Tournament Prep

[Gypsey]

Hello Ressers!

I have a local tournament coming up and am looking forward to three awesome games! I haven't been able to play much recently and regardless of being competitive, I'm going to enjoy just getting some games in. That being said, I want to get the group's thoughts on building to the follow strategies and schemes:

Game 1:

Deployment: Corner Deployment (10)
Strategy: Interference (Masks)
Schemes: 
  * Claim Jump (Always)
  * Frame For Murder (Rams)
  * Leave Your Mark (Tomes)
  * Hunting Party (4)
  * Search The Ruins (8)

Game 2:

Deployment: Close Deployment (14)
Strategy: Headhunter (Tomes)
Schemes: 
  * Claim Jump (Always)
  * Frame For Murder (Rams)
  * Leave Your Mark (Tomes)
  * Undercover Entourage (2)
  * Show Of Force (3)

Game 3:

Deployment: Standard Deployment (7)
Strategy: Headhunter (Tomes)
Schemes: 
  * Claim Jump (Always)
  * Frame For Murder (Rams)
  * Accusation! (Masks)
  * Set Up (7)
  * Last Stand (13)

I'd love to see some full lists with comments on why you think the list would be able to achieve the S&S. All models are fair game. How would you swamp over the enemy and secure these games for team Ressers?

[Lokibri]

Well...i think here is some crucial information missing:

 How many Soulstones?

What do you have in your arsenal to play with as models?

Do you know what your meta will look like?

 

Those are pretty important to tell us, if you want complete lists with comments, which is equally to "you can do my work now" :).

I think it could be a nice start to give us a list with what you were thinkng and adjust according to the comments. That normally is more successful, than letting others post lists.

 

See you in the Bayou

[clockworkspide]

Is this the 50 SS tournament at Connections in Vancouver next Sunday?  I might go myself and I'd be interested in list thoughts.

Model pool:

Mercy of Death box

Carrion Emissary

Drowned

Crooked Men

Night Terrors

Hanged (1 only)

Shikome (1 only)

Forgotten Marshall

Hayreddin

Crooligans

Anna Lovelace

Nurses

Dead Rider

Most Outcast mercs and Oiran.

 

[Gypsey]

44 minutes ago, Lokibri said:

Well...i think here is some crucial information missing:

 How many Soulstones?

What do you have in your arsenal to play with as models?

Do you know what your meta will look like?

 

Those are pretty important to tell us, if you want complete lists with comments, which is equally to "you can do my work now" :).

I think it could be a nice start to give us a list with what you were thinkng and adjust according to the comments. That normally is more successful, than letting others post lists.

 

See you in the Bayou

It's a standard Tournament, so 50 soulstones. And I do mention that all models are fair game. 

I also do have a couple lists already built for this. I didn't want to influence the discussion though.

[Gypsey]

3 minutes ago, clockworkspide said:

Is this the 50 SS tournament at Connections in Vancouver next Sunday?  I might go myself and I'd be interested in list thoughts.

Model pool:

Mercy of Death box

Carrion Emissary

Drowned

Crooked Men

Night Terrors

Hanged (1 only)

Shikome (1 only)

Forgotten Marshall

Hayreddin

Crooligans

Anna Lovelace

Nurses

Dead Rider

Most Outcast mercs and Oiran.

 

Haha, yes it is

I was wondering if there would be another resser playing!

[clockworkspide]

Still a maybe, but I am considering showing up.

[Gypsey]

In the interest in getting the ball rolling. Here is one of the lists I'm considering for Game 1:

50 SS Resurrectionists Crew
Nicodem + 6 Pool
 - Undertaker (1)
 - Maniacal Laugh (1)
Mortimer (9)
 - Corpse Bloat (2)
Philip and the Nanny (8)
 - Haunting Cries (0)
Carrion Emissary (10)
 - My Little Helper (1)
Rotten Belle (5)
Necropunk (5)
Necropunk (5)

Since it is interference, going with a summoner makes sense to me. Frame for Murder is also in the pool so I want a master that isn't going to accidently kill anything and I don't want any killy Henchmen. 

I like Philip because he can help deny the scheme marker placement of my enemy while helping summoning. 

I also added two Necropunks so they can easily do claim jump and leave your mark. Or can walk into the centre, drop a scheme and jump out so they still score for interference. They will also be hard to take down and hard to pin as they can leap out of combat. 

Thoughts?

[hydranixx]

You can't go wrong with Nicodem in Interference. Competitively speaking, many share the opinion that he and Kirai are by far the best choices for Interference.

The core list is solid, each model serves an important function. Phillip and the Nanny in particular are extremely good with this pool; reveal them and you'll warp their scheme selection if they're any good, and if you can protect them, you can deny your opponent most of his schemes.

That said, there are some things to consider in your list. There's no definitive right or wrong answer, but this is how I'd tweak it:

6 - Nicodem + Undertaker + Maniacal Laugh + full cache of 7
12 - Mortimer + Corpse Bloat + My Little Helper
8 - Philip and the Nanny + Haunting Cries
10 - Carrion Emissary + Carrion Conflux
5 - Rotten Belle
5 - Necropunk
4 - Crooligan

Here are my reasons for doing it how I describe:

Bring the full 7ss with Nicodem. The extra ss will always see use - at the very least it's an extra turn you can cycle cards or an extra attack you can afford to ss damage away on Phillip and the Nanny. Most often it's going to be for summoning. It could equally be saved to secure the  trigger on Phillips (0) to steal the game away; given the pool.

Buy MLH on Mortimer. I think it should be stapled to his card if he's taking Corpse Bloat. He's doing one of two things in games with Nicodem (you'll know which based on your opponent's list, your control hands and the board state);

1) he's a sacrificial, corpse-generating god, capable of giving you anywhere between 2 and 6 corpses on one important mid game turn by ripping his spleen twice and charging for potential triggers (and if he dies, add 1 more corpse and 1 more Mindless Zombie to the tally)

2) Chatty will be extremely annoying to the enemy, so you make 1 or 2 Corpses early on and then let him stick around purely to keep up Chatty and occasionally whack people. This type of Mortimer LOVES the Dark Protection buff as on the right turn it can shut down the enemy's plan to get rid of him to enable them to score again. 

Swap MLH on Emissary for Carrion Conflux. Our minions tend to have good Ca (Rotten Belles in particular) so the  to all Attack Actions is great here. Even Necropunks near him and Nicodem become scary in Melee since their Flurry is now on  to attacks. I have played the Emissary both ways, and he's good both ways, but I think with Nicodem I prefer Carrion Conflux for 4 main reasons - its free, he becomes another mini Nicodem for your team (and most importantly, his  affects Ca too), it frees MLH for someone else to buy since it's only rare 2, and finally you only get 1 MZ from a turn in which you cast 2x Shards due to an FAQ.

Philip and the Nanny is superb in this pool. You could consider doubling up on her potency and adding some resilience by adding MLH to them instead of on Mortimer. It could even be correct to put MLH on both of them if you free up an extra ss somehow.

Swap 1 Necropunk for 1 Crooligan. This saves the 1ss to run a full 7ss cache, and it also opens up early game options with Fresh Meat with Mortimer for getting 3+ models an extra Wk. You can also place him somewhere awkward to distract your opponent. You're already going to summon Necropunks since they're cheap, suit the schemes pretty well, and because automatically heal. Further, you will still have 1 in the list to provide scheme markers for Phillip and the Nanny to consume, so the 2nd Necropunk will not be sorely missed on turn 1.

[hydranixx]

The tournament you're playing in is rather unique if it's actually the same strategy for round 2 and round 3. Double Headhunter seems tailor made for Ressers lol.

If you are legitimately playing Headhunter twice, you could confidently start both lists for these rounds with 3x Rotten Belle, Carrion Emissary + Carrion Conflux. This core fits handles Headhunter superbly and is useful in most of the other available schemes. It fits relatively well with most of our masters too. Izamu is also nice in Headhunter due to Melee Expert and his ability to sacrifice himself when he's killed.

For Round 2 I would consider some weird build with Anna Lovelace to control the middle, make Show of Force a pain, and making pushing into pick up Heads impossible. This could also be a chance for The Forgotten Marshall to actually see play since he can bounce around the board picking up Heads and/or give you the edge to deny SoF, and at the last moment teleport to score Entourage.

Round 3... There's a few ways to do this. The Belle + Emissary core can handle Set Up/Frame for Murder/Accusation easily enough. Anna again shuts down easy pushing/placing for Head retrieval, as does Phillip and the Nanny or Mortimer's Chatty. 

[Gypsey]

3 hours ago, hydranixx said:

If you are legitimately playing Headhunter twice, you could confidently start both lists for these rounds with 3x Rotten Belle, Carrion Emissary + Carrion Conflux. This core fits handles Headhunter superbly and is useful in most of the other available schemes. It fits relatively well with most of our masters too. Izamu is also nice in Headhunter due to Melee Expert and his ability to sacrifice himself when he's killed.

For Round 2 I would consider some weird build with Anna Lovelace to control the middle, make Show of Force a pain, and making pushing into pick up Heads impossible. This could also be a chance for The Forgotten Marshall to actually see play since he can bounce around the board picking up Heads and/or give you the edge to deny SoF, and at the last moment teleport to score Entourage.

This thought has been especially helpful. I honestly felt kinda stuck with Headhunter feeling that it was not a good scheme for Ressers. I always fine my models to get locked in combat and are either unable to pick up the heads or die too easily, giving up too many heads to my opponents.

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

3 hours ago, Gypsey said:

I honestly felt kinda stuck with Headhunter feeling that it was not a good scheme for Ressers

have you tried three rotten belle in headhunter? they make it somewhat easier... sometimes.

as for game two, in vacuo I would consider Reva with Undecover and Leave Your Mark.

game three looks like "pick whatever you like and hope that it will counter your opponent's picks".

[hydranixx]

Game three looks like a 6 model Yan Lo crew to me :L

[Paddywhack]

13 hours ago, hydranixx said:

For Round 2 I would consider some weird build with Anna Lovelace to control the middle, make Show of Force a pain, and making pushing into pick up Heads impossible. This could also be a chance for The Forgotten Marshall to actually see play since he can bounce around the board picking up Heads and/or give you the edge to deny SoF, and at the last moment teleport to score Entourage.

Oooh. I hadn't thought of the Forgotten Marshal in HH. That could work well as he can be very difficult to pin down and can jump around quite well. I need try this in my next HH game. I like the FM, but so far he's been more of a nuisance model than actually getting anything significant done for me. With Close deployment you should a number of your models near the action, just try and wait to kill things till near the end of the turn. Of course the FM will have to pick it up at the beginning of the next turn, but nothings perfect. 

[hydranixx]

Yeah, to be honest I've never felt compelled to include my Forgotten Marshal in a crew, let alone put paint on him. This pool of schemes and strategy makes him seem more interesting though.

Sadly, he can't score Entourage as he's not a henchman or master, so he's not as amazing as I initially thought he'd be... but I still think he's a nice package for the round. I would have him activate early, walk to pick up a head, then disappear with his (0) before he loses his own head, then position to pick up a head early next round again. Failing that, his melee can debuff something that you desperately want to kill. That's probably not worth 7ss in and of itself, but because he is also able to teleport to the centre of the board for Show of Force (take MLH unless you already have 2 copies in the list) purposes that's kind of nice too. He's also a good target for Frame for Murder (which oddly enough is in all 3 rounds this event, wow!) if you make him annoying with jumping around picking up heads and contesting Show of Force.

It would be kind of hilarious with MLH if he does die in Headhunter - one model dies, and two models get summoned for free to go stand on his head.

[Gypsey]

The tournament is over and I wanted to share what I took and what I faced. Unfortunately there were 9 players for this tournament so first round I ended up getting the buy. I had my lists preselected so I would have gone with the Nico list mentioned above.

Game 2

This round I decided to take a risk and go with Reva. I had to be very cautious on what I tried to murder with her to reduce any Frame For Murder points.

My opponent took the Viks. Basics of the list was malifaux child, librarian, Vanessa, effigy, and Johan.

I took this list:
Reva + 6 Pool
 - Beyond Death (1)
 - Litany of The Fallen (2)
 - Spare Parts (2)
Graveyard Spirit (3)
Carrion Emissary (10)
 - My Little Helper (1)
Yin The Penangalan (8)
 - My Little Helper (1)
Hayreddin (7)
 - Unnerving Aura (1)
Shieldbearer (6)
Shieldbearer (6)

I used the Emissary to funnel the Viks down the center of the board and had Hayreddin standing at the front as my Frame target. Although pretty obvious, I was able to sell that I hadn't takes Frame enough that eventually henchman Vik killed him and gave me 3 points. Unfortunately as I tried to keep the opponents crew tied up in the center, they were ripping through my models and claiming heads. At the end of the game, one of the Viks crossed into my deployment for Undercover Entourage and I ran Reva and got her into the opponents deployment to also score. In the end, game was a draw at 7-7

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

I would advice refraining from picking graveyard spirit against outcasts, since they have way too many models that ignore armor, masters among them. I would strongly advice refraining from picking graveyard spirit with reva, since you can't summon corpse candles then (I mean, you can, but then you sacrifice graveyard spirit, so there's no point in hiring it in the first place).

Have you ever played reva with decaying aura? it makes killing masters and henchmen much easier, and could prevent your opponent from scoring entourage.

[Gypsey]

21 hours ago, thatlatinspeakingguy said:

I would advice refraining from picking graveyard spirit against outcasts, since they have way too many models that ignore armor, masters among them. I would strongly advice refraining from picking graveyard spirit with reva, since you can't summon corpse candles then (I mean, you can, but then you sacrifice graveyard spirit, so there's no point in hiring it in the first place).

Have you ever played reva with decaying aura? it makes killing masters and henchmen much easier, and could prevent your opponent from scoring entourage.

Yes, I did forget about the corpse candle thing. My opponent obliged me by targeting the the graveyard spirit first. So it didn't matter much this game. I almost always take decaying aura on Reva however I didn't want her killing things too hard with Frame For Murder in the pool. For that reason I decided to add in Spare Parts instead. Reva actually was easily able to summon in a Rouge Necromancy on turn 3.

[Gypsey]

Game 3

This game my opponent declared 10T. I heard from people around me that Yas was going to be a thing this game. He brought McCabe, Yas, Emmisary, Luna with 3 dogs, and a terracotta warrior.

My list:

50 SS Resurrectionists Crew
Seamus + 6 Pool
 - Sinister Reputation (1)
 - Red Chapel Killer (1)
Copycat Killer (3)
Madame Sybelle (8)
 - Not Too Banged Up (1)
 - My Little Helper (1)
Carrion Emissary (10)
 - Carrion Conflux (0)
Dead Doxy (6)
Performer (6)
Rotten Belle (5)
Rotten Belle (5)

I put Frame for Murder on the Emmisary and took Accusation! With the thought that the belles would be pulling stuff in. Has did his thing and was able to charge the Emissary, which was barely left standing down to Hard to Kill. Has got 3 pushes from the crew, fast, nimble and charged. Nuts! Has did end up killing the Emissary top of turn 2 to give me 2 points for Frame. I was able to tie up the terracotta warrior with my Dixie to Accuse it, though I only scored 1 VP in total. The dogs went to the side field and did claim jump for 2 VP. I just couldn't get a high enough crow to get the performer to paralyze Yas , but she did collect a head while engaged. Seamus killed a dog on turn 1, but then struggled to do much to the Emmisary. All my stones went to keeping Sybelle up in Yas' face. Turned out that Frame for Murder was on Yas, and I left him at 1 wound when time was called.

I won that game 5-4. Though we barely got to the end of turn 3. I ended up barely winning the tournament with a buy, draw and win. Somehow beating out my opponent on game 2 who had 2 wins and a draw. And my opponent on game 3 with 2 wins and a loss.

[Nikodemus]

Bye counts as a win with a specific VP and differential. I forget details but it's in the GG document.

What do you think you could've done to speed up your play? Only getting three rounds in is bit of a bummer but also sort of expected in your first timed games. If you were to play this tournament again do you think you could manage five rounds a game?

[Gypsey]

5 hours ago, Nikodemus said:

Bye counts as a win with a specific VP and differential. I forget details but it's in the GG document.

What do you think you could've done to speed up your play? Only getting three rounds in is bit of a bummer but also sort of expected in your first timed games. If you were to play this tournament again do you think you could manage five rounds a game?

Haha. This was far from my first tournament and there were a couple factors why we didn't make it to into round 4. The rounds were short, only an hour and 45 mins. And my opponent took a while to get set up. So we only had about an hour and 20 mins of actual game play. 

[clockworkspide]

Suddenly I'm glad I didn't show up, considering I tend to play a little slowly.

[Nikodemus]

3 hours ago, Gypsey said:

Haha. This was far from my first tournament and there were a couple factors why we didn't make it to into round 4. The rounds were short, only an hour and 45 mins. And my opponent took a while to get set up. So we only had about an hour and 20 mins of actual game play. 

Ha! I don't know where I got that idea. Yeah that kind of round times will do it.

I really like 2h rounds with 10-ish minutes in between them get all your stuff from table to table. Pre-announced strats & schemes help out too, especially if people aren't as fast at building lists on the fly.