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Sandeep experiences so far?


Anung Un Rama

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@Blackraw that's one of the ways to look at attrition:  simply outlasting your opponent. If you can hit your opponent hard enough early enough that they never really recover (alpha strike), you have effectively outlasted them--but not in the same sense of attrition that I'm talking about.

The dictionary way to approach attrition is to gradually wear down your opponent through constant pressure (in Ramos' case board presence and ability to keep sending in spiders to tie things down or explode and hurt them). The effects of an attrition game are felt most keenly in Turn 4-5 when your opponent realizes that for everything they've done, they have not actually stopped you.

It seems like what worked for you most there was your opponent made mistakes. They had their models clustered too closely (McMourning crews, in my experience, tend to poison themselves to get additional mobility and to set up nasty traps, so they shouldn't be playing in such a way where their own catalyst hurts them), and they put a lot of their own AP into killing your summons instead of either the summoner or the support. While they wore themselves down with mistakes and you saw massive return on minor investment of cards and AP, it's not quite the same thing. I pose the question: if they paralyzed or buried your summons, what would have gone different?

That's where Ramos' style and advantage in numbers kicks in. No matter what you do to the things Ramos summons, he can always summon more. If the Sandeep player's opponent ignores the summoned models (or paralyzes or buries them), Sandeep cannot just drop a new set in a new place and keep the pressure on--he has to kill them first. That's what puts Ramos into a similar class of attrition as Hamelin: no matter what you do to their summons, they can bring more to bear. It's almost not worth the effort to deal with the summons except that in Ramos' case, his summons are significant and quick enough to get into scoring positions for any scheme that involves markers or positioning and therefore must be dealt with (when in the hands of a practiced player).

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Along the lines of the scenario I described above:

I've run into Ressers (and others) using Anna to accomplish two things:

  1. Create a push/place-proof area that slows down Sandeep's strike capabilities.
  2. Bury Banasuva (Wp 4 and a Wp duel late in turn against Anna and Banasuva's buried).

I've also run into Paralyze/control-based play that makes it harder to keep pressure on. The nice thing about this (unlike Anna), is that if my Gamin is paralyzed and I need it to do work, I can use Kudra's personal upgrade (which actually gives her a lot of interesting stuff) (0) action to outright kill the Gamin, which frees up the upgrade for redeployment on a fresh Gamin.

 

For the Anna scenarios:

  1. Her bubble does not stop summons, and if Commands Sandeep is played cannily enough, he's able to get to the edge of her bubble with 2-3 AP left so that he can drop in the support Gamin followed by Banasuva as close to the area Anna is trying to protect as possible. Ideally Banasuva's dropping in will provide enough of a distraction where my opponent is forced to deal with him (i.e. Earth upgrade for 3" :melee in order to tie up a large area) while other elements follow up Sandeep's dive.
  2. A buried Banasuva is not a happy thing. When this happens to me, I end up double-checking the exact specifications of the bury so that I can try to get it on my own terms. For instance, if Banasuva stays buried until something dies, I'll line Kudra up to nuke the support Gamin after the burying model is activated so that I can bring Banasuva back on the front line. This comes up when Banasuva's controlling a portion of the board ends up being a key piece of my plan (and why I went to so much trouble to get him on the board). If Banasuva was summoned with the Flame upgrade his only job was to be a distraction, so it's not as important to bring him back.
    The threat of this makes me think I might be better off holding off on Banasuva summoning until something has happened to Anna or she's no longer in a good denial position.
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I'm preparing to play Sandeep in my first tournament which will be 3 Rd GG2017. The strategies therefore are Extraction, Guard the Stash and Reconnoiter. I think that these strategies force me to play Commands upgrade (and i'm more used to it also).

My basic list was 

Sandeep+ Arcane Reservoir + Commands + Enlightened Soul

Myranda + IE - second threat

Shastar Vidiya Guard + IE (positioning + academic)

Oxfordian Mage + Nemesis Ward + TS (same)+Student of all engine

Ice gamin (in case of bad cards) + 7 SS

Imo this crew can do these schemes easily: Accusation, Dig their graves, FFM, Undercover Entourage, Search the Ruins, Mark for Death and Tail'em. It cannot do Show of Force and Last Stand. For Leave your Mark and Covert Breakthrough I exchange SVG for Angelica+PP+Raptor.

I'm expecting that the games will now last full 5 turns as we're all new to the game and playing very slowly, so Hidden Trap, Set Up might be the reasons to take Visions instead of Commands in specific matchups (ressers?). Maybe I just need to have a plan to do these schemes within 2-3 activations, and there will be no need to change the upgrade

The schemes that dont fully depend on me are Eliminate Leadership, Hunting Party, Claim Jump and Inspection. Eg, I'm not sure I will be able to kill McMourning or Dreamer, or do Hunting Party vs the Viks. Claim Jump imo is easy done and easy countered.

Then came the Quick Murder, and this crew gives 3 VP to the opponent who takes it. So here came another list:

Sandeep+ Arcane Reservoir + Commands + Enlightened Soul

Arcane Emissary + Arcane Conflux

2 December Acolyte

Ice Gamin + 7 SS

This crew is so powerful and synergetic and at the same time terribly slow. Okay, i can put one Acolyte 12" from deploy and lure Sandeep and Gamin for just a 6 and another ram. But in case something goes wrong later, this crushing power will take years to reach the target. However, this crew can occupy the middle in Extraction and Stashes and let no one there. I can again trade 1 acolyte and Sandeep's upgrade for LYM combo, and with Angelica this crew will be much faster.

As for other models - Mech rider seems too slow for this format. Amina doesnt look that good in a 35ss crew. Captain is overpriced. Joss looks too straightforward, though making him incorporeal could be fun. As for Howard, I imagined a ultra-fast list that could Alpha strike on t1 and Sandeep could be there on t2 with his best guys:

Sandeep+ Arcane Reservoir + Commands + Enlightened Soul, Myranda +IE, Howard + IE, December Acolyte to drag them. Or kick out Enligtened Soul and Acolyte and put Angelica+PP+Raptor in. I like Raptor for being able to trade a low mask for one or even two cards. I suppose this list could break a resurrection/rat/another engine fast, but it also looks like all-in that could lose to bad flips.

So my question is: are there any obvious mistakes or flaws in my logic? Am i missing some key models that could help me with specific schemes? Should i combine solutions from my lists or be focused on advantages instead of disdvantages? Is there any obvious counter to Sandeep that could spoil the game? (Leveticus isnt present for sure).

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4 hours ago, spooky_squirrel said:

Along the lines of the scenario I described above:

I've run into Ressers (and others) using Anna to accomplish two things:

  1. Create a push/place-proof area that slows down Sandeep's strike capabilities.
  2. Bury Banasuva (Wp 4 and a Wp duel late in turn against Anna and Banasuva's buried).

 

Yeah, I hadn't actually seen Anna on the table until recently against Sandeep. I read her card but didn't really absorb the magnitude of that movement denial range until I tried to get Cerberus moving in there on a leap after a Myranda shift, which made me realize just how effectively he shut down Sandeep's place, the wind gamins' leap and the mages' push ability. That's a massive area and really puts the breaks on what I want to do with the crew.  

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Sunday at a tournament (went third playing ramos and ironsides) i fell in temptation and bought Sandeep's box.

Tried him monday against a club-mate who played Leveticus.

I tried this crew:

Sandeep: commands, unaligned sage, arcane res (6 ss)

Joss: warding runes, recharge ss

Kudra: free of mortal.., warding r.

Trio of mages

Ice gamin

Arcane effigy

It was outstanding. Basically whiped out the enemy crew having only Joss as a victim (who was FFM, btw).

What Sandeep did.

First turn summoned a Metal Gamin with [+]s to near models and Non-slow Bonasuva. Big blue gone Frozen Heart with 4 min dam. in his first activation, killing a FFM trapper and on second turn exploded in leveticus, Alice and Desolation Engine faces for 3 damage + burning.

Second turn had't the right card to summon, so Sandeep killed the engine with his bolt.

Third turn summoned a stationary bonasuva, activated his non-randomize aura and damaged A&D with his bolt (A&D and Ashen core were killed by mages and bonasuva).

Forth turn charged and killed leveticus all by himself.

His mechanic is awesome, as his abilities are. A 4 ss minion (effigy) using a 2/4/5 non "gun" bolt is terryfing.

He gives you an answer to basically.. everything. Pushes, places, interactions, summons, buffs, meele.. really really solid and forgiving (you moved that model poorly? It's a pity you don'have a "lure" on a 4ss model.. oh, right!).

Bonasuva is great, even only as a threat or distraction.

Ox trio are.. well, Ox trio (probably even better than in a Tony crew).

Joss is ridiculos with Ox buffes, turning from a tanky model to a nightmare to play against (HTK + rigeneration is bonkers).

Kudra.. is useful. Her (0)s are very cool, expecially the forest. She didn't a lot in this game, basically shooting something, placing a couple of forests and countering a Claim Jump. Not sure the warding rune ss was well spent, but well.. I needed to score Show of Force.

Anyway, positively impressed. Cool models (far better than it seemed in photos), cool rules, very funny to play.

Byez

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20 hours ago, spooky_squirrel said:

It seems like what worked for you most there was your opponent made mistakes. They had their models clustered too closely (McMourning crews, in my experience, tend to poison themselves to get additional mobility and to set up nasty traps, so they shouldn't be playing in such a way where their own catalyst hurts them), and they put a lot of their own AP into killing your summons instead of either the summoner or the support. While they wore themselves down with mistakes and you saw massive return on minor investment of cards and AP, it's not quite the same thing. I pose the question: if they paralyzed or buried your summons, what would have gone different?

No doubts it was. Do not get me wrong - I do not present is as a tactic, neither I do incite to do so. But when I saw my opponent choosing to stay in a bubble, that was just an occasion for attrition. Since he has to deal with 3" :melee of extended range Poison gamin and 2" :melee of Banasuva right at his face. He did paralyze Banasuva getting him off game for the first turn, but he had to kill him, so that I do not activate it early next turn. So he had to deal with renewable summons which passively damaged him whilst exploding, thus he spent both Wd and AP.

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18 minutes ago, Frollo the Wordbearer said:

Anyway, positively impressed. Cool models (far better than it seemed in photos), cool rules, very funny to play.

Byez

Good to hear that you have enjoyed it! 

Joss-regen thing made me think of the following:

(I do not have rulebook by me to clarify).

Joss reactivates near nephilims, get to 2Wd due regeneration. Joss beats nephilim (either one (2) AP attack or 2 (1) AP attacks with SS on prevent so that he does not die. Gets back to 1 Wd. Then repeat.

Will that work? (Not as a tactica, but from standpoint of mechanics)

Also minor question to more experienced Sandeep/Arcanists players. Is Recharge SS a good one to pick with Sandeep (hard to deny he's so SS hungry)? 

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5 minutes ago, Blackraw said:

Good to hear that you have enjoyed it! 

Joss-regen thing made me think of the following:

(I do not have rulebook by me to clarify).

Joss reactivates near nephilims, get to 2Wd due regeneration. Joss beats nephilim (either one (2) AP attack or 2 (1) AP attacks with SS on prevent so that he does not die. Gets back to 1 Wd. Then repeat.

Will that work? (Not as a tactica, but from standpoint of mechanics)

Also minor question to more experienced Sandeep/Arcanists players. Is Recharge SS a good one to pick with Sandeep (hard to deny he's so SS hungry)? 

I don't think so. You can gain the Reactivate condition only once per turn if I remember correctly.

I really like Recharge SS on Joss or a tanky henchman/master, especially if i suspect an enemy with a lot of living models and a meele-oriented game.

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You can gain it as many times as you want, but you can only use it once per turn.

Edit: documentation - pg.62 digital rulebook "A model with the Reactivate condition is available to be Activated one additional time during this Turn, as if it had not already taken its Activation.
A model may not benefit from the Reactivate Condition more than once per Turn, even if it lost the Reactivate Condition and then gained it again."

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36 minutes ago, Nikodemus said:

Reactivate condition goes away at the end of the turn, not at the end of the model's activation. Furthermore, a model can benefit from Reactivate condition only once per turn. This is true even if it somehow loses and regains the Reactivate condition.

This really comes up when dealing with someone like Shenlong who can steal Reactivate even after it is used.

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Played my first game with Sandeep last night and it was a lot of fun. I'm pretty new to the game so any suggestions on what I could have done better would be appreciated.

 

Reckoning v Ten Thunders, corner deployment

-claim jump

-quick murder

-set up

-eliminate the leadership

-leave your mark? (i forgot and don't have my phone to check)

 

My crew was:

-Sandeep + Commands/Arcane Reservoir/Unaligned Sage

-Arcane Emissary + Arcane Upgrade

-Johan(na) + Imbued

-SV Guard

-Librarian

-Silent One

-Ice Gamin

 

His crew was:

J Lynch + huggy rebirth/wanna see a trick/woke up with a hand

Huggy

Kang

Graves

Tannen

2x Beckoner

I don't remember his other upgrades if there were any but I know he had a cache of 6.

 

I think his crew selection was a little strange, but I guess his intention was to force me to kill huggy every time he appeared instead of using my AP to kill targets that would count for the strat? I think he should have brought harder hitting and/or tougher models to support hugs/Lynch since the 2 of them can get 2 kills per turn easily. Knowing his available model pool I think he should have dropped a beckoner, tannen, graves for an illuminated, Shadow Emissary, and maybe a 10T brother?

 

My basic plan was to drop banasuva into engagement with as many of his models as possible, while having the silent one and librarian provide ranged damage with SV guard, Emissary and Johan(na) playing to counter charge/tie up anyone that big B couldn't reach.

 

We had the same amount of models to start but he won activation turn one and made me go. I started with a killer hand so after I moved my gunline into position I summoned an immobile poison gamin as an additional gunner from a different location, enabling me to save sandeep for the last activation to summon banasuva dependent on where he positioned his crew. That worked amazingly. I was able to summon the big b engaged with 3 models including the quick murder target (Kang). With my non-slow banasuva I just took swings at the beckoner and kang, since I couldn't cheat I hit with 2 out of 3, hitting each of them once. 

 

Turn 2 he won activation and tried to kill Banasuva with kang his first activation, but failed to do so because I got some ridiculous flips. I then killed the beckoner with b, he killed b with huggy. Since huggy and kang had already activated and were very close to each other, I used the ice gamin to get into range of the silent one/where I would bring banasuva in again (surprise, exactly where he was before!) subsequently use the silent one to cast at huggy/blast onto kang. This was a great plan because I got to ignore Kang's primary defensive tech and still hurt huggy. I got the trigger to cast again and this time flipped red joker on damage, removing huggy and getting kang much closer to death. I saved Sandeep til late this turn again and dropped him in the same spot. I did this when he only had lynch left, and the position was such that the combo of banasuva/kang/terrain blocked LOS to the rest of my crew, so he killed B with lynch before I could activate it (which brought huggy back), then got closer into range. I finished off Kang with the librarian, scoring my 3 for QM. 

 

So end of turn 2, there was a bloodbath and I was winning 4-1. For turn 3, I stoned for cards and wound up with a MONSTER hand. I wound up tabling him and winning 10-1 by using johan(na), emissary, and SVGuard to clean up tannen and graves after silent one softened them up a little, librarian furious casted to kill the remaining beckoner, and Sandeep + another Banasuva ate lynch for dinner. 

 

So I think against a more experienced opponent this probably wouldn't have been such a one sided game, but does it sound like I played it right by using Banasuva to basically just soak up my opponent's AP? 

How was my hiring? Do you find it to be a waste of stones to hire a gamin to help get Banasuva out? My alternative idea there was the use the effigy, but since this was my first sandeep game I wanted to make sure I did everything possible to be able to summon the big guy as early as possible.

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Welcome to Malifaux, glad you're enjoying Sandeep. :) 

I'm not going to overly comment on the game play, as you clearly did better than your opponent on the table.   My only thought being that on Commands I prefer to apportion my upgrades;  

  • Fire (not slow/can't cheat):  Wind Gamin
  • Wind (attack aura/can't attack):  Metal Gamin
  • Earth (attack range/can't move):  Banasuva

That way the Metal Gamin is giving [+][+] to Johan's attacks.  I think Banasuva loses a lot from not being able to cheat, and can still surprise an opponent by 'leaping' when needed when earthed.

Looking at the scenario and crew selection;  Corner Reckoning, with; Claim Jump, Quick Murder, Set Up, Eliminate the Leadership, Leave Your Mark.

Reckoning games are often about which player wants to be on offence vs defence. Corner also means the long run and wide flanks make our speed really useful and our ability to play an evasive game even better.   Scheme wise we need to be mindful of who our QM target is, and also that Sandeep can be an easy target in EtL.  Leave Your Mark is a good scheme for our faction and I could see playing any of the schemes depending on our opponent's crew.

I'd probably take something like;

  • Sandeep: Commands, Seize the Day, Arcane Reservoir, 7ss Cache  (7)
  • Carlos Vasquez: Stunt Double, Practiced Production (11)
  • Myranda: Imbued Energies (9)
  • Johan: Imbued Energies (8)
  • Silent One (6)
  • Soulstone Miner  (6)
  • Malifaux Raptor  (3)

Seven activations plus summons should be plenty against TT.  We can keep Carlos clear of trouble to defend QM while PP-ing from our Raptor and Miner. I would definitely look to take either of both of Claim Jump or Leave Your Mark as we want to be able to start scoring without forcing contact with the enemy.  It's then up to them to go after our toys.

Really not sure about Silent One here. I could make a case for swapping her for Acolyte or Raptor and Gamin (plus a stone from our cache).

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Thanks for the suggestions! 

I can definitely see Sandeep being a potentially easy EtL target and needing to protect him with positioning with that in the pool. My opponent and I discussed that if I hadn't activated Sandeep before he could have activated Lynch on the last turn he would have wound up with at least 3 more points because he was EtL-ing as well and had the resources to kill Sandeep with ease(4 aces and an 8 card hand) and rebirth Huggy in the process. 

The metal gamin for Johan(na) is a very good idea, I'm surprised I didn't think of that actually bc I have both in a campaign right now and literally all the gamin does is follow her around buffing her defense and giving her the pluses.

The reason I went with the silent one was to have 3-4 heals on the table so that if the situation called for it I could play SVGuard and Johan(na) on the front lines and have easy ways to get them above hard to kill/force my opponent to kill them in a single activation while also having multiple engagement ignoring ranged damagers (without committing to 3 oxfords). 

I strongly considered soulstone miner instead of either librarian or silent one for leave your mark, but I do that basically every time it's in the pool so I didn't want to get too predictable. Also since it was reckoning I wanted to be able to dedicate my AP to just straight killing instead of interacting. I haven't quite gotten the hang of balancing my AP use like that yet, I tend to play pretty evasive in scheme heavy pools and then just in my opponent's face for those that are kill heavy. 

I don't have Carlos yet, but I do have Angelica. I tried to find rules about this on the rule discussion forum but couldn't quite figure it out, can a PP marker be used to score without using an AP to drop a marker? Or does that go away before scoring? I don't want to get too far off the sandeep topic here so if you're afraid of derailing the conversation feel free to ignore that one.

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21 hours ago, mythicFOX said:

That way the Metal Gamin is giving [+][+] to Johan's attacks.  I think Banasuva loses a lot from not being able to cheat, and can still surprise an opponent by 'leaping' when needed when earthed.

I've discovered this same bit here. Additionally, a Banasuva that can cheat can also try to use Sandeep's Lure ability if you don't want to (or can't, re: Anna) leap at something. The only time a non-cheating Banasuva has really helped me is when he's supported by the Emissary (Arcane Conflux) and the Commands the Wind caddy and I don't want him to survive the next turn. Commands the Earth Banasuva creates a 7" diameter circle on the table of things that are engaged with a melee expert who has a serious damage track.

I don't always bring Johan, so my Commands the Wind caddy shifts depending on what I need. Wind Gamin with it are able to dart around the board and set up a target for the next thing that follows. I get some mileage out of an immune to slow Wind Gamin when I need to clog a charge lane (jam my opponent).

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About Johan. Don't know.. 

I'm used to bring him with Ironsides (and M&SU heavy crews) where he has [+][+] to hit AND [+] to dmg, brings a heal for the enire crew and do his other jobs.

Here he seems to have less sinergy to not having one (if you don't take the mages). Not sure if the [+] metal gamin justyfies him enought.

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How good is Sandeep without mages. I hear about him a lot and we have one guy who plays him constantly and the list seems pretty fixed. Sandeep, 3 Mages, Mech Rider, a wind gamin or 2 and the last slot is variable but our guy uses Amina a lot. 

I wanna play Deep but Mages make it into so many of my lists that I'm less than interested anymore.

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Sandeep is 100% playable without Academics.  You won't be using Unaligned Sage, but it's not like it's a mandatory upgrade.  When going non-Academics I bring an elite-ish crew of 6-7 models and let my summons do the scheming (except Banasuva) while the crew goes in for the kill.

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@Mrbedlam -  I don't use mages and I have a strong competitive win rate with Sandeep.  I don't rate them at all in most situations. 

@Frollo the Wordbearer -  At 7ss Johan is still probably the the best model we have in the 7ss slot across the faction*.  Condition Removal, 3" range, an Ml6 weak 3 flurry (possibly with [+] or [+][+]) are strong enough to be highly playable.  He can routinely punch above his weight. 

*Also Acolytes, but they perform a very different role.

 

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@Mrbedlam - I'm trying to convince the local Arcanists to explore not using the Oxfordian Trio by default. So far only our top regional player really has voluntarily dropped them from some of his lists, but because he's expecting something like what Levi does: 5+ damage with 0 reduction allowed. Levi can kill all three Oxfordian Mages in a single activation, and then "die" to avoid retaliation.

Similarly, the Shastar Vidiya Guards have a trigger that ignores all damage reduction. Other models can shut them down even without killing the Mages. For examples: Mei Feng venting steam, a fast moving M&SU model with Bleeding Edge Tech diving in to jam them, Sue, anything hanging out near a counterspell aura like Sonnia's.

Alas, it looks like they'll have to run into more games against more crews that just go full blown Honey Badger on the Mages to convince them to learn to work without them.

Don't get me wrong, 15 stones on those three models seems like a steal. In many cases it really is. Playing them at your midfield shooting into the centerfield scrum, especially with something like Sandeep's Unaligned Sage (1) action up can be brutal. Then you run into a hard counter and have 15 stones spent on a gunline that's going to spend its AP pushing your own models around. For 7 stones you can have Angelica do the same, and be able to drop scheme markers virtually anywhere on the board. At least going that route, there's no confusion for the Sandeep player on what role she's there for.


Read between the lines on @retnab's composition/plan and apply the same kind of reasoning that @mythicFOX (and others, including myself) have brought up: "what job is this model going to do on the table that will score VP" and "what is this model going to do to deny opposing VP?" Then there is the one question that I've seen people make some interesting agility checks to answer: "if the other two questions are not clean answers, how does this model support the models doing the first two things?"


I know that there's an argument to be made for how killing opposing models can help support the main efforts of scoring and denying, but my counterargument to that is: what if it doesn't work?

  • We have Colette in faction. I've had games with her where everyone died but I still got 8-10 VP while denying my opponent their full 10. If you're used to playing her as a schemer, you know her crew is fragile and you hire a crew and select schemes with that in mind. You might get tabled, but still can win even if that happens. So we know within our own faction that killing everything doesn't always help.
  • We have Mei Feng in faction. If you haven't seen what she does to casting and shooting crews when used in a supporting role, then I can understand why the threat of her doesn't register very high. If you have seen what she does to casting and shooting crews, then you should know better than to count on them landing enough hits to exploit their triggers. So we know, in faction, that hard counters to magical gunlines exist.

Sandeep is quite strong, to the point where every tournament I go to my opponent thinks I'm going to play Sandeep into them. My pre-game banter of "you've probably run into this before, but let me know if you want to see anything" on revealing the crews is greeted with a groaning "Sandeep?"--when I'm actually dropping Ramos' Spider Factory (because Extraction or Interference). This isn't because I always play Sandeep, but rather because the other half dozen Arcanist players in the region often do. This leads me to believe that people are going to build up counters to their local (and regional if you have multiple local meta groups that get together for tournaments) Sandeep experience.

Similar to all the Armored Core variants that people have learned to expect from Arcanists (look at other factions' postings), anti-Sandeep stuff is in the works. Some will target the mobility by dropping Anna into key areas (cuts down on pushes/places), some will target the support elements (trust me Oxfordian Mages crumple when hit, and with Temporary Shielding you're attacking your own hand to keep this dude alive). Then there's the same kind of approach that works against most crews and masters: go after their stones and their hand. Arcanist players who are learning Sandeep will need to keep their options open.

 

Which comes about to answering the question:

10 hours ago, Mrbedlam said:

How good is Sandeep without mages. I hear about him a lot and we have one guy who plays him constantly and the list seems pretty fixed. Sandeep, 3 Mages, Mech Rider, a wind gamin or 2 and the last slot is variable but our guy uses Amina a lot. 

I wanna play Deep but Mages make it into so many of my lists that I'm less than interested anymore.

Sandeep without mages is still an significant threat (A+ to S-tier) because of how much he can do and how many ways he can do it. You don't need the mages to pull off most of Sandeep's shenanigans. For instance, if you've a full hand with exactly what you need for two lesser Gamin summons and Banasuva (with stones if needed) and a good enough tome to cheat in on a Beacon ability, then you've got 2-3 disposable cards to do something like:

  1. Emissary Activates, discarding card for Flesh and Metal, moves, ends within range of non-master (model of choice, let's say Angelica who walked in front of everyone after the initiative flip).
  2. Angelica uses her 'free' (1) to copy Sandeep's The Mind Among The Senses (needs a 6:tome for full effect) to Lure Sandeep forward (Sandeep relents).
  3. Sandeep discards a card to take a 1AP action as a result of a :tome on a successful Beacon copy, summons an immune to slow Wind Gamin (for example).

This can be your first activation of Turn 1. Stuff like that sets an immediate tone for what Sandeep can do, as well as bumping your activations count before you've committed your main effort (Arcane Conflux is a supporting element, Emissary is bullying for board position with its threat). I've done this with Commands because Sandeep and his summoned Gamin are the distraction/kill effort, while the rest of the crew will be scheming. Visions Sandeep probably would not need or want to do something exactly like that, as the crew is the distraction effort and the summons will be trying to set up for the schemes' main effort. It's more likely that on step 2, Angelica would take the opportunity to push the Emissary another 5" to line it up for a deep, distracting FFM-smelling dive in Turn 2.

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5 hours ago, mythicFOX said:

@Mrbedlam -  I don't use mages and I have a strong competitive win rate with Sandeep.  I don't rate them at all in most situations. 

 

Could you please provide a sample of your non-mage crew?

17 minutes ago, spooky_squirrel said:

@Mrbedlam - I'm trying to convince the local Arcanists to explore not using the Oxfordian Trio by default. So far only our top regional player really has voluntarily dropped them from some of his lists, but because he's expecting something like what Levi does: 5+ damage with 0 reduction allowed. Levi can kill all three Oxfordian Mages in a single activation, and then "die" to avoid retaliation.

  • We have Mei Feng in faction. If you haven't seen what she does to casting and shooting crews when used in a supporting role, then I can understand why the threat of her doesn't register very high. If you have seen what she does to casting and shooting crews, then you should know better than to count on them landing enough hits to exploit their triggers. So we know, in faction, that hard counters to magical gunlines exist.

I do not understand how Leveticus can do this. Please explain. Btw, the Mages often have a :+fate on Wp duels, so Leveticus will need three 12+ cards even to hit.

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26 minutes ago, Alexander Tsikarev said:

I do not understand how Leveticus can do this. Please explain. Btw, the Mages often have a :+fate on Wp duels, so Leveticus will need three 12+ cards even to hit.

It's not that he's likely to, it's that it's possible to. He doesn't need the 12+ cards to hit, those just make the attack essentially automatic. Being on positives just means you get to flip another card and take the better of the two (barring jokers), not that the next card is going to save you. If Levi totals high enough to force you to cheat or take damage that cannot be reduced, you are in a bind with a master that needs its hand. In a tournament scene, possibilities can affect how the standings go--similar to other wargames, it will be the possibility that you don't anticipate that will throw a wrench into your positioning.
Only the damage that Red Joker comes out for will beat 5+, but it may be the only one that needs to. Often times in Arcanist crews that use Oxfordian Mages, two or more of them have been damaged (1 wound is enough) getting into position off of the others' pushes. So the Arcanist player that is aware of their own playstyle needs to account for that, and in the case of the regional tournament scene this is exactly the reason that player doesn't play the Oxfordian Trio if he's anticipating Levi. He's also our top tournament player, even in 20 to 30+ player turnouts, so it's not just a middle-of-the-playing-field line of thought.

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So what would be a good core 30-35ish points to play around with Sandeep core list barring the mages? Guards look real good and I love them in a Toni list, and Amina is always a fun addition. Is Deep looking to run threats in the list while his summons scheme or is he bringing a ton of control and holding large sections of the board with the threat of his move + casts?

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