Nicodem
This figure is not tournament legal unless the tournament says so. Nicodem is considered to be Dead Man’s hand and only usable when allowed. Dead Man’s Hand Stat Card
Nicodem, is the zombie horde lord; able to easily buff and heal his own crew as well as summon new models into the game. While not an offensive caster, Nico is adept at drowning his opponents in a sea of powerful undead minions. He is very reliant on the generation of Corpse counters and must manage this resource well to succeed.
He does not have great mobility and does not even have a charge range. Hint: he should stay out of melee combat. He does not even have a MI attack so that is another clue that his model works his magic away from the front lines.
Decay is a heal and deal spell, with blast damage and blast healing of 2 on your friendly undead. Since it’s a has no gun icon, there’s no randomization or benefits from soft cover. Decay is what you keep the low cards in your hand for, it is much easier to get the blasts in if you target your own models in combat, cheat in a low card for their defensive flip and then catch the enemy (or multiple enemies!) with the blast template. Nothing frustrates an opponent more that watching his models take damage from the same attack that heals your undead. The Desiccation trigger allows you to discard a nearby (8″) corpse Marker to fully heal one of the Undead Healed by the action, while this seems like a worthwhile trigger, it is more of a trap as each Corpse counter discarded this way could have been used to create an entirely new undead minion instead.
(1) Rigor Mortis, is an offensive cast which grants Slow to the target or Fast if it’s a friendly undead. This essentially trades ones of Nico’s Ap to deny the opponent one or give one of your other models one. With a double Crow trigger, he can also have the target suffer 3 damage, which can make the slowing trade very much worth the investment. This competes for AP with Nicodem’s reanimate ability. Is giving one model an extra AP better than summoning in another model that will contribute 2 AP per turn that it is alive. If you are out of corpse tokens and have an AP left
Rigor Mortis is more than worth while, however 2 AP per turn is more efficient and Malifaux is a game of AP. One general good use of Slow is that enemy with only 1 AP cannot charge at you, this is good against enemy heavy hitters so consider wisely to take the chances.
Nicodem has 14 wounds which is the highest in the game, however his DF is below average so sometimes those wounds can go away quite quick. His WP can be tough to cut through. Nicodem also has Impossible to Wound. Like Hard to Wound this gives a negative twist to damage flips against Nico, but it also prevents cheating regardless of how many positives your opponent may have. The other nice bonus is that models that ignore Hard to Wound will not ignore Impossible to Wound as it is a different ability. If you have an abundance of corpse markers Chime of Sorrow can help make him last longer and really frustrate an opponent since they will have to cut back through his wounds.
Embrace Death
This allow Nicodem to discard nearby Corpse counters (6′) for a +1 bonus to all Casting Actions for this activations. This is a good ability in a tight spot when you need to create undead and don’t have the cards for it, or really need to get a Decay severe through on an enemy. As with all abilities that Nicodem has that are fuelled by Corpse counters, it must be planned as each corpse counter used this way is one less free undead model.
Death’s Whip
This is Nicodem’s ability that makes him shine compared to many other summoning models. Any model friendly undead summoned within 6′ of Nicodem are immune to Slow. This means that any model he summons is operating at almost full abilities (still can’t interact on turn its summoned) when it appears. He is able to quickly raise and get undead forward towards objectives and enemies.
Corpse Conductor
Another excellent ability that allows your nearby undead a positive flip to Melee attacks and defensive flips. This makes undead close to Nicodem very deadly combined with the Death’s Whip ability, especially if summoned late into a melee where the opponent believe all the activations are done! All of these benefits are enough to keep the crew together, but that exposes one of the crew’s major weaknesses.
Success with Nicodem can be very reliant on access to corpse counters, to fuel new minions and some abilities and as such including models in his crew that can generate free Corpse counters (not created by killing models) can be of great benefit to him. Models such as Mortimer and Canine Remains can easily do this as well as some upgrades like Corpse Bloat’
Nicodem has a decent cache of 3 Soulstones. While this is a decent amount Nicodem can do very well with a high cache and I have found it best myself to max this out in every game to 7. Nicodem functions best when you have as many Crows as possible in your hand and as such most turns its is a good idea to burn a Soulstone for the additional 2 cards at draw time. This lets you cycle faster it find all those Crows you need. Getting the Crows into your hand is much better than having to use the Soulstone later to add a suit to a casting of Re-Animator.