Welcome to the sixth Malifaux Faction Focus article!  Today we’ll be talking about the objectively best and coolest faction: the moonshine-sippin’, boomstick-totin’, pig-farmin’ good ol’ boys and gals of the Bayou!

Remember that you can also check out the accompanying video on Danger Planet, the premier source for Malifaux video content!

The Lore of the Bayou

East of Malifaux City, the terrain slopes away into a vast, marshy lowland, full of brackish deltas, winding estuaries, and dark, overgrown thickets.  The Bayou is a microcosm of what makes Malifaux Malifaux.  It is absurdly dangerous, filled with predators like the amphibian Silurids and the tunneling Grootslang.  Yet it draws a steady stream of explorers and adventurers, because some of the most pristine ruins of Old Malifaux can be found there (including the Kythera mechanism, where Titania let the Grave Spirit into the world, as well as the crash site of the Red Cage).  For every three expeditions into the Bayou, maybe half of one makes it out, and often empty-handed.  Part of that is due to the Bayou’s “natural” hazards (mud vortices, patches of wild magic, bloodthirsty silurids, will-o-wisps) and part is due to the Bayou’s, uh… other inhabitants.

Remember way back in the Neverborn article, when I talked about how the original inhabitants of Malifaux had to change themselves in order to survive their Tyrant-haunted world?  It’s not totally clear that that’s where gremlins come from, and the other Neverborn don’t seem to be in a hurry to claim them, which suits the gremlins just fine.  Standing about three feet tall when they’re not slouching or drunkenly stumbling (which is never), gremlins are green-skinned, big-eared, noseless pests with a taste for the finer things in life: liquor and pork, mostly.  They’re widely regarded as stupid, annoying nuisances by Malifaux’s human settlers.  Which is, admittedly, what they are.  But it’s not all they are.

Unlike Malifaux’s other “native inhabitants,” gremlins are quite friendly.  That is, if you’ve got booze or guns or a nice-looking hat, and you don’t look weak enough to rob and dump in the swamp.  Gremlins trade with humans, and some even make the pilgrimage to live among the tall people for a time.  Humans will tolerate their drunken antics for a time and often even find them amusing.  Gremlins are world-class imitators and are totally taken with the tall, enchanting strangers and their strange devices.  Many humans who spend time around gremlins find themselves acquiring a pint-size doppelganger, which can be a bit flattering at first… but the little buggers are inveterate thieves as well, and soon enough the human will find their clothes and possessions going missing as their little duplicate tries to perfect their look.

Gremlins have taken to all things human with surprising speed.  Rusty boomsticks abound in the Bayou, along with stolen aethervox radios and the products of fine human haberdashery.  They’re simple creatures, and in some ways quite innocent, but they’re possessed of a feral cunning no human should underestimate.  Gremlins know full well what the humans traipsing into their Bayou are coming for, and they’re not at all keen to see their homes pillaged and robbed.  Nor are they interested in the types of things that unscrupulous humans can bribe them with: gremlins don’t want power, or fame, and they only need enough riches to keep them in gunpowder and booze, both of which are easier to steal than buy.  And if you don’t have anything to offer a gremlin, you better watch your back.  Or at least your ankles.  Nekima may think Malifaux is OURS!, but the Bayou belongs to the gremlins.

Well, them and Zoraida.  The Swamp Hag lives in the Bayou, and just as she’s basically Honorary Neverborn, she’s an Honorary Gremlin as well.  Not exactly– the gremlins are terrified of her, fully aware of her power– but they at least know enough not to mess with her, and to go to her for help if they need to.  Zoraida, for reasons of her own, is glad to aid the little terrors.  Maybe it’s sympathy?  Maybe she’s playing a long game and needs the gremlins alive for some future plot.  Impossible to tell.

Gremlins, as has been intimated above, love two things above all others: pigs and whiskey.  The first form an essential building block of the Bayou’s ecosystem.  There isn’t so much a food chain in the Bayou as a food circle (or perhaps some kind of non-Euclidean tesseract).  Gremlins raise pigs for war, companionship, and food, usually all at once.  Pigs feed on gremlins too stupid, slow or unlucky to get out of the way.  They are livestock, pets, mounts, beasts of burden, and predators.  And these aren’t your momma’s pigs… Bayou swine are massive, fearsome tuskers with bulging muscles and evil dispositions, a rampaging wall of pork summoned by the battle-cry “SOOOOOO-EY!”

Liquor is the gremlins’ other passion, and the greatest moonshiners are revered as demigods of distillery.  Gremlins make shine out of just about anything, and though they may be small and prone to dying unexpectedly, their little green bodies are remarkably resilient to the stuff.  The most potent gremlin shine can strip paint, power jet engines, and destroy all traces of human cognition with a single sip, but no matter how much the gremlins drink, the only noticeable change is that their already-atrocious aim gets even worse.  (Or sometimes better.  You never know, with gremlins.)  Even weaker shine is prized among certain very specific human communities, and gremlin-brewed liquor is a major trade good… important enough for smugglers to risk the ban on trading firearms to gremlins (a Guild law passed in a moment of lucidity and foresight).

The gremlins could be a force for great good or terrible evil if they could get their act together.  That’s a load-bearing “if,” though.  The Bayou is ruled by major families– the Joneses, the LaCroixs, the Turners, the Tuckets, the Gautreaux, and a few others– and they spend most of their time raiding each other and acting out their painfully complex and utterly incomprehensible feuds.  Recent events have forced a bit more unity, and the gremlins (in a moment of inspired imitation) decided to hold a Democrazy to elect a Gremlin General counterpart to the Guild’s Governor General.  A little bit of backroom politics resulting in the selection of Lenny Jones, who seems a decent sort even if he can’t always remember which way to put on his pants.  This has not appreciably increased the amount of organization in the Bayou, but Lenny likes his new hat, so maybe it’s all to the good.

Why Should I Play Bayou?

I don’t really know what to put here.  If the above paragraphs didn’t convert you to a Bayou player for life, you and I are just on two completely different wavelengths.  I have been playing Bayou since first edition and don’t see myself ever jumping ship, though I have recently acquired a couple of Explorer’s Society crews for the novelty.

Bayou are The Greenskin Faction.  Every game has to have one, by law.  If you’re a greenskin player, you’re a greenskin player, and you just know it.  We communicate via secret frequencies, our minds thrumming to the same subterranean rhythm.  Our works rise beneath green-tinted stars, monuments to gods of chaos and disorder.  Do you like to do weird things that no other faction does?  How would you like to care about the suit of your initiative flip?  Do you want to hit someone with a piano?  How drunk can you be and still play a game?  Let these questions shimmer on the mirror of your soul and you will know if the Bayou is your destiny. The Bayou symbol is the pig-and-whiskey, the two things that gremlins care about brought together into one glorious icon.

Play Bayou if:

• I mean, “greenskin faction” says it all.  You want to be able to horde up.  You want to have a chance of damaging your own models.  You want to damage your own models, on purpose, because it’s funny and because you get value for doing so.
• You like catching people by surprise.  Bayou are not the most commonly played faction, and many people are unfamiliar with their tricks.  And the faction is basically all tricks.
• You appreciate the faction’s tone.  Bayou are, for what it’s worth, the comedy faction.  You’re not going to be a brave hero or a sinister villain.  You’re going to be a drunken swamp hillbilly, and you better like that idea.

Masters

Som’er Teeth Jones

When most humans think of “gremlin raiders,” they’re naturally thinking of the Jones clan.  Led by their patriarch Som’er, the Joneses simply cannot be kept up with; they’ve got the shiniest boomsticks, the meanest skeeters, and the biggest hats on the Bayou.  And there’s a lot of them.  Som’er can’t keep track of his sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandkids, cousins, drinking cronies and hangers-on.  But he doesn’t have to.  They all know who he is, and most importantly, they know he’s got the biggest and best hat of all.  That’s the law, down on the Bayou– he who has the Big Hat makes the rules.

The only one of Som’er’s kids he bothers to care about is Lenny, a hulking and surprisingly gentle lad who’s not even trying to hide his Steinbeckian roots.  Lenny, owing to a quirk of fate far beyond his understanding, is the Gremlin General, but it’s Som’er who is the power behind the throne.  What does Som’er want?  Well, unlike many of the other faction honchoes (with their plottin’ and schemin’) pater Jones is a gremlin of simple tastes.  He wants more loot.  He wants quality mash liquor.  He wants a gun that makes a nice satisfying BOOM.  And he wants respect! He’s the boss, and it’s important that everyone else knows it.  He was out raiding human settlements for hooch and guns while the rest of the gremlins were wondering where the tall people came from.  And he’s the one that put the Gremlins up to the idea of Democrazy, even if that dang Lenny can’t remember what he’s supposed to be doing for five minutes at a time.

Som’er is the Bayou’s summoner, calling on his seemingly endless family tree to replenish his ranks.  Rank and file Bayou Gremlins are weak as hell, but you can summon up to four of them at a time, and quantity has a quality all its own.  And there are plenty of gremlins with specialist jobs– Gremlin Criers spread the good news about Democrazy, whipping the others into shape, while Good Ol’ Boys are a cut above the average gremlin.  Som’er can also rely on the strong right arm of Lenny to put decent-sized holes in things.  Som’er’s title form focuses on plunderin’, and while he can still summon Bayou Gremlins, he’s more interested in stuffing markers into his sack.

Play Som’er Teeth Jones if:

• You wanna throw a wild hootenanny and invite all the gang
• You really want to blanket the table in little green bodies.  Quantity is job one.
• You like punching your own models for value – Som’er is the undisputed king of this.

Ophelia LaCroix

Nobody beats the Joneses for quantity.  That’s a given.  So what’s an ambitious gremlin to do?  It’s hard to even think of an “elite” gremlin squad, but that’s what Ophelia LaCroix is trying to build, pressing her Kin into service.  The whole clan takes the field, from crazy old Pere Ravage to the Young LaCroix that carry Ophelia’s arsenal into battle.  Motivated by spite and cowardice–a potent mixture at the best of times–the LaCroixs are surprisingly dangerous, a fact many Guild patrols have learned to their sorrow.

It started with a dream.  Ophelia watched as Perdita and the Ortegas began clearing out their corner of the Bayou.  The Ortegas saw the LaCroixs as pests, and the disorganized gremlins couldn’t stand up to a disciplined, professional force like that.  In the middle of the fight, Ophelia saw her: the pistolera with the broad-brimmed hat, guns blazing in her hands, directing her family like a living weapon.  In those flashes of muzzle-fire, Ophelia saw her future.  Her destiny, written in living flame.

She would have to steal Perdita’s hat.

That done, Ophelia set about whipping her clan into shape.  One by one, they got the message, and like their boss they set their sights on the hardest gunslingers they knew.  Raphael imitates the swaggering Santiago Ortega, while Francois follows in the footsteps of the swashbuckling Francisco.  Rami, a coward with a sniper’s eye, based his clockwork rifle on Nino Ortega’s long-barreled repeater.  Even when they ran out of Ortegas to copy, the LaCroixs kept up the tradition; Merris’s liquor-powered jetback is the Bayou’s answer to Kaeris’s wings, and Sammy LaCroix’s habit of sticking pins in stitched dolls is surely inspired by Zoraida’s voodoo.

The Kin are perhaps the most straightforward crew in the game.  They shoot, and if that doesn’t work, they shoot again.  Francois is a melee beater, but the rest of them form Malifaux’s most potent gunline.  They’re not particularly adept schemers, but it is hard for your opponent to score points when they have no models left on the board.  They’re aided in this by a variety of custom upgrades, which can grant them special skills – or, in a pinch, can stop a bullet.  Ophelia’s title form focuses on directing her family rather than perforating things herself, and under her command they learn how to declare two triggers at once.

Play Ophelia LaCroix if:

• Your friend plays Family and you want to play a version of the crew that’s just better
• Your playgroup goes light on terrain and you want to punish them for their folly
• You find Malifaux isn’t quite killy enough for your tastes

Wong

Wong was once a simple gremlin named Obadiah.  Along with his cousin Burt Jebsen, he stumbled across the path of a caravan, deep in the Bayou: a sorcerer hired by the Ten Thunders to summon oni.  Burt and Wong had no idea what that was, but they’d seen the havoc the sorcerer had wreaked on innocent gremlins and were determined to put a stop to it.  They ambushed the caravan and killed the sorcerer… at which point gremlin looting instincts kicked in and Obadiah stole the man’s clothes, moustache (it was a fake, held on with spirit gum) and his bag.  That last decision proved to be a mistake.

The Three Demon Bag contains disembodied oni spirits, and with their connection to the material world dead in the swamp, they needed a new one.  Their beguiling whispers ensnared Wong, and here the oni ran into trouble.  Wong was certainly not strong-willed enough to resist the oni’s temptations.  He didn’t even try.  In fact, he appeared to be too stupid to easily manipulate.  The oni fed him some of their power, a taste of what they could give him if he served them, and he marveled at the pretty lights.  Then he went off to organize a stage show, gathering a Wizz-Bang cadre of magical neophytes around him.

Wong’s playstyle is… interesting, to say the least.  His magic is unpredictable, and his crew thrives on it: their Pyrotechnic Markers produce random effects, and lots of them can make those markers or toss them about.  Wong also draws lots of cards, which can fuel some pretty deadly beatdowns at the hands of his chief bodyguard and assistant, Alphonse LeBlanc.  Both versions of Wong hand out Glowy Tokens to reflect his chaotic enchantments, cashing them in for value, but his original version mostly channels that Glowy energy into ever-larger explosions while his title instead has a wider bag of movement and support tricks.

Play Wong if:

• You miss the chaotic gameplay of WHFB Skaven
• Your opponents like to bubble their crews up
• You don’t care what happens, as long as a lot of it does

Ulix Turner

Whose hogs these are I think I know

Some of them are feral, though

They will not see me stopping here

To brace my gun against the snow

Pigs and liquor, liquor and pigs.  All gremlins love both, but there are few gremlins who love pork as much as Ulix Turner.  The Bayou’s premier pig farmer has reached an impressively old age for a gremlin– doubly impressive when you take into account his line of work.  He breeds, cares for, raises, and trains the nastiest, meanest, biggest, orneriest pigs you’ve ever seen in your life.  With his faithful hound Penelope at his side, Ulix is known far and wide as a pig whisperer: not only are his pigs fat and healthy, but they display a startling level of obedience to their master, even letting him hitch a ride (useful, with his bum leg).

Ulix has a few green-skinned assistants to prod pig buttock and haul slop, but most of his followers are, well, pigs.  That suits him just fine.  He can summon an army with a cry of Sooey and go to war on pig-back.  Ulix is a cantankerous old coot, but he has a keen sense of justice, and if humans or other creatures think the gremlins near the Turner ranch are easy prey they’re in for a rude surprise.  Under the watchful eye of Old Major, who keeps an eye on the young ‘uns and nudges them along where needed, the Turner pigs are a force to be reckoned with.

Ulix’s crew is, unsurprisingly, almost entirely pigs.  Pigs are very fast and hit very hard, but tend to be fragile; however, there are lots of ways to heal them, so as long as your opponent isn’t finishing off your pigs then you usually have ways to top them off.  And nobody keeps pigs safe like Ulix.  One thing pigs are great at doing is making more pigs; Piglets are small, but with Ulix’s help they can grow into much larger and more powerful forms.  When the little snouters suddenly turn into fearsome War Pigs, you have to stand up and take notice.  Ulix’s title form rides into battle on, well, piggyback, and his pigs are on fire in more than one sense: specifically, they’re fast as hell, and also engulfed in flames.

Play Ulix Turner if:

• You love the 30-50 feral hogs meme and wish it had more time in the sun
• You think things like “ranged attacks” and “playing the mission” are a bunch of silly faffing about
• You don’t mind shouting SOOOOOO-EY at the top of your lungs in a crowded game store

The Brewmaster

Liquor and pigs, pigs and liquor.  All gremlins love both, but nobody brews hooch like the enigmatic god of shine known as the Brewmaster.  Hailing from a distant tribe of mountain-dwelling gremlins, the Brewmaster arrived in the Bayou at the head of a strange collection of robed followers.  The Tri-Chi gremlins have raised drunkenness to an art form, and an expert Moon Shinobi is more than a match for any trained human martial artist… as long as he’s completely wasted.

The Brewmaster was initially sent to the Bayou by the Ten Thunders to infiltrate the gremlin community and shape them into a weapon for the Thunders’ use.  This he did for a while, but seeing his own kind awakened something in the Brewmaster.  He made a fateful choice: he turned his back on the humans that had raised him and taught him the secrets of alcohol, and pledged instead to support and defend the gremlins against any who would wish them harm.  The Thunders aren’t happy, but even some of the Brewmaster’s former human peers still respect him enough to come and learn (and drink) at his side.  He doesn’t just brew whiskey; he crafts intoxication, and his skill at doing so is profound.

The Tri-Chi crew, unsurprisingly, has a style of fighting that focuses on intoxication, represented in-game by Poison Tokens.  Poison heals them rather than damaging them, and they can spend their Poison tokens for all kinds of bonuses.  Once opponents start getting hammered, they’re putty in the Brewmaster’s hands– he can command drunken foes to do his bidding, push them around, or just burn out their livers with concentrated alcohol poisoning.  The Brewmaster’s title form focuses on drunken kung-fu, empowering his models to spend their Poison tokens to deliver intoxicated haymakers and potent, inebriated roundhouse kicks.

Play Brewmaster if:

• You like playing with fire… or at least firewater
• You’d rather slowly wear someone down than knock them out in a single blow
• You love painting liquids, bottles and robes– the crew has a lot of all three.

Mah Tucket

The Tuckets are perhaps the Jones’s biggest rivals for control of the Bayou.  Like Som’er and his brood, the Tucket clan make their living (such as it is) as raiders, looting human settlements for anything shiny, useful, and/or not nailed down.  But there the similarities end.  While the Joneses are all under the thumb of the their swaggering patriarch, the Tuckets bow and scrape before Mah Tucket, who maintains order via liberal use of her giant wooden spoon.  And while the Joneses tend to drown their foes under a horde of drunken, hollering hooligans, the Tuckets take a very unusual approach to warfare: thinkin’.

Mah Tucket’s dumpy, bowlegged form conceals a keen tactical mind at least the equal of the Guild’s sharpest captains.  More to the point, she has an understanding of human “puh-sy-col-ogee” unmatched by any other gremlin.  Humans tend to underestimate gremlins.  They don’t expect them to lay traps, to sneak, to plan ambushes and stage feints.  The Tuckets profit from being underestimated, and gremlins dissatisfied with the sheer stupidity of their kin tend to find their way to Mah Tucket’s side.  These Tricksy bandits are quickly becoming the scourge of the Guild and Arcanists alike; Mah Tucket has a particular appetite for high-tech salvage and often raids M&SU holdings to loot machines left behind by Ramos’s departure.  Just what the gremlins are doing with all of this advanced technology should probably be a bigger worry for the humans.  Sure, some of it just blows up (and solves two problems with one sizzling green explosion), but there definitely aren’t enough kabooms emanating from the Tucket junkyards to account for all the parts they’ve stolen…

Mah Tucket is positively thinky for a gremlin. Her models are slippery, able to escape from combat at a moment’s notice, and love to Injure enemies or Analyze them to prevent them from reducing damage.  Once they’ve set up the kill, Mah swings in with her wooden spoon to finish the job – or lets the snorting, clanking Mechanized Porkchop do it.  Special mention goes to Trixiebelle, one of the most versatile, powerful scheme runners in the game.  Mah’s title form, riding a mechanical spider, is a lot more brutal in melee, and her crew makes great use of Analyzed to zero in on enemies and copy their best actions.

Play Mah Tucket if:

• The movement phase is your favorite part of 40k
• You love Terry Pratchett but wish Nanny Ogg was a bit more violent
• You want to field your whole keyword– there are basically no Tricksy models that aren’t at least situationally great.

Zoraida

Zoraida is more what you might call “honorary Gremlin.” She was human, once, one of the first humans to enter Malifaux during the time of the original Breach. It’s unclear why exactly she decided to turn her back on the human race– whether Malifaux unlocked something within her, or whether the events that played out during the first Breach were always her plan. Zoraida is more attuned to the vagaries of Fate than anyone else alive, and she serves as the steward and shepherd of the fates of two worlds– a heavy responsibility, especially for such an old woman.

Zoraida used to call the Neverborn her home, but she wants no part in Titania and Nekima’s war.  She has retreated to her Bayou home to cast her spells and watch over her green charges. She surrounds herself with Swampfiends— the cursed, the lost, the mad, and the creatures that dwell in the deepest, darkest wilds of Malifaux. Practicing her voodoo and divination magic, Zoraida can control the wills of lesser creatures, manipulate them to her own ends, or just torment them from afar with her voodoo dolls. It was she who helped the Neverborn close the Breach the first time, and while it’s unclear whether she had any hand in reopening it, since then she’s had her hands full making sure that the humans don’t do too much damage.

Zoraida knows everything that happens in Malifaux. That’s what helps her keep one step ahead of the invaders, and with a foot in both worlds, she’s probably the best positioned to help Malifaux’s old and new inhabitants prepare for what’s coming.

On the table, Zoraida is a tremendously potent control master, able to channel her powers through her servants and take direct control of ally and enemy alike. She can manipulate hands and decks and place curses on her enemies. Her Keyword is a grab bag of swamp-dwellers, from the hulking beatstick Bad Juju to the quick and agile Silurids, the slow and implacable Waldgeists, and some of the weirder swamp dwellers like the Adze and Grootslang. Her title form focuses on her control of this marsh-dwelling menagerie, handing out buffs and manipulating the land itself to counteract her enemies.

Play Zoraida if:

• You never grew out of the “stop hitting yourself” game
• You played Warmachine and miss arc nodes
• You don’t care how weird your horror movie monsters are

The Clampetts

The Bayou slopes down to the sea in a long, shallow delta, and in those brackish shallows dwell all sort of misshapen horrors.  Dread things from the nightmare abyss, they shamble onto land, seeking to drown Malifaux in a tide of ancient evil.  These gibbering hordes are pallid, waxy, with needle fangs and bulging eyes, and their cruelty is matched only by their delicious flavor.  There’s good eatin’ on them things.

The Clampetts are the Bayou’s pre-eminent Angler family.  They fish up all sorts of things, and they’ve gotten used to clubbing even the big ones to death before they eat too many cousins.  Some of them can be pressed into service as pets; the rest make fashionable cloaks, or their shells form makeshift armor.  Nothing goes to waste in the Bayou.  The Clampett family is huge, and can call on all manner of uncles and aunts when they get their dander up.  They may seem lackadaisical, because they are, but they’re also tough enough to gut a denizen of the briny depths with nothing but an old rusty hook, so put some respect on that name.

On the table, the Clampetts mostly deal with Tide Markers – little pools that give them all sorts of bonuses.  Using Drift Tokens, they can teleport between Markers, and they can even attack through them.  The Angler keyword is highly mobile and hard-hitting, as long as you can keep the table nice and wet.  Their title version, the Bally-Hoo Bucket, takes to the field in a customized amphibious boat, with a big outboard motor perfect for tossing enemies into.  Don’t stand too close to the water – you’ll find yourself pulled in and fish-slapped to death.

Play the Clampetts if:

• You prefer you puns nautical
• You get a little excited by the term “movement tricks”
• You like painting bright colors and skin textures

Bonus: for a long time, Bayou had no Nightmare Edition crews.  Then we got one, and, uhhhhh… hoo boy.

Ulix Turner has had a bit of a makeover.  The set “Unicorn Vomit and Pixie Farts” is well named, and it’s guaranteed to strike terror into the heart of your opponent.

That’s all for this week– and would you believe it, we’re 3/4 done!  Join us next time as we enter the home stretch and deal with those masters of manipulation, subterfuge, and precisely meted out violence: the Ten Thunders.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.