Its Brilliant!!!

Among the variety of new crews that have been brought to us in the Storm of Shadows is Mr. Lynch and his crew of gangsters, gamblers, addicts and women of ill repute. Jakob and his crew are the first crew box to make it out of the release gate post Gencon, and those like me who were lucky enough to grab stuff at Gencon had the opportunity to get the full crew. These guys are dual faction Neverborn and Ten Thunders, but I decided to get them based up on my asian bases to match my 10T crews.

I have had a lot of fun playing around with Jakob and his crew, although I am finding I am using less of his "dedicated" crew and more of the wider 10T faction models to flesh out his play style. Jakob is a very flexible master, with him actually working less as master and his totem being the heavier hitter of the pair. Now, I love the idea of his Totem, the Hungering Darkness. I will readily admit I think its one of the worst models Wyrd has produced to date. It just does not fit my overall mental image of a "Creature of Old Malifaux on par with the Tyrants". The model, in my mind, looks more like a Tadpole than anything else. This model is up very high on my list of models to find a good alternative to use. That said, I love the simplicity of Jakob. I could have attached a ghostly skeleton bit with cards dropping to the ground that came with the model, but I prefer the simple man in a suit offering out his hand in greeting, or to accept payment.

Jakob and Huggy (Hungering Darkness) both work in a crew that contains a new characteristic of Brilliance. Brilliance is a type of drug that Huggy exudes into willing addicts then consumes from them afterwards. There are a number of servants that work for Jakob and Huggy, are full of this "Brilliance" and help deal it out. The first of these are models I love, which are the Beckoners. These would be the "Women of Ill Repute" mentioned earlier. I painted mine up and then showed them to my daughters and wife. The overwhelming response was that they looked like slutty versions of Disney's Tinkerbell (in green) and Jasmine (in purple). At the end of the day, who am I to argue with them, they would know best! Both of these girls regularly find their way into my Jakob crews, as I find them to be the best way to spread brilliance and help Huggy operate within the game.

That brings us to the Gangsters of the crew. In the story, Mr. Graves and Mr. Tannen are actually Neverborn who have "inhabited" the skin-suits of humans. These guys both work for Huggy and are operating on some level full of Brilliance as well. I really like the look of the models, although I am finding that I am not using them a whole lot in games. Tannen can create a bit of a negative play experience overall, and only fits into the play style of a couple crews of mine. As for Graves, he is a great model but in my Jakob crew, I have other models that perform his role better than he does.  I love the model for Tannen, as he certainly comes across as a creepy little slimy dude. He has a knife hidden behind his back which you cannot see in the picture. As for Graves, I could not resist modeling him up with a fence post in hand, as that's one of his weapons on the card.

At some point we come to the question of how does this Brilliance drug affect those Humans who are imbibing and partaking? What are the addicts like? Happily, Wyrd answers this question for us in two different stages. We start with the "Active" addicts, those humans who are currently under the influence. Those are the Illuminated in the game. These models are fun to put together, although the woman with the distended jaws was a bit of a frustration. From a painting standpoint, there are lots of chances for blending and off color choices to play off the human skin tones to the more alien/exotic brilliance infused mutations. The third model is a real "Monkey on your Back" illustration of addiction. In this case the Brilliance has manifested some type of Mini-Huggy that started consuming the Brilliance during use. The Illuminated are not Dual Faction models but instead are dedicated Neverborn models. They can be hired by Jakob regardless of which faction he is in, but not by other 10T masters. Despite this, I wanted to keep with the same asian base scheme across the models that could end up in 10T crews.

Then we come to the next set of models, which is an illustration of what happens when an Illuminated becomes burned out on Brilliance. The result end up being the very sad and incredibly creepy Depleted. Depleted are exactly that, Brilliance users that have hit rock bottom and are hopelessly burnt out on the drug. Their life essence has been consumed by Huggy and only a husk of a person is left. I am not finding that I use these much at all, as they really fill a spot in the crew as a cheap tarpit unit. I can see the use as they can fuel Huggy in the game, but I just do not have room in many of the lists I have build for Jakob. I have pulled them out in fun games and they are interesting. While the model rules alone make them insignificant, Huggy has a rule that removes their insignificance while he is within LOS. Add to the fact that they are brilliant and the fact that they can offer additional healing to Huggy and they are not a horrible hire. Overall, I can see them making their way into a couple lists, just not the primary lists I am playing. These end up being a more for fun model overall. On the modeling side, the Gimpy Foot guy was the biggest challenge for me among the Depleted. I ended up having to glue him on the base with the Foo Dog just to get him to stand up securely. The normal foot is very very small so does not have much room for a pin. The gimpy foot has no room at all for pinning. This required something else for him to lean against. That said, I am fairly happy with the way these three ended up coming out.

That should bring us to the end of the Jakob Lynch crew from the Storm of Shadows book. What we basically have here is the Neverborn section of the new book, which all synergises well with Jakob. I find that I am going a different way with his crew, as I mentioned above. Instead of taking him primarily as a Neverborn Master, I am melding him into the Ten Thunders, running with Beckoners and Huggy but then adding models like Yamaziko (from the pure 10T faction) and Kang (from the Dual faction 10T/Arcanist). I also like adding in Ototo from time to time, swapping with Kang.

Stay tuned next week, still to come are a look at my Arcanist/Ten Thunders and some Hobby tracking and random painted models.