thegoatgod_pan

Liliths most important ability is Tangle Shadows and it is only cast 5, prevent it from going off at all costs and you will severely screw her activations. If it succeeds you simultaneously lose a model and get an enemy model in your face. Prevent it and Lilith is out of position and has nothing to do but try again. Save a card or two for blocking it. Coryphee can shred her and her crew outside the range of black blood, especially with pushes and the impossibility of charging that they bring. Generally speaking, with Colette playing the schemes is a lot easier than playing for blood: best case scenario is ignoring Lilith, teleporting around scheme markers while dropping some more, keeping coryphee blocking up the charge lanes and eliminating the tots before they grow up. Finally, if you do want blood: bring Howard or the Mech Rider. Prompting Howard around for a turn with Colette and Cassandra can end the game: Howard will go through Nephilim like a hot knife through butter and he too can engage them from further than an inch preventing black blood from taking effect. Mech Rider can spam mannequins, ice gamin, metal gamin and other scheme runners to overwhelm the tots: Lilith doesn't have a reliable way to make more, even with Nekima around.

Mr. Tannen is great with Lilith because the +2 masks helps get off Tangle Shadows, and if you keep him near Lilith, prevents opponents from delivering the message or distracting or cheating cards against all of Liliths attacks (and/or fears given form) Juju and McTavish are good for swamp fiend Lilith, especially since she can Tangle Shadows them both upfield compensating for Juju's slowness and McTavish's need for good vantage points and full AP.

With Juju, you don't need anything but waldgeists or silurids, you just approach the issue differently. In a waldgeists game, you deploy them over the objective you are using them to defend and send Juju to tie up enemies. Juju will die, but with Eternal field he will return the next time a waldgeist dies: which means, that with good placement you can resummon him right over the objective you are protecting. With Silurids, it is a different matter: you don't want SIlurids dying until late game, so you get Juju killed early by tossing him into a group of enemies. Then, each silurid is not just some squishy, easy to kill minion, but the container for Juju, just waiting to spill out. Enemies become suddenly disinclined to chase silurids at the moment they should: and say they do kill your silurid: well Juju doesn't have to attack with anything other than his 0 and can use his other AP to distract or deliver a message, making the silurid complete its purpose in death. Juju is pretty damn good for both Zoriada and Lilith. McTavish has a nice synergy shooting into Juju's inevitable melee.

Depleted can be great for reconnoiter: they count for the points and are really hard to remove. Collodi has a nice time with it: the marionettes are great for this scheme, and Collodi can stand near the center line, keeping his bubble extended into both quadrants. The real reason he, and Zoraida and Lilith can have a good time with reconnoiter is their ability to mess with placement out of turn: enemy moved a model just into a quadrant? Obey/My will/Tangle shadows them out of there for point denial. Your model is just out of range/in the middle circle? Do the same thing to re-adjust them. Done late in the turn this can completely deny points to your opponent or score points when it seemed impossible.

Neverborn! This land is ours

Sometimes those waldgeists will do you no good (e.g.) no points to defend, and you'll want more silurids instead. Sometimes you will want Juju instead of Teddy, because you will want something that can die. Sometimes you will want Coppelius, for an elite scheme runner, with a Doppelganger along. Malifaux child will be good, but Iggy (as said above) is better with a Voodoo doll.

This isn't about Zoraida (although she is near and dear to my heart), but I often run the full swamp fiend gang with Lilith, and she has a great trick with McTavish. I am often up against long range "From the Shadows" models: Katanaka snipers, pathfinder and acolytes, which have a tendency to deploy in sniper nests and bother my poor neverborns before they even get close. They are prime targets for Liliths Tangle Shadows anyway, but putting McTavish in their place and them near Lilith is extra mean/fun, because their sniper ends up near Lilith's big sword, and your sniper ends up in a convenient sniper nest. My other tricks is "breadcrumbs": With Zoraida's crew, Silurids can use their early turn dropping scheme markers in a line, with a leap between, so that later McTavish can gator snack every turn, following their trail with pushes for an extra action or heal or whatever every turn at the cost of a junk card. Hard to pull off in some cases, but if you have a flat stretch of land along your protect territory area or something like a raised walkway overlooking the battlefield (like a lot of Vassal maps), McTavish can just slide along popping off shots.

I find Huggy to be the better bearer of "Addict" since he is easier to maneuver into line of sight for the rest of the crew.

What did he bring to Hoffman crew? I always figured that aside from high-brow allusions to the Sandman (1816), there were not much synergy there.

I had a really good time taking Mr. Tannen with Lilith: his +2 shenanigans are a great synergy with Tangle shadows, as it almost always requires a high or a stone anyway. Tannen makes it into a Ca 7, and since Tangle Shadows always seems like the one part of Lilith's activation that *must* go off smoothely, it makes a big difference. Ideal scenario: Lilith activates after Tannen, Tangles shadows with an enemy model, dumping Juju or Barbaros into their midst and landing the hapless minion (or master) into base contact with herself and into Tannen's cooler aura. Then she is attacking with the usual for not having charged, the enemy can't cheat without discarding. Very potent for Make them Suffer and other killy schemes and synergizes nicely with Fears Given Form on Lilith, for a true card vacuum to decimate your opponent's hand and lynchpin models.

I've run Ironsides crew without Ironsides and with Colette a lot. They synergize nicely: prompt is great at moving the mages along the battle field, while the Captain can push Colette and protect against shooting with his wind walls. He is also no slouch in combat and is a good prompt target too.

You can also just give one of the Coryphees reactivate and not be greedy (still ensuring that its' reactivation ends with the Duel forming).I tend to run mine up my flanks, and then return them to the middle in a single activation when needed, and form the duet. That was they drop a scheme or murder a flanking models and come back for the finale. Coryphee have a few perks that are overlooked: their bases are fairly large and they can't be charged, making them useful for blocking Colette and Cassandra and their performers from charges and shooting. The impossibility of charging Coryphee synergizes well with their built in attack trigger: the coryphee can hit and then push out of engagement range where they cannot be charged. They are getting on nearly everything that matters (MI, defense & willpower) making them far less card intensive for you and far more card intensive for your opponent. The low four wounds is scary, but as long you avoid the Joss types of the universe, and cheat away sniper attacks, the coryphee will survive. Their single most unpredictable and dangerous ability of the coryphee is that it can teleport halfway across the board to a friendly showgirl. You need a card for it, but rapidly relocating a model like the coryphee and then prompting it, makes schemes like assassinate a lot easier, or a lot harder, if you drop it between Colette and a would-be assassin (not that Colette has to worry about assassins: if there are scheme markers everywhere, you are almost always safe). This is especially relevant if either Cassandra or Angelica or both are in play: they can be far upfield by the end of turn one, especially Cassandra, with her nimble and extra 6' push at the end of the first turn. Either model can serve as a beacon for a coryphee to leap in, make a 7' move and be in position for turn 2 prompting, or you can prompt them to do their teleport first, setting them up for turn 2 (or 1 with Angelica) charges. Finally, I know you said you aren't getting more Arcanists for a while, but if you do: December Acolytes really fill in some gaps in the Colette crew (namely ranged attacks), while getting a lot of what they are missing (mobility) back from the prompts and pushes Colette can deliver.

Maybe it is because my only arcanist master is Colette with her aura of (almost) free interact actions, but I have never felt a shortage of good scheme runners, however they are usually expensive models that you only happen to use for schemes, often without giving up their AP to do so. For instance, a showgirl with the Practiced Production upgrade turns any of your models into a scheme marker model without giving up activations: December acolytes are great for this, embed them with From the Shadows and start putting schemes at their feet with Cassandra/Angelica/Colette, while another model (for me, usually a performer) farms the ones you will destroy at the end of the turn to satisfy Practiced Production. There aren't many schemes or fights that Cassandra can't help with. Performer+Mannequin= most scheme marker agendas are easy, while a mannequin is usually my first summon when I bring out a mechrider. Being able to toss scheme markers 6' is a huge ability Speaking of the ironsides box: The Captain, with his massive pushes will be great for schemes: who needs silurids when the captain can toss a model into the enemy engagement or pull it out, as needed. Similarly, snowstorm can charge and then (0) action to bring in the model who will deliver a message/distract, but this is less flexible than the Captain.

I stand corrected

I've had a lot of fun with her. I keep Barbaros and Cupid from her standard crew, because both bring so much to the table in shenanigan. Cupid is a monster for the points: 5' push and slow? The ability to take (2) interacts as (1) and 1 as (0)? Only Colette has anything close to this kind of cheese and with flight and 6' move you can assuredly keep him safe until you steal the game with him. Barbaros is great for wasting the opponents time and often models, while the rest of the crew runs schemes, and ideal for "Frame for Murder". I fill the rest of the crew with swamp fiends. Waldgeists are great for creating terrain for her to charge through, without giving up her line of sight blocking illusory forest and good targets for tangle shadows. Juju is a great target for Tangle Shadows, especially with Eternal fiend and other swamp fiends, done correctly you can position Juju for the perfect hand-draining activation, and if he dies, no biggie. Silurids have something of a counter synergy with her, due to ignoring her ignoring of line of sight restrictions, but I still take them for Distract, Cursed object and Deliver a Message. Finally,McTavish is great ranged support. Lilith can conveniently snatch an enemy sniper from a good perch with Tangle shadows and replace it with McTavish.