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"I just can't play Pandora anymore"


Zalabar

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said the young man after looking down at the third table full of happy playful spirits and young monsters in innocent skins, cavorting among their newly broken toys. He looked up at his scowling friend, sighed, and sent those poor spirits and children back to their box, where they waited paitently. They knew, you see, that he loved to see them out, making mischief and wreaking play.

So they waited, and they waited, and they waited. Baby Kade played with Teddy, and Candy shared her bitters with the Sorrows, while Pandora and her Poultergiest watched the lid. Occasionally, it would open and Doppelganger would return with stories of the table. Of dreams and mice, dancing faceless girls, of a toy that breaks itself and never stays broken, and so many flailing shadows!

But also, always, Doppelganger would say with his voice "I just can't play Pandora anymore." His friends smiled now, and always the tables were choked with all the broken toys. Eventually, they realized the truth; he was stuck. So if they were to play amongst their toys again, they would have to answer his problem.

So they thought and they thought and they thought. They were sure it wasn't that they were doing it wrong. Kade loves Teddy, and the Sorrows just love their games. It wouldn't be fair to keep them from what they love. But the same way, they didn't know how to make their toys play better. What does a shiney little ball want, if not to be smushed flat? What does an old man want, if not a last breath? If only their toys knew how to play too, then the games they'd play!

It was Doppelganger, again, who gave the question form. She said, with another his voice, "I'm this close to just asking the Forums how you beat Pandora." Now, they didn't quite know what a forum was, but they knew it used a web and Teddy knew a spider. So, Teddy told the spider their sad story. The spider wove its web around the story and set the question at the center.

So don't thrash now, children. The playful spirits and young monsters want to come out to play. What can the young man's friend do to make their toys last longer against Pandora and her friends?

---------- Post added at 01:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:16 AM ----------

Wish I could've kept up the narrative, but it doesn't work that well with lists.

He's using the Pandora starter with a Teddy and Doppelganger, and generally sees the Perdita starter, Ramos's starter with Electric Creation, and the Dark Debts box. Also lots of gremlins.

Edited by Zalabar
Mimic is a type, Doppleganger is a model.
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http://joelfaux.blogspot.co.uk

Look at the articles:

The box opens

Why bigger isn't always better

Those pesky rules

For some tips that can work for any crew. Pandora is far from unbeatable.

Look for stubborn and ruthless models to preserve your cards and hit theirs.

Look for models that can remove cards from the pandora player's hand.

Eliminate her team, she is much reduced without it.

Give her a tank to tie her up.

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what joel said.... she is beatable.... just takes a little out side the box( that was punny wasnt it) thinking....

pandora tends to come at people sideways, especially newer players( this was true in 1.x and has carried a bit into 2e) but once you wrap your brain around exactly how she works, countering some of her usual practices becomes an easier task

--Woe

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How you beat Pandora?

Couple of things. First of course is make sure you are focusing on your strategies and schemes. You might not even have to deal with her little group of monsters. Secondly, don't focus on Pandora. She generally wants people to be quite close to her to take advantage of her auras and other close ranged effects and she is pretty decent at keeping herself alive. Her sorrows and many of the other models she likes is not nearly as good at doing that. And once you take down the sorrows and other support models she is much less of a treat. That goes double if there is a Poltergeist on the board. That model needs to die as quickly as possible.

Obviously taking high WP models helps as well. And possibly some way of removing conditions so she have a harder time messing with activation order.

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Uh guys, I think the OP is looking for advice on how to better play Pandora.

Nope. Her player is already roflstomping the rest of the group. I'm looking for advice on how to beat her, so she can get back off the shelf and on the table. Isn't that a great problem to have?

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Rasputina WRECKS Pandora in my experience. Yes, Pandora has ways around Frozen Heart, but that requires Pandora to take activations to fiddle with that rather than stomping around on you.

Pandora's range is pretty low - Raspy's range can really ruin her day, plus magic attacks means all those incorporeal models take full damage.

My recommendation is to look for crew compositions that can deal damage from range AND if possible, a model or two that can move Pandora's models into your firing ranges (for example, I use December's Acolyte). Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the new abilities of Perdita, Ramos or Lynch to make much recommendations for those particular boxes.

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Nope. Her player is already roflstomping the rest of the group. I'm looking for advice on how to beat her, so she can get back off the shelf and on the table. Isn't that a great problem to have?

I noticed in the narrative this line: "...looking down at the third table....". Does that mean that there have only been a few games against Pandora?

I have not yet had the pleasure of facing M2E Pandora, so I may be way off here. However I do know her from last edition, and she doesn't seem 'incredibly' different.

Pandora is a whole different game. You can't play your crew the way you want to, because she can dictate when certain models will go in a turn. So you really need to play her a couple of times to learn how to alter your play-style to beat her. You need to have a more flowing battle plan.....play with redundant models, so when she tells you you can't activate a certain model, you can activate another that will be able to perform a similar role. Learn how to act while reacting. It really is an entirely different mind-set. You can't play how you normally would, because she disrupts all of that.

I am not surprised that Pandora crushes all opposition for the first couple of games......because you can't play your normal way, and Pandora is playing exactly how she wants to play.

As an aside, as a big 'Dita player, I'm surprised that she was able to crush the Ortega's. With 'Dita's Upgrades, she seems very anti-Pandora.

Os Veo gives her Stubborn, putting you at neg flips to Ca against 'Dita's impressive Wp 7.

Aura Ancestral gives almost every family member a Wp 7 (except Papa...and even he is a Wp 6)......that's a lot of high numbers to punch through.....even Pandora is only Ca 7, so they're mostly even.

It also allows 'Dita to ignore all targeting duels......like Manipulative and Terrifying.

Trick Shooting allows 'Dita to ignore Incorporeal.....she can pretty much one-shot sorrows with their 4 Wds and Df 3....she may need two shots on a Poltergeist.

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Rasputina WRECKS Pandora in my experience.

True facts of truth. The range, the frozen hearts, the Ca actions. Raspy can put Pandora in her place pretty well.

As a Pandora player I can connect with the OPs friend. I've been sending my little gang of ghostly monsters after my friends to much success, perhaps too much. The problem is that she works a rather weird line of play, that you just can't counter if you don't know all she's capable of; and in the right hands she can just power through despite the opponent being wise to her tricks. At the risk of it being used against me here's some insight from the green side of the table:

Pandora loves her little aura bombs, setting up sorrows and poltergeists in just the right spot so she can stroll in and tear people's minds out their noses. If you manage to break up that group, she starts to lose her edge. Killing off sorrows is a good place to start. The sorrows are like 5ss upgrades for Pandora, that add to her Dg output and pad out activations (interacting is just a bit of gravy on top); keep in mind that Pandora is generally paying out 15-20ss on these and the Poltergeist just to buff her own abilities. Keeping your models from getting clumped up and corralled into the kill-box is the best way to avoid too much shenanigans. Taking higher Wp models helps (Oiran were frustratingly hard to get rid of the other day) but even that can be overcome by just hammering on Wp until you flip badly (Seamus bit the dust to a triple Inflict turn rather easily a few weeks back) or sending models like Teddy and Kade in to attack your Df, so don't think you're invincible with some 6-7Wp models. Finally, just focus on achieving your Strat/Schemes. Pandora might be a little green goddess paving your models into the board, but her ability to do so requires a lot of set up, leaving less models and AP to prevent you from scoring VPs.

Hope this all helps! Once you figure out how to get around her tricks games involving Pandora tend to be very interesting from both sides of the table.

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My thoughts on beating Pandora, from a "I use Pandora sometimes, and this is what hurts" point of view:

1) Sorrows are pretty easy to kill and an important part of her damage stacking and nasty Auras. Kill them when you can. Perhaps not to the point where you ignore everything else, but certainly if you can, take them out.

2) Pandora does a bunch of her killing with Auras, especially overlapping Auras, this typically means she'll end up a bit bunched up herself (to stack those auras) and returning the favor with your own blasts, pulses, and auras can hurt. I got pretty badly beaten up by a Collette player using the Prestige to blow up Scheme markers during the Beta test (not sure if it still works that way, but the idea of blasts/pulses/auras works against Pandy). Rasputina has been mentioned before. Likewise, targeting Pandora herself can be problematic , but those same blasts/pulses/auras noted above can either target another model (maybe even your own) or need no target at all. So you can get around some/most of Pandora's defenses and possibly take down multiple parts of her crew at once.

3) Likewise, try not to clump too much yourself. As a Pandora player, I'm quite happy when you're bunched up enough that I can drop a Project Emotions blast onto several of your models while getting overlapping Misery aura damage. It takes a bit more doing if I have to kill models one at a time.

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I got pretty badly beaten up by a Collette player using the Prestige to blow up Scheme markers during the Beta test (not sure if it still works that way, but the idea of blasts/pulses/auras works against Pandy).

It doesn't, the Prestige is no longer in the game, it was taken out a month or so into the beta (A little fuzzy on the time scale), yours must be the one game I've heard of where it actually worked well. But aside from that, anything that doesn't have to target Pandora to hurt her is gold. Her trigger only works if she actually gets to flip cards. So targeting everything but her. Inflicting conditions on her can also be fairly bad for her.

Another thing is about the resilience of your crew. Because of the way Pandora do damage a lot of the typical defences are not worth very much against her. Mostly you just want a high wound count, as she will often just be doing lots of 1 point attacks. There are exceptions of course, but wounds probably count for more than any other defence against her.

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I think noone mentioned yet a trick that usually works against Pandora. You should engage her with multiple models so that she can't push out. This at most needs 3 models but in case she is close to a building, wall etc. even 2 is enough. Since Pandora will want to bring harm as soon as possible if the Pandora player plays overconfidently he will activate her early, making this tactic easier.

From the mentioned crews, Ramos and the Gremlins can do that easily. And when she is locked up in combat, you can shoot her with Attacks that doesn't randomize (Ramos' spell, Shoot High Boys aura etc.) or send in some melee beatstick like Howard Langston. She will melt quite quickly.

As for Lynch he can kill Pandy with 2 successful Final Debt spell. He just needs the same high cards as Pandy since it will be a 7 vs 7 duel. Of course you need to get Brilliance on her but that is not a very big task.

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I think noone mentioned yet a trick that usually works against Pandora. You should engage her with multiple models so that she can't push out. This at most needs 3 models but in case she is close to a building, wall etc. even 2 is enough. Since Pandora will want to bring harm as soon as possible if the Pandora player plays overconfidently he will activate her early, making this tactic easier.

The downside is that she then spends her turn spamming her AoE, which will churn out pretty sizable damage, especially if she can bring in any support (Sorrows, Poltergeist.) So make sure you pin her down with Freikorps Librarians or something. :P

My advice generally mirrors some of the earlier suggestions in the thread. Pandora herself is a great model and really hard to take out. Don't go after her first. If the opponent is using Sorrows and the Poltergeist, thats a lot of points in some very fragile models. Burn those guys out quickly, and Pandora's threat drops quite a bit. That leaves you free to either take her on, or simply work on other schemes and strategies.

Now, a crew that is more focused around unique Woes (Candy, Kade, Iggy, etc) might be a bit trickier to deal with, since they can get a good amount of support and protection from each other (Martyr lets them share some damage around, making it easier for Candy to keep the front ranks healthy.) However, no Woe tends to have a great amount of Wds to begin with, so focusing fire can burn some of them down before they have a chance to recover. (Speaking of which - Focus itself is a good option when dealing with Manipulative models, since it is easier to force through one big attack rather than flail a few times and possibly get hurt by Pandora's aura.)

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sorrows are just as killable as before but went up in points 67%. my sorrows die pretty regularly if an opponent decides to target them. many leave them completely alone, which is a mistake. if you see an opportunity to wreck a better model, then go for it but swinging at kade with a Ml 5 model hoping to get him without any edge means you should have just killed a sorrow instead. sorrows require close proximity to be effective, so you should have little problem being able to swing at them.

if teddy is present, you can try to kill him before he can go crazy. it will usually take 2 models activating in order to do it (assuming you can pass both terror checks). he is impossible to wound, but his df3 means he gets hit by nearly anything. many things can bank on 3+ minimum damage and so he is 4 shottable (3 with a lucky severe) in many cases.

candy can be quite survivable between her Df, soulstone use, and manipulative. if played well, she can live most of the battle while being a thorn in the opponent's side. if she doesn't have FGF then you can try to go at her with 2+ models. she doesn't handle multiple models well. also, engage her with models that have low end damage on their melee attacks but have good effects. she only borrows the damage with self loathing. candy dies nearly every game for me and it is usually due to repeated attacks or i leave her on her own due to FGF.

none of the crew really take blasts well. sorrows are low Df and only 4 wounds, candy and kade are fragile, it bypasses pandoras wp->df mechanic and teddy dies to repeated damage. the models tend to be a bit apart from each other, so sonnia might fare better than rasputina would in this regard. also, i fear witchlings used properly.

well, time to board my plane now.

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I'm the player being referred to by Zalabar. Unfortunately, I tend to utilize several DF duels to counter the high willpower models. I use Kade to push Teddy into devastating important models, occasionally a beckoned to draw people into my mobile traps, if the opponent doesn't kill Kade in close quarters, Teddy plays ring around the Kade while he mercilessly stabs them to death. Certain models have not been used because too many WP duels makes Pandora absurd. She functions as a mobile trap that can spring in any direction while she causes havoc. Because of a mix of fast models, traps, and incorporeal models, she can easily move around for objectives and react to almost anything. I also play Rasputina and so I know how to counter most of what she does simply by murdering her advanced models and any remaining midline. It is easy to kill almost all of Rasputina's models and they tend to be slow. I haven't fought Sonnia, but I expect her to be a challenge. Perdita is easy to overrun if the board has any terrain.

I love to play her, but I'm finding it far too effective to use mostly the models made for her.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sonnia is a hard one I can attest. I had Pandora and Teddy die to a bunch of witchling stalkers suiciding into their Terrifying and failing the check on purpose to take misery damage and blow up. After the damage added up Pandora and Teddy died and were resurrected as new witchlings. Add her to the list of crews that are a good bet against Pandora.

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