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Lilith Help


Velcro

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Hello peoples. So after an interesting (brutal) first game vs Seamus and losing by a bit of a good margin (5v9) I'm not sure what to do on her turns. I read a lot about how strong she is, but I'm garbage with her. Without summoning Tater Tots her teleport spell is extremely limited, and with Belles being able to Lure from across the world he can keep his stuff back so it's difficult to create forests and charge through them. I ended up just using them to block LOS wherever I could. But I just have no idea what makes her good or how to unlock is amazingness everyone talks about.

What's her schtick? Do I NEED cards from the Arsenal box? I only have the cards from the Master box. With Seamus bouncing around the board summoning these crazy Belles I just feel like there's nowhere to escape to, and running Tater Tots doesn't matter because they just get pulled wherever and pounced on then killed.

It was a 35SS game with lists as follows as best I can remember, there might be a discrepancy.

Lilith 5SS cache

-Wicked Mistress

-Living Blade

-Beckon Malifaux

Cherub (I LOVE THIS THING SO MUCH!)

Mr. Graves

3x Tater Tots

Illuminated

 

Seamus 7SS cache

-Bag O'Tools

-...I honestly forget the other upgrades

Copy Cat Killer

Valedictorian

3x Belles

 

Mr. Graves was so invaluable vs Terror checks and the Cherub was incredibly useful for the reduced action costs. Outside of that, not much happened.

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For other upgrades, get the Generalist Upgrade deck. That will give you the wave 1 and 2 general Neverborn upgrades. The only other upgrade you'll be missing is Rapid Growth, which is in the Nephilim set, and the stuff from Ripples of Fate, which will be in the Generalist upgrade deck 2. They put Rapid Growth there since you can't really run a Growth list without those models. There's a few upgrades in there that help, like Wings of Darkness which gives her Flight and Rush of Magic for an additional card draw.  Flight goes with her ability to declare actions without line of sight - she can charge through/over a building and get her bonus.

Really though it's all about playing her and figuring out how her actions work for you. She's got an upgrade for a Lure, though you can also get one with Lilutu which is a great model. She can root people which hampers movement and damages them if they're pushed out of it. Tangle Shadows is great with her ability that ignores LoS for actions. Try putting a beater in the opponents face that hasn't yet activated.

Wings of Darkness is pretty important though. Lilith is a guerrilla fighter, not a brawler. So having her ignore terrain with her Wk 6 and 3 actions is pretty big.

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Upgrades I typically use with Lilith: Beckon Malifaux (always auto-include Terrain creation), Wicked Mistress (Lure), and Wings of Darkness (flight + card draw).

Personal play style -

I don't use Lilith as a beater. Hell, I think I've charged with her MAYBE about 5 or 6 times in the 50+ games I've used her. I use her as a hit and run model. Wicked Vines models from range, and out of LoS to keep them from moving, Lure models out of position (or lure Wicked Vines targets so they take +3 extra damage). I use my forest (Beckon Malifaux) like another crew member. I'll drop it in front of my own guys to block LoS to protect them, in front of the Opponent to block their LoS, or to screw up bonuses from :aura & :pulse. I use it to create or block up choke points, etc. I use Tangle Shadows (model positioning swapping) to get my big guys near their models, to pull their big guys or scheme runners out of position (game/situation dependent on what I need at that particular moment), or just to through a sacrificial model/tot into combat to tie something up for a turn (such as trying to place someone in combat with Seamus so he can't teleport early or just to eat up his AP). Hell, I'll even use her to drop scheme markers.

She's the tool box and I build my crew to do the heavy lifting of accomplishing schemes or killing the opponent. 

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First, welcome to Malifaux! You've picked a wonderful master to start with :) Lilith is super-fun, and is deep enough to be the only master you need for a long time.

Second, don't sweat early games. Malifaux is a highly-skilled game, and almost nobody plays their first 10 games nearly as well as their second 10 games.

Third, take Wings of Darkness and Beckon Malifaux always. These are without a doubt her best upgrades. Stone for cards every turn until you get really good at the game. It's nearly always the right call, so save yourself the mental energy for now and just do it :)

Fourth, avoid Grow unless you love the aesthetic. Making Grow lists work is its own learning curve, and most people just get frustrated and give up.

Fifth, the Cherub is great. You'll see lots of recommendations to go with the Primordial Magic. It's not that the PM is that much better (if even at all), but that the PM is super simple to play, while the Cherub is a very high-skill piece. If you love the little guy, stick with him! It'll slow down how fast you improve somewhat, but in the end, he's a totally legit model, and super cool!

A few questions:

1. Are you looking to play with a small group primarily, or are you looking to jump into tournament play?

2. When do you expect to go to 50ss? The game is very different at different SS levels, so advice differs a lot based on SS level. I personally highly recommend 50ss games.

 

The best advice I can give for learning any master in Malifaux is pick the every turn abilities of the master and only use those. Ignore the highly situational stuff to start. Malifaux imposes a very, very high mental burden. In tournaments, my first thought in picking my crew is "how much mental energy do I want to burn this game?"

Lilith has many very powerful abilities. However, all but 3 are highly situational. I'd recommend your first 20 games be all about these abilities:

1. Illusionary Forest - Oh my goodness, so powerful. asrian's post talks about great uses for this. Note that you have no restrictions for LOS, models, terrain, markers, etc... Also note that they are two separate dense markers. Being in one marker doesn't let you see through the other.

2. Wicked Vines - This can be immensely efficient and should be how most of your AP is spent over the course of a game. Typically, when you root something important, your opponent will have to jump through hoops to free the model. On occasion, they can't get the root off and you've effectively paralyzed the model, which is insane for a 12" no LOS Ca6 ability! If your opponent has no good way to remove the root, this ability can be bonkers. And even if they do, they're usually investing quite a bit in order to do it.

3. Tangle Shadows - Sometimes you use this to swap your enemy to you, but most often, you'll use this to reposition your killer. This ability is why Lilith loves strong combat pieces like Graves, Johan, Nekima and even Bad Juju (if you're interested in the Juju list, I play it often as my "I need a mental break" list. Note that it is by no means the best Lilith list). When you need to bring a model home AND put Nekima in position to kill stuff, you'll net something insane like 4-6 AP out of this ability! It's amazing. Think of it first and foremost as an uber-efficient means of moving your crew around, and second as an uber-efficient means of moving your crew around ;) A distant third is yanking them into your crew, which can actually be a risky move more often than you think. One common mistake I see is to swap your 6SS model for their 8-9SS model, only to have spent a SS and/or a high card to do it, an AP from Lilith, and then to find that they have something nasty they can do with your now easy-to-kill model, such as summon a model off of it dying. You will absolutely win games by yanking a model to its death, but treat that part of it as situational, and focus on learning how to use this ability for your own crew's mobility. Another important piece: this ability encourages you to spread out a bit. Learning to strike the right balance between overextending and providing yourself efficient swap options is a key piece of playing Lilith.

Hope that all helps! Based on your answers to my questions, I can also give you crew advice if you like!

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So, I'm not the op, but I am also a new Lilith player (although I have deep seated issues, and have already bought Pandora and Jacob Lynch despite having played 1 game so far).

I'm planning to play 50ss games, as I don't like building for the smaller non-played options.  

I want to build a complete Lilith beater list to start, because it looks hilariously fun (and because my opponent murdered me first game with a Lady Justice list).

I'm looking to do something like

Neverborn
50ss Crew

Lilith -- 7ss
 +On Wings Of Darkness - 1ss
 +Living Blade - 2ss
 +Beckon Malifaux - 1ss

Primordial Magic - 2ss

Barbaros - 10ss
 +Nephilim Gladiatus - 1ss

Mr. Graves - 8ss

Nekima - 13ss
 +Fears Given Form - 1ss

Terror Tot - 4ss

Terror Tot - 4ss
 

Given my extremely limited experience, I don't know if that's reasonable or not.  Right now, I have the Neverborn half of the starter, Lilith's box (With Primordial Magic instead of the Cherub), Nekima and Graves, so I don't have a ton of options for swapping.

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Since you have the starter models I would drop Barbaros for two Bloodwretches here. Wretches hit reasonably hard, and would get you up to 8 models which will help with activation control. 

Also, just as an FYI to you and the OP, I think beater Lilith is probably her least effective incarnation. I get a lot more use out of Traffic Cop Lilith, where I park her somewhere close to the center of the board behind her trees and have her decide who gets to move and where they go. I very rarely use Tangle Shadows against opposing models, unless I have a really high mask in hand and I see something exposed that I can grab. Usually I use Tangle to cycle beaters onto a target or sacrifice a tot to get one of my key pieces out of a bad spot.

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Doppelganger is a good model for beater lists, because you can pretty much go balls deep without having a high risk of losing initiative on the next turn. She can also copy attacks from other models, which is rather obviously useful in a beater list as well.

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Since you have the starter models I would drop Barbaros for two Bloodwretches here. Wretches hit reasonably hard, and would get you up to 8 models which will help with activation control. 

Also, just as an FYI to you and the OP, I think beater Lilith is probably her least effective incarnation. I get a lot more use out of Traffic Cop Lilith, where I park her somewhere close to the center of the board behind her trees and have her decide who gets to move and where they go. I very rarely use Tangle Shadows against opposing models, unless I have a really high mask in hand and I see something exposed that I can grab. Usually I use Tangle to cycle beaters onto a target or sacrifice a tot to get one of my key pieces out of a bad spot.

Good plan, thanks!

And yeah, I'm planning to play her as suggested by the Lilith podcast (where they literally said "Play 5 games with Lilith where you don't swing her sword"), but I'm coming from Warmahordes, so I want to run the pure beatdown a couple times to get it out of my system.  I'm going to do a grow list a couple times too. ;)

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The "don't swing her sword" approach is how I started playing her and still do(mainly because the first couple of games I just wasn't in a position to, so I just dropped trees and cast Wicked Vines from behind a wall, and used her lure from Wicked Mistress, then realized how powerful those simple actions alone were). I highly recommend trying it as she is far more of a tool box master than just a beater or Grow list model (which I still haven't tried after nearly three years of playing her as the prospect of doing so feels like it limits her too much for me to even consider taking in a game).

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Yeah, and having the positive flips to damage allows you to easilly get red jokers into what you want to kill, which she can easilly with tangle shadows and gets drawns often enough due to 8 cards.  The only thing i find it's a trap, is to use your own created forests to charge through them. You rarely will want to do that.

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I document my games on youtube and am going through a Lilith phase at the moment. By no means am I an amazing player, but if newer players are looking for tips on how our Nephilim Queen can be used (or how not to use her as the case frequently is) the Encounter reports might be helpful. Irresponsible adults only, I am prone to bad language...

This game went fairly well, using only the mother of monsters and nephilim boxes:

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'll add one more (last one, promise), as it includes many of the models discussed above and shows some ways of using them that I think come across more clearly. Hopefully useful to players starting out with the brood. If nothing else, it was a damn fun game.

For perspective: My opponent is currently ranked among the top 10 players in the UK. This was a relaxed game where he was trying out a few things, so its not a super-optimized tournament crew, but it isn't weak (certainly didn't feel like it!).  

 

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