Collodi - Help with Reckoning & Headhunter

[tunichgut]

Hi folks,

I’m still new to Malifaux.
At the moment I love playing Collodi.

But I’m really struggling with Headhunter & Reckoning

I can’t kill enough to get these done.
Headhunter is a bit better because there I can collect some Headtokens
but overall I’m not good at this
 
So how do you guys & girls get this done?
Are you playing fated Collodi or Bag of Props and how?
What are your Key Models?
Maybe you have some crazy combinations flying around?

I’m curious!

Thanks for your help!

[lusciousmccabe]

Not a Collodi player so I can't really help, except to say that this might be one of the few situations where posting a sample list would be useful. 

Mostly I just wanted to say how much I like that your post resembles a poem.

 

[Wee Little Puppet Man]

Well, as everybody and their personal puppet will tell you, in Malifaux it all depends on the schemes and faction you're facing. There is many ways in which you could approach Headhunter and Reckoning playing Collodi. 

There are a bunch of killy models that would be well suited for this task: stitched, illuminated, Lazarus, teddy, coryphee, bunraku, bloodwretches, changellings + trappers; not to mention the puppeteer itself...

But, as don't own many of these models, I usually take a less straightforward approach. After some time playing Neverborn, I've realized a couple of things: the game is won by whoever scores more VP, not who reaches 10 or wins the strategy; and Neverborn are all about making the opponent play the way we want, not trying to win them on their game.

So, if Reckoning is draw, and I know I will be playing Guild, I will think about Sonnia and the possibility of being blasted to death. Then I'll probably go with hard to kill and armour, probably a fated + healing approach, and try to stay alive while accomplishing the schemes. 

Now, Headhunter is a different beast, a way better strategy for Collodi. As Malifaux is about concrete scenarios, I'll go with an example:

I was facing Guild. Corner deployment. Headhunter, convict labor, hunting party, leave your mark and detonate the charges. I feared Sonnia, and was pondering to go with a defensive build. But, at the last moment, I changed my mind. I realized in headhunter there is no point in killing the enemy from afar, as the head markers are left 3" from the killed model. And there Collodi has several advantages against Guild: number, ap, and mobility. I decided to go with a balanced scheme build: a mannequin to place markers wherever I wanted; a performer to lure out of position and drag the mannequin along; a couple of marionettes for personal puppet, to push Collodi across the board and to place markers and get heads; a weaver so killing my puppets was all to my advantage, to increase mobility even more and to help Collodi obliterate the enemy; lucky, brutal and arcane, because they are a pain to kill and to benefit from their buffs, specially the healing; and, finally, a bloodwretch, because I feared I lacked hitting power (which, in retrospect, was not the case).

My original plan was to go with leave your mark and detonate. But, looking at the board, I realized there was an almost closed space around the midline, next to my deployment area. So I chose convict labor and detonate. 

My opponent revealed his crew and I was happy to see it was McCabe and not Sonnia. BUT there was a Peacekeeper; which not only is scary, but could screw with my scheme game.

I started the match as I always do with Collodi: Lucky passing its buff to everyone but the weaver; and, in this case, moving towards the closed space to achieve convict labor. Then I went on activating the less powerful models. The marionettes hit Collodi to position it before it activated last. With the mannequin being dragged along by the performer, I was able to place 3 scheme markers on the midline somewhere out of reach even from the Peacekeeper. I made sure that, if they wanted to disrupt the convict labor, they had to go over my scraps. So, thats 3VP right on the first turn. Now my worry was that they would achieve their own schemes and draw (or even win, if I couldn't detonate the charges).

So, by my second turn, I started to bring everyone from their hiding place. I had left the weaver on the rearguard, as she is fragile and my worst fear is her being killed. The good thing is, this allowed me to drop two webs (turn 1 and 2) near McCabe himself, who had crossed to my half of the board, as I was expecting. I started the second turn with the weaver dropping a web, trying to paralyze with terror, and hiding herself. She barely survived the next attack; but now I had the upper hand. I couldn't wait for a perfectly buffed attack, so I activated Brutal, passed the healing buff along and accompliced into Collodi, which had no problems pushing itself into position after taking damage for fast, which amounted to 4 attacks. I slowed the Peacekeeper, made it hit McCabe and saved its remaining ap for myself. With my last attack, I was able to bring McCabe down from his horse. From there, the game was won. They could not interact while engaged and I made sure that the head marker was in range. My puppets took care of it later.

On turn 3, weaver managed to create some dolls (just because I like the models and I felt confident, it wasn't a wise move) for then being killed (her, and the dolls). Still, that only gave me more heads and the chance to detonate for 3. At the end I won 8 to 5 or something like that, because I got careless the later turns. But I never lost control of the game.

So, as you see, there are many ways to approach a game. At every moment, I had to change plans in order to take advantage of the board and my opponent's decisions. My best call was to take what appeared to be my disadvantage (lack of firing power; cheap, low wounds models) and turn it into an advantage (overactivating; more heads for me; bringing the enemy to play in close range).

It was a game I enjoyed very much, and made me confident to chose Collodi as THE master for most headhunter scenarios. A similar thing happened to me with Pandora and reckoning, after games and games being blasted away by Sonnia: I decided to make her come to me, laying an elaborate WP trap and relying in Candy as a field medic. But that's another story...

Tl;dr: Take advantage of your weaknesses. Don't try to play your opponents game: make them play yours. Neverborn are about cunning, mobility, and the unexpected. And anyway, Collodi is a beast: 4ap with slow, obey, pseudo paralyze, healing, burning, card drawing and a consistent damage will take you through anything.

[Ludvig]

Don't play Collodi but you should get some decent mileage from Stitched togethers and Illuminated in killy strategies. It can take defensive or armour to protect all minions nearby. You can aldo focus on controlling enemy actions to mess up their plans.

[tunichgut]

Sry for my really late response!

I had some more games with Collodi lately and it's getting better and better

I still have problems with this two schemes, especially against killy masters like Viks and McMourning but beside this I recognized that my main mistake is often a wrong position and activation.

So thank you all for your tipps!

 

and thanks to you lusciousmccabe for your kind words!

[NoStringsOnMe]

I may be late to this party, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents.  I tend to play with Fated Collodi and have found that his ability to throw out focus to almost his entire crew is great for the more aggressive, killy strats and schemes.  Illuminated, Coryphee, and Stitched are all great minions to help kill multiple models a turn.  I feel like Coryphee often get overlooked for the killing role, but with Swirl of Motion they can kill something, push 4", potentially into another target and Collodi or Vasalisa (yes, I recommend her) can give out additional attacks using My Will or Twist and Obey.  Personal Puppet on Illuminated can also generate additional attacks, punishing your opponent for damaging Collodi by generating more attacks and a possible kill.

[The Lone Gamer]

I haven't seen anyone recommend the Arcane Effigy yet.  Using it with Fated means your opponent is either going through cards or having his models catch on fire with successful hits, increasing the damage output of all the models within Collodi's bubble.