Getting Jack to Work

[Khyodee]

So I have 8 games with Jack so far and I'm looking at a 3-4-1 record with him so far. Granted I am trying to learn and experiment with him a bit, but I can't seem to really get him to "work" at the level I think he can play at. That all said, what strategies & schemes do you people find Jack really good for? What are some of the typical models you bring with him (and for what purpose)? What is Jack actually doing during his activation?

I typically run Jack with his 3 curses and the upgrades, Writhing Torment + Twist and Turn. I pretty much always take a nurse and Johan to start. I usually like to bring at least one guilty to make one of my shooters tormented and then send it of as a jammer/tar pit. I usually bring a big shooter (Envy, Rusty, Lazarus) and the last spots have been a bit mix and match (tried Jakuna, Wrath, librarian, Greed, Lust, hanged, and drowned). In my games it just seems like my crew always gets picked apart and Jack often dies (I'm a bit confused by people he say he is hard to kill, because he seems to go down quite easily in my experience).

 

[MariFaux]

Hm, my tournament record with Jack is 25-1-8, so overall pretty good, and most of the losses were in Recon/Interference or against nasty 10T or Ressers with too many positive flips.

My standard crew with him is Jack (three curses, writhing torment, twist and turn), one hanged, one guilty and usually two of Taelor, Bishop, Lazarus and either Johan or a Trapper, depending on strategy, schemes and terrain. 

I play his crew in a loose bubble and love him most in Collect the Bounty, Turf War and Guard the Stash.

[daniello_s]

Rusty. I love her with Jack. Get Jaakuna with Creeping Terror also. Torment Rusty with The Guilty and you have 4'' no charge zone on the model who is fast on her own (not ot mention extra push when activating near Jack) who also hits like a train no matter if fighting in close combat or shooting.

[Khyodee]

Last couple games were some rough matchups with Burning Ramos (spider spamming with the burning damage aura, then clamping on and spamming attacks to stack burning) and then Wong. Wong game was going alright until he was able to target his own Whiskey Golem and yank all my models into a giant clump and killed 4 of them in one go, leaving my Jack and a librarian.

[Joasht]

Any of the Crossroads Seven particularly useful with him?

[Kirby]

Joasht, the better ones and the ones with solid auras are.

• Lust - She's always amazing and the added movement tricks from Twist & Turn and (0) Driven By Injustice make her short range Now Kiss! ability more frequent.  Boosting her aura from 6" to 7" adds even more range to a constant drain on resources for your opponent.
• Greed - Just plain good.  Also has a short range ability that appreciates out-of-activation movement.
• Gluttony - Combines nicely with Crooked Men, force a double-dose of damage.
• Envy - Just solid overall in a marker-heavy pool.

[Adran]

I would Add sloth can be pretty good, slow or 2 damage or 2 cards all adds up when you can get him against several models.. 

Wrath is laregly based on boosting Ml attacks, and as protection for your own crew, so I think needs a creww built around him to make him useful. Pride is probably the weakest, but does effect cheating fate. So if you Like Lady Ligia but don't think she is tough enough you could try Pride instead 

[Bodiless]

I'm just getting started with Jack so am following this with interest. I have a game coming up on Monday where the strategy is Squatters and am wondering what advice people would give for running Jack in that. He seems like he likes to keep his crew at least somewhat bubbled up around him so Squatters might not be his strongest strategy, but my plan is to stick with him for a while until I at least stop forgetting what he does.  

[Rogue1]

I have had some success with Pride and Jack together by making the choice to discard cards very difficult due to guillotine injustice.  It can very quickly become take 4 damage or lose the minion.  This is a bigger deal when your opponent is running higher cost minions like dawn serpent or hanged.

[Bodiless]

I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Xroads7.

[Khyodee]

I think part of my problem is I was trying to make Jack into a single target killer, which isn't how it feels he should play.

So this is what I took my last game in Reconn with Flank deployment, Entourage (Jack announced), and Assassinate (Mei Feng).

Jack Daw -- 7ss
 +Guillotine Injustice - 0ss
 +Twist And Turn - 2ss
 +Writing Torment - 2ss
 +Drowning Injustice - 0ss
 +Firing Squad Injustice - 0ss

Envy - 8ss

Johan - 6ss

Nurse - 5ss

Papa Loco - 7ss

Taelor - 10ss

The Guilty - 5ss

----------------------------------------

Jack - This game I purposely positioned him so he could tag multiple targets with curses in one go, then pulled him back. I had to put him out in the open for a round in order to start throwing our multiple curses, but I figured I would be ok with a full cache to protect him if needed. Mei Feng did in fact charge him, but failed to hit (player didn't focus before charging which was his mistake). The full cache did seem to help keep Jack and Taylor safe (I normally play with a low cache and go for the extra model/upgraded model). The extra pushes on tormented models is nice, but I'm not sure if I get my full 2ss worth out of it. I probably need to play a game without it and see if I noticed the difference. I'm also not sure I get full points out of Twist and Turn either, but the obey does get used most turns unless I need more movement on Jack (which is the normal reason I use Driven By Injustice action). By turn 4 Jack was able to take off for the opponents deployment zone (half the time I forget they are on minus flips for disengaging strikes which is amazing).

Envy - had the MVP moment by wiping out 2 metal gamin (one would have lived if they still had hard to kill) with blasting attacks (they had placed a marker for breakthrough) which allowed me to swing points on the strategy. I think he is the #1 reason for taking writhing torment so you can push him into firing position.

Taylor & Johan - moved up slowly and positioned themselves to charge anything that went after Jack (which ended up being Mei, perfect). The opponent did end up "quickly" moving Willie up the board and placing him between these twos with the intention of blowing him up on them and a large part of my crew. Instead I just swung around and attacked Mei with 3" reach relic hammers. Johan managed to Red Joker flip damage on Mei Feng on 2nd attack of flurry in turn 4 and finished her off with the 3rd attack.

Papa - was launched up the board to try and tie up the opponent, but Mei just rail walked away and in the end he only tied up a couple of models before exploding in a fiery blast. This is my first time using him with Jack and he did ok, but I'm not overly impressed yet. I'm sure he would do better against a different crew selections.

Nurse - she did the biggest mistake of game as I didn't realize he had an upgrade that prevent Mei from being paralyzed. Wasted a high crow and first activation to heal her for 3 damage basically much to my annoyance. Otherwise she didn't do a whole lot this game, but she has won MVP in other games so she isn't gonna come out anytime soon.

Guilty - Made Taylor tormented and then pushed up the board to jam opponents. The model did its job as expected so no complaints.

I ended up winning with the assassination of Mei Feng as nobody was in good position to kill Jack (he took assassinate) who was ready to score entourage.

 

 

[Bodiless]

By turn 4 Jack was able to take off for the opponents deployment zone (half the time I forget they are on minus flips for disengaging strikes which is amazing).

....

I totally did not think of that. That is a thing of beauty.  

[Axelst]

Personally I love Writhing Torment. It not only speeds up the crew (which is always useful) but it also makes the crew very hard to lock in combat. Also, if you brought models with long melee ranges, you han use it to push enemy models to plages where they are engaged but unable to attack anything. To me it's an auto-include.

[Uktena]

Last couple games were some rough matchups with Burning Ramos (spider spamming with the burning damage aura, then clamping on and spamming attacks to stack burning) and then Wong. Wong game was going alright until he was able to target his own Whiskey Golem and yank all my models into a giant clump and killed 4 of them in one go, leaving my Jack and a librarian.

I've had that one.  It was an Ice Golem.  

[Kalkris]

As a pretty avid Jack player (but one with a crummy track record), I am watching this thread intently. I hav to say that I eagerly await for the re-release of McTavish so as to try him for his anti-focus aura. I REALLY want this to work. Think he'll be worth the stones and merc tax?

~Lil Kalki

[Khyodee]

As a pretty avid Jack player (but one with a crummy track record), I am watching this thread intently. I hav to say that I eagerly await for the re-release of McTavish so as to try him for his anti-focus aura. I REALLY want this to work. Think he'll be worth the stones and merc tax?

~Lil Kalki

Funny you should ask that as I tried him out last night. Doing write up in a bit.

[Khyodee]

Turf War with Standard Deployment
LiTS, Bodyguard, Cursed Object, Distract, Murder Protege

My Schemes: Bodyguard (Jaakuna), Murder Prot (revealed on Envy)
His Schemes: Distract, Murder Prot (revealed on McTavish)

Jack Daw -- 7ss
 +Twist And Turn - 2ss
 +Writing Torment - 2ss
 +Firing Squad Injustice - 0ss
 +Drowning Injustice - 0ss
 +Guillotine Injustice - 0ss

I think I finally realized/remembered that Jack and attack any model with a mask to jump to them at range (including his own) which really helps him out in the movement department. I say this because this is how I eventually got to Envy (hiding near opponents deployment) to kill him. Otherwise, Jack mostly just pushed other models around with his upgrade and his (0) action in the early turns, then set to single target killing mid/late game (taking out a lured stitched and hunting down Envy). He did get one good use out of the obey on Envy to make two focused shots in one round (first attack put them all to hard to kill, and second shot from obey killed them).

 

Envy - 8ss

As always he did work taking out a stitched and 2 marionettes in one turn with Jack (self focused on (0), shot, focused, obeyed by Jack to shoot again). After that he didn't last very long as Collodi had enough and unloaded into him (and had Envy shoot at McTavish with his pull the strings trigger a couple times).

 

Jaakuna Ubume - 6ss

In retrospect not the best bodyguard target against a collodi crew with stitched, but I figured she would be very low on target priority (and I was correct in this assumption). She just lured a already activated stitched out of position so my crew could take it apart before it did any damage (to her specifically). After that she positioned as if she was wanting to lure in Envy, but ended up just making a break for open backfield. She did turn 5 lure away my distracted guilty so it could remove distract on turn 5 as well.

 

Johan - 6ss

This dumbest move of the game came form Johan this time as I knew my opponent had distract (as he did it to another model early in turn 2 with his stitched before it died) and I charged Johan into an illuminated that hadn't gone yet (I was thinking it had gone since it was pushed). I didn't finish off the illuminated and then go distracted giving up a point that I didn't need too (as nothing else was really in range to distract round 2). He killed an illuminated, cleared off distract, and sat next to a turf marker.

 

McTavish - 11ss

So I took him to play around with the ability that enemies can't focus (to hit Jack) around him. Of course, then my opponent took Murder Prot and I had to keep him back to avoid being murdered by Collodi. The ability to still get cover despite Collodi not having a projectile attack is quite nice and helped keep him alive (as did burning like 4 stones to prevent damage). I would say I didn't get my 11 points out of him actively, but he was still able to help damage some models, dodge some attacks (or absorb them), and deny the opponent 3 points. I would call that a win despite not getting to play with his aura really.
 

Nurse - 5ss
She really didn't do anything other then threaten to paralyze the opponent and stand in the Turf Zone the whole game. She did manage to paralyze Collodi on turn 5 before he activated, but at that point I had the game locked up already point wise.

The Guilty - 5ss

Another model that mostly just sat in the Turf Zone and helped score the point. He as always made another model of mine tormented (in this case McTavish).

Funny the biggest learning moment I had of the game was more that I am starting to put Collodi together in my mind. He is very much like Levi, sure the mechanics are different, but the style is similar (consistent ranged damage each turn, hard to put down do to his totems, helps gain activation control with numerous totems as well).

[Bodiless]

I had my second game with Jack tonight against Ramos, playing against a pretty new player that I coached for most of the game. Turns out I am a better Ramos coach than I am Jack Daw player at this point and I coached myself into a loss.  It did get me thinking though about dealing with summoners in general with Outcasts, and some of trials and tribulations daniello_s has reported on. Kirai is looming large in my future games as our Resser player has just fallen in love, and I am sure we will be seeing Molly at some point as well. 

How do people tend to deal with summoners in Outcasts? Especially ones that like to loiter back behind a wall of spiders/spirits/whatnot. Taelor? 

[daniello_s]

Taelor is a gold, especially with Jack as being Tormented helps Taelor a lot with positioning.

Also I had some good results with Sue who can remove corpse markers from the distance and I'm going to try Specialist in Thursday.

[jonahmaul]

I'm just getting started with Jack so am following this with interest. I have a game coming up on Monday where the strategy is Squatters and am wondering what advice people would give for running Jack in that. He seems like he likes to keep his crew at least somewhat bubbled up around him so Squatters might not be his strongest strategy, but my plan is to stick with him for a while until I at least stop forgetting what he does.  

Probably a bit late but the only game I've played with Jackdaw so far is Squatters Rights and I just treated it like a mini Turf War and took two markers and held onto them all game.

 

Taylor & Johan - moved up slowly

Guilty - Made Taylor tormented and then pushed up the board to jam opponents. The model did its job as expected so no complaints.

Jack can negate Taelor and Johan's weakness of being so slow by making them Tormented.  They benefit from the free push a great deal.

A good trick is to use Jack to copy the Guilty's ability to make model's Tormented on the first turn as after that it's unlikely that he will take it again which means that model will never lose Tormented.  The Guilty is then free to zap other model's as it chooses.

[Bodiless]

My plan was to play it as Turf War too, except that I never managed to get through the wall of spiders to flip the markers I needed. I think my crew would have benefitted a lot from a Bishop or Ashes and Dust that could have gone most unsupported after a corner marker and the area where he was setting up all of his scheme markers and cleaned it out.

On the other hand, when I was coaching him on Ramos I didn't check his card to see that Ramos can only summon spiders once per activation. So the summoning problem was not actually as bad as it appeared. Still, with Kirai it really will be that bad so best to start thinking about it now. :)

[FacelessOne]

I really love Jack Daw when playing with movement shenanigans.

Jack Daw

-Twist and Turn

Writhing Torment

Jaakuna

-Creeping Terror

Lust

Anna Lovelace

The Guilty

The Drowned

Then either a second drowned or a trapper depending on strats and schemes and a cache of 4.

The list is built around moving your opponents models around and then shutting down his/her ability to re-position. A tormented Lovelace with the buff of creeping terror is a 9" bubble of no movement shenanigans from your opponent but where you are free to push them around.  Jaakuna is the anchor of it all. You feed enemy models into her four inch bubble. Then with some proper positioning Lust forces them to decide if they are going to try and close with Jaakuna or move towards Lust. The Guilty runs your schemes, and Jack does his thing harassing your opponent with curses.

[Bodiless]

It could just have been my flips, but Jaakuna's aura alone didn't actually do too much to the spiders. My drowned is awaiting black friday shipping, and since everything in his crew was armored hazardous terrain just didn't amount to much. In Neverborn I always had a beater with Retribution's Eye as my anti-armor option... I think my crew last night would have really benefitted from Bishop. A model that could move quickly, especially with pushes, and punch out armored models. Or incorporeal once I start seeing Kirai regularly. 

[FacelessOne]

Jaakuna's aura isn't going to do much damage. Her point is to engage lots of models and then just sit there and activate last. Incorporeal and anipulative are pretty decent defenses against the spiders. The three inch engagement range also helps; if you postioned Lovelace and Lust correctly, walking to engage Jaakuna will activate Lust's Aura, and Lovelace prevents movement shenanigans to save AP, so Jaakuna is only taking one attack per model. Still if you want a solid beater, drop the second six point model, and grab a hanged.

[jonahmaul]

Seems like a cool combo but it's a lot of set up to be effective.