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Tara : how do I start ?


LoyalSkritNa

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Hi,

I just bought a Tara crew, as it is a long fantasy of mine, but i'm wondering where to start, considering all the ways you can play her.

I like to control my opponent and I will love burrying all of my opponent's crew in the ground.

So where do i start? What upgrades do I need with her? What is important to know to avoid being drowned by the possibilities she can give?

I'll buy Talos soon as I understand he is an auto take with her (I mean just look at these stats oh boy).

But i'll give you the range of models i presently own :

viks crew ; von schill crew (all freikorps range except engineers) ; lazarus ; big jake ; midnight stalker ; sue ; hodgepodge effigy ; 

3 death marshalls ; tara crew.

A big thank you in advance, and i hope you will not be upset i started this topic, as i couldn't really find a good source of information about how Tara is played nowadays (pullmyfinger is kinda dated).

Cheers,

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Now, let me clear an important misconception first: burying the whole opponent's crew is very unlikely to happen due to natural bury restrictions on Glimpse the Void.

Sure, you can bury another one with Talos, then a couple more with Marshals, but that requires putting very fragile models very close to the enemy with a lot of counterplay possibility (if they die, the enemy comes back into play which you won't like; and they will go down).

 

The most common way to play Tara is with Child, Scion, Beast and 6 Void Wretches: it's an extremely mobile and AP-efficient crew that doesn't really care about your hand as long as you can produce a couple of 7's to meet TNs on Turn 1 and leaves most of your opponent's crew Slow afterward.

As for Tara upgrades, Knowledge of Eternity is the only auto-take (Emptiness being a no-brainer), Dead of Winter and Out of Time are nice boosts, I also like Scramble and Survivalist for some extra mobility and survivability respectfully.

There are variations with Desperate Mercs instead of Wretches to get you extra SS during the game and fit several more upgrades.

Aionus is more like win-more, but can do some sweet things if you don't have those 7's for Pull the Void (his scheme marker manipulation is often overlooked, but boy is he good at it).

Talos's problem is that he's an Enforcer, so Scion doesn't unbury him, plus he's gonna die horribly if you alpha the enemy with him.

You could go the traditional route of Marshal-bombing your opponent (Tara gives out Fast, walks twice, Marshal buries Talos and hides, last activation Tara walks twice and unburies Talos with Obliteration Symbiote), but it still works better with Nothing Beast because he's a much greater threat and waaaay more survivable.

Now, Talos might work as a counter-alpha measure in scheme pools where you don't need to go up the board: just wait for the initial attack, give away some minions as bait, then waltz in with Talos, bury your enemy and let remaining Fast Wretches nibble on the buried model to their heart's content.

There's also a build where you Tara-bomb Lazarus and take I Pay Better on Tara for a double focused shot 8-12" up the board, but again, isn't too efficient to do that.

 

As for the models you own: Stalker is great with good activation control that Void spam provides; Sue is a great all-rounder, but with about zero Tara synergy; Lazarus will do exactly nothing on a properly set up board due to hard cover; Effigy is a good scheme runner, but again, no synergy with Tara (she's not gonna kill anything, better to take another Wretch); Freikorps folks are overcosted and not worth it outside of VS; Taelor might be good if you don't YOLO-bomb her; Jake offers nothing special, really.

I haven't played classic bomb-Tara in a while because most opponents know how to counterplay it, so it might get into fashion again because no-one really expects it due to the popularity and power of the void spam list.

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Hey, so I started playing Malifaux over a year ago and my first master was Tara so i'd gladly give some input on her.

So in pretty much all scheme pools I will take Knowledge of eternity (2ss), Obliteration symbiote (2ss) and Out of time (1ss), Emptiness is (0) so it is always worth taking that too, the last 2 are broken promises so make sure you have that set of upgrades as they are pretty good with Tara.

I often take The Nothing Beast with Tara and beastie bomb him, if you have read anything about Tara even the old posts you'll have heard of it, I know Bishop, Killjoy, I've even heard Hannah being beastie bombed, may work better but TNB seems to work for me, void wretches are brilliant scheme runners and can cause problems by hitting buried models and giving out slow, it varies person to person on how many people run, I run 2 but would run more if I had a lot more of them as they are great. You get Karina in the box too but I haven't ran her in ages, she isn't particularly good at all but worth trying if you'd want to get a little use out of her.

Now onto the other models you have

I have used Taelor with Tara before as she can give out fast easily making Taelor a lot faster and with her recent cost reduction she can take scramble and get into to opponents face quickly, she doesn't drop that quickly and is horrible for summoners to deal with so maybe try her out as another henchman. I didn't get Lazarus until recently so haven't really been able to try him out but I imagine that being on the receiving end of a fast Lazarus' volley of fire isn't nice. 

Big Jake is a great scheme runner and really good for certain strategies like Ours, he is cheap and has don't mind me so giving him fast could be an option to help him run schemes as long as he isn't in danger of getting killed. The Midnight Stalker kinda seems like an auto take a lot of the time for me, I just see him fitting in my lists so well and I enjoy using him, I know he is great so it is worth using him with her and seeing what you think, him and Tara create chaos on Symbols of authority from my own experiences. 

I often use Sue with her too as his Man in black aura can be very helpful for protecting my incorporeal models or making a caster back off a bit, his pistols can deal decent ranged damage and overall he is just a great model to use with her in general.

The Talos is brilliant with Tara, I really like it because of the burying mechanic, I often don't bury enemies with glimpse the void as it isn't really my style and doesn't always work but the Talos can bury models fairly easily especially ones that are a threat, also his (0) to make enemies do a horror duel is amazing late turn when the opponent is out of cards, he is a good damage dealer and his bury and enemy and heal is very good for replenishing wounds, I just like the Talos in general, I don't always use him with Tara but he definitely has a place.

Finally onto death marshals, I got some a while back for Tara but they are not that good, I haven't really seen them shine and there are definitely problems with them which makes them pretty bad choices, adding to the burying is fun and it is definitely worth trying if you get the chance but overall they aren't really in my lists at all.

Anyway I hope that all this information manages to help and if you have any other questions or need tips feel free to post them on this thread and us Tara players will help out.

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Alright thanks for all these precious informations.

I feel there is two schools for tara : spamvoid with great AP efficiency, and old school beastie bomb.

Is Scion an autotake in spamvoid, or in any tara crew? What makes him so cool with her?

As for upgrades, i need some clarification : does emptiness allow me to have more than 3 upgrades, or just allow me to have 3 upgrades with a tara restriction instead of 2?

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4 hours ago, LoyalSkritNa said:

I feel there is two schools for tara : spamvoid with great AP efficiency, and old school beastie bomb.

Is Scion an autotake in spamvoid, or in any tara crew? What makes him so cool with her?

That is correct!

The big difference is that oldschool beast-bomb used Obliteration Symbiote to unbury, while the void spam crew uses Scion because the upgrade is too expensive and requires a suit.

She's also quite mobile and very durable due to her own bury ability.

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Okay so I checked Scion a little, and while I do like the mecanics of the model, i'm not a fan of the "bring all these models to build efficiency or all of this will be useless" thing.

I'm forced to bring a maximum of void wretches and if Scion dies i'm basically screwed.

 

So i'm more interested in a beastie bomb / make damage on buried enemies gameplay. Like i said i'm already fan of Talos, so what can you tell me about cool things to do with him, maybe with another model I don't own yet and could make a nice combo with? (Except with the obvious void wretches)

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So, I’ve actually been enjoying a blend of the voidstuff/ beast bomb Tara lately.  My general crew for reference:


Tara
   Dead of Winter 
   Emptiness 
   Out of Time 
   Knowledge of Eternity 
Malifaux Child 
Scion of the Void 
   Oath Keeper 
   Scramble 
The Nothing Beast 
   Void Shield 
   Oath Keeper 
Talos 
   Oath Keeper 
Void Wretch 
Void Wretch 
Void Wretch 

For bury/ attack bury shenanigans:

- Emptiness gives out the Nowhere condition, upping damage to models you bury.

- Out of Time let’s your Void Wretches nom buried enemies twice as often, as well as making Tara hit harder in later turns

- You can still bury the Nothing Beast and deliver it turn 1 thanks to Pull the Void and the Scion.  Child also gives you another Pull the Void to make Talos fast, so you can get a top of turn 2 charge off with it.

I can’t speak to Karina or Death Marshall’s much.  Aionus is an option, as he can attack buried models and is pretty tough.

Hannahs another who can offensively bury models in faction; though she is a bit counter-intuitive with Tara’s “empty my hand” gameplay.

Have fun with Tara and the beast bomb!  She can really surprise someone with any of her beaters, and burying is a nice way to deal with problem models.

 

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2 hours ago, LoyalSkritNa said:

Okay so I checked Scion a little, and while I do like the mecanics of the model, i'm not a fan of the "bring all these models to build efficiency or all of this will be useless" thing.

I'm forced to bring a maximum of void wretches and if Scion dies i'm basically screwed.

 

So i'm more interested in a beastie bomb / make damage on buried enemies gameplay. Like i said i'm already fan of Talos, so what can you tell me about cool things to do with him, maybe with another model I don't own yet and could make a nice combo with? (Except with the obvious void wretches)

not at all the Scion has movement tricks and any model can use it's 0 to unbury, surprised you haven't use it in Viks with soaring Dragon. Opponents that target it waste AP, and it finishes models off by doing strait 3 dmg. 

 

As for the void Wretches, they control the board by passing out slow like no tomorrow giving you huge AP control. 

I keep the NB close to Tara so she can chuck card to prevent DMG, and to keep things in 6 in of both fast so they are -2wp vs the NBs attacks. so his 4 attacks realy do the most. also do not ignore the value of out of time, Tara can use it twice per turn and the child once, making Tara with survivalist hard to take down. 

 

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I thank you all for these precious informations. Once again the Malifaux community proves its superiority in friendly manners.

 

For now I think taking Scion will be a lot to handle for my humble beginnings with Tara. I'll take her and 3 other void wretches if I want to be very competitive later. But of course i'm passing on a great combo with Blood as I understand fully how deadly she can be with a teleportation mecanism.

As a matter of fact I read Aionus card and I think it's gonna be perfect for this "control" feel I wanna have with Tara. 12ss is a lot but you basically get a second master...

So my crew would be Tara, NB, Karina/student of conflict, 3 void wretches, Aionus, 1 death marshall. A few models and upgrades changes to adapt to strats and schemes.

 

The death marshall will be for style mostly, as it is the most badass model you can get. That shows you my level of investment to winning at this game :D

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9 hours ago, LoyalSkritNa said:

The death marshall will be for style mostly, as it is the most badass model you can get. That shows you my level of investment to winning at this game :D

I like to bring 1 death marshal because I love the models. They occasionally come in handy as scheme runners or to pine box some other models but mostly I just enjoy the aesthetic ;)

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Tara - Out of Time, Knowledge of eternity, Emptiness, then either Dead of Winter or Eternal Journey whichever suit the schemes.

Karina - The Faces of Oblivion

The Nothing Beast - Void Shield

Scion of the void - (Scramble - option 1)

Talos - (The Bigger they are - option 2)

1x Death Marshal

2x void wretch

[Get yourself, 1 punk zombie, 1 drowned, and a box of guild autopsies for summoning].

That is my default list, then switch upgrades to suit to taste/scheme. I never bother with Obliteration symbiote because I think beast bombs are really boring to play as or against.

I like one death marshal, because if they hang back a bit they can often enough hit way above thier pay grade by burying Nekima or howard etc. If you don't want to spend so much right away you could use a second death marshal instead of the Talos (that is what I did until recently when I got a Talos myself). The must have outside of the Tara box in my opinion is the Scion. It is amazing at being where it needs to be to score points or deny them, and has threatening enough attacks.

Just remember that TARA DOES NOT ALWAYS HAVE TO GO FIRST. If something is going to die then often it is worth activating it before Tara. Often Tara's first activation isn't that great anyways because she has to play a bit cagey (she is very weak vs strong Ml attacks).

This should be a solid Tara crew, until you get a hang of your personal Tara playstyle.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Declared Faction: Outcasts 
Crew Name: Talos 50ss 
Leader: Tara - Cache:(4)
Emptiness 0ss 
Dead of Winter 1ss 
Knowledge of Eternity 2ss 
Out of Time 1ss 
Voiceless Words 1ss 
Malifaux Child 2ss 
Hodgepodge Emissary 10ss 
Conflux of Nothingness 0ss 
Talos 8ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Freikorps Engineer 6ss 
Desperate Mercenary 3ss

 

My latest Tara brew, played one game with it and it went okayish, gotta try more.

The idea is that you can bury two enemy models off Talos and HPE if you got the suit (HPE can get a model 23" away, which is insane), Wretches are protected by Voiceless words by further straining your opponent's hand. Then your Wretches just chomp on the buried guy to their heart's content.

And Talos with Engineer buff is extremely tanky

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  • 2 months later...
On 6/3/2018 at 6:31 PM, Seadhna said:

Now, let me clear an important misconception first: burying the whole opponent's crew is very unlikely to happen due to natural bury restrictions on Glimpse the Void.

Sure, you can bury another one with Talos, then a couple more with Marshals, but that requires putting very fragile models very close to the enemy with a lot of counterplay possibility (if they die, the enemy comes back into play which you won't like; and they will go down).

 

The most common way to play Tara is with Child, Scion, Beast and 6 Void Wretches: it's an extremely mobile and AP-efficient crew that doesn't really care about your hand as long as you can produce a couple of 7's to meet TNs on Turn 1 and leaves most of your opponent's crew Slow afterward.

As for Tara upgrades, Knowledge of Eternity is the only auto-take (Emptiness being a no-brainer), Dead of Winter and Out of Time are nice boosts, I also like Scramble and Survivalist for some extra mobility and survivability respectfully.

@Seadhna Sorry to bump this up and ask you but I just picked up the Tara box and an extra box of Wretches just in case. I just happened upon this list here and probably will start with what you suggested as the most common way to play her. I only have 2 games and one of those being a demo game under my belt and was just wondering if you would mind elaborating just a little more on this specific crew / list. How does a basic turn 1 or 2 play out in theory for you. What order of activation's are like etc. I'm still trying to grasp the concept of being "behind / ahead" in activation's as a tactic etc. I really appreciate any specific insight you could provide in running this list and how it tends to preform in actual games. Thanks!

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On 8/24/2018 at 7:57 PM, Monster said:

@Seadhna Sorry to bump this up and ask you but I just picked up the Tara box and an extra box of Wretches just in case. I just happened upon this list here and probably will start with what you suggested as the most common way to play her. I only have 2 games and one of those being a demo game under my belt and was just wondering if you would mind elaborating just a little more on this specific crew / list. How does a basic turn 1 or 2 play out in theory for you. What order of activation's are like etc. I'm still trying to grasp the concept of being "behind / ahead" in activation's as a tactic etc. I really appreciate any specific insight you could provide in running this list and how it tends to preform in actual games. Thanks!

go to schemes and stones podcast, there is a great discussion on that site. its about an hour but fantastic how to play tips

 

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44 minutes ago, beergod said:

go to schemes and stones podcast, there is a great discussion on that site. its about an hour but fantastic how to play tips

 

Thanks I’ll check it out. Any particular episode in regards to Tara? Or is their podcast more just general play tips and tricks? Got my first game with her this weekend, granted it’s my 3rd game ever. Other two were demos with the starter Guild crew and a 35SS Sonnia Crew just to learn the basics of the game. 

Just going to run a list I saw here.. figured it let me get a taste and get use to the bury mechanic.

Declared Faction: Outcasts 
Crew Name: Voidlings 50ss 
Leader: Tara - Cache:(4)
   Emptiness 0ss 
   Knowledge of Eternity 2ss 
   Out of Time 1ss 
   Dead of Winter 1ss 
   Scramble 1ss 
   Survivalist 1ss 
Malifaux Child 2ss 
Scion of the Void 8ss 
The Nothing Beast 10ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 

Any advice on upgrade distribution? I kind of just dump everything onto her. Think maybe I should put one or two on Beast or Scion.. not sure what though..

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I would move scramble to the Scion, and make sure you put Void Shield on the Nothing Beast since it is 1) amazing, and 2) free.

Survivalist on Tara may not do too much, because Out of Time is likely going to be your only source of healing and does so without a flip.

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there is a tara episode 

I would dump scramble and put Void shield and the Bigger they are on the Nothing Beast. I love Survivalist on Tara as it keeps her upright for her second activation so she can usually heal twice in a row as she'll activate last and first on the next turn 

 

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Declared Faction: Outcasts 
Crew Name: Voidlings 50ss 
Leader: Tara - Cache:(4)
   Emptiness 0ss 
   Knowledge of Eternity 2ss 
   Out of Time 1ss 
   Dead of Winter 1ss 
   Eternal Journey 1ss 
Malifaux Child 2ss 
The Nothing Beast 10ss 
   Scramble 1ss 
   Void Shield 0ss 
Scion of the Void 8ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 
Void Wretch 4ss 

updated.. Scramble and Void Shield now on Beast and dropped Surv for Eternal Journey. Thoughts? 

6 minutes ago, beergod said:

there is a tara episode 

I would dump scramble and put Void shield and the Bigger they are on the Nothing Beast. I love Survivalist on Tara as it keeps her upright for her second activation so she can usually heal twice in a row as she'll activate last and first on the next turn 

 

That was kind of my thought on for Survivalist too.. but Journey just seems a bit more useful. Granted it is my first game so I guess I’ll see. 4 cache SS seem like enough or should i maybe unload an upgrade or two to get a few extra?

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5 minutes ago, beergod said:

i've never used Journey, and the NB does not need the extra movement, he does need the extra dmg as his min is garbage.. As far as ss go  4ss is plenty for non summoners 

Thanks I’ll swap that out for the extra damage. Having never played a game before with Outcast / NB I can see where you want the extra dmg but didn’t know if the requirement to get it was so narrow it doesn’t come up often. I’ll give it a go though. Might get two games in on sunday so probably try one with journey and one with survivalist see how they feel in actual game play. Appreciate the pointers.. I’ll let you know how it goes lol kind of worried cause I can’t really see the synergy and tricks but I know they are there. It feels like as soon as you get a buried model or two you should just pile the wretches on and try and single target focus down buried models right?

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