Sarge048

Papa loco is the one who blows up, which can be very usefull by itself, especially when combined with his "te leviera infierno con migo" (I'm taking you all to hell with me) ability. But in the Sonnia crew where he really shines is his plus to dmg flips. At the start of his activation he can give a friendly model in 2" + to damage flips. So when you give that to sonnia and combine it with her Ca of 9 (after confiscated lore) it makes it extremely easy to get strait dmg flips without having to focus. So if you have a couple of face cards in your hand you can pay a stone to add a tome to your attack flip (to trigger burning on dmg'd models) then cheat in face cards to the dmg flip for 5 dmg to the base target, plus three 3 dmg blast markers (that can be pushed 2 inches from the target model), and 1 burning to dmg to everything you hit. Do that 2 - 3 times in one activcation and you can wipe out a lot of stuff. Personally, I find that papa loco is usually worth his 7 stones for that alone.

As one other observation here, if dmg dealt is the same as dmg suffered then the lawyer would be incapable of ever giving slow or paralyzed to any model with armor. After all a model with armor would only suffer 1 dmg and since 1 dmg is less than 2 it wouldn't be equal to moderate or severe dmg.

I personally run Sonnia a fair bit, she is me go to master when playing guild, and I have found that the witchling stalkers alone make for excellent melee monsters. At five stones with MI 6 and 2/4/5 dmg profile (3/5/6 when you add in burning) they are pretty devestating, add in their explosive demise setting things on fire and they don't even have to live long enough to swing their swords to be effective. Tthe key is to use them like grenades. When you see something heading towards sonnia, or something else you want to protect, have a witchling stalker either charge or (if you don't have the range) double walk into melee with the advancing foe. It's MI 6 makes disengaging difficult, and if they manage to kill it they will burn up most of their activation doing it and end up on fire. Then sonnia just uses confiscated lore for a cast of nine, ignores cover and LOS and fries whatever was approaching. Even if the stalker doesn't die I'll usually still shoot into melee with sonia because if I end up hitting my stalker I can usually cheat it's defense flip low and then use it as a focal point for blast dmg, or alternatively hopikins rapid fires on it and with a minum dmg of 4 on a burning target few things will survive that. Add in sonnia's reincarnation aura to replenish your supply of witchling "grenades" and it's a devestating combination. As a side note I'm also a big fan of bringing papa loco with sonnia for the + to dmg flips as it makes it soo much easier for her to pop out the blast markers.

I appreciate the insight and I do agree that my crew severely lacks in the dmg department. As for the schemes I choose line in the sand because I knew I could lay down the markers early before my crew was dwindled down to almost nothing and I didn't realize his spider swarms had a zero action that would eat them all, and that was indeed a blunder. Also I knew from playing against him previously that he planned to keep Ramos in his deployment zone while summoning spiders for most of the game so that made spring the trap and breakthrough significantly less viable as well. As for why this in this forum and not the beta forum. I've found the beta forum to be more about tweaking the beta cards vs generalize strategy, and my question more has to due with the generalized strategy of how to counter a master that can summon in ridiculous amounts of minions fairly consistently. I can't seem to figure out how to counter a summoning master with a master that focuses more on support vs damage. In a previous game with the same opponent I attempted to kill Ramos and found my attacking forces quickly trapped behind a wall of spiders which kept them engaged and unable to get to Ramos, combine that with those same spiders latching on to all of my attacking forces and essentially reducing their Df to zero, while being summoned in almost as fast as I could kill them, and the result was a most painful experience. The three models I moved in with were quite powerful (the judge, the pale rider, and a death marshal) but they just couldn't get past the spiders. So the last game I played I tried just avoiding the spiders while scattering around the map and trying to accomplish objectives. The plan worked until around turn four when he had almost twice as many models as I did due to a combination of my losses and his gains (2 - 3 spiders per turn). I'm just at a loss for how I am supposed to effectively counter that with a support master. Maybe the answer is to not run a support master, but that's part of why I'm looking for suggestions. Thanks.

I appreciate the insight and I do agree that my crew severely lacks in the dmg department. As for the schemes I choose line in the sand because I knew I could lay down the markers early before my crew was dwindled down to almost nothing and I didn't realize his spider swarms had a zero action that would eat them all, and that was indeed a blunder. Also I knew from playing against him previously that he planned to keep Ramos in his deployment zone while summoning spiders for most of the game so that made spring the trap and breakthrough significantly less viable as well. As for why this in this forum and not the beta forum. I've found the beta forum to be more about tweaking the beta cards vs generalize strategy, and my question more has to due with the generalized strategy of how to counter a master that can summon in ridiculous amounts of minions fairly consistently. I can't seem to figure out how to counter a summoning master with a master that focuses more on support vs damage. In a previous game with the same opponent I attempted to kill Ramos and found my attacking forces quickly trapped behind a wall of spiders which kept them engaged and unable to get to Ramos, combine that with those same spiders latching on to all of my attacking forces and essentially reducing their Df to zero, while being summoned in almost as fast as I could kill them, and the result was a most painful experience. The three models I moved in with were quite powerful (the judge, the pale rider, and a death marshal) but they just couldn't get past the spiders. So the last game I played I tried just avoiding the spiders while scattering around the map and trying to accomplish objectives. The plan worked until around turn four when he had almost twice as many models as I did due to a combination of my losses and his gains (2 - 3 spiders per turn). I'm just at a loss for how I am supposed to effectively counter that with a support master. Maybe the answer is to not run a support master, but that's part of why I'm looking for suggestions. Thanks.

So I'm somewhat new to malifaux and I've been experimenting with the Lucius crew with mostly positive results. However, I recently played a couple of games against Ramos and I find myself at something of a loss for an effective strategy and I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas. The last game I played featured the following set up 50ss Guild Lucius Sgt Dashel 3 Guild Guards 1 Guild Capt 2 Lawyers 4 Hounds Archanists Ramos Toolbox Howard Joss Killjoy (buried) Stake a claim Line in the sand protect territory spring the trap cursed object breakthrough Knowing that Lucius excels at laying down scheme markers and that my opponent planed to keep Ramos essentially in the deployment zone while summoning spiders I elected take cursed object and line in the sand as my schemes. I thought about protect territory but I knew that I wouldn't have many models left at the end of the game. Ramos took distracted and protect territory. I managed to score all points for distracted and stake a claim and I had 7 scheme markers on the center line by the 5th turn. However, my opponent was able to swarm his spiders and use the swarm to devour four of my scheme markers resulting in my loosing the game with 8 points to 9 (3 for each scheme and strategy). But the victory points don't tell the whole story. By the end of the game I had only four models left while my opponent had around 10 (Ramos, 8 spiders and killjoy). I found that the lawyers were great for attaching fees and poison to the high value models (Joss, Howard, Killjoy) and they were also great for paralyzing and slowing them, but even with those tricks my forces quickly dwindled. Combine that with my opponent being able to use soul stones and effective use of the control hand he was able to summon 2 - 3 spiders every single turn. And the result was that he was quickly out damaging and out activating my forces. I'm just not sure what the effective counter to that is. How exactly does one deal with a master that can summon in 8 - 12 souls stones worth of minions every single turn? I'm open to any suggestions.