Box front featuring the artwork in all its full-colour glory
In this part of my look down memory lane, I’ll be covering the Open Graves starter set, a box designed to get you on your way to fielding the (sadly deceased, see below) Resurrectionist Master Nicodem. My motivation for picking this box up was, I’ll be honest, avarice. My favoured faction at the time was the Resurrectionists (for those that aren’t familiar with Malifaux, these are the folks who deal in all manner of necromancy) and the motivation that Nintendo so perfectly captured with their Pokémon slogan got the better of me: I just had to catch ‘em all.
Masters in Malifaux tend to have their own schtick, a defining characteristic which marks them different from their peers, and Nicodem is no exception. In his case, an ability to summon corpses from the grave is what sets him apart. While most Resurrectionist Masters can do this to some extent, nobody has mastered the art quite like Nicodem, and it’s not uncommon to see his crews end a game with more models on the table than they started with! For this reason, I picked up a box of Mindless Zombies, but that’s a set for another article…
Box back showing the model renders
So what models do you get? Well, there’s the sinister mortician Nicodem obviously. He’s shown in a dynamic, very thematic pose, bionic leg prominently on display and in the act of raising some poor soul from his grave. There’s also his loyal gravedigger Mortimer, who looks just like you’d imagine a lower-class Victorian oik would, and appears to be in the act of robbing a grave. He even comes complete with his own necklace of ears! Next up is Nicodem’s personal totem, the Vulture, a design which is sufficiently stylised to give it a truly menacing appearance- and the spine-trailing skull in its talons certainly helps too! Rounding the crew out are a trio of Punk Zombies to add numbers and a little punch. I’m not really sure why they mixed a samurai look in with that of 80s punk culture, but it somehow works, and the models are well posed.
Box contents
Other items included in the box are 6 stat cards for the models, their relevant bases, and a selection of upgrade cards for use by either Nicodem or Mortimer. This hands out a soulstone total of 33 for the models base, plus the option to up it a little with the upgrades. That’s a pretty respectable total for a starter set.
One last thing to include here is that it has been a long time since I’ve been actively interested in Malifaux, but while putting this article together I found out that Nicodem is now dead in the fluff. Apparently he was tricked into a fight with the Guild’s Lady Justice, and she put a beatdown on him before destroying his body beyond any chance of resurrection. So now he’s a disembodied consciousness held in a soulstone carried by Mortimer. Those Guild swine!