Levy's Master Recycling Campaign 2015

[Kadeton]

Masters using damage prevention to avoid dying when you trigger for an Abomination is exactly what I expected to see when you started this challenge - Levy has a fantastic trigger which stops damage prevention and kills Masters in no time flat, but you have to give up the opportunity to recycle them in order to kill them.

 

(Like Godlyness, I was surprised when Sonnia didn't have Counterspell Aura in your report - it's one of the most powerful upgrades in the game for defense, so not taking it when Assassination is in the pool seems inexplicable.)

 

Nice work spreading the Word of Leveticus to the masses, though.

[SpectreEliteGaming]

Resser faction masters are very hard to assassinate - aside from a blatant screw-up it will be hard to pull them off. I've been reading up on and hearing a lot about Molly (especially from both Cheated Fates and MWM podcasts) and I am really starting to want to go over to the darkside of Malifaux for a bit. Molly sounds aweeeeeesoooome. Drop a punk in the face and get Belle'd around sounds like a ton of fun.

I think the biggest problem with this game is that evey faction is awesome and every master is awesome and every awesome playstyle is mostly accounted for in some way and you just want to play every single one but could never have the time to do so. :/

Is that a problem?

Been splitting my time between Zoraida and Levy lately - no abom masters to report yet and I've been focusing so much on researching and table time for Adepticon I haven't been goofing around much with my games.

[jonahmaul]

I think I need to start my own recycling campaign with McMourning.  Played in my first tournament yesterday and made myself a Ramos Flesh Construct!

[valhallan42nd]

If you're willing to get Levi in close combat, you might consider path of Bone, and a crap ton of Canine remains to lower defense/stop master pushes. For the lulz. "I'm perdita, Defense 9!" Five dogs later...

[Nicodem Returned]

Put me down for Jacob Lynch and Von Schill.

[Hateful Darkblack]

Put me down for Jacob Lynch and Von Schill.

 

Any notes on how it went down?

[tomjoad]

I had a tournament today, three rounds, and Assassinate only came up once. I was against Resurrectionists, but luckily it was McMourning (so no pesky Impossible to Wound to foil my plans). On turn three, after getting very close in order to Expunge Lazarus to death the turn before, my opponent won initiative and decided that the good doctor should charge Leveticus. He ended up doing 4 points of damage, so I wasn't able to channel for every attack, but between burning stones and flipping a red joker on one attack flip, I managed to hit severe damage twice, and ol' McMourning fell to the ground, with a gross chainsaw-armed Abomination crawling out of his skin.

[Hateful Darkblack]

I had a tournament last weekend. Three rounds, Assassinate came up first and third game.

 

First Game: Facing Perdita. She's hard for Levy to Assassinate! With Francisco by her side, she's rockin' a +2 Wp up to 9, which is hard to Unmake. So I killed Francisco first, of course, which helped. Lazarus took an Auto Fire against Perdita while she had "Faster n' You" up, which took away half of her Wd but nearly killed Lazarus in the process, and then she finished off Lazarus. Then I had a Hollow Waif kill a Witchling Stalker near her, which did another 2 damage (1 direct, 1 for the burning). On Turn Three (which was the last turn because Tournaments are like that), I had Levy do some unmaking attacks, but she managed to hold on to her last Wd and survived.

Assasinate: Failed

Recycle into Abomination: Failed.

Win Match: Succeeded. (5-0)

 

Third Game: Facing Seamus. This was the top-table match against one of the stronger players around, Chad, and he's beaten me with Seamus before in the top table. He makes great use of cover, picks objectives well, and catches me by surprise a lot. Wp 7 and Impossible To Wound plus healing makes for a durable master. Turn Three, Levy popped up with a perfect attack with no cover, but Seamus focused and killed him with a single shot before I could go. "Not today, Levy!" I ended up killing Seamus with Ryle in Turn Five, enough to get two Assassinate VP, but didn't recycle because Levy wasn't the killer. My opponent was courteous and awesome and played quickly so we could reach Turn Five - he was beating me in Turn Four so that made a big difference.

Assassinate: Succeeded (2 VP).

Recycle into Abomination: Failed

Win Match: Succeeded (9-7)

[Hateful Darkblack]

OH! I never wrote up the Story Encounter from Califaux.

First and second matches, Assassinate wasn't on the table.

Third match I faced Seamus. Couldn't even get close to assassinating him and in fact he Assassinated Levy instead (for 2 VP by killing all Waifs). He also killed Ashes and Dust and nearly killed Mech Rider too. Strong player! He had this valley area where Seamus hung out behind a bunch of terrain and killed my waifs as I tried to bring them in. Fortunately, I managed to win the game anyway based on a summoned Metal Gamin taking full Protecting Territory and Dust Storm getting 2VP for the objective-running Strategy.
Assassinate: failed
Abomination Recycling: totally failed
Game: won 5-4.

Lessons learned: Don't send an Ashes & Dust in where it can get Lured away from the table edge. Don't let Waifs get close to Seamus, because killing young women who are hiding behind terrain his his primary job skills at the top of his resume. Do win on VP anyway. Seamus is also super hard for Levy to kill thanks to high damage, Impossible to Wound and a tendency to stay behind cover.

[Hateful Darkblack]

At Bay Area Open, I played three games, none of which had Assassinate in the pool, so no Recycling challenge.

 

At OFCC, I played five games. The last two had Assassinate in the pool.

 

Fourth Match I faced Kirai in Squatter's Rights. Leveticus managed to do a bunch of damage, then Ikiryo blocked the Waif from LOS with the Soulstone Miner I was using as the anchor, and Ikiryo + Kirai were able to kill Levy for good. However, thanks to a field full of Scrap and the Scramble Upgrade I was able to redploy Ashes and Dust to the other side of the board to kill Kirai on Turn Five. Kirai seems to have multiple layers of defense: Manipulative (so you gotta kill her late), a decent and surprisingly stubborn pool of wounds (so you gotta throw a lot of AP at it), the ability to shunt damage onto nearby spirits (so catch her when there aren't any around or kill them first), and her ability to summon an Ikiryo when hurt (so use melee attacks or attack when Ikiryo is already summoned.) I got full 4 VP for Squatter's Rights, 3 VP for another scheme (I think Delivery a Message?), and 2 VP for Assassinate. My opponent got 2 VP for Squatter's Rights, 3 VP for Bodyguard on Datsue-Ba, and 3 VP for another scheme (I think Deliver a Message?).

 

Assassinate: Succeeded! Ashes + Dust killed her in Turn 5 for 2 VP.

Abomination Recycling: Succeeded! Ashes + Dust did it, not Levy.

Game: Won 9-8.

 

Lessons learned: Kirai has a lot of wounds and a line of defense that involves a jumpscare monster. You need to be persistent when attacking her or you won't manage. Board control and quick redeploys go a long way.

 

Fifth Game (last game of the tournament), I faced a Perdita Crew and a very tough match. It was Stake a Claim and I ended up doing a lot of movement and Interact tricks all game to stay ahead. Ryle held off Perdita's gang, while a Soulstone Miner and Ashes + Dust dropped a bunch of Claim markers. I did manage to kill Perdita, but when I spent the Soulstone to summon an Abomination off killing Perdita, Perdita spent a Soulstone to prevent some damage and I had to finish her off without recycling. I managed to split up Ashes and Dust to put a Dust Storm in his Watcher's face to stop last-turn Scheme Marker scrambling, which made a huge and final difference. Perdita didn't stick too close to Francisco this game, and I was eventually able to kill Francisco with Ryle, which probably made killing Perdita much much easier. Perdita's main defense is her Wp 7 Df 7 (9 and 9 if helped by Francisco), so it's powerful when you have the good cards to overcome it.

 

Assassinate: Succeeded for full VP.

Abomination Recycling: Close, but not.

Game: Won 9-4 I believe. I got 3 VP for Stake a Claim (he stopped me with tied Claim Markers one round), 3 VP for Assassinate, and 3 VP for Breakthrough. Opponent got 0 VP for Stake a Claim, 3 VP for Plant Evidence, but only 1 VP for Breakthrough.

 

Lessons learned: Have a plan for where you want to fight the enemy and what you want to be doing elsewhere while that's happening. At the same time, be prepared to improvise for a lot of adaptive movement tricks.

[Bengt]

Regarding Kirai, since when is 10 wounds a lot for a Master? Average for all the Masters is ~11 and median is 12.

[Kadeton]

10 Wds plus the combined Wds of all the Spirits within 2" is often quite a lot, though.

[jonahmaul]

10 Wds plus the combined Wds of all the Spirits within 2" is often quite a lot, though.

The way that it is written is that 10 wounds is a lot in it's own as the ability to pass wounds off and manipulative are mentioned separately.

[Hateful Darkblack]

Yeah, fair enough. Changed it to "a decent and surprisingly stubborn pool of wounds."

[Hateful Darkblack]

At Celesticon, I played three games. Only the second had Assasinate in the pool.

I played against Ten Thunders Misaki with an old friend. It was a Turf War match. Misaki actually charged Ryle nearby, and spent all his Soulstones to get the Assassinate trigger twice against Ryle. I burned two Soulstones and then two cards to keep Ryle alive, then Leveticus Charged Misaki with a Channel on the Charge. I had good cards in my hand and was able to cheat in the Joker for damage on the last swing, killing her. What's more, I got the trigger and successfully recycled her! Misaki's main defenses were a really high Wp stat, positive twists on Df when she's out of soulstones, and a really high Df stat. And, of course, just killing things. Her main weakness was that she gets rid of her soulstones quickly, leaving herself vulnerable to attacks.

The Scheme pool was weird in this one because the only scheme marker scheme was LITS. Schemes were Distract, Cursed Object, Assassinate, Vendetta, and LITS. The game was also notable in that I came close to making a Desolation Engine in play, though I decided to finish out schemes instead.

Assassinate: Succeeded! Got full VP for Assassinating Misaki on turn two.

Abomination Recycling: Success!

Game: Won 9-5! I got 3 for Turf War (the game only went to turn four), 3 for Assassinate, and 3 for Cursed Object. Misaki got 2 for Turf War and 3 for Distract.

Lessons Learned: It's really a good idea to take Distract or Cursed Object in Turf War, since enemies will bunch up. If your opponent wants to put effort into killing Ashes & Dust for good, let them if there's no VP riding on it -- but fight back enough to waste their resources while doing it.