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Von Schill... I Can't Seem To Get It.


the proxy union

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Hey everyone,

as the title sugests I have been having some trouble with playing Schill. He seems super simple to play, but once I get him on the table he does average at best and doesn't seem to do enough to justify playing him over another master.

 

He tanks reasonably well but still crumbles under a couple of turns of moderate guild shooting or he gets hit with something like a teddy, or die to burning and mass attacks. the augmented jump is really really good and it did everything I ever wanted it to. The issue there is that I went too deep to hit the sweeter targets like guild riflemen/austingers and then got swamped and had many multiple weak damages take him down after he got in.

 

I used to try to send him charging in to kill two to three models over two turns before he gets shanked, but then I'm down a master while the rest of his boxed set gets tied up by four point models or killed by the surviving master/heavy hitters. I then played him back in the mid-field in a shooting/support role and he did well over four games and did well melting small things like scheme runners once or twice but it felt lack luster and had me cheating more than I thought I should.(That might have something to do with some lucky flips)

 

I should probably mention that these games have been using most of the box contents against guild (sonnia, lady j), arcanists (ramos, kaeris, raspy) and outcasts (Levi). played a good mix of all 4 basic strats.

after about 10 games I feel that I should have got a better handle on this guy.(usually it takes about 5 before I feel like I have a solid grip on what style they want to play like) My impression at this point is that unless im playing guild (And think that Sonnia is likely), I dont really want anything other than probably the trapper and, situationally, the specialist for point defence with scheme marker removal and other fun triggers. everything else in that box seems overcosted by about half a point for what I want to use it for; which is either running schemes or killing/tar-pitting key models.

 

Most of this is a comentary on the hired guns box seeming to be better with other masters than with Schill himself. (Although I am warming up to the specialist as he removes all sorts of counters and the blasts with burning are pretty sweet) So I guess what I'm really asking is:

 

what do you run in a Schill list?

 

How do you use Schill? (forward&agressive/ Mid/Backfield shooting support/ Engage at Will 0 action support)

 

What Combos/Synergies with other models have worked well? for what strats?

 

 

Thanks for the replies in advance,

-Proxy

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Personally, I think the Hired Guns box was a bit poorly thought out, and suffers from exactly the problem you're describing. That, and the Specialist and the Freikorpsmen are pretty lackluster models for their cost.

 

To really get the Freikorps going, my main recommendation would be a Strongarm Suit. It's an all-round monster of a piece, and fills a big gap in the killing power of the crew. Lazarus is a quite similar model with a heavier emphasis on shooting, so take your pick depending on your playstyle.

 

Another element to think about is adding Hannah, supported by a Librarian (or two). She gives passive support and a big control area, plus the ability to temporarily remove key pieces of the enemy crew to deal with later, and she's tough as hell and can borrow the Librarians' healing or attack spells.

 

Trappers are one of the best Minions available to Outcasts, in my opinion - I take at least one, often two.

 

The above is all assuming that you want to stay in theme - Von Schill is a little more tied to his core models than most Masters, but he can still benefit from thinking outside the box. One particularly fun combo is Rusty Alyce, who carries the same gun as VS and can hugely benefit from his ability to grant two (0) Actions per turn - she can summon an Abomination from nothing every activation, which is quite nice for Reconnoiter. Similarly, Sue and Ama No Zako are great value models that love getting an extra (0).

 

It took me quite a while to realise that the reason I was so unhappy with the Freikorps when I first started playing them was that the Wave 1 Freikorps simply do not work well together - they need some of the spicier Wave 2 elements to really get going, especially the Strongarm and Librarians with Hannah. I'd suggest giving those a try.

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I rarely play Von Schill now as he Aways Wins!

Granted our players have limited crews, but Von and his large crew of all round average dudes can really do everything at least ok. I run the box and Lazarus, with a convict gunslinger at 50ss. I take few if any upgrades and shoot crews off the table. The crew works very well in two or three small groups with VS and the librarian in the middle to help/heal the other two. The only time I've ever run two trappers they died too fast to tell if it was worth it. And the trapper would be the model I'd drop maybe as once he has no targets, he is a waste of points.

The freikorps men are awesome at most scemes and work very well in ones or twos on their own, and with VS in that mid-field shooting/support role going for late game hand to hand has won me at least 15 games. The crew were so successful that I changed Factions for something more challenging.

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I have been having similar thoughts with von Schill. I just don't get him.

He seems to accomplish absolutely nothing in melee once he gets there. That min dmg of 2 is ridiculous.

I've played Schill for around 5 games by now and I'm all lost still on what the hell is he supposed to accomplish actually..

The crew I feel is solid, Strong-arm, Hannah, Librarian and Trappers. I am very much on the waste of points train of thought on Specialist though. The Freikorpsmenn themselves are quite okay.

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They do everything well enough, but don't really excel at much.  So they can suffer from out-activation, and they can easily be outpaced - they're just not that mobile.  As for melee - his cracked trigger is nice, -1 Df.  I really, really wish they had a bigger melee range though...or some more mobility.  One of the two I'd be happy with.

 

I wonder, what upgrades are you guys taking?  My von Schill rarely dies.  Though I do play a bit too defensive.

 

He can get hard to kill from an upgrade (I usually take that), and let's not forget about burning SS to reduce damage.  

 

His 'finish the cur' is a great action that can be used on himself as well - and if he's in the open a bit, that ability allowing him to use 3AP to take a shot at everything can be great.  Then there's 'and the shirt comes off' - healing plus terrifying.  That, plus a librarian should keep him quite resilient.

 

It's funny, I like the crew, but not some of the models.  Librarian?  healing is handy, but she only ever seems to die for me.  Specialist?  with a walk of 4 and no movement tricks to the crew, I can't even get him close enough to the action to be useful.

 

Trappers are awesome, and with von Schill's 'I pay better' they're even deadlier.  Discard your low card, take a focussed shot, then take a normal shot.  Start picking off those minions from Turn 1!

 

Freikorpsmen....I personally feel like they're slightly underwhelming for their SS cost, but they're fairly resilient.

 

I mainly play VS these days.

 

Other models...bishop, even convict gunslinger can be good.

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I usually have Survivalist, The Shirt Comes Off and I Pay Better. I do find it though that as I like to get a lot of members for the crew to actually do something my cache has been at 3 on the highest and even then I'm sad I can't take oathkeepers on a few models. If I do take those I go in with cache of 1 and then I'm royally fubar'd by the cards usually.

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Von Schill is my most played master, to be honest. I suppose he isn't really flashy or anything, but there is something to be said for having what is pretty much unquestionably the best raw stats in the game. I agree, it doesn't usually feel like he is singlehandedly winning the game for you, but at the same time, I have never had a turn where it did not feel like he was doing something valuable. 

 

If you want to bring more big moments with Von Schill, may I humbly suggest taking Scout the Field? 12 inches is a pretty big bubble to make gunshots in. I regularly get 4-6 Clockwork Seeker attacks out of Stand and Shoot with Scout the Field, and the effects can be pretty impressive. Getting to charge through blocking terrain thanks to Augmented Jump is also pretty tech.

 

The knife is what it is. 2 minimum damage is pretty disappointing, but the Focus action is a thing and the severe damage of 6 is plenty high, especially if it is ignoring armor, and Finish the Cur gives you a nice little free attack sometimes. The Can Opener trigger is pretty good if VS is softening up a big target for the  Strongarm or Hannah.

 

I'm also going to jump to the defense of the Specialist. While I find myself cutting him out of my lists a lot, he has a really nice toolkit for certain situations. Wildfire is a really big pulse removing Scheme markers, Clear the Area is situationally brilliant, and Move or Burn makes the crew as a whole immune to Slow and Paralyze effects with no downsides, thanks to the suits. His gun also ignores cover, which the otherwise shooty crew doesn't like, and, while Lazarus has the edge on blasting, weapons with blast templates play well in a crew that is mostly immune to damage from them. He has a lot of good tools, but they are all very limited in scope. I wish he was 7ss, but I play him at 8.

 

He brings a lot more to Sonnia, I will admit.

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Tally Sheet can help with the cards (on Hannah or VS). Card drawing tricks and card efficiency (reference the field guide) are very important for the 'Korps. So getting those extra cards in can be very helpful. 

 

I don't mind having VS in melee. In comparison to another high stat, run and gun, outcast master, Misaki, he can do ok in melee especially against the games most common defense: armor. Maybe I just have been lucky, but I have done ok with Schill as a brawler. For me, his biggest downside is his 1" range.

 

Overall I think VS is in a good place. The Freikorps aren't a fancy bunch, but the are very versatile and can tailor their attack to handle any opponent. Those Freikorps armor, high stats, ridiculous amount of healing, plenty of debuffs and friendly buffs will win you games.

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If you want to bring more big moments with Von Schill, may I humbly suggest taking Scout the Field? 12 inches is a pretty big bubble to make gunshots in. I regularly get 4-6 Clockwork Seeker attacks out of Stand and Shoot with Scout the Field, and the effects can be pretty impressive. Getting to charge through blocking terrain thanks to Augmented Jump is also pretty tech.

 

I hate to be the party pooper, but Scout The Field doesn't remove the LoS prerequisite on the attacks produced by Stand and Shoot. Thus, Scout the Field does nothing at all for the action. Either he can't shoot at a model because he can only shoot at those he sees when declaring Stand and Shoot, or he can't target it when the time for the actual shooting comes.

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I don't think I've ever got good use out of Stand & Shoot. Its only tangible benefit, in my games, is in forcing the enemy to play around it to some extent... but the Freikorps are a pretty shooty bunch, so the enemy already tend to hug cover or stay out of LoS wherever possible. Even if it's technically "worth it" (hitting 4+ targets) it would usually be better to concentrate fire and kill one target than to put 3 damage on a bunch of targets.

 

And yeah, no dice with Scout the Field. Put that on Hans instead.

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I don't often get to use Stand & Shoot - it's only possibly worth it if at least 4 models are in range, and even then not always.  Maybe if you have Oathkeeper as well, allowing you to finish off a model.  But it can be nice sometimes.  Especially if you've jumped behind lines, or in strategies like Turf War if the middle is fairly open.

 

Scout the Field has always felt very expensive to me - although I've been toying with the idea of using that to allow a charge in the first activation to get right in the thick of it.  

 

I tend to find the Freikorps Trappers have a bigger impact on how the enemy moves than S&S.

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I love Von Schill. I generally run Shirt Survivalist and oathkeeper.

2 charges in an activation means you can place him anywhere you want almost.

Yes min 2 is not great but tag him with a SAS and anything hit for -Df will be eaten by the stronarm.

Trappers are amazing at controlling where models will stand while korpsmen have a use as they are almsot as quick as void wretches but are more sursurvivable in my experience.

Librarians are also great in a support role. While lazrus is also good.

not used hannah too much and specialist is v hit and miss.

The korps are great generalists which is their greatest strength and weakness

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The whole generalist thing really bugs me. It just means, to me at least that they are super mediocre at everything in a game where you can build your list to accomplish anything you want.

When you combine models with great strengths and their weakness' and compare that list to the generalist list, the generalist list suffers in comparison when it all is counted together.

I don't see it as their greatest strength as much as I see it as a glaring weakness. A nice idea in theory but not very good in practise.

Just my thoughts though.

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zFiend just summed up my entire experience with him. But as much as I complain about Schill, his crew are some of the best in the faction and are able to fill holes in the lists of other masters really well. I just don't like most of them with Schill. Im going to try him with a crew of highly specialized models like Rusty, void wretches, and the specialist then work from there.

 

he puts out damage fine, but so do most other outcast masters.

 

he tanks really well; Levi, Daw, and Hamelin are harder to kill.

 

I update later to tell y'all how it went. maybe this will turn into a "discover the ultimate Schill combo" thread. :D  I can hope right?

-Proxy

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That view of generalists holds true in games which are poorly balanced and have a limited range of scoring mechanics, in my experience. Generalists tend to "pay more" for their range of abilities, and get beaten at any specific thing by specialists. If winning the game only requires doing one thing well, then a specialist will always win.

 

Malifaux at least partially overcomes this by extensive playtesting and randomised objectives (few of which focus on killing). Proper playtesting means that models are costed according to their actual impact on games, not by paying for their abilities, which means generalists tend to be slightly stronger overall, while specialists often have built-in weaknesses to exploit - this has the added benefit of making generalist crews more forgiving for new players (though arguably not as effective as a specialist crew with an experienced player). Multiple randomised objectives means that you will often get combinations that require a mix of skills - in that situation, generalists can switch roles as needed, while specialists are more single-minded.

 

That said, I'm not convinced that the Freikorps, in general, are generalists. They're a support-heavy, synergy-heavy, survival-heavy ranged specialist crew with a couple of in-theme beater elements. They're weak in mobility and melee, and have some specific vulnerabilities (attacks which ignore Armor, for example, are a huge problem because they have crappy Wounds across the board). I suspect people tend to think of them as generalists because they don't have any special tricks that make them stand out, but that's not really enough for the category - to be generalists, they'd actually have to be pretty good at a range of activities, and they're not.

 

I think the crew's problems are two-fold: One, they have a couple of common, overpriced models (Freikorpsmen and Specialists) that people play with when they're starting out. Those models are garbage, and they drag the team down. Two, Von Schill has to do too much lifting, and he's not really up to it. He has to be everywhere (he's even got an upgrade inspired by that, which sadly is also garbage) - buffing his crew, getting into melee, taking shots - and he can't do it all. Some of it he can't even do particularly well.

 

That doesn't mean I think the Freikorps are weak (once you excise the tumours) - I think they're great at what they do. I just think that people like to try to play them as generalists, and get disappointed when they don't perform well.

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Interesting thoughts - though outside of the freikorpsmen and specialists...well, that doesn't leave much in the way of freikorps to play with!

 

I don't see what's terrible about freikorpsmen - I feel like they're a little weak for the price, but not so 'terrible'.  Too slow to be great scheme runners, and they don't do anything in particular, but they can be a bit annoying to kill

 

Specialists - everybody raves about them, they've been nothing but an 8SS pit for me.  Ordinary defence, with the mobility of a fridge.  He can't get close enough to the battle to do anything.  I'm convinced his main purpose is really just to clear scheme markers, but he's just too damn slow to actually get anywhere to do anything useful.  Though even the librarian I think is overrated.

 

Never thought of them as being 'synergy heavy'.  Outside of von Schill giving them all his version of 'hard to kill', there isn't any synergy, outside of a couple of von Schill's upgrades (like I pay better, or the one allowing you to draw a card if somebody kills something)  there isn't really much synergy there.

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Outside of Freikorpsmen and Specialists, you've got Hannah, the Steam Trunk, the Strongarm Suit, Lazarus, Librarians and Trappers. (And unofficially, Hans - he's even got a Field Guide!) That's plenty to build a crew around, supplemented as necessary with other Outcasts.

 

Freikorpsmen are bad, in my opinion, because they don't actually have a role. If you want something to run around the board and lay down Scheme markers, a Void Wretch is better and cheaper (and, in most circumstances, tougher). If you want something that can do Schemes and also fight, for a single stone more you can get a Trapper, who comes with an extra Wound, a vastly superior attack (built-in :+fate, auto-Reposition, +1/1/0 damage, +2-16" range), the ability to push out of engagement, and From the Shadows. While a Freikorpsmann spends two turns foot-slogging across the board to put down Schemes, a Trapper spends that time shooting people and is still better at surviving and avoiding engagement while placing Schemes. I'm not saying you can't play them if you like (nothing in the game is that out of balance), just that there are more efficient choices.

 

The theme's synergy comes in many forms. Hard to Kill synergises with Librarian and Steam Trunk healing. Von Schill handing out the ability to take two (0) Actions synergises with the Steam Trunk (and everyone near it) and Von Schill having multiple powerful (0) Actions. Hannah, Librarians and Lazarus (and Specialists) all having the potential for blasts on their attacks synergises with Freikorps Armor. Hannah copying Ca Actions synergises with Librarians having both offensive and defensive Ca Actions. Everything about the crew's abilities suggests that they perform better in tight-knit groups.

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I will never understand why Freikorpsmann get such a bad rap.

 

Armor +1

Unimpeded

Immune to blast/pulse damage 

Field guide

12" rng shot with crit strike or reposition

Df 7 (after Duck and weave)

WP 7 and Hard to kill (while near Vonschill)

 

Seems pretty good for 5ss to me.

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They would be a bit too good for 4 stones, and are not quite good enough for 5 stones, I think. It's one of those things that sometimes happens in a system with very little cost granularity.

 

Remember also that in your consideration of what a 5-stone model is "worth", they're up against some very stiff competition. Belles, Nurses, Necropunks, Slop Haulers, Performers, Riflemen and Insidious Madnesses - those are some of the most efficient models in the game at what they do, more than capable of changing the outcome of a game by themselves. For 5 stones, you want something really good, otherwise you might as well pay 4 stones for something that's just as good at the one thing you want them to do.

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Mostly because Trappers are way more than a stone better.

 

Edit - Kadeton nailed it. I'd add Lightning Bugs to that list as one of the most effective scheme runners in the game (and a solid damage dealer, with a heal).

 

How about the fact that they're only walk 4?  That's the downside to trying to use them as scheme runners, IMO.  I tend to find they're a unit I want to use focus on a lot, so I hate having to move them.

Their melee is pathetic - rifle butt?  More like 'slap him!', but I guess that's countered somewhat by their 0AP push out of melee.  But I do love my trappers....

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