Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

I finished up the last member of my initial Scarecrow crew, Scarecrow.  He was a different model to paint when compared to the militia members.  While I went with red and light grey for the Henchmen, Scarecrow is wearing worn out dark brown and black.  He will definitely stand out from his minions.  The red liquid in his tubes and syringes will help to tie him into the crews colour palette though.

I had a hard time with the face, my fine detail brush is starting to split and lose bristles.  Time soon to invest in a new one I guess.  I tried to give him fiery eyes to match the pumpkins on the base.

While I have yet to win a game with my Scarecrow crew, I have enjoyed playing with it.  I think I am getting a little better each time.  It plays very different from my Joker or Batman crew that I am used to playing.  I would probably do better with it if I took more low level henchmen and drop Diablo.

While Diablo is a cool looking model and fits into my theme, he has yet to prove his worth.  He is actually more of a liability for me.  In my last game with him, there were several moments early in the game that his spray template attack would have been great.  However I continually passed the willpower check for "Regrets" (start of activation make a Willpower check, if Diablo passes he can not attack, if he fails he can attack as normal).  In fact I did not fail it until the last turn (the game was long lost by that point).

He does have some limited uses when he passes his willpower.  You can put him into base to base with an opponent to give another model the out number bonus (-1 defense).  Alternatively you could just have him run objectives.  However with a Move characteristic of 2 with no movement bonus he is an average speed.  He also cost 50 rep and $200 funding, so he is not cheap.  A few Arkham inmates would do it better.

There is another seedier option to improve his abilities.  You could keep him near Scarecrow (or one of the models Scarecrow can use to release his fear gas).  You purposefully gas Diablo, hoping to fail the willpower check.  If he fails the test by 3-7 points he will gain "Terror 1,2, or 3".  This will lower his willpower by the Terror level.  This would then increase the likelihood of him failing his "Regrets" rule when you activate him, allowing him to attack more reliably.

However, the down side is that when his Willpower drops, so does his action counters.  Less action counters means less effect or options when he activates (hopefully he would still have two to set something on fire).  Also if you fail the "Inspire Fear" test by 8 or more, the model is removed as a casualty...

In the end I "regret" hiring him into my campaign crew.  

I watch the Wonder Woman movie this week, so now I am taking a small break from the militia to paint the Amazonian warrior for my DC Justice League team.

Kevin