Tale of Malifaux Bloggers: Month 0 Part II

So ToMB officially kicks off tomorrow; for those of you who don’t know (where have you been?!) that is the Tale of Malifaux Bloggers (see my last blog post for details). The master I have chosen for ToMB is The Dreamer.

So who exactly is the Dreamer? The Dreamer is a boy who lives Earthside, but while he sleeps his playmate, Lord Chompy Bits , and he visits Malifaux in what the Dreamer believes to be his dreams. Little does he realise that the games of “Monsters” they play are real to the inhabitants of Malifaux. The Dreamer feels no guilt for the terror and death his actions cause, believing it all to be a dream. Lord Chompy Bits, on the other hand, is very much aware of what the pair are doing, hoping their ‘playtime’ will help him find what he needs to escape his prison between spaces where he as Nytmare has languished for centuries.

The Dreamer and Lord Chompy Bits are unique; while the Dreamer is a single master and Lord Chompy Bits his Henchman they can’t coexist in play at the same time (except in avatar form). At the Dreamer’s disposal are abilities which allow him to summon and control Nightmare models; Lord Chompy Bits, on the other hand, possesses raw combat skill and power. Between the pair they use the Dreamer’s Nightmare control to dominate much of the battlefield which allows Lord Chompy Bits to enter play close to targets he can easily eliminate through melee attacks.

So when I initially set out on my ToMB journey, I was going to purchase the Dreamer box set and a packet of Daydreams. However, the intention of ToMB is to build up a collection of information which would be useful to a new player. This presents a bit of a problem, in that the Dreamer box will be changing in composition when the plastic set is finally released, so if I was to start with the current Dreamer box it would not be representative once the plastics are out. With this in mind, I have decided to make an educated guess about what I believe the new set will contain based on what is considered a “standard” Dreamer crew and the content of other crew boxes.

So, considering what we have seen in the currently released crew boxes and art (with a few exceptions, e.g. Levi, Marcus), the standard crew box composition is:

·         Master

·         Totem

·         Henchman

·         3 x Standard Minions

The only other thing which I am going to take into account is the other masters who used to be two masters and is now a master and a henchman – Victoria of Ashes and Victoria of Blood. In this case, the box contained a second henchman.

So that’s Dreamer, 3 Daydreams, Lord Chompy Bits and I would guess Weaver Widow and 3 Stitched. Now the next thing to consider is where this will sit price wise. The boxes which sit closest to this model count/size wise are the Viks ($40), McCabe ($40), Raspy ($45) and Ramos ($50). In the interests of conservatism with regards to the ToMB process, I am going to put this crew box composition guess at $50, leaving me with $10.

I can see a significant number of holes in this crew already. For starters I have no Alps, which are a stable summon for the Dreamer. Secondly I have no Wicked Dolls or a Teddy to take advantage of the Weaver Widows personal upgrade. This is before I have even used the crew to see what I need. So I am going to save the $10 till month 2 to try to fix these holes.

Theoryfauxing, my future potential purchases are:

·         Coppelius

·         Alps

·         Teddy

·         Lelu

·         Lilutu

·         Wicked Dolls

·         Vasilisa

·         Insidious Madness

·         Illuminated

·         Depleted

For now, I have a base crew (no upgrades) consisting of:

Dreamer

Lord Chompy Bits – 0ss

Weaver Widow – 8ss

3 x Daydreams – 6ss

3 x Stitched – 18ss

Total – 32ss

So my plan for this month is:

Learn how to use Vassal

      Build the crew
Paint the crew
Write up at least one ToMB battle report

Right, well I think that is enough for now. Good luck everyone participating in ToMB! It all kicks off tomorrow.

Ciao!