During my foray into the world of Malifaux a few years ago, one of the starter crews I picked up was the Hired Guns set featuring Von Schill and his crew of mercenary soldiers, the Freikorps. While the group’s aesthetic is perhaps just slightly too modern for my headcanon view on Malifaux, the miniatures themselves look great, with a uniformity which gives them a very cohesive look unseen in many other crews.
Although this starter box came with a good selection of miniatures, they’re all human in size (well, except for the Steam Trunk, an odd little wagon full of weapons and upgrades), and something I feel every Malifaux crew needs is a big, handy-looking character. Like so many of those group shots of superhero teams, having an oversized muscle guy standing at the back looming over the rest of them – like Hulk in The Avengers, The Thing in Fantastic Four, or Colossus in X-Men – is almost compulsory.
For the Freikorps, my muscle guy came in the form of a muscle girl, Hannah. I’m not very up on the actual lore of the Freikorps, but from what I can gather she acts as its second-in-command and chief archivist. Using her vast knowledge on the vagaries of magic and with access to resources beyond most other people, she built herself an enormous exoskeletal rig for the express purpose of reaching the books on the top shelves! Needless to say, this suit is capable of some other feats on the battlefield…
This box came with a single model, Hannah, a large 50mm base, her stat card, and a single upgrade card which only she can use.
As with so many of my modelling projects, this one remains unbuilt. One day. One day this beast of a model will find itself glued together with a coat of camouflage paint and Hannah will stand threateningly behind the rest of my Freikorps like the badass she is! But probably not today.