Liched

25 minutes ago, Jingizu said:

 

But it would be so easy to do Vendetta with her 😐

Easy to do with a 1/2/3 damage track?

4 hours ago, CrimsonWraith said:

I hired 2 wretches today and thought they were great. I mostly used them as a node for the Scion. Being able o move them 10”, then use them to do interact actions with Scionwas clutch. As the Scion does the action, it didn’t matter if they were engaged. And though it was a thing in my game, it would also ignore things like Chatty. It was also hard for my opponent to use cards to stop the Wretch’s Stutter Time with Talos right there breathing down his neck.

I foresee 1 or 2 in most of my Tara lists, but my summons did go to Hunters.

Did your scion take interact actions as in dropping scheme markers?

14 minutes ago, CustosUmbra said:

Unpopular opinion:

After thinking over and over.. I think it's worth it to hire a couple of Wretches over a single Hunter. Just hear me out

Wretches, even while not survivable, are great schemers - Mv 5 + Incorporeal is a great combo that will get you pretty far. If an enemy closes in on them and fails to kill them, he suddenly realises that he has some problems:

1. Tara can summon a Hunter on 11+ Tomes. Every Void model can hit burried models.

2. Void Wretches have Stat 5 Stutter Time, which isn't terrible and can apply Fast. That will allow a Hunter to appear near their little bro's offender. 

3. While Wretches' attack has an unimpressive Stat 4, never forget that it has built in Tomes, which you can use to GTFO the problematic model far far away.. or force your opponent to cheat, which will allow you to apply Stutter Time more relliably. 

Afaik people tend to hire neither Wretches or hunters since the crew costs stones already and you often want an out of crew hire - as well as SS to make sure Tara or a henchmen doesn't just die, and instead of hiring a wretch you could have enough ss to summon without a hitch throughout the game. 

I might be willing to try 2 wretches instead of Aionus tho

Hello, time to talk about Tara the Time lord? The void queen? Neither? Again.

A quick thing, the reason why this is so huge is because I'm a game designer and a person who can see and recognise systems fairly well, as well as trying to cover as many bases as possible. Sorry for the incredibly long post. 
I will also excuse the amount of salt that seep into these words.

I know Tara isn't especially popular, but she is (was) my main and I will under the beta try to argue why I think she's very boring and one of the greatest dolphins around (yes, I'm talking about jumping through hoops). This is based on multiple playtests, battle reports and theorycrafting.

So context, Tara became a summoner since M2e and a lot of her power budget has been moved there. The entire team has also been shored up, so going from a bandaged mess to what to me feels like just a generic mess in my opinion, where everyone can do their thing - but they seldom do it together.
This is also less of a discussion regarding her power level and more about how boring she is, because she does seem to win her matches and do her things, but she doesn’t feel very exciting to do anything with. But I will also talk about the strengths or weaknesses of her things.
It might also be a reaction to how extremely aggressive the game feels to play.

As a side note, just because you have the option to do something, it doesn’t mean that it’s a good option or something you’d actually (want to) do

Crew abilities

Beyond time: I really like this, it gives the crew some counter-pick tech against other crews who bury. It allows you to truly just wail on a buried target that needs to die and it gives you more options in the line of; do I target the buried enemy, the one in front of me or do I just move? It also adds decisions to your enemy; do I activate my model to avoid the dogpile, probably popping up in a bad position, or do I activate something more important and risk taking damage?
For a crew seemingly being strongly tied to the bury mechanic, they are surprisingly unreliable at it. Often becoming a case a trying to drown the opponent in so many flips and hope you’re lucky. It’s also counterproductive to your own unburying and since you tend to unbury later in a turn because of you’ve been trying to tag an already activated model with stutter time, you often times don’t want to trigger glimpse of the void on a model you’ve given or want to give fast to.

It's also countered by keeping your crew reasonably close, which isn't  an issuer since Tara has very little AoE and you decide when someone pops back up.
But, I will say that the “Glimpse of the Void” is a fantastic ability. It often goes of without a hitch or at least drains some resources, it has clear counterplay, it’s hard to abuse to the point of NPE and it doesn’t just lock out certain schemes like other offensive bury tools.

Stutter time: This ability is interesting, every void model has it (except Talos) and it’s also the reason I think there’s so few other 0 actions in this crew. So it gives enemies a very dangerous condition, especially if they haven’t activated yet, but also gives you +flips on some models and a way to unbury your other.

What I think it’s designed to do is to mind game your opponent into not activating their priority targets until later in the turn to avoid getting fast after their activation, or that you use it on a model that has already activated, unleash upon it and then remove fast by unburying a model on top of it. Both of them feels very, weird. The first one is too fringe for the enemy to truly consider since you could bury, kill them or they just move into a group of models, threatening you0if you want to unbury something bigger… And the often times you’d want to kill the enemy model instead of leaving it up.
The second option is a lot safer to do however and can be done a lot more, but is also something you can only do once a turn, maybe a maximum of two or three. Which leaves a lot of unused zero actions.

If the target is a beater, then it’s basically a lose, lose. You can’t put it before they activated because they straight up murder you and if you put it on after then you’re gonna summon a minion in what’s most likely in a bad spot, where one of the 2 minions probably won’t even scratch it, you could just walk away from the model, but then you’re probably leaving another model unsupported, you could unbury the model that threw stutter time in the first place, but that requires you to be in a position where that model didn’t do anything before - the map feels a lot smaller too and all matches I’ve played have become slugfests, doesn’t really matter which opponent, so I don’t value conditional movement on a model that just ignores models or terrain from the beginning that much, especially when I have to go through extra steps to get it..

Yes, you can use it on your own models as well, to move them upfield or get them out of a tight spot. Both of which are legitimate uses, often times however since it feels like M3e can get very clumped you won’t need to reposition your own models that much and the model you’d really want to move around since he’s so slow, can’t be buried or unburied normally. The biggest problem is however that there’s currently only three ways to unbury your own models, through their theme-wide ability, through Aionus (we’ll get to him) and Karina (we might get to her).

Let’s say that you have around 7 models who can use this, it means that you can cast this 8 times a turn. A number that you will pretty much never reach. If you have more, the enemy has pass tokens so that they won’t be too out-activated if you’re saving them for that and you simply won’t bury your own models that much. So I’d say that the crew needs some other form of bonus action, or could we just get the option for slow in it?

Also, Talos doesn’t interact with this ability in any way.

 

From Nothing (and other unbury): For you new open beta players, Aionus once had an aura that gave friendly models fast for ending near him - and Karina didn’t have her heal. 
Why is this relevant? Because I think that this ability was designed with that aura in mind. Because now it feels very meh. It will mainly be used for your summons and maybe Tara and the Scion.

The other two options, aka. Karina's heal and unbury first requires a six and then burning a card, or it requires you taking Aionus… I really can’t say much about the ability, it’s solid, but not always reliable.

It also means that your models can’t unbury in your deployment (as far as I know).

There isn't a lot of actual crew synergy where the crew make each other stronger or interact with one another beyond these abilities which are super generic and works dubious at best.
I know I sound fantastically negative, but most of them are solid, the biggest offender being stutter time. Since it’s the only bonus action we have and scales negatively with how many times you use it per turn. (which makes it feel like a chore using it and you often feel punished for using it)

Okay then, let’s get to Tara…

Tara Blake

Okay so, Tara is still a mess. I don’t feel like she fulfills a role. She’s not really a summoner since she only has two options for summoning. She’s not really a beater since she has a minimum damage of 2 and much rather wants to bury her targets according to the crew mechanics. I wouldn’t call her a support master since she has no real supporting actions unique to her. She’s not a control master since she only has one really control trigger and beyond that no real way to influence the enemy crew.

It’s true that she has a lot of Ap to potentially spend, but she can only spend those on two things: Walking, and soulstone-swinging. And nobody likes their master to be a sheeme runner, especially one without any fancy tricks.  And to me, that's a problem, when you don't feel like you've got any options, especially to what you could do with her last edition, or what options a lot of the other masters have. Even if it something as basic as choosing between a ranged and a melee attack.

This feeling of there being a problem regarding what you’re able bleeds into her having a weak theme and it’s not like she has one in the first place. She’s not the time-master like she was, but more focused on throwing people into the void, but you don’t do a lot with that either.
I feel like she is in an awkward in-between.

Soulstone sword: A fairly good melee attack for a non-beater. Stat of six, 2/3/5 damage track. Not to say that She cant beat people up, but we all know that the prize is in the trigger - glimpse of the void, which is built in. And to reiterate, Glimpse of the Void is very good. It's a good attack, what'd you'd expect from Tara, but it's also creates an incredibly dull playstyle- it even lost its ribbon function of attacking fast enemies while buried.
Just having this ability as your only attacking option feels bad, since it's not very exciting and you don't really do a whole lot else on your turn, which means that the action you repeat ad nauseum should be interesting to use!

On a side note, is there a reason Tara's only interaction with fast on enemies are Age to Destruction and From Nothing?

Age to Destruction: Solid ability and it mostly works as a consolation prize for when you’re not able to capitalise on the enemies fast. That’s not to say you couldn’t give someone fast and leave them on 1-2 HP and let them die when they active - a very crew dependant strat but it’s 100% viable. I like it in it’s simplicity and function, even though I’d want something more exciting. The biggest issue is that it’s something that will hardly ever trigger and is placed on models which doesn’t seem to know what they want to do - and when it triggers its effects aren’t noticeable. It’s also reducible damage, and paying 1 wound for fast isn’t that steep of a price, 2 stings a bit. So it works, but is just bad.

From the Void (Summoning): To me, a summoner has always been defined by the resource drain and their versatility. Tara is none of that, and is more an aggressive (scheme running) summoner whos thought process boils down to “Do I have an 11 or higher in hand? If not do I have an 8?” And it’s a bit jank, but fine, but when the only two models you can summon is specifically balanced around being summoned, ergo you will probably not ever hire them in to your crew normally, it just becomes an action you don’t feel rewarded for using or even really need to think about that often. So much of her power budget is baked into this and since you have 5ap a turn, you really kind of need to use this every turn. It covers up the other models blandness and weaknesses with just summoning more, because a wretch is not worth 4ss and often times feel barely worth the effort to summon them (No I don’t like her becoming a summoner). And I’m not saying a crew shouldn’t have weaknesses, but it feels like most of the crew costs one or more stones for what their worth, especially when they all sort of cover the same bases.

The two 100% useful tactical actions

Temporal Shift (fast redistribution): I’m all in favour for high-risk, high-reward things in games, especially when done right. Like Tara’s mass fast in M2e, an ability which required a lot of finesse, positioning and forethought. This ability exists I guess. To make this ability even remotely worth using you need to shift two, preferably three fast from enemy models to your own and have no models buried. This will almost never happen in a game, fast is a really dangerous condition to leave up, if you summon or bury your own models they’ll need to fast to come back and you need to play so suboptimally to set up a position where it will be useful and then it won’t often actually take effect until the turn after. Suffice to say, I’ve never seen it being used in effect in battle reports on when I’m playing it myself - the only time I’ve ever used it has been for the trigger, which honestly is the best part about it.

You could bomb ‘em with the nothing beast and apply his fast field to a couple of models and then activate Tara and redistribute them, it’s not terrible. But that’s still a lot of things that need to go right for a comparedly mediocre payoff.

Time warp (Flip the Deck): Uhm. So I have thought about this one a lot, and done some simulations. The conclusion? You need a shit ton of luck to ever consider this action remotely viable. To the point where you need to flip most of your 8-9+ cards in a row, without having to many low cards at the bottom of the discard, because then you need to waste activations before you can actually use them productively. I don’t see the scenario where you would use this ability ever realistically happening enough times for it to warrant space on a master card - with a target number.

 

Aionus

Oooh, boy, where do I start with this guy? He used to be (read. Like the first month of Closed Beta) an integral part of the Tara crew with an aura that gave fast at the end of activation, which was really good admittedly, but the replacement ability he got… isn’t really up to snuff for a 10ss model with a melee damage track of 2/3/4 and no defensive tech… But without further ado, let’s get into why Aionus doesn’t function.

 

Time in a flat circle: It’s new, and I actually kind of like it. It’s good, offer some crew synergy. Doesn’t require you to spend extra resources. Nice.
I'd argue it's one of his best, if not his best ability.

A stitch in time: This ability has some potential, but it feels like someone thought it should be his main selling point and thus justify his price cost. You can kill a buried model (assuming you actually get something buried, since once again, only 1 model with a reliable way to do it) and then give someone on the table fast, or chain from an enemy assuming…

Tick, Tock: If he actually gets to apply the condition before the model is killed, because otherwise you’re truly gambling. What I think they want you to do is to charge, attack once and apply slow, then attack again with the trigger and then apply fast for what I believe often will be 5-6 damage, and then you cast fast (or slow) on something else or you have an enemy model with fast to unbury on (Why does this crew do so little with fast?).

The stat 6 against WP is actually solid, but that 2/3/4 damage track with a conditional trigger will have a hard time properly killing anything larger than a basic minion and is the ability to reliably give slow or fast to something valued so high? 
You also have the possibility to attack on of your buried models and give it fast for 1-2 damage and if one of your best uses for a 10ss model is inefficient ap trading, you know something is wrong.

Eventuality: I don’t know if Wyrd realised why eventuality was so good on Tara in M2e, or perhaps they did realise it and that’s why we don’t have it anymore. (For context, it worked exactly the same with dealing damage, but could be used twice per round on Tara b/c double activation and also had a built-in trigger for healing).
It doesn’t activate and become useful before turn 3 at the earliest and in most of my matches, it had already been decided by turn 3, leaving it not very good - and on turn 3 you’ll also be so close the opponent so that you could charge them without problem.
But hey, at least it has the glimpse trigger on a model that actually can get it fairly reliable by using stones - not that I would recommend doing it frivolously considering how stone hungry Tara is.

Sever timeline: It does was it says on the tin. Surprisingly his most interesting action since it can actually be used to help your team and disrupt the enemy sometimes. Maybe a little too low stat if we are talking balance here, but that’s another discussion.

 

Karina

Blast it, we are talking about Karina since Totems are now bundled up together with their masters when evaluating the efficiency of them - and let me say, if Karina wasn’t free, I’d never touch her (heck, I still haven’t taken the time to paint her because she was so bad in M2e).

Her 3 main selling points are: She has a very expensive heal + unbury. She can save Tara if Tara would die within 8". She’s insignificant. She’s free. Sorry, meant four main selling points.

As for saving Tara, it requires a model with df4 and 4 wounds to be within 8” and LoS of Tara, meaning she needs to spend most of her Ap repositioning instead of doing something semi-useful beyond burying your own models and even then she probably won’t be able to keep up with Tara if you play her like the scheme runner Wyrd seems to have envisioned for her. Luckily M3e is very much of a slugfest for me, so you’ll often be in range with one move from deployment, but it does limit what you can do with Tara, since both Tara and Karina are rather squishy.

The heal and unbury action is an action that can, and probably will cost you 3 cards on the regular. Since you’ll often need to cheat an 8+ if you wan’t the ability to go off, then since you actually invested some resources you might want to cheat a better card for healing if you need to and then a final card for unburying the target. And let me remind you that the Obliteration crew has exactly 1 way to draw a card - a trigger on a situational ability on the Scion, who I won’t talk about now.

 

Tl:Dr: She’s still very much a mess without a solid theme or role and is very boring to play due to the lack of meaningful choices coupled with what feels like a lack of agency.

• Very few minions, a very conditional six cost model and pretty much useless 10 cost henchmen leaves you without good options in theme and with a 8 and 9 cost you are limiting yourself in scheme ways. They are all melee for goodness sake and Tara even as a gun.

• A lot of the things that is supposed to make the crew feel thematic and make “work” together isn’t reliable and requires a lot of hoops to go trough and set-up for an average pay-off compared to the work.

• Tara doesn’t feel master level, and every time I activate her I feel like it’s a draining chore. She’s a boring scheme runner.

• The crew has a surprising lack of focus on what it wants to do and ⅓ your models doesn’t even interact with the “main mechanics” of the crew.

• Aionus is not worth 10ss at the current point. Maybe 8ss with the current set, and even then he doesn’t have a clear role.

• Tara and her crew doesn’t make you feel anything - you don’t feel like a time manipulator, or a herald of the void. Unlike when you play Parker where you feel like a running and gunning bandit, robbing people.

Suggestions to make Tara, Aionus (and their crew) more interesting to play and hopefully more thematic

• Make ‘Age to Destruction’ not counteract the basis of giving people fast so that you then can unbury your models. Something like “After an enemy model gain the fast condition do X” Where X can be 2 damage or have unique ability for each of the models that have that ability.

• Give Tara some form of ranged option - like a void gun or something, but please don't give her a collier pistol. (Also don't make a ranged version of the sword) //idea// Choose an attack action of a target buried models. Copy that attack with range X" [gun]. If it's a friendly model, this action can use triggers

• Give Tara a (in-built) trigger on stutter time to give the buried friendly model fast.

• Give more models (interesting) interactions with fast. Right now it's used to unbury and gives 3 models +flips to duels.

• If the Scion is gonna stay the same, please make “Glimpse of the Void” more reliable or give the Scion an action or trigger to bury both models.

• Can Karina become better, ergo not bad? Even if it's as boring as giving her Arcane Reservoir.

• Aionus needs to gain a purpose within the crew. Have him dish out fast to allies, interact with scheme markers. Reactivate… etc.

• Adjust the cost or power level of the Void Wretch specifically (and the hunter to a lesser extent so that the hunter isn't just a better wretch).

• The thematic crew could use some more tools or models in general. I know you can hire out of theme but that is supposed to make your “crew” worse and costs more stones - and I don't think the crew in general is in a place where the extra costs for getting more diverse options is warranted. Outcast has few versatile models afaik. Not to say that every crew should have every tool, but Taras main toolbox is countering bury mechanics and hit things averagely.

• Give Tara new tactical actions, the current one has never been used as far as I am aware. To get them to work you need so much luck, need to go so many hoops and play so well, for a mid-low reward…

• An attack action to give fast to a model an accomplice into a buried.

• Something like the old eventuality “ X” pulse, enemy models hit by the pulse take Y damage when burying” debuff.

• An aura where models with fast can't activate before other models have activated (can also bet her age to destruction).  

• Talos is fine. But I feel like he doesn't interact with his own crew actively.

• If burying the opponent is supposed to be a big part of the package, maybe make em a bit more reliable and maybe give bonuses to models if there’s one buried. Because right now it feels like I get more from just hitting most enemies or leaving them up so that I can unbury on top of them and hit them more.

• Having more options for free actions would be nice, but I also understand why Wyrd would want to limit them.

I’ll edit this if the update provides changes etc.

And Tara has some defensive tech in “Through the Hole” and the ability to bury enemy models.

 

8 minutes ago, Daerthe said:

The Old Deathmarshall, she was able to recut earlier are gone or? So I do not need the models anymore, right?

She can't hire them anymore so you're correct. 

23 minutes ago, trikk said:

4SS models aren't meant to reliably do damage. That's why they cost 4SS. Especially not from 12-14" away

I mean I want 4ss models to have a purpose and feel worth hiring

7 minutes ago, trikk said:

Or make it stat 4 and give them something in return. When I say an aspect of a model is too good, it doesn't mean that you just have to nerf it and the model will be fine. Maybe the model should just shift focus a bit?

My problem with stat 4 is that it makes the model unable to reliably hit something - and if the model is supposed to do damage or trigger of their attack, they lose value. 

And if you give them utility in other ways you might as well rework the model for that purpose instead because it's either gonna become their main purpose or they won't be hired. Low cost generalist are seldom good. 

So that's why I think it's better to let them have a (focused) role and make them worse in that regard, compared to giving them other things to do. Then again, it also depends on what they would get in return

3 minutes ago, trikk said:

Drop the range to 12 and ignore cover and they can be ok with stat 5.

That's probably a fair change 

I think the biggest argument for changing the Desperate mercenary is that almost all 4ss are just garbage. /s

I think their purpose is to be good in a Viks crew as a ranger threat. A crew that is pretty recourse draining if you go in theme. And I guess they are fair for 5ss in other crews, but probably wouldn't be hired  if they were stat 4. 

Maybe just losing cover ignore might be enough

 

1 minute ago, ShinChan said:

Yes, Talos is slow, but you can bury him and make him pop with Aionus/Karina (that she doesn't deserve such a big nerf IMO).

 

And yeap, Mad Dog will have 3 AP 2-3 turns, that's why he costs what he costs xD  Still, we all agree in that he kills and don't do anything else, so let fill his purpose as he should (there are even better beaters in other factions/crews).

No, you can't bury him xD He doesnt have the ability to allow him to be buried unless you smack him with Tara... 

I have no real problems with Mad Dog

All factions should have access to the same tools to some extent, otherwise that factions just laggs behind. The problem is that it requires a tome to go of, sure, he has showboating so it's not that terrible, but it adds a layer of unreliability, which it looks like other faction doesn't have (Looking at the arcanists).

Johan is not a terrible model, but in a faction where most crews seems to be more focused on killing, it feels superflous 

1 hour ago, ShinChan said:

Like if Cornelius doesn't do enough things by himself... And he's probably going to be my first purchase in M3E

The streamlining of weapon profiles is "kind of ok" in my opinion, in order to give some homogeneity, but not any models should have the same triggers in their weapons, or they will be loosing a lot of their identities (which is being something discussed a lot in different threads).

On that comparison, Mad dog is purely a "beater" with no other purpose, Cornelius is for starting, a Master, so 3 actions by default, with a really nice number of bonuses to his crew and better than decent attacks and support abilities.

I think my low contempt for Talos comes from the general high cost of the crew and that he only halway synergise with the crew. He's slow and can't reposition that well, his bury is slightly weaker than the normal bury mechanic, but not on a trigger. It's the same feeling I have with the Scion - to get good value from her you need to get through quite a lot of hoops or a buff heavy crew. 

Tbh Mad Dog will often times have 3 ap a turn xD but yes, his only purpose is blasting people to high heavens

I'd be happy if Johan just was a little more reliable when yelling things

1 minute ago, trikk said:

I'm complaining hard

As you should

1 minute ago, trikk said:

What do you mean? As a faction? I think more than half the models make sense. 1/3 could use tweaks (mostly to make them more interesting but there are a few too good models too) and then there's Family, who are basically in development

Sounds like a good spot to be in for open beta I guess 😛 

Just now, trikk said:

Touche

I'm talking more frome a Hoffman/Guild perspective but I agree, that Df7 is nuts.

True. I understand that sometimes that crew is just shut down in certain matchups. 

As a Outcast players I am a bit concerned with the fact that there's a lot of overlap, without having enough of a toolbox. 

How do you think the guild is faring right now?

1 hour ago, trikk said:

Just showing an option. But I don't think Armor-ignoring should be cost efficient. It should actually be a hard choice to include.

Then armor shouldn't be placed on models with high stats and healing

24 minutes ago, trikk said:

Just saying they have the same gun so I doubt the rules will be different. 

As for anti-armor, you have Wretch with Analyze Weakness for 6SS (Tax included)

I mean, Probably not. 

I haven't tried the Obedient wretch, but it feels like she's not gonna do anything outside of Hamelin, and I'm unsure if analyze weakness is worth like 6ss (actually like 3-4ss since you get a body). Tbh, it looks to be as good as the scion

Outcast doesn't have a lot of cost effective anti-armour and it's still on Df6/7. 

You could hire a Lazarus, but then you're paying premium for an already underperforming model 

If you really need Colette to bury, smack a dove or a coryphee/duet. Sure it's a trigger, but you can get it with low masks or a stone (and a lot of models are recourse intensive)

Deployment

Standard deployment

 

strategy:

Reckoning

 

Schemes:

Detonate charges

Dig their Graves

Power Ritual

Deliver a message

Vendetta

 

Crew

Tara Blake

Karina

Aionus 10ss

Mad Dog Bracket 10ss

The Nothing Beast 9ss

Scion of the Void 6ss

Talos 8ss

7ss in cache

 

Schemes selected:

Vendetta: Scion against Carlos.

Deliver a message: Colette

 

Thoughts about my crew selection

I picked Tara for testing purposes and because I dislike my life.

I picked Aionus even though I don't think he's worth the price to try a combo with the Nothing beast, Mad Dog to counter the Coryphee and kill

some fools for reckoning. The rest of the crew is for testing purposes and the stones are there so I can summon reliably each turn and have

some over for defence.

The schemes were picked because I thought they would go well with reckoning and because I know I can hit Colette when she's buried. I also now realise that Tara has very few low cost models, so picking Vendetta almost proved to to bite me in the ass.

 

Crew

Colette Du Bois w/Magical Training +2ss

Mechanical Dove x3
Cassandra Felton 8ss

Carlos Vasquez 8ss

Coryphee Duet 12ss

Showgirl 5ss w/Magical Training +2ss

Showgirl 5ss

Mannequin 4ss

4ss in cache

 

Deliver a message: Tara

Detonate Charges

 

Thoughts on my crew selection.
I’m still not sure about what to get and how, I’m not very experienced with Malifaux per sé. However since I’m going to a tournament next weekend for the open beta I wanted to play test some of the models which I owned. I know that the Coryphee Duet, on top of being my favourite model visually, is very strong so that felt like a no brainer. Showgirl with magical training also felt like a no-brainer. I wanted to try Carlos out, but I had bad feelings about him. He did practically nothing this game.

 

Turn 1

Tara stones for Cards. Dropping a 1 and a 4 for a 13 of crows and a 11 of Rams.

Colette starts as the attacker and deploys a coryphee, Carlos and doves in the middle.

Tara wins initiative but Colette goes first, and Tara generates 3 pass tokens.

The doves fly forward while the Nothing beast hunkers down in a forest and focuses twice.

Mad Dog Bracket goes clay hunting and charges a dove, killing a dove. We ruled that it was him who dropped the marker and not the dove and therefore we placed a scheme marker before the body was cold.

The scion buries the Nothing beast and then walks forward

Colette presto changos the scion for a Coryphee which Tara then charges, hits, but the duet succeeds on the wp test. It hits Tara back, missing once and then hitting again for weak before splitting.

Aionus whacks the Nothing Beast to give it fast and then moves. The Duet reforms and then walks and charges Aionus, triggering execute and smacking for 4 damage.

Karina tries to something but is worthless. Carlos attacks the Scion and the scion takes 1 damage and then disappears.

Carlos moves forward and places a Pyre marker under Mad Dog.

Tara activates again, gives the Coryphee fast, misses the one attack.

Showgirl walks and then continues moving with a mannequin in tow.

The void hunters spawns on the Coryphee, gives it fast with a red joker, attacks once and misses. Attacks a second time with 2 + flips. Gets a 12 and then the coryphee cheats with an 11.

Cassandra walks forward and then drags the mannequin with her.

The last showgirl moves forward and then tries to lure talos, failing her terrifying test.

Scion and Mad dog burns

 

Turn 2

Colette uses a soulstone for cards. So does Tara.

Colette cheats initiative and Tara gains 1 pass token.

The Duet activates with fast, takes 1 damage. Delivers a message to Tara and scores 1vp. Then attacks the Void hunter, flipping an 11 vs. 2.

Dealing 3 damage after a cheat and incorporeal. Attacking again, cheating both the attack and the damage flip. I forgot the void hunter has

terrifying and is killed on the second attack. It then splits, the left one activated.

Mad Dog Bracket, mad, activates and eat the scheme marker, walks and charges, hitting a severe on the first attack, dealing 4 and 3 damage

to the single coryphees. The second attack dealing weak damage, killing one.

The last coryphee, scared, runs away, dropping the scheme marker and taking the mannequin with it once.

Talos activates and charges Cassandra, she flips a black joker and Talos cheats a mask for the trigger. On a neutral flip he hits Severe.

Cassandra stones for 2. Damage. Talos hits again, but flips a black Joker for damage.

Cassandra walks back and forth and drops a scheme marker on next to talos.

Tara activates and removes a scheme marker and then gives Cassandra fast. Colette then activates, moves within 8 of carlos and Cassandra and

tries to presto chango them. Spends a soulstone but flips a one, failing. Then tries again but fails. Then uses her bonus action to move

a Showgirl 3".

Ainous activates and charges the poor mannequin, missing once but killing second. Transferring fast to Tara. And then fasting a coryphee (Which

we realised had activated, but Tara delayed a scheme by one AP so it's fine).

The mannequin who lived activates and tries to heal Cassandra, and cheats for a total of 1 heal, then places a scheme marker.

The Nothing beast activates, unburies and attacks Cassandra, but the mannequin intervenes. Taking 2 damage. The second attack misses

and the last attack and last focus kills it with a weak.

A showgirl activates and really want to seduce the Nothing beast, and wins the Wp duel with a 13 flip, but fails seduction. Seduces again

succeeds the terrifying with another 13, and win the seduce, giving the Beast distracted.

Tara activates again, and strikes Cassandra twice killing her. Then summoning a Wretch by stoning and cheating.

Carlos activates, fails a pyre marker, walks and tries to breath fire and fails again.

The aforementioned Wretch activates and move forward from the Coryphee, removing a marker in the process. THe second showgirl moves up and tries

to Lure Aionus and succeeds.  The scion activates, targets vazquez and manage to remove is his fast from his by attacking through the wretch

and focuses, taking to damage.

ANother dove moves.

Mad Dog and Scion takes 1 point of Damage from burning.

 

Turn 3

Tara stones for card. Colette goes first.

Carlos breathes fires on the Wretch twice, misses once and then deals 2-1 damage on the second attack and applies 2 burning.

Then he runs away. Aionus activates, smacks Nothing Beast for fast. He then kills the Coryphee and gives it slow, which then transfers to the

replacing mannequin.

A showgirl runs away and drops a scheme marker. The nothing beast chases after Carlos, misses and he jumps away. I then make the mistake

of attacking Colette. Never ever attack Colette. Never worth it.

Colette jumps up next to Tara gives distracted to everyone, whacks the wretch dead with her sword trick dealing 4-1, tosses Talos 8 inches, presto changes herself for the dying Mannequin and drops a scheme for scoring 'Detonate the Charges Later' and smacks Talos for another distracted and stunned. Talos is now at distracted 4.

Tara activates, kills the mannequin, moves up and assists the Talos, dropping 2 distracted. A showgirl activates and tries to seduce Tara twice, fails both twice.

Talos activates, delivers a message to Colette and then focuses because it's not worth attacking Collette.

A Dove activates and flies next to Aionus, attacks him for 1 damage and explodes (Why is it attack 4?). Karina activates after that and heals the Scion 3 points of damage after lucky flips and cheating. She still hasn't moved a single time.

The second dove moves between Tara and Anions and is annoying.

The scion activates and Removes burning from Carlos, dealing 2 damage to him and then destroys the bird. Vendetta is revealed and scored.

She drops down to 2hp (again).

Tara activates again, moves up through difficult terrain, gives a showgirl fast and then summons a void hunter after cheating a 13 tome.

The newly born piece of Void activates, pops up next to the Showgirl with fast, reapplies fast again and begins smacking her, hitting the first attack and then flipping the Red Joker for damage, killing her.

Somewhere here, the Mannequin and mad dog activated. They accomplished nothing or changed anything so I'm omitting them.

 

We decided to end it here 4-3 to Tara because the coming two turns would literally be the benny hill theme played in Slow motion.

 

What I, the Tara player could have done better

If I ignore the fact that you shouldn't play Tara into a killy strategy when Parker exists and is in the same faction.

But I need to remember terrifying and incorporeal. Use my SS more and triggered Fade Away on Colette instead of Carlos.
I also shouldn’t have attacked Colette ever.

 

MVP

Mad Dog Bracket for just being a fun and exciting model. Also for blowing up the split Coryphee duet (and actually feeling like he’s worth his stones).

 

Tara players thoughts on Tara

When Mad Dog shooting and missing 2 times is more exciting than activating Aionus or Talos, then something is wrong with the core crew. And I think that is that they feel very lacklustre. Aionus is not worth the 10ss you pay for him, he doesn’t do a lot. The Talos was a distraction carnifex this game, but I have never gotten value out of him since his stats are low and he’s very vulnerable to all forms of control. Tara still only has 1 action besides summoning, which in itself is a very binary thing “Can I summon a void hunter, yes or no?” but I will talk more about her in a seperate post. May I ask why 4ss minions just feel bad? And why would I ever want to hire it for 4ss when I’m hesitant to summoning it for 1ss and a card? Also, why is Karina never allowed to be “good”? She’s a 5ss totem which best ability is requires her to keep up with a master who is apparently more of a scheme runner (luckily this edition is just death ball galore) and her second best ability is insignificant… with her best action probably being assist at this point…

All in all her crew is very lackluster, it has its moments, but even broken clocks are right twice a day and it’s kind of hard to motivate myself to play more of her.

An apt comparison would be if (M2e Tara) or M3e Parker is speed or any other kind of drug, Tara right now is a slow monday without coffee when you’re hungover.

 

Tara players thoughts on Colette

I don’t like how so much of the crews power is tied to two models: Colette and the Duet. The duet creates a sort of boring thing where if you have a counter (which in outcast right now is Mad Dog every day of the week) you play goose chase and if you don’t have a counter, it will just do whatever the fuck it wants. (I knew both my opponents schemes by the beginning of turn 2 and there’s in general very little point in trying to fake out schemes). I don’t think you can buff the performer crew without tuning down their already powerful models.

Colette was about as fun to face as I imagined. The best counterplay to her is still just ignoring her, which isn’t very fun for either side, and then I’m supposedly playing the crew that counters her.

 

Cassandra died without accomplishing much, mainly because my opponent usually overextends with their models without proper support. Carlos was an annoyance, but not really doing anything and I think most of it stems from him being a dual crew model.

 

@valkirsWrath the Colette players thoughts:

I should not have over extend so hard and respected Mad Dog Bracket. Should’ve been more careful with my resources. Think more seriously about my crew selection.

I should’ve used Cassandra's defensive ability turn two instead of walking with nimble, so she would've survived maybe survived.

False Reality was a beast, moving the Talos right to where I wanted him for detonate charges. Too bad he had a message to deliver. Colette is still very defensive, and very strong. The Mad Dog has a mean shotgun, note to self, never split the duet in range. Double note to self, his range seems bullshit. Will never let him that close to my duet again.

Carlos was a distraction carnifex. He did nothing but let my enemy score for vendetta and look mean.

 

Compared to Colette, Tara doesn’t really feel master tier

 

I still have a lot to learn with Malifaux, this was my first beta game and I still have to shake my “Kill kill kill” reflexes from 40k and AoS. Fun game though, I’m looking forward to the tournament next sunday.

 

My suggestion for trying out buffs for her if needed is the following

- Bring back crow, damage 2, or give it a built in mask
- New fade away: After resolving an enemy attack action, discard a card. This model sufers 2 damage instead and is buried. (Meaning that you take the hit and any conditions followed by it, but if you choose to fade away you'll negate the damage and take two points of damage. Worded in such a way to ignore irreducable)
- Showstopper on 3"

This is mostly a knee-jerk reaction to the nerf and thus would require testing

6 minutes ago, stevenlance said:

Please, look at yasunori, it cost is 10. Tell me your opinion comparing with duet

The WP stat is pretty insane. The average return of 2 damage per attack good. I'm about to step into the 10t world on sunday I believe, but I don't talk to anyone who plays them so I am not totally aware of the different combos you could do. The 8 damage you'll probably do a turn is "fun"

1 minute ago, Caspergad said:

fair, was not really the point with the targeting, but we agree on the important part, so...  

Yeah

I have already resigned my fate to having a totem that will never be worth it's supposed cost of 5 xD

3 minutes ago, I'm a Teapot! said:

Well, as the duet gets free walks by Angelica and Cassandra if needed, the crocket blessed combo gets a lot of utility with Marcus. Stealth+disguised would be my pick against the bandits, but I also experienced Parker as a strong ranged force and a lot of fun to play. Stealth, and captain/snowstorm would be in my arc crew 100% if the enemy declared Parker. 

My opponent was very scared of Parker and put stealth on Marcus instead of other models and kept most of his crew in cover. Denying me a VP for claim jump, but that doesn't matter in the long run when the opponent doesn't have a crew by turn 3.

@Sabbac The nerfs against Colette was harsh adn I expect her to be buffed a bit. I think Carlos might have been overperforming in the Wildfire crew, since the Wokou raider also got nerfed even though they are bad in Outcast but might be too good in Last Blossom.

I also think that the Ice Dancers needs something more so that they are a more attractive pick in a Colette crew. Something they could try is giving her Blade rush and Rush +1 or +2 and increasing the range on freeze corpse by an inch or two and then handing out distracted in a small area around it.