Arcane Vanilla?

[madaxeman]

Played a game at my FLGS last night using Marcus against another "occasional" player who was using Seamus, and he commented that both crews were both pretty straightforward in what they did - move, shoot, hit the enemy etc.

This got me thinking as to whether this is actually an Arcanist thing, and whether in general it would be fair to say that Arcanist Masters and models are relatively light on the "auras", complex synergies, card manipulation and general "shutting down the enemy" tricks that I seem to find myself facing against a lot of other crews.  

Is that a fair assumption and Arcanists are actually much more all about the basic mechanics of moving stuff, scheming and killing the enemy compared to other factions ?   

Or am I just mistaking my own familiarity with what my own stuff does for a perception that other crews have far more tricks and combos than my own? 

 

[Ludvig]

I think the latter. Many things are straightforward when you know them well and confusing if you are just trying to understand them by seing your.opponent do them.

Some examples: Mei Feng's trigger combos and rail walks. Myranda summoning a cerberus AND a jackalope. Marcus doing things in his acrivation that isn't actions and then debuffing and alphaing the opponent's models to activate but they're not properly activating. Kaeris and auras. Just a few things.

[Squirrelich]

*glances at favorite Ironsides list

*HPM from Ironsides to all M&SU
*Mage's distance to Ironsides + Amina for Warding Runes
*Mage's LoS to Ironsides + Amina for student loans
*Mage's distance to each other and Amina for free Tomes
*Amina distance to anyone damaged to put attackers on negative if needed
*used to be Johan to anyone else to get solidarity
*used to be Well Rehearsed on Johan to everyone else to get extra HtK
*Ironsides distance to enemy for Challenge Aura
*Ironsides distance to enemy for Adrenaline

Nah, I'd say there are at least a few cases where aura's/positioning matter in Arcanists.
(I'm not even going to into Sandeep shenagins)

[cbtb11235813]

Played my second game with Sandeep yesterday. I would say auras and complex synergies are alive and well in the Arcanists.
-Sandeep having theoretically 11 AP (technically 4 of that is other models using his actions) 
-Amina having all kinds of auras and weird conditions to give out
-Activate effigy, Beacon, use free Sandeep AP to summon Banasuva off of Kandara, remove slow, chain activate into Kandara, Kandara heals jealous fire lord damage, takes Banasuva's "upgrade", gives him a better one
-Banasuva alone has a ton of synergy with gamin. Borrow armor +2 (metal gamin), Frozen Heart (ice gamin) for facing terrifying or extra damage from bite of December, Lithe from Kandara, etc, etc.
 

Just a couple examples from a crew I'm new at, so all of this is still fresh and confusing

 

[WWHSD]

I think it’s relative. I don’t think we’ve got anything on the Yan Lo or Parker level. Sandeep, Colette, and Kaeris can get kind of complex. Marcus could be depending on how you use him. The other masters seem to be relatively straight forward though.

Ramos summons and puts up bubbles, Rasputina shoots stuff and can draw LoS from her thematic models, Mei Feng makes casting and shooting hard, jumps around, and can chain attacks, Ironsides chains attacks, heals herself, and has ways to make enemy models deal with her. None of them have a lot of switching between models during an activation or a lot of setup that needs to happen to make their abilities go off.

[Ludvig]

Parker is conplex just for the heck of it but I think guild is probably less complex and ressers aren't very complex either. Colette hops between different models doing actions a lot: prompting Cassie to prompt herself to prompt something else and all that nonsense.

Sure to get the most optimal superduper OP Nico perfect summoning engine you need a finetuned engine but I've seen plenty of players understand how to play Niko to a moderate level in no time. As long as they had some models to summon they beat other new players using just Mortimer for corpses and no Philip but soulstones and cards they drew. Seamus pops in and shoots something dead and then maybe summons a belle. Reva kills someting she points at.

Most neverborn masters aren't that involved. Pandora is hard to do well because her themaric crew isn't very high-powered and new players often try to make stuff from the box work but most of the others don't have such strange interactions? Pandora is desd easy when iu just take good beaters and auto-paralyze three enemies.

Maybe i'm misunderdtanding what constitutes complexity. 

[WWHSD]

20 minutes ago, cbtb11235813 said:

-Sandeep having theoretically 11 AP (technically 4 of that is other models using his actions) 

So you've got his 3 base AP, 1 AP for discarding a card when a friendly has a  in an ability to borrowed with Beacon. You're counting 4 from other models using Beacon abilities (even though 2 of those are zero actions). That's 8. Where are the other 3 AP coming from?

 

20 minutes ago, cbtb11235813 said:

-Activate effigy, Beacon, use free Sandeep AP to summon Banasuva off of Kandara, remove slow, chain activate into Kandara, Kandara heals jealous fire lord damage, takes Banasuva's "upgrade", gives him a better one

 Kandara can't give Banasuva any upgrades.

She has one zero action that can replace an upgrade that she has equipped with one that is equipped by a friendly Gamin within range. Her upgrade is discarded, it is not attached to the Gamin whose upgrade she is getting.

 She has a second zero action that will let her replace an upgrade that she has equipped with either Mantle of Flames or Human Guise. 

[cbtb11235813]

7 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

So you've got his 3 base AP, 1 AP for discarding a card when a friendly has a  in an ability to borrowed with Beacon. You're counting 4 from other models using Beacon abilities (even though 2 of those are zero actions). That's 8. Where are the other 3 AP coming from?

 

 Kandara can't give Banasuva any upgrades.
 

My bad, both cases of remembering the card wrong. Didn't see the "once per turn" on student of all. 8 actions is still a lot though

[WWHSD]

1 minute ago, cbtb11235813 said:

My bad, both cases of remembering the card wrong. Didn't see the "once per turn" on student of all. 8 actions is still a lot though

I think a lot of people miss details on Sandeep and the Academic models that he typically runs with. This makes Sandeep seem better than he actually is.

- Actions from upgrade cards can't be used through Beacon.
- Only Academics and Minions can use Sandeep's place.
- Sandeep can't make himself Incorporeal.
- Sandeep needs to take an action to be able to damage himself for cards or to allow Acdemics to not randomize when shooting targets near him.
- Sandeep needs to discard for his free AP and can only do it once per turn.
- Mages need to discard a card from your hand in addition to Temporary Shielding. It doesn't work like Imbued Armor.
- Beacon and Warding Runes require LoS (Sandeep can take an upgrade to allow Acedemics to Beacon without LoS).
- All Academics have abilities that require card discard. If you've got a lot of Academics in your crew that are doing a bunch of cool shit but still have cards in your hand there's a good chance you are doing something wrong.  

Personally, I wouldn't count the actions used on Beacon as Sandeep's since they come from a different model that needs to spend the AP (or zero action), have a lower Ca value, and may not be able to stone for a needed suit. 

[Ludvig]

For the purrposes of complexity I think we just established that Sandeep is not straight forward or vanilla. An awful lot of players seem to do things wrong with Sandeep and playing a rule wrong has to be the ultimate example of a master being no straightforward but seriously complex.

[cbtb11235813]

10 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

For the purrposes of complexity I think we just established that Sandeep is not straight forward or vanilla. An awful lot of players seem to do things wrong with Sandeep and playing a rule wrong has to be the ultimate example of a master being no straightforward but seriously complex.

Even more so, complex for the people playing him. For the opponent it must be even worse

[madaxeman]

Yeah, Sandeep is messy to play.. but that is probably a different thread. 

I guess I was more meaning the horror duel-esque stuff that makes it difficult for you to play your own game, or the  "everyone in this aura gets negatives to this, that and the other" bits.  Arcanist stuff seems generally about making our own guys hit a bit harder, whereas other factions seem to have a couple area ability-denial models or masters. (I think... !).

Marcus has the +2/-2 WP aura, but other than that what sort of wide area enhancement/denial stuff do we have?

 

[WWHSD]

10 minutes ago, madaxeman said:

Marcus has the +2/-2 WP aura ...

That's not an aura. He gives out a condition in a pulse. If a model moves away from him they still have it. If they gain or lose the Beast characteristic it  also changes whether or not that condition is giving a +2 or -2 to Wp. 

 

10 minutes ago, madaxeman said:

... but other than that what sort of wide area enhancement/denial stuff do we have?

Pretty much everything on Amina's card.
Performer's Seduction ability.
Mei Feng's Vent Steam.
Ironside's Challenge.
Constant Yammering on the Visions in Earth Gamin upgrade.
Marcus has a handful of other debuffs.
There are a bunch of models that have the ability to drop some sort of terrain markers.
Kaeris's Heat Wave upgrade.
Open Current for Joss
Bleeding Edge Tech.

Those are the ones off the top of my head.

[Ludvig]

34 minutes ago, cbtb11235813 said:

Even more so, complex for the people playing him. For the opponent it must be even worse

Can confirm this as a Sandeep opponent. The reason people get away with playing him wrong is that it's so confusing you stop bothering to ask how things are working at some point and just assume he is supposed to be doing all the OP crap your opponent tells you is happening. In most other crews I know the rules well enpugh to cqtchpeople doing things wrong and have them reread their card.

[Adran]

You can probably sum up any master in a couple of sentences, but that might not say how simple they are.

Trying to explain to someone how you master just made one of their models activate under your control is not very vanilla. Or how all those scheme markers just covered the table (depending on which master did it). I don't really think we are any more vanilla than any other faction. Although I will agree Outcasts are an odd lot and even their "vanilla" masters are a bit wacky. 

 

[WWHSD]

2 minutes ago, Adran said:

You can probably sum up any master in a couple of sentences, but that might not say how simple they are.

Trying to explain to someone how you master just made one of their models activate under your control is not very vanilla. Or how all those scheme markers just covered the table (depending on which master did it). I don't really think we are any more vanilla than any other faction. Although I will agree Outcasts are an odd lot and even their "vanilla" masters are a bit wacky. 

 

Even all of the scheme marker dropping in a Showgirl heavy Colette crew is relatively straight forward if you compare it to a Parker crew full of Bandits. They have things that drop their friendly scheme markers, drop enemy scheme markers, change markers, move markers, remove markers, and then they’ve got a buch of crap that goes off when things happen with scheme markers. 

 

 

[Adran]

40 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

Even all of the scheme marker dropping in a Showgirl heavy Colette crew is relatively straight forward if you compare it to a Parker crew full of Bandits. They have things that drop their friendly scheme markers, drop enemy scheme markers, change markers, move markers, remove markers, and then they’ve got a buch of crap that goes off when things happen with scheme markers. 

Colette doesn't do the enemy scheme marker things but has potental to do a lot of things with all her friendly markers, from giving everyone extra ap, to moving to the markers, area de-buffs, damage preventions, and can count several models as scheme markes for such a purpose. 

I agree Parker is more complex, but probably not by as much as people think if you look at all the things Colette crews could do with markers...

[retnab]

4 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Can confirm this as a Sandeep opponent. The reason people get away with playing him wrong is that it's so confusing you stop bothering to ask how things are working at some point and just assume he is supposed to be doing all the OP crap your opponent tells you is happening. In most other crews I know the rules well enpugh to cqtchpeople doing things wrong and have them reread their card.

That's exactly why I made some homemade tokens so my opponent always knows what spells I can still Beacon that turn and what summons have what upgrades, and i'll always try to explain what I'm doing as I'm doing it. He does a lot of stuff and a bunch of the abilities have overlap so it's not surprising at all that it can be easy to lose track of what's happening.

[Squirrelich]

1 hour ago, retnab said:

That's exactly why I made some homemade tokens so my opponent always knows what spells I can still Beacon that turn and what summons have what upgrades, and i'll always try to explain what I'm doing as I'm doing it. He does a lot of stuff and a bunch of the abilities have overlap so it's not surprising at all that it can be easy to lose track of what's happening.

I found this for that: 

 

[WWHSD]

1 minute ago, 7thSquirrel said:

I found this for that: 

 

That's much prettier than the one I use.

[KingCrow]

12 hours ago, madaxeman said:

Played a game at my FLGS last night using Marcus against another "occasional" player who was using Seamus, and he commented that both crews were both pretty straightforward in what they did - move, shoot, hit the enemy etc.

This got me thinking as to whether this is actually an Arcanist thing, and whether in general it would be fair to say that Arcanist Masters and models are relatively light on the "auras", complex synergies, card manipulation and general "shutting down the enemy" tricks that I seem to find myself facing against a lot of other crews.  

Is that a fair assumption and Arcanists are actually much more all about the basic mechanics of moving stuff, scheming and killing the enemy compared to other factions ?   

Or am I just mistaking my own familiarity with what my own stuff does for a perception that other crews have far more tricks and combos than my own? 

 

I'd say Marcus can be one of the more complicated masters to play.  Yes, you can run him as a melee beater and all the Cerberi (I think that's the right plural) but there is so much more.  The buffing and debuffing, controlling the opponents master and models, turning enemy models into Beasts to use your DF trigger on, giving your own models (or enemy models) positives to attack and damage and (best for when used on enemy models) -/- on Df.  Marcus can range from the most simplest and hardest masters to play just because of his choices and different play styles. All of the masters can be played simply but it's understanding how they work in-depth and with other models that you see just how much they can do. I could also go into a great amount of detail on Colette but I think I, and the others here, have given some pretty good examples about how the Arcanist are not "vanilla". Unless you want to hear thought about Colette, although she has fallen a few tiers since her glory days. 

Although I will say I wish we had better card draw engines in the Arcanist faction. I would also say we are one of the factions that surprises the enemy the most.  Only 2nd to Neverborn (or TT) with all their shenanigans.