The Melbourne Shuffle

[anencephalous]

 

This is a crew created by Surdreal and I. I know crews sort of like this have been played before, but perhaps not to this extreme.

The crew composition is named after the dance style. The Torakage spend much of their time shuffling 3” up the board, which reminded us of the shuffling dance.

Anyhow, without further ado:

The premise of the deck is simple. Shoot Lust a lot. Pick up the ace of tomes and any other ace with Lynch's Ace in the Hole. The Torakage can use an ace to Flurry, then pick it back up. Then they throw three shuriken at Lust. Each time you cheat one ace on offence, and the ace of tomes on defence (attack total 6 v 7). The attack misses, but the Torakage gets a 3” walk, and Lust picks up a card. Thus, for only once less movement than the normal Torakage walk, you get three cards. Repeat two or three times a turn, and you have card dominance, and Final Debts of doom.

The maths and turn sequence looks like this:

Pick up hand. Total 6 cards drawn. Chance of the ace of tomes 11%. Chance of any other ace 30%.

First activation: Lust spends a card, goes defensive stance twice.

Second activation: If you have a ram in the hand (82% chance), the samurai shoots the Hungering Darkness. Hungering Darkness accepts the hit without flipping for defence. So 4 cards on attack, 3 on damage. Total 13 cards drawn. Chance of the ace of tomes 24%. Chance of any other ace 57%.

The Samurai will do 2/3/4 damage, halved for incorporeal. Almost always 1 point.

The Samurai cheats down the ram in hand, declares the trigger Walking Fire, and shoots lust. 4 cards on attack, and 3 on defence (def stance 2). Total cards drawn 20. Chance of the ace of tomes 37%. Chance of any other ace 75%. On the rare chance none of the 4 cards you draw on offence are lower than the 3 on defence, cheat something from your hand to make it miss.

The Samurai's second action is to attack Lust again. 4 and 3 again. Total cards drawn 27. Chance of the ace of tomes 50%. Chance of any other ace 88%.

Third Activation: Torakage flurries (hopefully you have at least one ace by now – 94% chance, otherwise spend another card from your hand), and attacks Lust three times, each time using the Leaf Steps trigger to push 3” in whichever direction objectives are. Each attack is 1 flip for offence, 3 for defence. Total cards drawn 39. Chance of the ace of tomes 72%. Chance of any other ace 98%. Note that if you still don’t have an ace to cheat down on offence, you may need to cheat again from your hand to prevent damage. If you flip the black joker for damage, you will do 1/2/3 to Lust, but try and keep it to a 1.

Then we have 3 more Torakage doing the same thing, some time around the third Torakage, you will have flipped your whole deck.

If you don’t have a ram in your starting hand, you will not want to shoot Huggy (unless you feel 73% lucky of drawing one on the flip). If you have two, you can shoot him twice. Also, whenever you can get a tomb on Lust (60% on 3 card defence) you will pick up a card, increasing your odds. So the probabilities are a guide only.

There is a small chance that during some sniper fire, or real fast alpha strike, the ace of tomes gets flipped on defence before you can cycle your deck. This isn’t good, and you will have to fish for it after the re-shuffle of the deck. Since you will have picked up an average of 8 cards by that time, there will be less cards to sort though for your last two Torakage. If worst comes to worst and you have to discard all those cards without the ace of tomes on turn one, at least all those discards do not add to the deck you deal from with the ace of tomes in it.

Once you have the aces, which is almost always some time during turn one onwards, Lust walks up the board as normal, with a few Torakage flurrying her at the start of every turn. You can do this 4 times if you want, but I found 2 or 3 was usually enough, giving you a hand of 12 or 15 (barring black joker defence flips).

The Wastrel is there to heal the small amounts of damage Huggy and Lust will get.

Huggy is just Huggy, using an abundance of high cards to hug people firmly.

Lynch wanders up the board and tries to delete one model a turn with an outrageously high Final Debt.

The deck is very defensive. There is a weird sensation at the start of every turn, where you will only have 3-4 decent cards in your hand (holding on to the 2 aces and the black joker if you get it). Despite the usual mayhem, almost always the best thing to do is spend the first two-three activations flipping more cards. During this period, it will feel very passive, as people wail on you without reply. The total card dominance usually neuters these attacks, although some damage will get through.

The deck is actually better at killing than scheme running, despite having 4 Torakage, because they need to be within 10” of Lust. They mostly just form a defence cage against charges for Lust and Lynch. They do actually fight pretty well in this deck, since a positive flip on a 1/3/5 damage track is not to be sniffed at when you have a hand of moderate cards to burn.

Despite the fact that the 2 card draw from Lynch's Woke Up with a Hand is almost meaningless, it is still worth trying to activate Lynch at the end of the round. Apart from the six cards you are going to keep for the next round (and any you need to help with defence this round, if you are being out activated) you will want to throw out your next three HIGHEST cards with Mulligan. That helps to stack your deck for next round, because you are going to be throwing a pile of lower cards into the discard pile, not to be shuffled into the next round's deck.

It looks tempting to switch out a few of the Torakage for other models, and rely on a bit of luck for cards. This is probably viable, but remember that your Torakage will frequently be in engagement after the first turn, and therefore cannot be shooting Lust. I found the four more flexible (Lust is really good for manoeuvring them into a place they can shoot, should you need it).

Weaknesses:

Somer Teeth Jones -

The total card drop on Bigger Hat Than You could be devastating. If Gremlins are called, it will be worth taking Servant of the 5 Dragons on Lynch, so you can cheat over the top with a 7 vs 6 attack.

Ashes and Dust -

The big beater that cannot be Final Debtted.

Crews with many long range snipers -

Each defensive flip could be the ace of tomes. Hide your crew well till it pops out.

Short Tournament Games -

In the four games on the weekend, only once did I make to the start of turn 4 before the time ran out. All that card flipping (and explaining what you are doing to befuddled opponents) takes time!

 

Feel free to discuss, flame or ask questions!

[InvokeChaos]

So I had a spur of the moment game, so I tried this list spur of the moment.

It's a LOT of fun. I swapped out two torakage for depleted, 3 stones and a recalled training on huggy. I also made the mistake of not realizing (my opponent didn't know this either) that you have to discard down to 6 each turn. Just not something that's ever come up in a game before. But the premise is funny as hell. Obliterated a killjoy on turn 1 with a 13 final debt.

Doubt I will play it often, but I fully endorse this list for some shenanigans

I didn't activate Lust for the defensive turn one, but I did walking fire between her and huggy a couple of times. Picked up the two aces I needed in one activation of my samurai. Then my two torakage netted me 6 cards. Fun times!

 

[anencephalous]

55 minutes ago, InvokeChaos said:

So I had a spur of the moment game, so I tried this list spur of the moment.

It's a LOT of fun. I swapped out two torakage for depleted, 3 stones and a recalled training on huggy. I also made the mistake of not realizing (my opponent didn't know this either) that you have to discard down to 6 each turn. Just not something that's ever come up in a game before. But the premise is funny as hell. Obliterated a killjoy on turn 1 with a 13 final debt.

Doubt I will play it often, but I fully endorse this list for some shenanigans

I didn't activate Lust for the defensive turn one, but I did walking fire between her and huggy a couple of times. Picked up the two aces I needed in one activation of my samurai. Then my two torakage netted me 6 cards. Fun times!

 

Yeah, the picking up half your deck then throwing it away is what it is all about. Good times. Glad you played with it, even more glad you had fun. How did you go keeping the two Torakage out of combat for the flurries on Lust?

 

[InvokeChaos]

Pretty easily, the game didn't really last beyond turn three, and only one was engaged in that time period.  It died turn three, but my hand was already stacked.

[OneLittleThunder]

Interesting. You could swap in a Wandering River Monk and use the same Ace of Tomes to make him spew out Scheme Markers whenever he's hit (though he would take some damage in the process, as he's only DF 5). Handy for things like Covert Breakthrough and Set Up.

[anencephalous]

2 hours ago, OneLittleThunder said:

Interesting. You could swap in a Wandering River Monk and use the same Ace of Tomes to make him spew out Scheme Markers whenever he's hit (though he would take some damage in the process, as he's only DF 5). Handy for things like Covert Breakthrough and Set Up.

Interesting idea, I suppose you could drop two Torakage for a Wandering and a Depleted, and the Depleted could unexpectedly charge the Wandering late in a round to drop a few markers. Chiaki also has a 4 attack, although she has no particular synergy, except a much higher chance to find a heal with the condition removal (you should have a few 7+ rams in any hand). But perhaps the best contender is a Low River Monk. Would be pretty useless to do anything else, but it is a neat way to get markers down in the middle of a ZOC filled area. Good thinking.

 

[Gottkaiser]

I tried this list today. I changed it a little bit, exchanging the wastrel and one Torakage for a low river monk and an illuminated. In addition, Lynch got the Upgrade allowing the Low River Monk a healing action. Imvao this makes the healing much more reliable as even the black joker gives you a second chance to heal.

I played against a Titania list consisting of Titania, Thorn, Tooth, Claw, Changeling, Baby Kade, Treeman and Primordial Magic.

The Mission was Divergent Paths for the self-righteous man, schemes: convict labor, Show of Force, Leave your mark, Frame for murder and Set up. I took Frame for murder on one Torakage and Set up with Kade (god knows why).

In the first turn I shuffled a little, wating for my opponent to do his stuff. Huggy used heed my voice to make Tooth come closer, Lynch finished her off. Second turn he got 2 VP from wrecking the kart with the treeman. We threw a few punches, Huggy Heeded Kade to the front. The illuminated charged and missed, Lynch corrected that and killed Kade (d'oh). In the end, I wiped his crew off the board, but was unable to score from any of my schemes (he failed to kill any model...). So I lost 5:4.

All in all, the list is fun, but I think I'll have to learn when to go for more cards from turn 3 on. My opponent was a little frlutterd what I was doing. But it is really nasty and hard to avoid having one of your minis killed by lynch, although he is never really exposed.

[anencephalous]

Yeah, I haven't played the lineup a lot, because it feels mean playing it against friends. It really excels in killing, and not being killed, but doesnt lend itself particularly to point scoring. Its not the one you want with lots of scheme marker and running around objectives in the pool, because that first turn set up can really set you back.

 

[Mxbedlam]

Just switch out a torakage and a wastrel for 2 Ten T Brothers. (Which work well with Lynch's aces too) and you have all the scheme running you need

[Gottkaiser]

That is quite true, though it takes some punch out of the list. In addition (and much more severe imvao) it takes away the healing. And I really like having the ability to heal my boys and girls after shooting at them again and again.

[BigHammer]

You need one more ace than you think to pull this off; you don't get the ace you discard for rapid fire back until all if the attacks it generates are complete, as the rapid fire action itself isn't compete until the actions it generates are.

Aside from that, it's a very weird and silly list and I like that

[anencephalous]

Do you think, BigHammer? I had assumed it was like focus and charge, where it is clear that the focus cannot apply to all the attacks, because it is a charge action, that generates two attack actions. I read Rapid Fire (and flurry), as a an action, which generates three attacks. That is, as soon as you have discarded the card, the action is complete, but the effect is to then take some more attacks. Otherwise any buff (like focus) that lasts one action would last over the full effect, which would be OP.

 

[Adran]

Pg 38, “Actions Causing Actions” Call Out Box: Change the text of the first paragraph to: “Some
Actions and Abilities will force or allow a model to take another Action. If an Action or Ability calls
for another Action to be taken (such as Charge or “Make A New Entry”) then the additional Action or
Actions do not cost any AP. The original Action is not considered resolved until the new Actions are
also resolved.”

 

The rapid fire is not complete until all the actions are complete. Thinks which effect the Rapid fire action don't carry over to the attacks from it.

 

Focused +1: This model may remove this Condition when declaring an Action to
gain a number of + to the Action’s duel and damage flip equal to the value of the
Focused Condition removed.

You can Focus a charge, but the bonus flips will only apply to duels and damage flip on the Charge action (which is a tactical action with no Duel itself), not of any on the Attack actions the charge action generated. This would help with a terryfying test, but thats about it. The cjharge isn't finished, but the bonus' to the charge don't apply to the attacks that the Charge creates. 

 

 

[InvokeChaos]

On 9/16/2016 at 6:36 PM, anencephalous said:

Do you think, BigHammer? I had assumed it was like focus and charge, where it is clear that the focus cannot apply to all the attacks, because it is a charge action, that generates two attack actions. I read Rapid Fire (and flurry), as a an action, which generates three attacks. That is, as soon as you have discarded the card, the action is complete, but the effect is to then take some more attacks. Otherwise any buff (like focus) that lasts one action would last over the full effect, which would be OP.

 

Technically Charge is a tactical action that generates two attack actions. That's why Focus doesn't work there. as @Adran said above, if you focus your charge, you simply get a  flip to any terrifying duels you would generate. I think that's literally it. Manipulative doesn't proc until you declare the first attack, as it doesn't affect tactical actions. 

So I don't have the card handy, but I believe that that's correct, you don't pick up the ace until the action is complete. As such, yes, rapid fire doesn't fully resolve until it's attacks are all completed. If so, technically it works like this:

Declare Rapid Fire

Declare attack 1. Resolve. Attack 1 ends.

Declare attack 2. Resolve. Attack 2 ends.

Declare attack 3. Resolve. Attack 3 ends.

Rapid Fire is now resolved. Rapid Fire action ends. Pick up ace.

[Skitt_Happens]

Nicely thought out argument guys. Rapid fire does indeed end after the third attack is resolved.

However, that has absolutely no impact on Acer In The Whole - rulebook pg. 24, 'Determine Success':

"... Once success or failure is determined, the cards in use are discarded..."

You discard after the duel, not the action. Ace is back in your hand by the time you flip for damage.

[BigHammer]

Ace in the Hole:

"When an Ace from this Crew's deck would be placed in the discard pile during another friendly model's Activation, this model may place it in its hand instead after the Action resolves". (bold by me).

Ace in the Hole's own timing is what causes you to not get it back until the action is complete. You discard the ace for Rapid Fire when you declare it as an action, and you pick that one back up once Rapid Fire resolves (which is after you have fully completed all three attacks).

[Skitt_Happens]

Huh.

Never clocked that. Interesting because that's two completely different timings. The rules specifically forbid going through your discard pile, so mechanically that means you can't pick up an ace if it was not used in the last duel/flip of the action.

Common sense makes the rule work, but technically, Ace In The Whole is almost completely useless in this reading.

[Adran]

12 minutes ago, Skitt_Happens said:

Huh.

Never clocked that. Interesting because that's two completely different timings. The rules specifically forbid going through your discard pile, so mechanically that means you can't pick up an ace if it was not used in the last duel/flip of the action.

Common sense makes the rule work, but technically, Ace In The Whole is almost completely useless in this reading.

No it just goes into limbo between the time it would go to the discard pile and the end of the action when it appears in your hand. You don't need to seach the discard pile, just put it to one side instead of the discard pile and then into your hand when you're allowed. 

[Math Mathonwy]

14 minutes ago, Adran said:

No it just goes into limbo between the time it would go to the discard pile and the end of the action when it appears in your hand. You don't need to seach the discard pile, just put it to one side instead of the discard pile and then into your hand when you're allowed. 

If you run out of cards in the deck and need to shuffle, do you shuffle the cards that are in limbo into the deck or not? And does this limbo exist for normal Flurry discards or only when it's an Ace and Lynch is on the table?

[Adran]

I would say no. The cards aren't in the discard pile. They therefore don't have any of the discard pile effects (like being shuffled to create a new deck) happen to them. And it only exists for Lynch. because his rule tells us that Aces that would go into the discard pile will instead go into your hand at the end of the action. Its a thing that replaces it going in the discard pile, so the ace isn't in the pile. The Ace in the hole doesn't tell us to take it out the discard pile, it tells use it goes somewhere else instead. 

[Mxbedlam]

I'd love to get an official ruling on this if possible. A lot of gray area here.

[InvokeChaos]

There was a FAQ entry regarding that the wording of Lynch was to clarify only his deck, and not the opponent's, but it also said that it doesn't matter whether it was flipped, cheated or discarded to get it back. As there is a situation where flipping can have 3-4 cards rolled and the ace might be the first, I would say it's pretty clear that it works just fine as intended, regardless of the number of cards flipped.

The only grey for me would be if you flip and ace as your last card mid-flurry, do you still get that ace? I say yes because of the wording. Ace in the Hole says if you WOULD discard an ace. Much like Sensei Yu's if you would discard when he copies a leader ability. It doesn't ever actually hit the discard pile, because the would indicates a replacement effect.

I think we are probably putting too much thought into this, haha.