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Collodi 101


EpicWaffle

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8 hours ago, Kirby said:

 They don't hit hard, they don't have much staying power, and they don't apply crippling conditions.  What do they accomplish?

I tend to find Collodi, two stitched and the weaver can and do maim, cripple or kill most things when I really need something to die - usually key pieces of the opponents machine or something which is getting in my way

When you can hand out the shadows effigies condition to almost your entire crew then give them either defensive stance or +1 armour and they have defence of 5-6 I don't tend to have many problems with people spending a/p to kill them off - especially when I can resummon something from the scrap.

The additional wk from the weaver makes your doll friends very agile scheme runners especially when they can frizbee scheme runners round the board thanks to the mannequin.
They also work well due to reasonable defense + armour + hard to kill etc if you want to run up and drop a condition on something.

I do really like my wicked dolls but have not been using them much lately - the wicked dolls plus arcane effigies condition is a way of making other dolls and marionettes rather gruesome in the death by 1000 cuts style as their all now on 3/4/6 unless your opponent discards 4/5/7 with a marionette if you hit with a ram, they will only be attacking on 5ml at most but if you decide to make them all fast.....worst case scenario, when the weaver isn't busy spinning webs, paralyzing people an chewing through their armour she will pull a teddy together from the scatter dolls and corpses.

To be fair though my general play style doesn't rely on "elite" or beater crews and I'd possibly think twice about running the above list if the strategies and schemes flipped lacked enough scheme marker and interaction based vp which is probably when a Collodi player is better to switch from fated to bag of props, but in that instance I'm presently just running other masters instead.

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So yesterday I had a go with this list:

Collodi (fated,strum their threads,breath life) 6 ss cache

Widow weaver (thousand faces)

Teddy (thousand faces)

Stitched together x2

Marionette

Brutal Effigy

Arcane effigy

The strategy was guard the stash and for schemes I had claim jump and frame for murder. Although I must say I had a lot of luck, the earlie pressure from teddy provided to me enough time for my "bubble" to set up while scoring me 2 points of frame for murder and sent Tara and a valedictorian (already wounded by collodi) both in critical conditions. The widow held to his nothing beast for 3 turns, paralyzing it 2 times in a row and stitcheds one shot half of his minions. As said, I was very lucky, but still the crew idea would had work even with less luck, since the amount of pressure you are able to put on the other player is huge (works mainly if the enemy has to come to you too). Feel like I could had left teddy at home for a bunraku + extra marionets or an illuminated and something else, but he did his job and with collodi having such a reliable Ca, you're almost sure to hit Smell fear (a neat trick too is to hit the crow trigger and force someone to fail the terror check).

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On 15/01/2017 at 3:30 PM, Kirby said:

There are several crews being listed, but how do they work on the table?  What's your general activation order and operational goals?

One problem I see with these crews, which is somewhat mitigated by Illuminated and Stitched, is that there tend to be a bunch of low-cost Minions running about.  They don't hit hard, they don't have much staying power, and they don't apply crippling conditions.  What do they accomplish?  How do they deal with opponent threats?  Any kind of standard defenses such as Armor, Hard to Wound, Hard to Kill, etc. seem very difficult to deal with.  Are you relying entirely on Collodi's 3AP to get real work done?

What does a typical turn or game look like for a Collodi crew?  How does it do what it wants without getting murdered or shut down?

In addition to Mo11usq's video reports (which are excellent), I have a couple of tournament reports now posted in the battle report subforum with Collodi.

Masters of the Path

December's End

In both events I used only Collodi so there are 6 games reported using it.  The latter event was fixed master, but the first was one where I just decided to stick with Collodi anyway.

Just because Collodi has synergy with minions doesn't mean that you need to have a crew which contains only minions and nothing else.  If killing stuff is the order of the day then you can take Nekima, Teddy or whoever you fancy.  If you prefer high damage minions anyway then Illuminated plus Beckoner can be effective, or just take Stitched Together.  Presumably Rougarou would also be effective but I have no experience there.  I can say that I haven't had a big problem just putting things down with lots of low damage attacks anyway, especially as Collodi can really reduce return fire by applying Slow or Idle Hands as needed to anything scary coming at you.

Hard To Wound, Hard To Kill, armour etc have not been a problem for Collodi in my experience unless they are coupled with the ability to somehow reduce damage to zero (usually with Soulstones).  In general I'm not really trying to kill enemies with it (though I don't turn down the opportunity if it comes up) but just to cripple them with conditions.  Of course, if the other crew has a lot of condition removal then you must be careful of what you're trying to do here, but unless you are facing something like Shen Long, Sensei Yu and the Shadow Effigy (which I do all the time) then there is a limit to what the other crew can mitigate as most condition removal is quite hard to use, requiring often a moderate suited card.

If you desperately need an out of activation action from something that is not a minion or puppet then you can always cast Pull The Strings and cheat/stone the My Bidding trigger since it helpfully doesn't specify that it only works on enemies.  I've used this to move Nekima and Lazarus around if I need the extra threat range.

Stitched Together combine really well with Threads of Fate (allowing them to go Fast at the cost of two wounds) and Fear Not The Sword from the Brutal Effigy shared via the Fated upgrade on Collodi.  Due to the high risk nature of their attack I'm much more likely to cheat to win the duel so it is more often that they will be able to heal.  And 3 AP on a Stitched Together can be rather nasty.

I really like Bunraku; they synergise well with Collodi in general but can work well enough without its support too.  I often seem to find them taking Fear Not The Sword and Fast one turn then rushing off out of the 'ball of death' to deal with some threat.  Inevitably the schemes will require that your crew splits up somehow so it is important not to get hung up on keeping everything within :aura6 of Collodi.  If the opportunity presents then Snatch can bring a victim closer, but the range is quite short so I think that in practice this plays a lot less like a mini-Lure than I had expected.

Lazarus is good with Collodi partly because of the Assimilate ability (though it does conflict with Self-Repair, so make sure you've got something useful to do with the ability if you use it) and partly because he's a nice big armoured target that can take some of the attention of the rest of your crew.  No-one wants to give Lazarus free shots at something in the open so this can force some interesting positional choices on the other player.

Finally, if Sybarite is the player I think that they are, then I also recommend attending to their posts as I believe that they are quite skilled at Malifaux.

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On 1/15/2017 at 5:59 PM, Vorschlag said:

I tend to find Collodi, two stitched and the weaver can and do maim, cripple or kill most things when I really need something to die - usually key pieces of the opponents machine or something which is getting in my way

When you can hand out the shadows effigies condition to almost your entire crew then give them either defensive stance or +1 armour and they have defence of 5-6 I don't tend to have many problems with people spending a/p to kill them off - especially when I can resummon something from the scrap.

The additional wk from the weaver makes your doll friends very agile scheme runners especially when they can frizbee scheme runners round the board thanks to the mannequin.
They also work well due to reasonable defense + armour + hard to kill etc if you want to run up and drop a condition on something.

I do really like my wicked dolls but have not been using them much lately - the wicked dolls plus arcane effigies condition is a way of making other dolls and marionettes rather gruesome in the death by 1000 cuts style as their all now on 3/4/6 unless your opponent discards 4/5/7 with a marionette if you hit with a ram, they will only be attacking on 5ml at most but if you decide to make them all fast.....worst case scenario, when the weaver isn't busy spinning webs, paralyzing people an chewing through their armour she will pull a teddy together from the scatter dolls and corpses.

To be fair though my general play style doesn't rely on "elite" or beater crews and I'd possibly think twice about running the above list if the strategies and schemes flipped lacked enough scheme marker and interaction based vp which is probably when a Collodi player is better to switch from fated to bag of props, but in that instance I'm presently just running other masters instead.

So what does this sort of crew look like, then?

 

Collodi, Fated (1 iirc), ?

Widow Weaver (8) + Hex Bag (2)

Stitched (6)

Stitched (6)

Shadow Effigy (4)

That's a little over half your points.  Are you taking Vasilisa?  Mannequins?  What else, generally?  I'm really interested in this crew, but Collodi is just so out of my ability to conceptualize....

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if scheme markers are going to be important I will take a mannequin for the frisbee'd scheme markers.
I normally take two marrionettes and then a mix of effigies.

- this type of crew is a whirl wind of claws for anyone that steps into it especially if you've got the arcane effigy and a wicked doll in the mix as now everyone's handing out poison and burning.
- the crew gets stronger if you take something with a lure  - have not done this myself but it is obvious.
- while stronger when acting as a ball of death the crew has the ability to split apart for scheme running when required thanks to htw, armour and collodi, stitched + effigies handing out protection or fast.
- Collodi and stitched are your only ranged/semi ranged options so best at stats/schemes where the enemy will need to get close.
- No I would take Vasilisa in a completely different build where her abilities would be better suited and where she's not taking stones away from my swarm of underlings.

- you mean hand bag with weaver - hex bag is Zoraida.

 

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1 hour ago, Vorschlag said:

if scheme markers are going to be important I will take a mannequin for the frisbee'd scheme markers.
I normally take two marrionettes and then a mix of effigies.

- this type of crew is a whirl wind of claws for anyone that steps into it especially if you've got the arcane effigy and a wicked doll in the mix as now everyone's handing out poison and burning.
- the crew gets stronger if you take something with a lure  - have not done this myself but it is obvious.
- while stronger when acting as a ball of death the crew has the ability to split apart for scheme running when required thanks to htw, armour and collodi, stitched + effigies handing out protection or fast.
- Collodi and stitched are your only ranged/semi ranged options so best at stats/schemes where the enemy will need to get close.
- No I would take Vasilisa in a completely different build where her abilities would be better suited and where she's not taking stones away from my swarm of underlings.

- you mean hand bag with weaver - hex bag is Zoraida.

 

Gotcha.  I think this is what I'm going to use to try out Collodi.

And yes, yes I do mean hand bag.

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I personally play Collodi 90% of the time with Bang of Props.
I like the ability it give me too do consistent damage with Collodi.

you need to Play Collodi as a agressive caster. with control abilitys. 
every turn you go fast with collodi and attac 4 times. the focus makes hitting more easy and some defensive abilities non existent (rides, Yin)
Control with triggers big models and kill medium to small models. 'my will' you almost never use with Bag of Props.

i start with this
Collodi
    Strum the Threads
    Bag of Props
2/4 x Marionette
Brutal Effigy
Arcane Effigy
Lucky Effigy or Hodgepodge Effigy

this is a 30 point list that Makes Collodi very scary killing machine.
with this also comes your scheme runners and activation control.
Dont underastemade the power with 30 point and 8 activations. and 7 models with HtK.

the other 20 point is for with you need based on the games (opponents faction, strategy, schemes)
same examples
Nikema
doppleganger
graves

Emissary,
doppleganger
johan

2 x silirid
2 x depeleted

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Well i used to play collodi 1,5-2 years ago and got best results with:

Collodi (fated, strum, breathe)

Vasilisa (little food, litte water) taxi

3-4 marionest - scheme runners

lucky effigy - main buff to spread

brutal effigy - buff collodi, scheme runner

arcane effigy - condition removal, scheme runner

2 stitched together - main damage dealer

Turn one i just activate everything but collodi, vasilisa and stitched together. that is about 8 activations so oponent cant actualy react. Then just simply activate vassilisa drag stitched together forward in 6 range with most exposed enemy model, for zero twist gamble your life, then activate collodi,move and My will the same stitched together to gamble your life with positive flip, then activate stitched together and gamble again. There is no need for high cards for collodi so i u have any 13 against model with 5 or 6 defense u dont have to worry. i usually managed to kill important model turn one like this. Obviously doesnt work against every master.

 

ps lucky effigy buff has incredible synergy with hard to kill models, it saved me many models. + u can add wicked doll for heal&buff  my will/twist target for extra positive flip.

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On 2017-01-26 at 9:50 AM, nishi said:

Well i used to play collodi 1,5-2 years ago and got best results with:

Collodi (fated, strum, breathe)

Vasilisa (little food, litte water) taxi

3-4 marionest - scheme runners

lucky effigy - main buff to spread

brutal effigy - buff collodi, scheme runner

arcane effigy - condition removal, scheme runner

2 stitched together - main damage dealer

Turn one i just activate everything but collodi, vasilisa and stitched together. that is about 8 activations so oponent cant actualy react. Then just simply activate vassilisa drag stitched together forward in 6 range with most exposed enemy model, for zero twist gamble your life, then activate collodi,move and My will the same stitched together to gamble your life with positive flip, then activate stitched together and gamble again. There is no need for high cards for collodi so i u have any 13 against model with 5 or 6 defense u dont have to worry. i usually managed to kill important model turn one like this. Obviously doesnt work against every master.

 

ps lucky effigy buff has incredible synergy with hard to kill models, it saved me many models. + u can add wicked doll for heal&buff  my will/twist target for extra positive flip.

List looks a bit fragile. I would skip some small puppets for another beater

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7 hours ago, Sybarite said:

List looks a bit fragile. I would skip some small puppets for another beater

Collodi

- Fated

- Strum the Threads

- Threads of Fate

Marionette x2

Illuminated

Stitched Together

Mysterious Effigy

Arcane Effigy

Brutal Effigy

Hodgepodge Effigy

Shadow Effigy

Mannequin

4 SS left, 7 SS cache

 

Thoughts? Too fragile? I'm considering just putting another Marionette in there, but a 4 SS cache is a little low for my usual taste. I could replace one Effigy with a Stitched, or the Stitched with another Illuminated.

 

I love, love, love the Effigies. I think they're great just because they're cheap, somewhat durable, and can really tailor Collodi's crew with their buff. Depending on what I need in a given moment, I'd use the Brutal Effigy's buff as the primary buff to use (to get Fast for 2 damage then hopefully heal it back up).

If I go for a lower cache, I'd use the Hodgepodge's buff one turn to try and recover some stones.

If I absolutely need to kill something, I'll go for the Arcane's Burning buff. Either I kill a vital target, or I kill their hand to avoid Burning damage. Win/win.

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Looks a bit pillow fisted to me. Effigies are nice but you barely have anything to buff to actually kill stuff. I tend to go for 2 stitched and an illuminated, then either a lure model or coryphee. You have five effigies and only a couple of models who really make use of their buffs. If I focus down your single stitched you're in trouble a lot of the time.

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  • 1 month later...
3 minutes ago, Ergonomic Cat said:

Follow-up to myself: The Knights' Lures are 0 actions, not 1 actions.  So while they're good for what they are, you can't My Will their Lure.

They are however good models to take with him in scheme pools as they can place markers as part of their attack and getting healing from the effigies puts them in a similar durability to Illuminated and Stitched.

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