Mad Caps

"Cautious calm has no place here—our drunken revels give us cheer!"

Mad caps are particularly volatile imps that congregate around a portable still. These hedonistic grymkin gleefully hurl volatile bottles of flammable moonshine at anyone foolish enough to wander near their raucous merriment. Unfortunates who quaff the liquor from their still are quickly transformed into speedy and unstable cask imps.

Basic Info

Abilities

• Template:Advance Deployment
• Boss only
  • Template:Officer
  • Template:Cask Tapper
  • Template:Catastrophic Explosion
  • Template:Mobile Artillery
  • Template:Vent Fumes

Weapons

• Boss
  • Template:Unarmed

• Grunts
  • Fiery Spirits - 6" range, 3" AOE, POW 12 ranged attack
    • Template:Fire Damage
    • Template:Continuous Fire

Theme Forces

• Template:Bump in the Night. They gain Rise in this theme.
• Template:Si

Thoughts on Mad Caps

Mad Caps in a nutshell

An extremely unique advance deploying artillery piece. The Mad Caps rely on creating living bombs instead of making traditional artillery attacks. Without a doubt one of the most unique units in the game.

Why Should I Include Mad Caps in my List?

Mad Caps are an extreme value option within Bump in the Night. They cost a very low amount of points, 4 is on par with a solo. But provide you with 2 competent grunts, and a Boss who will spawn between half a point and 9 points of free models for you. (9 points = 18 cask imps = 6 turns of rolling a 3. Its not 7 turns because we only count the turns that create a Cask Imp that will get an activation).

They are a solid Grymkin answer to infantry based defense skew - everything they do is non - blasts that aren't an attack, or blasts with continuous fire on the grunts.

Finally, they make your opponent make sub-optimal plays. Mad Caps have a very high value in psychologically effecting opponents who have suffered at the hands of cask imps before. Very often shots will be wasted into the cask imps as well.

Mad Caps are by no means an auto include, but they are a very powerful, extremely unique, and super fun addition to any Bump in the Night list

What About Vent Fumes?
Vent fumes is definitely an ability the Mad Caps have, but it is a very difficult ability to make effective use of. This is for a few reasons:

1. Mad Caps spawn living bombs, these bombs explode if they are knocked down or simply if you roll poorly on their activation. This generally means the most effective place for Mad Caps is not the middle of your army
2. Bump in the Night does not play many heavies, meaning stumbling drunk has less ideal targets
3. Bump in the Night has Rise as a theme benefit, meaning for many infantry being steady isn't that useful.
4. Piggybacks can potentially be pushed out of shield wall by stumbling drunk, which nullifies the extra tough they might make if they are steady
5. Two of the best Bump in the Night casters are Steady already (Old Witch 3, The Heretic)

So how do we use Vent Fumes effectively?

If you're up against a pop and drop caster, play your mad caps closer to your army. You don't even have to spawn cask imps. the 3" aura of steady can potentially save your key units from becoming easy targets. In particular make sure you drop cask imps within 3" instead of within 4" so that they themselves become steady and wont automatically blow up when say, Kreoss1 uses his feat.

Mad Caps can also be used to negate effects that will cause knockdown, such as the melee of a Siege Animantarax or guns that cause knockdown such as the Hurricane's main guns.

Combos & Synergies

Generally there is not much synergy for the Mad Caps beyond offering them protection from attacks. They are a self sufficient unit with a very unique mechanic.

• Old Witch 3 is able to provide protection against ranged attacks for both the Mad Caps and the cask imps they spawn. This is a very potent combo
• Death Knell is an extremely corner case synergy as it is not traditionally taken in Bump, but the Mad Caps can create a constant source of corpses for it to collect
• The Dreamer can shelter them from shooting with cover and buff the accuracy of the grunts
• The King of Nothing What's worse than Mad Caps creating guided living bombs that walk straight at your lines? Mad Caps creating guided living bombs behind a cloud wall
• The Wanderer Fog of War can bring the Mad Cap boss to quite a respectable defensive statline. Especially if they can find a hill to sit on.
• Hollowmen can entice the enemy forwards to try and shut down their gunfire, which can bring them in range of cask imps. This is even more true for melee forces who suffer devastating losses against cask imps.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• They're hard to protect. 13/15 is not an exceptionally hard to kill statline and a boosted pow 10 will kill them more often than not.
• Stumbling drunk is not optional, and can sometimes push your models closer to the enemy than they began, putting them in more danger.
• Cask imps that they spawn can be a genuine threat to your own army. They can be thrown or slammed which can cause all kinds of chaos.
• The Boss's Catastrophic Explosion can kill your own models just as well as it kills enemy models.

Tricks & Tips

• The Catastrophic Explosion is not an attack, so it can still drift up to 6", even if you put it down 5" away (the smallest result on 2D6+3). Choose the point of deviation accordingly.
• Catastrophic Explosion is neither an attack, nor a blast - so girded/blast immune models still get hurt, and attack-related abilities (Vengeance, etc.) won't trigger.
• The Grunts in the unit have one of the most effective guns in Grymkin. They're constrained to a short leash around the Boss, but there are many opportunities to kill multiple models with an aoe3 with continuous fire. Let alone a pow 12.
• Placed behind LOS blocking terrain can lead to them simply pumping out an army of cask imps with nothing to stop them
• The Boss can mind flags for you by placing a cask imp on it every turn. The imp will score the flag, and even if your opponent kills it or the imp wanders off (the movement is non optional) the Boss can simply place another imp down.

Other

Trivia

• Released with the Faction release (2017.06)
• Name is possibly derived from the (Mad) Hatter from Alice in Wonderland