Malifaux 101: M2E Guild Master Changes
Lady Justice
First up she is still a melee powerhouse, but she is more of a glass cannon then ever from her base stat card, she still has the Riposte defence trigger however as she only has an average defence of 5, so any melee model that has a higher attack and a few decent cards in hand can take her out fairly quickly, but some of her upgrades can help with that.
Most of the abilities and actions on her base card are all about augmenting her melee abilities. Blindfighter lets he ignore LoS when charging which given her 2″ melee range can be really useful in densely packed terrain. Inspiring Swordplay to buff Guild Marshalls is good if you are running a fluffy crew which will work well with the Justice Unleashed upgrade. Final Repose is good against crews like Ramos, Leviticus and any Resser master which need markers for certain actions and combos. Her melee is still as good as ever with a 3/5/6 statline before the built in Critical strike.
She has 2 non melee abilities, Juggernaut to heal and Restore Natural Order to remove conditions.
Upgrades help to further augment her melee and defensive abilities. Badge of Office and Thalarian Doctrine help to boost her defences, Implacable and Justice Unleashed boost other Guild Marshalls as well as locking in models in her melee range. Vendetta Style and Last Rites boost her Melee.
My core build for Lady Justice is a 6-7 soulstone cache, Badge over my Heart, Vendetta Style and Justice Unleashed or Flames from the Pit. This gives me a mix of defence, boosts to her melee as well as buffs to Guild Marshalls as I quite like running a fluffy crew.
Sonnia Criid
Sonnia is still the master of burny-burny-death-death that she was before, especially with the changes to burning she can potentially put a lot of damage especially with Samael and Witchlings putting out more Burning to augment her.
She still gets benefits against certain models though this has changed to Willpower from Casting, she now ignores cover and line of sight against burning targets which can help to keep her alive. She still has her Inferno to put a pulse of damage out the same as before, her attacks are her sword, and her main form of attack in the Flame Burst which has a nice 14″ range.
All of her upgrades are largely defensive. Cherufe’s Imprint gives her Flame Wall to block LoS and Dampening to prevent the enemy using soulstones. Counterspell Aura gives her a damage spell that works well against models with lots of casting actions such as Nicodem who has potentially 4. As well as denying suits in Ca. Violation of Magic is different to before, it costs a soulstone or 2 cards to summon a Witchling Stalker when a model dies from burning, this ties in nicely to the final upgrade the Mask which prevents a model from losing burning.
My core build for Sonnia is the average cache of 6-7, Reincarnation, Cherufe’s Imprint and The Mask when running with Samael. This gives defence in the form of Flame Wall, buffs to Burning damage and Reincarnation to summon witchlings.
Perdita Ortega
Finally Dita. she is still the excellent shooter she was before, but now she has more movement and manipulative tricks.
Her newest ability is Relocate which gives her an 8″ push towards a Family member at the start of her activation if she discards a card, effectively its a walk and a half for a card, which is largely worth it if you have a family member in the position for her. She still has Hero’s Gamble to farm for better cards, and Faster Than You for shooting defence. She still has an impressive defence at Df7 and her Peacebringer has a nice 14″range, well above average.
Her upgrades are a mix of offensive and defensive, Aura Ancestral buffs Wp of Family members as well as giving her the ability to ignore duels like Terrifying to target models. Os Veo gives Stubborn and Bulletproof to protect against Wp based damage and -2 damage against shooting damage. Her last upgrade is trick shooting which helps tailor her attacks against cover, armour and incorporeal models.
My base build for Perdita is the usual cache of 6-7 soulstones, then all 3 of her upgrades as above for flexibility.
More Malifaux soon!
