Mikey_C

 

 

Whisper From the Other Place Ability (On Wings of Darkness Upgrade): When this model spends a Soulstone in the Draw Phase to draw cards, it may draw and discard three cards instead of two.

I think it is worded this way to be clear that this ability is lost if the model with the upgrade is dead.

My 2¢.

How looks charge while climbing?

 

Is this possible?

And if yes how it looks when model must move horizontal then climb to reach his foe?

What if during charge model ignore terrain? Does he messure distance diagonal or horizontal?

My initial thoughts were "yes of course!" but then when I went to look for rules to support my opinion I couldn't find any. However, I couldn't find any to dismiss it either.

I still stand by yes climbing charges can be made, you just have to pay for the climbing movement. 

The other thing to keep in mind is the vantage point rules (pg 41 large rulebook) that might effect line of sight prior to charging.

I'm of the opinion that the "straight line" mentioned in the charge rules is intended from a "top down" point of view (horizontal only), though an FAQ would be needed to cement this as fact or not.

I think focusing on corpse removal against ressers is a trap. 

Can you clarify? Do you mean focusing on corpse removal during crew building is a trap or during the actual game turns?

Rusty Alyce is a pretty great add on as her gun ignores hard to wound, outranges a lot of resser models and her snares prevent punk zombies and the like from charging near her when summoned.

I also like Taelor because having her smash something that was just summoned feels pretty great.

Lastly, the whole Von Schill crew. They have a lot of corpse marker removal at their disposal, Schill's gun ignores HTW and they have a pretty high WP to deal with hanged.

Only downside there is they lack a little against incorporeal. 

And from the Mercs there's Ama No Zako, Killjoy, and McTavish at least.

+ Lazarus

How many guys do you tag with fast to be able to reliably get use out of it, or do you just chain?

 

Also, I'm surprised you ever get opponents giving out fast and giving you a buff- if they ever have that option when I'm playing Tara, they don't use it or put it on something away from her aura.

I only ever aim to tag a single enemy with the fast pulse.

I don't often play with Obliteration symbiote, so I seldom chain unless it's off Karina.

I can't ever recall an opponent making something near Tara fast, I was just saying that if they did, it would suffer -2wp so the upgrade (dead of winter) is still useful in that circumstance. 

I get the most mileage out of dead of winter with knowledge of eternity, where I am pinging the opponent for 1 damage, fast and the TN13 (15) bury test.

I wouldn't call the WP penalty "huge" because I consider it rarely worth it when the other half of said penalty is fast, so your opponent is getting a buff and then losing the penalty, so usually the best you'll get is a chain activation taking advantage of the penalty if you set up the chain, a tough choice for your opponent, and then an/another activation with the penalty on a model.

 

It's certainly more than nothing and you can do some nasty (if situational) things with it, but I think it generally looks better on paper than it is in practice.

On this point you and I would disagree.

Since you are in control of when/wether or not to give out the fast, it is easy to minimize the drawback.

If it's the opponent who gives their own model fast, then they also get -2wp. 

In my experience, when I've wanted to take advantage of the -2wp, I've succeeded in burying the target, or draining the opponent's hand significantly.

I played 5 games with Tara this weekend, 4 as a resser and 1 as an outcast. I didn't take any of these upgrades and found it pretty alright, didn't feel like I was missing anything. 

 

I think Dead of Winter is good, but when are you taking more than 1 Death Marshal? Are they really worth the 7 pts? (Even if you take two, are they worth 6.5?) 

There's more to the dead of winter upgrade then just unlocking death marshals. 

-2wp to fast models within 6" of Tara is huge. Taking a TN13 wp duel to a TN15 wp duel is an enormous burden on the enemy hand.

If the target model is wp 6, it now needs a 9+ to stay on the table.

Also having a death marshal around for friendly burying is worth the point if you ask me.

6.5 for a death marshal (6.25 really because I usually take 2) and .5 for the wp debuff, is worth it in most of my games.

Hah!  Yeah his actual niece is always a good plan (I love that story!)

Do you know I can find that story?

I'm aware of it, but haven't been able to track it down.

If you are handing out slow via Knowledge of Eternity, don't forget you can only take that cast action if Tara has other models left to activate. 

If you already have drowned though, why not consider adding Jaakuna? 

I usually take both these upgrades and leave symbiote at home.

I really like EJ as a panic button to get Tara out of harms way, and often find myself using it on her first activation, because a dead Tara doesn't get to reactivate.

I find dead of winter extremely useful with Knowledge of Eternity to preform aggressive burying. On a reactivation I'll position Tara for next turn, and pop the fast pulse, I can count on KoE and soulstone use if needed to win initiative most times, and then I'll ping their  fast model up to 3 times for 1 damage and fast, forcing an essentially  TN15 wp duel each time. If it doesn't bury (though I find most times it does) it's likely thinned their hand quite a bit. 

So instead of a magician and show person she's a Con artist. Hmm

Can't she be both?

I love that she looks like a con artist now.

 

I think it might have something to do with you dumping your hand? I thought, somewhere back, you mentioned basically focusing on getting the NB to high defenses, so it would make sense that you're card-light, which would put non-Nothingness high-priority pieces (Tara) in a pretty vulnerable position. I usually stop pushing to get void things when they hit middling defenses (burn half the hand unless it's good, in which case I might let them go on a little longer at lower defense) and save the best cards for defenses and necessary triggers unless it's something like a fight I think the NB is about to get chumped in.

You are misinterpreting something I will do occasionally / situationally, as something I do all the time.

If recall you said you'll often pulse fast twice a turn (or that may have been someone else)? If that's the case, I'm guessing our hands are likely in about the same shape. There is a fair bit of high CA, and highly mobile crews in our group. Even with Eternal Journey she attracts a lot of attention.  

I'm honestly baffled as to how you can get her to survive without it.

I pulse out a few fast and most of my opponents want to remove that ability at its source. 

 very rarely are opponents fixating on Tara herself,

Every time I take her she seems to be almost priority 1 for my opponents.

Eternal journey has become nearly auto include for me and I am using it primarily to get her back to the safety of her deployment zone.

That only matters if you have/get old models with 1.5 cards though. If you just want to read the stats before buying I think the Crossroads book is much more practical than a pile of cards, you also get stories to read that way.

 

I assume the Karina/Nothing Beast upgrades will be in the Tara box if that is ever released. I wonder if the Nightmare boxes sold on the most recent black Friday had them?

My friend bought Tara through the black friday sale, it did not include the wave 2 upgrades.

Have the limited eidtion Katanaka Sniper from black friday sale, 

Looking for a Johanna, though I would also entertain any offers for anything interesting.

Is this upgrade official/legal?

Yes, and it is in the wave 2 pack.

However, it did change slightly from the last Avatars update.

It is now a 10" aura. 

I don't think you can discard more than one card for defensive. It states discard a card and then spend AP equal to the defensive count.

 

Also void shield should help to keep him alive.

He's suggesting taking two separate Defensive (1) actions rather than a single Defensive (2) action. That would have the same effect aside from requiring an extra discard.

He's suggesting taking two separate Defensive (1) actions rather than a single Defensive (2) action. That would have the same effect aside from requiring an extra discard.

Decker has it right. 

It is being a little gamey, but I haven't found anything in the rules to say you can't do it this way.

Really though, void creatures are the only reason to do it this way, I'm taking it as 2 separate 1ap actions so that I can discard more cards.

Cadaver:

I do play in a relatively new group, though I've been playing myself since 1st ed.

Though, I don't think that has a huge impact on the effectiveness of my tactic. Also, it's not something I'd do against a crew full of non projectile casting. If I find myself against a crew without a lot of casting, this is a great trick and works well. 

In regards to having NB last me most of the game, I don't know what to tell you. I'm typically quite conscious about lowering my hand size quickly. Anything below a 7 in a Tara crew I consider expendable (unless it's a mask and I'm up against a lot of SH). My mindset in a Tara crew is typically to get down to 3 cards in my first activation, whether that be through NB discards or Tara pulsing fast. Typically I save my last 3 cards for defensive duels.

I mean NB has incorporeal, I find it easy to keep him either out of LOS or in cover until he's locked into combat. I also find that with, void shield a lot of opponents are just not interested in attacking him at all.

I'll also never take Tara when my opponent declares Neverborn. Dopplegangers in my opinion just pose too much of a threat to my Tara build.

Interesting idea, but it seems like his 0 and maybe a card on defensive would be plenty- while it's nice to play towards the void stuff, that assumes you have a bunch of junk cards and that you don't want to spend them on other useful discards (such as Temporal Shift or plain old Flurry), and that your opponent doesn't just blast him with spells (which ignore the ability and often target WP, circumventing defensive and his high df that you've just dumped your hand to achieve) while there are plenty of pistol fighters who just sh in melee, so while they'll likely miss, they're not risking anything.

 

With void pieces, I'll more freely spend my hand, but won't go out of my way to do so, and I feel like it's a trap to put that much investment in one piece in dumping your hand, and, by the time you're taking 3-4 void pieces to get a lot of mileage out of spending your hand freely, you might as well run a tara list. I'm not saying the stars won't align where you're surrounded by melee chumps and have a poor hand, but... IDK, I don't really understand trying to tank with a glass cannon as a strategy to aim for.

All I can tell you it's that the times I've done it (and yes I am selective about choosing appropriate times to do this) is that it is extremely effective.

In regards to shooting an engaged NB, they risk hitting their own models, sure they can just cheat to miss etc, but that is costing them cards as well.

Then again, even before the new upgrades I never found the NB to be a glass cannon. I don't think I've had a game where he's died before turn 4, and most times I would say he survives until the end of game (especially now with the new upgrade).

Here's one trick I've used somewhat often with the Nothing beast that I haven't seen written or duplicated.

If NB is in the thick of it, I'll have him go first and take a 1ap action for defensive (discard a card), then take a second 1 ap action for defensive (discard a second card), Cast his (0) (discard a card, hand size is now 3 and NB's def is 6) and then make one attack with casting expert, or 2 attacks if fast.

This is really great for tying up a lot of enemy models in combat NB's /// rng of 3 and 50mm base can catch a lot of enemy models, and then they are forced to deal with a def 6 ++ model. If they hit him, cheat in one of your higher cards and now he's def 7 ++ or let him get hit as he'll hit them back thanks to his (0) action. With his new 0 upgrade he can really cost your opponent a lot of ap to remove.

This trick also makes NB viable outside of Tara crews.

Yeah, I was playing Viks against a beginner who wanted to try out Colette the other day. I was going as friendly as humanly possible without utterly murdering my opponent. I was giving him multiple options on what he could do and let him make up his own mind whilst also showing him that objectives are key rather than the blood bath it could very well have been. He appreciated my help and that I gave him options on either how to deal with my Viks, achieve his objectives or general advice however he was not impressed when by turn 3 he only had Colette left.

 

This was pretty much down to a bit of bad luck on his part with some utterly shocking flips and control hands and me playing the Viks and Co. (with no upgrades other than Sisters in Spirit on Ashes) to achieve the objectives I had already revealed (Assassinate and Power Ritual, I know I can't reveal Assassinate but it was a beginner game and figured it would help him out). This was his 3rd practice game trying to get used to Colette and he asked that I play a crew he was vaguely familiar with and still he wasn't having much fun. 

 

Conclusion, even without all the bells and whistles the Viks have a fairly simple play style, they can be very straight forward but given the chance they WILL smash face, they WILL annoy your opponent and for some people they WILL create a NPE. I wouldn't advise using the Viks against beginners unless you yourself are also a beginner. Even then I'd probably still be wary. A lot of beginners will focus dramatically on their strengths and these can often overshadow their weaknesses. 

(I realize at this point I'm beating a dead horse as you've already made your decision but I hit my trigger for an extra attack, so TAKE THAT HORSE!)

This is the exact reason I would not recommend the Viks for beginners learning the game. When you are learning the game ideally you'd like to have 5 turns of close play where the game comes down to what happens on turn 5. You'll get a better feel and learn more from each game. That's just not typical of a Viks games. Odds are a Viks game is decided turn 2 or 3, and after that you are just going through the motions of playing it out, the final result is for all intents and purposes  has been decided.

Personally, I do not enjoy playing as or against the Viks.

Playing as them I always feel like I'm getting blown out, or I am blowing out my opponent. My playstyle as them just isn't condusive to getting close scoring exciting to the end games.  I own the metals models and played them exclusively in 1E. Now I just don't care for them, and they never come out of my transport.

I find playing against them incredibly boring as I basically try to stay out of their enormous threat range until I can remove 1 sister model with shooting or spells. Alternatively, I'll try to bait an early Vik of blood charge so I can counter charge her. But for the most part is feels like I'm pussyfooting around the edge of their threat range waiting for something to happen. 

I don't think playing vs the Vik slingshot would be fun for beginners. Especially if you don't own the right models to try and counter it.
The Viks don't have to be played in the slingshot style, but that fact that they can kind of forces your plays defensively.
 

Nice!

I should be able to make it.