# Tale of Three Gamers: Cult of December



## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

So the local gaming club has laid down a challenge in order to get more people interested in Malifaux.

Using "easy" starter sets we are to buy, paint, game and report our progress on our favourite forums. I have chosen to use Heresy due to the vast amount of painting experience and the range of other systems that people are using.

Firstly I decided that I loved the Guild Death MArshalls set but unfortunately they are currently out of stock at the supplier and will not be arriving until well into December which will leave me seriously behind schedule.

So I have switched from a beatstick (Lady Justice) to a longe range caster.

Enter the Cult of December boxset led by the Master Rasputina.










Each master can have one totem attached, for this I have ordered the Essance of Power, there is no subtlty with this totem (unlike many others) he is there to provide power for Rasputina's spells (and scream in agaony as his essance is used as fuel for casting)










Onto the Minions, the Ice Gamin. Hardy little fellows who can turn into statues and explode when they die! Also due to one of their natural characteristics Rasputina can cast certain spells through these delightful little imps, the starter box contains three, during later additions I may add more or remove some depending on the encounter size.










Last and by no means least is the Gamins bigger, meaner, colder brother. The Ice Golem, this bad boy trudges across the battlefield to smash stuff over the head with large icy fists. Also he/she/it has the same characteristic allowing Rasputina to cast certain spells through the model, as with the Gamin he also explodes when killed causing considerably more damage in the process. 










Now all I have to do is wait for my purchases to arrive which shall be either today(Friday) or Monday, once that has happened and I get them home I will be assembling the models and photographing them during the stages of assembly, undercoating, base coating, etc etc.

Crew List - 25 Soulstone 

Rasputina - Soulstone Cache 6 (4+2)

The Soulstone is much similar to the points system in 40k/WHFB also masters (and certain other models) can use Soulstones to CHEAT FATE (Malifaux uses a card deck system instead of Dice) a masters maximum cache is 8, so with nearly the maximum I can afford to be very very offensive with my casting attempts.

Essance of Power - 2 SS (Soulstones)

3 Ice Gamin - 12 SS (4 SS Each)

Ice Golem - 9 SS

9+12+2 = 23 the remaining Soulstones (2) go into Rasputina's Cache.


The Other gamers that I am aware of are as Follows;

Steve - The Neverborn: Liliths Brood Boxset

The Neverborn are Malifaux natural monstrous occupants, this crew uses blood counters (gained by killing models) to upgrade their units to make them more and more nasty. Think Dark Eldar pain tokens

Robin - The Ressurectionists: Body Thieves Boxset
Necromancers and Grave Robbers, Dr. McMourning uses Body Parts (another form of counter) to create new and nasty units to summon, he gains these whenever he wounds another model with one of his attacks/spells


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

RULES and Terms and Conditions

*Month 1. November.*
Purchase Starter Box and one other miniature to make a 25 Soulstone Crew (awaiting delivery, its going to be Monday now so I'll be going mad over the weekend.)

Assemble and Paint purchased minitures ensuring that the following stages are photographed and reported on (I have 9 days to complete what the other two have had the whole of November to complete so my basing will have to wait until December) 
1.) Unwrapping
2.) Finished Assembly
3.) Undercoat
4.) Base Coat
5.) Detail
5b) Base
6.) Finished Miniature.

Maximum spend £30.00 - total spent so far £23.40 including delivery


*Month 2. December*
Expand Crew to 35 Soul Stones in size
Play at least One Game and produce a battle report (which I am going to attempt to make narrative based.....we'll see how that goes)

Monthly Total Cost £30.00 plus remains of last month £6.60 giving me a total of £36.60

I plan to purchase two Silent Ones, I may have to drop one of the Ice Gamins to fit these two girls into the crew but they are amazing models and one of them will have to be converted










Cost £10.80 including delivery, leaving me with £55.80 for January


*Month 3. January*

This will be the interesting month as we have a choice of expanding the crew size to 60 SS (which is a very large crew for Malifaux) we can either continue to expand by adding the usual models (with the £30 a month cap + remainder from previous months) OR adding a second starter box.

I want at this stage to add some of the bigger items avaliable 

Snow Storm










And Also Rasputina's avatar, The Avatar of Famine










Also in January we will start to compete in a three way tournement style competition with the ending Victory points used to create the league (hopefully at this stage we should have a few more players within the club)

This must be reported in a series of Battle Reports.

*Month 4. February*
as yet to be decided


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## Midge913 (Oct 21, 2010)

Sounds interesting, but all of your pic links are broken mate. 

I don't think that I have seen a Malifaux log here on Heresy before, so this one will definitely be interesting to follow.


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## TheSpore (Oct 15, 2009)

Love this game just wish I had some folks around that were into it


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

@Midge913 I've removed the links, I'll re embed them when I get home and can view images on heresy without my works firewall preventing me viewing them.

Also I plan to use Heresy as my plog place to raise a little more awareness of the game itself and the fact that there are some fantastic painters (such as yourself) that I can gain some painting tips from :biggrin:

Am a little nervous that you'll be following having seen your work.

@TheSpore, I know what you mean, I have recently only just found the other two to get involved and even then I had to beg them to start and promise them that £80-100 would give them enough models for a sizeable game or lots of choice in small scale games, plus it gives us an excuse to use all of our scenery from 40k, WHFB, Necromunda ect.

Its also great for the fact that the gaming board is a simple 3'x3' space so needs very little room.


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## Midge913 (Oct 21, 2010)

Ratvan said:


> @Midge913 I've removed the links, I'll re embed them when I get home and can view images on heresy without my works firewall preventing me viewing them.
> 
> Also I plan to use Heresy as my plog place to raise a little more awareness of the game itself and the fact that there are some fantastic painters (such as yourself) that I can gain some painting tips from :biggrin:
> 
> Am a little nervous that you'll be following having seen your work.


I must puncture my head to fit through doorways now I will be more than happy to give critiques as it is my opinion that you only get better by practice and having more experienced painters point out things. At least thats what has helped me the most. 

To be quite honest I have been interested in starting up with the game, but I don't know anyone in my area that actually plays it so I have no bargaining chips with the boss (read wife) to start in on another game system. I may have to at least pick up the rule book at some point and read up on the ins and outs. Like I said, I am really interested to see your log progress.


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

Midge913 said:


> To be quite honest I have been interested in starting up with the game, but I don't know anyone in my area that actually plays it so I have no bargaining chips with the boss (read wife) to start in on another game system. I may have to at least pick up the rule book at some point and read up on the ins and outs. Like I said, I am really interested to see your log progress.


 
Seems to be a common problem, I had a similar issue so I trolled a few gaming forums for players within 40 miles of me (Mad I know) and found a grand total of 5 interested parties, 2 of which have joined me in this escapade.

I already have two crews, well my girlfriend has stolen one of them so this will be my 2nd, they kind of live at the club for our open days/community events to try and get more people interested

http://pullmyfinger.wikispaces.com/home - is a good overview of most of Malifaux.

Also if you are seriously looking at the rules (no fluff) buy the Malifaux Rule Handbook as the other three books are fluff and picture/art heavy (which is why I have bought all 3!)


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## Midge913 (Oct 21, 2010)

Thanks for the link mate, lots of good info there.


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

No worries mate, always happy to help out a fellow gamer.

My main concern at the moment is how to paint the Ice Gamin and Golem as these constructs are made out of the ice and tundra I want to paint them in a blue ice design (much like the space wolves frost blades) but am a little unsure of how I am going to achieve this.


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## Midge913 (Oct 21, 2010)

hmmmmm, I was looking at a pic of the Ice Gamin and If you are going to go for the studio scheme I would mix a bit of Hawk Turqois into some Ice Blue, probably about a 1:3 mixture. Use that as the base coat and then wash the base coat with a blue wash. Then work back up using your base coat, leaving things dark in the recesses. for highlights I would just start adding little bits of bleached bone or similar, to the orginal mixture, maybe just one or two layers adding the bleached bone for the blue skin highlights. 

From there I would add more bleached bone to get the belly, bottom of the feet, and palm color, makeing sure to leave a hing of blue/green in the mixture. 

If that makes any sense what so ever. 

For the Golem, that is a bit trickier. It looks like they have some browns and greys incorporated in the scheme, and without painting that one (most of what I do is trial and error) I am not really sure how I would go about it.


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

My minitures have finally arrived so you all can expect to see some photographs uploaded at some point tomorrow and wednesday. (Stages 1-4) 

For the bases I will attempt to use the tutorials for winter bases and snow bases from submitted sontent by other Heresy members.

I might even feel the flu coming on soon *cough cough*


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## Wolfbane (Oct 22, 2011)

I hear flu is ravaging the country at the moment. It would be a terrible shame, if it struck me when my 5 new razorbacks arrived. It would almost appear I was skiving off, when I truly am to ill to leave the house. :wink:


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

Unfortunately I had an accident on monday night and have royally f*cked my shoulder and dislocated a few vertabrae so the photographs and painting is going to have to be delayed until I can actually do more then try to glue stuff together using my good vaguely aim a can of spray.


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## Midge913 (Oct 21, 2010)

That sucks mate! Hopefully healing is quick.


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

Neck brace for 3 weeks and shoulder in sling for another 4  takes me till xmas until my hand is steady enough to hold a paint brush. I'm devastated was really looking forwards to painting again.

fucking Bmx


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## Midge913 (Oct 21, 2010)

Ratvan said:


> Neck brace for 3 weeks and shoulder in sling for another 4  takes me till xmas until my hand is steady enough to hold a paint brush. I'm devastated was really looking forwards to painting again.
> 
> fucking Bmx


Yikes! That will do it. Get better soon mate I am looking forward to seeing these models.


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

Well so far have undercoated and base coated the Lady Justice set with her totem Scales of Juctice. I will be adding pictures/links tonight so some small and painful progress.

The concentration to keep a steady hand was immense and I had to lie down for an hour after doing this small amount of work, sucks I won't be able to do much detailing for a while but will hopefully give me a chance to get a lot of layers down on the flat(er) surfaces to work towards a nice finish

I also began to paint my Bretonnians, having the Knights on Kebab sticks tickles me.

Also have a battle report that needs tidying up before I post


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

*20 Point Battle Report*

The Encounter: 20 Soulstone Scrap with Diagonal Deployment

The Factions: The Guild’s Death Marshals vs. The Resurrectionist’s Undertaker’s Lot

*Death Marshals: 18 Soul stones* 

Lady Justice

Scales of Justice 

The Judge 

Death Marshals x3

*Undertaker’s Lot 19 Soul stones* 

Nicodem 

Mortimer 

Samurai Punk Zombies x3


Strategies: Claim Jump: 
5"x5" Piece of terrain in the middle of the board. 

4VP if one team has a model completely within the terrain (we used a building) and no opposing players models within terrain

2VP If one player has MORE models within terrain piece at end of the game 

Schemes:

Marshals: Raid: 1VP If I have more non-totem(he didn't take a totem) miniatures in play at the end of the game

Undertaker’s Lot: Death After Death: 1VP If he has more non-totem miniatures in play at the end of the game.

Deployment

He won the flip to deploy, and let me deploy first. My deployment strategy was to spread out, and hope to flank around Nicodem and his crew, hoping that the critical strikes (if I remembered it l) would help me get past the thick skins of his crew (all of his models had the hard to wound 1 rule which means that I have an extra negative twist to my flips (meaning that I flip an extra card and take the lower result).

He wins the initiative flip, and moves one of his samurai zombies forward, I in turn activate a Death Marshal and double walk him forward (spending 1 action point to walk forward, and then using a second one to walk forward again). He activates Mortimer and walks him forward, and casts exhume, creating a corpse counter I activate another marshal and march him forward, hoping to get some in range for a few peacebringer shots into the zombies. This move back and forth continues until the end of turn one.

Very few cards were used, and I was looking at that corpse counter, knowing that Nicodem can turn them into zombies, and then control them (Normally mindless zombies are controlled by both players at the end of everyone’s activation).

So turn two begins, and I win initiative, but I had to burn a soulstone to add a flip to my initiative flip. I knew I had a few to burn, and I really wanted the first chance to set up this turn so I could prepare for what might be a giant slug out in the middle of the board (knowing that I could take out his zombies pretty quickly).

About halfway through turn 2 I realized I had not taken my camera with me so grabbed a note pad and began scribbling.

I moved 1 death marshal forward and cast Finish the Job: A spell that gives him a 4 inch aura that gives you +2 damage per Ram’s head in the casting flip (I had 1 from the Death Marshal casting the spell, and 1 from the 10 I used to cheat fate to cast the spell (I flipped a 4 (plus the 4 CA that the DM has) = 8, so I had to cheat fate to get the spell off, but it worked well because each model with the death marshal type gained +4 damage per hit till the end of the turn… Now here is where things got crazy…

My friend activates Mortimer, and uses exhume to create a second corpse counter, and attempted to get it again (but didn’t get it off, but it was okay because he forgot that he could only cast exhume once per turn). So he has a single action point left, and casts his (0) action Zombie Companion. This allowed 1 undead creature to immediately activate after him (this is a way around the you go, i go, you go game play). So he casts it on Nicodem (who is not normally undead, but can choose to make himself undead to receive the effects of talents, spells, etc..).

Nicodem then moves forward and casts on one of my death marshals, dealing 3 damage to him and 3 damage to Lady Justice. Then he casts arise, turning the corpse counters within 6” into Mindless Zombies (total of 2 counters). Then when he ends his activation he immediately takes control and activates all mindless zombies within 12 inches. So those two zombies come closer towards me, slowly of course.

I activate a death marshal and move him forward 4 inches and take a shot at the closest samurai zombie, but I was a mm or 2 out of range.

Then he activates that zombie and casts Self-Mutilate to deal 3 wounds to himself and inflict 3 wounds on his target.

Then I activate Lady Justice and walk her forward 5 inches and cast Last Rites, removing all corpse counters (mindless zombies are still considered corpse counters) from play. Then he activates a samurai zombie and walks him forward. I move the judge up and attack the samurai zombie, putting 3 wounds on him taking another model down to half wounds.
The rest of the turn ends without much happening


Turn 3 is where things got fun

I won initiative, as my opponent drew the black joker and basically failed automatically. So I choose to activate Lady Justice first. I want to take out his ability to create zombies, so I go for the throat. I have her cast (0) Sword Style Onslaught (so if I hit with a Greatsword Strike and have a mask in the duel total I get a free strike (we were curious if I got the option of an infinite loop should I manage to be lucky enough). I charge Lady Justice forward (she passed through severe terrain, and paid 3 inches of her charge to do so (double movement cost for moving through it, she moved 1.5 inches so we decided 3 inches was fair (still made it into melee)). She hit with her first attack, and dealt 4 points of damage to Nicodem, attacked again and missed, and then used her Melee Expert Action Point to attack again, this time I dealt six points of damage, this time with a mask card, so I attempted another strike and failed. (We realized next turn that Nicodem would have died after this onslaught, but I forgot that her Greatsword has Critical Strikes).

Side Rant: This is where we had our first major rules discussion. My friend wanted to activate Nicodem, target himself with Decay, to heal himself and hopefully catch Lady Justice in the Blast (Decay creates a 50mm blast radius if it does at least Moderate Damage. Rules state that you can’t cast ranged spells in melee, so Nicodem couldn’t do that. He then wanted to remove himself from Melee to cast the spell. Lady Justice has a melee range of 2 inches, so Nicodem would have to move far away to avoid her, and then she would get a chance to strike him as he left melee… (if she succeeded he wouldn’t be able to move). So after we determined that Nicodem also couldn’t target himself as ranged spells are ranged attacks, and ranged attacks are considered ranged strikes, and you can’t hit yourself with a strike… (we ended up going to Wyrd’s website for this discussion).

So instead, he activates Mortimer, moves towards the melee that is happening in the middle of the board. Then he manages to cast Empty Grave. This ability lets Mortimer slow a target, but he ended up choosing to cheat fate with a card that had a Crow symbol, allowing him to paralyze Lady Justice instead (I burnt a soulstone and still couldn’t beat his casting cost). So before he ended his activation, he used zombie companion on Nicodem again. Instead of moving away, he left him in Base to Base with Lady Justice, but could cast spells because Lady Justice did not have a melee range (due to being paralyzed) he stood there, cast decay on the self-mutilating zombie.

The strange thing about this game is that his zombie still has to resist the incoming decay (“no don’t buff me….oh wait I can cheat down the total to draw) but the owner of the zombie can cheat fate to make it more beneficial to himself. He managed to get a moderate hit, hitting Lady Justice, the Zombie, and Nicodem.

Lady Justice at the moment has 7 wounds on her. I move up a death marshal (remember I’m down 1 marshal at the moment), who takes a pot shot at the zombie, managing to 4 wounds, taking him from 6 wound to 2 wounds (again stupid six wound monster).

He activates a zombie and moves it forward, taking dealing 3 wounds to Lady Justice (she has only got 2 left and won’t be able to act until turn five).

Thus ends turn 3, where we haven’t managed to do anything. I killed 2 zombies, but without killing any of his starting models I haven’t managed to deny him his Death After Death scheme (though with 3 of his minions are still on the board, so I haven’t managed to get my Round Up! scheme either );

Turn 4 begins with us both drawing the same value cards for Initiative. The third card had him winning, but I burnt another soulstone to win.

I NEEDED to get Nicodem and as many models away as I could down this turn. The first thing I did was activate the Judge, and move him through the nearest Zombie’s melee range (making sure I stayed within an inch, to prevent a disengaging strike). I unloaded the Judge’s Blades and Bullets ability into Nicodem. I managed to strike the last 5 points of damage (I won combat, but had 2 negative twists of fate, meaning I flipped 3 cards and took the lowest results. I flipped 2 elevens (severe damage) and a seven (moderate damage). The judge’s moderate damage does 4 points of damage, and adding in the +1 damage from Critical Strikes, meant we had 1 dead Nicodem…

There WAS a tall gaunt man there (Edit: At this point the game moved thick and fast and we both got rather animated)

He advances a zombie forward and strikes at Lady Justice, I spend my last soulstone (I had burnt them elsewhere) to prevent damage, but it was still not enough to beat the combat duel, meaning Lady Justice dies .At this point, we decide to call it a draw because we needed dinner (we started setting up at 6:45, started playing closer to 8 and quit around 10:15 so we could grab dinner from somewhere and hit up the bar (the main reason why we were playing plus the rules argument took up a good 45 minutes).


Hope you like the first battle report.....I feel pictures would definitely help on the subject of which my camera is currently charging and the mini's are on their white card waiting.... and its ready

Lady J









Scales of Justice









The Judge









Death Marshall 1









Death Marshall 2









Death Marshall 3









Also My Resurrectionist Crew 

Nicodem









Nicodem and his Totems (he can have two)









Mindless Zombies









Mortimer









Punk Zombies









I also have Rasputina, 3 Ice Gamin, Ice Golem and Essence of Power to paint for the Arcanists, and for the Resurrectionists another 3 Mindless Zombies (there are only 3 Models so some conversion work is to be done when my shoulder and neck is better) and two canine remains

Let me know what you think


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## Midge913 (Oct 21, 2010)

Looking good so far mate, though some pics with a little more light would help see what you really have going on. I love the Death Marshall models and really can't wait to see the end result there. I also think that the color choice for their dusters is a good one. I will be interested to see the end result on the zombies as well, love the green tone to the skin so far.


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

yes unfortunately it was 18:30 with a shitty couple of halogen spotlights but just wanted to take some photos, I'm looking at making a light box so that I can get a little better quality photographs, I'm pleased with the Resurrectionist models as I have only used washes and Bestial Brown over a white undercoat (which has now run out half way through undercoating my Brets) in the palette.

Its fair to say I got a bit of a painting itch recently and with any luck this'll kick me into shape to actually play with a painted army for once


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## Moetle (May 23, 2010)

This is awesome, and i'm very glad you started it. I recently purchased 4 box sets just cause i liked the look of the mini's, and after cleaning them up i decided to go ahead and buy the rules and see if i liked the game. Like you i don't have alot of folks around here to play with (hour drive in any direction to get to get to a 40k game). But due to the look of the mini's my Gf and her daughter seem interested. 

Anyways i'm looking forward to more 

Moe


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

Cheers Moe, it is about time for a medical update. Stupidly I took my sling off early (3 weeks early) and have really buggered my shoulder. After Physiotherapy it was discovered that I have completely ruined the ball and socket join of my shoulder and ligaments connection the muscles. I now need an operation to place a metal plate on my shoulder blade and pin that to my upper arm to keep my arm on my body.

Obviously due to this I have had no painting recently but I am determined to finish the Crew before the end of February so hopefully should have a few more painting updates for you soon (operation is on Wednesday so means I cannot really eat or drink much )


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## Moetle (May 23, 2010)

Sounds to me like your turning into a mini yourself, being pinned in place and all 

I'd help you out with your painting but its a bit of a walk across the pond, ya know? i just finished my witchling stalkers last night you can check em here http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=101066

In all seriouslness though, take it easy shoulder injuries aren't anything to sneeze at. Hope everything turns out well for you. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread though 

Moe


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

I know I been Ignoring the injury because I wanted to play rugby again, now i've been told I can't play for at least 6 months and tasks such as picking up a needle could take a month after surgery I'm going to have to take it easy  so fine detail is out for a while so will be posting pictures of my base coated Grey Knights soon as well as learning how to paint tanks (Razorbacks) - a new experience for me!


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