As the Cult continues moving towards completed, I think it’s time to post up their other playstyle-defining Deckhand – Sansâmes. Translated from French, it means “without souls” and that’s exactly what they are: the kind of living, kind of dead “zombies” of the Freebooter’s Fate world that take inspiration from living voodoo zombies rather than the standard infectious zombie we see more commonly.

The Zombie Crew

Here’s all of the Sansâmes I’ve finished so far: I have a few more, but there’s only so many Deckhand models I can paint before I start wanting to get something else ready.

Surprisingly picture heavy, right? That’s because I needed several of these soulless husks to wander around the game board, so I figured better to have too many prepared than too few. Also, this isn’t even all of them, so I’ll probably end up posting more as time goes on (and as I get more of them).

Painting-wise, these were pretty basic. I took my usual skintone recipes and made sure that the highlights were mixed with a gray color to ensure that it desaturates and gives a sort of ashen, bloodless appearance. Seeing as they’re still technically ‘alive’ in the game’s setting, I avoided too much in the way of overt rot or anything like that, but there’s tinges of it from my old habits painting the undead. I think #3 has the best overall skin for this group, with #1 needing some refinement and #2 needing to be refined from the chalkiness that ensured when I started too light.

Clothing was, as usual, meant to look worn out and tattered. I tried for a cool green/blue dress on #2, but I’m not quite satisfied with how it feels yet. Maybe I’ll redo it at some point, but the faded look does work well enough.

The red accents should be pretty easy to see on everyone, as well – it’s going to be weird when I paint models that don’t have that random splash of red on them anymore. I opted to make them somewhat more dominant on these particular models, as well; if you’re pulling out Sansâmes, then the Cult is no longer worried about being subtle and they should be nice and clearly visible.

Finally, the (admittedly small) NMM on #2 and #3 came out well enough. It was a lot of using oranges and browns over a warm gray, to make the iron tools look very badly deteriorated. It was a quick little effect, and I’m certainly seeing progress in how I think about the process.

So what’s the deal with all these dead people?

Sansâmes – and their very important linked rules, Numskull and Souldriver – are a Cult specialty that almost no other crew has access to (Yes, I’m aware there are a couple of discontinued ELTC models with Souldriver, along with the limited-edition model Calamite Balfour who can lead a Pirate crew, but let’s not split hairs here) and that gives them a lot of cheap fodder. It’s also one of the most elegant ways I’ve seen to represent controlling semi-mindless minions on a tabletop game, which I’ll go into further.

To hire a model with Numskull, you need a model with Souldriver to let you hire them. At the start of each turn, all the Numskull models contribute a point to a pool of actions, which can be assigned to them when they’re activated but before they act. You can only do this if the Souldriver is still able to participate in the game – if they’re panicking, then they don’t have the ability to control the pool and the Numskulls don’t do anything. If the Souldriver is taken out of action, then the Numskull models just stand around doing nothing. The Souldriver can also spend some of their own vitality to add another action to the action pool once per turn, representing extra exertion to ensure that the mindless creations are getting detailed instructions.

This is remarkably elegant, to my eyes. They’ve created a mechanic where you’re once again incentivized to take at least two – that gives you the actions to keep moving them forward each turn or using two on a single model for a sudden surge forward or an attack. They need a controller, but they don’t need to be micromanged by them by staying in a certain radius or testing to see if they listen; they just shamble along whenever their Souldriver commands them through the mystical connections they share. It also makes very clear that – since each Souldriver can only control a certain number of these Numskulls – you need to protect them to keep large portions of your crew from being useless standing targets.

Mechanically, they’re your classic zombies: tough, but not exactly fast on their feet. They are also cheap – 30 doubloons per Sansâme, which is maybe the 2nd-cheapest Deckhand in the game. Suddenly, the Cult’s requirement of 2 Deckhands per Specialist makes a lot more sense, because they can very easily meet that with some cheap models. They’re hard to put down, being immune to poison, morale tests, and being removed from play via critical hits, but they make up for it by being unable to perform complex actions. Note that this includes charging into melee combat, so they’re more of a slow grind forward than anything else.

Hobby Progress

I finished these Sansâmes off today, obviously, and got started on some white cloth for my next group of models. I am running low on palette paper, so it might be time to get more or start trimming my usual parchment paper to size for my wet palette. It’s been so long since I’ve had the ability to do these daily hobby tasks that I’m really enjoying the regularity of everything.