Tara as a Resurrectionist, round 2

[DeleteAccount]

OK, I've been trying to wrap my head around Tara again, but I'm just having problems connecting. Basically, is she just a glorified Taxi? She eats soulstones like nobody's business when buying her upgrades and it frustrates me that I feel I need 2 upgrades from the get go to make her work (dead of Winter + Death marshals and Obliteration Symbiote or Obliteration Symbiote and Knowledge of Eternity). I was thinking of breaking with that by going with a Spare Parts configuration, and the initial idea is Spare Parts and Corpse Bloat while also hiring the Carrion Effigy to heal her up with ease.

 

It's only an idea and I was also thinking of adding Bete and Obliteration Symbiote into the equation for example to have some use out of burials and so on. But a part of me just notices that Nicodem can summon better, give fast without playing with fire and plain buff better. Do people feel tara having 6AP compensates that? I mean, logic dictates she is the best rogue necromancy summoner simply because she has so much AP and doesn't even know what to do with it half the times.

 

Anyway, I'm just rambling now, so anybody have suggestions on how to use Tara as a resser and get good bang out of her?

[Fetid Strumpet]

I've had some succes ill post more when I have more time.

[DeleteAccount]

Really hoping some discussion can come out of this...

 

Though I suppose Tara not having an easy access model as such and being plain better as an Outcast is a big factor in this.

[Kalkris]

Allow me to make some headway on Tara as a Resurrectionist, at least concerning Wave 1 models (Wave 2 I should save for others to input on, as I haven't much to input on their part).

 

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Firstly the trio of thematic Henchman options: Madame Sybelle, Sebastian, and Mortimer.

 

Madame Sybelle and her upgrades (Not Too Banged Up, and Bleeding Tongue) are okay if you are looking for support for the inevitable Rotten Belles which *I* personally think should be run with Tara-as-Rezzer, especially if you have a good amount of them. With Tara, I might suggest using Sybelle as an AP engine, allowing for more and more usage of whatever the for has, more movement from them, your Belles, and your own Lured models.

 

Sebastian along with his upgrades (Those Are Not Ours!, and Unknowable Pain) provides a whole lot of utility to a Rezzer Tara crew. Poison is spread like candy, cover is focally procured, and Corpses turn into Canine Remains. One anti-synergy I see is this: If you decide to take the thematic crew alongside Sebastian and Those Are Not Ours!, the soulstone & card generation is not helpful for their Df stats. I rank him a bit lower than I do Sybelle in this context.

 

Mortimer is, however, better here than Sybelle is. With his upgrades (My Favorite Shovel and Love Thy Master), he gets the capability to provide additional movement for all his Undead kinsmen (Including Tara!!!), and/or assist in any sort of summoning shenanigans (here's looking to Sebastian for said summons). He can also help with summoning by himself through Found a Bone or his Dismember trigger. Pretty good, and sets a high standard for the likes of Rezzer Henchmen, although, as good as he is, I might take him with Sebastian to make him really shine here.

 

Now, we come to the Totems. While Karina is Tara's thematic totem, and an Enforcer (thus able to utilize upgrades), I feel speaking about her would be the thrashing of a thrice-dead horse. Therefore I'll talk about the Graveyard Spirit (who, in my honest opinion, is better).

 

The Graveyard Spirit is quite helpful in thematic Tara above other builds, if only for its (0) ability, One Foot In The Grave, which has both players discard a card, without a resist. It hinders the opponent but helps your Voidlings immensely. If it were random discard, I'd feel much differently, but as it stands, Graveyard Spirit is an essential totem for Tara-as-Rezzer. Plus, granting Armor+2 isn't too shabby either!

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I'll cover the minions in a bit. Of note shall be Bete Noir, Canine Remains, Crooked Man, Necropunk, Nurse, Rotten Belle, and the Hanged (and yes, I know that's most of them, but they're all pretty important!). Check this post for updates to the list.

 

~Lil Kalki

[Mason]

I've honestly had more luck with Tara without Obliteration Symbiote than with it.  I usually run her with Knowledge of Eternity and Dead of Winter, and sometimes with Eternal Journey, and just use her to buff up my crew and steal AP from the opponent's crew.  When something gets close to her, I have her fire off Temporal Shift, then bury it with Pull the Void.   Once it's Fast and Buried, the Void Wretches do a pretty good job of ripping it apart, and when they're done, Karina can strip away its Fast and light it on fire. 

 

Toss in some Death Marshals for board control via burying models (bonus points if they're fast for Tara's Dead of Winter debuff) and she's a very effective control master. 

 

 

The Obliteration Symbiote "Tara Bus" has never been all that successful for me, but running her as noted above makes her one of my better Outcast masters.  I really don't see the Bete Noire synergy; I think she's more of a hindrance to a Tara crew than an asset, as Tara generally isn't the sort of girl that likes to keep a lot of cards in her hand.

[DeleteAccount]

But isn't the Void Wretches attack incredibly underwhelming against buried models as well as Karina being pretty much a bad joke? And the model still has to actually fail the Wp duel to be buried, yes, it's easier from the dead of winter debuff, but still, can be a problem, specially if they just kill something and it comes out again. Also, doesn't it collide with the Death Marshal burying since Tara can't bury anything the moment it is in a marshal casket? Finally, is only being able to use Pull the Void during the first activation enough? I mean, the moment a Marshal has buried something it just becomes an expensive way to apply slow and in your second activation she is pretty much just giving out fast if relevant and looking at her other weapons funny.

 

I could see this sort of configuration as a resser with Spare Parts since she has quality actions with summons during the second activation, but as you describe it, seems like a veyr hard game of resource management to get results.

 

Anyway, I suck with Tara, so I might just not understand the potential.

[Mason]

But isn't the Void Wretches attack incredibly underwhelming against buried models as well as Karina being pretty much a bad joke?

 

The Void Wretches gain :+fate  in all duels against Fast models, so they're pretty good at ripping little chunks out of buried models with Fast.  Void Maw does a pretty respectable 2/3/4 from anywhere on the board, without any chance of the buried model attacking it back.  If you catch the Wretches in Tara's Temporal Shift, they can even scoot around a bit before chomping down on the buried model. 

 

Karina...actually isn't too bad if you actually make use of her abilities.  With Tara using Fast offensively with Dead of Winter, Price of Eternity is just a brutal ability, especially in Turf War if you just park her in the center and go defensive.  Likewise, Flames of the Void really comes into its own once you've got two or three buried enemy models, and Energies is good for slowing down a Fast model once its buried (after the Void Wretches are done with it, of course).  Is she a bit overpriced?  Yeah, probably by a point or so.  But she gets a lot more flak than she probably deserves and has been really useful for me at times.

 

And hey, people like the Guild Autopsies for 4 pts because they have a ranged attack, and Karina's got a marginally better gun for one point more, plus a whole lot of other abilities.  Perspective and all. 

 

 

Also, doesn't it collide with the Death Marshal burying since Tara can't bury anything the moment it is in a marshal casket? Finally, is only being able to use Pull the Void during the first activation enough? I mean, the moment a Marshal has buried something it just becomes an expensive way to apply slow and in your second activation she is pretty much just giving out fast if relevant and looking at her other weapons funny.

 

Tara is usually activating before her Death Marshals and Pull the Void has a longer range than their caskets, so I haven't found it to be too much of a problem, honestly.  If you only use the Death Marshals to bury "important" models and just have them shoot at or stab the weak chaff, then it's still a win if they keep it locked down all game, even though it turns off your Glimpse triggers.  If those models are already in combat with Void Wretches, they're gonna have a bad time. 

 

And even if you do have a buried model already, being able to hand out Slow or Fast at range (and even do a point of damage, so hey) is a pretty good trade off.  You can spend Tara's entire first activation doing nothing but slowing the enemy crew and she'll still have a second "normal" activation at the very end of the turn to do whatever she needs to do. 

 

On the other hand, in games where you've got Plant Explosives or Deliver the Message or Distract, sometimes its best to forget about Eternal Moment and just start dropping Lost Instants every turn.  That's a large bubble of "keep your opponent from getting points." 

 

If you take Eternal Journey, she's great at hopping back to support your own flanks, or just getting away from the opponent's models when they're chasing down an Assassinate.  Plus, she has an ever-changing armory of attacks stolen from buried models, which - if your Death Marshals are only trying to bury important models - really opens up her options each activation.

 

 

I could see this sort of configuration as a resser with Spare Parts since she has quality actions with summons during the second activation, but as you describe it, seems like a veyr hard game of resource management to get results.

 

I wouldn't disagree that Tara's got some resource management and juggling to her playstyle (or at least, the playstyle I favor with her), but I don't think it's very difficult (or at least, not more so than running, say, Kirai or Hamelin).  I do rather like Spare Parts on her, but otherwise I tend to stick to her thematic upgrades and just run her as a heartless toolbox.

 

I'll see about taking down some battle reports with her this weekend. 

[Math Mathonwy]

I've been using Tara twice now without the Dead of Winter as a Resser. Suddenly you don't need to throw away your hand, which is pretty nice. And Ressers have enough stuff to take that you can forgo Void stuff and Death Marshals.

The biggest thing about Resser Tara IMO is the access to a crazy good Lure from Belles allowing you to get one enemy model close in order to make your stuff and that one model Fast.

Another big thing about Tara is giving out Slow to enemies. In one game I made Lazarus basically useless by giving him Slow every turn. There are many models which are utterly crippled by Slow and Tara's ability to activate twice can make sure that the enemy model will have that Slow every time it activates.

[osoi]

Having come back to Tara only recently after not using her for a good while I found she is just a good toolbox running midline support with her primary help being adding more AP to your crew while stripping AP from your ooponent.

Lure is huge for Tara as has been said in maximising the potential of her toolbox. I havent used Dead of Winter in a little bit and found me not regretting it

[DeleteAccount]

Guild Autopsies aren't as conditional as Karina and can combo very well with our poison addicted pieces like Shikome, Rafkin or Canine Remains by tagging enemy models to get ganged on. That they also have a crappy summon of mindless zombies also means they help with activation. To me the guild autopsy is a LOT better then Karina. Though you seem to have managed to actually bury enough and reliably enough to make use of her. Also, even with ++, using 2 AP for a very uninspired attack with wretches when they should really be doing the mission doesn't really thrill me, though if they can allow themselves to do it, it's a good option I guess.

 

I'm thinking of a summoning configuration which plain passes on all upgrades except Spare Parts and maybe Knowledge of Eternity, which relies on Mortimer popping out 2 corpses per turn and another one based on the taxi configuration with Izamu, death marhal and a nurse, where you pump up Izamu with rage drugs, bury him and deliver him with Tara where a weak damage 5 Izamu that does not allow stone prevention can cause the most chaos.

 

I have a tourny this saturday and I'm thinking of passing on the Kirai/Yan Lo plan to just sacrifice it to get a good run with Tara and play with different playstyles.

[DeleteAccount]

Well, played a full tourny with Tara and played 3 games while changing the formula on each one.

 

First I went with a summoning and poison based list with Tara only using Spare Parts with Mortimer with his shovel and corpse bloat, Rafkin, a belle and a doxie, a nurse (MVP of the match by far), a couple of canine remains and the graveyard spirit. My opponent was using a Marcus blitzkrieg list where Myranda sacs first turn to deliver Killjoy and the blessed of december and Marcus gets +3 Wk and +2 damage to reach anything and destroy it. On this match Tara did a grand total of jack outside of killing of Killjoy, basically, turn 2 initiative decided everything since I won, drugged Marcus and finished killing Killjoy. After that I pretty much went into survive mode thanks to completing both my schemes turn 1 (plant explosives and Deliver the message) and having to take the brunt of a very superior combat force. Turn 3 I managed to paralize Marcus keeping him off my back but turn 4 tara died to club in the face. She only summoned a guild autopsy all game and I only dared to give fast once in the whole game because Marcus was stupefied. Without the nurse it would have been a massacre against me. The first turn I intended to summon 2 autopsies, but the blitz destroyed my hand and my soulstone pool, so I barely ever had a good card to even think of summoning even though I was choking on corpses.

 

Game 2 I faced lilith in a Reckoning and very killy schemes, so went with a full Tara delivery service with her 3 staple upgrades, the Dead Rider, Izamu with the decaying aura upgrade, a nurse, a death marshal, two night terrors and the graveyard spirit. After a very strange first activation of sending Lilith barreling through the middle turn 1 and putting a forest up, I pretty much prepped the double beatstick delivery service. I unburied Izamu, charged Nekima, killed her with red joker damage from my hand and thanks ot her death, the Dead Rider was unburied. The rest of the match was me hunting and killing with abandon. Outside of Tara's initially death delivery, she spread fast twice on almost all her crew and then went hunting for a flanking tot. As a comment, I healed Tara to full with the nurse avoiding assassinate and only having to lose her second activation, so very worth it.

 

Game 3 I faced Lady Justice and went with a summoning crew that also intended to bury some enemy models if possible. The enemy burying only happened thanks to a Death Marshal boxing Francisco and causing mayhem in his activation order, but the summoning aspect was pure gold since I actually had cards to dedicate to summoning and summoned a ton of guild autopsies that I sent to the grinder that is Lady Justice. Them coming in at full wounds is very nice and lets you get stuff done with Tara's surplus AP, never got a cerberus because Lady kept cleaning the corpses of anything near her, but Mortimer more than feed me enough and since I had my crew avoid Lady J like the plague, I had some distance to get my stuff done.

 

I managed to win all 3 games. As for my conclusions, the + to initiative is golden, but haven't really gotten much use out of Pull of the Void outside of giving Fast to my models. The Tara taxi is still very lethal, but it is risky because of a the all your eggs in one basket syndrome. I'm also noticing that I'm passing on her theme pieces except Death Marhals, though I didn't use night wretches mostly because I really didn't need interactors as much as cheap distractions which is what night terrors excel at. The Nothing Best I didn't really miss one bit which saddens me and I could still give less then half a damn about Karina as seeing how my games went, she would have been wasted space on all of them.

 

I'm still a bit on the fence of feeling her though, the other masters just feel more interesting than her, she feels too much like a hodgepodge and tends to just be sort of there sometimes. I'm not saying she isn't powerful, but I'm not really sure I find her gameplay style that compelling.

[rythos42]

I played her with Toshiro the other day and had a blast. He can Focus or Fast friendly Minions for when Tara can't. Summoning with him is fun, dropping a 3 Wd Hard to Kill model on the table was nice. I brought the Malifaux Child for some HtK healing that frustrated my opponents, and a Death Marshall to bury.

 

I only did 1 DM, and I missed having the redundant backup.

 

And having at least one Void Wretch I find incredibly useful for if you need to get an important model out quick. Bury Tara with a DM, then heal+remove conditions (Poison 10...it was a multiplayer game against 2 McMourning crews. >.>).

[Ausplosions]

2 Mcmouurning crews and they only got you to poison 10? They were doing it wrong... ;-P

[rythos42]

One of them was skirting around the edge of the table...we were playing the Chronicles 11 3-player game, and he was trying to make us think he had the Wild Card to put Scheme Markers in my deployment zone...luckily I was busy with McM#1 in the center, so didn't fall for his clever gambit. >.> "being busy" == "being taken apart by Poison"...

[Matney X]

I hate to be a threadomancer (necro-threadomancer?), but I hate starting new threads where there are existing ones that suit my purposes.

With the two new upgrades for NB and Karina, how does Tara play as a Resser? Especially now that Karina isn't a terrible summoner?

[MudgeBlack]

I hate to be a threadomancer (necro-threadomancer?), but I hate starting new threads where there are existing ones that suit my purposes.

With the two new upgrades for NB and Karina, how does Tara play as a Resser? Especially now that Karina isn't a terrible summoner?

Yes, yes, Inquiring minds want to know.

[Fetid Strumpet]

She can't spend ss, so even if she isn't terrible she isn't very good at it.

[Sezar]

I have been playing a few games with ResserTara lately, specially interested on Karina:

 

My initial feelings were that it now rocked. Yeah, she can't SS the Crow in, but there is a midly broad selection of Horros to summon, so it didnt look that bad as I could easily summon 2-3 models per game with ease.

 

At first, it looked great! basically Karina was paying for herself sitting safely on the backside of the Crew... but then you realize that when Karina happens to summon something, it becomes a pseudo forced AP wasted on the first activation Tara gets on the next turn because that summoned Horror has no way to get back to the table unless you bought Obliteration Symbiote, so then you won't be able to bury anything else with Glimpse the Void, nor will be able to summon any other Horror with Karina

 

So then you are almost forced to unbury the now Slow Horror back to the table, which is not that bad, but you then need to have, or Stone, at least a 7+ Crow, exactly what you would need for Karina to summon another model in, all the while burning one of you Master's AP (ok, Tara uses to have a lot AP, but still this is an almost forced one).

 

Still, if you accept the AP  and Crows sink, Karina is now 100% better as she was previously, and I guess she is now a legit option on Tara's arsenal. Not an autotake by any means, but if she manages to summon at least 1 cool Punk or Student in (which she should have at least the chance in 5 turns), then she could turn to be a worthly investment.

 

 

Unfortunately, I never felt like using the Nothing Beast, as for its price, there are a lot of other monsters at Tara's disposal, specially the Dead Rider and Rogue Necromancy, which I feel are stronger overall.

[Matney X]

The Nix trick works well, on paper, for Outcast Tara -- take Nix, give the summoned creature Fast, and it dies at the end of the turn.

Is there anything like that in the Resser arsenal?

[PraetorDragoon]

Sebastian with "Those are not ours!" Might do the trick in that way. It gives him a (0) that requires you to sacrifice an undead for a card & SS. Something like this might work the way you want it to. Use Karina to summon something, then sac it with Sebas to draw cards. 

[Sezar]

Ummm, quite awesome ideas there... I don't like the idea to hire additional models to make Karina work, but that might actually help!

[Matney X]

Sacrificing doesn't drop corpse counters, right?

[Ausplosions]

Right.

[PeregrineFalcon]

 

Unfortunately, I never felt like using the Nothing Beast, as for its price, there are a lot of other monsters at Tara's disposal, specially the Dead Rider and Rogue Necromancy, which I feel are stronger overall.

 

Very much disagree. He was great before, but now with (0) Void Shield he is nearly unstoppable if played right. 2/5/7 Ca attack with Casting Expert is amazing. Rogue Necro is good and so is Dead Rider, but they server VERY VERY VERY different roles. Nothing Beast is an early game killing machine and can now last even later into the game if played right. Further more, for 10ss he is quite well priced. 

 

Another tidbit, if you want to try something quite powerful.

 

Tara (Eternal Journey, Oblit Symb, Dead of Winter)

Hannah (Decaying Aura) 

Hanged

Death Marshall

Nothing Beast (Void Shield)

Then swap out with rest of ss based on schemes (Crooligans, Necros, Bete, etc.)

 

Hannah and Tara can both now copy Hanged Whispers from Beyond. Further more Hannah has Decaying Aura, so you can cast WFB at 10 Range and if its a master it can't use ss to damage prevent.

[Sevorin]

 You had me at "Hannah (Decaying Aura)"