Hello again, fellow Wyrdos!

It’s time for your Monday Model, and I’m expanding our view a bit this week: we’ll be investigating the versatile members of the Puppet keyword, and how they work together to benefit their fellow Neverborn. We’ll be looking more at the concepts these models work with rather than a by-the-numbers breakdown of each, so we can get a better look at the bit picture they weave together for us. I don’t want to keep you dangling on a string, so let’s dive in!

First off: Everything we’re going to talk about, of course works with Collodi, who is currently a member of the Dead Man’s Hand club. I can’t stress enough that while this means by default Collodi is not allowed in competitive play–but be sure to check with your local Henchmen to see if they plan to allow them. I know the two Henchmen I play with regularly are allowing DMH masters, and I’ve heard a good number of others are following suite, so be sure to ask! Either way, Collodi and the rest of the DMH masters are perfectly fine to bring into a friendly game. With that out of the way, I won’t be pulling Collodi into this article any more, but rather focusing on what these Puppets can do for the rest of the faction as Versatile models.



Our first act is the building block of the suite of versatile Puppets, the Wicked Doll. These only cost 3ss and are not Insignificant. Their defenses are a bit low and they only have 3 health, but they have Stealth to minimize the opponent’s chance to target them before they have assisted your crew. The Puppets all work at least a little bit with Staggered and the Wicked Dolls are no exception, causing enemy models with Staggered who start their Activation in the Dolls’ 3″ aura to take a point of damage. Their melee attack only does a 1/2/4, but if its target has Staggered, it ignores negative flips to the attack and damage flips, and even without Staggered, the target has to discard a card or else it cannot take Actions on its card until the end of the turn. That would leave them with only Walk, Charge (with no attack afterwards), Concentrate, Assist, breaking Destructible terrain, and Interact. All that, plus a trigger to give the target Slow and end the Doll’s activation, and another to, you guessed it, hand out Staggered, all with a stat 5. And again, the Doll is only 3ss.



The real reason you’ll find to bring at least one of these little puppets into any Neverborn crew though, is their ranged attack, Threaten. With an 8″ range they can do this from relative safety beyond Stealth range, and give the target Adversary for your choice of keyword, vs Wp, also at a stat 5. They have a trigger to place the Doll into base contact afterwards as well. Combine that with their bonus action to Creep Along for a free push towards another friendly model in their LoS, and their Accomplice ability, quite often you’ll see them Creep up, Threaten something to give the rest of your crew positive flips to attack it for the rest of the turn, and then scheme or walk off, if they didn’t Concentrate for Focus to help Threaten really stick, and possibly chain activate into a friendly model more adept at making good use of that Adversary. Extremely useful for 3ss.

Not useful enough, you say? Bring along Vasilisa for 8ss, much better defenses backed up by Armor +2, and an ability to automatically give Staggered to every enemy model within a 2″ aura of a friendly Puppet at the start of every turn. Idea being the turn before you double-teamed an opposing model as I mentioned, but left the Doll within 2″ of the enemy, preferably with their large, scary buddy engaging them in such a way they cannot reach the Doll. Now when they activate the next turn they’ll be taking an automatic damage from the Doll’s aura, and will be ripe for the Doll to attack them for some surprising 4 damage if needed. In addition to helping with that set up, Vasilisa also gives all friendly models that begin their Activation within a 3″ aura of her, including herself, +1 Mv, and when she walks she can pick up a friendly Sz 1 Puppet nearby and place it in base contact after the walk. More free movement for those Wicked Dolls? Why not! She has the same attack as they do, but with a stat 7, retaining the trigger for gaining two different ones; one to make a Staggered target–which she’ll already be ignoring any negative flips to the attack and damage against, remember–suffer +2 damage, and the other to drop a Scrap Marker in base contact with the target if it is an enemy construct. She can also summon a Puppet minions using a Scrap Marker and a Mask–Wicked Dolls for a 6, Stitched Together for a 9. As an Enforcer she can’t stone for the Mask, but her summons also don’t attach a Summon Upgrade, they just come in Slow. Add to all that two bonus actions, one to heal friendly constructs a good amount, the other to make a friendly Minion take an action, and she is a rather unassuming, model to look at, but surprisingly effective and downright brutal when used well.

Hinamatsu is the Puppet Henchman, and quite frankly, she’s a blender on legs, and she’s not going down easily. Moderate defenses with more Armor +2, 8 health and Soulstone use as a Henchman, along with a bonus action pulse to hand out Distracted on a failed Wp duel will keep her alive against anything but a storm of ping damage or a good number of armor ignoring attacks. And that’s if they survive her offensive side. A high move that increases by 2″ when she charges will get her where she’s going, combined with a stat 6 sword with an inbuilt positive flip and a trigger for Onslaught and another to ignore Armor, all on top of Flurry for a possible–nay, fairly probable–6 attacks, and she will kill things, even with her average damage track. If something survives and tries to disengage, she doesn’t slow them down; with Wicked she gets an actual free attack against them, including triggers. If all that weren’t enough, her other attack is a Lure, with triggers to give the target Distracted +1, and to take a free melee attack if the target gets close enough, with an extra positive to the duel. And one more thing: since she shares Youko’s keyword allowing her to be hired into the Qi & Gong crew in Ten Thunders, she also has their ability to gain a Pass Token if the opponent has any revealed Schemes, and allowing her to spend a Pass Token to gain a positive flip to any duel she performs.

And remember, as a Henchman, she can lead the crew instead of a Master, which would give her another action, bumping up her maximum number of attacks per activation to 8! As a Leader she’s also able to hire in a Coryphee or their Duet form, any Effigy, and other Qi & Gong models, as well as the Widow Weaver, who counts as having the Puppet Keyword when hiring–which, as a Henchman herself, means she can also lead a crew and have the same hiring options, except she swaps out Qi & Gong for Nightmare. Anyone who’s assuming Henchman-lead crews aren’t going to be as effective haven’t looked closely at some of the options like these two Henchmen, I think.

The Widow Weaver isn’t a versatile Puppet, but I want to cover her briefly here, as I think in crews bringing versatile Puppets she’ll be seen decently often as an Out of Keyword hire, and even more often in Puppet crews, especially in certain schemes. She has the same summon action that Vasilisa has, with two improvements: as a Henchman, she can stone for the Mask, and when a Nightmare kills any enemy within a 6″ aura of her, she gains a Stuffing Token, which she can use instead of a Scrap Marker when summoning Puppet Minions. Stitched Together are not only Puppets, but also Nightmares, so they can create a cycle of summoning for with Widow Weaver. That’s all she specifically does to interact with the Puppets, but it’s enough. The rest of her card is some excellent movement tricks, beginning with a bonus action to place a 50mm severe, destructible Web within 6″, which combines wonderfully with her ability to place in base contact with such a Web within 12″ when she activates, and of course, a spider never gets caught in her own web, so she is unaffected by them. She can also Terrorize a target to push it away from her, possibly healing herself and damaging them, or creating a Web. Her melee attack is another average damage track, but can also create more Webs, or place the target into a Web within 8″.

Stitched Together also aren’t versatile, but I should probably cover them quickly as well. Primarily that they can, using a bonus action many Nightmares share, reveal the top three cards of their deck and remove one non-Joker from the game. Most of the time this will be done to remove low cards, but there won’t always be a low card in those top three. Luckily the Stitched can also, once per Activation, chose to use a removed card instead of flipping, which also returns that card to the game. This works scarily well with their signature action, Gamble Your Life, which makes them and an enemy flip the top card of their deck (or a removed card, if the Stitched so choose) which cannot be Cheated, and whoever gets the lower card takes a hefty chunk of damage. Unless the target is Hard to Wound, as the damage flip is a flip, if the Stitched didn’t choose a removed card for the actual gamble, they can choose it here. All of that, and a built in trigger to draw a card–which will also discard afterward if the target wasn’t killed.

Looking at all of these models together, you can see a few different package deals to bring them into a Neverborn crew. Aside from Hinamatsu or Widow Weaver leading a Puppet/Qi & Gong or Puppet/Nightmare crew, respectively, there’s also bringing either or both of them and Vasilisa as a Puppet summoning/Staggered machine, bringing along some Stitched and Wicked Dolls as you’d like. Or, for a cheaper option, Bring Vasilisa and a Wicked Doll or two for some possible summoning, auto-Staggered, and some impressive damage. If you just have a few stones extra and aren’t sure what to do with them, bring a Wicked Doll for a great deal on movement economy and handing out Adversary for your keyword of choice.

It should be fairly obvious that Dreamer and his Nightmares will make good use of all this, since Widow Weaver and Stitched Together will both show up plenty in Nightmare crews. Adding Wicked Dolls for Adversary and Staggered, and auto ping damage if you also bring Vasilisa, and not only will the opposing crew find it ever more difficult to get away from the Nightmares, they’ll have more issues scheming and scoring in general, especially in games where the scheme pool requires spreading out.

Lucius will also appreciate some Wicked Dolls and Vasilisa, as his core crew does not have an obvious big damage dealer, but several of his favorite models to bring add +2 to their damage track if the target has Staggered.

Zoraida can assist in Vasilisa or the Widow Weaver setting up to Summon by sacrificing her Voodoo Dolls to leave Scrap Markers in addition to drawing her a card.

Titania’s Fae have quite a few things going for their crew, but a cheap, mobile scheme runner isn’t one of them. I’ve also found giving them a little extra push offensively will help break through some tough crews. A Wicked Doll or two is just what the Queen ordered, handing out Adversary (Fae) before rushing off to scheme. This could also possibly be said of Euripides, though in their case, it’s nice to have something on a 30mm base to fit where their 50mm bases can’t.

I’m sure there are other options I’m missing, but I’m not trying to be comprehensive here, you get the highlights. Adversary for your keyword of choice is amazing for 3ss, handing out auto-Staggered leading to auto-damage is also good, though more of an investment, etc.

One other thing to consider, not many opponents will hear you declare Neverborn and necessarily plan for a way to break through armor. You can bring Hinamatsu and Vasilisa, hopefully summon a Stitched or two or even pay an extra stone for them, and they will last longer than expected for Neverborn’s expected glass cannon-esque showing, though that has been a bit less faction-wide in M3E. Either way, armor’s not generally an expected theme for the faction, and knowing to bring some when the declared opposing Master is known for bringing heavy hitters, say, the Viks, might just give you the edge you need to tangle their strings.

What do you think of the versatile Puppet options? Which tricks with them did I not mention? What versatile options do you want to hear about in the future? Tune in next week for a look at the versatile uses of mortal coils that have fallen into disrepair for the Ressers!