Weekly Waffle #403 – Cutting to the Core of the Morticians
29th November 2025
For this week’s Weekly Waffle I have stayed on the playing fields with more Guild Ball Mortician action for you. I’ve used the same scheme as last week and I’m beginning to settle into a bit of flow. The challenge I’m finding now is in which bits I decide to pick out in purple. I don’t want to do too much as it’s only really intended to be an accent. But at the same time it needs to make sense to the overall flow of the miniature. For Scalpel here it worked nicely to just use it not the belts around her hips. I was tempted to try and add more into other areas but this just seemed to be about the right amount.
I’ve also been using some gamers grass on the base just go give that little bit more interest. What I do find with this is that it doesn’t really make that much difference to the individual mini. But when you start to get a few miniatures alongside each other it does make them feel like they are all just that little bit different. I was finding that without the grass the bases felt a little bit drab and too much alike. Adding the grass, which is such a simple thing to do, really makes all the difference.
But what do you think of her.
You can see more Guild Ball miniatures at my gallery here
When it comes to the game, you know that feeling when your opponent has clearly read the room, spotted the trap, and still walked headlong into it? That moment where you don’t need to trick them, because they’ve already signed their own death warrant? That’s where Scalpel thrives.
If Obulus is the master puppeteer of the Morticians’ Guild, pulling strings, whispering secrets, and turning the pitch into his own personal chessboard. Then Scalpel is the one who walks up, smirks, and drives the knife in. Literally.
She’s the surgeon of the Morticians, the guild’s alternate captain, and one of the most direct expressions of the team’s philosophy. It’s not about whether you win or lose, it’s about how much psychological damage you can inflict while you do it.
And today, dear reader, we’re going to carve her open and see what makes her tick. Figuratively. Mostly.
Where Obulus rules by shadow and manipulation, Scalpel rules by… well, a scalpel. The woman has a reputation as one of the best surgeons in the Empire, though you’d never book an appointment willingly. Her bedside manner is nonexistent, her regard for human suffering is minimal, and her approach to surgery feels less like healing and more like morbid curiosity.
For Scalpel, the body isn’t sacred. It’s an experiment, a puzzle, a thing to be poked, prodded, and sliced until she finds out how it works, and, more importantly, how it stops working. That attitude spills directly into her role as captain. She doesn’t care about building bonds or playing to the crowd; she cares about demonstrating the power of cold, clinical precision.
And unlike Obulus, who terrifies with secrets, Scalpel terrifies with scalpel blades and scalpels to the face levels of violence. She isn’t subtle. She doesn’t need to be.
On the table, Scalpel is everything her lore promises: a whirling, slicing, repositioning nightmare who turns the enemy’s formation inside out.
If Obulus controls by making you feel like you’re not in charge, Scalpel controls by making you feel like your team is suddenly scattered across the pitch in the worst places imaginable.
Scalpel excels at repositioning enemy models. Her character plays let her drag opponents out of position, rip them from safety, or even fling them into the waiting arms of her teammates. If you thought you had a neat little defensive bubble, Scalpel’s here to tear it apart stitch by stitch.
Unlike Obulus, who plays a slower, subtler game, Scalpel is fast. She darts across the pitch like a scalpel blade across an operating table, punishing poor positioning and forcing your opponent to react. And let’s not beat around the bush, she hits harder than Obulus. While she isn’t a pure brawler in the Ghast or Casket mould, her ability to pile on damage while repositioning enemies makes her a terrifying dual threat.
With her speed and precision, she’s also capable of surprising goal runs. She’s not primarily a striker, but the Morticians love a captain who can threaten multiple victory conditions, and Scalpel does exactly that.
Scalpel’s play style is about dissection. She doesn’t just dismantle your plans; she dismantles your team. Players who enjoy fast, aggressive control will love her, she’s proactive where Obulus is reactive. She is at her best when she’s dragging pieces of the enemy team out of place. Once the team is stretched, she pounces, often supported by her Mortician cronies. Whether it’s taking out fragile strikers or disrupting heavy hitters before they activate, Scalpel punishes mistakes with surgical precision.
If you thought Obulus was frustrating, Scalpel brings a whole new flavour of misery. You set up your defensive lines, only for her to grab your key players and scatter them like someone upended the salt shaker.
She forces discipline in a different way, you can’t clump up too tightly, because she’ll punish you, but you can’t spread too thin either, because she’s fast enough to isolate targets.
The best advice? Don’t let her control the tempo. If you sit back and let her dictate the flow, she’ll cut you to ribbons. You need to hit her back, hard, and deny her the chance to reposition at will. Which is easier said than done.
There’s a certain archetype of gamer who gravitates toward Scalpel. They’re not the schemers (that’s Obulus’ crowd) and they’re not the big smashy types either (those people are still over in the Brewers or Butchers, laughing about how many dice they just rolled). No, Scalpel players are the precise ones.
They’re the folks who lay out their dice in neat rows, who measure every movement twice before moving a model once, and who definitely alphabetise their board game shelves. They love efficiency, they love neat little solutions, and they get a little glint in their eye when you mention the word “precision.”
Playing against them feels like being slowly dismantled in the most methodical way possible. Playing as them feels like doing surgery on your opponent’s strategy, and let’s be honest, sometimes that’s just deeply satisfying.
Scalpel is the Morticians’ answer to the question: what if Obulus, but knives? Where Obulus thrives on shadows and whispers, Scalpel thrives on movement and mayhem. She’s faster, more aggressive, and more direct, but she still embodies the Morticians’ core philosophy of control and disruption.
On the pitch, she’s a terror, pulling teams apart, carving up isolated targets, and never letting you feel comfortable. In the lore, she’s just as terrifying, a surgeon who sees people as experiments waiting to be cut open.
If you want a captain who controls the game through decisive, clinical cuts rather than subtle strings, Scalpel’s your woman. Just don’t expect your opponent to thank you for it.
That’s all I have for you this week. There will be more Mortician action for you next week as the mojo is still flowing and I’m enjoying my hobby time with these guys. Which for me is the key. I hope to see you all back here same time, same place next week. And until then I hope you all have a great week.
