Natty

Then you should definitely get him Lilith. She is a master that CAN crash down the field and still have a good chance of winning. There is plenty of stuff you can do to use her and have tactics at the same time, but honestly, you don't really need to. Running at the enemy is a perfectly good strategy for Lilith. Basic Lilith box set, pack of young nephilim, Lilith's totem, and a Teddy. Bam, done. Have him field the Teddy, totem, and one mature neph and then fill out the points with terror tots. Easy to learn army right there. As he gets better he can switch out the mature neph for the complicated Lilith dudes (shaman, nekima, lelu, lilitu, etc), but since you always need tots/young/mature in a Lilith crew for growing, its not like he will be wasting bucks on figs he will later never use.

:bike: Meh, it happens. :club: It's the holidays and I'm stuck in a cubicle with no desire to get any work done. :toilet: I'm slowly going crazy. :fest30:

...he will reply promptly, and email you his How to Use Karn instructions in pdf format along with a coupon for free meat! FREE MEAT! :spam: -----> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat <----- :spam:

Please send Karn a private message for instructions on how to use Karn. The pdf that he will send you will contain helpful guides such as "How to send Karn a private message" and "How to install Adobe products so you can read pdfs on your computer".

I believe you meant to say: Yeah it comes down to Americans find long German words very funny.

Ok, I am starting this thread for the sole purpose of discussing using the Dreamer AND Collidi together, which is exactly what I intend to do the second that the Collidi figures come out. Note that I haven't tried either of these crews in an actual game and have NEVER even used Collidi, I just intend to whenever his figs come out. Here is my two plans: 35 point crew: The Dreamer + LCB Collidi (8 pts) 4 marionettes (8 pts) 2 Stitched together (10 pts) 3 Daydreams (6 pts) 3 soulstones left over + 5 nightmares = 8 soulstone cache. The purpose of the crew is to first turn activate Collidi and give both of the Stitched Togethers fast and casting expert and then to bury them. This way they get unburied later in the game with 3 AP and 1 casting AP (nasty). Collidi can then run around like a super fast madman completing objectives and picking off people, coming back to buff the Stitched Togethers whenever he feels like it. Also, with 3 daydreams, you can always drop the stitched togethers right next to Collidi before he activates and then buff them up and rebury them for later use again. 30 Soulstones: The Dreamer + LCB 3 Stitched Together (15 points) Collidi (8 points) 2 marionettes (4 points) 1 Daydream (2 points) 1 soulstone left over + 4 nightmares = 5 soulstone cache. This crew would be much more of a "Stitched Together Bomb", where you give the Stitched Togethers fast and casting expert, bury them, and then later drop them all on the enemy. One of the biggest hopes for this crew is to give at least one enemy the minus flip against nightmares, and then use each stitched (0) action to draw a total of 6 cards and make your opponent discard 3. With good hand control, winning gamble your life will be even easier, and Chompy's insta-kill bite reaches a whole new level of nastiness. Now, Collidi only has 2 marionettes, which should severely limit his movement, but it is just enough movement to use one marionette to get him near your Stitched Togethers each turn, give them all fast and casting expert, and then use the other marionette to get out. A key to this crew would be to take out any immune to influence or high wp models with LCB since most of your damage is wp->wp with the stitched togethers. Personally, I think the 30 ss crew is kind of limited in it's choices and is much more of a head on fight, win slaughter kind of crew (although still more mobile than many other crews). The 35 SS crew would have amazing mobility and would be incredibly hard to pin down except by anything but the fastest crews. The hit and run capabilities with Collidi and 3 Daydreams would mean that your opponent would have a very hard time controlling where the fights would happen. Thoughts?

I Heart Karn Discuss... I think my favorite Karn strategy is to read his posts. I think skimming his posts isn't utilizing Karn to its full advantage. He is a very high point cost forum-troll, and if you are spending that many points, you should probably try to get some return.

I think the point that we got messed up on this discussion is that the comparison between her and ANY other master is a tough one when talking about required models because Pandora is so powerful on her own. She will literally dominate most games by herself, which is something most masters cannot do. They need the help. I think the doppelganger increases the power of Pandora on scale with how much daydreams increase the power of the Dreamer. It's just that she starts out so powerful, so who cares? Let's use some completely arbitrary numbers with absolutely no scale or meaning to them: The doppelganger takes Pandora from a 7 to a 10 and the daydreams take the Dreamer from a 4 to an 7. It's the same increase, but less noticeable because Pandora already starts out so powerful. So to sum up: Karn is right, the doppelganger is NOT required to win with Pandora. I, however, think that it is an amazing model and Pandora should never leave home without it.

Nah, the always winning was only a small part and it was mainly the fall back that made her not fun in my opinion. I really REALLY found everything about Pandora to be fun except the fall back trigger. With fall back, a soulstoned cast and any minion in the game is out for up to 3 turns (run away, rally, run back), and a soulstoned cast and you have about a 50/50 shot of doing the same thing to a master (assuming they also have a high card and soulstone the resist)[and if they already have project emotions on them, you can get them to fall back even with a really low crow]. Then you throw on top of that the :minus twist and basically anything can kill someone that is falling back. There is no single ability in the game that has anywhere near the power level of that fall back trigger. I didn't like looking at my first hand, seeing a few high crows, and immediately knowing the game was won before any activations were even taken. Since I've retired her I've played Zoraida, The Dreamer, and My friend's Viks crew and I have to say I have enjoyed all of those games a lot more than most of my Pandora games. My biggest hope for Malifaux is that they release the Avatar version of Pandora and rework her without the fall back trigger.

Don't forget that as a Henchmen she has use soulstone, so she can slow to die and use a soulstone to heal. I have never played her but when I read her I kind of always thought of philosophy of uncertainty as the reason she can summon in more totems and then make the totems cast it and burn a soulstone to make it an irresistibly high cast. Using her totem and a soulstone to take out your opponent's biggest minion is pretty sexy. Again, I've never played her or against her, and it seems situational, but it also seems REALLY nasty.

Again, I'm sorry for the rant but I wanted to accentuate the point that I was talking about building a crew to win. Karn is totally right that there is never any way you HAVE to build a crew, but there are ways you can build crews that have a better chance of winning. Seriously, it's a game, if you don't like the doppelganger then don't play it. Pandora is a force to be reckoned with even is she is by herself. I have never once lost a game using Pandora (most of the reason I retired her), and the doppelganger was vital in almost every one of those games. The games where the doppelganger wasn't vital was usually the games where I played silurid alpha strike, and took out entire crews with them (again, not fun). Even then, though, I used the doppelganger as a huge target to position my enemy correctly.

I think we are on totally different pages here. It was mentioned that there was no bad way to make a Pandora crew. Something that is always seems to me like not taking it would be a bad choice. There is no right or wrong way to play the game. It is about having fun, but if someone wants to know good and bad choices when building their crew, I am going to offer them honest advice, and that is that the doppelganger is ALWAYS a good choice. Not taking it is a bad choice. If you want to play certain models, then by all means, play those models and you can win with essentially any Pandora crew, but if you are asking me what is good/bad to take, then the only sure thing in my mind is that the doppelganger is GOOD. I can't see any competitive Pandora crew not using one, and that was basically the statement, what is good/bad, what is competitive, how do I WIN? That is what I think of when people say "bad". It's not like the cops are going to come in and arrest you when you don't field the doppelganger, but you have a MUCH better chance of winning by fielding one than if you don't field one. I can't see the result of that choice as anything but a "good" or "bad" choice. Whooooooooo..... kinda ranted there, and I'm sorry. You are one of my favorite people on these boards, Karn, and I think you are probably the most helpful person around, but in this situation, I think it is pretty black and white, and the doppelganger is as important to building a good Pandora crew as multiple daydreams is to building a good Chompy crew.

When I go defensive with the doppelganger, I usually copy a defensive talent or stat, and then emotional trauma for extra damage for wp talents. Then I go into defensive stance. It takes a lot of resources to kill a doppelganger with 7 or 8 defense in defensive stance and copying nothing but emotional trauma the whole game will generally be a thorn in your opponents side. I would say half the games I play with the doppelganger she is mainly just there to copy emotional trauma and when the time is right, copy a couple offensive abilities and go nuts with her, not caring if she dies.

That being said, I did retire Pandora a couple months ago and haven't ever played her against some of the new super super fast crews. Pandora is a lot about positioning, harassing, and then striking when the time is right. I bet that a speedy crew like Colette or the Dreamer could mess up the best laid plans and take out the doppelganger without much worry.

That's because Pandora is one of the most powerful masters out there. But the question was about a "bad" way to build a Pandora crew. Sure you can win a TON of games with just Pandora and any old minion at all, but if you are taking Pandora as a given, and asking what a "bad" way to build her crew is, then I say not taking the doppelganger is bad. That is like not taking skeeters when you play Somer, or not taking undead minions when you play Nico. I think Pandora is one of the best masters to let you personilize her crew just because she is so powerful that it doesn't matter what you take, but the doppelganger does everything for her and complements her perfectly. Well, I've played maybe 30 something games with Pandora and never once had the Doppelganger not earn its points. Not once. That model is breakable, sure, but if it is in danger or getting killed, then you need to plan ahead. Make any of the models that could get to it fall back. Activate the doppelganger first and copy defensive talents. Don't position the doppelganger where it is in trouble. Use pacify and incite to control their activations so you don't have to worry about the doppelganger (I tend to use that method a lot when I need to activate Pandora first and make sure I incite stuff that can't attack the doppel or pacify stuff that can). Yeah, I've had the doppelganger die, but usually at the expense of a lot of resources from the opponent. The doppelganger is the most important minion in a Pandora crew and if you just throw it into the opponent's face, then it will probably die.

14 Soulstone model... I sure hope they are powerful. Seriously, think about what the other factions can get for 14 points. They don't seem overpowered to me at all. You are putting all your eggs in one basket with those things. Hrmmmm... 2 punk zombies getting stuff lured into range by a Belle? That sounds like 14 points to me and I'd much rather face the Duet than that. The only overpowered thing about the duet is that they technically don't have a soulstone cost so they are broken for the slaughter encounter.

Regardless, there is nothing in the rules that would even begin to imply that a model you can summon is considered to be in your crew before you even summon it.

I don't think that is true. That would be like saying that every Arcanist master technically always has a Corphyee Duet in their crew.

Agree.

Pandora. I don't play her anymore. Nothing is more unfun than making your opponents entire crew fall back because of her overpowered trigger. It's not fun for me, it's not fun for them, it's just not fun.

I have never played with the librarian, nor have I ever even seen it played, but when I read the rules on it, I immediately thought of it as more of a large SS game type of model. The healing and abilities seem really nice, but I don't think I'd ever use it in a 25 SS game. Especially with McM, where you are paying extra for it, it'd be a big chunk of your crew. The healing probably wouldn't be as effective in a small game as just including a heavy hitter or two more small guys. But like I said, I've never even seen the librarian played, so...

Well, there is one bad way to build a Pandora crew and that is if you don't take a doppelganger. Best model ever for Pandora. But yeah, Pandora and a doppelganger don't even need backup. I say take the models that you think look the coolest.

Well, a wp duel is any duel involving wp, but the difference here is that Pandora removes immunities, but doesn't make you have to take a test you never needed to take in the first place. In the description for terrifying, it states that living models need to make the test. So it isn't that non-living models are "immune" to terrifying, it is just that they never have to take the test at all.

I plan to play Collidi with the Dreamer when he comes out. Gonna give stitched together Fast and Casting Expert and then bury them, so when they come out they still have the buffs on them.

I had a Perdita player learn that lesson when I did like 36 damage on my first activation. We decided to just restart the game and he put Papa Loco out of LoS.