4thstringer

Yesterday I played a Lady J game where the 2 DM I brought were my MVP. One kept Bishop boxed the whole game, the other delivered Papa Loco to an extraction marker for lots of explosions before boxing a Torokage for an extraction point. It was the first time where the box as an offensive weapon had worked out for me, but I held 13s in my hand specifically to keep him locked up. They also dropped one of the Plant explosives markers. I'm starting to be a little more positive on them.

I'm here to stand up for guild guard. I usually play lucius, so they are always available for extra actions, which is nice, even if I would rather give the actions to other models usually. But at 4 points, they have real survivability that makes them a great speed bump. That armor 1 5 wounds makes them much more survivable than the more expensive WS and DM. They have an additional move trick against scheme markers, which is occasional gold. And while you don't plan for them to be part of your offensive plan, just weight of fire alone with those pistols will make a sent in your opponents wound pool. It doesn't take them doing much for them to earn their points back. They are more versatile than almost all of the other minions guild has (with only the DM, the Hunter, and probably the Pathfinder being more versatile). Recon, Interference, Squatters rights are all strats that they are very useful in, and they can, at least short term, do the Turf War, Extraction, and guard the stash job as well. They grab heads in headhunter as well as anyone and help your activation control. I had been leaving them in my bag recently, and this post has reminded me how much I love them. I've been resting Lucius, but I'm going to start putting them into my Lady J crews to remind me how much I miss them.

I haven't but I like it. How did you get papa activated before they moved away/murdered him?

I had similar issues with their durability, especially against any min damage 3 models. I soon realized that I was using them too much like guardsmen and wardens, whose armor gives them a bit more staying power. I still haven't been getting full value from them but I am starting to see how their flexibility and utility can pay off.

Just an idea, maybe instead of having sportsmanship award be completely separate, make it a part of the placing strategy. Set requirements for the prizewinning spots- you cannot hold a prizewinning spot if you have the lowest sportsmanship score in the room.

Right now 2/6 people in my meta play outcasts as their main faction. Ashes and Dust seems to be a constant part of that. How do you generally deal with this Swift, undying, hugely damaging, fast model? The best I have done so far is to basically ignore him while he achieved breakthrough on his own while killing two smaller models, but even then by 5th turn he was amongst the rest of my crew putting a pounding on my mid-board models.

It's funny, I don't get how to use lj, but Lucius was my first master and is like the back of my hand.

So what makes Lucius tier one for guild but tier three for NB? Is it because NB masters are generally more powerful, or the way he synergies with his crew? I'm of the opinion that Lucius had better tools in NB (illuminated, bbs, tots) than he has in guild(witchling stalkers, hunters, death marshals). I figure the mimics and guardsmen can end up in either.

I would argue that the LOL community is toxic, and exactly what we should be trying to avoid.

Yeah that is more my go to with him.

Do you find Fears given form a good deal on Lucius? I like the upgrade with some other NM models (Candy, Huggy, Nekima), but Lucius isn't my choice for holding up a bunch of weaker models, and for one big model it is to easy to cheat over without major effect.

That's what lackeys are for and commanding presence are the center of my first turn tactics. I rarely play against those masters which may account for out different experiences.

The models I tend to use with Lucius are wp 6. Illuminated, beckoners, Doppelganger (maybe wp 5), lawyers, bbs. I would almost never bring a young nephew with him. Illuminated just do the job better. Tots on the other hand....so good.

Back to the main topic, I tried hidden weapons today. I used my sarge to toss markers in, and accompliced Lucius to lead to a pretty devastating turn. I'm not sure I love it, because his low melee damage made the effect kind of disappointing (facing armor is a real problem for him) but the trigger really messed people up, depleting the effect of von schill and hannah. Double negs are amazing.

Do you find you are losing lots of minions in the big turn? My experience is that, except for against deathballs, using lots of minions prevents the damage from becoming overwhelming. The lack of keystone models keeps the big turn away.

I've played Lucius with daschell. I think for killing it is effective, though I don't bring him against neverborn as they get into my riflemen to fast. I only bring 4 Stones and there are definitely times I don't have the suits I want, or even the mid cards to make his stuff go off at all. That is usually when I go with commanding presence on a warden or a model in the aura of a lawyer or sarge. Sometimes I will risk it for commanding presence anyways, depending on the low cost of the model to keep it from being too much of a waste. I will say I rarely see a rage quit against him as he doesn't feel like he is doing that much. But as the game goes on, the piece trade starts tipping more and more my way and my opponent finds they didn't make quite the progress they thought they would. He will never have a turn like McM or Even McCabe where he wows you with all he accomplished in one turn. He's a slow culmination of well planned pressure. That's part of why a bad hand isn't a disaster, because he's been making those incremental gains since turn one.

This is the kind of post that makes me want to stay away from "competitive play". I'm very interested in how I could hold up against tourney players, but when the game starts being about cheap tricks not the game, count me out.

Admiral v- Is it possible that Lucius doesn't fit your play style? I have had a ton of success with him and at least in my local meta he is the master my opponents have asked me to stop using. I have rarely seen Lucius die. The only time he does is when I decide to use him to tar pit mid or late game, and then he doesn't get his melee trigger off. I rarely if ever use stones to prevent for him, saving them for cards or hidden sniper triggers. Lucius's greatest strength is his ability to, from a distance, allow you to choose an area to enhance as needed.

For Plant Explosives and Spring the trap- Guild Sergeant is great, his ability to move scheme markers is really effective. Lucius's Thats what Lackeys are for is really nice for those schemes that require you to get across the board fast, like Power Ritual, Breakthrough or Entourage.

If you are looking for doing damage, refer to the Daschell/Riflemen discussion. If you are looking for tanky- Ryle, Peacekeeper. An outside the box damage dealer, especially if you opponent hits hard, is Candy. She plays interestingly with Lucius, and her aura's and abilities make her an interesting damage option. For hand to hand damage minions, stalkers, Wardens, and hunters are your best bet.

I've run Lucius as NB, but the only summoning I have done with that is grow builds, which isn't really the same thing. I haven't bothered with WW because I don't generally target WP. Since I play mostly Lucius anyways, I love Daschell. He makes the other side make a tough choice early in the game, and really does evaporate enemy models with the riflemen. At the end of the game, a timely reactivate can make the rifleman that was standing in your deployment zone get out there and work on either scheme or scheme denial late, before killing themselves from exhaustion. I definitely disagree with whoever was saying that Lucius can't do attrition. Lucius pushing the right minions to extra actions can shoot many other crews off the board. I want to try him with 2 wardens, charging them both in with him giving them a free focus to use on the melee attack. Just to flip the script a bit.

I have found Candy to be a hard beatstick to use. She is great for hunting down other beatsticks, but sometimes you need your killer to clear out a tarpit or kill a scheme runner, and she is god-awful at those due to being dependent on the opposing model's damage spreads. I find her better as a planned support/secondary beatstick model.

35 wasn't a big problem for us, as noone really abused summoning. I know some people trial played Kirai and felt it went too far. I can say that I think I would have struggled had Mourne or the Sonnia player brought summoning. The only summon I faced was a guild autopsy in my second game (he was consistently not getting crows for Karina). Other than that, low SS games make some schemes really tricky as you have a small number of models to make it happen, especially if you are going with a fairly elite crew. As someone that plays 50 most of the time, that definitely took some getting used to. I think LITS only happened because my opponent hated all of the other options in the second game. Protect territory is almost a given in that size game, but the rest of the options just were ones that no one likes. In the third game, the Distract and MtS combo was similarly due to not liking the rest of the pool. I abhor LITS with such a small crew, I hate risking bodyguard in tournament games due to the possibility of leaving points on the table because of the endgame situation. Vendetta was a no go because I expected nekima and lilith to do my killing, and Nekima is way too many points to have someone to vendetta. So I decided to make them suffer to take advantage of lilith and Nekima's murderous skill, and distract because I would be trying to engage models with my tots anyways for the strat., so I figured distract would not be too bad. It kind of bit me in the end, as I was literally trying to keep models alive for distract (without success) but given the other options I felt it was still the best choice.

Here is what I would do (or try to do): I would use Lucius as a tarpit. First turn move him up, making sure to take advantage of any cover that he can. use his commanding presence with the lawyers to get the lawyers and Guild Guard up the board towards scheme success. Work to get him and the scribe into combat as fast as possible (but not together, the scribe should chase the lawyers to keep their defense at a 7 so that the hunter's 5 shoot will struggle. Daschell and the guardsman should work as a team too, hopefully giving the guardsman the ability to actually hit things with his shooting, and hopefully allowing him to get a severe off so that he can actually do some real damage. Daschell's gun isn't half bad, as is certainly enough to take down watchers. If he is given plant evidence, he can operate as a fairly tough scheme runner.

I like grow in turf war/extraction as well. Since there is often a big fight in a small area, putting tots in there where they count towards the strat, where their black blood can hurt multiple other models, and where they can grow if your killers get the job done. This is multiplied if you are using BBS to do some good pulse damage in that scrum as well.