Time Warp Again Again - A 4th Edition Obliteration Breakdown

We are back! One of my earliest posts on this blog was a breakdown of how Tara played, and now I'm here to do it all again in a new edition. Obliteration in Malifaux, 3rd Edition was a notoriously difficult crew to play, one that approached the game in a sideways fashion relative to anything else in the game and had the sort of playstyle that newer players were advised to steer clear of until they had a firm grasp on the game more broadly. In 4th Edition, the Keyword has flipped this on its head and become a pretty straightforward, easy to learn crew that I would have no qualms in recommending to a newer player, but the developers at Wyrd have done a sterling job of maintaining the thematic elements of Obliteration that made it so compelling.

Theme

Tara and her followers are beholden to the Tyrant Obliteration, and have a bit of an unusual relationship to concepts like "space" and "time". This comes through with their mechanics in 4th Edition in a few ways. You can expect to see a lot of place effects as models slip through cracks in reality to appear in unexpected locations, a smattering of Fate Deck manipulation as your crew tries different possible timelines on for size until they find the one in which you win, and a number of incorporeal eldritch terrors from another reality that allow the crew to attack an opponent's willpower as much as their physical defences. Some of your units may be a bit ephemeral, flickering out of reality at the end of the turn rather than being a permanent mainstay on the table, but even their return to non-existence can provide you with key advantages in the game ahead.

Markers and Tokens

Before we get into how the crew works, I'd like to mention their unique marker and unique token. The Backtrack Token is the simpler of the two. A lot of models in the crew can hand out this token, usually via the action "Stutter Time" (which has the added benefit of giving you a small place if you get a Raise). After flipping cards in a duel, you can expend a Backtrack token to discard all the cards flipped and try again. You keep any modifiers you might have had, so this is perfect for those situations when you empower a key flip and still fail. It can be used on simple duels or opposed duels, making it flexible and always useful. The Obliteration crew broadly lacks card draw, but Backtrack tokens allow them to continue being consistent even as their hand runs dry. They just can't help with any Jokers.

The Echo Marker is a rather more unusual beast. There are only a handful of ways to make them the crew, and they usually appear as a by-product of actions where the Echo Marker isn't necessarily the point of the action itself. When one of your Obliteration models dies within 10" of an Echo Marker, you can summon a brand new version of that model at the Echo Marker by spending a Soulstone instead of infusing one and removing the marker. The new model has a Flicker token, meaning it will die at the end of the turn, and a summon token so it won't be able to take Interact actions, but as a "new" model it can activate this turn even if the model that died was activated. You can use them to keep your Flickering models alive into future turns by using them in the end phase, or as an emergency measure to keep critical actions available when the model bearing them dies. For this reason, it's often best used on models with good support actions or ways of making scheme markers that will contribute to your score (Vee and the Hodgepodge Emissary are the main examples) or just to get a couple of good attacks in (Talos and, in certain circumstances, Aionus are often the key picks). Tara herself doesn't die very often, in either title, but it's worth noting that if she does you can keep her in play a bit longer with this mechanic. Overall the Echo Marker is a bit niche, it's a high cost to pay to keep a model around that often can't directly help you get points, but it's a fun and thematic little option.

Masters and Totems

Tara's two titles, Voidcaller and Timeless, can be broadly understood as the "scheme-y one" and the "brawly one", but there is a little bit more nuance to it than that. 

Voidcaller is not really designed as a combatant, her Adrift In Time ability lets her activate twice each turn but will eat up most or all of your starting cache in return. It's absolutely worth it, but expect other Soulstone options in the crew to be underutilised. She can generate more Soulstones if she gets a Raise on her melee attack, and her melee attack is weak enough that opponents may be willing to let that go through, but she really shouldn't be in combat. Her primary actions are "Timeslip", a 6" place that also leaves an Echo Marker behind where she was standing, and "From The Void", which lets her summon the Obliteration Minions. Technically the Nothing Beast is also an option, but frankly I would almost always prefer a Void Hunter as a summon for reasons we'll get to later. The overall package is a model who will get five actions a turn, plus a couple of Stutter Time signature moves, granting a lot of mobility and allowing her to run up the score while her summoned models engage the enemy and disrupt their scoring plans.

Mostly, the nuance that makes Voidcaller a bit better in a fight than she looks can be found on her Totem, Karina. For one, Karina has a built in Mend trigger on her Stutter Time, letting her heal up models like the Nothing Beast, but more important for our purposes in a fight is her "Last Gasp" ability. This lets you discard a card whenever a friendly model dies to pulse 2 damage to every enemy within 2". There is no resist flip allowed, and your summoned models will reliably die at the end of every turn thanks to Flicker, so if you have the discipline to hold onto 1-2 cards each round you can actually generate a surprising amount of automatic damage across an enemy crew every turn. Dealing an unavoidable 4 damage to multiple enemy models will swing a brawl pretty quickly. The other shout-out is that the crew card action "Reset Timeline" lets your models trade their Backtrack tokens for a pretty solid self-heal, so your crew can hold up in a protracted fight surprisingly well.

Tara, Timeless on the other hand is clearly a melee fighter. She has an incredible amount of resilience thanks to the combination of Butterfly Jump and her "Lost In The Moment" rule that prevents opponents from Cheating Fate to hit her if she has a Backtrack token. Her melee attack is Damage 3, targets the lowest of Df or Wp, and has two powerful triggers making her a very effective combatant. Further to that, her signature action of Expedite can be used on herself to declare a Charge action, and the Soulstone trigger "Chronal Glitch" allows her to teleport to an Echo Marker before that Charge, letting her get to all sorts of weird places and threaten four melee attacks from a long way away. Timeless also leans further into the Echo Markers as a mechanic, when they resurrect her models they get a couple of extra hit points and lose Slow. Killing an activated model like Talos just invites a second full Talos activation, I've had games where opponents were slow to wise up to this and even though Talos died on Turn 1, by the end of Turn 2 he had activated four times just from being killed repeatedly and essentially generated a full game's worth of value much earlier than normal.

The nuance for this title is that Expedite can generate any general action, so it lets Tara reshape the scoring landscape by using it multiple times to generate Interact actions in places the opponent didn't think you could get to. She also has a magic attack, "Rewind", that can target friendly models and drops an Echo Marker and places the target a short distance. This lets you bounce models all over the table out of melee and then order them to interact, allowing for all sorts of surprising plays. Her totem, the Scion of the Void, is also not half bad as a little scheme runner. If it has a mask its Signature Move, "The Future Is The Past", allows it to teleport around and essentially act like a Leap model.

The result is that both of Tara's titles feel quite viable, and it's possible to use them in a variety of different pools. While broadly speaking I would prefer Voidcaller for the likes of Plant Explosives or Timeless on something like Informants, depending on scheme choices I could be persuaded to run the other title. 

Nothing Beast

This guy is pretty straightforward. He has good defensive stats, high speed, Incorporeal, and a great melee attack that happens to be a signature action with fantastic triggers. He even gets a positive to hit targets near Echo Markers, which combined with a Backtrack token can make him really efficient. You mostly just use the melee attack, but his Soulstone action of Accelerate Time is good for a Turn 1 unpack. His health is a tad low for his cost, but that seems to be mostly because he's quite resilient in other aspects. Magic actions, which ignore Incorporeal, can melt him down quite quickly though.

Worth noting is that he has a rule, "Half In The Void", that exists to make him weaker if he is summoned. This means you always want to hire him, that you will only rarely want to use an Echo Marker to keep him alive (usually only when an enemy model is on the cusp of death and you want a couple of extra attacks to finish the job), and that even if Tara, Voidcaller flips the 13 needed to summon him and he's not already in play, you likely pick a Void Hunter anyway.

He can pivot a little to scheming, thanks to his speed, Accelerate Time, and the fact that his Stutter Time has an "On Your Heels" trigger if you need another option to get out of melee, but mostly he lives for the brawl.

Aionus

Reliability is the main selling point for Aionus. He has Stutter Time as a signature and another action, Sever Timeline, that drops Echo Markers and places the target a short distance. The target numbers on both actions are really low, so I find him to be a solid little support piece for the crew that won't cost me resources. His Tick, Tock attack shouldn't be undersold though, it automatically gives the target a Slow token so it can be really disruptive. If you have the Soulstones, particularly in later turns, it also threatens a 4 damage hit which can let Aionus shift gears. Your opponent should be careful about leaving fragile summons or peons or cheap models with low willpower near him too, whenever he kills a model he can give another nearby model Slow or Backtrack. Killing a Peon might seem like a waste of time for a Cost 8 model, but it feels surprisingly worthwhile when it means you can get Slow on the enemy Master without having to push through their high willpower.

Talos

Talos is the secondary damage dealer of the crew, after the Nothing Beast. He's a bit more fragile and doesn't hit quite as hard, as his Signature Action attack is just a 1 damage ping, but both his attacks have triggers that apply Slow and the combination of Rush with an incredible 4" melee attack does mean he can project his damage from a long way away. The most recent FAQ did hurt him a little bit, despite ignoring LOS he still has to account for Cover and Concealment on his swings, but he's generally a good little workhorse for the crew and the best model to bring back with an Echo Marker if you need more damage. I've never used his "Open The Furnace" action, there's no situation I've encountered when another Void Hammer attack wouldn't be better.

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Three is a weird little model. She's a pretty mediocre damage dealer, she's got a good Speed but no reliable place or movement effects that would make her a good scheme runner, and her main selling point is her signature "Slam the Coffin" to place an Echo Marker that forces nearby enemy models to make a willpower check or gain Slow. Good for draining the hand of an enemy crew, sometimes even good for shutting them down with mass Slow, but not reliable. Her best feature is her "Two Places At Once" ability that lets you get additional mileage out of place effects. I've never regretted hiring her, but she's also often an easy model to cut if you need a particular Versatile in your pocket.

Minions

The Void Hunter and Void Wretch are simple little Incorporeal beasties with their own unique selling points. They're not terrible hires, but I still usually prefer the Unique models in the Keyword and so mostly see these as summons for Voidcaller. The Void Hunter is fantastic as a summon, it can choose to take damage to not have a Slow token so it can actually contribute a surprising amount of damage, and can even aid the mobility of the crew thanks to having Stutter Time as a signature action. Its main role, however, is that of a disruption piece. The "Don't Turn Your Back" rule lets it shut down those Don't Mind Me models or other scheme runners with place or movement effects that let them get out of melee, giving the Obliteration crew a critical edge in denying the opponent points.

The Void Wretch is a truly weird little model. The best part of it is its demise, which it thankfully will reliably get as a summon at the end of each turn. It basically lets you move a scheme marker from anywhere in the Wretch's line of sight into base contact with the Wretch before it dies, which lets you set up a lot of scoring opportunities for those end-of-turn schemes that require scheme markers in specific locations. Not so much help in the ones that score at the end of enemy models' activations though.

Vee

Vee is sort of the antithesis of Aionus in many ways. She's a little bit cheaper, and a whole lot swingier. Their kits are remarkably similar, both have attacks that apply Slow, both have actions that move friendly models. Vee's version, Secret Inspection, has great triggers and also drops a scheme marker, the only instance in the Keyword of scheme marker generation, which opens up a lot of scoring potential. It is, unfortunately, locked behind a very high TN of 8. With a Backtrack token and an Empower or two this can actually be reasonably reliable, but it will always be significantly more resource intensive than Aionus's cheap and cheerful approach. Similarly, her "Overclock Burn" attack only applies the Slow on a Raise. On her best days, Vee brings an insane amount of free value to the crew by moving them into position and setting up their schemes for them. Just be prepared for the fact that on her worst days, Vee's actions may all fizzle and she will be left sitting there looking a little silly.

Hard Stop Herbert

Herbert is just a solid, cheap scheme runner. He's fast. He has Onwards as a Signature Action. He has a Soulstone trigger to place to an Echo Marker within 6", and a trigger on his melee attack that let him move, so he has a couple of ways to get out of combat. He can also randomly punch unexpectedly hard for a model in his points bracket. He's Damage 2, Damage 3 on the charge, with two different triggers to choose from that functionally add +1 to the damage. It's hard to imagine a situation where I wouldn't want to include him. Remember to take advantage of Rush and use Charge actions instead of Walk actions to get around when you can, 9" of movement for a single action is a heck of a thing if the board allows for it.

Versatiles

Hiring every Obliteration crew except the Minions actually gives you a surprisingly neat and tidy 45 stone crew, with a solid 5 stone cache and a lot of internal synergies. The crew is sort of the definition of well-rounded, pretty tanky, pretty killy, pretty efficient, and pretty mobile, but outside of the Masters it doesn't necessarily excel at anything in particular. A couple of the Versatiles, like Hans or Maurice, are worth considering if you want a bit of extra killing power. Maurice also brings Token removal as a useful tool. The ones I reach for most often, however, are the Midnight Stalker and the Hodgepodge Emissary.

The Midnight Stalker has no special synergy with the crew. I mostly bring him as a back-up scheme runner. In any pool, like Plant Explosives, where you need to get to an opposing deployment zone, the Obliteration crew can reliably do so quickly with Herbert and Tara. But I often don't want to commit my Master to such an action intensive job, especially Timeless, so the Midnight Stalker is an easy substitute. He's also very good at killing cheaper enemy models in their backfield or out on their flanks scheme running in their own right, and the flanks and the enemy backfield are where he needs to be to score points, so that's nicely serendipitous.

The Emissary is a stronger contender for a spot though. It has multiple Drawn Out Secrets triggers on its actions, giving you additional ways of generating scheme markers that you might not have otherwise had. It brings a little bit of extra healing, which is present across the Keyword in a few places but not particularly widespread. Most importantly, however, it can give Tara a Pretty Floral Bonnet. This grants her Don't Mind Me, making her ferociously good at denying enemy schemes. This is better on Voidcaller (five actions across her two activations in a turn) than Timeless (up to four actions on her one), especially since Timeless's strength is in her ability to generate Interact actions on other models. 

It's worth noting too that the Quick Study rule makes the Emissary count as an Obliteration model. This means you can use an Echo Marker to keep it in play should it die, ensuring you get all those upgrades out or to generate a couple of extra free scheme markers from its triggers. Its Junk Strike attack can also let it use those Echo Markers to get a positive flip, in case you weren't using the Echo Marker for anything more important.

That probably about wraps it up for this write-up. The Obliteration crew is flexible and well-suited to 4th Edition, being able to pivot mid-game to different schemes and situations, with enough resilience to make it easy enough to learn for newcomers and enough tricks to keep things interesting for veterans. Despite the radical overhaul to its playstyle in the transition between editions, I think the spirit of the Keyword has been captured well and in a way that is a lot more accessible.