Fast Grow League Advice

[case.card]

Hi all!

I'm returning to Malifaux after a three year sabbatical on the Other Side.  

There's a Fast Grow League (2015 packet) kicking off in a few weeks at the FLGS, and my wife and I have already signed up.  In the past, I've always been a Guild toady (Sonnia & Hopkins are my heroes!), but the Gremlins are just too much fun to stay away from!  That said, I've never run Gremlins outside of manning demos, so I could use some advice from fellow bayou brethren!

Here's what I have access to:

1. Wong (Explosive Solutions):  fully painted
2. Zipp (The Sky Pirates):  un-assembled 

I also have just about all the Guild stuff, and nearly all the crews from the other factions.  Many of them are older metal kits (we're in the process of updating).

All that said, what do you folks recommend for additions?  The league grows weekly:  26ss/30ss/40ss/50ss.  The first two weeks are pretty easy-peasy (boxed crew plus upgrades), but the following two weeks get a bit tougher.  I thought I'd ask early as I'm a terrible stickler for having models painted before playing with them.  

Thanks in advance!!!

[EpicWaffle]

I would recommend going for zipp. He's really fun, offers a variety of different tricks and it's really solid. Wong imo requires some wise positioning and some tricks that are some what predictable by a good player. The only thing I would recommend is for you to buy some stuffs for when it will get to 50ss. My recommendations would go to buying Ophelia crew and  the Creative taxidermist one:both offers you access to a good variety of strong enforcers (taxidermists sure rocks) while also offering you one of our strongest bench man when it comes to fighting, which is Francois La Croix (pair him up with dirty cheater and stilts and you're good to go) and, imo, one of our best unit which are Stuffed piglets. If you have some spare money to invest, Gracie and Burt can sure wreck the house, and both offers a strong choice for a glowy target (Wong condition), without leaving at home Somer box, although it's the one you need the least (especially since you have lighting bugs for runners).

A good 50ss list I run with zipp using what I described to you is

Zipp (dirty cheater, rambling diatribe, gift of gab) 3 ss

Earl (not mandatory) 3 ss

1 mate (where the captain can't see, treasure map/drop the piano) 10 ss

Francois la cross (stilts and dirty cheater) 9ss

Gremlin taxidermist 7ss

Iron Skeeter (poorly handled explosives) 6ss

Lighting bug (if you need an extra scheme runner other wise you can leave it home) 5ss

sruffee Piglet x2 (2ss each)

thats 47ss so you have 7 ss as cache and you can pretty much do what you want  hope it helped

 

[cryion]

Burt.

Frank is sweet, but the rest of that crew is meh. Not sure if you should invest into that right away.

Taxidermy is a good box to have, but you might not make many friends with C4 Piglet swarm.

Both masters are fun. I'd go with whatever you feel like because league is probably primarily about fun anyway.

Whichever you pick: Burt.

Dont feel like Zipp needs Cheater unless Undercover Entourage is happening.

Did I mention that I like Burt? Oh right, he wants Cheater. Like 99% of the time.

Enjoy playing with the glorious masterrace. All hail the gremlin overlord.

[EpicWaffle]

8 hours ago, cryion said:

Burt.

Frank is sweet, but the rest of that crew is meh. Not sure if you should invest into that right away.

Taxidermy is a good box to have, but you might not make many friends with C4 Piglet swarm.

Both masters are fun. I'd go with whatever you feel like because league is probably primarily about fun anyway.

Whichever you pick: Burt.

Dont feel like Zipp needs Cheater unless Undercover Entourage is happening.

Did I mention that I like Burt? Oh right, he wants Cheater. Like 99% of the time.

Enjoy playing with the glorious masterrace. All hail the gremlin overlord.

Dirty cheater on him is a personal preference of mine since I like him being in the middle of the action an being able to cheat 4 flips for turn makes him way more tough to take down, so if you don't have much experience with him, it allows you to make some errors without too many consequences

 

On the Ophelia box I wound t be so rough on the rest of the box: Burt is sure tier 1 and I would recommend to take him anyway (same goes for Gracie) but I wouldn't underestimate Raphael and Rami in the right hands, especially the 1  

[cryion]

22 minutes ago, EpicWaffle said:

Dirty cheater on him is a personal preference of mine since I like him being in the middle of the action an being able to cheat 4 flips for turn makes him way more tough to take down, so if you don't have much experience with him, it allows you to make some errors without too many consequences

 

On the Ophelia box I wound t be so rough on the rest of the box: Burt is sure tier 1 and I would recommend to take him anyway (same goes for Gracie) but I wouldn't underestimate Raphael and Rami in the right hands, especially the 1  

Im not sure about Rami. It seems to me like you can be much more efficient and more importantly consistant if you spend those points elsewhere. Even if you get the Ram for whatever reason his min damage is still 2. On a shoot 5. That seems pretty bad. If you have advise Id greatly appreciate it though.

And fair enough on Zipp. I suppose it can be pretty good giving the right circumstances. ^^

[codingCaptor]

Rami is a one trick pony.    That's usually okay, because it's a really good trick.

Turn 1, Lenny should be deployed withing 3" of Rami.   Ideally, a slop hauler should be hanging out nearby as well.  This allows Rami to activate, Double focus, and murder something in your opponents deployment zone. Lenny nearby guarntees getting Dumb Luck off.   1 damage from reckless, and a maximum of 4 damage from a dumb luck red joker flip (Remember, Lenny's damage prevention aura helps against dumb luck!)  means that even if you hit someone for 10, Rami will live.  The trick is picking something that has 8 or less wounds (10 if you have red joker in hand and can't find a good 8 target)   and doesn't have a bunch of armor or hard to kill or enough defense that Rami won't be able to hit.

Summoner lists in particular are vulnerable to this, since they will end up using their good cards early to summon things leaving you free to murder whichever model is nearby.  

It's not an overpowered trick.   It has counters (I would never bring him vs. Rezzers.  Too much impossible to wound)    But the ability to delete an ~8 stone model off the enemy side of the board on turn one (OR, better yet, crippling a key model that their build needs to function)  can be worth it depending on your opponents.

It can also scare players.   Not good players, mind you.   But if you do reach out and touch someone, the opponent will spend a lot of the rest of the game making sure to position such that Rami can't get them.   Such an inconvenience to their positioning is almost worth the 7 stones in and of itself.

To be honest, I don't use it very often anymore.  It's just a little too situational to be worth bringing most of the time.  His turn 1 activations when he's next to his support and has a handful of good cards that aren't needed by another other models are always the best.   His other turns won't be nearly as exciting, and in some games it won't have been worth it to bring him for what he gives.    But he performs well in just enough games that I still keep him ready at all times to drop into a game and punish my opponents for their hubris.

[EpicWaffle]

6 hours ago, cryion said:

Im not sure about Rami. It seems to me like you can be much more efficient and more importantly consistant if you spend those points elsewhere. Even if you get the Ram for whatever reason his min damage is still 2. On a shoot 5. That seems pretty bad. If you have advise Id greatly appreciate it though.

And fair enough on Zipp. I suppose it can be pretty good giving the right circumstances. ^^

On rami I'm with you on your thesis and find myself rarely picking him but with the right table, you put a lot of pressure just by having him being a threat to the other. It's  more of a psychological thing rather than being objectively good (he's not comparable with other 7ss models of our faction) and when the shot hits, it sure hurts (for example you can't put a scheme runner in playing sight with someone like rami on the board). So yeah, not that great and wouldn't bring him so often  but still can be useful   I put him on the same level as pere for example: not easy to pick him instead of other models but still can find him place in the right hands.

[EpicWaffle]

1 minute ago, codingCaptor said:

Rami is a one trick pony.    That's usually okay, because it's a really good trick.

Turn 1, Lenny should be deployed withing 3" of Rami.   Ideally, a slop hauler should be hanging out nearby as well.  This allows Rami to activate, Double focus, and murder something in your opponents deployment zone. Lenny nearby guarntees getting Dumb Luck off.   1 damage from reckless, and a maximum of 4 damage from a dumb luck red joker flip (Remember, Lenny's damage prevention aura helps against dumb luck!)  means that even if you hit someone for 10, Rami will live.  The trick is picking something that has 8 or less wounds (10 if you have red joker in hand and can't find a good 8 target)   and doesn't have a bunch of armor or hard to kill or enough defense that Rami won't be able to hit.

Summoner lists in particular are vulnerable to this, since they will end up using their good cards early to summon things leaving you free to murder whichever model is nearby.  

It's not an overpowered trick.   It has counters (I would never bring him vs. Rezzers.  Too much impossible to wound)    But the ability to delete an ~8 stone model off the enemy side of the board on turn one (OR, better yet, crippling a key model that their build needs to function)  can be worth it depending on your opponents.

It can also scare players.   Not good players, mind you.   But if you do reach out and touch someone, the opponent will spend a lot of the rest of the game making sure to position such that Rami can't get them.   Such an inconvenience to their positioning is almost worth the 7 stones in and of itself.

To be honest, I don't use it very often anymore.  It's just a little too situational to be worth bringing most of the time.  His turn 1 activations when he's next to his support and has a handful of good cards that aren't needed by another other models are always the best.   His other turns won't be nearly as exciting, and in some games it won't have been worth it to bring him for what he gives.    But he performs well in just enough games that I still keep him ready at all times to drop into a game and punish my opponents for their hubris.

Yeah that's the idea  I don't even bring Lenny when I pick him ,it's really, it's more of a "if it goes well, nice, otherwise I'm forcing you to position very well otherwise you're gonna risk a shot from me". I used him vs a player I knew was gonna deploy a bunch of dogs with McCabe at a tournament and just by that he wasn't able to rush schemes as he wanted while I sent out francois for Luna.