On the Painting Table ... Nuclear Winter

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MERCS – In and effort to complete my collection I've started painting a Kezi-Waza force. I really like the look of the models and can't wait to get them on the table. After opening the box I was disappointed to see I was missing some parts. The leader's missle wasn't in the box. I've contacted Brian at mercsminis and he assured me they'd get the part right out to me. While I patiently wait for that to arrive I got to work assembling the rest of the team. 

First thing I noticed is these are particularly fiddly to put together the arms didn't seem to match up as nicely as the other MERCS models I've assembled. After a bit of pinning they fit together pretty much as pictured on the box. There is a nasty gap with the cloaked sniper head that I need to fill with greenstuff and the Heavy Hybrid wouldn't hold his gun with both hands no matter how I tried to position the arms. Eventually I got it to stick with only a slightly noticable gap behind the arm. I mounted these to my urban base set and am happy with how they look. 

After priming them with a dark grey primer I went to work painting the armor plates. I opted for the "official" orange scheme to match the dice that came in the box. The fabric is a nice khaki brown. 

Jungle Fever (A MERCS Three-Way)

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MERCS - After my regular Malifaux Demo night, a few of the guys stuck around to play some MERCS. Since I already had a swamp board set up we decided to play a three-way game in the swamps.

Prior to the game starting we set-up some ground rules so the game didn't devolve into shooting from your deployment zone.

• No shooting from your deployment zone turn one

• Plants are infinitely high tubes originating from the base

• Set-up is as close to an equilateral triangle as possible

• Last man standing wins

I chose to play my KemVar, leaving the sniper on the bench. My opponents played Keizai Waza and sefadu. For the deployment I set-up two groups of two MERCS and the Heavy holding my deployment zone, in what I thought was the perfect spot to cover the board. (having forgotten the ground rules we set-up during deployment, it wasn't as sweet as I thought).

he game played hard and fast with the Waza player spreading out over the board, and sefadu coming at both opponents with a two pronged attack. I was able to neutralize the Waza sniper with my demo. Once my Heavy was set and overwatching things got interesting. I unloaded with him and killed (2) sefadu, (1) Waza and my assassin because of his sweet position. This also triggered two overwatches from the sefadu and Waza players which finished off the carnage my Heavy started.

The sefadu Demo took out my Leader and Monkey Wrench with several salvos of Fire grenades. After another crazy Overwatch trigger fest the sefadu player was eliminated and I just had my Heavy and Demo left. The cagey Waza player creeped up taking advantage of the tree cover (which I forgot blocked LOS completely) and was able to pick me off for the win.

The more I play this game the more I love it. I can't really see it as a competitive game, but as something to play just to relax and have fun it's really worth the low cost of entry. We were discussing this after the game and realized that for the amount that I paid (several price increases ago, remember when Rhinos were less than $30) for the transports in my Space Marine company, you can have all the factions, battlefoam bag, terrain mats, GF9 Tokens and rule book for this game. Think about that for a minute.