#ToMB2 The Thunder (Ben Sime) Month 3

A Big Month

In the last blog I spoke about how I had a small month with just Yamaziko, so that I could afford a large month with an extra crew box.

Why another box?

Malifaux's crew boxes are designed to be a good gateway into the game, typically this means you are getting a "bulk discount" as opposed to buying smaller boxes.

With a lot of this year seeing me catch up on painting my other Ten Thunders I decided that it was definitely time to go Outcasts with Misaki and that the more mercenaries the better as let's be honest, I'm an Arcanist at heart.

Month 3 (£15+£18.87) £33.87 :

• Hired Guns - £28.89 from Element Games

Total Spending: £28.89 

Money remaining: £4.98

Even with a new crew box I had basically a fiver extra going into the final month so the future still held a few choices.

Let's keep to the present though.
Hired Guns (which is the Von Schill box) was actually my second choice, initially Hired Swords was where I wanted to go as all bar the Master and Henchman in the box would be useful.
More minions in the Ronin, a better totem and the good old hammer wielding Taelor.

Still that box has seemingly never been in stock when I wanted it, which is a pain so I swapped swords for guns.

Hired Guns

Well I guess while I go through what the box has added to my crew I can start showing the painting which I've completed.

Freikorpsmen 

I may have missed out on Ronin, but Freikorpsmann are a great 5ss minion.

Not as tough as a Railworker trading Hard to Kill for an extra wound, but a lot faster with Wk5 and Unimpeded.

In a fight these guys can be fairly lethal thank to their (0) Reference the Field Guide discarding a card to get the suit allows both their knife and pistol to be powered up for Critical Stike, the Hunting Knife in particular going up to 2/4/5 and possibly 3/5/6 is scary out of such a low cost model.

The other triggers are defensive, either holding ground with some extra Df or pushing away, overall, there is a lot of play in these little guys.

Freikorps Librarian

The Librarian is an interesting model which I have seen on the field plenty of times.
Her stat line is a little weak for a 7ss Enforcer but where I see her aiding the crew is by keeping Misaki alive whilst giving some ranged support.

Furious Casting does allow for the Librarian to go on the offence, three lots of damage which can potentially pick me up some more cards with Surge or blast the enemy to smithereens is very handy and if Misaki is in the thick of it and needs a lifeline then I can always do a couple of Healing Energies.
Not the most efficient needing sevens to cast and only healing 1/2/3, but this can still help, especially for anyone with Hard to Kill.

Freikorps Trapper

For a time this was public enemy number one when it came to "filth choices".

A focused Trapper is able to fire 28" and with the built in positive flip is virtually ignoring cover.

The bullet can be dodged with only a Sh of 5 but this model is fantastic at sniping out those key weaker models early and Critical Strike can allow for that tasty 6 damage which is useful against so many opponents.

Freikorps Specialist

What's not to love about a guy with a flame-thrower, or even cooler the German Flammenwerfer?

8ss is a cost, but the specialist does have a multitude of roles.

The front of it's card has Clear the Area on top of the typical Freikorps bits and a rule for a explosive death, what this does is, with no cards having to be flipped, allow the Specialists to remove all corpse and scrap markers with 4" of it and the end of it's activation.

This in itself can be a headache for many Arcanists, Resurrectionists and more if they have to use two activations for summoning shenanigans.

As well as the knife that all the soldiers seem to be equipped with the Flammenwerfer is the other Attack Action the Specialist has and it is a treat.

Sh6 Rg10 with lots of blasts is tasty, ignoring cover which thematically is obvious is also fairly powerful and then there is a whole host of triggers.

First off you can put Burning onto all the enemies damaged by the attack for each Ram and the weapon has one built in.

Secondly if the extra damage potential of Burning was not immediate enough for you a Tome will cause the damaged enemies to take TN12 Horror Duels allowing for multiple models to become Paralyzed

Finally, arguably the most interesting trigger is Wildfire.

Scheme marker need removing? Well with a crow all of them within 4" of the target are gone. This could be a game changer.

Lastly the Specialist also has a tasty Tactical action that can remove Slow and Paralayzed from your crew in a 10" pulse. It does deal a damage to them, but one less wound for an extra turn in the game potentially is quite easily worth it.

Unless they would die of course.

Good Deal

I didn't paint Von Schill and admittedly, because it is sought after I sold him with his totem.

I won't include that in the allowance but it is worth noting.

The Freikorpsmann box is around £12 which means the other three models work out at less than £6 each.

That's roughly about what they cost before when in metal so overall a decent deal.

Remember though, if you can get money for the Master and Totem (though typically I would keep them) that is lowering the cost even more, making the three single models around a couple of quid.

Bargain.

Painting and Basing

The theme for the crew was still meant to be infiltration, Misaki and her friends invading a town or the like and even her Hired Guns would be doing the same.

Recently I have been getting my tufts, including these fantastic flowers from War-painter on ebay

I decided that colour coding my flower beds was something that I would be sad enough to do, recently Graves has had his "buttercups" replaced with "lavender" and in the future McCabe and his friends will have a bunches of "roses" nearby.

My idea for the Freikorps would be that they were not even within the city, but creeping through the fields at night, the Trapper laying in the flower beds taking shots at his prey.

Overall the basing is simple but I really like it.

Colour scheme wise, it was faction colour coordination again.
I wanted to include grey to reflect real life Freikorps and other German military and all though arguably blue bits may've made sense the yellow of Outcasts was too obvious for me.

Also, I quite like the "studio" scheme and mine is just a brightened version. Plus hey, they're hiding in fields of yellow flowers.

The red lenses all got a little gloss too to help the models pop on the table.

Overall painting these guys was enjoyable but it was strange to "batch paint" with Malifaux.

Into the Final Month

Month 4 is the final month for this Tale of Malifaux Bloggers.

With around £20 to spend I will be looking through the plastic outcasts to see what I could get.

I'll leave you with a list of models I'm considering, and if you read this and have a suggestion, why not tell me on twitter or the forums.

• Bishop
• Hannah
• Strongarm
• Convict Gunslingers
• Hans
• Lazarus
• Malifaux Child

Killjoy and Johana have already been painted, those two will also feature some point in the future as a bonus extra.

Thanks for reading.

- Ben (@psientologist)