You Can Pick Your Friend's Nose, But You Can't Pick Your Friend's Schemes

The Struggle

One of the toughest things in Malifaux is figuring out which crew to play when you see a scheme pool pop up on the App. There are times that a game can be won or lost at the point you pick your crew, though I’d argue that player skill can hold out over a bad match up, but that’s not what we are here to discuss today. This week’s article is about the strengths and weaknesses of keywords in different scheme pools. A lot of the talk is often about the strategy. In online groups and the forums I will often see, “What do we take into this strategy?” While generally the strategy is important, its half your points all together, there are other considerations that can sway keyword selection. The schemes, the opponent’s faction, the deployment, the board and probably the biggest consideration: your specific playstyle and familiarity with the keyword. 

Now, this isn’t an article that is going to solve all your choice problems. Malifaux is a game that is full of player agency and choices aren’t always the same, but I

will attempt to give you a primer as to how keywords fit into the types of scheme pools in Malifaux 3e. 

Defining Things Definitely

Firstly, we should clear up some of the basics of how schemes and strategies are organized in the game. There are Kill based schemes and strategies. In Gaining Grounds 1: these are Public Enemies, Let Them Bleed, Vendetta, and Assassinate. These specific missions require you to kill your opponent’s models in order to score points. They are generally approached in two different ways. The first is bringing hard to kill, tanky models that can withstand enemy assault, and the second is to go in hard and fast with an alpha strike. 

Related to, are Kill and X schemes and strategies these require you not only to kill enemy models (or at least gravely wound them) but also require something else, such as interacting with a marker or being in the right position. Recover Intelligence is one such strategy.

These can be accomplished by aggressiveness, again, but also by using control methods to pull models out of position. 

Stand Your Ground is another type of objective. These are usually like Turf War, or Corrupted Leylines, Claim Jump, Outflank. Generally they are accomplished by having a fast model or a tanky model getting to a spot to score a point. 

Interact objectives require you to use the interact action and/or drop a marker in specific places. Runic Binding, Sabotage, Search the Ruins are all schemes that require this sort of interaction. These are usually done by models that are efficient in movement or capable of dropping multiple markers in a turn. 

Who Does What?

So now that we have boxes to put each of the objectives in, what are the strengths that Bayou as a faction leans into and which keywords can do which parts better? 

Well for Kill objectives Bayou as a whole is pretty good at taking out models, however outside of one keyword, very little in the Bayou is considered tanky or hard to kill, at least in traditional terms. Sz 1 can not be understated as a defensive measure, especially against shooting crews. It is very easy for a lot of the faction to hide behind scatter terrain that other factions barely get any benefit from. So who are the killiest crews in the Bayou? Kin, Tricksy and Big Hat are my top picks if the pool lends towards needing your opponent dead but each has their own nuance to what else they can do. Kin are exceptionally tanky, getting better stats and shielded versus a lot of other crews. Bayou has a rep for being easy to kill, but Ophelia has never been like other gremlins. WARNING: DO NOT TAKE KIN INTO A BAYOU MIRROR.  Mah and her Tricksy are not only good at killing, but they have a lot of speed and flexibility in what they can do. The keyword has a lot of interesting models and decent speed.  Big Hat can shoot down your opponent and control a good chunk of the board and bring a swarm of activations. They tend to overwhelm the opponent with a bunch of shots and a lot of those are insignificant models, so they don’t give points back when your opponent kills them.  

So can the other keywords remove models? Without a doubt, never underestimate Mancha or Zipp for putting an opponent on the floor, or Zoraida and bokors obeying other models to do the work for them. However, the 3 I mentioned are my picks for the most efficient killers. 

Stand Your Ground for objectives like Turf War, Claim Jump, Take Prisoner you need the ability to get to where you are going and keep your opponent off that section.  My top 3 for these type of schemes and strats are Tri Chi, Infamous, Swampfiend. All 3 of them have some good board control style abilities coupled with good ability to remove trouble models when needed. Brewmaster and his crew do this through lures, slows and large engagement ranges. They will get to where they need to be and lock down models, forcing them to spend way too many actions to get away from them. Zipp and his crew bring speed, resilience and Pianos to the party. Zipp and Earl can block off whole sections of the board to slow the opponent, while they race to the area they need to be and can remove markers that other crews are relying on. Zoraida and Bokors can obey friendly or enemy models to put everything in its right place.  Honorable mentions go to Kin again, they aren’t fast but are resilient and Sooey. They are incredibly fast at getting to a point but have a harder time holding the point. 

Interact objectives have 3 good keywords in the faction: Infamous, Sooey, and Whizz Bang. Infamous are not only fast with some extra move tricks for dropping more markers but they are super good at eating enemy markers. Sooey just have to get to the place you need the marker, then get killed right there, easy to do with all the sell damaging abilities they have, plus they have a ton of friendly only obeys to force marker drops if your opponent doesn’t feel like taking the bait. Whizz Bang has 2 models that can launch markers at range, and a pigapult that can fling scheme runners across the board. Who needs to be fast when you have a pigapult? 

Runner ups here go to Big Hat who can have criers obey bayous to drop markers even though they are insignificant and just end up having a ton of models around the table to get what you need done, and the same can be said for Swampfiend. 

Counter Picks

This is another thing to consider when choosing your Bayou keyword and it goes a long way into deciding how you want to play your game. Several of our keywords are stronger in part because they are so good at denying certain scheme pools. Infamous, for instance, will insure that your opponent will never get a scheme marker to stick and if they try to bring Terrain Markers like Titania or Kaeris, they can’t rely on them to stick around. Whizz Bang also has no problem either tossing your markers to useless spots or turning them into stuffed piglets. Swampfiend can turn a big beefy Nekima crew against itself. This is a tougher decision to make though, as you won’t ever know for sure which master your opponent is going to pick before the round. It does give you some good ideas on where to start looking. I would recommend building your knowledge of the opponent's faction first before you start worrying to hard about which master they take and how to counter that specific keyword. Remember, you can always hire in a Lucky Emissary to stomp on markers if need be or Gluttony to punish those marker drops. Bayou is probably the strongest anti marker faction currently in the game. 

Putting it All Together

So now that we have outlined most of our good keywords for each type of objective, it should be cut and dry right? Well... not really, because you always have a strategy and 5 schemes in your pool. Though Kin  are really good at Public Enemies they don’t scheme well, so if 4 of the schemes in the pool require interacts, Ophelia might not be the best choice. When choosing a keyword I tend to look at the top keywords for me in the Strategy and then decide if they can handle the pool. Sometimes a versatile or out of keyword model can shore up the weakness. Lucky Emissary is a great Lodestone carrier for Leylines. Merris is a pretty amazing scheme runner for her points and Rami can take out problem models from across the board. 

Ultimately I encourage Bayou players to pick 2 or 3 diverse keywords, play them and figure out which works well for you. You don’t have to play them all as often as I have, sometimes that’s actually a worse tactic, as you can really laser focus your play skill with just 1 or 2 crews in that amount of time. Also, make sure to experiment. Bring a model out of keyword to see if it works. A bokor showing up in a Kin list with Sammy in tow can turn the card draw and resilience up to 11. 

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to comment and let me know where you have had success with the various keywords in the Bayou and how you approach different scheme pools.