A Bump in the night, the bell chimes at midnight and something catches your eye as you fear the dark… Hey Folks! It’s your warden of Arkham once again The Warp Forge comin’ at you with a frightful crew reveal!
So over at Knights Models we have a new crew finally come to the Streets of Gotham and I’m so, so hyped for it because this boy is looooooong overdue… 10 years in fact! Finally, since their announcement way back in 1st Edition we get the Crew for my second favourite Arkhamite and it’s none other than Jonathan Crane and The Scarecrow Crew! Or as we in the community have coined it The Scarecrew!
Johnny boy over here is looking feisty upon his nightmarish horse (That I really hope they call Gunpowder, just to tie in with those sweet Sleepy hollow references) and it really makes me wonder how he will actually play in the Crew. Old Jonny boy here is known for creeping around the back alleys of Gotham giving the kids the sweet, sweet Fear Toxin and while it’s no secret that this Scarecrow will be giving those sweet tricks to his “Volunteers*” the fact he’s on a horse hints that he’s gonna be as swift as the wind and his speed crazy and I wonder how will we see him play along with the rest of his Crew.
Speaking of his playstyle, Cranes gotta lot going on already as we’ve been told on the Batman Miniatures Game Article over on Knight Models website with his army of Nightmares these nightmarish Malifaux cosplayers are fragile and can be knocked down pretty quickly, but what makes them interesting is that they appear to have a respawn mechanic so they’ll just pop back without any effects or damage on them giving them that hallucination feel. They also don’t move but have a radius on how they operate as they spawn in on places Suspect Markers (They work like Malifaux scheme markers for you Malifaux players) and they don’t attack conventionally either.
How they attack is they attack the core of your being by targeting the enemy Willpower (that’s the Leadership stat for you 40k players) as the stat they need to attack you. No doubt Crane and his group of sickos will have ways to lower that Willpower stat to make you truly feel the fear!
In addition, The Nightmare have the tangible fear rule which allows you to play around with your hand by rotating the cards in your hand with the ignore the dense and attack values in your opponent crew. This could be very handy against high Willpower models like Batman and Deathstroke.
What’s more is in the past few days KM have been slowly showing off more of the models in the Crew for the more mortal members being a lot of Tim Burton wannabes in lab coats and Ozzy Osborn glasses. Looks like they’ll have a hand to make sure you get the right** treatment and helping lead them is Fright before she turned of the Good Doctor Crane*** and returning to the crazy game, we all love it’s none other than Hugo Strange!
This crew is looking really good. This is very much the mad scientist crew and I’m all here for that. I’m hoping for some more scarecrow looking henchmen with just potato sacks over their heads, perhaps they could be patients of Arkham getting into the Halloween vibes but only time will tell.
So, there we have it folks. The new Crew this month and it’s a much beloved Arkham Rouge taking the spotlight. All I can say is I look forward to seeing what comes next and I deffo look forward to pre-ordering all of it at the end of the month! As always if you’re looking for awesome mats check out the Frontline Gaming Store and this is your Warden signing out. I’ll see you in the Next Article, Same Bat-Channel! Same Bat-Time! Same Bat-Place!
– The Warp Forge
*I don’t know how much he’s paid them to be volunteers or if they are volunteers at all…
**The right treatment is a very subjective and loose term here at Arkham…
*** Fright is available in the Black Mask boxset already but that model was after she turned Crane into the Scarebeast that one time. The Scraebeast is basically The Hulk but for Johnny Crane rather than Bruce Banner. Yeah, it was a crazy story but a fun one to boot!