A love letter to M2E Reva

So of late I have been playing some Reva and I wanted to touch on Ms Cortinas as we have a little bit of a history.

As I’ve mentioned many a time on here, Bayou was the thing that originally drew me to Malifaux, but Rezzers was where I spent most of my time. The vast majority of which was on Nicodem. 

If you never had the pleasure of playing into M2E Nicodem it was essentially pos flips on everything. You summoned Punk Zombies (now called rabble rousers) who had pos flips on attacks, Nicodem had an aura that gave you pos flips on attacks and df duels, Toshiro gave minions even more pos flips, then Nicodem gave you pos flips on dmg via an upgrade, you hired Bete noire who had pos flips on attacks. It was a whole thing and you flipped a bajillion cards every game and it was great (until you played something that attacked WP). Who cares if you have no card draw, you’re flipping all the cards. Also you card draw because Nico turned corpses into cards. Honestly I can’t believe they wrote him out the game. I blame Jamie.

But, much like Sonic, sometimes you gotta go fast and in the Ripples of Fate expansion every faction got a new Master and it was a hell of a time.  I immediately started playing Reva, not exclusively but she started making more regular appearances on my tables instead of Seamus or McMourning, those games where Nico wasn’t going to be my preferred pick. But why? Well I wanted to talk about that.

So this is my girl as was. Firstly charge 10 and unimpeded was just the most glorious change for me after so many games of a creeping zombie wall of death.  Charge worked slightly differently in 2nd edition as it cost 2ap but you got to move and attack like we do now. Whilst a solid QOL change for M3E this was what we had to work with in 2nd.  The attack was wondrous given I could target DF or Wp, had a whopping 3” engage and a super reliable dmg track of 3/4/5. What’s not to love? The amount of games I just parked Reva in the middle of the board and then just face rolled my way to victory in the middle tables of tournaments was a simple delight. Honestly? The rest of the stuff on the back of the card? I hardly ever used it. It was all about the ethereal reaping (as you might imagine).  The attack could still be arced through Corpse Candles like they can be now but there were two very specific upgrades that I would nearly always staple on to Reva.

Litany of the Fallen: That trigger is built in on her attack. Am I going to spend 2ss to make her attacks irreducible? Yes. Yes I am. Well, does my opponent have any damage reduction? Whilst this one wasn’t an auto include, it was pretty damn close to being so. Like 60% of the time. And the only reason it wasn’t higher was…

…because this one was probably already there. I am lying, it absolutely was 100% already there. I don’t think I ever didn’t take this as a 4” aura on a 50mm base is an awful lot of real estate and just turned Reva into a Master/Henchman assassination machine that I absolutely delighted in playing.  I can’t still hear the scream of opponent round 1 of 2017 UK Nationals when he realised that Carlos was about to die horribly because he wasn’t going to heal the burning 10 he’d spent all turn 1 stacking on himself and was instead going to lose that model.  Glorious.  Nicodem remained my number one guy however, Reva came out when I wanted to be faster or if the last round of a tournament had been particularly taxing and if I just wanted Horse Nun to go brrr for a bit.  I generally rounded out the crew with Shield Bearers, Crooligans/Necropunks depending on the pool, the Emissary, Toshiro and Bete Noire and had a lovely time doing it. I think I only ever lost one game with Reva, against regular Guild Ball opponent Jay (he of DTTB appearing fame) and that turned out to be my very last game of Malifaux for years and of M2E entirely.  

So now I find myself in M3E some 6-7 years later and staring down the barrel of my old friend again. 

There are of course some similarities. The arcing attacks, the 3/4/5 damage track, the speed and the unimpeded but the rest of the card seems so much more well rounded. She even has what might be considered some defensive tech in the form of self healing (well if you squint at it real hard) but for some reason not being able to slap that pair of upgrades on makes her less in my eyes somehow (boo hoo Beard you don’t get Horse Nun Levi impression anymore) but I am hit with a wave of nostalgia as I build the Revenant keyword, especially the Shield Bearers and Corpse Candles, so I am very much looking forward to trying out the old flame so to speak.  I can’t get Nicodem back (thanks again Jamie) but I can reconnect with this old friend.  Who knows, maybe I’ll actually play Vinny this edition?……