I thought I'd get this blog back in shape and start hitting out malifaux posts. I've taken a back seat from 40k recently and I've sold a lot of my stuff. Malifaux has taken over as my main miniatures games.
This post is the start of many, basically these posts will be guides/intros for the crew box sets which are available. The only draw back is I can only discuss about the crews I have.
Guild's Judgement
The first crew in this series of articles is the Guild's Judgement. Now if you don't know what the Guild is just think of them as like the Imperium. The Guild's Judgement crew is lead by the fearsome melee expert, Lady Justice. Her job and that of her crew is to hunt down pesky Resurrectionists. Resurrectionists do what they say on the tin, bring things back from the dead, this is extremely frowned upon in the city of Malifaux.
Lady Justice
Lady Justice or Lady J for short is one of the baddest melee models in the game. Her fearsome greatsword has a nice range of 2" and at the minimum does 3 damage, now the greatsword has the ram trigger built in, which does +1 damage for each ram in the final duel total. So, Lady J is in fact doing minimum 4 damage, 5 if you get another ram in the attack draw!
Lady J has some other nice actions; she can remove all conditions within 8", though this spell needs a 17 to go off and casting value is 5.
Juggernaut is a sweet 0 action which allows Lady J to discard a card, very handy for a melee expert and for a model who has an average defence value.
The last action is also a zero action and this treats Lady as if in soft cover if models are shooting at Lady J within 12".
To mesh with Lady Justice's actions there's some nice abilities; she doesn't need LoS to charge, when she kills an enemy model all minion models in 8" gain + to melee and shooting actions. The best ability is if a melee attack misses Lady J, then she can hit them back with a - damage flip, though needs the mask suit to do this (already has the ram built in)
Lastly, enemy models killed by Lady J don't put down any markers; excellent if going against Lady Justice's preferred enemy crew; Resurrectionists!
There's two upgrades which stand out for Lady Justice; implacable and vendetta. The former gives Lady Justice bullet proof for shooting attacks and vendetta allows Lady Justice to get a free melee attack with the mask and ram suits.
Scales of Justice
Scales is Lady Justice's personal totem. Scales has some nice abilites such as giving +1 will power to all friendly models within 6" and has the accomplice rule.
The only cool action Scales has is you can draw an extra card if the opposing crew has more cards in hand. Of course this ability is situational.
The Judge
The Judge is the henchmen of the crew (second in command) and is basically a mini Lady Justice.
The Judge has hard to wound and hard to kill, throw on a lead line coat amd you've got a very tough cookie! Add anice defence of 5 and The Judge can be hard to take down.
The Judge has a fairly decent shooting and and melee stats, melee is slighty better and includes built in ram, which gives +1 damage for each ram in the final duel total. The best bit about The Judge is the bullets and blades trigger which is built into both actions. Basically this mask trigger allows you to make a melee attack after shooting or vice versa when in melee.
To help The Judge in melee there's the stand for judgement action. This is a zero action and pushes target model 5" towards The Judge. This power has a casting value of 5 and target 9, so should be fairly easily to get off.
The Judge also has a dislike for the undead. The bound by law action has a casting value of 5 and target of 13, the target suffers 2 damage, but if an undead model suffers 2/4/8! The model then must discard a card to take a walk or charge action.
The Judge costs 9 soulstones, which is pretty expensive, but this melee beat em up supports Lady Justice nicely, especially as both have the same walk value.
Death Marshal
The Death Marshal is the crews minion (think troop choice 40k players) and costs 6 soulstones. At first glance this is a bit high, but you get some nice abilites like hard to hard and unimpeded (ignores severe terrain)and you're getting a mini Judge with six wounds.
The shooting and melee attacks of the Death Marshal are reasonable with the ram trigger giving +1 damage to each ram in the final duel total. Shootingis slightly better as severe damage deals 5 damage insteadof 4 like in melee.
The cool thing I like about the Death Marshal is the pine box action. Basically you get the bury target enemy model - lock those bitches up in the green fiery coffin! The spell is pretty easy to get off as casting value is 5 and target is 10, the resistance against this is will power so anything with low will power or an unlucky draw will find themselves in the box. There's some cons to this pine box action, but I feel fair ones. The range is only 1" and at at the start of the Death Marshal's activation there's a will power dual to be done in order to keep the target model in the box. Of course only one model can go in the box.
Final Thoughts
Overall the Guild's Judgement is a greater starter crew (hence why I bought it) and is nicely balanced.
There's particular models which will suit the crew more than others such as an Exorcist and The Lone Marshal. Both these models are marshal types, so they can benefit from an nice upgrade Lady Justice has access too, which is call last stand - this allows marshal models to push up 6" if Lady Justice charges.