Malifaux/Neverborn/Tactica

Neverborn Tactica

The Neverborn are probably the best faction in Malifaux in terms of having diverse and competitive crews. They also have just downright broken as fuck combos that will lose you the few real friends you have.

Lilith

Slaughter is the name of the day with Lilith, she is an aggressive melee master with movement tricks to ensure that she gets in range to carve up enemies with her greatsword. As a Nephilim she has a lot of synergies with Nephilim models, meaning that 9 out of 10 times she will be running mostly Nephilim crews which are focused around mobility and melee combat. Factory builds that focus on getting lots of Nephilim into their higher forms are pretty common in the meta presently as Wyrd decided to make it pretty damn easy with the Black Blood Shaman and Nekima, Lilith's bitchy sister. Lilith has a few interesting alternative builds, but overall Nephilim tend to be stronger picks excluding crews based on her avatar.

Lilith has several interesting exploits, first of all "Master of Malifaux" means she can attack through walls and defenders can't hit back, but also defenders can't move without her getting a disengaging strike, allowing you to pin them to a wall without any problems (excluding defensive triggers), you can also use all her abilities and spells through walls, such as using "Earthquake" to pull an enemy to the wall where she can freely cut them up with impunity.

"Transposition" can target any model excluding herself, meaning you can swap a Mature Nephilim in base contact with Lilith, with an enemy model in base contact with its allies, allowing Lilith to carve up the victim and deliver the Mature Nephilim into combat safely, this can be done through walls thanks to "Master of Malifaux", helping you mitigate the squishiness of Neverborn. Also Lilith's totem can cast "Transposition" on her to move her into position, but it will require line of sight.

Common Crew Builds

Nephilim Blood Factory

35 Soul Stones, Buffing and Factory, whole crew build

- Lilith (You can add in Avatar, but the lack of Waldgeists makes it less than ideal)

- Malifaux Cherub

- Black Blood Shaman

- Nekima, the Dark Sibling

- Terror Tot Nephilim x2 (You will need 2 Nephilim Young and 2 Mature Nephilim models on the side)

- Desperate Mercenary x2

This crew is all about turning those 2 Terror Tots into Mature Nephilim as soon as possible for a cheaper cost than buying them (its 41ss if you trade the Tots and Desperate Mercs for 2 Mature Nephilim, 43ss if you took the Avatar option), allowing you to have a more efficient crew than your opponent. Turn 1 have the Terror Tots kill the Desperate Mercenaries, use the blood counters you have to grow them both Nephilim Young, with the excess make one of them a Mature Nephilim. Next turn move up and try get the remaining Nephilim Young a kill so you can grow it. Don't use this against The Dreamer or other crews that can get to you in turn 1 as anyone with half a brain will try and kill the mercs and tots before you can get things going.

Nephilim Alpha Strike

35 Soul Stones, Companion Chain, whole crew build

- Lilith

- Malifaux Cherub

- Lilitu x2

- Lelu x2

Pretty simple here, starting with the Cherub you can Companion chain your whole crew to activate at once. You need to start the chain with the Cherub companioning with Lilith, or end the chain with it companioning with Lilith as it can't companion with anyone else. Lilitu and Lelu are very good pairs and can shrug off damage thanks to their bond healing, which makes them tougher than they appear to be. Between 2 "Lure" casters, Lilith and her totem, you can rapidly get the best position on your opponent or make their crew into a complete disarray.

Pandora

Willpower duels are pretty much all Pandora does

Common Crew builds

Epic Mind Rape

35 Soul Stones or higher, power-combo semi-build

- Pandora

- 2 Sorrows

- Doppelganger

- Anything else, preferably minions that can force willpower duels like in a normal Pandora crew.

This isn't a whole crew build, you will need some stuff to get it running at 35ss, you can run it at 25ss but most of your points are going to be sunk in this dickiest of dick moves. Have all 4 models stay in base contact so this works, the Sorrows link to Pandora, have the Doppelganger activate and mimic their Link to Pandora. Every turn after have the Doppelganger mimic Pandora's "Unhealthy Relationship" and "Emotional Trauma" abilities. Mimicking "Unhealthy Relationship" allows the two sorrows, linked to Pandora and in base contact with the Doppelganger to mimic the Doppelganger's Mimic ability and therefore copy Pandora's "Emotional Trauma" ability. Pandora can then activate and inflict willpower duels on targets, which if they lose, suffer 4 wounds from the 4 versions of "Emotional Trauma" in play, instead of sapping 1 wound at a time you will chunk models down very quickly. A 12 wound model has the highest amount of wounds in the game, its a beefy tough bastard, yet it can't survive failing 3 willpower duels in range of this combo, unless you want to lose you will be spamming more than 3 willpower duels a turn inside the range of this death quartet.

Zoraida

Bad old ugly swamp hag, with truly ridiculous control options and card management. Zoraida builds are characterised as being anything and everything, with "Obey" by the fuck load. "Obey" is her bread and butter spell, either make that enemy heavy hitter blow his friends away or have one of your own models rampage. Zoraida can do this 3 times a turn normally, only 2 times on turn 1 though as you need to summon the Voodoo Doll totem:

1. Activate the Voodoo Doll and cast "Obey" on a target in 10"

2. Activate Zoraida and have her use her Casting Expert AP to cast "Obey"

3. Use Zoraida's 2 AP to summon a new Voodoo Doll replacing the current one

4. Next activation use the newly summoned Voodoo Doll, it has only 1 AP due to being slowed, use it to cast "Obey"

5. PROFIT!!!

This combo is frankly ridiculous, write it down on a cheat sheet and have it with you when you play.

Common Crew Builds

The Legion of the Dolls

25 Soul Stones, Board Control and Disruption, whole crew build

- Zoraida

- Collodi

- 4 Marionettes

- 3 Wicked Dolls

You can build this one easily, just buy Zoraida alone, her Voodoo Doll and Collodi's starter box. That said getting a few extra Wicked Dolls helps out as you should be summoning more Wicked Dolls when not doing Zoraida's Triple Obey. This build is very good at map control, nearly everything here can cross the board in 2 turns. Zoraida gives you the ability to fuck with your opponent's actions, have a presence anywhere on the map, and add more Wicked Dolls which get stronger the more of them present. Meanwhile Collodi is also having a presence anywhere on the map and using his dolls to pick off isolated targets and offering up less appealing targets for the other player. This build is good because it fits into the 25ss zone which is usually starter boxes while being incredibly more powerful.

Zoraidatron

25 Soul Stones or higher, power-combo semi-build

- Zoraida

- Doppelganger

- Stitched Together

This low cost build is focused on having the Doppelganger mimic Zoraida's Willpower of 10 and the Stitched Together's "Gamble Your Life". The reason for doing so is that "Gamble Your Life" is a Willpower vs Willpower duel and Zoraida has the highest Willpower in the game. Additionally by cheating in weaker cards you can have her "Obey" the Doppelganger into using "Gamble Your Life" further. Finally if you need to protect the Doppelganger it can mimic "Does Not Die" just to flip your opponent off by activating and getting mimicking a healing effect.

I can't believe its not Guild

35 Soul Stones, High ranged damage, whole crew build

- Zoraida

- Tuco

- Gunsmith x2 (M&SU Assets Special Forces)

- Convict Gunslinger

This build leaves you with an 8ss cache, so you can squeeze something in that isn't a Doll as the Gunsmiths fill your Special Forces limit. This is a crew that will gun down motherfuckers like the wetdreams of Gangster rappers, its fucked on objectives but good on slaughtering stuff. Zoraida can up your shooting by Obeying your guys, Obeying targets out of cover and the like, just watch out for fast melee crews like Dreamer or anything Neverborn, also bad against Pandora because only Tuco has good Willpower. Is very good against crews like non-avatar Seamus, where you can shoot a lot of his Rotten Belles before he can get his crew setup to lure your minions in to his trap. Also good against Rasputina as you can take out the weaker Ice Mirror minions before she gets to blasting away. Do not try and play this against the Ortegas, its basically diet Ortegas, they do everything you can do better, at lower cost and they have their Companion activation chains.

The Dreamer

Fucking overpowered pre-nerf, still pretty bad now

Jakob Lynch

Creepy cardshark and/or drug dealer.

Key models

- Arcane Effigy: I swear Wyrd must write the Neverborn rules during a binge drinking session. This is an Arcanist model that is more beneficial to Neverborn and more effectively employed in Neverborn crews. Its main advantage is +1 AP for casting, +1 control card and an attack which is Cast -> Cast duel, not very scary but it means you're bypassing all Def triggers and targeting a stat that is rarely as high as Wp or Def. Being a Doll it means you are affected by Special Forces rules,but unlike every other faction you can take an Effigy without forfeiting your Totems. Everyone bar The Dreamer will get use of this minion.

- Doppelganger: Apart from being used in the EMR and Zoraidatron builds this model goes relatively underplayed for being one of the best utility pieces out there. Any ability on the table it can copy, any spell is now available to be cast (note that you really want the suit requirements for it). The Doppelganger is considered a 2 Trick Pony by noobfags because those two tricks are broken as shit, a neckbeard can tell right away that anything that lets you copy something is instant gold. Additionally get this, if you Mimic Jack Daw's "Oldest of Magics" ability (the one that makes killing him harder than inventing portable Cold Fusion reactors) not only is the Doppelganger incredibly difficult to kill for a turn, the recent errata for the ability says it "cannot be removed or negated by any means..." ensuring that once copied you get to keep this fucking broken defence for the game, it also means you now have 2 tricksy bastards on the table, the Doppelganger can also just copy "Heartstopper" and "Suppressed Memories" for more instant death on unkillable model bullshit. As a final note, the Doppelganger gives you a positive flip when determing initiative at the start of the turn, making it fucking solid gold for this advantage.

- Insidious Madness: This is one interesting minion. The sacrifice for auto-winning initiative is ok, if you really need to go first that round, its the other abilities we want though. This model has some great support abilities but the one everyone looks at is its ability to strip "Immune to Influence" from enemy models for a turn, this will be the reason it is ever picked as Neverborn have a lot of abilities that are blocked by this, so being able to remove it allows for a whole new range of combos. Pandora gets a little less mileage out of it as she has a weaker version built-in, but Zoraida and Lynch will definitely enjoy it. The Dreamer shouldn't really take this as he is pretty meh at running non-nightmares in his crew on a good stand-alone model let alone something like this. Lilith can benefit from it but as she is the master least dependant on willpower targeting effects its better just to skip over it.

- Lilitu & Lelu: