Ironsides: Hero or Zero?

[dgraz]

And sure there are situations when free focus is very good, e.g. if you are having a ranged battle with both crews being in cover. But that is not something that happens that often, in most situations focus just makes attacks a little better. And really, on a relatively flat track (e.g. 2/3/4 or 4/5/6)  to damage has a pretty negligible effect,

  

This. The step from  to neutral is by far the most significant. So if you are doing a fire line HPM is more powerful as cover is much more common than things like Yin | Mass of Viscera that gives  to melee attacks.

These statements are at odds......you seem to make very light of HPM throughout...so far as saying it "has a pretty negligible effect", but you agree with Kadeton about it being an "enormous tactical advantage".

Being the worst Arcanist (maybe even worst in the game) do make her a zero in my opinion. Fortunately in Malifaux being the worst doesn't mean unplayable.

Ironsides is one of the new masters...she doesn't even have a crew yet....been out on paper for less than a year....how many times have you played her to come to the conclusion that she is the worst master in the game? Personally I think it's far, far too early to make any claims like that.

[Dirial]

Personally I think it's far, far too early to make any claims like that.

 

Is this the wrong moment to say that I think Perdita is the worst Master in Guild and needs a serious buff?

[dgraz]

Is this the wrong moment to say that I think Perdita is the worst Master in Guild and needs a serious buff?

Yes....for two reasons:

1. This is a thread about Toni.

2. Everyone would just laugh at you.

I would hate to see you get your feelings hurt.

[Dirial]

Yes....for two reasons:

1. This is a thread about Toni.

2. Everyone would just laugh at you.

I would hate to see you get your feelings hurt.

 

[AverageGatsby]

I have played against Toni 6 or 7 times and have been fairly underwhelmed with certain aspects of her thus far. Her aura is amazing and provides one of the most synergetic interactions with M&SU out there. Many models can utilize this, gunmages can get fast from various sources like Mouse, and can turn into powerhouses, though many of these interactions can be card intensive as mentioned previously.

 

Adrenaline definitely is a neat idea, but just isn't potent enough. When testing her, we even tried to get a best case scenario, where a swarm of piglets were caught in her Aura, and she was doing a good job with board control, but even sitting on a bunch of adrenaline she did little more that tie down a section of the board. 

 

I think that her Df trigger should either be built in or at the least be when she is hit, rather than when she takes damage. As written it is so specific that it is to hard to be relied on. It would also be nice if she could camp on adrenaline without using it to heal each turn. 

[D_acolyte]

I am going to try her with performers and try to bring the enemy to her.

[Bengt]

  

These statements are at odds......you seem to make very light of HPM throughout...so far as saying it "has a pretty negligible effect", but you agree with Kadeton about it being an "enormous tactical advantage".

Ironsides is one of the new masters...she doesn't even have a crew yet....been out on paper for less than a year....how many times have you played her to come to the conclusion that she is the worst master in the game? Personally I think it's far, far too early to make any claims like that.

What I called negligible was getting  on a fairly flat damage track (e.g. 2/3/4), only that, please don't put words in my mouth. Being able to cheat the attack is very good, I don't care much if I can cheat a flat damage track. HPM will only occasionally turn a non cheatable attack into a cheatable one, the most common being shooting into cover, there are a lot less situations where you get  to  attacks. I certainly think HPM is good, even great in some situations, but with the hoops you need to jump though to get the HPM bonus I don't think HPM is "hideously powerful" or "doubles your AP".

 

I haven't played her at all, I don't have the models... I wrote "maybe worst in the game", it's not a conclusion, merely a hypothesis. I certainly hope she is better than she looks on paper, because I like the soft aspects.

[binkys]

<snip>and she was doing a good job with board control, but even sitting on a bunch of adrenaline she did little more that tie down a section of the board. 

 

I think that her Df trigger should either be built in or at the least be when she is hit, rather than when she takes damage. As written it is so specific that it is to hard to be relied on. It would also be nice if she could camp on adrenaline without using it to heal each turn. 

 

Don't underestimate the power of controlling a section of the board, especially with mages pushes and You lookin' at me to drag more models into that tarpit.  If your opponents crew is tied up in a small section of the board with Ironsides, it opens up for some rather massive damage if you have anything that can put blasts out,  or just leaves the rest of your crew free to drop markers all over the board.

 

I had been playing Ironsides with Challenge the Crowd, Iron Determination, and Warding runes.  My goal is typically to tie up as much of the enemy crew as possible turn 1 or 2.   Usually I burn through a full cache of 7 soulstones in 2 turns with prevention flips and adding the tome to her defense, but in doing so, I drop a bit of a hurting on my opponents crew(With the help of the stones for prevention, usually more damage to them than I'd taken).  Then when necessary, I'll activate,  regen thanks to Blood Rune being nearby, and burn all my adrenaline to heal up if needed.  If that isn't needed, then I'll try to chain some attacks.

 

In the meantime, 5+ models are walking around doing schemes, or possibly shooting into the scrum since with the number of models i'm flipping randomization for its unlikely I'll be hitting ironsides.

 

Does Ironsides survive the game?  Not usually, but that isn't very important.  What is important is she bought me the time to do what needed to be done and interfered with my opponent doing what they needed to do.(Short of assassinating her, in which case if that's in the pool I'll play slightly differently.)

[Jordon]

I view Ironsides as an opportunist and treat her as such. I don't think the adrenaline mechanic was designed to turn her into combat monster but more as a resource to offer extra flexibility. If you focus strictly on maximizing adrenaline then your only serving to strangle Ironsides biggest advantage - her flexibility. 

 

I treat adrenaline like pseudo AP that I can bank. I'm of the philosophy of it's better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it. Adrenaline is a very flexible resource that can do three things - extra attacks, healing, or repositioning. I tend to try and sit on adrenaline rather then look for ways to blow it all in one go. How many games have you played where if you just had that one extra attack or need that little bit of healing or your short just those few inches. I know I certainly have in almost every game I've played.

 

Knowing when to use adrenaline is the best way to succeed with Toni. Trying to look for ways into gaining vast amounts and subsequently burning vast amounts tends to pigeon hole her into a role she doesn't particularly excel at. 

[dgraz]

please don't put words in my mouth. 

I quoted you.

 

You're right, you did say "maybe the worst in the game" so I'm sorry about that....but you did say "being the worst Arcanist"....and I was wondering what experience you had to come to that conclusion.

Please don't be offended, I was merely trying to understand what you meant because the two seemingly different statements confused me.

[Bengt]

You're right, you did say "maybe the worst in the game" so I'm sorry about that....but you did say "being the worst Arcanist"....and I was wondering what experience you had to come to that conclusion.

Well she is officially the worst Master, no one else have a cache of 5. Of course several Masters have suspect caches, but I don't think it's unreasonable to take the printed value as a starting point to be (hypothetically) proven wrong by experience, as opposed to assuming it's wrong.

[Jordon]

Well she is officially the worst Master, no one else have a cache of 5. Of course several Masters have suspect caches, but I don't think it's unreasonable to take the printed value as a starting point to be (hypothetically) proven wrong by experience, as opposed to assuming it's wrong.

 

 

I certainly don't agree with tagging her as the worst master. Especially since she hasn't even been officially released yet and so many people have not given her a chance to shine. I still stand by the belief that Hand Picked Men is probably the strongest passive aura buff in the entire game and until you see it in action you cannot truly see how brutal she can actually be. 

 

I don't think her starting cache should be looked as a way of compensating for her "lacklustre" abilities. It's a resource that again offers her a greater deal of flexibility. It really allows her to maximize her crew and still retain a healthy cache, giving her the flexibility to take on a multitude of roles. 

 

No doubt she is not a strait forward master and I would expect many people to struggle with her for a good many games before figuring out her strengths, but I think that only serves to make her interesting and all the more rewarding once you actually do so. She has a good many answers to a good many situations and an experienced player will have no problem achieving success with her. 

 

Thats just my 2 cents though.

[Bengt]

 

I certainly don't agree with tagging her as the worst master. Especially since she hasn't even been officially released yet and so many people have not given her a chance to shine. I still stand by the belief that Hand Picked Men is probably the strongest passive aura buff in the entire game and until you see it in action you cannot truly see how brutal she can actually be. 

Because it "doubles everyone's AP"?

 

I don't think her starting cache should be looked as a way of compensating for her "lacklustre" abilities. It's a resource that again offers her a greater deal of flexibility. It really allows her to maximize her crew and still retain a healthy cache, giving her the flexibility to take on a multitude of roles. 

Compensation is exactly what the cache is, it's used to equalise different Masters, e.g. Perdita is worth 3 SS more than Ironsides. And I disagree strongly with the notion that a high cache makes you flexible, in fact I would argue the opposite. The cache SS are looked in, the low cache Masters gives you the option to either spend SS on crew or SS pool. With poor Ironside you not only have a less valuable Master, you are also forced to take a large cache. If you had the option to spend your cache I think it would be an effective equaliser, but currently it's a half hearted booby price at best.

 

No doubt she is not a strait forward master and I would expect many people to struggle with her for a good many games before figuring out her strengths, but I think that only serves to make her interesting and all the more rewarding once you actually do so. She has a good many answers to a good many situations and an experienced player will have no problem achieving success with her. 

I think she is weak, not boring. As I said earlier I'm going to get her and I wouldn't do that unless I thought she would be fun to play. A Master doesn't have to be strong to be interesting in my opinion, indeed being the underdog gives a little extra spice.

[Fog]

I think she's vastly underrated. I've played only a handful of games with her, but I find giving a CA 7 charge speed lure (with a repeat trigger) to a model that gains benefits from being attacked, has a ML 7 + disengaging strike, an aura that draws fire and forces movement towards her, gains adrenaline from starting in melee, is immune to conditions, and has significant sources of healing available is an absolutely monstrous form of board control. The rest of your team can spend all day taking care of objectives, Toni will just hang out in the middle of the board and take the enemy team to the face.

When I read her card at first I was very underwhelmed. She's just putting this giant target over her head and she needs to take damage for her defense trigger to go off, her damage is lackluster, she doesn't seem to be able to hand out the pain... And she doesn't. Every time I've played her she's been in the middle of a huge scrum just standing there, like a magnet. Anything that comes too close gets yanked into the black hole.

That's enough, though. If your master is denying three or four models their activations, that'll win a game. If they're spending other models activations from outside the mess trying to break it up? Even better.

Just watch out for deliver a message.

[Parker Barrows]

So.... I was planning on painting a bunch of Gremlins, but now I kinda wanna to paint Ironsides and get her ready to play.

[katadder]

have had her hand out loads of damage when got her upto 6 adrenaline. kill mcmourning, then trigger to go flying off into the rest of his crew handing out the smack downs.

if you can get the combos off with jabs and uppercuts her damage off even 1AP can be horrendus (assuming you have the adrenaline). as long as you trigger into the uppercut and hit with that you auto trigger back to jabs.

[madaxeman]

Just watch out for deliver a message.

 

Isn't a "message" an enemy-inflicted condition ... which she can be made immune to by one of the Mage's abilities? 

[Dirial]

Isn't a "message" an enemy-inflicted condition ... which she can be made immune to by one of the Mage's abilities? 

 

No, it's not. Interact action, but no condition.

[Durza]

You're probably thinking of Distract and Cursed Object.

[madaxeman]

No, it's not. Interact action, but no condition.

 

aaaah - Distract is the condition one that the Mages can make her immune to, sorry.. 

[Ampers&nd]

Deliver a Message is almost guaranteed Vs Ironsides unless she plays it very cagey indeed, I've yet to not lose 3 points to that one.

[melkore]

I'm a newer player and just played my first game with her against Molly. It was a lot of fun punching through her army to get to Molly with a stack of 8 adrenaline.  I like the idea of sling-shotting her with the Captain (and Mouse) into a group of models to tie them up and let her start punching through the front line.  With the push, lasso and her 0 action she can fly across the board if you need her to. With the Mages supporting her in the back she can be pretty safe face tanking.  I also used the Captain to keep her safe behind the wind wall until I was ready to wade into battle.  

 

Taking plant explosives with her was a pretty easy way to get 3 pts since I want to be up close and personal with multiple models.

 

I am looking forward to checking out the buring side of Toni with her molotovs, gunsmith and Rail Golem.  I also want to build a super fast scheme running list and use Toni to hold enemies in place while arachnids or other models run around causing havoc.

[ierthling]

I had my first really great game with Ironsides today, after three or four so-so attempts. I took her in Reckoning with Howard Langston, Joss, Captain, and two Gunsmiths. Between the Captain's pushes (with low rams cheated in on df) and some handy pings of gunfire from my Guild enemy early on, those Gunsmiths basically had fast and Hand Picked going the whole game. Joss and Hank with Hand Picked Men are just horrible. A big scrum developed on one side of the board involving Toni, Hank, Joss vs. Francisco, Santiago, Sidir, and McCabe, and that was when Toni really shone. Hank and Joss softened everybody up, and then she had so many attacks off her Adrenaline when she activated, it was just beautiful. An uppercut killed Sidir, then the free Brass Knuckles I got off that killed Santiago, and then she repositioned and punched McCabe a bunch. One of the Gunsmiths charged a nearby Executioner and just melted right through him, and the other shot Nino off the side of a building. After that it was just cleanup - Hank flurried Francisco into oblivion, and Toni herself polished off both McCabes. Tabled my opponent at the top of turn 5 for a 7-0 victory. I'm sure the mages still have their place, but I was really thrilled by how well the Gunsmiths fit into Toni's crew, and holy mother of god Hank with +flips to attack and damage is just awful. I have to say, at first I thought maybe Toni was a zero, but my vote is now firmly on the hero side.

[Fog]

Took second place tonight at the qualifier at CaptainCon tonight using Toni 3/4 rounds.

She's super legit guys.

[Kadeton]

Nice result, well done! Any highlights to share, memorable plays?