Unboxing Malifaux - Brotherhood of the Rat

'The plague spreads...'

The 'Brotherhood of the Rat' Story Encounter contains enough parts for twelve miniatures though eight of those are Malifaux Rats. It also contains a single player and three player scenario for use in the game of Malifaux and a scenario for use in the Wyrd Games 'Through the Breach' RPG. The models are a perfect compliment to the Hamelin box set as Rat Kings and Rat Catchers work excellently with a Hamelin Crew...more rats are of course also pretty useful...

The 'Brotherhood of the Rat' models have been based in the same style as the Hamelin crew with which they'll be being used and my original metal Hamelin crew here. There's a 'sort-of' tutorial for how I made them here should you be interested.

This makes the Soulsstone value of the box...

Rat Kings (8, 8), Rat Catchers (6, 6), Malifaux Rats (2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2) which is an impressive 44 soulstones worth of models though in practice some of these models will appear as the game progresses through summoning or combination rather than being deployed as part of the crew. It's also worth noting that as it contains no Masters or Henchmen it can't be used as a stand alone crew box.

Sprues

The box has four sprues in it as well as the aforementioned cards. Here's pictures of both sides of them all...

Stat Cards

Wyrd Games didn't like my publishing pictures of both sides of the stat cards so you'll have to make do with just the fronts...

Story Encounter Booklet

Here's some sample pictures from the aforementioned scenario booklet.

Lets have a look at each of these models in turn. Should there be any assembly issues with any of the models then they will be listed in the appropriate section and you can view larger versions of the smaller pictures or instruction pictures by clicking on them.

Instructions

Some General Notes on Assembly

Many of these models contain quite small parts so depending on how dexterous you are you might consider getting yourself some tweezers. Dry-fitting is also always a good idea in case a part needs a tiny bit of extra filing or filling as some of the fits are quite tight. Where the parts on the sprue are quite thin (chains, weapon shafts, cables and the like) then it might be better to remove parts with a sharp scalpel rather than cutters.

Rat Kings

Assembled

The main body of this model consists of two halves and is simplicity itself to put together. It does however require the addition of several smaller thin parts in the form of a scarf, a belt piece and a couple of rat tails. I added the tail on the bottom of the cloak after putting the two halves together but you might find it easier to put that part in before putting the body halves together. Either way be careful is it's very thin indeed.

Rat Catchers

Assembled

Another pair of easy to assemble models. Neither have any particularly tricky parts and with the exception of the one rats tail being a bit thin these should give you no issues at all.

Here's some comparison pictures between the original metal versions and the new plastic ones...

Malifaux Rats

Assembled

You get two identical sprues of four rats each.

Three of these models consist of just two parts with the fourth consisting of four. Rats one to three just involve gluing both halves together (while being careful to not snap those delicate rat tails). The fourth is the most challenging as it has a tiny separate head piece, a tiny separate arm and...a tiny separate and delicate tail.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.