The GenCon rumour-mill has been running away with itself lately, fuelled by Wyrd giving us plenty of glimpses behind the curtain. Here’s a brief rundown of the sneak peaks that we’ve been treated to in the last few weeks. I’ll update this post as and when new previews appear - please let me know if I miss any!
Book 4 itself is going to be called Storm of Shadows, and will introduce a new sixth faction, the Ten Thunders. That much is certain. It’s been heavily hinted that the Ten Thunders minions will be spread across the existing five factions, with their Masters able to hire cross-faction any model with a Ten Thunders characteristic. Speculation is that the new Masters will each fit one of the current faction archtypes, meaning we’ll be able to build both themed and generic TT crews from the outset. If true, this seems like a great way to introduce a new faction and reinforce the existing factions in one stroke. Kudos Wyrd.
The cover art is impressively evocative, however I question where it’s meant to be? Does Eastern architecture in that style exist Breachside?
More artwork from the new book. These three lovely ladies look to be ninja-assassin types. It’s unknown with which other faction their allegiances may lie, but I’m anticipating a link to the expected upgraded Misaki. All female crew perhaps?
Un-named Ressurectionist minion - the picture is named “Trick or Treat”. Does he look to you like someone that might appear as part of a Halloween story pack?
Un-named Neverborn minion – the picture is named “My Hands Can Touch Anything But Themselves”. Maybe we’re looking at a minion with some sort of electricity/energy conducting powers?
Un-named Outcast minion – the picture is named “GremWow” which doesn’t give much away. He has a bag of tricks, a fu-manchu moustache and… 3 hands?
Ressurectionist/TT Wallpaper – You wanted Malifaux skeletons? Here they are, along with a look at a creepy old man who might just be the new Resser/TT Master. His main claim to fame though, is in having the biggest forehead in Malifaux.
Arcanist/TT Wallpaper – A couple of rather generic minion types (although very cool looking if the models can match the art) and a giant living-metal construct-thing that thwacks people with an iron girder? Mike approves.
On the left, the Alt Executioner. A pleasingly ferocious vision of one of Wyrds most iconic models. On the right, a hanging tree with two bodies. Speculated that this year’s Nightmare Edition alts will be the Hanged, possibly accompanying Jack Daw.
I'm not sure about this critter. He looks a little bit like some kind of Pokemon. Still, it could be that Sonnia Criid crews are about to get a lot more firey!
Continuing the firey theme, here's Ragnaros' younger sibling. There's a thread of elementalism running through these releases - looking at Misaki's current abilities, I'm inclined to suspect that it will be the theme of the Ten Thunders.
The guy on the left is new, some sort of Baron Samedi-esque zombie voodoo type? He looks more Master/Henchman than minion though, so who knows. Perhaps a unique named minion a la Jaakuna Ubume?
[EDIT 11th July 2012]
This one, called "Magic", appears to be a Neverborn preview. The characters on the left all have shining white eyes, suggesting possession of some sort. Does Malifaux already have enough scantily clad ladies? Of course not! The gigantic beasty on the right looks kinda like the image has been blown up, there isn't enough detail, and so I don't think we're seeing him to scale.
[EDIT 18th July 2012]
A few more pictures have appeared over the last week:
It took a lot of work for the community to track down all twelve of the puzzle pieces making up these two previews, and the results are certainly interesting! The
Breachside Broadcast tells how these guys are a couple of union miners who were involved in a train accident, and were subsequently put back together by Ramos. It appears that Ramos didn't have access to all the pieces, so filled in the gaps with some spare parts. I suspect these will be a new generic Arcanist minion - they need some more variety in the 4-5 SS range.
Caught on camera at Comicon, this is a computer visualisation of the Nightmare Edition Hanging Tree, coming to a GenCon near you (or not!) very soon. Apparently the corpses can be removed somehow and used as Hanged, but I think it will make an excellent piece of scenery in it's own right.
This one is called "Gangs", and it's been suggested that the influence here is the Scorsese film Gangs of New York. If these are yet another generic minion (Guild? Outcast?) then each one of the three has a unique and characterful look to them. It would be the first time we've ever seen concept art for all 3 variants of a minion though. Could they perhaps be named characters? Part of a new crew box?
This picture is called "Mist". Another beautiful pig miniature to add to the game can never be a bad thing. I love the armor made out of kitchen utensils. The luminous Gremlin in the foreground has what appears to be a gun with 20 barrels. Some sort of repeating pistol then? I'm not sure why, but he doesn't seem like he fits as a Malifaux-type character to me.
Breachside Broadcast has this model captioned as a new Ressurectionist minion, but she looks nothing of the sort. Perhaps she's intended to work with Kirai, but why does she look like she's still alive? Is she floating on a cloud of blue fire? Hmmm...
