Today’s Crew Focus takes a look at one of Malifaux’s most iconic Masters. Seamus, the Redchapel Killer, has been with us since the very earliest, metal-box days of Malifaux First Edition, and with new art (seemingly presaging a new sculpt) and a new lease on (un?)life, he’s primed to have a gloriously fun time in Fourth Edition, too.
Help for this article was provided by the incomparable Hamish “Hamdog” of the Pack Mentality podcast. Check it out – those Kiwis know what they’re doing when it comes to Malifaux.
Why Hello, Love
Seamus has carved his name into history, becoming one of the most feared – and most prolific – serial killers ever to swing a knife on either side of the Breach. But he wasn’t always this way. Indeed, Seamus came to Malifaux a modest haberdasher, thinking that the new land on the far side of the Breach was ripe for a new wave in fashion. But of course, in Malifaux, bad things happen…
Nobody knows why some people hear the Whisper of the Grave Spirit. The Spirit, an unfathomable entity of terrible deathly power, is bound by the Kythera mechanism, but a select few hear its voice – and those who hear are inexorably driven mad by the terrible truths it imparts. It happened to Albus von Schtook the stargazer, it happened to Douglas McMourning the coroner, and it happened to Seamus, who followed the Spirit’s whispers to a wonderful, mysterious book.
What the book taught him, nobody knows. He’s never told anyone. At least, anyone he’s told is not in a position to repeat it. But shortly after Seamus ceased making hats, he began making corpses, and he’s never stopped since then. Some killers slink in the shadows, but Seamus practically craves the spotlight. (Okay, he spends plenty of time in the shadows, too). He is implicated in dozens of high-profile crimes, like the slaughter of the entire staff of Sybelle’s Saloon, a notorious house of, er, negotiable affection. He also murdered the beloved journalist Molly Squidpiddge, who had been investigating his crimes. But even worse than his crimes (at least in the eyes of the Guild) is his habit of raising his victims to follow him. Most of them are mindless, shambling things, although a few, like the aforementioned Molly, are free-willed and thinking, and have split off from Seamus to chart their own paths.
These days, Seamus is a figure of terror to civilians and Guild forces alike. He’s been thought killed dozens of times, only to reappear from each “death” with the same chipper attitude as ever. Not only is he seemingly unkillable and deadly with a knife, but he’s accompanied everywhere by his “entourage” of Doxies, Dandies, and other victims, as well as some darker things that feed on the terror and grief he leaves in his wake.
Seamus himself appears to have no plan and no agenda other than to practice his “art.”  But isn’t that enough? Must we all be stuck in the rat race? Does true talent need to explain itself? The Guild Guard think so, but so far they haven’t been able to convince Seamus. Best of luck, boys!
A Grin In the Dark
We will begin with Seamus, the Last Breath, Seamus’s “original” form. I say “original,” but for the first time since First Edition Seamus has had a significant playstyle shakeup. For as long as the game has existed he’s been defined by his enormous .50 caliber flintlock, a massive but slow-to-reload gun that could blow a huge hole in basically anything. This created a very polarized and frustrating profile, where if you could protect your crew from Seamus’s gun he couldn’t do much except run away and scheme, but if you couldn’t you’d just lose a valuable model every turn with little counterplay available.
He’s ditched the gun and even his infamous Bag o’ Tools, leaving them in the capable hands of his Copycat Killer, but don’t worry… he’s a dab hand with those knives. Soon have you looking prettier ‘n ever, dear.
Let’s start with his crew card. Madness and Malice immediately focuses your attention on Last Breath’s core mechanic: emerging from the mists and shadows to get a kill before darting away just before the cops arrive. Whenever an enemy attacks a friendly Redchapel model, regardless of whether that attack succeeds, the target may remove an Aura (Concealment) token to be placed within 3″ of its location.
These tokens, by the way, give you a 2″ aura of Concealing terrain (as the name implies!), which does not impact friendlies. This is huge, putting most enemies at negative flips to hit you unless they’re really close, and therefore immensely pressuring your opponent’s hand if they want to reliably hit. You lose them during the end phase, though. So you need a reliable way to apply them.
Fortunately, the crew card has you covered there, too. Friendly unique Redchapel models can drain a Soulstone and spend a signature action to gain an Aura (Concealment) token and then charge, while ignoring engagement. This is huge, effectively letting you charge as a bonus action as long as you have stones to spend, and therefore letting all of your uniques make three melee attacks per turn (except Seamus, who gets four). You can even charge out of engagement! Or if you’re already engaged you can just charge the person you’re engaged with, if you want. It’ll get expensive to spam this but it’s an amazing mobility tool and ensures your models have those all-important aura tokens just when you need them.
The 3″ jump that the card grants you is actually a significant amount of safety: it’ll take you out of many models’ melee ranges, and if you’re being shot at it’ll often put you in cover or out of line of sight entirely. It’s very hard to pin down Seamus’s models if they’ve been assiduous about concealing themselves. Of course, remember that you’re giving up the concealment if you do jump.
Seamus, the Last Breath
Let’s start with his front of card. Seamus is fast but not particularly tough. Terrifying gives him some nice defense (and stacked with Concealment, it basically forces your opponent to cheat to hit him unless they have Ruthless or some other built-in positive twice to hit), but he’s actually pretty fragile with only Df 5 and 10 wounds. Except…
That Demise is bananas. As long as there is a model with an Aura (Concealment) token anywhere on the board, friendly or enemy, once per turn Seamus can just burn a soulstone to evade death and return at full health. To put him down you have to kill him twice in a single turn – as discussed, not too easy with all the negative flips – or hit him with anti-healing or anti-Demise tech. This is not common at all and some crews don’t have it at all. I think some factions don’t even have it. Sometimes you’ll run into Kastore and be sad, but sometimes you’ll just be able to act with impunity.
He’s also got Ruthless, which is flavorful and situationally useful – but what is he Ruthlessly attacking with?
Alone in the Dark is, by pure stats, probably slightly below curve for a combat master’s attack. But pure stats don’t tell the full story. First, if the model is in concealing terrain – that is, if Seamus has an Aura (Concealing) token – then the attack gets a +twist to hit. That’s strong by itself, often forcing opponents to cheat first, but if the target is isolated from its friends (and 2″ is pretty close to have to huddle together), it has a raise value of 3. That often means that you’ll be hitting with 1 or even 2 raises, making this “3 damage” attack regularly do a lot more than that. The triggers are pretty great, too – Shove Aside will let you separate your target from the pack so subsequent attacks get those juicy raises, while Execute pressures both hand and stones. If your opponent does lose a model, hey, you sometimes get a Doxy out of it!
The other half of the equation is Secret Passage, a massive teleport that lets Seamus track down his target from almost anywhere. Tables are so full of blocking terrain, especially with buildings having a Moment this edition, that you’ll often be able to get where you need to go. Remember you can jump on top of buildings with this!
Given Seamus’s extreme survivability, you can dive into bubbles and use Shove Aside to isolate someone for the kill. You will often make four attacks in an activation – True Terror is a pretty meh action that will rarely be correct, but the Sudden Strike trigger on Secret Passage is great, and while you could use it to set up Aura (Concealment) it’s more cost-effective to simply use your crew card action for that.
Copycat Killer
Ah, so that’s where the gun went. The Copycat is a fun little guy as ever, drawing you cards, moving Seamus around and letting him get a fifth attack sometimes. That free Aura (Concealment) is also clutch, since the fail case is just tagging someone in a safe position with it to give Seamus an anchor point for his Demise, and it can get much better than that.
The Copycat’s attacks are funny, especially with the recoil on the Big Ol’ Gun, but at stat 5 and without good triggers to speak of, you can’t really rely on them – and the Copycat is fragile, Terrifying notwithstanding. If an enemy wants to kill him, they will. You want him alive, so don’t put him in danger unless you can get him out with Mistaken Identity.
Where Stars Are Born
Seamus’s title, AKA Sebastian Baker, shows what happens when he tries to go incognito for a while. Sebastian Baker is an agent to the stars, although a worrying number of his clients don’t make it to opening night. Ah, that’s showbiz, right?
Beginning with his crew card, Urban Legend, AKA Sebastian Baker ditches the Aura (Concealment) synergy (I guess his office is well-lit) in return for some Entranced synergy. When a Redchapel model (note: no non-unique rider) targets an Entranced enemy, they may remove the Entranced token to put the target on a -twist to resist. This is fun, but since they can still cheat, at best it’s pressuring their hand. Entranced is also a pretty powerful effect to lose – and remember, enemies can remove their own Entranced tokens simply by attacking you, so you have to be careful about timing when setting this up.
The other half of the crew card, Pounce, is nice and simple: It turns soulstones into attack AP. That’s really good! If models could cash in Soulstones just to take more attacks above their AP limit, a lot of them would. This isn’t quite as good as that, but it’s still free damage into things you want to deal damage to.
AKA Sebastian Baker
At Df 6 with 13 health and Stealth, this Seamus is a bit sturdier than his alter ego… but he only has one life to live, so in practice, you’ll have to work a lot harder to keep him safe. The front of his card has two signpost abilities that give you some clues about what you’re supposed to be doing with him: he heals when nearby enemies get Entranced, and he damages enemies who get pushed into his waiting arms outside of their own activations. So how does this all come together?
Sebastian Baker’s melee attack lacks the raw power of Alone in the Dark, clocking in at only Damage 2 and lacking both the raise value advantage and the built-in positive twist, although it is a highly accurate Stat 7 and always hands out Entranced (which heals Seamus). Remember that you can cash in Entranced to put enemies at a negative twist to resist you, which both makes the attack more accurate and, conveniently, allows you to reapply it to heal again. It’s not too hard to imagine an activation where Baker simply slaps someone three times to heal 3 and deal 6+ damage, not counting any damage from Coordinated Attacks – and there are some pretty solid friends here to coordinate with.
Of course, Baker has other attacks, too. Grandiose Promises is an odd one – it’s only 6″ range and with the Magic icon you can’t charge into it or get damage from raises, but it does 3 damage and pushes other enemies away from the target (or towards them, you know, whatever you want). The really spicy part is that it has a raise value of 3 and gives you a Coordinated Attack-style extra attack for each raise. It won’t happen often, but if you flip the red joker on this you could be looking at 3 friendlies making attacks into the target one after another, which is just brutal. It’s unclear from the wording whether you can pick the same model to attack multiple times if you have multiple raises, but I would say probably not – ask your TO! To help you set up these extra attacks, the Tome trigger lets you yank an ally in close, and realistically I’d say you probably never need more than two allies in range. Remember that the condition for an extra attack is being engaged with the target, which is 1″ no matter how long your melee range is.
Finally, Special Arrangements is Baker’s signature action, a reasonably high TN that requires an Entranced token on the target but lets you yoink a friend into position to smack them. Sometimes you can even summon a Dead Dandy into base contact with the target, which is funny but will often not be good.
What does it all add up to? Well, this Baker wants to be surrounded by his lovely belles, of course. You have so many actions that make other friendlies attack, and ways to make those attacks more accurate with Entranced. He’s a champion bubble breaker with Grandiose Promises, barreling into the enemy formation with his gals in tow, but he’s a bit fragile and, awkwardly, likes to spend the Entranced he hands out, meaning he won’t benefit from it defensively. He’s slower than Seamus and less able to deliver a knockout to a key target, but the sheer volume of accurate attacks you’ll be making means you can often kill enemies by the death by a thousand cuts. If enemies can avoid him, though, he can’t really chase them down, since he needs to stay with his friends to be effective.
White Rabbit Co.
What’s a hat company doing on the battlefield? Who cares? Sadly, we were not blessed with Hat Tokens, or Hat upgrades, or Hat Markers or anything. Boo. For all that, though, these guys have some interesting tech.
First of all, they offer some scheming and counter-scheming via Dashing Fit and Chatty, respectively; the former is pretty expensive for what you get, especially given the short range, but you’ll need it near the action anyways to hand out free Entranced with Marvelous Wares. This is one of the few ways to hand out Entranced without having to win an opposed flip or hit a TN or anything, so take advantage of it.
Aside from the standard totem card draw action and a crappy attack, the haberdashers are mostly all about Bespoke Headwear. Shoving allies around is always, always good in Malifaux, and though this shove is pretty short, it has some very good triggers. Special shout-out to Fez and Stetson; being able to drop or remove Scheme Markers within 3″ of the target, after it finishes its movement, is a pretty wide range, and you can do it from relative safety given the 6″ initial range on the action and base width of the target. I think a lot of the time you are just doing Bespoke Headwear 2-3 times.
Belles of the Ball
That covers our Masters and Totems, so who else is lurking in the shadows? Let’s take a peek, shall we? Note that Rotten Belles have officially been retired; they were basically just the same as Dead Doxies, but oddly with different abilities, so now they’ve merged.
Madam Sybelle
That little hussy Molly may have abandoned our brave hero, but luckily, his best girl Madam Sybelle is loyal to the end (and beyond). Sybelle is a Juggernaut (one of the strongest pieces of defensive tech in Malifaux 4e), which aptly sums up her role. She’s got 12hp, so some Masters will be dropping her in one activation (look out for Ophelia) but almost nobody else will. She’s a bit lumbering, but you can pretty much plant her where you really need an anchor and she’ll do a lot of work. Enemies nearby that are afflicted with Aura (Concealment) or Entranced also gain Slow, which means she can just passively debilitate the enemy crew while you do your thing (just note that it’s once per activation). This is more likely to occur with AKA Sebastian Baker, since Last Breath is often applying his token to friendlies, but on occasion enemies get in the fun.
Sybelle’s Bleeder Lash is as scary as ever, with conditional plus flips, an exceptional strike range, and an option on free Entranced. It has three solid triggers, and especially if you’ve got several models engaging an enemy (often the case with AKA Sebastian Baker) you can hit people for scary amounts of damage. Sybelle also has two options for a signature, with Beckoning Call returning and giving you much-needed movement as well as a source of much-needed Aura (Concealment), while Knives in the Fog can do a truly unfortunate amount of AOE damage to enemies once those Concealment markers are out. Knives being Once per Turn is probably a good thing; the game doesn’t need Sybelle pulsing out 6 points of unresistable damage in a 9″ diameter bubble.
Overall, Sybelle is a beefy beater with a very annoying AP-sapping aura. Hamish thinks she’s a must-take with both Titles and I agree; she’s got some very obvious synergy with both, she’s a great beater for Baker to give free attacks to, and she’s tough to remove.
Bete Noire
Bete has lost her burying tricks (and her busted action that never got fixed all edition long), but is otherwise much the same: a Diving Charge-ing murder machine. Her knives are only Damage 2 but with a raise value of 3 all the time and three extremely strong triggers it will do work for you. It also has Dismember, which, eh. Bete can use the Remains marker it makes to trigger her signature, but it’s a bit awkward, because the free Charge generated by her Signature does not ignore the once per activation limit. You can’t take a normal Charge with her without losing your signature action, although you’ll often just use the Last Breath crew card action.
Without burying, Bete still Fades Away, but now it requires 1) a Soulstone and 2) a model with Aura (Concealment) within 12″ to dive to. You will quite often have one of those in Last Breath, at least, so I can see her showing up there.
Bete’s best role is probably as a solo schemer, Hamish thinks. She’s fast, and she’s hard to remove if you are being assiduous about keeping Aura (Concealment) up. You will be spending Soulstones and Aura (Concealment) tokens keeping her alive, so beware of that.
The Strange Lady
Seamus and Molly share custody of this odd woman. The Strange Lady is tough to put down, with 6/6 defensive stats, a huge health pool, Hard to Kill, and total immunity to triggers. Combined, this all means she’s going to stick around for a while. But what does she do?
Terrifying Gaze is an interesting bit of tech – sometimes it’s completely blank but in some matchups it’ll let you spend a stone to completely no-sell an action, which is situationally very strong. When it comes to actions, the Strange Lady is a bit mixed: Gorgon’s Kiss is not that great an action for a ten-stone model, unless you’re touching the enemy, though it has some pretty strong triggers (again, though, Finisher is only situationally good, but when it’s good, it’s super good). Whispers in the Dark is an Obey that can target friendlies but also damages the target, and sometimes damages the target a lot, especially if you Gorgon’s Kiss into it. Offensive Obeys always have the problem that you have to win two opposed duels to do anything useful a lot of the time (one to Obey the target, and again when the Obeyed target attacks), though it’s helpful for scheming and counter-scheming – annoying that you have no choice but to ping your own models when you do that.
Of course, when you do, you can heal your friends with The Healing Dark. Annoyingly, this doesn’t really kick in at full strength until later in the turn, and its range is short, but once you’re down to 4 cards or less you can spam it and heal up to 9 on Sybelle or Sebastian Baker in one activation. Draw Out Secrets also gives you some ranged scheming in a crew that otherwise doesn’t do that much.
Hamish thinks the Strange Lady is not quite there, and I agree. I think she has a lot of cool tools but is very expensive and often competing against Sybelle for a slot, and Sybelle is probably just better. The Strange Lady is extremely difficult to kill, and that matters; Sybelle’s Juggernaut is strong tech, but if an enemy ignores it – or if they just have a volume of attacks, via Onslaught and similar triggers – she will drop easily enough. Draw Out Secrets is probably the best thing on her card and can force through schemes like Ensnare and Leave Your Mark.
Keepside Strangers
These guys are very weird (I suppose, befitting their name)? They have Accomplice… sort of, just for your leader. They make Remains Markers for Bete and hand out Entranced for AKA Sebastian Baker, both without spending an AP or needing to hit a TN or suit… but the range is very short. Their melee attack is kind of unimpressive… except if they’re healthy and being forced to attack. They have one of the only ranged attacks in the Keyword… but it’s just okay.
Lots of strange things going on here! This is pretty clearly an AKA Sebastian Baker model, as it has lots of Entranced synergy, but it might be good there – he can certainly force it to attack, and having a Damage 3 Crit Strike attack with a raise value of 3 is solid. This is also one of your only card draw sources in keyword, and it doesn’t even strip the Entranced off enemies when it draws cards. The Remains markers are really just for Bete, but Take by the Hand is useful for everyone. The core issue here is that these guys need to be right up in the thick of the action to do their stuff, and if you put them there, they will die. Quickly. They have no defensive tech at all.
If you really like AKA Sebastian Baker, give them a try? Maybe? I’d hire them against lower-damage crews, but if you put this guy on the table against, say, Kin or Mercenary, you are going to feel really sad really quickly.
Dead Doxies
Dead Doxies are perhaps the most iconic Seamus minion: his many, many unlucky victims. They’re reasonably tough with 9 health and resilient, especially given the crew’s ready access to Concealment, but 7 stones is a pretty premium price for a minion, and 5/5 defensive stats means they won’t stay alive that long if targeted (particularly if they’ve been spending health for those Aura (Concealment) tokens). That said, it’s almost certainly correct to bring one every time, if only for the completely free start-phase Aura (Concealment) to avoid any chance of losing Seamus, and Hamish prefers to hire 2.
Fair Prey points to an offensive role for these distressing damsels, and their attacks are up to the task. Lure is the key here: a built in positive twist makes it much more reliable, and with the Sudden Strike trigger you can get a third melee attack, making that Damage 2 go a bit farther than it looks. Tear Apart isn’t that notable an attack, but if you’re bubbling up they can do scary damage, and if your opponent is bubbling up then you can get surprising mileage out of Pouncing Strike. They can also summon each other, which is extremely funny, but as the summon requires a 10, comes in within 1″ of an enemy, and only has 2 health, this is unlikely to come up much (unless they’re solo on a flank against a nearly-dead enemy they can summon off of and immediately kill).
Doxies hand out both types of token this crew cares about and Lure draws enemies to their doom. They are great enablers for both titles and should be near the top of your hire list.
Dead Dandies
The criticism of Seamus as a lighthearted depiction of a particularly vicious type of gendered violence is fairly apt. I don’t think introducing dead himbos really addresses that criticism, but it is funny.
Dandies are sort of a step down from Doxies, at one stone cheaper and with one fewer health. They don’t have quite as much built-in tech as the Doxies; while they can create Aura (Concealment) tokens, they do so on a trigger on an action that requires both a marker to target and has a TN of 7, so it’s not reliable. Treacherous Strike is kind of nice but is a bit redundant (Seamus is already perfectly capable of murdering anyone who gets isolated), although Stat 6 is a nice touch.
Part of the problem is that Proper Murder Mystery doesn’t actually work. It’s obviously meant to help Bete by generating the Remains markers she needs, especially with that crow trigger, but the crow trigger doesn’t work because it is a trigger that generates an action (Bete’s signature), which itself tries to generate another action (Charge), which is not allowed by the game rules. The “Charge exception” to the no-chain-generating-actions rule only allows a Charge generated by another action to declare its attack, it doesn’t allow you to generate a Charge using an action that was already generated by another action. If that makes sense. The point is – it doesn’t work.
Anyways, these guys are a significant enough downgrade from Doxies that, even at one stone cheaper, I’m inclined to say pass and just hire the Doxy unless you are really hard up for stones.
Mourners
After spending pretty much all of 3E on the shelf, Mourners finally have a chance to shine. They’re both cheaper and have less health than Dandies, continuing the downward progression, but they’re actually tougher to remove due to Disguised, and they can hand out Concealment more easily (even to themselves). They’re sort of The Doxies We Have At Home. Funeral procession is very strong, essentially giving a 5 cost minion three full AP to play with. Their attack isn’t great but it’s not why you take them: they are cheap, quick, annoying to remove, and they have a signature action that can remove a token from an ally within 4″ for a 4 of tomes. That’s great! There are a lot of tokens you don’t want to have! Hire these ladies!
Mind the Shadows
So when are you hiring Seamus? What pools does he do well into? You generally want Strategies where you have to stand and fight – Informants and Recover Evidence. He will struggle on Boundary Dispute (though Mourners being able to get a free walk makes them good can-kickers). Plant Explosives he can probably do, but there are other options in Resurrectionists that do it better.
You’ll want to look at the table, too. Seamus wants lots of blocking terrain. You are somewhat vulnerable to getting shot to pieces, so he doesn’t do too well on wide-open tables.
Be aware of anti-Demise tech; if your opponent declares Qi and Gong or Monk, they are very likely to bring Charm Warders, which can make Seamus, Last Breath very sad, and against Kastore you’ll likely face Incurable tokens. You don’t have to declare AKA Sebastian Baker into those masters, but it’ll be a lot harder to keep Last Breath alive.
This crew rewards forward planning. Seamus does not want to be stuck in combat; he wants to dart in, get his kill, and dart away to the next one. He’s doing most of your damage, so don’t let him be tarpitted. You also don’t have a lot of ways to score outside of “walking into position and Interacting to drop a Scheme Marker,” so remember Seamus is going to have to carry some of that load with Secret Passage. The call of murder is strong, but points win prizes.
Last Breath is the stronger title, but if you really think the game is going to be a slugfest into a bubble crew, AKA Sebastian Baker is perfectly respectable.
Here is Hamish’s sample list for those interested in trying out Redchapel:
Size: 50 – Pool: 4
Leader:
Seamus, The Last Breath
Totem(s):
Copycat Killer
Hires:
Madame Sybelle
Bete Noire
Dead Doxy
Dead Doxy 2
Mourner
Mourner 2
Dapperling
Carrion Fate Effigy
References:
Madness and Malice
The Dapperlings and Effigy are nice cheap little options to pad out your list and burn activations, or in the case of Dapperlings, stand on home objectives/guard Strategy Markers and not die. Always helpful!
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