Arcanists against Ressers: How to?

[TychoTerziev]

One of my friends has started Ressers with a bang, so they will be on the menu for quite some time. The thing is that I am dreading playing against them. I have no problems against Seamus and McMourning. Yes, they can be quite nasty, but I find them challenging in a fun way. The dedicated summoners- that's what I am worried about and it is sucking the fun out of the game. I know that they should be balanced, there is evidence that's the case. The thing is that I am not seeing it on the table. This cognitive dissonance is driving me insane and sometimes I feel like I am on the verge of quitting the game. Malifaux is currently my favorite game and I am sure that my observation of summoning is wrong, so my only option is to grind my teeth, clench my fists, man up and start thinking about counters.

 

  I feel that Ironsides an Mei Feng can be good against those pesky Ressers-  Mei is immune to paralysis, have some synergy with burning , seems to go well with gunsmiths, have access to Kang and his sweet modifiers against undead and constructs, can destroy markers, Vent Steam can help against those nasty Ca actions and she tends to gravitate towards higher model count crews. Ironsides ,on the other hand, has better synergy with the Oxfordian Mages, can be protected against conditions, Hand Picked Men is insane on paper, loves playing against hordes and can be easily given Counterspell  , which messes Whispers From Beyond and Lure.

 

 As I write this, I realize that every Arcanist Matser has some edge over Rezzers- Marcus can alpha strike, which can be devastating against summoning crews , if pulled right; Rasputina is all about casting and her thematic crew is immune to paralysis; Ramos can churn spiders at an alarming rate; Colette is.... well,Colette. I am sure that Kaeris has some tricks up her sleeve too. I know we have the tools to smash the undead, I just can't make them click.

 

So, can you give me some advice on fighting the Ressers?  Some example crews would be awesome too!

[Whut]

I've actually still not faced Ressers to this day, but here is what I can tell you in theory and from what I've heard:

1) If you are concerned about lure, take Warding Runes. And preferably use a master that is similarly lure-proof (Raspy, Ramos, Ironsides, Mei) Specifically, take Joss. Ressers can do very little against a counter spell Joss. Kang is also brilliant. Cassandra with Warding Runes can go around scheming untouched for most of the game.

2) Against summoners, pressure them to drain their hand. If they're using high cards for Df flips, they're not using high cards to summon. Try to engage fast and engage hard (but don't overextend!). Don't leave them to power up.

3) Ressers tend to have low Df, low WP, but lots of Wd and H2W. This means focus on taking models with high minimum damage. For example, if you want a frontliner, don't take that Rail Worker, take the Metal Gamin with effective min damage 3. It's Ml4 will usually match the opponent's Df anyway. Cerberus and Howard basically won't miss.

4) December Acolytes are nice. They will shoot against low Df, drain cards, and can't be terrified. Also they can remove H2W in an AoE. Just be aware of lure.

5) Focus on strategy and schemes. Who cares if they outnumber you? Go for your VP! You will rarely, if ever out-attrition Ressers. Just try to keep them contained while you score.

Is there anything in particular that's bothering you?

[Adran]

I don't think there is a "Do this and you beat Faction X" button.

 

Summoning looks really powerful from the outside, but a lot of the summoners are actually distorting their game quite a lot to get that summoning to work.

Nicodem can spend a huge amount of time and effort to get enough corpses to do anything. (Mortimer and Corpse bloat is a common way to get corpses, but then you've spent 1/5th your stones on somethign that is larely there to help you summon, so they have that extra cost to make up before they are even breaking even).

Nicodem can have spent his whole turn (and Mortimers turn) summonign 3 models, using 3 good cards from his hand and also soem soul stones, and Rasputina can remove them all with 1 decembers curse. (I know thats quite an extreme example, and going to be quite rare to be that effective, but as a general rule she can probably kill a model as quickly as Nicodem can summon them, if not quicker)

 

Focus primarily on scoring, your points, and then on disrupting your opponents.

 

My personaly disuption approach is normally to engage the summoner asap and hit them really hard. If they are trying to defend against my attacks, they normally won't have the hand to summon as well.

[katadder]

Mei Feng is our hardest counter to ressers as with hard worker upgrade (usually on kang) you ignore almost everything they have defensively.

Joss is also useful carrying bleeding edge tech and having in built ignoring resser defences.

 

recent tourney game against a Nico player I got a 10-0 as I just pressured Nico and Mortimer with Kang and Joss, and with them having a  to casting there ended up no summoning.

 

my list:

Mei Feng

-Siesmic Claws

-Seize the day

-Vapormancy

Emberlin

Joss

-Bleeding Edge Tech

-Imbued Energies

Kang

-Hard Worker

-Imbued Energies

2 Metal Gamin

2 Rail Workers

[TychoTerziev]

Thanks guys! Your suggestions and tips are really helpful! Whut, what bothers me the most are The Hanged and Whispers from beyond. After playing against them I feel that me being scared by them is more impactful than their actual performance on the table. But still I find them difficult to play around.

[decker_cky]

Bring some condition remove (arcane effigy or johan) and Whispers from beyond is much less devastating. Bring some Ca actions or easy sources of burning and Hanged are surprisingly vulnerable. Hanged are a model, like many others that you have to respect and put down quickly to avoid them dominating the game.

[Whut]

Well the easiest way to deal with hanged is Frozen heart models, or Ca actions. Either the Oxfordian Mage or Silent One will make fairly short work of the hanged, considering their Df4 and only Wd7. If you don't like that, then the firestarter or Cassandra can do something similar, though not as effectively.

Don't be afraid of Whispers. People get so scared when they see "Half of your wounds!!!!" But in reality that will mean around 3 or 4 damage for most models. Sure thats scary, but it's really not THAT bad. In fact 9ss models that do 3-5 damage per attack are pretty commonplace. Arcanists don't rely on healing too much so the denial of healing doesn't hurt much either.

If you're playing the same opponent each game, I suggest taking up a Rasputina crew. One game of spamming horror duels against them and you'll be seeing much less of the hanged from then on.

[decker_cky]

Models near a hanged lose immunity to horror duels, but frozen heart is still great against those types of lists.

[valhallan42nd]

I find taking lots of small, easily killed living or undead minions that aren't constructs is the path to victory.*


*Yes, is the best advice.**

**Super serious, guyz***

***Okay, I might be a Ressur player

[Shadowfane]

Models near a hanged lose immunity to horror duels, but frozen heart is still great against those types of lists.

 

Just to clarify for the OP (not you, decker!) this is due to frozen heart ignoring paralysed as well - you fail the horror duel, but nothing happens since you can't be paralysed.

The only way the resser player gets anything out of this is if he has effects that go off when horror duels are failed - eg, Seamus healing from them, etc.

[benjoewoo]

I'm kind of cutting my own throat here, since I play Seamus, but like everyone's mentioned, models that do good minimum damage are tough, because Hard to Wound just makes it more likely you do weak, as opposed to negating damage--you obviously have a higher chance to flip a BJ, but a RJ could just as easily come up if neither are in your hand.

 

Like most resser match ups, you don't usually win the attrition war, because your dead models and my dead models generate corpse/scrap markers that I can turn into useful models for myself that same turn or next turn--most arcanist models generate one of the two, and depending on the master you will only generate corpse counters at times.

 

You want to attack quickly to prevent Nico from getting the summoning engine going--you'll likely start with 1 or 2 more models than him, but by the end of T1 if you haven't' put enough pressure on him he'll have equal or more models depending on the engagements and what upgrades he took to generate corpse counters. He'll likely have equal models if he just gets to sit there summoning--if he gets a good engagement then he'll have more models.

 

Molly summons spirits or horrors in addition to belles, depending on which upgrade she took, which can be tough, but if you don't bunch everyone together, then the summoned model doesn't come with a whole lot of wounds on it, so you can pick it off fairly easily. If Molly summons, she'll likely accomplice the summoned model since it'll be low wounds and not have a whole of time left in the game.

 

Kirai can summon spirits, and her spirit pool includes an enforcer that will come back to haunt you repeatedly, though from an ability rather than a summon action. Try not to lead off with attacks from weak models with Kirai nearby--Kirai has no range limit on the summon, and only requires LoS to where your model is when it attacks one of her friendly models. Ikiryo isn't super hard to kill, but she can really hurt your plans by spawning in engagement range and her attacks aren't bad by any means.

 

Watch out for Toshiro if you bring constructs--Toshiro can summon from corpse AND scrap markers, and he makes punk zombies stronger in addition to being a pretty decent fighter himself.

 

While not a summoner or a summoned minion, Bete Noir can be quite a problem. She's like Ikiryo, but can only pop up when a living/undead model is killed. Her melee attack is good, and it gets better with the triggers--she can trigger off any suit to boot. She's hard to kill unless you've got something that goes against a non-Df stat or have blast, but she can always avoid dying with a 10 in hand. 

 

I didn't mention Seamus or McMourning because you have the match up well in hand with a challenge, but the same concept applies, if not a little more strongly in those match ups because their summoning abilities are much more limited--which is made up by their personal abilities to kill as masters.

 

Key weakness to all of these guys: they require other models for them to really get going. Beat on them before they can summon too much and you stop the attrition war. This lets you fulfill the strategy and your schemes more easily when you're not watching 4 punk zombies shamble over and flurry you to death.

 

Games are won by VP, so you don't have to decisively stop the summoning--in fact you're unlikely to stop it entirely since some of the masters just don't have a better option. You just need to stop it enough to get your points and the other person gets fewer points than you.

 

Hope it helps and that ressers continue to present a challenge--you can always join us ressers. We keep our dead pretty ladies forever.

[Adran]

Thanks guys! Your suggestions and tips are really helpful! Whut, what bothers me the most are The Hanged and Whispers from beyond. After playing against them I feel that me being scared by them is more impactful than their actual performance on the table. But still I find them difficult to play around.

 

Whispers is scary for 2 things. Firstly, if you are currently on a high number of wounds, it really hurts. But what it is rubbish at is killing a model. So its a good first attack against a model, and then rapidly gets rubbish.

Secondly, if you rely on healing as your defense then it will scare you. Arcanists aren't the most healing reliant faction out there, most of the healing we do is probably regenerate, and whilst it can be annoying to lose that, we are also pretty good at condition removal.

 

My end advice is to take the hit on the chin, and see how much it effects you. Once you are in the middle of a game, Whispers is almost irrelevant at killing your models.

[bertmac]

Also I believe whispers only does 1 wound to rail workers as it does damage equal to half remaining wounds which is 2 at most and armour will reduce that to 1.

[TychoTerziev]

 Thanks again! My mind is put to rest, at least for now. Tomorrow I will play against Ressers again and will try Mei Feng with Gunsmith support ( I love those guys!). I really like the advice to take a hit on the chin- I think that I am too obsessed with winning and it is interfering with my ability to play adequately.

 

 Benjoewoo, thanks for you rundown! Actually, I started M2E as a Resser, but   Seamus bored me to tears. Every game I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over, so I got rid of him. Sometimes, I find myself thinking of starting Ressers again- I really love painting undead monstrosities and I love Kirai's and Molly's fluff. The thing is that I am not sure that I like the way they play. I've played some Menoth in WMH and I discovered that I am not a big fan of winning-the-attrition-war style of gameplay. The other thing is that I don't like to play summoners - the bookkeeping is too much for me.  The only dedicated summoner that I find fun is Ramos and I am not sure that he is a dedicated summoner at all. His bookkeeping is even more atrocious, but I find him very  fluffy, so it doesn't bother me. Who knows? Maybe I will start Ressers one day. For now I will stick to Arcanists- I really like their playstyle(s) , their model range and their flexibility.

[Whut]

Out of curiosity, what bookkeeping are you talking about? With Ramos all you have to remember is 5,8T,11TT for summoning 1/2/3 spiders, right? If you have the card with the suit, cheat. If you don't, use a soulstone and cheat. All you need is an 8 of any suit

[TychoTerziev]

 By bookkeeping I mean tracking the wounds on the summons and which one has activated. Typically, I have at least five Steam Arachnids at any given time with Ramos and it can get a bit confusing. I use the features on the base (the option that works best for me) to track which one is which , but when the things get  hectic It starts to get a bit cumbersome. 

[ttsgosadow]

You can use the bloodbowl mechanic, where you turn models that have activated already facing towards you, while models that can still activate are facing towards your opponent. That's an easy way to keep track of it!

 

On a more related note: love reading the discussion! Thanks for all the tips and tricks!

[Sybarite]

High weak damage models can really help. Like Howard Langston. Joss and Kang are of course great too. Rail golem likes ressers because of high weak damage and their usually low df.

[TychoTerziev]

Wow, my game against Nico was quite good! We had to call it a day near the end of the fifth turn, but I have completed Plant evidence and had enough ap and good position to fulfill Protect Territory quite comfortably. I was leading on Turf war by two points.

 

This was my third game with Mei Feng and the first two were quite underwhelming. This one....oh boy! Mei Feng was bouncing around , killing tons of undead and destroying heaps of corpse and scheme markers. I think that she should have cache of four, but otherwise she is fantastic and quite fun to play! The other mvp was the Oxfodian Mage- she almost single-handedly kept Izamu in check, keeping him slow and pushing him around. Nemesis Ward FTW! My favorite moment was when the Mage managed to push a metal gamin and Mei into position with two botched randomization flips against Izamu. Kang died to two flurrying Punk Zombies near Nico(!), but I am quite impressed with him, although I didn't play him very well. The Gunsmiths did a lot of heavy lifting (Bye bye Toshiro!), but that is expected. This was my first game with an Arcane Effigy and its condition removal was quite convenient.

 

The bottom line is that I had an enjoyable game against one of the masters that I feared the most, I have a new favorite master  and my fears are put to rest. Which reminds me that this was my second game against Nicodem and both were fun, Go figure! Thanks again guys!