Saturday, June 23, 2018

5 Pregenerated Characters for your Through the Breach Campaign

One of the hardest parts of doing a demo game is putting together pregenerated characters. It's a time consuming, but necessary part of putting together a quick demonstration game. To help with that, here is a party of mercenaries that can be plopped into most games as necessary. Feel free to use them for demos, drop-in or replacement characters, or if your players just like and want to use them for whatever. I created them for Gencon several years ago as a mercenary crew from a failed contract town named Revival. They have good story ties to each other, but are free to be useable in a number of different game settings. If you do use them, just let me know how it goes.


Thomas Burnham

The Burnham family spent the last three generations rising quickly in the ranks of the Guild through savvy purchases and political gambits. By the time the second Breach opened and the call went out for workers to travel to Malifaux to start collecting the wealth of Soulstones waiting there, Thomas Burnham was in a prime position to become one of the first overseers to cross over.

He was assigned to Contract Town #8 - later renamed to "Revival" - and for a time, things were great. Money was flowing like water and the town's renown was growing by the day. To everyone watching, Thomas Burnham was set to catapult into the upper rung of society once his time at the mine was finished.

Unfortunately, the Soulstone vein running beneath the town dried up earlier than expected and Thomas was out of a job. He applied for a position at a new mine, but the Guild wasn't interested in paying him even a fraction of what he made at Revival, so Thomas bought the last rifle in the general store and convinced the town's sheriff, Logan Dimmer, to join him as sellswords for the highest bidder.

Logan complains endlessly about his joints and his back and how he's only working until he can earn enough money to retire, but Thomas has seen the glint in his eye; he knows a born adventurer when he sees one.

Unfortunately, their first job (cleaning Neverborn out of a portion of the Quarantine Zone called Beggartree) ended up costing more money than it earned, and hurt his reputation with the Guild. To try and avoid future embarrassment, he thought he would fill out their crew's ranks. He hired a few other mercenaries and purchased the contract of a convict, Mary Finnegan, who he suspects might possess an affinity for fire magic.


Logan Dimmer

Logan is the sort of man who, from birth, has seemingly always been drawn to scenes of violence. Born the son of a Texas Ranger, he learned to shoot a gun and swing a saber about the same time he was learning to tie his shoes. He's seen action around the world: from exploring the darkest parts of Africa to traveling to the far east.

Logan came through the Breach and settled in the Contract Town of Revival as old age started to creep into his sword arm and arthritis into the wrist of his gun hand. He can barely fire a pistol straight anymore, but he can still swing a sword just fine, though he pays for it the next morning.

What he couldn't have counted on after becoming Revival's sheriff was the town's failure. Just when he was giving thought to setting down his guns and taking up a life as a farmer, the mines dried up and the people left. Forced to take up the mercenary life in order to fund his impending retirement, Logan is looking for one last job to get enough money to buy his land, and then he's going to retire.

He's joined up with the town's former mine overseer, Thomas Burnham, in the hopes that the two of them can watch each others' backs. The "Beggartree Incident," as the papers described the Revival Company's efforts to clear out the Neverborn from the Quarantine Zone of the same name, was supposed to be his last job, but the financial troubles it brought on them has only delayed the process. He's told Burnham he's only interested in getting the money he needs to retire, but the younger man keeps trying to convince Logan that there's plenty of work to be had for the two of them.

It's just like the young fellows to always be yapping their mouths and never listening to their betters...

Herman Wipple

Herman was abandoned on the steps of a London orphanage at a young age; exactly what happened to them or who they were is unknown. At the age of twelve, he was adopted by the local mortician and undertaker, Arthur Wipple, who needed someone with a strong back to dig graves. It wasn't what you would refer to as a loving home, but it was better than sleeping in the gutter (even if the occasional out-of-town gravedigging job actually required sleeping in a gutter from time to time).

Herman grew up strong but alone, and when his adopted father died, he decided to try his luck in Malifaux, reasoning that such a deadly place would have great need for a gravedigger. He was only on the job for a few days when his shovel started talking to him, telling him to travel to the badlands to a new contract town. Herman barely noticed the mine closing or the town going to ruin, as the demand for his services stayed constant throughout. When the town mayor, Mr. Burnham, asked him to start working for him personally, he thought of it as moving up in the world, even if it just meant smashing in the occasional head from time to time before digging the graves.


Susie Quince

There are some who say that no Quince has ever done an honest thing in their life. When Fast Harry Quince was caught running a confidence scam in London, there were few who shed a tear over his arrest. His wife, Susie Quince, was one of those few.

Pregnant and with nowhere to turn, Susie scrounged as best she could before giving birth in an alley and giving her child over to an orphanage, where he could have a better life than what she could provide. She survived through desperate means, stealing food when she could and breaking into houses when she couldn't.

Eventually she ended up making her way to Malifaux, where she fell in with a bandit crew that had aspirations of joining the infamous Barrows Gang. Or rather, their leader had aspirations of being the  man to kill Parker Barrows and claim the bounty on his head, but that went south in a bloody way and Susie was the only one to escape.

She contemplated returning to Earth and was about to rob someone for a ticket out of town when she was approached by Thomas Burnham with the offer of a job. Susie didn't care about trying to make some coin by helping the Guild, but the young man next to him was the spitting image of her husband...with her eyes.

Feeling the long-dormant sting of maternal love welling within her heart, Susie reluctantly signed on with Burnham in order to watch over her offspring. She's still debating whether or not she should tell Johnathon that she's his mother, or whether it's better to keep that door closed forever.


Mary Finnegan

Born in Ireland, Mary came to Malifaux as a young woman with no aspirations beyond someday taking over the ownership of her father's pub. She was happy to ply her hand at bartending, cleaning, and preparing food, though she sometimes found small burn marks on things she touched.

Everything changed after she spent an evening entertaining some customers with her singing voice, which Mary (falsely) believed was quite lovely. The regular patrons suffered through her performances out of fondness for her and her father, but when a new patron made a joke about how she sounded like someone strangling a cat, Mary saw the awkward expressions of the patrons and realized they had been patronizing her for years.

The anger rose up within her, and with it came the flames that Malifaux had gifted to her upon her journey through the Breach. The tavern burned to the ground, killing seven people and severely burning just as many, including her father.

Nobody was quite sure exactly how the fires started, which is likely the only thing that kept her from the Witch Hunters' attention. People seemed confident enough that Mary was involved, however, and that earned her a quick trial at a Guild courthouse and a sentence of life laboring in the mines. She was shipped off to the small Contract Town of Revival, where she spent a few months laboring in the nearly dry Soulstone mine.

When the last vein finally dried up, Mary was surprised to learn that her contract had been purchased by the overseer, Thomas Burnham. Despite her attempts to keep her growing powers a secret, he seemed to have his suspicions about her...and worse yet, he planned to drag her into the deadly Quarantine Zone as some kind of mercenary. She managed to survive that first debacle, but any hopes of a quick release disappeared, as Burnham seems set on continuing in this line of work and throwing her into danger. If only she had her freedom...

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Overcoming the Dog Days

               The dog day doldrums of summer are very much upon me. That might be why posts have slowed down from Malifaux Musings. Or, it might be the fact that I’ve found a new job and will be relocating to Cedar Rapids, IA in a couple of months. Or it could be that the Malifaux I’m playing right now falls into the category of “things I can’t write about for various reasons, some of which rhyme with ‘Blen-Dee-Aay.’” Also, there’s the fact that Wyrd’s in Con season mode right now, but hasn’t started posting about whatever the new releases for Gencon will be, yet. I assume the big push will be The Other Side, which releases officially in July, but it would be weird if there was NOTHING coming for Gencon. There have certainly been a lot of pictures of new models coming on the Monday Previews every week, so I’m sure SOMETHING’s in the works, but I’ll be damned if I have any idea what it is. As such, it’s kinda tough to write about it (outside of “ooo, that looks neat.”)
                 I’ve got some ideas for posts on Through the Breach, one specifically where I give you some pre-made Fated characters you can use to for demos or a Wanted Poster Malifaux post about the Jack Daw-Lazarus-Guilty Spam list I’ve heard about, or Zip or Nellie crews. Additionally, I’ve been considering running a league over Vassal (though the pending move has made that less appealing at the moment. I’m about to have a lot on my plate.) If you have anything you’d like to hear about on the blog, feel free to mention it in the comments and I’ll pull out the good stuff.
                It did occur to me, however, that I may not be the only one feeling the doldrums. After all, we’re well into the Gaining Grounds 2018 season at this point, and we’re reaching the end of the Wave 5 season. The good stuff has more or less been found. Most of the models are at least on the release schedule, though not as many as one would hope, of course. And, much as I hate to write about it, I think that some of the top-level Malifaux competitive diversity is being stifled by some of the top-end masters which will hopefully be getting addressed with the July Errata. As the Flippin’ Wyrd team has espoused several times, the top-end competitive meta currently boils down to playing one of the top-end 2 masters, Sandeep or Nicodem, or playing an alpha-strike crew that can jump in and kill the opposing master on turn 1 or 2, which is the only reliable way to stop a Nico crew (you can play for early scoring schemes and win that way as well if Nico misses some of his, but the only SURE way to beat Nico is to take him down before he can get his snowball rolling downhill.) That doesn’t encourage list diversity and punishes players for experimenting, which isn’t great either. Ben Sime from Arcane Reservoir experienced a bit of this in a small tournament recently when he tried to bring out Marcus’ Venomancy upgrade and was rewarded with a first round pairing against Nico. Bad times, and not a great encouragement to keep trying new things rather than plop down the tried-and-true reliable stuff.

Now, I’ll say that this is probably an exaggeration (probably) but sometimes even the perception that the meta is stagnant can lead to it becoming reality. In any case, there are reasons why some folks may be experiencing their own version of the summer-time blues when it comes to Malifaux. So I thought I’d write about some ideas for how to get yourself around the ho-hums.

1)     Try a new crew/faction

This is probably what I’m going to be doing in the near future. If you’re in a rut with the crews you’ve been playing regularly, that probably means it’s time to try some new stuff. Malifaux does a pretty respectable job between factions of creating diversity and difference of feel. Neverborn move fast but are brittle. Guild hit hard. Ten Thunders have pushes and hand out focus. Obviously there are exceptions or models that don’t match up with the overall theme, and the last couple of waves have introduced a lot of models that have incidentally homogenized things more than they used to be (Kentauroi giving Rezzers speed, some of the new Fae stuff giving Neverborn some resilient models, etc.) But still, trying a new faction or even just a new crew within the faction you play can do a lot to reinvigorate your interest in the hobby. I’m personally getting tired of how fragile my Neverborn tend to be, as it makes every play and choice you make in the game potentially game-breaking, as you can accidentally walk into the deaths of your models by putting them in the wrong place or failing to anticipate your opponents’ moves. I’ve been looking at Perdita or Hoffman to try and switch things up, as a consequence.

2)     Try a new format

While the Standard Gaining Grounds tournaments have their place, tournaments using a different format can help to add some diversity and spice to your Malifaux experience. The success of the Iron Scorpius event at Capital City Meltdown speaks to how hungry many Malifaux tournament players are just to try something different. Grow leagues, fixed master, team tournaments. All of these can add some diversity to your game and get you thinking outside of the boxes we put ourselves in. Assuming I manage to get it off the ground, the Quick and the Dead format I’m going to try and use for my online Vassal League would be one example of this.

3)     Play for fun rather than victory points

Sometimes we just have to lighten up a little. I’m particularly guilty of this. You can lose track of the fact that we play these games for fun. While there are prizes/bragging rights on the line, ultimately we’re here to have fun. So, maybe it’s alright to bring out some suboptimal crews or play a meme list. It’s ok to occasionally pick less effective schemes to try and see if you can pull them off. How many times can your totem strike the killing blow on an enemy model in a tournament? Hoffman falls into this category for me. His W5 upgrade cards made him better, but he’s still in no danger of becoming a “top-tier” master, or even a crew that can compete with them. But, on the other hand, big stompy robots are fun, and they’re probably my favorite paint-job. Plus, I like the Breaking Bad style story Hoffman’s been undergoing over the course of the game. So, yeah, I might start giving him a go just to see what he can do.

4)     Take a break for a little while

If all else fails, there are worse things than stepping away from Malifaux for a while and letting the game sit for a bit. Much as I don’t admit it on this blog, there are other games out there. Step away for a while and try other things for a bit. Games Workshop has released some new skirmish-scale games that have been fairly popular. There’s always Infinity, or Blood Bowl. As I mentioned above, The Other Side is coming out next month, so you can keep that “Malifaux” feel while trying something different, an army scale game! You could turn over to the dark side and go play 40k, I suppose. Or you could give miniature games a rest all together and go do something else. Malifaux’s not going anywhere, and you can always come back to it when Wave 6 comes along, or if some future developments in Malifaux change your perception.

               In any case, I hope some of these ideas are useful to any of you who are struggling with your own Malifaux doldrums. As mentioned above, if there are any topics you’d like to see me write about in Malifaux Musings, feel free to pass them along.