Starting Up Malifaux: Mother of Monsters

Hi Malifaux fans.  This time humans are the invaders. Let’s help the demons fight back with another gorgeous plastic boxed set from Wyrd.

Model Count: 6 (Lilith, Barbaros, Cherub, 3 Terror Tots)

Points Playable in Box: Up to 34 (All 6 models, max soulstones, max upgrades)

Strengths: Speed, Control, Defense

Weaknesses: Ranged Game, Damage Output

We all know why you’re here this time. You’ve sold your soul to demons for power! Well, ok. You could be a fan of backing the indigenous people fighting back the waves of those invading barbarians. Either way, let’s look at what makes the Mother of Monsters box tick.

The first article was…slow zombies. The second article was…slow ice constructs. The Nephilim are NOT slow. There are schemes like Plant Evidence and Breakthrough where you want to get on your opponent’s half of the board and move around a lot over there. The movement shenanigans Nephilim can bring will help out a lot with that. Right off the bat, the Terror Tots have an ok walk of 5, Lilith and the Cherub have a fantastic 6, and Barbaros has a kind of slow 4 (but he also packs the extremely useful Nimble ability, giving him an extra AP for walk actions, in addition to an epic charge range of 8). The Cherub and Lilith also pack useful terrain ignoring features, as the Cherub flies and Lilith has the Master of Malifaux ability, which lets her ignore penalties for moving in severe or hazardous terrain and ignore line of sight for charges and casts as well. An incredible ability, especially if you’re playing with the recommended level of terrain, which can get fairly dense. The Terror Tots will be your main objective grabbers, as they have a great ability for movement in the form of Sprint. An upgraded version of the walk action, you take a walk and then flip a card. If it’s a mask, you get to take a second bonus walk action, zipping across the table! They also have an ability where if they die, your friendly Nephilim close by get a free walk towards the model that killed them. The Cherub also drops the interact cost of models around it (from 2 to 1 or 1 to 0), letting your models drop scheme markers and still use all their actions to move.

Now you’re where you want to be for schemes, but that pesky opponent keeps getting in the way. That’s where you start moving them around for your own pleasure. You can start off by hindering them, as Lilith’s Wicked Vines spell can root a model in place, and her Beckon Malifaux upgrade lets her put forest terrain into play (remembering that she can ignore those forests). But once the opposing models are directly where you don’t want them, you have a surprising number of options (several of them non-lethal, making the box decent at scoring the Take Prisoner scheme as well). Lilith’s Tangle Shadows will not only move one of your models to the location of an opponent, it will move the opponent right next to Lilith…and her greatsword. The Wicked Mistress upgrade does very similar, forcing a model to move their charge towards Lilith. Barbaros then is the king of bashing people around the board. Both of his attack actions push the opponent, his Macuahuitl pushes the target and has a trigger on target’s death to push even further, keeping them alive and paralyzed. More on that ability in the expanding your forces section. Bull Rush will push both the target and him, allowing you to continue your beatdown elsewhere, perhaps now out of range of one of your opponent’s defensive auras. The Nephilim Gladiatus upgrade gives him an action that can end up pushing everyone away from him, freeing Barbaros to move elsewhere unhindered. He even joins in the fun on defense, having a trigger that shoves away models that miss him in melee. Finally, even the Cherub joins in, packing a bow that can hand out slow as well as a decent sized push.

Not as jaw droppingly amazing as the ability to shove your opponent every which way, but the crew packs some decent defense as well. Everyone has a defense score of at least 6, with Lilith having a rather impressive 7. Everyone except the Cherub packs the Black Blood deterrent as well, damaging all non Black Blood models around them when they get hit. Finally, Barbaros packs armor +1, and Lilith packs as nasty defense trigger that gives a model that misses in melee -2 to hit her in melee for the rest of the turn. Just try not to actually get hit, as there’s very little damage mitigation, and a scarcity of hit points (Lilith only has 10, which is quite low for a master!). Barbaros and his armor can help out a bit here, as his Challenge (0) action works as a taunt, requiring a willpower check for the opponent to not target him when they attack.

The box’s ranged game absolutely stinks however. The Cherub is the only model with an actual ranged attack, and it’s pretty short at that (8”). Luckily Lilith packs all those abilities to drag your opponent to you and you can chase your opponent down, but you do not want to get involved in a lengthy shootout.

Not nearly as bad, but the damage output on the box is a bit on the low side unless you get tricky with people. Lilith’s greatsword (or the Alruane blade from her upgrade) is the only weapon that packs much of a punch, Barbaros being only average damage and the Terror Tots and Cherub being pathetically low. This is where you can get tricky if you MUST kill some models (forced into the Reckoning strategy for example). You can start by chewing your opponent with multiple free attacks. The Terror Tot’s Pounce ability and Lilith’s Living Blade upgrade allow them to make a free attack against any model pushed near them (through all of your own push effects for example). Once you’ve pushed all your opponent’s models around one of yours (and gotten all your free attacks), Lilith can then use the Summon the Blood upgrade to poke your own model for a point of damage, which in turn hands out 2 damage to everyone instead of Black Blood’s one. You can turn Wicked Vines into a bit of a damage spell. After the target has failed to move during it’s activation, have someone go up and push them. This breaks the roots, but you can a bonus 3 damage on top of your attack. For Lilith’s charges, you can even drop your illusionary forests right next to her to guarantee terrain for her to charge through, giving her a slight bonus in damage. The obsidian Talons upgrade gives all of your Nephilim the Flay trigger as well, letting them cheat damage flips even with negatives on the flip. A little card intensive perhaps, but the Terror Tot’s severe damage is FOUR TIMES higher than it’s weak.

The box has a special note for expanding it, as you can’t play one of her primary styles straight out of the box (it’s too model intensive for a starter to contain everything). The contents lack one of her upgrades (Rapid Growth), which allows you to play a list focused on leveling up your Terror Tots. Pick up that card from an arsenal box or a friend, and then pick up the Young and Mature Nephilim. With it, your Terror Tots can basically evolve into a Young Nephilim whenever they kill a non-peon, and the Young Nephilim can turn into a Mature whenever they kill an enforcer level or higher model. Turning your cheap stuff into expensive models is quite the deal. This is where Barbaros’ trigger to not kill a model really shines, as he can lay the smackdown on someone, and then push them towards a friendly terror tot for them to do that final point of damage, perhaps even with a free pounce attack.

You can also play up the terrain angle with some Swampfiends. The Silurid can leap through terrain, giving you access to more fast models and getting into the thick of things faster, and the Waldgeist can move through them unimpeded. Not only that, the Waldgeist brings extra uses of creating forest templates and the rooted condition, and has a whopping 4” melee range while touching severe terrain. If you’re going to be playing a scheme where you’re messing around a lot on your side of the board (Protect Territory perhaps), the Beckoner can be a good buy, just to use Lure to drag those pesky gunlines towards you.