McTavish

[doubledragon]

Hey guys,

Had a game last night with a friend. Guild vs Guild.

I was running McMourning and my friend was running Nellie. The strategy was Ply For Information. Crew lists looked something like this:

McMourning
- Guild Coroner
- Test Subjects
- On The Clock
Myranda
- A Debt To The Guild
Rogue Necro
- A Debt To The Guild
Dawn Serpent
2x Guild Hounds
2x Nurses

Nellie
- Cant remember her upgrades (but the culprit upgrade was the one that gives out fast)
Phiona
- Transparency
McTavish
2x Reporters
Monster Hunter
Thalarian Queller
Printing Press

The problem was McTavish with fast - every turn! Pushing into scheme markers dropped by the reporters. Then 3x 14" shot Sh 6 shots with high damage - every turn.

In my opinion, McTavish is broken. He does everything. Sh that ignores cover and doesn't randomize, with massive damage. A Ml attack that's only slightly less effective than his Sh. Scheme marker interaction. Henchman, so he can use stones. All for just 10 ss. Which, when compared to other models that cost 10 ss, seems a bit much. You can't deal with him as you would other models, take advantage of their weakness, because he has none. Stay in cover? Nope, ignores cover. Get into Ml? Nope, Doesn't randomize. Engage him? Probably your best bet if you survive getting to the otherside of the board, then if you do, make sure he's already activated so you can do some damage, cos if he hasn't activated, he'll kill that model in Ml. Now take all of this and combine it with fast every turn from Nellie and A Debt To The Guild for one turn of extra craziness, is too much too handle.

How do you guys deal with McTavish in general?
How do you guys deal with McTavish in a Nellie crew?

[Myyrä]

I kill him. He isn't that difficult to kill.

The problem here seems to be your opponent just had all around superior list.

[Hidelfon]

Wait until you see him with Wong 😨

[Clockwork_Fish]

He's a lot worse if he has Swampfiends around.  Ironically, McMourning is probably just as good at running McTavish as Nellie thanks to his new upgrade.

[4thstringer]

He's a very good model,  hence why he is so popular.  If you set up second you can put a trap engaged with him.   Which makes me laugh.

Hes also going to shine against a list with glass cannons,  Which beasts tend to be.   Honestly,  with dougie I would try to put the good Dr into him. 

[Ludvig]

Models at 10ss usually chew through 3-5 ss models, not much you can do about that.  Try loading up on armoured models, the list you played has zero staying power. It's also in part due to Nellie making a lot of models silly good, I bet you she could cause grief with any number of models.

Throw a Peacekeeper at McTavish, he's going to struggle to put a dent in that. Couple it with some other large-based armoured model and hide squishy stuff completely behind terrain or the aforementioned models, he can't ignore LoS. In McMourning you could also have gone with Sebastian doing his Under cover bubble that gives negatives to Sh without it being considered cover. One trick McMourning now has is waldgeists. Give 'em extra walk with a nurse and you could have them really far up to mess with the spots where McTavish wants to shoot from, he can't shoot if he is engaged himself and he should have some trouble taking them out giving you time to do what it is you want to do. A single cerberus hitting a few tomes should also end him before he gets anything done, you just need some good terrain to hide behind.

[Dogmantra]

McTavish's damage isn't great for a 10 stone model. Weak of 2 hurts him a lot, so Hard to Wound and just not letting him get straight damage flips goes a long way to making him much less scary. His strength is more that he is really consistent, so the answer is to make his average output worse. Armour is a really good answer because even just armour +1 halves his damage output.

Or of course there is the option of just killing him. 6/6 and 10 wounds isn't great with no other defensive tricks.

[Myyrä]

14 minutes ago, Dogmantra said:

McTavish's damage isn't great for a 10 stone model. Weak of 2 hurts him a lot, so Hard to Wound and just not letting him get straight damage flips goes a long way to making him much less scary. His strength is more that he is really consistent, so the answer is to make his average output worse. Armour is a really good answer because even just armour +1 halves his damage output.

Or of course there is the option of just killing him. 6/6 and 10 wounds isn't great with no other defensive tricks.

Saying armor +1 halves his damage output is pretty ridiculous, because obviously he would start using Focus at that point. It might be more or less true for those few models that have both armor and HtW.

[Ludvig]

He has a trigger for a positive to damage I think? Or is that just the gator attack?

With Nellie he can get two focused shots provided he snacks with the right suit.

 

Counters include

With McMourning: Leap a cerberus from behind a building, burn debt to the guild and charge him. See how well he handles that. Doc himself might also be able to get in there and tear him a new one. Put a nurse behind terrain and try to get it to a point where it can walk out from the terrain and get meds on him.

With Hoffman: Fast, nimble peacekeeper with debt can tear into him with a flurry doing min 5 (at least) turn one probably.

[Tris]

2 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

He has a trigger for a positive to damage I think? Or is that just the gator attack?

With Nellie he can get two focused shots provided he snacks with the right suit.

Pos. to damage is just on the ml attack.

Yeah, provided he snacks the right suit and is in range/los.

 

Regarding the main topic - he's very good but not op

[Ludvig]

Just now, Tris said:

Pos. to damage is just on the ml attack.

Yeah, provided he snacks the right suit and is in range/los.

He has a decent range on that rifle and he should have a target within push range from turn two onwards at the very latest unless you're playing a really weird game. First turn is usually the extended push so he gets like 7" of movement from his (0) alone. After that he can attack if in range or walk. In standard deployment he usually gets to shoot at my stuff in his activation turn one, in corner he might need to walk a little turn one.

[trikk]

7 hours ago, Dogmantra said:

McTavish's damage isn't great for a 10 stone model. Weak of 2 hurts him a lot, so Hard to Wound and just not letting him get straight damage flips goes a long way to making him much less scary. His strength is more that he is really consistent, so the answer is to make his average output worse. Armour is a really good answer because even just armour +1 halves his damage output.

Or of course there is the option of just killing him. 6/6 and 10 wounds isn't great with no other defensive tricks.

He has a Queller so he doesn`t really care about Armor I believe

6 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Put a nurse behind terrain and try to get it to a point where it can walk out from the terrain and get meds on him.

If he`s in cover, Meds are at a  so I wouldn`t bet my donkeys on it

[doubledragon]

McTavish was in cover. Dense to be exact. So he was in it and shooting through it. So he was getting cover from any Sh.

I turned Myranda into a Blessed and sent it after him, but McTavish killed it in Ml. The problem here is that Nellie also had her card draw upgrade, so after a couple turns, my opponent had stacked his hand with Kings, which allowed him to survive and hit back really hard. He didn't even have to use soul stones, which is another problem with McTavish.

I'm not sure I agree with the superior list comment. The strategy was ply for information, so I opted for more models to execute it. The scheme pool was also split 50 50 between killy and schemey. I went the schemey route with Set Up and Inescapable Trap. My opponent went Eliminate Leadership and Vendetta. I built my list to the schemes I selected, and same with my opponent.

I guess the thing is just focus on taking him out, then once that is done, focus on scoring points.

[Ludvig]

32 minutes ago, doubledragon said:

 

The problem here is that Nellie also had her card draw upgrade, so after a couple turns, my opponent had stacked his hand with Kings, which allowed him to survive and hit back really hard. He didn't even have to use soul stones, which is another problem with McTavish.

 

That sounds like a problem with Nellie, not Tavish. Any model with a decent defensive stat is impossible to take out if your opponent is hogging all the 12s and 13s in their deck.

[4thstringer]

1 hour ago, doubledragon said:

I'm not sure I agree with the superior list comment. The strategy was ply for information, so I opted for more models to execute it. The scheme pool was also split 50 50 between killy and schemey. I went the schemey route with Set Up and Inescapable Trap. My opponent went Eliminate Leadership and Vendetta. I built my list to the schemes I selected, and same with my opponent.
 

It is fine to go schemey, but that doesn't mean your list is as good as your opponent for the board you were playing on.  Looking at your list, it doesn't speak to me as particularly better at scheming or killing than that Nellie list.  McTavish is quite effective, as is phiona.  I've gotten huge results from the new monster hunters.  I couldn't say about the quellers, but giving the ability to ignore armor takes away at least one of your options for the nurses.  The fact is, assuming Nellie had her misleading headlines, delegation and embedded package she is going to be very hard to score inescapable trap or set up on, as you are going to be outactivated regularly.  On top of that, McTav is going to cause that list big problems due to it's fragile nature.  Finally, you summoned the Blessed rather than the sabertooth.

About your best hope was to paralyze McT with those nurses, but to do so you would have to get into range, which was going to be very difficult.  Sometimes lists just don't match up well.  That feels like what we are seeing here.

[Myyrä]

9 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

About your best hope was to paralyze McT with those nurses, but to do so you would have to get into range, which was going to be very difficult.  Sometimes lists just don't match up well.  That feels like what we are seeing here.

I can't think of any Guild list I have ever played that would be at a disadvantage against that McMourning list.

[4thstringer]

Just now, Myyrä said:

I can't think of any Guild list I have ever played that would be at a disadvantage against that McMourning list.

I made a curfew focused Lucius list pre errata that I think would qualify.

[Myyrä]

1 minute ago, 4thstringer said:

I made a curfew focused Lucius list pre errata that I think would qualify.

I'm not saying it isn't possible to make a list that would be at a disadvantage. I'm just saying that it doesn't make much sense.