How to fight Nicodem as Collodi

[Gummu]

I am quite new to Malifaux and I found that, it is very hard to play against Nicodem.

My team

Declared Faction: Neverborn
Crew Name: Puppet 50ss

Leader: Collodi - Cache:(3)
Strum the Threads 1ss
Bag of Props 1ss
Breathe Life 1ss

Marionette 3ss
Marionette 3ss
Marionette 3ss
Marionette 3ss
Widow Weaver 8ss
Brutal Effigy 4ss
Beckoner 6ss
Arcane Effigy 4ss
Lazarus 10ss
A Thousand Faces 1ss

I dont have a actual list of Nicodem but it is about this
 

Declared Faction: Resurrectionists
Crew Name: Nicodem 50ss
Leader: Nicodem - Cache:(3)
Asura Roten 8ss
Mortimer 9ss
Sebastian 7ss
Philip and the Nanny 8ss
Rotten Belle 5ss
Rotten Belle 5ss

My strategy is using Collodi to get 5 activation with Lazarus and fast and spam Slow/"A New Theat" and Burning on most of enemy crew and focusing to put slow on Nicodem if possible. I use my Widow to create the -wp zone for Collodi.

But Nicodem stay defense at base and summon a lot of scary zombie at least 2 punk zombie and student of steel every turn. He draw a lot of card from sacrifice zombies and some SS every turn. After turn 3 I found that I was over ran by horde of zombie and I cant do nothing but kill some of his zombie and only few model like Mortimer and Belle. His aura immune to slow is very annoying.

I try to summon Carrion effigy but I can summon him on turn 3 and it is too late. I  lure Nicodem and some of his engine to kill zone but with 2 Belle He can lure his team back to position easily. And he counter by double lure my Widow to get charge by student of steel and say goodbye to her.

I cant my the way to counter his summoning /drawing and getting SS like crazy. My crew dying every turn while his crew getting stronger and stronger. I know my set up is not good so I need some advice and some counter strategy against Nicodem.

[Scatterbrain]

Do you own any powerful melee Neverborn options, like Mature Nephilim and/or Teddy? The Pull My Finger article on the Stitched Together suggests that they "can help with cards if you're summoning a lot of Effigies" through A Game of Chance.  

[Haagrum]

Malifaux Musings has a good article about taking on the Nicodem engine. That's a good description of this kind of crew. Every part plays a role in making it work, and you can stop it being so effective by taking parts out of it.

It's nasty, it's efficient, and very hard to beat. But it can be done - just not with a crew that doesn't try to rip the heart out of the machine early, or which can't get the jump on VP early enough to squeeze out a win.

I don't use Collodi, so I don't know what would work for him to beat Nicodem, but no doubt others can contribute ideas. My generic Neverborn suggestion would be to use Serena Bowman and take a couple of big beaters with Df-targeting attacks and Warped Reality to put the pressure on Nicodem and his crew from turn 1.

[Angelshard]

Against nicodem I would go hyper aggressive. It depends a lot on scheme and strat though, and wether you're tailoring against nicodem or want a more general anti ressers crew, but here are some suggestions.

Throw out widow weaver, if you're only using her for -1 wp for colloddi she doesn't do enough to justify 8 points.

Add vasilisa with a little food, a little water and a coryphee.

Switch colloddi to fated.

Turn one you throw brutal buff on colloddi and chain into vasilisa. Depending on how defensively he's placed his models you go fast or not and walk her and the coryphee up the table. Second activation you run colloddi up and use your (0) on coryphee to position her for charge. Then chain into her and go for a fast charge on whatever you think is best (Phillip and the nanny only if they've activated, otherwise leave them alone).

Also I would really recommend the mysterious emissary, he's fantastic in a colloddi crew.

[Ludvig]

A single stitched with fast and pushed up to reach Nico could put him on the defensive pretty early I think. 

Collodi can slow the living henchmen and Nico himself since he only makes undead models immune to it. Against undeads you should use the other trigger which lets you steal their attacks when they activate and don't forget they can still borrow Asura's actions when you are acting with them. If nothing else you should borrow it just to prevent them from doing it themselves. That effectively slows undeads and gets around the immunity while also screwing with Asura's buff and possibly hurting his own crew.

[Scatterbrain]

5 hours ago, Angelshard said:

Add vasilisa with a little food, a little water and a coryphee.

Coryphee are definitely fast, which could be a big help in scoring those VP.

As far as Mercenaries go, I wonder if you might get more mileage out of Taelor than Lazarus for her anti-summoning abilities, @GoodJeaw?

[Haagrum]

26 minutes ago, Scatterbrain said:

As far as Mercenaries go, I wonder if you might get more mileage out of Taelor than Lazarus for her anti-summoning abilities, @GoodJeaw?

This isn't a bad idea. However, Taelor is quite slow, Wk 4 and Ch 6, with no synergies with Collodi to overcome that. In Outcasts she has upgrades to overcome that, but in Neverborn you'd need to use other tricks. That said, she offers a lot of area denial if you can push her forward with her 0 action condition active. It'd mostly be useful from turn 2, as my understanding is that turn 1 with this Nicodem build is all about hand-stacking rather than flat-out summoning.

Lazarus has the advantage of blasts at range, which can be great against the close-packed Nicodem engine. Collodi could help push him forward with the Crow trigger on his basic attack (unlikely to do anything but 1 damage to Lazarus), in addition to things like Show You The Door or Vasilisa's Obey. Lazarus can also copy Pull The Strings or Gamble Your Life (or Obey, if you take Vasilisa) using his 0 action before using Auto Fire with the Grenade Launcher.

[Scatterbrain]

57 minutes ago, Haagrum said:

This isn't a bad idea. However, Taelor is quite slow, Wk 4 and Ch 6, with no synergies with Collodi to overcome that. In Outcasts she has upgrades to overcome that, but in Neverborn you'd need to use other tricks. That said, she offers a lot of area denial if you can push her forward with her 0 action condition active. It'd mostly be useful from turn 2, as my understanding is that turn 1 with this Nicodem build is all about hand-stacking rather than flat-out summoning.

Thanks for the input. Hmm, it sounds like Taelor just left to her own devices won't do a lot of good. It would have to be Taelor + some kind of movement trick, then ideally, something else in conjunction to deny the Nicodem player some of their vital cards in turn 1.

[Davos]

For advice on Collodi play in general, I recommend checking out Alex Schmid's YouTube Channel.  He recently did a pretty detailed summary of his Collodi crews - Schmid is currently the #1 ranked player in US (last I heard at least)

Additionally, you want to check out the Schemes & Stones Podcast, they will be releasing a Collodi Spotlight soon, featuring Schmid.  Good starting place

[Davos]

As for general play against Nico, you need to be aggressive and really hit him hard, targeting the key summon tools of the crew - this is normally just Nico himself, but also Sebastian (his posion aura is annoying as hell), picking off Azura Rotten can help make the zombies joke models, Mortimer isn't really worth killing (unless you can get to him before he pops My Little Helper, since when he dies he drops extra corpses).  having ways to remove corpse markers is always good as well