Countering summoning engine crews

[Pikciwok]

On 23.03.2018 at 2:58 PM, Clockwork_Fish said:

If you want to try using Lazarus for this, give Lucius a go, since he can use What Lackeys are For to get him up there turn 1.

Lucius cannot hire Lazarus - please re-read 'Hate the Maker' ability of the latter.

[santaclaws01]

1 hour ago, Pikciwok said:

Lucius cannot hire Lazarus - please re-read 'Hate the Maker' ability of the latter.

You literally just had to read 3 more posts.

[Frollo the Wordbearer]

14 hours ago, Ox Barrel said:

I had some success with Dreamer, Serena, 2x Matures w/ Warped Reality, Doppleganger, Changling. You can place a Mature at the absolute closest to the enemy and still get Dreamer to him with 1 AP left to give it Fast, then accomplice to it. 

Turn 1 I went first, moved Dreamer up, gave fast to a mature, accompliced to it, it walked to get a charge lane and then hit Nico hard. Nico tried to block second Mature, but I had a high tome for charge through and then landed a RJ on damage against Nico. It was about as best as that could of gone for me. In another game having Dreamer within heal range of the Matures meant I was able to heal, give fast, give playtime, and heal again to full, followed by accomplice .... got 4 free cards from that. 

My favorite version of this list right now (this is really only for breaking the Nico Engine):

Dreamer w/ Growing Up, Otherwordly, Wings of Darkness. Serena Bowman. 3x Matures w/ Warped Reality. (maybe) Primordial Magic.

Well.. Discussing with a friend the other day (who plays NB, me playing Resser) we just arrived at the same exactly conclusion. 

The problem is, as you said, that this crew's a gamble. Nico can quite easily have Mortimer dropping 3 corpses (or charge and drop 2) on first activation, and nico summon 3 models on second one, disrupting your plan. 

Yesterday night we played something similar, with a teddy, mature and hooded rider due to a lack of multiple matures and it did not work well for him (OK, hooded was deployed away, in position to take an Authority marker on t2 and charge t3). 

 

It's a viable way and really fun one, but still needs some finesse, better play than the opponent and hopefully a little bit of luck, IMHO. 

[Adran]

1 hour ago, Frollo the Wordbearer said:

Well.. Discussing with a friend the other day (who plays NB, me playing Resser) we just arrived at the same exactly conclusion. 

The problem is, as you said, that this crew's a gamble. Nico can quite easily have Mortimer dropping 3 corpses (or charge and drop 2) on first activation, and nico summon 3 models on second one, disrupting your plan. 

Yesterday night we played something similar, with a teddy, mature and hooded rider due to a lack of multiple matures and it did not work well for him (OK, hooded was deployed away, in position to take an Authority marker on t2 and charge t3). 

 

It's a viable way and really fun one, but still needs some finesse, better play than the opponent and hopefully a little bit of luck, IMHO. 

Making Nico summon on activation 2 before his card draw engines have kicked in sounds like a win to me. And anyway, Mature is hitting on first activation, so before any summons. Its will probably cost Nico 1-2 stones to still be alive at the end of the activation, so restricting his summoning potential over the game. 

Will it cripple Nico every game? No. Will it make the Nico player have to adapt to his opponents game? yes. which sometimes is enough. 

[Ludvig]

Bonus points if the mature can place to block LoS to most corpse markers and have Nico and a few others within 1" of it for extra damage if anyone attacks it and Nico can't summon without moving or pushing from something.

[shakes1066]

So I've been thinking about Zoraida with powerful control and with Mature. If you take Hexed this means you can have a swamp fiend up table for charge through. So now it only requires a low tome to get your charge through, this means 5 mature attacks on Nico turn one as very few things can block his lanes with height 3 and flight.

Will try it soon

[Fixxer]

15 hours ago, shakes1066 said:

So I've been thinking about Zoraida with powerful control and with Mature. If you take Hexed this means you can have a swamp fiend up table for charge through. So now it only requires a low tome to get your charge through, this means 5 mature attacks on Nico turn one as very few things can block his lanes with height 3 and flight.

Will try it soon

Charge Through only works on enemy models. 

Its still a threat though. Ressers typically have lower DF so if Nico were to overextend ANYTHING, like a mindless zombie for even an activation, you might find a charge with the ability of Zoraida to obey, adding further threat range and timing.

 

 

[cbtb11235813]

I have not played Nico, and only played against him once, but against any summoner, I think the best thing to do is make him play on your terms. In my experience many summoners have a sort of snowball effect to them. My main master is Ramos, and the more spiders I have, the easier it is to get more spiders.  When playing him, nothing is better than when my opponent stays on their side of the board for a turn or two (whether it is because that is their plan, or because I practically catapult Howard over there to look scary), and let me start the spider engine. But when turn 1 I have something fast and mean to deal with, it becomes much harder to summon. Whether that is due to them drawing cards out of my hand, blocking access to scrap, or simply making me activate things in an order I don't like. 

[WWHSD]

25 minutes ago, cbtb11235813 said:

I have not played Nico, and only played against him once, but against any summoner, I think the best thing to do is make him play on your terms. In my experience many summoners have a sort of snowball effect to them. My main master is Ramos, and the more spiders I have, the easier it is to get more spiders.  When playing him, nothing is better than when my opponent stays on their side of the board for a turn or two (whether it is because that is their plan, or because I practically catapult Howard over there to look scary), and let me start the spider engine. But when turn 1 I have something fast and mean to deal with, it becomes much harder to summon. Whether that is due to them drawing cards out of my hand, blocking access to scrap, or simply making me activate things in an order I don't like. 

I think the biggest difference between Nicodem and Ramos is that Nicodem can start hitting you in the face turn one with hard hitting models that he summons even if you don't leave your deployment zone. You still need to get into him and his hired crew quickly but he's potentially throwing a pair Kentauroi riding Punk Zombies at you turn one as opposed to Ramos summoning 3 slow spiders.

[shakes1066]

Thank you missed the Enemy models only, looks like I will have to add some lures to bring someone in.

[katadder]

I am thinking a Titania crew with her running royal indignation, fears given form and the forest claims all. She can survive most the minions quite happily and stand around in the middle of their crew turning corpses to schemes (or wasting their cards) using her fears given form and attacks to attempt to cause issues.

might not work but it was something I was thinking of

[Ox Barrel]

Got to live the dream with not just one, but two out of activation Mature Nephilim charges on Nico. I used the combo of Empty Night w/ Journey and the Charge Through trigger, once was a lucky RJ, second was a high tome I cheated in. Nicodem was dead middle of turn 2, I lost 1 Mature in the process and another shortly after. 

This game was different as I deployed first, placing 3 matures evenly along what I guess you'd call the from the shadows line and Dreamer dead center along my deployment line. Not sure if there was a better way to play this, but it worked fairly well. My opponent deployed in one corner after seeing how I had arranged things. 

I believe there is a counterplay where the Nico player fills their area with a mindless zombies so that you literally can't place a Mature close enough to attack. 

[Ceodoc]

Just getting back into Malifaux this year and prepping for my 2 tournaments later on.

The theme here seems get a Beater in the summoning engines face very early.

In terms of Collodi would delivering this new Hinnamatsu model do that job? And if not what model would you suggest to put in my case for this job when facing Nicodem summoning engines.

[Ceodoc]

4 minutes ago, Ceodoc said:

Just getting back into Malifaux this year and prepping for my 2 tournaments later on.

The theme here seems get a Beater in the summoning engines face very early.

In terms of Collodi would delivering this new Hinnamatsu model do that job? And if not what model would you suggest to put in my case for this job when facing Nicodem summoning engines.

Omg with Fears Given Form

[daniello_s]

If only getting close to the summoner is always so easy...

I played a lot against Resser crews (Nico, Molly, Kirai) and found it hard to get to summoner early enough to avoid being heavily outnumbered in next turns. Same story was with my most hated master - Hamelin (who i played long time ago but i scrapped him due to absolute boredom i had with rat-engine thing). 

I think Lilith might be interesting here with here movement shenanigans as long as opponent is not clever enough to field Anna Lovelace who shuts down many positioning tricks.

[f1amius]

Try to play pandora with fgf upgrade and barbaros. Ressers don’t like mood swings and combination of df/wp simple duels. If u also take emmysary u will get more mood swings and can destroy simmoning combinations. 

 

[Ox Barrel]

Played the Jamie Varney style Nicodem list (this includes the new addition of a lampad) at a very small tournament over the weekend. Played the triple nightmare Matures Dreamer list against it, having to deploy first in standard. I again put the matures 6" away from enemy deployment zone, one at the center and two 12" from the board edge to make any area of his deployment reachable turn 1. 

Out of activation charges are definitely clutch in this list so save any high moderate or severe tomes. Target mindless zombies on the fringe of the Nico bubble after forcing a journey with empty night, it is really a game changer to have that free charge and their defense 2 (or maybe 3) makes cheating in a charge through super easy. 

Lampads change the order of operation somewhat, because in some cases you are better off waiting to see if they activate the lampad early to put burning on the Mature, then Dreamer can heal and wipe out the burning condition with empty night. I doubt the Nico player will make the same mistake twice, but it is worth holding Dreamer back until you need to buff the last Mature to activate. 

If you take Growing Up on Dreamer don't forget his "Your Turn" trigger on the cricket bat, that was a great help in maneuvering around cramped areas in enemy deployment zone. 

Won 5-4 on Supply Wagons... completely ignored the wagons. Got 3 VP for take prisoner on malifaux child and 2 points on Dreamer entourage. 

[Domin]

On my last tourney I faced Nicodem with my Lynch and made a 10-4.

Maybe it's the only due to non-optimised crew of Nico: no Asura Rotten, no Philip or Centauroi but, Vulture, Mortimer, Emissary and Anna Lovelace.

My team included Huggy w/ Malifaux Provides, Emissary w/ Lynch's Conflux, Doppleganger w/ Useless Duplications, Hans w/ Thousand Faces,  Beckoner, Bloodwretch and Effigy

We played Extracton on Standard deployment, I took Hold Up their Forces and Inescapable Trap

I get quite an easy trail, killed Vulture on 1st turn, then out-summoning Nico due to Burn Out upgrade on Lynch and burning corpse markers with Emy's attacks.

 

 

[Ludvig]

The Nico you are describing is the fun old one that was balanced. Without all the card draw, the extra corpses or kentauroi to taxi any model anywhere Nico has weaknesses that can be exploited.

[Domin]

12 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

The Nico you are describing is the fun old one that was balanced. Without all the card draw, the extra corpses or kentauroi to taxi any model anywhere Nico has weaknesses that can be exploited.

He still had card draw from killing mindless zombies and an ability to raise them from corpse markers.

But i agree that he wasn't as optimised, as was I.

[Ludvig]

1 hour ago, Domin said:

He still had card draw from killing mindless zombies and an ability to raise them from corpse markers.

But i agree that he wasn't as optimised, as was I.

Just having Asura with MLH means an extra card to start and two extra zombies (so even more cards and corpses that you can't just discard for him) turn one while Nico without Kentauroi doesn't project his scaryness as far into the board. That would have been a pretty significant difference since he would have been pretty much guaranteed two summons turn one no matter what you do. He's still no pushover but I think Asura and Kentauroi are a really large part of the current displeasure with him.

[spikes]

@Ox Barrel , thanks for the ideas. I tried it out and pressured Nico somewhat with just 1 Mature. I think 2 would be right there, 3 seems kinda an overkill. 

Anyway, here's a quick batrep if you're interested.