Molemen!

In my recent post, Twenty Arcanists, I talked about the twenty models I wanted to play Malifaux with to the end of the year. At the end of the article I asked players to send me their own lists. I've been thrilled with the responses and wanted to thank everyone who's sent me their thoughts. They've been great to read and have led to some interesting and valuable conversations. Keep them coming!

I've written this post as the first in what I hope will be a brief series looking at the models I've chosen for my list and why. I suppose the best place to start would be the masters I've chosen; Ramos, and Mei Feng, however true to form I'll be starting with what looks like the most random minion choice on the list; Molemen.

I'm surprised I've not seen more people raving about these little guys yet, they're rather amazing. I suspect some of this is down to very few people owning any, considering how poor they were in first edition. So for those of you who've never seen one before here are some I made earlier...

My recently painted Molemen

So what are they for? Well one of the first things I look at when I build a crew is where my VPs are going to come from. Almost regardless of the strategy and scheme pool you'll need some warm bodies to do your interacting and drop your scheme markers.



While higher cost models tend to be better at hitting than lower cost models all interacts are equal. So having some cheap runners to grab objectives and therefore Victory Points is usually a very good idea.

At four soulstones each these little guys fill this role in my crews perfectly.  The key to this being their (0) action which lets them snap into base contact with a scheme marker within 8". Movement tricks have always been good in Malifaux, and I suspect are are even more so now there are less specific AP doing the rounds.

Whac-a-mole

A pair of Molemen can move up the board fairly quickly. Mole one walks up 4" and drops a scheme marker, mole two pops up next to him for a zero and walks twice and it now over 12" from your deployment zone on turn one. So when turn two opens the second mole can place a scheme marker on the center line and first mole will be able to (0) up to join him.

Not only is this a good movement trick for pure speed, but it also involves dropping scheme markers as a matter of course. Having an excuse to drop markers means your opponent can't really be sure if you have an ulterior motive or not.

For a 4ss model they're also quite hard to kill. They're only Df4 but with good armor (+2) and strong defensive abilities it normally takes several hits to take one down. Plus their (0) let's them bamf out of melee so they've very hard to pin down, especially as other crew members can drop a scheme marker to give them an escape rout.  Once you hit scheme marker critical mass it's like watching your opponent playing Whac-a-mole, with their models darting between mole-hills trying to put down the moles that keep popping up.

Used in a central role they'll fold fast, but played well on a flank it'll require an opponent to invest significantly more than the 8ss they cost to handle them.

The other great thing about molemen is they're relatively low maintenance. Their ability to teleport doesn't require any flips, and I'm a big fan of models that just work and so don't divert resources away from the body of the fight.

If there is a downside to moles it's that they don't really output any damage to speak of. If they did however they'd be total filth. I'm running two at the moment, I'd consider three but their lack of Ramos and Mei Feng synergy precludes it. I expect to see threes showing up in Marcus crews more often.

So with that I'm off to make some mole-hill scheme markers, I'll leave you with some random on topic comedy;