Malifaux Crews: Tara, The Herald of Obliteration

Tara’s our first completely new crew for Malifaux 2.0. What’s she got in store for us?

The Heralds of Obliteration are a bit of an odd crew. Two main themes tie each of the models together: burying models/punishing them while they’re out of play and giving out fast to everyone (enemies included) and then gaining bonuses against said models. While each of these pieces will provide a strong combo, they’ll need a strict turn order to maximize the effect.

A shared trigger amongst almost all the models is glimpse the void (tome). After damaging, a model will have to pass an average willpower duel or be buried, coming out base to base with the next model killed. While it can’t be used if any model is already buried, it can start your combined attack on a buried enemy, or help you maneuver a heavy hitter into your enemy’s ranks.

Tara herself has fairly average stats (walk’s a little low with a slightly above average charge) and a cache almost unheard of among outcasts. Heartless will help her survive against cast attacks, and through the hole’s a nifty trigger to get out of shooting attacks, so melee is her squishiest defense. Attack wise, her weapons are pretty bland (an average sword and gun), but the sword has both the glimpse trigger and the sympathetic echoes trigger. While it requires 2 crows, neither of which is suited, it deals damage to all enemies with the same name as the target in a bubble. It’s a great way to punish players who spam the same model. 2 (0) actions have huge effects on the game: one that creates a bubble to prevent interact actions and one that if she’s the first model to activate, she gets to activate again after every other model. Her big buff is the ability to discard your entire hand or 3 cards to give every model in 6” fast. It must give at least one enemy fast, but that, as well as the discarded cards, plays into the other models.

Her totem Karina is an enforcer instead of a peon. Fast enemy models have to make a willpower duel when activating around her or take damage. Her attacks are definitely subpar, a normal gun and the absolutely pathetic bash…which has an autokill trigger. Once you start burying models, she can give them fast or slow (if enemy) or set all buried models on fire. While extremely situational, if a living model dies in short range of her, you can discard the red joker to summon up one of Tara’s trademark zombie death marshals.

Tara’s pet Cthulhu, the Nothing Beast, packs in decent stats across the board. Well, except for his highly variable defense (a ridiculous 9, minus one for every card in your hand). In addition, incorporeal should keep his measly hit points protected. His one attack can be thrown out all over the board with +1 ap for it and a (0) void action to let him counter attack anyone who hits him. The attack has high cast versus willpower, high damage, and an auto glimpse trigger. His other cast gives enemy models with fast the choice of taking damage or – flips on willpower checks. The beast gets to switch between hammering on opponents and setting himself up as a tank, using defensive stance and the void action to discard multiple cards buffing his defense to giant levels and countering anyone who manages to hit him. The tank strategy is not for every occasion though, as leaving your hand desperately low will leave your entire crew vulnerable to flipping aces.

Void wretches are mini nothing beasts. Sadly, their stats are subpar (except for the variable defense). A low cast attack spell has the same glimpse trigger (remember with all these glimpses you can only bury one model at a time with them). As a (2) action, they can either attack or heal any buried model. In addition, they can pass out fast or slow. While all of these actions have very low attack scores, the wretch gains a double plus flip on any action against a fast model. If your other models set up some fast targets, they’ll have a much better chance to flip.

The crews upgrades will unlock a host of abilities for Tara. Obliteration symbiote will allow her to unbury a buried model and then activate it after her. If it’s friendly the action is a (1) action, while enemies can be controlled as a (2) action. If it’s an enemy it doesn’t count as the model’s activation, so they can immediately activate it again. Eternal Journey allows her to use (1) actions off of buried models (sans triggers), and gives a third (0) action to teleport back to your deployment zone, but has the limit of only being useable as part of the first activation of a turn. Dead of Winter allows her to bring her iconic crew with her even when playing resurrectionist in addition to her zombie death marshals in either faction. Additionally, she gains a willpower debuff bubble for enemies with fast.

Her most important upgrade is probably knowledge of eternity, which fleshes out her ability to do everything. The positive flip on initiative will help you take the first action, good for her abilities that can only be used then. She also gains the pull the void attack, which hands out fast or slow and has the glimpse trigger, allowing you to do all the setup required for the crews actions in a single attack.

Karina’s upgrade gives a bubble in which you can discard a card to make a model sacrificed instead of killed. While it has no direct bonus to the crew, it’s powerful denial, allowing you to cut off corpse or scrap counters or deny death based abilities such as witchling stalker explosions.

Finally, for either Tara of the Beast you can get Voiceless Words, which will grant the ability to try and bury anyone who kills the model or a wretch in LoS. Said model gets unburied at end of turn in the deployment zone, which can definitely take it out of the game for another turn.

It’s hard to talk about the models themselves, since this is the nightmare edition. If you’ve already got them you know what they’re like, if you don’t it’s definitely going to be tricky getting them. A couple of notes on them though:

Tara’s hole in the chest doesn’t actually exist. The hole itself is sculpted in there, but it’s filled with plastic. Nothing a little work with a pin vice can’t fix, but something to be aware of.

The Nothing Beast overflows the base, by quite a bit. The game I had comments like “well, it might be 3” away, it might be 3.1” but I have no earthly clue where the actual base starts under that thing.”

Everyone will walk up to you and say, “oh, those void wretch things look exactly like (blank)!” and then pick some creature from a sci fi or fantasy movie. Not a single one has picked the same reference yet. I just though they looked like three legged ticks (the tripedal thing is awesome though). In addition, the bizarrely tiny pieces are starting to creep back into the molding process, one of the wretches has an incredibly tiny foot individually cast.