Help me making the World shine

[Gabbi]

I have some hard time spreading the Brilliance around. I was playing with Dark Debts box alone mostly, but today I have added  a Depleted and a Beckoner (that seem to be the main tools in spreading Brilliance). List was: Jakob, Huggy, 2x Illuminated, Graves, Depleted, Beckoner. Things gone slightly better (an Illuminated  one-shotted a shiny Viktoria of Blood. That was lot of fun ) but anyway I overall struggle in having enemy models constantly 'Brilliant'.
Making Brilliance last would be great, but never had the chance to use Huggy's You Are Mine trigger and and Beckoners' The Party Never End ability doesn't seem a viable option (if the girls are within 3" of an enemy, pretty sure they'll be dead very soon).
Any tactical hint would be greatly appreciated

[santaclaws01]

Replace Graves with either a Beckoner or 2 depleted in a brilliance list. Also, Beckoners are more durable than you think when in close with Brilliance models, especially considering she heals when they die. Also, don't worry about getting brilliance on a model to prep for Lynch or Huggy, they can do it fine themselves and Huggy really doesn't need it, it's just a bonus. 

A trick with depleted is to just go ahead and shoot at them with Illuminated while engaged to set up the other Illuminated. It doesn't really matter if you kill it, because that's just brilliance and damage to everything around it, and it can get you a brilliance cloud next to some enemies.

[D_acolyte]

I use Lynch as a guy that hands out brilliance, he does it ok to well depending on my hand but that also means I have to activate him about early to mid in the activation order.

[Gabbi]

Uhm, I thend to include Graves because how awesome the model is (no need to have horns and wings to instill fear ^-^), but I can see how he could be replaced with better options in a Brilliance-centric Crew.

[Thana.]

The other option is to not build your game plan around brilliance. Just think of it as an option to use occasionally when the situation cals for it. This way you get more freedom with crew creation, better ability to tailor for schemes and strats, better flexibility with activation control and you can still make sure a model gets deleted by an illuminated in a pinch.

[Gabbi]

Thanks for posting further advice. Schemes and Strategies, and optimizing crew for them, is something I'm still learning atm, to be honest
 

[Slobber]

I've just started playing malifaux myself, and play a Lynch crew. I think you might be placing too much value on brilliance. It's a buff that makes your pretty good models great. I tend to think of it as a condition I'll place prior to deleting an enemy. 

As far as Lynch goes I've done better in the games I play when I get over getting the two free cards and activate when I need to burn down some wounds. You can catch someone sleeping with a early play for blood, final debt, want to see a trick. 

As far as brilliance delivery goes Lynch and Huggy are the best with the Beckoners as a close third. 

One combination I like is rising sun on Lynch and fears given form on Huggy.  With a 50mm base and 3 inches you've got a large part of the board covered and at the least will drain your foes hand or soften up his (or her) crew. If they focus Huggy down you've burned their AP and can easily bring him back with a single activation of Lynch. 

[Gabbi]

Thanks for further insight, Slobber. One thing though: to bring back Huggy you do need Brilliance on the killed model, and just shooting it with Jakob doesn't suffice due to timing issues

[lusciousmccabe]

You can bring back huggy with Lynch as long as you don't give them brilliance and kill them in the one action. So go for something that won't die to two damage. 

Also, bonus points if you use 52 pick up to finish them off without spending ap.

 

[Slobber]

You've got a few options for low damage+ brilliance. Play for blood is great with a CA8 you're not losing very often. Just don't target anything with less than 3 wounds or 2 with armor. You can also use a Beckoner and cheat in an ace on the damage flip. Even if they stone promises is brilliance after succeeding. Another reason to activate Lynch early and dish out the condition is that the requirement for rising sun is that an enemy model with brilliance dies within 6 inches, he doesn't need to do the dirty work himself. 

I've found the want to see a trick upgrade invaluable. What no one seems to mention is the ability to shuffle your deck afterwards. Let's say you burn down a bunch of face cards early you can pop Lynch drop an ace at the end of his activation and reset your deck. This means if you can keep track of the 13 high cards you can insure that you're always able to top flip an (at worse) neutral deck.

Edited November 4, 2015 by Slobber
Typo

[PharaonXIII]

Wait what? You don't reshuffle your deck with wanna see a trick. You just shuffle the ace(s) in there

If I understood you right, and you meant reshuffle with discard pile

Edited November 3, 2015 by PharaonXIII

[Woo]

From the upgrade card: "If it does so, the revealed Aces and this model's discard pile are shuffled into this model's Fate Deck"

[Slobber]

Wait what? You don't reshuffle your deck with wanna see a trick. You just shuffle the ace(s) in there

If I understood you right, and you meant reshuffle with discard pile

 

"52 pick up: at the end of this model's Activation, this model may reveal any number of Aces from its hand.  ... The revealed aces and this model's discard pile are shuffled into this model's Fate Deck. ..."

Seems pretty clear that you're shuffling everything but your hand. You don't even need an enemy with brilliance.

[PharaonXIII]

Oh, I was wrong then.

Yep, it's cool then, if you manage to get at least one ace in your hand.