Half-Blood, half Asylum: A Doctor Silas breakdown

 Hey all, I've been spending the time since I got home from the Houston GT conducting some reckless research on one of the newest, strangest additions to Malifaux. Doctor Silas is a Henchman for the Outcast faction (hey, that's my faction), but he breaks a fairly core rule of the game in that he, and his test subjects Trial and Error, do not share a Keyword with any other Outcast model and nor do they have the Versatile tag. That's pretty weird as Malifaux goes, it makes them the only models in the entire game that cannot be hired by any Master in their faction without paying the +1 Soulstone tax for hiring an OOK model. Honestly, that is a design decision that rather irks me, it feels like I am being directly discouraged from hiring either of these cool new models into my Outcast crews, but I can at least appreciate the intent behind that choice. More than perhaps any other Henchman in the game (including, perhaps, the Crossroads Seven), Doctor Silas is designed to lead crews in place of a Master. In some regards he feels like a stealth addition to the game, sneaking an extra Master into the Outcast faction without disrupting the current balance of 9 Masters per faction.

The face of a sneaky lil' stealth Master. So cunning.

Now, that sounds a little unfair to all the other factions with just the normal amount of Masters, so let me start by assuring everyone that Doctor Silas isn't really very good so you aren't missing out on much. I've been limiting myself to just playing him for a couple of months now, and have a good number of games under my belt, and while I have certainly snuck in a fair number of wins there really isn't much to recommend the good doctor over any other Outcast Keyword. But he is fun, flavourful, and gives an excuse for an Outcast player like myself who owns the entire faction to grab a few toys from other factions to goof around with. Let that set the tone for the rest of this blog, this is mostly a character you play in order to have fun, not to try and optimise wins with, though that isn't to say there are no good tricks you can pull with him. I'll do a brief run-through of the Keyword with that in mind and, as is my wont, talk a bit about the narrative mechanics you get to play with here.

Doctor Silas

Now, the biggest thing on Doctor Silas's card can be seen in the screenshot I posted above, which are his Keywords. The Asylum Keyword allows you to hire a handful of Versatile models from the Guild faction (and Nurses from the Resurrectionists), while the Half-Blood crew grants you a similar number of models from the Neverborn faction.

What else does Silas do? Well, not a lot honestly, if we are considering him as a Master. He has an insane amount of health for his cost at 12, which is Master tier and ties into that pseudo-Master vibe. He has Black Blood, which comes up a bit. But he is mostly designed as a support model and there isn't actually that much else on his card that makes me feel like his actions are on the level of a Master. I've had games where he just ran down a flank and schemed because being a Leader granted him an extra action each turn and basically none of his abilities came up after Turn 1 as a result, and it didn't feel like it hurt the crew all that much. 

In terms of actions, he has Toss (with a trigger to give focus and a built-in trigger for an extra use of his bonus action, both excellent) so he gets your beaters past the centreline basically immediately, he can hand out Slow and sometimes Staggered with Sedate Them if you need some board control, he has an aggressively average 2/4/5 melee attack, and he has a cool little Bonus Action called Reckless Research that mostly draws you a card each turn while pinging your models for damage. It combines well with Black Blood.

His front of card abilities are decent, though they do lean into the idea that Silas is intended as a Master because they will basically never come up if you hire him into a crew. The one that will come up the most frequently is Ethics Violation, which lets him give an upgrade to another Asylum or Half-Blood model in his crew when he activates, or two upgrades if he discards a card. The upgrades themselves are... interesting. If anyone is familiar with Marcus, the core gameplay loop is similar because the upgrades can be discarded to add a suit and a positive flip to an attack. The Half-Blood specific upgrade also gives the model a Leap bonus action (though they need a good Mask for it to work) *and* grants the Black Blood rule to the Half-Blood. And the one you give to the Asylum model grants absolutely nothing materially relevant. It's a very skewed power budget, and I'm not sure why the Half-Blood one is quite so loaded while the abilities and actions on the Asylum upgrade are so niche, but here we are. A positive and a guaranteed suit is enough in practice.

The other abilities on his front of card are Lab Safety (which grants immunity to Black Blood to Asylum and Half-Blood models, but the latter are already immune anyway) and Outpatients. If Ethics Violation is the rule that comes up most frequently, Outpatients is the rule that is actually the most important to the way the rest of the crew is hired and plays. Outpatients allows you to discard a card whenever an Asylum model is killed within 12" of Silas to replace that model with a Bloodwretch on 3 health, keeping any upgrades. Since both Asylum and Half-Blood keywords are pretty squishy, but Bloodwretches have Hard to Kill basically guaranteeing that the replaced model will take several additional actions to kill, this rule is vital to the staying power of a Silas crew.

It is also important to recognise that, since Outpatients is a Replace effect and not a summon, it is invaluable for shutting down certain denial plays by your opponent that normally focus on quickly eliminating weak models. The Asylum Keyword is filled with models that die to one or two attacks, and some opponents will mistake that to mean that they can easily clear you off an objective. A Nurse might die to any old Severe 6, but she'll still be contesting that Raid the Vault marker after being hit by the Mature Nephilim's Focussed swing after she replaces into a Bloodwretch. Just watch out for Line of Sight, Outpatients is an aura so can be blocked by any Size 3 model.

Now, what of this weird crew that Silas wants to assemble?

The Asylum Volunteers

The standouts in the Asylum category are Doctor Grimwell and Nurses. I hire them in every single game.

A man who loves his work.

Doctor Grimwell is fast thanks to Nimble, and is probably the most threatening model in the crew. The ability to build in a suit is critical for him because it allows him to go for either double Critical Strike attacks or the famed, brutal Lobotomy trigger on his Skull Saw. Fuelled with Focus from Silas and Nurses, Grimwell can reach the lofty heights of 7-8 damage Severe strikes, while his Maim trigger and the built in nastiness of the Skull Saw can demolish an opponent's hand extremely quickly. I have found him to be easily the MVP of the crew, and I love that he can pivot between options depending on the situation. If you think you can get a kill, you can have him swing and try to land big damaging hits. If, however, he has found himself in a position where he is unlikely to seriously threaten his target (an armoured soulstone user for example), you can pivot instead to removing most of their control hand in order to remove your opponent's own agency that turn. And I haven't even mentioned Prepare for Surgery, which can sometimes be a brutal way of punishing an enemy model that thought it could dive your crew early in the game. Stat 7, and capable of dealing 4-5 damage if you have Silas and a couple of other support Asylum models nearby, will make the regret real.

I do not regret the massive box of Experimental models I needed to buy in order to own these, but does anyone want some Guild Autopsies?

Being able to hire Nurses is one of the great joys of playing Doctor Silas. Tools for the Job alone is one of the best rules in the game and I am increasingly convinced that it just should not be available on Minions at all. It's hard to not just hire two Nurses at the start of ever Silas game... so hard that I think I have only skipped doing so once. Plus their bonus action is a heal, condition removal, and has three great triggers (Smashed doesn't do a lot outside of self-healing). With Tools for the Job and/or an upgrade from Silas you can pick your trigger too. And just to add insult to injury, they have damn strong attacks as well really only limited by their Stat 5.

They're not too hard to deal with, especially if your opponent has Focus or Ruthless to bypass Manipulative, but sometimes you're able to spam Seduction on a target to strip its focus and load up on Distracted instead and stay alive a bit longer than you have any right to. Silas throwing out Slow, occasionally adding Staggered on top, and then the Nurses adding Distracted on top grants a surprisingly strong Control side to the Doctor Silas crew.

The other Asylum models are Orderlies and Nurse Heartsbane. I actually rather like Orderlies, the problem is that for 1 point more I get a Nurse. And when I have two Nurses, do I want to hire an Orderly on top? They feel really, really efficient as hired when they die and replace into a Bloodwretch, it's a silly number of actions that need to be spent removing such a cheap model. Hard to Wound on the Orderlies means it usually takes ~2 hits to kill one, and then Hard to Kill on the Bloodwretch means another 2 hits to kill the Wretch, making dislodging them from points really resource intensive. Unfortunately, Outpatients can only trigger twice (until one of the Bloodwretches dies) so I don't actually want to run a massive horde of cheap chaff. It is a fun concept though, and I did get good use out of my Orderlies in the games where they hit the table. I'm just not convinced they weren't better when substituted for something else.

As for Nurse Heartsbane, each time I've put her on the table I have found she died before I really got to do much with her. The Bloodwretch that she became did some work, but I have cheaper ways to get a model that will just die and become a Bloodwretch.

The Half-Blood Experiments

And what models should you hire from the Half-Blood side of the crew? Your options are Angel Eyes, a very good sniper, Tuco Ortega, a little shockwave bot, Marcus, a support model with foul-mouthed motivation for Focus and healing, and of course Bloodwretches.

The answer is Angel Eyes. Sometimes. Don't hire the others. Fundamentally, the problem with the Half-Bloods is that hired Half-Bloods won't benefit from Outpatients, and they die easily. Marcus offers focus and healing but the Nurses do that about as well while also making your hand better, and for cheaper. Tuco's best aspect is that he can really speed up your crew, but your models are already decently mobile and Silas makes them faster so that isn't that important. And hiring Bloodwretches would mean you run out of them to use for Outpatients, since they're only Minion (2). The fact that the Half-Blood upgrade is a bit better just isn't enough to make these models appealing.

Angel Eyes is good though. Give her a point of Focus with a Nurse and she'll reach out and touch something dead from across the table. She has Critical Strike on her gun, so receiving an upgrade will let her build in a bit of extra damage. I was expecting to hire her in every single crew when I started playing, but weirdly I've actually found myself leaving her at home more than half the time. I'd rather have models that are actually hoping to cross the centreline in a lot of pools, and while having Leap as a bonus action helps Angel Eyes get there it really isn't where she wants to be.

Df4 and no way to reduce damage means putting her up front is quite a risk.

Both?

Silas's box also includes Trial and Error. Are they any good? Well, insert some snarky comment about the design process clearly involving a bit of Trial and Error.

They're pretty mediocre overall. I've hired them a bit, mostly for flavour, and they've never truly shone but they haven't been appalling either. Boring Conversation is the best thing on their card, and it combines very well with First to Speak to cause a bit of a problem in the centrefield. Give them the Half-Blood upgrade for Black Blood as well and they will, at minimum, be annoying. In Their Heads is a truly weird defensive trigger that has maybe caused one attack to miss so far in all the times I've had them be attacked. It should come up approximately 50% of the time if the opponent attacks their Defence, and approximately never against Willpower since it needs both you and your opponent to be cheating in a Mask for it to do anything. But it also needs you to be matching the suit with a high card of your own and they are, like the Nurses, practically designed to die in a single focused Severe 6 swing. The trigger at least makes it risky.

Where they shine though is when paired with Pride. Boring Conversation and In Their Heads are both infuriating rules to deal with if you are also punishing the act of Cheating Fate. It's a 13 stone module and I don't think it fits into most crews you would build with Silas, but I've run it a few times and against an opponent you think will want to cheat fate a lot (particularly those that are going to try and hit you for Severe damage, I've found) it's pretty effective.

The Rest

There are a few interesting combinations available when hiring from among the rest of the Outcast models. There are three huge standouts I have noticed in particular, in Montressor, Barbaros, and Yannic. But before I get into any of them, I'll just note that you get the Hodgepodge Effigy for free when playing Silas and 2 soulstones for the Effigy of Fate upgrade to turn it into the Emissary on Turn 3 is usually a steal.

Now, for the big guns. Montressor is an interesting option. You want a model with good staying power in this crew, since neither Keyword really has it, and Montressor has that. He also provides Stagger synergies and there is a decent bit in the Asylum crew that appreciates Stagger or produces it. He's not bad, but I have found him too slow to really keep up. Give him a Wedge pool where he can get to and squat on the centreline from the early game though, and he's happy as a clam.

Barbaros is my preferred tank. He's hard to deal with, Caught in the Ring helps keep the attention on him, and as a Black Blood model he adores actions like Reckless Research or even the Bloodletting action provided by the Asylum upgrade as the 1 damage pings to him translate into damage for everyone around him. Plus, since he is immune to Black Blood himself, you don't need to worry about him taking damage for fighting in the same area as other Black Blood models in the crew. Armour and Black Blood together mean Tossing Barbaros into people is a lot of fun, and if you use One Flew East you can usually deal 2-4 damage to an enemy model (depending on if they pass the Toss check) just in the course of getting Barbaros into position.

And Yannic. Yannic is a weird one here. There are a lot of Discard effects in the Keyword, which Yannic's Ingenuity rule can help you with. What really makes her shine though is Democratic Elections. There are a lot of Black Blood models in this crew, and sometimes Democratic Elections will allow you to damage a couple of enemy models and a couple of friendly models and pour out the Black Blood damage. Honestly, the hardest part is finding enough models to heal to "pay" for all the models you want to damage. She needs a bit of help getting into position, but once the brawl has begun she can really shine.

Longitudinal Studies

My promise to myself was to play Doctor Silas until the end of 2024 as a way to unwind from a fairly busy year of travel and competitive play. He's certainly been a good giggle, but do I see any reason to keep coming back to him?

I think I will play him from time to time. I still intend to solo him at one local tournament in the future at the very least. And I think he's a nice, soft crew to play into newer players or just to bust out when I'm feeling like trying some nonsense. But frankly, there isn't that much to dig into and enjoy from a more competitive lens. All your damage dealing models want to be making focussed attacks with (ideally) built in Critical Strike triggers, and so even from a flavour perspective there isn't actually all that much going on in practice beyond "Nurse and Silas give Grimwell/Angel Eyes/Barbaros Focus, then those latter models spend Focus on big attacks". The narrative of the crew really only comes through in Outpatients and finding ways to ping your own models for Black Blood, but the latter has proven to be a smaller part of the gameplay loop of the crew than I initially assumed.

I do truly wish Silas was a Versatile model for the Outcast faction though. It's hard to believe it would be all that unbalanced with so many of his abilities Keyword locked, and I would like to feel a bit more encouraged to experiment with him across the faction. There was even a Waldo Weekly when he released that made the mistake of describing him as a versatile model, but alas he (and Trial and Error) remain awkward and difficult to hire. I do plan to sneak him in a bit regardless though in the occasional crew. He is so expensive it is hard to fully evaluate him, but I'm not unconvinced that he can be justified as a support model. A Toss that also grants Focus is a ton of support with no TN beyond demanding a Tome, and he can also draw 1-2 cards in a turn. That's frankly getting pretty close to enough, but there aren't many Keywords in Outcasts that both want that support and can justify 11 soulstones.

At least it's an argument I can have with myself. Not sure I can say the same for the Bad Omen.