When a new release makes an old one sing

Hey folks, Azahul here. I've got some thoughts on a pretty big blog post sometime in the future (when I find the time), but for today I wanted to share a short little post about something that has been making me happy this past month or so.

I've been playing in a local league lately, and have used it as an excuse to repaint one of my more neglected Malifaux crews. Specifically, I decided to use the league to force myself to touch up my Tormented crew and finally get their Ashes models, Kari Zotiko and the Ferryman, assembled and painted. I'd been neglecting them mostly as I'm an Outcast player and they can't be fielded elsewhere in my faction, and in part because I don't really get Jack Daw on the table terribly frequently even though I do tend to enjoy him when I do. It hasn't been a great Gaining Grounds for him and that, combined with the models not being my best work, led to a long time passing between me buying the new models and actually getting them to the table.

This little league has made me a convert though. Both Kari Zotiko and the Ferryman are excellent new releases for the Tormented keyword, and go a long way towards making the crew less reliant on Terrifying as its primary defensive mechanic. If you aren't in the know, Jack Daw historically has relied heavily on the Terrifying rule both for himself and for his main collaborators in his Keyword (his Henchman, Montresor to some extent, but mostly a pair of Minions called the Hanged) as a means of keeping himself safe. It's a rule that has the potential to be oppressive but has a few obvious counters, most notably Ruthless but also shockwaves and high Willpower to a lesser extent, giving experienced players a lot of cues on how to approach list building if they want to take you apart.

Neither Kari nor the Ferryman are particularly reliant on Terrifying though, and with Kari packing healing and both models having means to create Concealment they help keep other models around them safe in new ways for the Tormented crew. Similarly, in a Keyword that mostly targets Movement with attacks, both Kari and the Ferryman tend to attack Defence. That's arguably a bit of a disadvantage since Tormented is so good at handing out Staggered, but the diversity does come in handy from time to time.

As I mentioned, these two models released during the Ashes of Malifaux expansion (at time of writing the most recent expansion for Malifaux 3rd Edition) and, in keeping with the design approach for that expansion, were designed as a pair of models with multiple Keywords and some direct synergies with one another. Most notably, Kari Zotiko has a bonus action called The Silver Whistle that can be used on a Tormented (or friendly Urami) model to have that model take a General Action. The Silver Whistle requires a Crow to go off, but gets the Crow built in on the Ferryman. A nice way of giving the action a lot of broader utility when you need it, but generally encouraging you to have the Captain and the Ship work together.

What sets these two models apart a little though, is that there's a third friend who goes unmentioned on their stat cards. A model from a much earlier release. One Auguste Hart.

Auguste is a weird little guy. He released way back in the Malifaux Burns expansion, in the title box for Jack Daw and Nellie Cochrane. At the time, his synergies with the Journalists (and especially Nellie's title, Voice of Disorder) were obvious, but he was largely dismissed from consideration in Tormented. The core reason for this was his rule Ignore the Voices (and also his melee attack, Crazed Swipe), which allow him to treat the Distracted condition as a boon making him both tougher and more dangerous in melee. He has a few, minor ways of building a modest amount of Distracted on himself, and the Journalists add a variety of others. Nellie Cochrane, Voice of Disorder also has a few actions that rely on the target having Distracted on them, creating a clear series of strong synergies between the two models.

In Tormented, however, Distracted is largely non-existent. The only real way to support Auguste was to have Drowned use their Projectile Vomit action on him, which was both inefficient in terms of actions (one Distracted for one action, and that from a slow model that wanted to spend the early turns getting as far up the table as possible) and also a bit self-defeating since it also damaged *and* poisoned the target, neatly off-setting the benefit of the Distracted in the first place. More reasonably, at least in Outcasts, we had models like the Catalan Rifleman and later First Light who could hand out Distracted ok, but it was still a large investment to get Auguste up and running.

So for many years, Auguste sat at the bottom of the Tormented roster, largely unrealised. The release of Ashes of Malifaux, however, has breathed new life into him and resulted in this expansion feeling more like it added three models to the Tormented crew than two.

The big synergy, really, is the Ferryman's Lost in the Fog action. It adds 2 Distracted to Auguste (and can also give him Concealment). It's pretty good. Doing this twice, to get Auguste to 4 Distracted before activating on Turn 1, aught to feel a bit inefficient too, but Kari Zotiko's Silver Whistle means that the Ferryman can take a Walk action later in the turn anyway. You miss out on concentrating, but the Flay trigger on the Ferryman lowers the need for Focus on that model too.

With Auguste going into the game with such a large amount of ablative armour, he feels like he can actually function well above his comparatively modest price. His Disturbing Whispers aura makes the Ferryman's Stat 5 Lost in the Fog and Mark of Vengeance actions more reliable too, so the synergies aren't even one-sided. It's 22 stones for the full package of Kari Zotiko, the Ferryman, and Auguste Hart, but the group aren't particularly reliant on one another once the game gets going and I've found them to flexible, pretty durable, and at times unexpectedly dangerous for their cost.

And hey, narratively it's pretty funny to begin every game with the mad journalist wandering off into the fog listening to voices, before running forward to excitedly share his findings with the enemy.

To me, this is an excellent piece of model design. It takes a lot of work to create a new model design that elevates something older in the process, particularly in a way that doesn't also create some problematic interaction with a different older model that was already working just fine. I'm really happy Wyrd found a way to get Auguste back into consideration for the Tormented players out there, and I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate it.

Talk more soon! (Auguste would be proud.)