Starting Up Malifaux: Dark Debts

Come in to the casino. First hit’s free, and nothing bad could ever happen…

Model Count: 5 (Jakob Lynch, Hungering Darkness, 3 Illuminated)

Points Playable in Box: Up to 34 (All 5 models, max soulstones, max upgrades)

Strengths: Multi Use Debuff, Card Tricks, Durability

Weaknesses: Model Count, Long Range

Agent of the Ten Thunders, congratulations on infiltrating the complexities of the local neverborn. In time you can choose to expand your collection into either faction (or both), but how does the Dark Debts box play by itself?

Jakob Lynch’s crew is designed around a debuff condition called brilliance. On it’s own, the condition does nothing, but the entire crew interacts with it in deadly ways. First thing is getting it out there: both of Lynch’s attack actions, the Hungering Darkness’ melee attack and the Illuminated’s ranged attack all give it out until the end of the turn with assorted mask triggers. The Darkness can make it permanent with a trigger on Heed My Voice, and in a pinch the Illuminated are all permanently brilliant.

Once a model is afflicted, most of your models will get straight out buffs to attacking it, as well as a few abilities that only work on the brilliant. The Darkness’ control spell gets a + flip against them, and the illuminated’s melee attack does extra damage. The addict upgrade makes most of your army gain + flips on both attack and damage against a brilliant target. Both master and henchman have a 0 action that gets rewarded for having a large pile of brilliance in play. Pay Up makes you burn a card from your deck for each model with it, and then you get to draw any masks discarded into your hand. Consume brilliance makes the Hungering Darkness heal a damage for each model within 6”, and then they all have to pass a horror duel. The Woke up With a Hand upgrade gives Lynch an attack which hits a brilliant model for damage equal to the number of cards in it’s controller’s hand.

Lynch himself has a great deal of options to mess around with cards. Mulligan will let you discard several cards to redraw a new batch, and his pistol has a trigger for every suit. Ace in the hole lets other models recycle your aces, excellent for when you want all your models to do actions with a cost of discarding a card (such as defensive stance). His upgrades are where it starts to go crazy though. Wanna see a trick takes all those aces you’ve saved up and lets you toss them for an action free, non resistible damage source. Expert cheater gives him a great psychological tool: friendly models within line of sight can cheat their cards face down. If you can bluff well, you can get your opponent to waste high cards either trying to beat you or upping a duel you never had a chance of winning in the first place. Finally, woke up with a hand lets you activate Lynch last but still have cards to play with. If Lynch is your last model, he draws two cards at the start of his activation.

The crew is also pretty hard to kill off. Lynch is the squishiest model in the box: he only has a built in trigger that does 2 damage to an attacker that cheats against him, and the expert cheater gives him the Squeal! trigger to push 4” out of melee. Hungering darkness is incorporeal to begin with, and Lynch’s rising sun upgrade lets him come back from the dead whenever a brilliant model dies (it is a limited upgrade, so you have to choose between that and making the Darkness deadlier to begin with, the other limited upgrade gives him casting expert and upgrades his terrifying to effect all models). Illuminated are aggravating to put down, with armor 1 and a decent chunk of hit points for a minion, followed by both regeneration and a 0 heal action making damage just slide off of them.

You’ll need to be careful where you position and when you activate each model in the box however. Since each model is expensive (and the henchman and totem are both the same model) other boxes will most likely out activate you, allowing your opponent to activate after you have little chance to react to their last action or two. In addition, all of your models lack a ranged action above 8”, which is generally the charge range of a lot of models, meaning if you’re interacting with the opponent they’re mostly likely about to smack you back.

Picking up new models can go in two different directions, depending on which faction you pick. Neverborn players might enjoy the doppleganger, as you’ll have a large selection of actions that would be devastating multiplied against a brilliant target. Meanwhile, thunder archers will give a ten thunders player some of the range you’re lacking. However, the first choice will be a box of Beckoners either way. Even ignoring the ever useful lure action, it’s another source of the brilliance condition and can really mess with your opponent’s interactions.