General Guild Tactics / Help

[flip_my_joker]

I am having trouble with my guild crews, I'm fairly inexperienced, but have a general understanding of the games mechanics at an intimidate level. so activation order / out activating, playing to the strats / schemes. synergy in crew choice and good soulstone use.

however I have yet to come even close to not being beaten soundly in every game I play.

I'm missing something, every game im out activated, out manoeuvred and out gunned, figuratively. the people I play against are more experienced but not massively, we have all played other war games before

I need a guide / advice which looks specifically at (but generally from a guild pov) strats / scemes. movement tactics, set up and deployment. play styles, offensive / defensive. there are loads out which tell you how best to kill things - fine if I had anything left by turn 3/4 to kill with in the guild world of using 4/5 ap to lure / push something with the durability of a damp tissue into range to attack.

examples:

Perdita VS Pandora. teddys tied me up kill Fransisco disrtact my guys for VP turn 3 Pandora kills scheme runners with AOE. turn 4 ive been pinned fighting midfield while pandora can go anywhere with 4" def push dropping scheme markers. lose 9/3 as my remaining guys limp around trying to do schemes

McCabe VS Rasputina. wall of gamin / golums. death by blast markers. Cant get past them to raspy, cant Melee as it ends your activation, cant outshoot raspy. scheme runners shot apart

McCabe VS Nico. out activated swamped & pinned in place Punk Zombies with flurry / Fast ++ to attack flips from Nico / Toshiro, scheme runners die to shikomi

[Adran]

I'm not sure there is an easy answer without actually watching you play.

So much depends on yuor model selection, the stratergy and schemes, the board and what your opponent brings. There si a podcast, " Before we begin" that looks at everything before Turn 1, and how all those choices will affect the game. They easily get an hour or so each time looking at what they picked and why, without ever getting as far as starting the game.

 

A few quick points from what you have said that spring to mind include:-

 

Out activation. If you don't want to be out activated, hire more cheap models. There is a quality vs quantity, but the guild has a solid range of relatively cheap models.

 

Sub Zero Trigger. If you know you are only going to get 1 shot against a model, then make it your last shot. Either use your other AP to Focus or go defensive stance.

There are several guild models that can easily one shot a gamin if they get a positive flip to damage. And even if you don't kill it, if you are engaged with the model she can't cast Ice mirrors through the model. Or just shoot gamin.

 

Blasts. Don't clump up. Rasputina has a much lower damage output if each attack can only hurt one of your models.

 

If you are going against a ranged crew, use cover. Pick what you want each model to do, and get it doing that.

Its hard work for Nicodem and Toshiro to get to you and then summon unless you go to him as well. There is some degree of you not being able to avoid cwertain areas, but you can try and make things as hard as possible.

 

Each of your examples is what I would be hoping my crew was doing if I was the opponent, and what I would hope my crew wasn't doing if I was you.

For example, If I was Perdita, I would want her to kill Teddy pretty early. She can probably do it in close combat very easily, so one thing might have been to bait Tedduy into attack somethign of yours, and then use her Mobility to get 3 attacks against him, with her built in Critical strike and a sh much higher than Teddys Df, she should very easily kill Teddy in 1 activation, doing 4 or so damage an attack.

 

Pull my finger is also a good resource, but without knowign where you are goign wrong, its really hard to say where to go right.

Prehaps if you swap crews with your opponent, and see how they use your crew, and how that differs to how you use it.

[flip_my_joker]

its funny you mention swapping crews. its been mentioned several times but we have never had time.

I do find myself clumped up. this has been my downfall a few times. perdita I find clumps alor with the relocate / Fransisco B2B push, Shackled from the cherub. Papas 2"hold this etc. popossibly a bad choice of crew vs Pandora or Blasts.

Perdy did indeed pull a tedy apart in turn 2/3 it would have happened in one turn but alas black joker on damage flip for attack 3 but again teddy took her out of the game for two turns so he did his job tarpiting

ill definitely look up the podcast. I just want a clue as to how I'm supposed to get guild to work in any way at all ive done the pull my finger trawl. ive read a million ways of killing things, never got one to work with Sonia / Perdita / McCabe or LJ. they usually do something but mostly end up dead or tied up all game.

it would be cool if there was a list of strats / schemes and synergies / tricks for acheiving them. this always seems to be second in consideration to killing stuff

[Michaud]

Try this - instead of building a crew to kill, only think about selecting models to achieve your schemes and strategies.

In game, instead of always looking to kill, spend your AP on ways to get you VP.  Sometimes this will be killing, and sometimes it won't.  Be ruthless in only performing actions that get you closer to scoring VPs.

 

Something I've been doing recently is just reading my cards.  Trying to find synergies between models.

 

Flip up a scheme and strat pool for games, and pick a crew for those.  Practice your crew selection.  How would you use the models selected to achieve your schemes and strategies?

 

 

Malifaux is a very different game than most other wargames, a lot of the experience from other games doesn't transfer.  I say this as a newbie to the game myself.

[Ludvig]

I need a guide / advice which looks specifically at (but generally from a guild pov) strats / scemes. movement tactics, set up and deployment. play styles, offensive / defensive. there are loads out which tell you how best to kill things - fine if I had anything left by turn 3/4 to kill with in the guild world of using 4/5 ap to lure / push something with the durability of a damp tissue into range to attack.

examples:

Perdita VS Pandora. teddys tied me up kill Fransisco disrtact my guys for VP turn 3 Pandora kills scheme runners with AOE. turn 4 ive been pinned fighting midfield while pandora can go anywhere with 4" def push dropping scheme markers. lose 9/3 as my remaining guys limp around trying to do schemes

McCabe VS Rasputina. wall of gamin / golums. death by blast markers. Cant get past them to raspy, cant Melee as it ends your activation, cant outshoot raspy. scheme runners shot apart

McCabe VS Nico. out activated swamped & pinned in place Punk Zombies with flurry / Fast ++ to attack flips from Nico / Toshiro, scheme runners die to shikomi

 

It would really help to know the schemes you flipped to choose from  and which ones you chose. 

 

After struggling initially to get to graps with the game I can try to give you a few pointers. A lot of the games where I killed more models than my opponent ended in horrible losses which is a very important lesson. Myself I'm still lucky to get a draw but mostly just lose by a single point at this stage so I'm no tactical expert but some thoughts from me:

 

(I realized the first part is very McCabe-centered upon reviewing)

 

With McCabe you can use Luna and 3-4 hounds to succeed in any marker-based scheme or severely outactivate the enemy to control where you fight. On most reasonable boards you can stash away your hounds halfway upfield and just outactivate as pleased, then you run them 14" (extra walk from Luna) each to where they need to be in preparation for the last two turns. Add to that that Cabe himself can push any model 8" by giving it two upgrades for his (0) action and I don't think the slow beaters are so slow. On the subject of McCabe you can use hounds or wastrels with the glowing sabre for insane damage missiles if you need something dead. Enemy scheme-markes make hounds very happy to be able to walk 7 and then (1) charge for 16" of threat from out of LoS before activating! McCabe also has a ridiculous threat range himself.

 

Against Rasputina (I know you can't know beforehand who you face but you can sometimes guess) you can just stack up on riflemen or other high damaging stuff that shoots further than her and take out her mirrors. If you deck out with Dashel you can walk for 1 ap, focus for a zero and also get + to the attack flip within 12", that makes riflemen pretty mean even against someone in cover. Remember to out-acticate with hounds so the enemy must walk up before you activate your own paper dragons. You can also throw in an executioner whenever you think someone is gonna have any sort of annoying def triggers. The executioner has the added bonus of making enemy scheme-markers deadly. If he has 2 markers within double walk distance +3 (11") (or 19" with McCabes pushes) the executioner can walk up and then (0) for double attacks (with trigger suit) and the added bonus of screwing the enemy out of 2 scheme markers.

 

The Judge can get unrelenting leader to make others take actions instead of him (for example a wastrel with the sabre ignoring armour, HTW and HTK and making 3/5/6 dmg by discarding any low card and drawing a new one) and having + to the attack from being close to McCabe with promises. This setup can work wonders in Turf War for example but also against "end activation" since the model isn't activating. Also note that Ruthless ignores Wp duels from models that could otherwise be hard to target.

 

Feeding Teddy one hound per turn and having him distracted/cursed object-ed for the entire game is very VP efficient use of hounds instead of using your master to actually try to hurt him. 

 

If you can't outshoot Raspy or are having toruble with any cast-heavy crew you can always try using Sonnia. Take the "no triggers on casts" and "- on all casts when close to witch-hunters". Kill a few gamin, turn 'em into witchlings, get the witchlings close to anyone with a ca-attack, profit! With a handler in the mix witchlings also run schemes pretty decently.

 

 

Perhaps the best tip to evolve your game is to try not to kill anything all game and take interact-schemes. Take a few models with slow/paralyze and lots of dudes and just distract+defstance in melee-range of your enemies and watch them try to solve the problem. Lucius is really funny with this. He and his totem makes the worst enemy hitters (preferably with low def stats) have double negatives on any attacks against minions or mimics (which happens to be your entire crew!).

 

Using the lawyer to make otherwise puny models with decent defence stats Hard to Kill is also nice in a max-scheme-setup. The lawyer can also be used to make your paper dragons a bit more resilient, again with McCabes armour thrown out you have armour + hard to wound on a model really not supposed to be that tough which can be nice.

 

Really sorry for the wall of text, I hope you got anything useful to try out of this!

[Dirial]

Try this - instead of building a crew to kill, only think about selecting models to achieve your schemes and strategies.

In game, instead of always looking to kill, spend your AP on ways to get you VP.  Sometimes this will be killing, and sometimes it won't.  Be ruthless in only performing actions that get you closer to scoring VPs.

 

Something I've been doing recently is just reading my cards.  Trying to find synergies between models.

 

Flip up a scheme and strat pool for games, and pick a crew for those.  Practice your crew selection.  How would you use the models selected to achieve your schemes and strategies?

 

 

Malifaux is a very different game than most other wargames, a lot of the experience from other games doesn't transfer.  I say this as a newbie to the game myself.

 

This really is the best advice you can get as far as general tactics go. All other pointers have to be about specific Schemes or models, there is no real way around it.

[ArcticPangolin]

Nice advice on using Unrelenting Leader Ludvig!

 

It sounds like your opponents have quickly adapted to their factions    Everyone here has given some solid advice, and I'd probably say the best is to just build for the strat/schemes.

 

I seem to struggle against Arcanists in general and have taken to auto-reaching for Sonnia when they're announced. dgraz had a suggestion which has worked really well for me, which is to bring along Papa Loco and a Death Marshall, give Papa's Take This! bonus of    to damage flips to Sonnia then Pine Box him. It usually means straight or positive flips for Sonnia's damage (including on her Reflect Magic trigger), and if you've got   for Sonnia's Pyroblast and/or have the Witchlng Handler's (0) Burn Them, Burn Them All! up then that's also a lot of Burning for Reincarnation profit. Plus, if Frame for Murder is available, it's just plain cool unboxing a Framed Papa in the middle of their crew on turn 3 (possibly after having declared a charge with the Death Marshall who attempts to Pine Box their target) as he's a high-profile target. I also love the Brutal Effigy with Sonnia as she can get use from its (0) Fear Not the Sword with her blasts too.

[Math Mathonwy]

McMourning is also nasty against Arcanists. Precise and Poison ignore Armor. Precise Austringers make those high-Armor, low-wound count Arcanist Constructs cry viscous, oily tears.

[flip_my_joker]

I think id like to start another post and re think my question. im understanding more and more my errors and where I need to improve. strats / schemes.

I looked at them again last night and tried to group them. distract / deliver a message / cursed object for example all require interaction with enemy modles. while power ritual outflank and brakethrough all need high mobility and dropping scheme markers. protect territory and entourage need defensive play etc

it would be awesome to see this sort of list / grouping expanded by people with more experience and say the top picks from Guild for achieving them. so McCabe / Luna / Badge of speed is ace for deliver a message or distract

[4thstringer]

I don't really play the same crews as you (mostly Lucius and Sonnia myself.). Through the Breach just had really good podcast segment detailing guild McCabe's strengths.

 

Generally the notes other people have made about what schemes you were doing are really important. 

 

The other thing you should try to do is pick which fights will help you achieve what you want to achieve.  You have a lot of movement/speed tricks with Jacob and Perdy.  Take advantage of those.

[rsteelrose]

Perdita is my favorite crew to take, she has such high mobility in her crew with all of the pushes and obeys that can be handed out. This is generally what I run in a 50ss game:

 

Perdita- 7 SS

-Trick Shooting

-Os Veo or Aura Ancestral

Enslaved Nephilim

Francisco

-Wade In

-Diestro

Niño

-Hair Trigger

Abuela

–Tormento de Plomo(Optional)

Pistolero

Pistolero

 

I generally don't run Papa as he can be unpredictable, possibly doing more damage to my crew than my opponents. I usually use Perdita, Francisco & Nino together put pressure on the opponent. Francisco getting into base contact with any big melee beatsticks and using Finesse to give opponents  in ML against him, then shooting them to bits with Nino and Perdita(they'll be at a DF   if their engaged by Francisco with Diestro). I easily blew up a Teddy the other day using this very tactic. I then use Abuela and the Pistoleros for objective grabbers. Using the pistoleros to push Abuela with a (0) and then Abuela pushing one of them each turn with her (0). Plus, if my opponent comes after Abuela & co. they're not slouches themselves when it comes to combat, especially if you can activate them after your opponent activates his models with the pistoleros abilities. I can also send the nephilim along with either group, although he'll usually be a bit behind either group due to his slow WK.