Coryphee

[hydranixx]

I'm excited to assemble (thank cthulhu for magnets) and paint these lovely creations when they arrive in the mail, but I'm a little uncertain of when to actually hire them as I have no experience with them as of yet. 

What scheme/strategies do you see that make you want to hire them? 

Are there any instances where you might hire only one of the Coryphee?

 

 

[Sordid Strumpet]

The Coryphee duet is vastly superior to the individual Coryphee which are very easy to take out with the right tools (anything that targets Wp and/or ignores armour). The duet is very tough, has a higher Wp and can heal itself. The only time I'd hire a single Coryphee is if I was playing Collodi and don't have access to a duet.

As for schemes/strats - they're not really your scheme runners as they are too expensive, but can of course drop markers in a pinch. But really the Coryphee are your main beaters. They don't like bunched enemies so much as they prefer not being hit, so anything turf war-esque is probably their least optimal strategy. Having said that, they're so fast and tough to hit, they can be used to good effect in all lists as you pretty much always need at least one model in your crew that can beat something up.

They are great with Ramos, Kaeris and especially Colette because Colette can get one of them to reactivate via prompt. You can then turn them into a duet at the end of the second activation of that Coryphee, avoid having to sacrifice the model due to the prompt trigger and then get another 2AP out of the duet. It's incredibly dirty when it works, but I have gotten too hung up on pulling that off before turning them into a duet. The consequence was that I got overly aggressive and lost one Coryphee (and with that any chance at getting a duet).

The best way of using Colette's prompt thing is start one one each side of the board and activate them late. You can then use prompt and reactivation shenanigans to get a Coryphee duet on whichever side of the board it is most needed.

Another fabulous use is to boost them a bit with mechanical doves who can explode next to them for even more +-flips to damage or making them all but impossible to hit.

[spooky_squirrel]

On top of Sordid's response, as mentioned elsewhere in the Arcanist subforum:

Coryphee (Duet) is usually taken when more activations are needed early and a beater like Hank/Miss Step is called for. In a Colette crew, they activate and drop schemes as (0) actions, dart around, cause trouble, reactivate, join up and cause more trouble. Once they're joined, they make decent prompt targets and they benefit from all of Colette's usual shenanigans, with the added bonus of being a little harder to hit and hurt and impossible to charge. Hank is less activations up front, less schemes on the ground, but a far better beater to prompt because of his damage track and trigger. He's also easier to take down, though either choice will fold under enough pressure.

[Jordon]

The coryphee is a highly finesse piece and requires experience and planning in order to maximize. I've had them crumble and I've had them devastate. Sometimes it's simply a bad/good matchup and sometime's it's my own fault for forcing them into a bad situation. Other times my opponent has no good ways of dealing with them. They're the type of model that gets better as you do.

I typically run two, but not necessarily because of the duet. In fact I often forego joining them up as having 14ss tied up in one activation can sometimes be disadvantageous. They work fine individually, but you have to know what your up against and to use them as they're designed. Sometimes if I feel like it's too risky i'll form the duet, but if my opponent does not have the silver bullet, or if I think I can manage the threatening pieces, i'll run them individually as I feel like I can more work work out of them. Also with GG2016, it's handy having a model that can alternate between minion and enforcer. 

They're meant as harassment models, using their insane speed to hunt down those hard to get models such as key support pieces or scheme runners. They also can do a decent job at tying up certain beaters, dodging in and out of combat. It's often overlooked but I quite regularly use their Ca action to slow models, especially those aforementioned beaters. If you think about if, having slow and being unable to charge the coryphee means they're essentially unhittable in melee. Also do not undersell their trigger to use soulstones, as that has saved my ass on more than one occasion and always tends to take your opponent by surprise. 

Obviously Colette runs well with them but I've heard of good success with Kaeris too. Having healing is great with armour+2 or they make amazing targets for grab and drop, able to run (well fly technically) 14" and drop a scheme marker. Both of the M&SU upgrade's also work great with them giving them burning and/or regen. 

[hydranixx]

On 10/13/2016 at 7:03 PM, Jordon said:

The coryphee is a highly finesse piece and requires experience and planning in order to maximize. I've had them crumble and I've had them devastate. Sometimes it's simply a bad/good matchup and sometime's it's my own fault for forcing them into a bad situation. Other times my opponent has no good ways of dealing with them. They're the type of model that gets better as you do.

I typically run two, but not necessarily because of the duet. In fact I often forego joining them up as having 14ss tied up in one activation can sometimes be disadvantageous. They work fine individually, but you have to know what your up against and to use them as they're designed. Sometimes if I feel like it's too risky i'll form the duet, but if my opponent does not have the silver bullet, or if I think I can manage the threatening pieces, i'll run them individually as I feel like I can more work work out of them. Also with GG2016, it's handy having a model that can alternate between minion and enforcer. 

They're meant as harassment models, using their insane speed to hunt down those hard to get models such as key support pieces or scheme runners. They also can do a decent job at tying up certain beaters, dodging in and out of combat. It's often overlooked but I quite regularly use their Ca action to slow models, especially those aforementioned beaters. If you think about if, having slow and being unable to charge the coryphee means they're essentially unhittable in melee. Also do not undersell their trigger to use soulstones, as that has saved my ass on more than one occasion and always tends to take your opponent by surprise. 

Obviously Colette runs well with them but I've heard of good success with Kaeris too. Having healing is great with armour+2 or they make amazing targets for grab and drop, able to run (well fly technically) 14" and drop a scheme marker. Both of the M&SU upgrade's also work great with them giving them burning and/or regen. 

I finally got my first game in with Coryphee, and I see what you mean. They're definitely finesse models, and they're not nearly as point and click as some other models can be. I did manage to win the game itself, but the Duet did not perform (ha) as well as I had hoped.

I was locking down and out activating the opponent (lots of Raptors and summoning Spiders) while buffing the Coryphee with pushes, Reactivate and s. However, even with double  to attacks and defence (Under Pressure + Field Generator) it couldn't deal with Incorporeal, and I managed to fail my last attack so I couldn't push away. See, the thing about Glowing Sabre is... well, Armour is meaningless, and 7 Wounds does not last long.

I think my main errors were having them Dance Together prematurely, and committing them to a fight with something Incorporeal. Failing their attack to push away really hurt too!

Are there any factions you won't consider them against, since there's an abundance of ways to get around their durability, or to counter their attacks? Would you ever play them in tandem with Langston, in a particularly aggressive list?

[Jordon]

2 hours ago, hydranixx said:

Are there any factions you won't consider them against, since there's an abundance of ways to get around their durability, or to counter their attacks? Would you ever play them in tandem with Langston, in a particularly aggressive list?

I mean it's probably very meta specific and there are bad matchups within each faction. However I do think the opposite can be said and they can dominate if used correctly and in the right matchups. Arcanists have the unfortunate (for the coryphee anyway) stigma of being the "armour" faction so it's not uncommon for people to bring anti-armour when declaring against arcanists. Now I don't often see anti armour spam, so usually I can deal with the one or two threats or use the speed of the Coryphee to outpace those models. 

For me personally, I find it difficult bringing the Coryphee against guild - or more specifically those damn austringers. It's commonplace to see them in just about any guild list and with their obscene range, ignoring LOS and high stat they can literally pick away at the coryphee and no amount of speed will save them. To be fair though, its a problem I have with just about any fragile model I bring - not just the coryphee. Also as sort of a weird irony, the Coryphee are actually one of the better models we have to deal with austringers as their speed can get them into those hard to reach areas quickly and austringers are pretty soft when you actually catch them. So in a way they both models are great counters for each other.

I've yet to do it but i'm sure there is a scenario out there where I might want to bring them along side another expensive beater but I rarely bring a list on the basis of aggression. I think of the Coryphee more as harassment then outright aggression. They are great at jamming a wrench into my opponents plans and if I'm going to hire them, it's usually because I'm playing for point denial, which is where these models excel at. 

[spooky_squirrel]

If there's limited Arcanist presence in your meta, then your local player are probably going to their respective channels and reading up on what to expect. This will cause an anti-armor skew based off of the most easily applied Arcanist builds and the expectation of "Arcanists will drop armor". If there's limited variety, then the local meta will skew for whatever they expect Arcanists to drop based off of their local players. When there's more presence and more variety, it becomes harder to predict.

So look at your meta and see how close the generalizations I'd summarized above are. If there's anti-armor coming out of the woodwork the moment someone walks in with an Arcanist t-shirt on, I wouldn't put the Coryphee on the table without a very specific suicide mission for the dancer. Like Framed for Murder (on a construct? Is it really murder?) or to draw attention away from the things that are really going to do the work (that's 7 stones for a distraction, hard to sell if it isn't enabling 2-3 strat/scheme points by doing so).

Guild is an obvious source of armor hate at range, and even the stuff that doesn't outright ignore armor can reach out and plink the Coryphee a couple of times and knock her down before she gets to do much. I would also be wary of playing Coryphee into an Arcanist opponent; everyone's favorite Gamin has a Ca 8 (0) that ignores armor and inflicts 2 damage, and it finds its way into many lists, even if by summons (Mechanical Rider, Sandeep), which can be a hindrance. I've used Metal Gamin to keep a Colette prompting crew playing conservatively with the Coryphee early on because of the Magnetism threat. Some Resser masters can also dial in against armor-reliant crews readily, summoning in the Student of Steel and/or using conditions to work around the armor reduction.

This doesn't stop me from using the Coryphee, but it does make me double check the role I'd be hiring them into. If there's a better option in my hiring pool for the job against factions that have definite counters, I'll probably use it instead.

[hydranixx]

1 hour ago, spooky_squirrel said:

I wouldn't put the Coryphee on the table without a very specific suicide mission for the dancer. Like Framed for Murder (on a construct? Is it really murder?)

Haha, well it's debatable. That would technically dehumanise half our faction.

FfM seems interesting with Coryphee... you can't form the duet if you want your 3 points... but they are really fast and your opponent will almost always want to kill them early to stop the duet forming in the first place.

[spooky_squirrel]

3 minutes ago, hydranixx said:

Haha, well it's debatable. That would technically dehumanise half our faction.

FfM seems interesting with Coryphee... you can't form the duet if you want your 3 points... but they are really fast and your opponent will almost always want to kill them early to stop the duet forming in the first place.

Well, if you listen to anything on the official channels, we're a bunch of criminals and terrorists anyway

I would only do it if my opponent looks like they're gunning for armor when FfM is in the pool. It would be a bluff play, because I'd be counting on them hating the duet enough to stop it at all costs even as I push/prompt/etc. the stooge Coryphee into range to threaten something important enough to be responded to by a Master or Henchman. The second Coryphee would need to be present in the list to complete the duet bluff, and if the bait is taken, great! I've got a fair chance that my opponent will ignore the second one as it runs around trying to do strat/scheme stuff (to include tying up opposing scheme runners for an activation or two).

If you only hire one, it doesn't present enough individual threat (in my opinion) to be targeted by someone important early in the game, so it doesn't make as good a stooge as other models I'd hire (for the same point cost, a December Acolyte presents enough risk to be answered right away and it can deploy From the Shadows and start near enough to the opposing henchman/master to garner an immediate response). Coryphee are also a little more resilient and harder to engage than other, cheaper options than you might leave out as targets of opportunity/charge bait for opposing henchman+ models if you're looking for something to earn VP beyond what your opponent would expect for a low stone cost model.

So basically to use it for this scheme play, you'd want to look like you're hiring them for the duet (the bluff), when in fact one of them is going to try and get 3VP by turn 2, and the other will play a slightly longer game and deny/earn 2-3 VP throughout the rest of the game. This is an example of what I think of when it comes to finesse--using board placement and activations in a way that makes it harder to gauge what I'm really going for.

[EnternalVoid]

20 hours ago, hydranixx said:

I was locking down and out activating the opponent (lots of Raptors and summoning Spiders) while buffing the Coryphee with pushes, Reactivate and s. However, even with double  to attacks and defence (Under Pressure + Field Generator) it couldn't deal with Incorporeal, and I managed to fail my last attack so I couldn't push away. See, the thing about Glowing Sabre is... well, Armour is meaningless, and 7 Wounds does not last long.

One of those Finesse things is to know when not to gamble.  If your opponent has Anti armor or you are not in a good spot to be counterattacked, I would consider walking away with that Last AP rather than going for one more swing and the trigger.  The fact they disengage with out testing means you can often charge, do your two swings, then use your third AP to just walk to where you want to be for later.  While the Duet is in the same SS class as Nekima, Langston, and other bruisers it is less for damage output and more for its other attributes.

I am trying to place what you fought though, Incorporeal plus the Glowing Saber means McCabe was the master but I am not sure what he was taking.  He would not have been Guild, so it would have to be 10T.  I know Chiaki has Incorporeal but she is Rare 1 so you can always ignore her with the Duet and go for something fleshier.

[hydranixx]

It was Chiaki in fact, though I had thought she was not Incorporeal. I... have a lot to learn yet :L

[spooky_squirrel]

4 hours ago, hydranixx said:

It was Chiaki in fact, though I had thought she was not Incorporeal. I... have a lot to learn yet :L

I'm sure more than a few of us have overlooked a key word or two on our own cards, moreso our opponents'. When I find myself making a mistake like that, I make note of it in hopes that I won't do it again. Things like: never give reactivate to the Emissary when Shen Long has not yet activated.

Ten Thunders presents an interesting challenge for anyone facing it because of their range of masters, infiltration, and core hiring pool. Other factions have variety, but tend to have some predictable Masters/crews/themes that are easier to play successfully than others (meta and meta-dependent). My own experience playing some 10T masters (including Mei) has shown me that branching out from their infiltration/theme makes them substantially more interesting, it's also shown me that those masters have several ways to play that aren't as obvious when you yourself usually only play one side of them. Mei Feng with 10T Brothers and Obsidian Oni presents a different puzzle to work around than Mei Feng with Rail Workers and Large Arachnids, even though the models listed can be seen as filling similar roles (objective camper and scrap marker source, respectively). Mei Feng with Toshiro operates differently than Mei Feng with Joss.

Because I tend towards M&SU models and constructs (Ironsides and Mei Feng are my two most played masters so far, go figure), I expect people I play against and around frequently to bring something to punch armor, get around defensive triggers, and do something about the damage output of things like the Rail Golem, Joss, and Howard Langston. So far I have not been disappointed very often, which helps me get to know the strengths and weaknesses of some of the beaters I employ. Something I haven't tried yet is bringing Coryphee in with Mei Feng. They would be highly mobile Railwalk nodes, and adding in a Powered by Flame caddy would have the thousand cuts give out burning as well. Unfortunately, they do run a bit more expensive than the Large Arachnids that provide a railwalk node, scheme marker removal, and drop scrap on kills. I would have give them a few runs to see if they can carry the extra weight I would expect of them.

 

Which ties into the second question in the initial post: I would consider hiring just one for Mei Feng. Two at 14 stones merging would not only reduce total number of activations, but also total number of Railwalk nodes. If I'm doing Mei Feng's Armored Arcanist Corps, I've got things like Bleeding Edge Tech and Powered by Flame in mind, and the first calls for construct minions while the second calls for higher numbers of landing and wounding attacks. Whereas bringing in one at 7 stones can take advantage of the fact that it doesn't present as big a potential threat as two, and is thus less likely to be worth the AP spent trying to kill it early, which gives me the opportunity to try and score some strat/scheme points off of it, or use it to deny my opponent's. That leaves me the other 7 stones to pay for the Large Arachnid with some change left over to have the same number of activations and Railwalk nodes, only with some variance in what they do and how they do it. Or to pay for the Arcane Effigy and put a down payment on some upgrades or otherwise pay forward on an additional model that provides more than "mobile beater" to the crew.