Starting Malifaux: No Shelter Here Crew Box

Abandon hope all who attempt to face off against the mighty Pandora…

Model Count: 7 (Pandora, Baby Kade, Candy, Poltergeist, 3 Sorrows)

Points Playable in Box: 48 (All 7 models, max soulstones, max upgrades)

Strengths: Control, Model Synergy, Slow/Paralyzed

Weaknesses: Opponent’s With High Willpower

Where crews like Lady Justice and the Viktorias are all about attacking your opponent physically, Pandora’s box focuses on going after an opponent mentally. All those high defense scores will mean nothing if they have a pathetic willpower, allowing you to crush your feeble minded foes with ease.

The first thing you’ll notice about Pandora is her stats are pretty low. The wounds are nice, but subpar for a master, and the willpower is above average, but walk/charge and defense are both very sad. Luckily for her, two abilities will help negate that: Expose Fears will let her use willpower instead of defense in opposed duels, and any time she wins an opposed willpower duel against an enemy she pushes a decent distance. Be careful! With her nice willpower score, it might seem like she’s hard to hit, but there are ways around that. Blasts bounced onto her from nearby models won’t care, and some esoteric abilities will just chew her up (Leviticus’ abominations have an aura that causes a simple defense duel for damage. Since it’s not opposed, get a few of those near her and her abysmal defense will cause her to flop over dead). She’s also got two aura fields: one that lets her take a point of damage to prevent a damage to a friendly woe (just be careful about her low health and the need to get her close to the action to use the auras), and the big one: Misery. Any time an enemy fails a willpower duel within 6” of her, they take a point of damage. Given that almost everything the crew does is willpower based, your opponent’s will most likely fall to many tiny cuts. For her offenses, she’s got 3 main options. Self Loathing/Self Harmlet her mimic the damage profile off of the target’s melee or ranged attack, allowing you to sucker punch your opponent’s heaviest hitters. Unfortunately, this does mean she’s pretty weak at attacking weak models, and can’t attack a model directly if they have no attacks themselves. Inflict shoots out a short range pulse that causes enemies to take a high willpower duel or take a point of damage…and is in range for her aura to plink them for a second point immediately. Her (0) action Incite (which can be triggered for a second use) allows you to mark a model and determine when in the round they activate, which can be a huge control element.

For her upgrades, she’s got 4 options unique to her. Fugue State gives her the ability to make interact actions very hard for the opponent. An aura causes willpower duels to the enemies who try and interact, with damage as the punishment for failure, and a new attack action allows her to pass out insignificant. Cry for Me gives an attack action that can pass out negative flips on willpower duels, making everything even harder to resist (with a trigger to spread it around to nearby models). The other two are limited, so you have to pick one or the other for her: The Box Opens makes her terrifying and lets her shoot out horror duels as a low damage attack (resisted by defense in case you run across any high willpower enemies!) or strip immunities to horror duels/paralyzed. Voices on the other hand increases her natural abilities, stopping Miserydamage from being prevented and adding a trigger to the Self Loathing/Harm attacks to reduce damage to 0 in exchange for paralyzed.

Pandora’s henchman Candy has largely average henchman level stats across the board, with Manipulativeto prevent her from being attacked before she gets a chance to play with the opponent, and casting expert for some extra AP (all of her actions are casts, so it works with everything she wants to do). Her huge synergy with Pandora is that Sweets and Sours let her pass out paralyzed or damage to enemies that activate near her in a certain order, which Pandora’s Incite spell helps you set up. She has the same Self Loathing attack as Pandora for melee and a medium range, low damage attack that triggers the condition to let you pick when someone activates. Goody Basket is very short range, but tosses out a heal to friendly models, which is a great effect when combined with Pandora’s ability to take some of the damage instead of her woes. Her unique upgrade Best Behavior can make her almost impossible to deal with, but at a high AP cost. It gives her Charmwhich gives all enemy actions targeting her a double minus flip, which is incredibly hard to get past…but it costs her all 3 of her AP. It’s (0) action Run Away Home on the other hand warps her back to your deployment zone, which can be a huge lifesaver, but it can also take a lot of AP to get back into the action.

Baby Kade is the crew’s melee punch. Above average defense and charge plus Manipulative let him get to an opponent relatively fast/unscathed, which is important due to his very low health (only 6 for a 7 point enforcer). Pounce also lets him get off some cheap shots, as he gets a free attack against anyone who moves into range of him not part of a standard walk or charge action…such as those brought close to him by his own Lure spell. His Carving Knife is short range and deceptively low damage with high accuracy. However, it does extra damage if the enemy is engaged with another friendly, plus a trigger for extra damage and slow means he could be dishing out quite a lot of hurt. It’s also very important as one of the few defense resisted attacks in the crew. Where’s Teddy isn’t applicable to games played straight out of the box, but with the addition of a Teddy miniature it lets him push long distances up to Teddy, and then give the Teddy a bonus push as well. Pandora, Candy, and Kade all have the option of the Depressionupgrade, which gives the model a (0) to discard a card and add that suit to all duels it performs for a turn, while giving out a (1) action to other nearby woes which forces the afflicted model to activate after all other friendly models not hit by the attack that turn.

The Poltergeist totem is designed to float around annoying the opponent. It has average stats, but decent health for a totem, incorporeal, and regeneration should keep it aggravating enemies for quite some time. Its huge bonus is enemy models within a short-range aura get minus flips on willpower duels. Given the pain of negative flips and the large number of willpower duels you’ll be generating, this can spell out a lot of failed resists for your opponent. Poltergeist can also do a melee attack or shoot out a small marker that can add slow to enemy models. For versatility’s sake, it can also copy (at a drastically reduced accuracy) any of Pandora’s (1) spells.

Sorrows are your bread and butter woe. They possess low stats, incorporeal, and a very weak melee attack. However, they can push into contact with any model with 8”, which sets up their very short range aura for 1 damage to models that begin an activation in it. A (2) action lets them pass out paralyzed, which can make or break a turn. Most importantly though, they all possess Pandora’s damage models that fail willpower duels aura, allowing you to cover huge chunks of the field in it.

How best to expand the crew? Your main goal will be to continue to pick up pieces with nasty willpower based effects, with an eye towards ones that can also attack defense to shore up that weakness. Doppelganger’s a good choice, as it is both a woe and can copy attacks. If your willpower game is going strong, copy your own abilities, if your opponent’s willpower can’t be cracked, copy their strongest defense based attacks. Models with attacks that trigger horror duels are also a good choice, as paralyzing someone is nasty enough, tossing damage on top of that is just mean. The aforementioned Teddy is also a reasonable purchase, as he’s a melee beast with some willpower effects, and has the synergy with Baby Kade.