spooky_squirrel

I ended up doing something more like what @Brassfist did, though it does have a small issue with fitting in infantry foam. I ended up having to put it in the 2.5" pluck foam try that I used for the Mech Rider, Rail Golem, Large Steam Arachnids, Hank, and the Emissary.

14 hours ago, Frollo the Wordbearer said:

To keep a lowish budget i'd say:

Johan

Large arachnids

Arcane effigy

Mecha porkchop

 

Effigy and porkchop are at the moment my auto-include for Mei's crews. They give her so much.

Johan is quite brutal and has a great heal in a M&SU crew (as Ramos' ones are).

Arachnids provide a lot of scrap via Creative Savagery, useful for both masters.

Johan is also a great caddy for Bleeding Edge Technology, allowing you more flexibility with Joss's loadout and potentially more staying power with your Rail Workers.

2 hours ago, Mrbedlam said:

There comes a point where the few points you save from Cassandra to Angelica with Practiced Production are pretty key. Slower lists like Ramos, Rasputina, etc really benefit from the pushes. And Marcus with Angelica means that you can get into an even more advantageous alpha strike position. 

The point described here is one of the areas that my local meta is stuck behind (see also: stagnation). Some of the Arcanist players cannot see any reason to take Angelica over Cassandra, even with the relatively significant cost difference when you're trying to optimize your hires. Cassandra has roles to play, absolutely, but sometimes you need Joss, Johan, Kang, etc. a little further up the board than their own legs can get them, because what they bring your crew is incredible important where Cassandra might normally wander off on her own to hunt scheme runners if she doesn't have a more critical role.
At the risk of sounding critical, it's something that comes about from people having fixed lists that they like to drop into strat/scheme pools without regard for opposing faction and terrain. Without exploring the range of options in a faction, there's a whole lot of nuance being overlooked in favor of what is comfortable and well-rehearsed. This can actually lead to some of the wtf is this bs?! responses to variations in hiring preferences when comparing regional metas. Their respective experiences vary, sometimes dramatically.
My local meta sees little value in Angelica and The Valedictorian, for example. Some of that is because I'm never playing casual games with any kind of "must try to win" thought and at tournaments they run into completely different Arcanist players; some of that is because of the other things that people are playing. For instance, I drop Mei Feng and Kang into Arcanists a lot; often enough where someone wanting to try out The Valedictorian is going to need to care a lot about the liabilities that she introduces when facing something that is a hard counter to Terrifying Undead/Constructs. The top Arcanist players in the regional/tournament meta also aren't running the same things I run, and a carry over effect from other wargames is a tendency to follow "known good" trends instead of trying to break new ground.

Building off of @Mrbedlam's "slower lists":
Angelica is also a great addition to Mei Feng, as it allows you to get Kang further up the field without activating, or if you're running a pair of Rail Workers as your linemen, get them into a position where they can actually influence the board from the top of Turn 2. Either use helps overcome the dramatic difference in speed between Mei Feng and her crew, to the point where if you're using Mei Feng in a supporting role more than scheming, she'll have to work a little harder to keep up with the crew (actually cheat in the Rail Walk to bump up the table to keep her Vent Steam bubble over her line, since walking alone won't cut it for more than a turn).

She will seem redundant in a Colette crew that is relying on speedy runners and reliable tricks, but if you switch gears to a more brick approach (i.e. Rail Workers, Large Steam Arachnid, Joss), then the friendly pushes actually can help a great deal. It helps overcome the relative slowness of some of the more brick-like crew options early in the game, and lets you push your minions out of engagement to do the work they're hired to do (like scheme as a (0)) if needed.

What it comes down to is how you are addressing the question that the strat/schemes/terrain/opponent faction asks you.
Slower moving crews might enjoy the bump in speed that Angelica grants more than anything Cassandra does within that crew. Maybe Carlos came along for the ride, but due to his assigned role is sporting Warding Runes and Stunt Double, so having your only showgirl enforcer be the Practiced Production caddy might make some sense, and her pushes are something you might not see as much use out of unless you've got a few slower elements or want to get the Mannequin's aura displaced to the next Performer/Oiran so that they can get those explosives properly planted.

I've seen meta stagnation, where some of the more frequent and vocal players get into a mindset about their models that doesn't shift until something undeniably different comes along. At which point the new thing gets focus, but the old things stay the same a lot.

To avoid this, I started doing some screwball things, like bringing Luther in my Ramos list and giving Blade and Claw to Joss, while having a Raptor or two available to turn Joss and Johan into beasts and to use whomever is available to let me peek at and stack my own deck. It confuses the heck out of people who are more used to a static mode of play, and having a (0) on Joss (Beast Joss) that lets him swap places with a spider significantly improves his threat range (or otherwise move Luther from one region into another to enable more effective scheme hunting).

Similarly, I've been playing more Mei Feng with less constructs. The only two things that are "fixed" in her crew are Kang and Envy, with models like the Shastar Vidiya Guard or a solitary Oxfordian Mage making an appearance--but even then, I'll swap over to Carlos, Combat Emissary, and the Coryphee for a mobility crew, so I cannot even say that Kang and Envy are fixed in her crew.

Probably my most static crew is the Colette Show on Ice thing, which I've noticed is something I don't even think too hard about dropping on the table when there's "minions do this" schemes in the pool. This prompts me to think about other things I can do with Colette, including using Rail Workers and other models that can boost themselves in some way for the turn, which makes things like Prompt, Reactivate, and All Together Now so much more interesting.

While my aesthetics lean towards Aby, if I pick up a second Allegiance (or convince my partner that she wants to pick one up), it would likely be this one. These two comments stand out:

On 4/10/2017 at 10:11 PM, Rathnard said:

To me, the best thing about Gibbering Hordes is that they're a "Horde" army done right. No need to hire hundreds of cheap mooks, just keep bringing back the ones that die every turn!

The aesthetic certainly doesn't hurt either of course, not to mention the Cthulu-type vibe, links with Meridion and the shared ancestry with my original favourite minion in Malifaux - the Silurid.  

On 4/26/2017 at 2:36 PM, Asinus Sum said:

I quite enjoy the gibbering, and the hordes.

But in all seriousness, the Lovecraftian angle is nice, the Karkanoi are great because I love bug models, and the sweet, sweet recursion. Oh also landsharks.

Having played some other systems where "Horde" was accomplished via hundreds of dudes and dudespam, I definitely appreciate the whole "spend a resource, get your old friend(s) back" approach to endless hordes. I especially love the Lovecraftian/Cthulhu look and feel of many of the models. The Alpha makes me think of the Rancor from Star Wars and I'm pretty sure I can sell my partner on the Whelks without even trying.

44 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

To people that have pinned the spiders (I just had to look up what that was to see if it was exactly what it sounded like, it was); did you use the tips of the feet or the bottom of the body?

For strongest hold (and best solution for transporting), pin the body. If you're not overly concerned with how the model looks under scrutiny, this is good enough. If you do have some of that vanity (I know I do), you can use some cork or putty to make it look like a rock, stick, or piece of rubble that the spider is crawling over. The problem with pinning from the feet is that they are so fine you don't get any real hold, which leads to having to do repairs at events when you grab your event go bag and rush out the door.

If you're not worried about strongest hold, then pinning at the feet lets you do some more aggressive posturing (upright spiders, etc.) for a more dynamic base--more modelling aesthetics that aren't everyone's cup of tea.

Reaching out to BackerKit solved essentially all of my issues, including updating the payment information. At the very least they can send you a link to see all your pledge tickets.

The base gadget that @Gnomezilla mentioned are likely these ones from customeeple. Similar to @7thSquirrel I acquired a second swarm box and built a single swarm. The other 9 spiders are on standby to drop onto the table. I've only had one game so far where I've been in danger of not having enough spiders to put more on the table, and in that game I went ahead and made a swarm to have more bodies to drop on the table.

If I had seen the linked gadgets before getting the second box, I'd probably still have the second swarm box just to have additional spiders for those games where more scheming than killing is happening. For scheme-heavy pools, about half of my Ramos games have seen 5-7 spiders on the table at any given time (Turn 2+).

On 11/29/2016 at 5:04 PM, Pyrflamme said:

So far they're my favorite in terms of aesthetics, and that's the important thing!

On 12/1/2016 at 11:15 PM, clockworkspide said:

Don't think I'll get into this much, but I have to say that Abyssinia wins out over the other factions if I do, based on aesthetics.

On 1/31/2017 at 7:05 AM, Harkevich said:

The aesthics have won it for me. As much as I liked the sculpts for guild stuff the whole heavy metal theme is fantastic.

What these peeps all said. The aesthetics won me over. One of the items in my backerkit order is the motorcycle because nothing screams tech tree like bringing a motorcycle with soulstone powered weapons to a cavalry fight.

Looking at this map and corner deployment, I see that one of the MVPs for the strategy will be Soulstone Miners. There's good blocking/concealing terrain near each corner, which provides a spot for the Soulstone Miner to unbury at the end of Turn 1 to Stake a Claim starting in Turn 2. This looks so tempting, that I'm almost inclined to take two of them. 12 stones to potentially get 4VP is a steal. The problem is that Gremlins have a number of things they could do, including pigapulting stuff up the field so that they can go reckless and drop markers in my half as fast as possible.

This same problem tells me to not try for Claim Jump.

However, Accusation! could be useful, especially if I'm doing it as a (0) against flung Gremlins trying to score the strategy. That would wash those VP (potentially, assuming no ties: they don't remove Accuse, but score Stake, I cannot score Stake, but score Accuse; they remove Accuse, don't score Stake, I don't score Accuse but get Stake).

Frame For Murder would also be good. If Francois or Wong go after that Soulstone Miner I already mentioned, that's 3VP for me. If Burt nukes it, only 2. Sounds like an argument for a second Soulstone Miner, put the non-Frame one nearer to Burt if he's present and force him to deal with it or let me work the Strategy. Mainly sounds good because that's 12 stones shooting for 7VP.

Which brings us to the last two. Mark For Death is an interact and kill kind of scheme, which similar to Accusation! is guiding my Master pick towards Colette, but the controller in me wants to dial it up a notch beyond what Colette can do with regards to the Strategy--she cannot deny it as readily as Sandeep can. If nothing else, I can get those Marks out in a hurry on things that come into my half and collect them up.

Show of Force requires getting some non-master models with 1+ cost upgrades up into the middle of the board to hold ground for 3 turns with greater than or equal to the number of opposing non-master 1+ cost upgrades near the center. If only there was a way for Arcanists to do this, right?

So that leans me into:

Sandeep Desai (Arcane Reservoir, To Behold Another World, Unaligned Sage) (full cache)
Carlos Vasquez (Stunt Double, Warding Runes)
Kudra (Free of Mortal Shackles, Warding Runes)
Oxfordian Mage (Temporary Shielding, Blood Ward)
Soulstone Miner
Soulstone Miner
Rail Worker

I know at first glance there will be some "what is this blasphemy!" urge, but here's the thinking.
The Soulstone Miners can work the Strategy. If my opponent brings killing Henchmen/Masters, one of them gets Frame for Murder and spends its life acting like it's working the strategy while drawing fire.
Sandeep summons in a Chattering Gamin to deny my opponent their own play on the Strategy. If they're flinging Gremlins up the table or darting them up the slow(er) way with reckless, that's fine. There will be a chatterbox waiting for them in Turn 2. This chatterbox can also potentially help with Accusation!/Marked For Death defense and Accusation! scoring. Who ends up chattering will depend on opposing crew composition.
The Rail Worker, Oxfordian Mage,  Kudra, and Carlos can all kill scheme runners. The slowest melee one in the group can try to copy Sandeep's place to give itself an approximately 15" threat. The other two are absurdly fast without needing to borrow Sandeep's abilities. They play into the idea of summoning a Gamin that can interact when summoned to hand out a condition to a model it happens to be summoned near.
Blood Ward makes the two frontline Henchmen immune to Accusation! and Marked for Death, which makes putting them in the middle of the table for Show of Force less of a liability. The Oxfordian Mage can also feed off of Sandeep and Kudra early game (corner deployment) to help do things like push the Rail Worker up the field to better threaten in Turn 2, while providing a 'gun' platform that can also get into Melee if needed. The Blood Mage and Rail Worker can also work together to limit the amount of VP an obvious Frame For Murder target awards the Gremlin player, either by arranging for it to die by burning (Shovel Faster might find use to soften someone up to die by burning).
These two Henchmen are an interesting take into Frame For Murder because they give out conditions with their attacks--which can completely negate the FFM scheme if pulled off. Just make sure you don't kill the target outright until you've identified the FFM patsy or know that your opponent didn't take FFM. At which point, let these two bully the center.

Sandeep's summoning won't be relying on Banasuva's threat and additional force multipliers, instead the focus is getting Gamin on the table that can get things done. The Gamin that comes in ready to interact will depend on whether you go with Accusation! or Marked For Death. If you want to get tricksy with Accusation!, for instance, you can use the Wind Gamin to plant the Accusation, Kudra to "kill" the Wind Gamin with a (0), Wind Gamin self-sacrifice to push a Soulstone Miner into a new position to stake another claim, and do it all again in the next turn.
If instead you are going with Marked For Death, Banasuva might drop in to Mark someone, then Melee Expert to collect on it (card intense, but done within a single activation after summoning, first time will be a surprise). Otherwise, you drop in Gamin of choice, Mark your target, then let the Oxfordian Mage and/or Rail Worker kill it. I recommend Wind Gamin because of the Soulstone Miner thing I already mentioned.

3 hours ago, Adran said:

Joss is one of the scariest things that a Dreamer player can face, especially if you can re-activate him and have a good number of activations. He can kill dreamer in 1 charge ignoring most of his normal defences, so I would try and hold him back from the fight to line him up for a dreamer attack. Laz is a good choice for removing little summons., and if you're lucky and get blasts then you might even get some damage on dreamer. This means he wants chompy out fast and to keep him out. i would have tried to tie chompy up with Spiders, using them as a scree for Joss/Ramos and with Electrical fire Ramos doesn't care if they are engaged, he can hopefully kill chompy and unbury Dreamer ready for a reactivating Joss. (I like Imbued energies on Joss, and never personally bother with Powered by flame and Bleeding edge tech, but I know others like them). 

With Bleeding Edge Tech on Joss he gains a (0) that will hurt Dreamer's summoning Alps and performing cast actions (like his Nightmare controlling bits) just in case you don't get all the damage you needed. I generally won't bother with Powered by Flame, instead opting for things like Warding Runes or Recharge Soulstone, since I know he's going to be in the scrum in most games. Joss ignoring triggers is the key to getting his hits in on Dreamer, and with Imbued Energies (as mentioned above) he gets a third attack for getting those last two wounds (barring Dreamer stoning damage away). The downside of being aggressive with your BET-caddy is that your spiders won't be regenerating unless they are up in the mix of things, so if you need them to scheme you need to be summoning in 2-3 every turn to make up for the fact they're going to be dying 2-3 per turn.

7 hours ago, Trixter said:

You're right it's not simple. Bit if you force your opponent's Belles move twice before they'll see nice target (without warding runes) via wind walls/pyre markers and blocking terrain - your goal is achieved. Just because you spend less resources for hide than belles for lure.

P.S. And, of course, if you absolutely sure opponent will bring NicoBelles - hire Raspy crew! =) More Pillars and Storm Teleport work fine.

I usually drop Mei Feng in. Vent Steam a couple of times to cover the crew in general and have someone like Kang with Warding Runes so that he's basically immune to the Lure. Added bonus is that almost nothing in Nico-Ressers wants to go near Kang-supported crews.

Killjoy's a 13 stone investment for something that's only good for killing things (yeah, really good at it) and putting your opponent on the backfoot when it works. When it doesn't work, it's a liability.

Hiring a dove to get him into position brings it up to 15 stones (roughly 1/3 of your crew). If the strat and scheme is such where he could get you 3-4 VP without awarding your opponent the same, no problem outside of what @Mrbedlam already described: you're telling your opponent what you are going to do. With crew efficiency being such a critical thing to the competition scene, dropping 1/4 to 1/3 of your hiring resources into a single vector is a high risk thing; here in the Arcanists, we can get activation control, AP control, and card draw to get an in-faction beater into play that only has a slightly weaker damage track, but built in positives and none of the "let me make sure that this thing is nowhere near my crew, just in case" stuff to worry about for roughly 1/6 of our available hiring resources. If all I need is a distraction beater rushing in to force my opponent to change their plans, I have cheaper options that have better returns.

If you want to overcome the AP/activation deficit, you'll probably want to run Ramos and use his spiders as a delivery system (because popping him out is optional, re: "may"). In this situation he's running in the exact kind of role that Howard Langston was: big distraction beater threat, just with less threat range when already on the board and no option to field repair, reactivate, or be helped by the Mobile Toolkit, all while being Ml 6 instead of Ml 7... but that's because here in the Arcanists we have more premium tools than we could ever use in a 50SS game.

15 hours ago, iamfanboy said:

But her job is giving Minions and Showgirls the ability to Interact as a (0). And spreading her AP around to other models with bonus movement on top. And being nearly impossible to kill short of "ignores triggers".

I'm not sure any Arcanist Master plays as well into an Interact-heavy pool as Colette. Hell, I'm not sure ANY Master plays as well into an Interact-heavy pool as Colette. If it involves Scheme Markers, she does it, while making the rest of her team even more killy in the bargain. ESPECIALLY in GG17, with things like Dig Their Graves and Mark For Death requiring Interacts before the killing starts, she's clutch in a lot of situations.

If you think she needs to Prompt a single model three times in order to use her, then you never knew how to use her in the first place.

If you want to find a better master for getting schemes done on a budget and in a hurry, you have to go out of faction and look at someone like Lucas McCabe with Luna and 4x Guild Hounds. Even then, he's still not doing what Colette does, and it starts with those 6 models. Colette can work with any minion to get mileage.

If you're trying to do something similar through Ramos, you're counting on AP attrition through summoning. He has to be doing stuff and summoning stuff, and you must have the cards in hand and scrap on table, and the first turn that the spiders are on the table they're not able to do those critical interacts. Sandeep runs into the same kind of problem, only he's not doing it through attrition, but rather wonky interplay between models (copying abilities, triggering effects, etc.) that is reliant on hand, triggers, and proximity.

Colette gives her minions and showgirls the ability to interact as a (0) (optional, so they can interact more than once per turn) with nothing more complicated than proximity. That is, she's on the table, and they're within her aura. No card reliance, no Master AP reliance, and literally the only thing your opponent can do is stop interacts altogether, control models out of her aura, or kill her or all of the minions and showgirls on the table that could get within that aura.
Where Master AP comes into play is if you decide you want to turn some of those (0) interacts into a (1) action of choice for models near markers at the expense of 2 AP from your master. Whether or not you want to is up to you.

On top of Ironsides, consider bringing The Captain and consider the Oxfordian Trio.

The Captain makes you nearly master-independent when it comes to interference, as he can walk away from engaging models (agile) push opposing models out of scoring position or friendlies into scoring position.

The Oxfordian Trio (three Oxfordian Mages with their 0-cost upgrades) give you access to more pushes for getting things up the field and/or enemies out of place.

If you're leaning towards Mei Feng, Coryphee are extremely quick constructs. The Mech. Porkchop is also quick enough to get you places. The Emissary with Mei Feng's conflux can drop a scrap marker to give you a leaping node. Outside of that, you can benefit from The Captain (for the reasons described above), or if you're only concerned about getting your own constructs into position, bring Angelica. She'll walk up 5" at the start of the first turn (after initiative, outside of activation), and probably not need to move anywhere else, as that can put her 11" up the field with an 8" range on her friendly pushes. That's good enough to help you with controlling the quarters on your half. As an added bonus, she can help you get scheme markers into play for scheme-marker oriented schemes or abilities with Practiced Production (sure, Raptors, but don't worry about them). If you have them, Soulstone Miners are a nice infiltration piece, as well as a potential node for Mei Feng to Railwalk to.

For kicks and giggles I've used Message from the Union in a crew that included Gunsmiths. Between that and Hand Picked Men it made things interesting. Switching Chambers with a Tome gets you around the whole armor business, but The Hard Way on a slightly scratched Gunsmith against a burning target is just bonkers. You will find all of your jokers. You might even get your choice of triggers too.

@Boomstick I've found that dropping Carlos in with a couple of Ice Dancers gives me more mobility than I need. At a tournament last month Carlos ended up travelling roughly 22" (prompt for a push/walk (8"), his (0) to push another 4", and his charge threat) from corner deployment to kill something that was near the centerline corner in the first turn. The Ice Dancers had no problem getting up into the scrum either. Colette, on the other hand, had to use her disappearing act to place herself up the table just to get into position to participate. The Ice Gamin and Silent One were both in the backfield with a "corner deployments are terrible for us, could we not get flank instead?"

Outside of that? It's great being able to play Colette and not have my opponent roll their eyes and expect Howard Langston. I already played a different way: Ice Show described above is how I played her pre-errata (Cassandra instead of Carlos) and I'm working out something else that's going to exploit Carlos burning and Rail Worker buffing and tanking.

11 hours ago, Bengt said:

And really man, there are other reasons to play a master than internet "wisdom" telling you it's the most powerful choice...

As an especially vocal internet entity, I agree with the above statement. Groupthink isn't always accurate, and definitely does not always apply to local meta and regional tournament scenes. Especially in this game system. Other game systems that have fixed list requirements and guaranteed win conditions can end up in a place where groupthink produces optimized lists, but Wyrd has Malifaux doing something different: you design your list on the fly after you've seen the scenario (strat/schemes), table, and you know your opponent's faction (and if you've played them before, their playstyle and default choices). Your crew is hired with a lot fewer unknowns.

So to this:

3 hours ago, Starrius said:

But. Kaeris one of my main masters.....

I say keep on rocking the winged spec ops agent and resident Arcanist arsonist. She's done very well in various competitive environments and some terrain set ups scream "play Kaeris!!!" Player ability (natural talent and practice) counts for so much more than distilled wisdom.

9 hours ago, katadder said:

whilst smell weakness is good, it does mean putting the acolyte within 6" of the target, which can often result in a dead acolyte as they dont stand up well to being attacked.

There's a couple things to bear in mind here:

• December Acolytes have 8 wounds and a decent defense. It takes something with some quality attacks to delete one in a single activation. That's something with quality attacks that's not going into the main threats in/effort of your force. If your December Acolytes are too far forward, it costs your opponent little to nothing. If that Acolyte is near your own stuff, your opponent has to figure out their risk tolerance. Having armor and Hard to Wound turned off is bad, but if there's stuff that can give itself positives or that has good min damage or can trigger for additional attacks that's near enough to threaten the target with melee, offering up a quality target to things that can tear it down is also bad.
  Now take that same scenario and have a Blessed/Luther or Snowstorm nearby with the Sub Zero upgrade. There ends up being no such thing as a good decision to make regarding the Acolyte and the forces it is enabling/supported by.
• If you're putting up Smell Weakness and are looking to get in close, you have threat vectors that can reach things that are relying on armor and hard to wound. All Smell Weakness is doing is making it so that you hit harder.
  Now I'm a janky and chaotic sort of player and the only Arcanist Mei Feng player in my meta, so I don't just bring one trick up my sleeve. What Smell Weakness does for me is make it so that Hard Worker Kang and his cadre of Rail Workers don't have to pick between (0) actions for maximum impact. It also makes it so that I don't need to worry about choosing between a trigger for an additional positive or a trigger to ignore damage reduction when my Shastar Vidiya Guard dives in. If my opponent decides to go after the already activated December Acolyte with something that could potentially kill it outright in a single activation, they're ignoring the things that were planning on exploiting the sudden loss of defensive tech.
  Let's say you're not doing this, but you're using other things like Ice Dancers and Silent Ones that can get some serious damage spikes if they pop moderate or severe. Your stuff is still in range to threaten. You might not delete as many models in the turn as you hope, but you still pulled a quality model's attention onto the Acolyte. That's a model that's not tearing down your main effort, even though you'll still have to worry about armor and negatives on wounding as they apply.
• If you're putting up Smell Weakness and are looking to Ice Mirror or otherwise use ranged attacks against your target(s), then you do need to worry about the Acolyte being dead. Or buried, or controlled into a position where it's no longer providing any useful effect. This is unfortunate, but it is also because the effort that the Acolyte was supporting was looking to engage from a long ways away, leaving the Acolyte out by itself. Of course, your opponent still had to put some effort into doing that, and that effort may have exposed something to your shooters. If you still need to bypass the Hard to Wound ability, you end up needing to focus. It happens, but as a matter of course, you probably want to have your shooters focus anyway to overcome the inherent weaknesses of shooting when it comes to cover (one of the mechanical things that weakens shooting over melee as @mythicFOX mentioned).

I mention the pulling a quality model's attention because it truly matters. My first run in (described in an earlier comment) with December Acolytes was using a Mei Feng Armored Core kind of list. Mei Feng used her activations in the first two turns to kill two of the three Acolytes. By the end of Turn 2 most of my crew was dead to Raspy's blasting things that were in the Smell Weakness bubble. The only thing I could have done with the board state to not have this happen would have been to play Mei Feng the way I do now: supporting with Vent Steam and hoping that I could reduce the number of effective attacks against my main effort until it was time to dive in and kill things. I got distracted with the idea of trying to kill them off, and that left me exposed when I fell short of killing all three of them.

The recommendation I would give is hire the December Acolyte to add an element of control to your force. It can hand out slow (just for hitting), strip cards (on a crow), or even pull things out of position (on a ram). Any AP spent killing it outside of killing schemes is AP not spent scoring or setting up to score (so Hunting Party, Collect the Bounty, Head Hunter, etc. end up being a different story). If your opponent has things that rely on armor and/or Hard to Wound, you have a means of turning that off if you need to. If you need to, then plan for it. Use it for isolated targets that have already activated or are hobbled by slow (this is where the control game comes into play, slow a target at 12" away, drag them 6" in, now they're really in trouble). Have a serious enough threat that's in range to exploit that isolated target. Don't plan on it surviving more than a turn within their own threat range to the opponent's crew. As has been mentioned by several of us, people who understand the threat of and whose crews are vulnerable to the December Acolyte will go to some trouble to kill them as soon as possible.

2 hours ago, H4ml3t said:

I've learned to be super conservative in placing Acolytes when my opponent has models with Lure or similar effects.

Don't get me started on Rotten Belles...

That's the key thing I was finding out when I used one in a campaign:
Deploy too far forward and they will be targeted and killed as soon as your opponent realizes their threat (as early as first activation of the game, if your opponent has ever faced them before). Play them back a bit so that they're shooting into where you want the fight to be (main effort, Turn 2ish) and they last longer and can get support from your crew (and be in range for Ice Mirror) much faster, without forcing you to play a hyper-mobile crew.

With what @Starrius said: turning off armor.

My first time running into December Acolytes across the table from me was my playing Mei Feng into Rasputina when I still was relatively new with Mei Feng. My opponent was relatively new with Rasputina, but knew how to run a blaster. He hired three of these Acolytes and put them in cover as close as possible to my deployment zone. One of them survived to Turn 2. Raspy's Turn 1 Ice Pillars had forced most of my crew to end up bunched up. The surviving Acolyte put up Smell Weakness and crept in close enough to cover my Rail Workers, Metal Gamin, and Rail Golem; Raspy arced her attacks into my bunched up crew and deleted most of my force, ignoring their armor outright.

More experienced me, playing Mei Feng when I expect horror and/or armor and Hard to Wound (especially in the form of Undead and/or Constructs), I have a solid reason to include an Acolyte in my crew. It does with 1AP from the Acolyte what Hard Worker does with a (0) and a card from each affected Foundry model; with the bonus of affecting non-Foundry models. Being able to hand out slow just for hitting a model is also a good way to help up the denial game, provided my opponent's beaters are not immune to conditions (or slow). In any case, if I'm using their attacks, the card stripping is also useful. If I'm winning and I have the trigger they're going to lose the resource one way or another.

In short: Rail Worker keeps the (0) for positives, gets positives against constructs/undead and immunity to terror from being near Kang, and the Acolyte lets him ignore Armor and Hard to Wound.

I've used Malifaux Raptors and Shastar Vidiya Guards for some card draw. Rake the Eyes to peek, and a cheated defense duel to draw whatever I stacked to the top (once per turn). I typically only do this when a slightly banged up SVG isn't a liability (M&SU-centered theme with Johan, Ironsides).

Condition removal: Arcane Effigy. Johan's good too, but he's a merc (Outcast, Mercenary, M&SU), and really shines when surrounded by M&SU models.

Depending on how deep you plan on diving into Arcanists in the long run, you might go with Ramos (relatively shallow dive, another box of steam arachnids and a large steam arachnid box will give you everything you need to figure him out and start with one of the most efficient summoners in the game). He's got that M&SU thing going on that Johan absolutely loves.
If you don't mind going deeper, Sandeep is tricky to learn but can play into anything. You'll end up wanting to think about acquiring Gamin and Oxfordian Mages (hence the deeper dive). He has other ways to go as well, but he can play in theme without losing a beat.
Last recommendation I'll toss up for now is Marcus, because he doesn't need anything else in the Arcanists to get work done, if you have beasts from another faction he brings them along for the ride. Another theme player that doesn't lose his edge for playing to theme.

46 minutes ago, Franchute said:

What are your opinions about poison gamins? Do you really think they are useless?

If I'm doing something that works off of poison, they rate higher, otherwise there's other things I could do with that 5 stones at hiring.

If I have the 9 in hand, they are a little tougher than other potential hires (except the Metal Gamin), so I always think about whether or not I want one with Commands the Wind on it near where the fighting is happening. What I've found is that I need something as quick as Wind Gamin to flit around and support the line where needed or to run schemes, and sometimes I want to be able to use Magnetism off of the Metal Gamin (opposing constructs, like a freshly summoned Teddy, Stitched Together, or something with heinous armor and relatively low wounds). If I don't need either of these and I don't foresee using the Poison Gamin's abilities with Banasuva, then I'll hire in something like the Wind Gamin if the fight is wider spread (Interference), or the Metal Gamin if I need it to help hold ground (Extraction).

If I'm bringing in a Performer and looking to do more with poison, then the Poison Gamin ends up in the pool of "things that bring poison to the table" as the only one that Sandeep can summon.

Just now, iamfanboy said:

I was mostly cracking wise - it certainly moved the Arcane Effigy up on my priority list to buy when I get around to Sandeep.

Yar, the Arcane Effigy is a solid take. One of the jokes regarding this model is "the first metal gamin I hire is the Arcane Effigy"