Slop hauler vs nurse

[Dogmantra]

Righto, tournament on Sunday and the strats and schemes have been released, so I'm doing some brainstorming and coming up with a default list for each match to tweak based on my opponent. I'm trying to work out what I want to do for healing though. Fingers crossed no one going reads this, or at least not my opponent

Turf war – standard deployment

• Line in the sand
• Body Guard
• Breakthrough
• Entourage
• Deliver a message

this is the match I'm looking at. I'm pretty set on Zoraida, so I can take Sammy with Animal Shape and get those sweet points for Entourage (and Sammy is mega in turf war anyway imo).

Otherwise, I have a really elite looking crew, Mancha Roja, Lenny, Francois, a slop hauler + a nurse.

Initially I planned on moon shinobis which made my upcoming question much easier, but I just didn't have the stones left. Now that the nurse is freed up from giving them the + armour condition, she can put most of her effort into control, and then healing Lenny and Mancha Roja to full if needed (Lenny any time, Mancha will use 1000 masks to get paralyse immunity).

Basically though, I'm wondering if I should still be taking that slop hauler or swap him out for Old Cranky. Reasons are obviously the on Df duels, the SSs which is very nice given most of my models are henchmen, but also the extra card cycling because Nurse healing needs those crows. The downsides are that I lose the voodoo doll until Old Cranky dies (though seeing him might be a problem for my opponent), which I'm not too worried about because Zoraida still has some very good Obey targets. Bigger thing I'm worried about is I lose a good source of Francois healing. Will Dirty Cheater be enough for him? That's going to make me very card intensive.

 

I'd like to decide on the day and I'm still open to change things, I just want an idea of what I'm doing. Anyone got thoughts? Particularly about various faction matchups?

[Math Mathonwy]

I would go with the Slop Hauler. The Df debuff rocks and Voodoo Doll is absolutely golden in Turf War.

[MONSTERNOGGIN]

Lenny being WP1 could be a huuuuuuge handicap if you face Neverborn or Ressers. I'd have a backup just in case. Other than that, I second the hauler for debuff/healing into the turf war bubble. 

[MONSTERNOGGIN]

Why not burt instead of Lenny? Are you wanting the Rams for Franc?

[MONSTERNOGGIN]

Or the toss?

[Dogmantra]

I want damage reduction, rams for mancha roja, and the full heal from the nurse. Also I don't physically own Burt.

[MONSTERNOGGIN]

Fair enough. I'd just be worried about two of your three beaters having such low df/wp. It's putting a lot of stress on the hauler and nurse.

Liking the entourage/breakthrough on sammy tho. And voodoo doll is always fun in turf war.

[Dogmantra]

For those curious, I went with the Slop Hauler and am sure glad I did.

Had a bizarre and excellent game against Shen Long, where I had Sensei Yu hemmed for most of the game and gave him every condition known to man, with loads of sneaky voodoo doll tricks and he still. would. not. die. (scored points for bodyguard too). A highlight was when Sammy gave the voodoo doll Twisted Mind (TN12 horror duel aura), which copied it to Sensei Yu. He passed. I activated the voodoo doll and deliberately failed, giving him paralysed. By the time it came back around to his activation, he was not only un-paralysed but also un-hemmed as well!

I ended up scraping out a 9-8 win due to time, although I got too tricksy and totally could have killed Sensei Yu had I thought things through a bit better.

[MONSTERNOGGIN]

Thanks for the followup, Dog, and gratz on the win! How did keeping your beaters alive go? 

That being said, your struggle with keeping conditions up is reflective of mine with Zoraida, Brewie, other 'obey' Masters in tournament play.

I find that obey/denial Masters can be quite powerful, but tend to require some degree of cooperation  from your opponent (i.e. allowing conditions to remain on key models, winning initiative consistently). Most competitive, tournament-built lists that I've encountered will anticipate some sort of condition removal. It seems like obey Masters rely a bit too heavily on drawing a strong control hand/good flips on your part and the opposite for opponent to hit on all cylinders. 

Most of my games with Zoraida and Brewie are fun on casual night, but tend to crumble if a turn doesn't go their way. I guess I'm saying I have a hard time recovering if a key duel or two end badly. For example, despite having Trixie, I still find myself being able to cheat in the win on initiative only about 50% of the time. 

Do you have a similar experience? Does my reasoning seems flawed? Or am I just having a nasty stream of luck recently?

  

[Dogmantra]

Mancha Roja died turn 2, but he managed to get an activation in before then and scored me 3 for Deliver a Message so he did his job. Lenny on the other hand, only took 6 or so damage, and when the Nurse healed him all the way back up, my opponent stopped trying to hurt him >:D Took second overall in the tournament too, so I'm pretty chuffed, even though it was admittedly only out of seven.

 

I can't speak for Brewie, he just doesn't mesh with me and tends to die uselessly very early and Zoraida does Obey better, so I don't really play him. But I think with Zoraida you're not wrong, she is somewhat reliant on having a good hand - one of the reasons I didn't kill Sensei Yu was because I couldn't get off a second Obey for Lenny to smack the voodoo doll, but I don't find her falling apart all that much - I much prefer to use Obey in order to do extra walks, interacts and other non-duel actions just so you don't need a thousand amazing cards. I don't know if I agree that she needs to win initiative (Brewmaster does from what I've heard). The condition removal was annoying, but between Zoraida, Sammy and the Nurse I hit Sensei Yu with so many conditions that he couldn't feasibly remove all of them, and when he did pull out all the stops, my opponent was sinking 5+AP on important models to clean him of conditions. I've never encountered that level of condition removal before, and I think much less and it becomes a nonissue.