today my phone was called up to the plate

So while not the most exciting thing ever I picked up some of Revell's snap together Star Wars models while  was working to break up my evenings. While a little bit fiddly in places they're great kits especially as their so cheap. While I am considering repainting them When I get time they look pretty good as they are for now. 

 This little collection is about two thirds of my Warmachine collection. I have never taken the game too seriously unlike many at my FLGS but i do really like it and as there's a local tournament coming up I designed this 50 point list to play in it. This is some of the stuff you'll see getting painting (or finished painted) over the week.

 I LOVE Batman, no really. But more specifically I love the Joker. So when A few months ago I found out Knight models were releasing a miniatures game based on Batman: Arkham City I placed a standing order with my FLGS for well "One whole Batman" so this is what the range stand at for now, but last night the rules were released so The biggest part of this weeks plan is to get my joker crew up and running to test it out. The rules look pretty solid and are very close to Pulp City for any who have played that system but with added BAT.
There was also going to be a picture of my finished batman model but it came out too dark (stupid phone) so He'll be in one of this weeks updates.
Until tomorrow then dear readers, stay nerdy.