December's Curse is the real reason Raspy got the summoning ability, right?

[WWHSD]

It seems like one of the strongest uses of Rasputina's new summoning ability is to send an Ice Gamin into melee, blow it up with December's Curse, summon it back from the scrap it dropped, and blow it up again with December's Curse. That has the potential to put out a huge amount of blast and  pulse damage without your opponent flipping any cards. 

Has anyone played around with this yet?  

[Jordon]

It's a bit fiddly getting this to work consistently.  First you need the gamin to be within 2" of one or more enemy models but not actually engaged. Once it's engaged then your having to randomize which may or may not be the intended target. Then you need to either be within 6" of the dead gamin or have another model within range to mirror through in order to re summon it.

In all honestly it's much easier to use a silent one who has a lower Df, can turn into a statue, not count as engaged, and reduce the damage to 1. Alternatively the Ice Golem is another potential better option because of it's awful Df (you basically start on strait flips almost) and the +2 armor helps tank the hit somewhat.

[SevenThirtySeven]

I'd much rather just focus shoot the enemy to get the straight dmg flip.  That way you don't have to worry about having an 8 of tomes in hand for the summon, or worry about using a stone. 

Plus, the summon is a short 6" range. Sure, you could Ice mirror through someone to cast, but that means you also have to have another unengaged frozen heart model within 6" of the combat.  

It may be useful once every 3-4 games if the situation lines up correctly.  But hardly something you will be doing with her consistently.  

In general, I think killing blasting your own models to kill is not as useful as a consistent strategy that some make it out to be.  I've heard ppl cite Somer's ability to shoot his own models to great effect, but it works for him bc not only are Bayou Gremlins cheap as dirt for him but he also draws 2 cards every time one of them dies.  Which makes it far less of a net resource drain.  

[Ludvig]

On 2017-09-19 at 10:53 PM, Jordon said:

In all honestly it's much easier to use a silent one who has a lower Df, can turn into a statue, not count as engaged, and reduce the damage to 1. Alternatively the Ice Golem is another potential better option because of it's awful Df (you basically start on strait flips almost) and the +2 armor helps tank the hit somewhat.

You only count as not engaged for the ice mirror part so you can shoot through them but you still need to randomise if shooting at something engaged to them.

[Patzer]

To me, summoning rasputina doesn't sound interesting at all. Why spend her ap on summoning when you have such a great attacks, and tactical actions. 

I will keep on rocking Cold Nights, Armor of December, and one of Imbued Energies, seize the day, arcane reservoir, or Child of December most of the time. 

[WWHSD]

4 hours ago, Patzer said:

To me, summoning rasputina doesn't sound interesting at all. Why spend her ap on summoning when you have such a great attacks, and tactical actions. 

I will keep on rocking Cold Nights, Armor of December, and one of Imbued Energies, seize the day, arcane reservoir, or Child of December most of the time. 

I think eating tokens for a heal is potentially more useful that the summoning, especially if you are playing into Ressers.

[KingCrow]

Good vs ressers and Asami! 

[Lokibri]

I like eating corpse markers and i got some math going on for summoning an ice golem on turn 1 and for the ongoing turns it depends, what you can store in your hand etc.

Here is the math i made: (AR = Arcane Reservoir, DP = Decembers Pawn, IE = Imbued Energies, stone for cards = Spend 1 Soulstone and draw 2 additional cards and then discard 2 cards)

With some games under my belt with Ironsides and my new favourite Minion called Steamfitter, i wanted to get back to one of my most beloved crews and try them out with frozen servants giving raspy new spice and things to do in turn 1!

In this case, it is summoning! :D.

So, i tried to work things out for you all and calculate which probabilites we got to get the big guy on the table :).

 

Raspy's probabilities:

Summoning an Ice Golem: 38,5%

with Arcane Reservoir: 43,6%

without Arcane Reservoir but stone for cards: 48,4%

mit AR und Stone: 52,9%

with DP:

Ice Golem: 45,9%

mit AR: 51,5%

Stone for cards without AR: 56,7%

Stone and AR: 61,4%

With each Action you can do in Turn 1 to see an additional card, the Steamfitters ability allows us to use those cards, as if they were „drawn“. In my theory you just keep skipping those cards, until the right one appears. Also keep in mind, that you should only do actions, that flip a single card, because i am not quite certain about in which order you resolve multiple flips (is there any rule how to stack them after flipping? Is the used card on top or are they just flipped and in the order flipped put on the discard pile?). So in this case i also suppose we flip single cards AND we only have to flip a maximum of 1 card in our enemies turn.

I will start with the highest count, which is AR + Stone for 2 more cards which is 9 cards deep:

Without DP (also usable for Ramos and summoning 3 spiders):

9: 52,9%

10: 57,1%

11: 60,1%

12: 64,1%

13: 68%

14: 71,1%

15: 74%

16: 76,7%

 

With DP:

9: 61,4%

10: 65,7%

11: 69,6%

12: 73,1%

13: 76,3%

14: 79,2%

15: 81,8%

16: 84,1%

 

I will end this calculation here at around 16, because i don`t think there is a way to see that many cards and still have a „realistic“ scenario.

This scenario can be approached via Myranda getting a blessed of december with imbued energies and maybe snowstorm casting 1 spell on his own minions just to push them and dealing no damage at all with a defense flip. If you plan to use ice pillars, the wendigo will add another card to your discard pile, but keep in mind, that decembers pawn could be one of those upgrades.

Myrandas IE 4 + Snow Storm casting 1 + defense 1 + ice pillars of wendigo 1 = 13 cards (14 with Arcane Reservoir/ 15 without AR but Stone for cards / 16 with stone for cards and AR).

So, in this case you can pretty clearly see what difference it can make, if you decide to pick up decembers pawn, not mentioning the anxiety you avoid knowing either joker is GREAT! So, in this case, we can be pretty sure, to have an ice golem on turn 2 at least. Given the new option of the steamfitter and the possibilities it gives you, makes it a pretty viable minion in a raspy crew and should be considered to be taken, even though it has no particular synergy with them not being gifted with a frozen heart :).

 

I know this isn`t the most exciting thing to talk about, but i wanted to show you guys the options and maybe make some new decisions based on this information :).

 

See you in the Bayou

 

[WWHSD]

5 hours ago, Lokibri said:

Also keep in mind, that you should only do actions, that flip a single card, because i am not quite certain about in which order you resolve multiple flips (is there any rule how to stack them after flipping? Is the used card on top or are they just flipped and in the order flipped put on the discard pile?).

I'll have to dig around but I believe the rules allow you to place cards in the discard pile in the order of your choosing but once they have been discarded there's no moving them around (outside of an ability that lets you do so).

[Adran]

If you flip multiple cards in a flip you chose one to be the active card and then discard the rest (page 17 and 18), so the card you use is the top card of the discard pile. 

[Lokibri]

15 minutes ago, Adran said:

If you flip multiple cards in a flip you chose one to be the active card and then discard the rest (page 17 and 18), so the card you use is the top card of the discard pile. 

I just read it again and i have to correct you Adran. You flip the cards, chose the card according to the rules and then place them into the discard pile you want to do it, which makes steamfitters even better! It is in the general rules under "discard pile". I just read it again, after you both answered in another way. So,WWHSD was correct :).

That`s even better!

[Adran]

 

9 minutes ago, Lokibri said:

I just read it again and i have to correct you Adran. You flip the cards, chose the card according to the rules and then place them into the discard pile you want to do it, which makes steamfitters even better! It is in the general rules under "discard pile". I just read it again, after you both answered in another way. So,WWHSD was correct :).

That`s even better!

The rules do say

When a player moves multiple cards to the Discard Pile at once, she does so in whatever order she chooses, but must show all players
what cards are being moved.

but you've missed an important bit from the flip modifiers section. 

 

Once all cards are flipped, the model chooses one to use as its active card. A model flipping cards with one or more + chooses one of
the flipped cards as the active card and discards the others to the Discard Pile. A model flipping cards with one or more -
must choose the flipped card with the lowest value to be his or her active card and discards the others to the Discard Pile. If cards are tied for lowest value the model
may choose which of those cards to use. The model cannot Cheat Fate if the flip had any -.

So the unselected cards go to the discard pile before you have the option to cheat fate. The selected card doesn't go to the discard pile until the sucess or failure is determined. (or you cheat fate over it in which case it is also discarded).

[Lokibri]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

 

The rules do say

When a player moves multiple cards to the Discard Pile at once, she does so in whatever order she chooses, but must show all players
what cards are being moved.

but you've missed an important bit from the flip modifiers section. 

 

Once all cards are flipped, the model chooses one to use as its active card. A model flipping cards with one or more + chooses one of
the flipped cards as the active card and discards the others to the Discard Pile. A model flipping cards with one or more -
must choose the flipped card with the lowest value to be his or her active card and discards the others to the Discard Pile. If cards are tied for lowest value the model
may choose which of those cards to use. The model cannot Cheat Fate if the flip had any -.

So the unselected cards go to the discard pile before you have the option to cheat fate. The selected card doesn't go to the discard pile until the sucess or failure is determined. (or you cheat fate over it in which case it is also discarded).

that was a great explanation! thank you Adran!