valkirsWrath

Played a tournament with Toni for the last game yesterday, Reckoning with Deliver a Message and Search the Ruins. It did not go too well, I was up against Nekima and it ended 3-6 with only Toni standing strong. 

I ran: 

Toni, Mouse, two gunsmiths one with Magical Training, two Steam Arachnids, Steam arachnid Swarm with Diesel Engine and Amina. 

I did several mistakes, this was only my second game with Toni and it shows. I took the two small bots because I figured they could scheme for search the ruins, rather than having one Mecharachnid. They were hunted down before I could get even one point. I was a bit unimpressed with Amina, just like last time, though I did forget about extended claims. She got two good obeys and stopped some charges but I didn't feel that it was that impactful. I think if I'm to use her I must focus more on her walk the line action. 

Two Gunsmiths really felt like overkill, and the terrain kinda hurt me. I overextended with one to snipe Nekima's totem, though it got away thanks to "I've got your back". Moue took the blow for that and got butchered. My feelings are that Fitsz might be better as a generalist than Amina, and that I really should try out Howard von Murderbot. Oh and realise that the Steamfitter isn't just for Howard Duty. Steam arachnids lackluster. 

One thing that I feel like I struggle with is movement and positioning. How are you actually supposed to be moving the union bubble around? Can anyone give me some tips for that? 

Her official card can be found in the M3E official app

So. Yesterday I played in the Swedish nationals in Umeå. I could only play for the first day, since I'm sitting at work now as we write while the second day is playing out. I'm personally rooting for the other Arcanist player to win, he's in the top four doing a round robin for the final placement. 

Anyway, I decided to take inspiration from your crew for games one and two, Idols and Explosives. The only difference was that I ran the mecharachnid instead of the Soulstone Miner game one, and a second Showgirl game two. I simply don't own the Soulstone Miner, and I'm not sure if I want to. 

Game one went 4-6, I was against Professor von Schtook. It was down to the wire with the last two points scored last turn. Some poor flips and a really bad Idols placement, I flipped Red Joker for inititative so I couldn't affect where the last idol went snubbed me for my last point. I did manage to threaten breakthrough and Power ritual, on standard deployment no less. He thought he'd stopped both but in a final act of showmanship Colette performed a trick and moved all the way down to the other corner of the map and planted a scheme which secured me second point for Power Ritual (the Valedictorian took a potshot after delivering a message, to it's own detriment) I ended up getting 3 for scheme and 1 for strat, while my opponent got three for strat, one for deliver and two for dig. First time against von Schtook, scary dude. 

Second game went 5-8 against Shenlong. I did a few misplays, I could've denied at least one point, possibly two, last turn. He did manage to deny my second point for outflank by cleaning up all the scheme markers even close to the other corner and by murdering all my low cost models in relevant positions. I did some misplays other than the final points denial, like overexetending with Cassandra and forgetting about Take the hit, so she died turn two. Still, getting five points (and almost going 5-6) against the best player in my region who won the nationals last year feels good. I put up a good fight and that's all I can ask for.

Coryphees with Diesel Engine will be a staple in my lists for sure, and boy did I underestimate the Mannequins. That's great new for me since I love the dolls. Hell I might even get a third. Hoping they release a Coryphee and Mannequin box in the future so I can acquire a Duet (I don't like magnetising) while also grabbing more Mannequins. Colette is as great as ever, I find that I really click with her and honestly no action on her card feels superfluous. 

Sorry this is turning to a full on battle report. I just wanted to highlight this since it was @Flippin' Wyrd Matt who inspired me. I was too dazzled by the duet to realise that the Coryphee dance just as well apart, as they do together.

Yeah Sonnia is tempting, Flaming Badass, and I can give her Orange hair like my Lady J!

2 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

Pale rider is godly, steward is just really nice.  He's an efficient utility piece, and he's funny to scheme with because your opponent doesn't want to kill him.  Hes an auto take into those matchups that need condition removal imo.

As far as complementary buys, are you talking about to play as a second master or to use models from one there with the other?  Sonia is my second master love, but other than that the mounted guard is the only one I can see taking out of theme between these.  (Jury or judge on the other hand, travel often)

 

I mean as a second master. Being able to 'cross polinate' my models is a good plus, but not the main focus. 

@Flippin' Wyrd Matt Hi! Lovely seeing more Colette! I am myself a big fan of all the mechanical aspects of the crew, considering running a list with Mechanical Spider and Arachnid Swarm alongside the Puppets for mechanical fun times. 

I have some questions for you. As was noted above, you chose to run Duet and two Coryphee which is something I can definitely see the perks of, as my friend would lament throughout the entire beta, the Coryphee and Duet are both very efficient models even without the added shenanigans. How do you find that they work when not using the reactivate trick? Is the nimble worth it? I'm thinking yes but I'd like to hear your opinion. 

Question two is in regards to the Mannequins and Performers, how do you use them, and how do you find their performance? I tend to find them lackluster but that might be because of my not properly utilising them. 

What did you use the Medical automaton for? 

Lastly, would you consider bringing a mechanical toolkit to assist the coryphees? 

Sorry for the wall of text  ^^'

So, with the event of M3e my local community held a slow grow league that culminated in a tournament yesterday (I went 1-2). I took this as an opportunity to splash another faction, from my main babes, the Arcanists. 

I decided to get the Lady J, and has acquired;
Core box, 2 Exorcists, Domador de Cadaveres, The Jury and Greed. I have future plans to acquire Charles Hoffman (I want to make a female Hoffman conversion) and at least one of the following masters, Sonnia Perdita or Barker. 

I've realised that a problem my Justice list has is that well, it's kinda slow except for Justice herself, and so I have to basically do the strategy of picking one flank, slaughtering everything in my way, and then do schemes. Kill first, ask questions while killing. So my conundrum here is what I should do for scheme running, get Mounted Guard and splash into Barker? Get the Lone Marshall and go pew pew? Hire an ook Watcher? 

It is a conundrum since I can't really decide on which of the other masters I want, so hence why I'm looking for opinions here. Of Sonnia Barker and Perdita, which do you think complement Hoff and J the best? Is there a guild model you feel like I've overlooked and should acquire? (Other than the Guild Steward, which I've heard is godly)

Sorry for the wall of text. 😅

I've given it some thought and since Angelica can use her 5" move bonus action on her self she could be a really good scheme runner. She can walk six, use give em an encore for five and then drop a scheme marker ten inches away with a tome. Seems decent ook for 7+tax. 

1 hour ago, Da Git said:

I got my biggest wish in that Smouldering heart is DROP, so I'm a happy Kaeris player   Also, no flipping for Flame Tornado for Flameborn, but only Burning 3 seems fair

I'm curious, as I'm thinking of picking up Kaeris from a friend, what's the difference between Drop and Place or Create in this case?

5 hours ago, trikk said:

I'm all for number 1) because it's a lot cleaner.

Has anyone really lost it easily in game? I played it wrong previously (I thought you split the Wounds) and it was still a pain to kill through the Distracted/Armor/Df6/Cover. I had one chance to kill a Coryphee and after that I had no chance so I stopped bothering and just accepted I'll get smacked a few times each turn.

I've lost it easily once. I slung it straight into Tara to deliver a message turn one, and then split within range of mad dog bracket turn two. Or well, thought he was out of range but he munched a scheme marker and charged. This was my first game of m3e and my first game against the dog. Since then it has never dropped below a third of its health for me. 

I sent an emissary and a duet downfield turn one murdering three models against a Zipp crew with Colette a few weeks back. She can't kill very well in keyword, but noone can deliver beaters like Colette can. 

I do agree that the full heal was oppressive. I think a good compromise now would be to let their aoe heal heal themselves as well. 

Isn't the Silent one and steamfitter the only models who can heal it? Those are fairly expensive OOK HIRES. 

Are we sure that iwa on Ironsides card was intended? It was not in the changelog. Can @matt or @Kyle confirm or deny?

I'm not sure at I think of the duet change, there's no way in keyword for it to heal now. It's still ridiculously tanky but maybe not 12ss tanky. I always thought the hall made sense thematically too, since they already have a "heal by the power of dance" action and then splitting and reforming is just a part of their dance. 

While we are talking about it, does this work with the Coryphee Duet too? Hire two separate Coryphees, go vendetta against something 7ss or whatever, and then you have your splitting and reforming 12ss monster of a model hunting it down.

19 minutes ago, Angelshard said:

Some fun tricks. 

You can have two emissaries. Hire the mysterious and put fate upgrade on one of the other effigies.

Sadly this does not work due to the before and after rule on all effigies: "this model cannot be hired into a crew containing an emissary model" (I'm paraphrasing) 

You can however get the emissary of any faction by hiring the appropriate effigy and giving it the upgrade! 

Collodi have some fun interactions with the arcanist duet. I main arcanists with a splash of nb and guild and I like Collodi so I obviously thought of interactions. One thing you can do is get 6/7 focus turn one. 

Collodi activates picking the action scene thing that gives focus giving focus to the two coryphee. He then pulls their strings making them concentrate once each. He finishes with a walk to move them up with entourage. Then coryphee one activates and walks plus concentrate. Lastly coryphee two concentrates, uses bonus action for dance together and then either concentrates (if the duet can concentrate again but it might count as the same activation) or moves up. 6,or 7 focus turn one depending on how activations work since conditions carry over. 

I need to playtest Collodi tbh. 

3 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

What if when a model moves in an aura around her or disengages she gains adrenaline can make a attack. Call it Attack of Opportunity, or Free Shot!

I suggest calling it something like "you can't ignore the union" to relate to her position of union president. 

Oh, so that's what it means. Thank you both!

So I was reading up on the Augmented keyword and found something strange on Joss, specifically the crow trigger on his Arc Axe.

"c Electroshock: Discard a Power Token. Models within p2 gain Stunned and Injured +1." (highlight added by me)

Is there something inherently stopping pulses from hitting yourself that I've missed, or does this stun himself too? If so, is it intended?
While we're here, since it says pulse, am I correct in understanding that the one being hit will not get stunned and injured itself? 

To me in Colette she competes with Carlos for the same role. I've played both separately, and together. I think in a scheme heavy pool you want one or the other, and only both if you don't run Cass. 
They have the same move, with Carlos bringing more utility and the extra push (plus easier distracted) while the dancer can move scheme markers. Carlos is 2ss more but also brings a lot for those ss. They've both performed solidly for their cost, either scoring me points or denying my opponents points. The one game my dancer did nothing I misplayed her, left her in a position where she got stuck between a Rock (Beast Within) and a Toothy place (Cerberus). They are both very solid scheme runners, the problem is that Colette's crew is already very schemy.

1 hour ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

For myself I really think she needs almost a total rework. Both in terms of what she does to the enemy crew/how she helps her crew. Because at the moment I don’t think she’s fun to play against, and I think she feels unsatisfying to play.

I'd like to offer my own experience as a sideways/counterargument. In my games with Colette so far, I've enjoyed playing her. I find her much more satisfying to play than in M2e. I feel like I can get more done, without being as finicky. Like my third opponent in the tournament told me, she seems to have a high skill ceiling. There's a lot of tricks and finesse you can do with her, and her crew is kinda flexible. They're just not the best at straight up murder, or taking murder. The problem I have with her is not that she's not satisfying to play for me, it's that I feel like I'm playing the game alone. I'm activating Colette, doing her tricks, and the opponent is just ignoring me, because that is the correct decision. 
Slinging up an Emissary and a Duet to crash into the center turn one was extremely satisfying to pull off, but after that Colette was just a glorified scheme runner going around giving me points. She's fun and exciting, with a big margin for error, but that error will lie mostly on me. I lost a vital point in game one because I just left Colette around Cojo, achieving nothing but to get pushed off of the strategy marker. Malifaux is a multiplayer game, I want it to be an intense match of skill and decision making going back and forth between me and my foe. I don't want to have half my crew literally just walk around doing as they please because attacking them is hardly ever a positive.

Yeah, you've got this figured out Trikk. I may find it fun to play as Colette, and I love her dearly, but this is kinda ridiculous. 
Hitting her is never a good choice, unless you brought a specific counter. For example the Misaki player i faced game three who brought an anti-resistance trigger upgrade.
My solution? Just stay buried with swordtrick until I felt safe. Colette currently is very uninteractive, which is annoying. From what little I played with her in M2e she's gone from feeling uninteractive in your opponents favour to being uninteractive in Colette's favour.

And to reiterate, once again, during a whole tournament my Collette buried six times, but never got targeted once, because my opponents realised the futility of it. Even against a gremlin where she was alone at the corner against two models they didn't even think about it, I had to fly out a dove to bury.

8 minutes ago, trikk said:

I believe this doesn't still solve the Colette issue. Nobody will attack her directly through the whole game because its counter-productive and brings you more harm than benefits.

 

I agree, and it also removes and or makes sword tricking your own doves to bury more expensive. 

But maybe I feel that sword tricking to bury yourself is necessary because my Colette has been attacked once over four games. 

5 minutes ago, Passenty said:

Debuffing whole enemy crew is quite good support. She dosent kill but making enemy Models useless is not much worse. I also totalny disagree on performer Models beeing weak. We shall się how they change conditions and how she works then

On performers being weak, I think that a lot of the models *are* weak, with significant power shoved onto Colette and the Duet, which is unbalanced.

On making models useless I agree, giving the Lone Swordsman 4distracted, stunned, slow *and* placing him 10" away was practically murder, without the extra steps. A very Performer thing to do.

1 minute ago, trikk said:

My opponent used a silent one because she can do a lot of stuff from the backline. How many times did you lose the performer or have activations where you did nothing?

My Showgirl died twice, once to a Cerberus I didn't think could reach it, and once to Ototo. And she spent most activations either walk walk, failing seduction, or dropping an inconsequential scheme marker.