Nico counter

[Trample]

What's your preferred counter to Nicodem in Ten Thunders? Do you prefer an alpha with Yasunori and/or Misaki to try to take him out right away? Do you think Asami is best by eating corpse markers and summoning herself? Would you rather build around Kang? What's the best answer to this guy in your opinion?

[Piccio]

I don't think Misaki will counter an Impossible to wound model.

[Saduhem]

26 minutes ago, Piccio said:

I don't think Misaki will counter an Impossible to wound model.

Pick any low df model and blast among the 3-4 wd summons all over the place.

[StormLordXIII]

Sorry to hear you are having trouble; I think a huge part of it depends on how your opponent plays Nicodem. I've played some games where Nicodem swarms the enemy with cheaper summons, and others where he summons tankier, more difficult models. Either way, you can't stop him from summoning, but you can try to neutralize its effectiveness. 

You have a few options:

1. Charm Warders. Surprised no one brought this up earlier. Their Barrier to the Other World will dish out Entropy damage to newly summoned models equal to the value of the condition (+2 to start) within 6" of them. This condition stacks, so if Nico tries to summon anything in a bubble caught between two of them, they should take an auto 4 damage. Gross! Since Nicodem's Re-animator causes models that are summoned to suffer damage equal to half it's wounds, anything that has less that 8 wounds total is toast so long as you can keep the bubble up.

2. Taelor. She's a merc and basically autocharges anything that gets summoned near her. You have to pay the extra 1ss merc tax, but if you run Misaki as an Outcast, you can hire her for free and still hire TT Last Blossom models. As mentioned above, Misaki may not be able to tank Nico in one round because of Impossible to Wound, but with Risky Ventures, and assuming your opponent has few cards or soulstones, you can go for the autokill with a high crow. Misaki and a few Jorogumo tend to kill things, especially when they're slow and at half wounds from being summoned! 

3. Outsummon. I really like Toshiro and the Mechanical Porkchop (I usually take them together with Mei Feng because they are Foundry and have lots of scrap marker shenanigans, although Obsidian Oni can place them too). Toshiro can summon Komainu or Ashigaru with Command the Graves. This way, you won't be outactivated and you'll have a way of matching your opponent's summons. 

4. Kill Nico's support pieces. Mortimer, Sebastian, the Vulture - anything that lets him sling spells, place corpse markets, or create more summoning materials. If your opponent is just left with their master because the rest of their crew is dead, they can't hold zones or place scheme markets since summoned models are slow and can't interact... A master and (max 3) slow models that he can summon per turn is less intimidating than it seems.

Hope this helps and good luck!

 

[meows0r]

Asami to eat her counters

McCabe to Paralyze Nico turn 1. (get push from Kama, walk, shoot twice, stone/cheat trigger on 2nd shot)

Taelor and/or Kang with a mobility buffer

 

[WWHSD]

1 hour ago, StormLordXIII said:

... assuming your opponent has few cards or soulstones, you can go for the autokill with a high crow. Misaki and a few Jorogumo tend to kill things, especially when they're slow and at half wounds from being summoned ...

Nico isn't probably going to have any shortage of cards to pitch for the execute trigger.

 

 

1 hour ago, StormLordXIII said:

3. Outsummon. I really like Toshiro and the Mechanical Porkchop (I usually take them together with Mei Feng because they are Foundry and have lots of scrap marker shenanigans, although Obsidian Oni can place them too). Toshiro can summon Komainu or Ashigaru with Command the Graves. This way, you won't be outactivated and you'll have a way of matching your opponent's summons. 

Toshiro isn't going to be matching Nico's summons. You'll still be getting out activated by him. 

 

 

1 hour ago, StormLordXIII said:

A master and (max 3) slow models that he can summon per turn is less intimidating than it seems.

As long as he summons models within 6 his summons aren't slow.

[bedjy]

Doesn't Kang help TT in any match up against ressers ?

[Trample]

22 hours ago, StormLordXIII said:

Sorry to hear you are having trouble; I think a huge part of it depends on how your opponent plays Nicodem. I've played some games where Nicodem swarms the enemy with cheaper summons, and others where he summons tankier, more difficult models. Either way, you can't stop him from summoning, but you can try to neutralize its effectiveness. 

Fortunately I am not having problems - yet! Rather I am anticipating problems after hearing so much about Nicodem lately, especially after he has added Asura, Lampads, and Kentauroi his arsenal. Most recently here: https://schemesandstones.podbean.com/e/episode-84-nicodem-crew-spotlight-with-varney/ 

The nature of this crew and related lists is to put four models into your crew in round one - the lampad, which doubles to 2 lampads, the kentauroi, and one other summoned thing. You have to deal with that at the beginning of turn two in the second half of which he'll be pulling new corpses off the line to throw at you so you have to deal with those as well. Sure, your'll be able to put them down, but your AP are spent. In the meantime he'll be positioned to run his schemes. 

I agree charm warders are pretty good. Taelor could help as well. The challenge is getting them stuck in and supported well enough to do some damage and survive at the same time. I think about a couple of options here:

1. Drive Asami up turn one and plan to activate her whenever necessary to eat corpse markers. If Nico doesn't have those as resources there really isn't much he can do. Since she can work with about any crew you could combine this with Yas or Kang strategies as well. 

2. Throw Misaki up with Yu and attack a non HTW model (like Asura) with The Storm. The blasts can go wherever but at least one of them each time should be hitting Nico. If he doesn't stone on Asura you can take her out in two hits and, depending on placement you may be able to charge a second time since you have fast from Yu. If not you're doing a downburst, which could help you re position some things and get another Thunder attack. You don't kill Nico in this scenario but hopefully can get him down 6-9 in round one before stone use. We're hoping he burns those stones because each one likely means fewer undead. If he heals using the corpse markers he isn't going to be summoning undead with those either. 

3. Push Yas into Nico round 1. Preferably on the 2nd or 3rd activation. You'll have 4-5 attacks here, so should hit and do 3 damage each time barring jokers (it wouldn't be unlikely to see either or both). You're not going to kill him with this strike but likely you can get him to half wounds and use 4 stones and be in a position to follow up for the killing blow in round 2 with Yas or the other models you've moved up behind him. Nico is going to deploy deep, so you may get a second model there in standard, but I wouldn't count on it. 

4. Build a round 2 strike around a well-supported Kang. I don't think you're likely to get him there round one (maybe with emissary, Shenlong, Sensei Yu) but if you could keep him from being bogged down in round one he could really do some damage. 

Personally I think #1 plus #3 is going to be the best bet. Yas is a handful for any opponent and if you can follow him up with a barrel of monkeys so much the better! 

I haven't tried any of these against a list like this and I haven't played against a list like this. I just want to be pseudo-prepared when I do. 

 

[fanteegi]

On 12/03/2018 at 12:50 PM, Piccio said:

I don't think Misaki will counter an Impossible to wound model.

Misaki can tho. All you need to do is attack another model and blast onto Nico. No damage transfer or impossible to wound.

[OneLittleThunder]

I've been pondering this myself lately. Most of the folks I've heard from who play that kind of Nico list agree that the best way to fight it is to go after Nicodem himself, as hard and as quickly as possible. Even if you don't kill him, it puts a lot of pressure on him and defending himself will cost him resources. Yasunori is a strong choice for this, because he's ridiculously mobile and churns out a lot of solid attacks. 

One other option might be a Strongarm Suit. He can also charge over enemy models, but unlike Yasunori, he can charge out of engagement, making it that much harder for Nico to tie him up with summoned models. Armor 2 makes him fairly durable, his damage is 3/4/7 (assuming he correctly uses his (0) beforehand) and he has solid triggers that can either eliminate Soulstone use to negate wounds, or offset the Impossible to Wound penalty on damage flips against Nico. The Freikorps Suit may also come in handy protecting against things like Kentauroi's Rotting Hooves and Punk Zombies' Slice & Dice. In general, he'd trade Yas' range and sheer damage output for a bit more survivability...at least that's the theory. I haven't tried it yet.

 

[cbtb11235813]

Not a TT player myself, but on the one time I played against Nico I tried out the Crossroads Seven crew. Lust may have won me that game almost on her own. Pulled Nico out of the backfield into a whole mess of my models to beat on him, while at the same time pushing a necropunk into position to keep Izamu from being able to charge in and save his master. Kept up the positioning shenanigans for another turn or 2, and Sloth was being just downright frustrating for my opponent. Take this with a grain of salt, because again, I only have one game against him, and my opponent was new with him, but pulling Nico in and putting a beating on him seemed to work out pretty well. If you can't out activate him, out maneuver him.