Malifaux Beta 2: Von Schill’s Reinforcements

“If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.” (Howard Taylor)

Wave two of the beta has started, and with it the Freikorps are back to being fully fleshed out. Von Schill’s release in part one felt a little hindered thematically, lacking many of the iconic Freikorps models, as well as having some minor group issues (Hannah not really having many good in group targets for her ability copying and their heaviest hitters being absent for example). While easy enough to rectify with other in faction models, Freikorps purists should be ecstatic over the wealth of new toys currently in play testing.

Starting off the bat, we’ve got the trapper. He joins the ranks of true snipers in 2.0 fashion, with the ability to focus for 36” range. Terrain avoidant players beware! His accuracy’s a little low for a sniper, but has a built in + flip to hit, and he keeps his built in reposition trigger, making him a little harder to avoid than the other snipers. From the shadows continues to let him deploy almost anywhere for proper firing lanes, but it’s lost the ability to deploy last, so you can’t use it to prevent people from deploying away from him. Kind of a one trick pony, his only other ability is the classic jerky time! While probably not close enough to the action to use it, Hannah’s willing subject trigger will actually let her use the ability herself.

The librarian’s our other missing classic model. At first glance, she’s very strong with the ability to toss out heals, fire blasts over the field and strip suits off of other models. In practice I fear she might be a little overcosted as currently written (which is what the beta’s for after all). Her heal spell has a major limitation: it can’t be cast more than once per turn unless your leader’s a mercenary. Normally this wouldn’t be too bad for Von Schill, except for the fact that the removal of brawl rules removed the mercenary rule from all masters. So the spell’s only going to reach it’s full spam potential in henchman lead games. Should still be fantastic in conjunction with Von Schill’s hard to kill aura however, making the army hard to take down. Her gun on the other hand has received huge buffs from the last edition. No longer limited by whom it can target, it’s also now a spell, allowing her to furious cast it at enemies (worth noting that due to the heal’s restriction, this is her only ability that can be furious cast in most games). Finally, she has the ability to strip suits off of enemies within a 4” aura. While incredibly powerful, her low hit points, lack of a get out of melee ability, and no melee weapon make it a kind of last resort option (In fact, once in melee her only actions are a heal once a turn and an attempt to walk out of melee with only average defense. It’s kind of harsh for an 8-point model). I predict we’ll see either a small drop in points or some additional abilities added to the librarian before too long. Even the addition of the traditional Freikorps knife would be welcome.

Our new friend from book 4, the strongarm, certainly brings back some punch. First, it’s going to take some effort to take him down. Superior armor to the other Freikorps models as well as stubborn for those annoying wp attacks should keep him around for awhile. His 0 action (which again can be taken by Hannah) makes him adaptable, either upping his melee damage, making him a whopping SH 7, or giving anyone who hits him in melee damage back. Augmented jump should let him be where he wants to in order to use either of his weapons: a potent punch that can ignore damage reduction (sucker punch Lord Chompy Bits!) and get + flips, or the aetheric projector, which can hand out slow or eat up any counters dropped by the target.

Finally, the crew gains a new brother in arms by the admission of Lazarus. While he still hates the guild, he loves to play with the Freikorps. Between his armor 2, Von Schill’s hard to kill, an auto heal each of his actions, and the librarian’s/steam trunk’s heal, his 10 hit points should last a long time. He continues to be the blast machine, with auto fire shooting out 3 blast creating attacks and his melee attack having a trigger for blasts. Assimilate no longer permanently copies abilities, instead adding a free 1 action stolen off a construct instead. For kicks, Hannah can actually copy assimilate off of Lazarus to then copy his grenade launcher, giving her a potent ranged attack.

The Freikorps team actually comes out of the 2.0 revision with incredibly swelled ranks. You used to be able to run one of every Freikorps model in a standard sized game. Now, between the introduction of Hannah and the steam trunk, the induction of Lazarus, and upgrades you’ll be leaving options out of the list every game you play. It’s a good time to join up.