Levy and Joss - Mass production

[Manxfaux]

I'm pretty new to the game but I like Levy in that it would seem you can play him in so many different ways so he will never get boring.

I wondered whether he would be able to match Ramos in summoning spidery things so set out building an abomination factory with the aide of Joss.

In a nutshell -

Turn 1 - Joss (with Oathkeeper and Tally sheet) hits a mobile toolkit creating 2 scrap and a card, Rusty places another before Levy uses 'From Ash' to turn them all into abombs, who all damage each other for an extra 3 cards.

Turn 2 - Oathkeepered Joss kills the 3 abombs creating 6 scrap (and three cards) which Levy and Rusty turn into 4 abombs, 3 of whom damage each other for cards and finally creating a DE.

Turn 3 - Turn the last 2 scrap into abombs.

In theory this gets you 2 abominations and a Desolation engine for the price of a mobile toolkit and Oathkeeper. What's not to like????

 

I actually tried this out the other day with 'mixed' results.

I addition to the above I took Johan, a Soulstone miner and a full SS pool, although completely forgetting to give Joss oathkeeper. The miner was great actually, netting me 3vp, but I could have brought it in a turn earlier, I was too conservative with it. I brought Johan as I felt he would go well with Joss, but he made very little impact in the end.

I lost the game, but I feel more because the terrain meant most of my crew were bunched and Misaki with misdirection and disguise was able to plant herself into engagement range and stop me placing scheme markers for protect territory. Also shooting with Levy into engagement (not normally that much of an issue) was painful when I hit Johan whose free attack at misaki (yay!) was misdirected into Joss' face (not-yay!).

The DE died quickly but was able to effectively cancel out Ototo (even when the black joker appearing at the wrong time).

Sheer volume of cards for the first couple of turns meant I didn't have to burn too many SS for suits and had good cheat cards.

Massive activation control, though because a lot of my stuff was still in/close to my deployment zone, I feel I didn't make best use of this.

Essentially the plan worked but I felt it was a bit too slow. Only Rusty was able to do anything for the first couple of turns, which allowed most of his crew to freely position themselves and get an early vp lead. This was compounded as he took some traps which hemmed me in and forced Joss to waste some of his activations later on to get rid of them.

Has this approach got real potential, perhaps with a different crew lineup? Or is using 2 full turns of Levy and Joss' time too expensive?

On a slight aside, do people use the abombs' Vile Reclamation often? Against Misaki I needed to use it to counter her assassination trigger but often on other abombs who then became easy targets for things like thunder archers.

[Adran]

This is a very time consuming use of your forces. Personally I don't think its worth the effort you have put into it, its using at least 40% of Joss and Leveticus for the game. If you really want to go this way you would probably want Joss to create more scrap on his first turn, or use a large Arachnid as a cheaper Scrap producer ( or both). Using a mechanical toolkit and a rat would get you 3 scrap for 2 ap killing them.

2 Abominations and a Large arachnid gets you 2 cards and 4 scrap allowing Alyce and levi to summon 4 more abominations on that first turn, potentially allowing 7 cards drawn, and the Desolation summoned on the first turn. (Or using the Large arcahnid on one of the abominations on the second turn to get 2 more scrap, which you can turn into a 4th and 5th Abomination

 

Ramos really only works for it as he gets 3 models for the 1 AP. 

A much slower but card effective way is using VonSchill and his upgrade to  allow Alyce to do both her (0) actions in 1 turn. You would probably want to start with 2 abominations as well (and the steam trunk). You can then discard the low cards you draw to heal the abominations with the trunk, allowing them to be used more than once each to draw cards from. First turn should see you drawing/cycling 4 cards and gaining 1 Abom as well as moving the block up the field.

 

[Manxfaux]

Aha! I knew someone would know how to get those 4 scrap on the first turn.

I completely agree it was a time consuming process but getting the DE up and running by turn 1 using 2 abombs rather than 1 toolkit works better. The downsides are that it has a higher initial cost by keeping Joss in the crew....... but thinking about it, why would you? Levy, Rusty and a DE should be killy enough not to need Joss too. Using a Large arachnid would still leave space for a couple of good crew members.

It's obviously not the optimum way to use Levy but with creating more abombs through the turns could be interesting. I may try it out next time

 

[Adran]

You can use 1 Abom and 1 mechanical tool kit to get 4 scrap for 7 SS. This nets you one less card.

For what its worth, an abomination and a large arachnid are actually cheaper than Joss with Oathkeeper...

Leveticus is probably better at summoning Abominations from enemy models than from scrap in  the long term. because then you are denying the enemy something as well, 

 

 

[jondoe297]

Of course this is viable and for Lols why the hell not. But for me levys strength is summoning from desolate soul, actively having the summoning as your game plan for me isn't the greatest use of his ap.

 

[Rurouni Benshin]

I did something similar to this the first couple of times I played Levi, and honestly, it's not worth the effort.  You spent way too many activations trying to outdraw your opponent (which you will, granted), but it eats up too many points in the meantime while the entirety of your opposition is doing it's work it needs to.  Plus to have Joss and Alyce there for only summoning purposes is a bit costly, considering what they could be doing in the meantime.

That said, I would still bring Joss, only utilize him more offensively.  Having him create one scrap marker on Turn 1 isn't bad, since that's usually how he's used on Turn 1 for Ramos, but once you're past Turn 1, look to using him more offensively.  The last time I played Levi, I brought the Mechanical Rider instead of Joss, and it ended up working much better for in the long run.  Alyce made one Scrap Marker on her activation, to which Levi was able to summon 1 Abomination from.  Granted I was playing against Kaeris, a Master who brings along Constructs as well, so Scrap Markers weren't hard to find, but with the Mech Rider making constructs with 2 Wds remaining, it wasn't long before I was able to swarm him with Abominations and get the Desolation Engine out by Turn 4.

[KrazyIvan]

If what you are looking for is AP control then throwing in an Obedient Wretch and a couple Rats will accomplish what you want on turn one while leaving the rest of the crew free to do whatever it needs to be doing.

Just looking at Abominations and the Desolation Engine...I prefer summoning off Desolate Soul and find the Abomination, on the whole, more useful that the DE. Their damage aura and 0 action stripping tends to force opponents to deal with them rather that doing more useful things. I really like them as speed bumps.

[Manxfaux]

You're probably right. It's a lot of SS spent on crew members and otherwise situational upgrades to summon something you can hire if you really want it.

In my game the DE managed to knock Ototo down to about 2 or 3 wounds in 2 actions plus his aura damage, but got pulped by the return flurry (especially as he gets a bonus to ml at 6wd). 4 abombs might have taken longer to get rid of, although the fact the DE drops 2 after dying is a pretty awesome final bonus.

[Drool_bucket]

One of our locals is a Levi player that works from the theory of spamming with Aboms and creating as many D. Engines during a game that he can.  It's quite neat to watch, him channeling and stoning on every summon he attempts... 

But its not the most effective way to use Levi, IMO.  Cause Levi does much more surgically what the D. Engine does and afterwards you are left with spare Aboms floating around anyways.  So skip the Rube Goldberg and just do what Levi does, bounce around and turn enemy models into Abominations.

[Rurouni Benshin]

One of our locals is a Levi player that works from the theory of spamming with Aboms and creating as many D. Engines during a game that he can.  It's quite neat to watch, him channeling and stoning on every summon he attempts... 

But its not the most effective way to use Levi, IMO.  Cause Levi does much more surgically what the D. Engine does and afterwards you are left with spare Aboms floating around anyways.  So skip the Rube Goldberg and just do what Levi does, bounce around and turn enemy models into Abominations.

^This.  Granted it won't yield as many Abominations as quickly, and the Desolation Engine may not even make it to the table, but if you're winning already, does it really matter?