They Grow up so Fast 50ss Lilith tournament

[Mastershake]

I'm not gonna lie, Malifaux is not my primary game. That being said, I do still enjoy it and find the game is still pretty unique among the ones I play, so I always come back every so often. We had a local 50ss tournament using the gaining grounds packet (mostly anyways), so I decided to come back after not paying for...I dunno like 5- 6 months ish. With such a long hiatus, I wanted to take an autopilot crew, one I could run in my sleep and that handled the various strats and schemes pretty well, so I decided to just play my favorite Lilith lost and see what happened.

 

Lilith (Beckon Malifaux, Living Blade, Rapid Growth)

Nekima (True Mother, Mimics' Blessing)

Cherub

6x Terror Tots

 

Round 1, Interference vs. Collodi, Standard Deployment

One of my Schemes was the Undercover Entourage on Lilith. I'm blanking on the other, but it definitely involved scheme markers. My opponent deploys first and immediately notice something I can abuse about her deployment. Collodi is really far on my left. In turn I drop heavy on the right with only a few tots holding the left. Turn 1 I also see something else I can take advantage of. A coryphée double walks to engage a tot. If the duet forms, I'm going to lose a lot of momentum trying to kill it, so I immediately have Lilith activate, chop the lone coryphée down in one hit and make a Young. The rest of the match isn't hugely interesting. Collodi spends too many turns chasing down tots and throwing scheme markers down while Lilith and Nekima do what they do best. As it turns out, effigy's are pretty perfect for Nekima since 1 slap drops them down to 1 hp, then she can cut herself for a point of damage and get a new tot. I ended the game with 13 models on the table and she only had Collodi.

Victory 9-4

If my opponent had deployed Collodi more centrally and combined the right away, I think she had a good chance to put out the damage to give me serious problems.

 

Round 2, Stake a Claim v. Pandora, Corner Deployment.

I went with Convict Labor (at least I think that was it, had to put scheme markers within 2" of the centerline) and Take Prisoner on Dora herself. If I need to, I can usually kill Dora, but it's rarely worth it, so taking that scheme frees up some firepower as long as he doesn't suspect I'm doing it. My opponents crew only had 7 models and none of them were crazy fast or hugely damaging. Meanwhile, I had 6 tots and a Cherub on corner deployment, so right away my thought was "4-0 on strategy". Schemes seemed pretty easy as well. There wasn't really anything explosive or crazy this game, I actually turned down some grow opportunities so I could keep the tots around to interact. Lilith, ultimately died getting my opponent some points for the new assassinate (or whatever it's called now). I was able to remove the Poltergeist and Widow Weaver in a timely fashion and without those two Nekima's high Wp made her pretty resistant to everything else. Nekima did have a chance to kill Lilith and take over the crew but we couldn't figure out an interaction with Birthright and the way the new assassination scheme is worded (we played it as he would get the points anyways and because of that there didn't seem to be a point in wasting the AP). Game ended with 4 hp Dora fighting 5 Tots, Cherub and Nekima

 

Victory 10-5

 

Last Round, Headhunter v. Kaeris, Standard Deployment.

Quickly wished I had picked different schemes, I went Inspection and the one where you put down Scheme markers one the enemy table half, 6" away from the centerline a more than 4" from enemies. It wasn't undo able, but I did trip over myself a lot. Anyways, at the end of turn 1 I saw a way to potentially establish an immediate and untouchable attrition lead. The only models left to activate on either side were Lilith and Nekima. I could use Tangle Shadows to have Nekima and a tot switch places, then Lilith gets 12" away from the Rail Golem and a Gunsmith, then Nekima charges Firestarter and gets 9" away from the Rail Golem. The Rail Golem isn't a huge threat to Lilith since I'm holding Red Joker, so if he tries to hit her she just disappears on the first swing and now it's Ml 3 v. DF 7, but he could easily kill Nekima. I'm losing initially on Initiative, but I stone up to a 9 or 10, he opts not to stone for initiative and...that's basically game. I think it just didn't register with him what I was planning. Lilith proceeds to root both the Rail Golem and a Gunsmith and uses Illusionary Forest to block the Gunsmiths' LoS to everything he has range to. Nekima proceeds to kill the Rail Golem and my opponent simply can't muster enough firepower to stop her from carving up his crew. His last model, a Gunsmith was turned into a terror tot on turn 4. Unfortunately, the tripping over myself I mentioned earlier meant losing a VP and my opponent most decidedly got full VP for his Frame for Murder on the Rail Golem.

Victory 9-5

 

so 28 total points with a 14 differential...seems legit.

 

I dunno what it is I like most about this list. It has good speed, accomplishes schemes and strategies pretty easily and more importantly giant vampire demons, but I guess a huge reason is that I can practically play it in my sleep with little practice and still do pretty well. Also a pair of sexy murder machine sisters because why not right?

 

Lilith is a fun master, Nekima is an immensely fun henchman and eating your opponents stuff is just fun. Also I think I summoned more tots today than in my last year or so of play (6 total across all 3 games although at least 2 were completely unnecessary and done exclusively for my own amusement).

[Mutter]

Thanks for the reports, sounds like a cool list. Could you elaborate maybe a little more on how you play that? And how many tots do you need to bring to the game? O.o

[Mastershake]

I keep 2x Mature Nephilim, 4x Young Nephilim and 3x spare Tots in terms of extra models.  You need 4x Young Nephilim, you can probably get by with 1 mature and it's rare, but not unheard of to have more tots than you started with (either because of casualties or becoming Young), so you can get by with 6 most games.  I had one game where I couldn't make a Mature Neph because I already had two out, but that game was pretty much over, so I didn't care. 

 

General Tactics are what you would do with any Lilith list.  It's easy to get the false impression that Lilith is all about face beating, but some of the hardiest Neverborn are still going to be hard pressed to kick in the door and there are easily crews that will match you in terms of damage output.  So, with that in mind, Lilith will pretty much always boil down to

1- Isolate

2- Destroy

3- Repeat

With Tangle Shadows and Beckon Malifaux you can easily isolate any model that wanders away from its crew proper and with Wicked Wines it's often possible to isolate a model even when it's surrounded by friendlies by simply crippling their allies' ability to move (assuming your opponent lacks consistent condition removal or easy push effects).  That being said, Nekima is hard for a lot of things to take down quickly and her healing and damage output is not trivial, so being able to gauge when she's going to be mostly unopposed and can just go crazy is important to being able to tear apart a weakened crew.  You should also look to engineer these scenarios whenever possible.

 

A good example was the last game.  Ultimately, I gambled a lot on one initiative flip, but it was flip where the game would still be playable if I failed or effectively over if I won. Nekima was able to remove the firestarter with no reprisals followed immediately by the Rail Golem and at the point I had a Mature Nephilim in the fight who killed the gunsmith and Nekima with Lilith's help made quick work of Kaeris.  It was a series of power plays that not only removed key models from my opponents line-up, but added a major damage piece to mine in the process along with even more activation control where needed. 

 

The Collodi game was also a pretty good example of something else you can do with the list.  Ultimately, I don't want to be in a position where I have to kill Collodi or lose, his defensive tech is pretty stout, so as soon as I saw his positioning on the far side of the battlefield I counter deployed and used superior speed and LoS control with the forest to avoid him until he couldn't contribute enough to turn the tide.  I also took advantage of the opportunity to remove one of the coryphee before they could merge to scalpel one of the big potential speed bumps.

 

General rules (not just for this list, but for Malifaux in general)

1- VPs trump everything- It's important to note that if sacrificing VPs now can get you position to garauntee VPs later that can also be viable i.e. if you can get far enough ahead of your opponent on the points trading to where they can't hinder your VP progress, it might be worth it to sacrifice a VP or 2, but that's a major judgement call.  In game 2, I skipped 2 opportunities to grow because it didn't feel like his attrition presence would be unmanageable, so I was willing to trade not having Young for VPs.

2- Favorable Trading trumps everything but VPs- If you can kill the enemy power pieces that threaten Nekima's board dominance, do it and don't worry about growing.  Now, realistically, growing with the True Mother upgrade is so easy, you shouldn't be stumbling on this, Nekima's pass off range for the kills is generous and neither that or Rapid Growth require LoS on top of Nekima's large melee range giving her a lot of options in terms of where to stand.  Even in game 3, where I went all in on an opportunity to rapidly dominate the game, I still had models in position to make a Mature Nephilim.

 

I've seen versions where there are less tots and I'm not really a fan.  In this list, there are so many Tots they become and entirely disposable resource.  The more you drop from the list, the more losing individual tots hurt and the higher payoff if your opponent can snipe them out.  I've also tried the Primordial Magic, but most games it just Rush of Magic and nothing else whereas the Cherub has a passive ability that makes all interacting easier, the Rise Up action that creates areas of Sever and Hazardous terrain around models and a bow that is absolute BS.  Seriously, I know it's Sh stat isn't spectacular, but it automatically tags targets with slow and has a built in trigger that pushes them 5" in any direction.  That is absolutely crazy on so many levels.  You can throw Rise Up on Lilith and shoot someone dragging them into the Hazardous terrain and giving Lilith a free attack if they end within 1".  You can also use it as a control piece on heavy hitters, by slowing them and pushing them into forests or mess with people on elevated terrain by pushing them off.  The Cherub really is fantastic on many level, and I've never really been happy with substituting it with the PM mostly because you're trading a lot of interesting tactical and strategic options for basically 1 more card drawn and discarded which never felt at all worth it.

[Mutter]

Thanks for the explanation, the whole thread encouraged me to explore a Lilith growth list myself (haven't really tried that).

If you have any more reports, would love to read them!

[Fireuser]

As a note, Collodi cannot make Coryphee merge together.  Only Arcanists can do that trick.