Why Resurrectionists?

I have finally settled (I think?) on Resurrectionists as the faction I'm going to try and use to learn the game.

They definitely aren't the faction I have the most built and painted for! My current collection looks like:

Bayou
Kin (all built and painted)
Tricksy (mostly built and painted - need to do the Bayou Engineering and Mah Tucket title box)
Angler (all built, mostly painted - need to paint Uncle Bogg and Buckaroos)
Emissary (built and painted)
Bayou Starter (not painted)

Explorer's Society
EVS (mostly built and painted - need to do the Harpooners and Tidecaller)
Syndicate (all built, mostly painted - need to paint 2 drudges, Catalan Brawler and 2 Surveyors)
Wanderlust (built and painted, who doesn't love Lara Croft and a mechanical goat?)

Neverborn
Fae (all built, mostly painted - need to paint the Bultungin and Rougarou. Do not yet own the title box or the Waldgeist.)
Nekima2 (Got her with the Molly title box, painted)

Resurrectionists
Forgotten (All built and painted except for the Rogue Necromancy and Call to Madness boxes I don't yet own)
Urami (On the way, except for the Undertow box which does not currently seem to be available in the UK)
Seamus (I bought the Miss Feasance alt sculpt because it is awesome. Built and painted!)

As I said in previous posts, my main interest in Malifaux was originally just to build and paint some fun miniatures. I then let myself wander around based on which bits of the lore attracted my attention and which minis seemed fun. I cannot stress enough that I consider myself to have gotten my money's worth from these just because of the building and painting portion - getting a good game too is the icing on the cake for me, I would in no way endorse this ridiculous selection as some sort of entry gateway into the game!

There are (unfortunately?) very few crews in Malifaux which don't appeal to me on any level. Thankfully, as I'm entering with a couple of friends, I could immediately rule out Arcanists and Ten Thunders as those are the factions my friends were initially interested in. Our Kaeris player has also expressed an interest in Guild (specifically, Sonnia) because painting Kaeris has apparently awakened a latent pyromania in them - so that's good. And it means I can give them the Sonnia half of the Other Side starter, which is convenient.

So, why go for Resurrectionists, and why buy Urami next? (other than an apprecation for Vengeance).

Those are reasonable questions and listing it all out it does seem like my backlog is quite long already. If I were sensible, I probably wouldn't! But there are a few reasons.

Firstly, my one and only game to date was with Molly and I found her a lot of fun to use. The core of her team - Crooligans and Archie - are both great, fast and fighty both in different ways, and annoying to deal with. The Rabble Risers are good fun, too, very killy.

I feel like there's a lot of room to grow with Molly. As a support Master she can just generically make most other miniatures you might want to try shine, giving them the cards and (hopefully) the activation order you want to get them where you'd like them to be. That seems like a good way to test things out.

Kirai was next up on my painting table anyway because her lore is also extremely fun. Unsurprisingly, I particularly enjoy the story where she teams up with Molly and they go on a roaring rampage of revenge. Lot of fun there!

Mechanically, I'm also extremely curious to see how summoning feels in practice. Wargames are fundamentally about resource management, and if you can set it up so that Kirai is summoning a decent mini each turn, that is turning 1 AP and a card (and maybe a soulstone) into a chunk of health, up to 6 inches of movement for the new body, and potentially breaking even on AP if they don't kill it that turn - an additional +2 AP for each subsequent turn it survives. Then throw in that if they take more than 1 hit to kill it, they're also taking some Vengeance damage for most of Kirai's summons.

That feels like a lot of value on paper, even if they can't score most strategies and can't score schemes the turn they come into play.

Not that these considerations are unique to Resurrectionists - every faction has a summoner. Still, not every faction can summon a hoarde of angry ghosts, and right back to my first hobby days I've always enjoyed that theme, but rarely explored it much!

I think it is interesting how the different Masters all have different variations on the overall theme of being difficult to put down and keep down.

Molly - Her Crooligans can be all over the table, most of the rest of her minis have self-healing and high wound pools but low defense, so they try to soak up the hits and push through it.

Jack Daw - Has a unique way to only take 1 damage per attack, a lot of Incorporeal models (like Kirai) and minions that can use soulstones. (He is also probably the Master that interests me the least because his crew are not, visually, spectacular in my opinion and his mechanics are reputedly punishing to play against so... not a great way to make my friends feel rewarded for their investment).

Kastore - Tons of healing and a wide range of effects that go off from healing and sometimes killing your own models. The second version is also monstrously murderous in his own right.

Kirai - Punishes you for hitting her, also has some inbuilt healing, some ability to put Concealing on her miniatures, and can just summon back what you have killed.

McMourning - Heals his own team the more poisoned they are, and can build flesh constructs out of corpses, very cool.

Von Schtook - Tons of armour and good wound pools. Probably the Master that plays 'tankiest' closest to what that word traditionally inspires.

Reva - Does interesting things with Burning, handing out shielded and healing based on it. Her Shieldbearers are also extremely hard to murder.

Seamus - His keyword gives out Distracted and messes with positioning in a variety of ways which combine to help mitigate most model's ability to land a clean shot, and when they do they often have Hard to Wound to help mitigate it. The man himself is also extremely difficult to pin down if the board supports his personal movement tricks.

Yan Lo - Even if you do kill his most notable minis, they pass off an ability to someone else in the team and then, later, he can bring them back if he wants to.

Though some of these keywords appeal to me more than others,all of them have something going for them on some level to me, and these variations on the theme of sticking around will hopefully prove interesting and forgiving enough to give me time to figure out how the game works more generally!

HONK

- A Goose