Advice against Sandeep

[godswearhats]

Yes, I've played against Sandeep a bunch. I take McMourning into Arcanists most of the time now - 100% of the time if Frame for Murder is in the pool.

[jolly_green314]

On 1/23/2017 at 1:30 PM, godswearhats said:

I would recommend taking McMourning vs Sandeep, for multiple reasons:

1. Poison ignores Armor (Joss, Metal Gamin)
2. Kudra can Poison your models all she wants and they won't really mind
3. Things that work in a bubble (summoned Gamin, Mages) work in McMourning's favor
4. Sebastian can help keep your crew protected from Mages using Under Cover

A list such as this:

• McMourning, Plastic Surgery, Moonlighting
• Zombie Chihuahua
• Sebastian
• Rafkin
• Carrion Emissary, Conflux of Forbidden Knowledge
• Nurse
• Rotten Belle
• Anna Lovelace

I included Anna because her 8" bubble helps a lot vs Sandeep - his free teleports now can't move him or his models quite as deeply, she creates more zombies, can shoot into combat and push Sandeep and his cronies where they don't want to be. You've got a couple of stones available for potential upgrades, or take a 7SS cache. My Little Helper seems good on either Rafkin or Anna. The Carrion Emissary will make a couple zombies for you and then throw Poison onto a lot of models (feel free to throw that Poison Fog at your own Zombie to maximize blast damage). Obviously, the Shards are great for blocking LoS but they don't slow Sandeep down that much, hence Anna.

Hope this helps,

~gwh

 

 

how has it been working out? Any insights beyond what you already listed?

 

And, what do you usually frame? 

[spooky_squirrel]

Also, what @godswearhats recommended (he's been practicing/playing regularly against the top Arcanist player in our region if not wider) will play well into other types of Arcanist lists you might see at tournaments because of poison ignoring armor, Anna's control, and McMourning's abilities into bubbles. This gives you an advantage against Arcanist players because this kind of build doesn't fall flat if your opponent doesn't drop Sandeep.

One thing I've been puzzling over is the problem Anna gives me: Anna messes up anything Mei Feng would want to do aggressively with Railwalk--my earmarked Arcanist versus Resser Drops (immune to paralyze and slow, gives me access to Kang, anti-cast defensive tech)--and interferes with placement/pushes that Colette might attempt all while being able to shoot into close combat. Her ability to bury stuff can come in handy against key beaters in Marcus/Ramos builds (provided no Raptors are buried yet). She can also push things around, which helps disrupt bubbles and control objectives--especially when some of the better tanks in Arcanists are relatively slow (Wk 4). I definitely don't want her going into Ironsides (target willpower, aim for bury trigger, Toni cannot punch back on willpower attacks and if she's buried for the turn has zero impact on the board state). So she's definitely someone to consider if you aren't already.

[godswearhats]

Frame targets are very opponent dependent. For example, if my opponent hasn't taken a killy master or Henchman, I won't take the scheme. Part of the reason to take McMourning is to avoid losing points to Frame (because the model will die to conditions). I'll generally take Frame on the Nurse, because you have to deal with a Nurse or she will ruin your day. I'll make sure she's positioned centrally. However, sometimes it can be worth taking on the Emissary - I have an opponent who never lets the Emissary live beyond turn 3 if he can avoid it, because of how much control the Carrion Emissary gives. We'll be talking about Frame for Murder in our next podcast episode.

As for additional insights vs Sandeep, we actually did a whole segment all about that in episode 6 - I think we talk for about 40 minutes, so there's a lot of useful info in there. Briefly, attack his hand (through simple duels like Terrifying), ignore the summons if you can, and don't try to kill Sandeep your opponent makes a mistake (e.g. activating him early and leaving him charge range of multiple of your models).

[spooky_squirrel]

16 minutes ago, godswearhats said:

As for additional insights vs Sandeep, we actually did a whole segment all about that in episode 6 - I think we talk for about 40 minutes, so there's a lot of useful info in there. Briefly, attack his hand (through simple duels like Terrifying), ignore the summons if you can, and don't try to kill Sandeep your opponent makes a mistake (e.g. activating him early and leaving him charge range of multiple of your models).

As an Arcanist player, I can vouch for the "wait for your opponent to make a mistake" approach. The more complex masters are easier to make mistakes with and Sandeep can get very complicated. This is where the comment of "pay attention to what the Strategy and Schemes are" comes into play (especially if you're at the point of familiarity with your own models and crews where you can reliably play for all 10 of your VP by picking the right combination of schemes and models), because if you can figure out your opponent's schemes and what they need to do to score them, you can screw them up. That's why I mentioned some typical things in my local/regional meta, like Angelica/Practiced Production and Raptor meaning the player is going for Leave Your Mark if it's in the pool (10 stones out of 50, safe bet that that's what they're there for unless the Strategy is Interference). If you see a specific combination of models, you can counter your opponent's plans by interfering with it.

If your opponent makes the same mistake(s) I do regarding playing for the VP, you can kill the over-extended model or solidify your position on an objective and relax knowing that you've stopped 2-4VP by exploiting the fact that someone like me got greedy, did not play into their scheme selection (you know, having the Henchman with two upgrades wander away from the center even though Show of Force was selected), or put too many resources into keeping someone alive because they haven't done their job yet (i.e., same Henchman being lured away from the center then attacked until dead leaving the Sandeep player with a stripped hand or soulstone cache, for example). If you can outright stop an entire scheme with one kill before your opponent scores it, you only need to worry about scoring/denying a total of 8 more VP to guarantee the win.

[Ludvig]

How about Molly with black blood horrors? Sounds to me like the list bunches up to get all those auras. If they don't bunch up you can lure something to you and eat it at your leisure and if they do bunch up you summon in a few black blood horrors so even if they don't randomize you are dealing damage to them every time they damage you.

Do people usually find room for Ama No Zako since she can obey enemies to force Ikiryo out? Seems like a decent trick if they opponent isn't willing to do it for you.

[Fictor]

Warding runes does inmunity to if you have the correct Oxfordian near and Arcane Shield reduces the dmg on 1 up 0 and all the crew have it (Sandeep, Oxfordians, Santionated)

So, Black Blood can be dodged if you play good your cards

[ttsgosadow]

Afaik the Sandeep list usually has two guys immune to conditions. This are usually his nasty beaters that will be in your face as fast as possible. I don't really understand how McM is a good counter to that. Sure, he ignores their armor, but they are immune to poison (is a condition). Am I missing something, or is McM still a good idea if you cant poison and nurse these threats?

[bertmac]

The real killers in Arcanists tend to be enforcers like Howard Rail Golem and Cerberus. None of them can take warding runes.

[Adran]

1 hour ago, ttsgosadow said:

Afaik the Sandeep list usually has two guys immune to conditions. This are usually his nasty beaters that will be in your face as fast as possible. I don't really understand how McM is a good counter to that. Sure, he ignores their armor, but they are immune to poison (is a condition). Am I missing something, or is McM still a good idea if you cant poison and nurse these threats?

For this Sandeep has spent about 35 stones for 3 Mages and 2 henchmen, so its fairly signifigant chunk of the crew to get to that.. And the models are only immune to conditions when they are near to the mage with the right upgrade, so if you want to do a condition game, then target the mage. 

That said I believe that McMorning is better when he doesn't rely on poison, but you are right that does mean if one of those expensive regenerating  immune to enemy conditons with bonus flips against the master Henchman is the fraem for murder target, then you are less likely to be able to kill them with posion to deny the points. 

[Ludvig]

5 hours ago, Fictor said:

Warding runes does inmunity to if you have the correct Oxfordian near and Arcane Shield reduces the dmg on 1 up 0 and all the crew have it (Sandeep, Oxfordians, Santionated)

So, Black Blood can be dodged if you play good your cards

While that is a powerful ability something must activate at some point and then you need to hit df 5 and it takes 5 damage to kill mages/sanctioned casters. That is "one shot one kill"-territory if you merc in a trapper, would stop the opponent from boxing up as much perhaps? They seem impervious to small cuts (before activating) but a big fat juicy hit could cause them some trouble. The crew sounds rather like a glass cannon. How does it like the Valedictorian with my little helper? With her  to damage trigger she can oneshot most of the models in the list Taelor does a pretty good job of countering summoned gamin and Joss and can be really tricky to hit if she discarded my little helper. As far as I can tell the list is light on positive flips so Yin, preferably in cover would preovide quite the obstacle for it to overcome.

Run somethin up with my little helper so nothing can attack it turn 2 and you're in a prime position to threaten most of the enemy crew? Try to charge in to block the overlapping auras with your own bases. Since everything is ht 2 in the crew it should require really careful positioning to maximize the auras to begin with.

Regarding cover and placing: If you use linear obstacles a 6" place shouldn't allow the opponent to circumvend the cover most of the time and areas of soft cover are really good for flying models since they can stand in them and recieve cover from all directions while still being able to charge out unhindered.

[spooky_squirrel]

7 hours ago, Adran said:

For this Sandeep has spent about 35 stones for 3 Mages and 2 henchmen, so its fairly signifigant chunk of the crew to get to that.. And the models are only immune to conditions when they are near to the mage with the right upgrade, so if you want to do a condition game, then target the mage. 

That said I believe that McMorning is better when he doesn't rely on poison, but you are right that does mean if one of those expensive regenerating  immune to enemy conditons with bonus flips against the master Henchman is the fraem for murder target, then you are less likely to be able to kill them with posion to deny the points. 

Of course, if your opponent drops in Joss with Warding Runes as their FFM target and you ignore him altogether because he's an expensive and slow piece of tech that takes a focused effort to kill, that's their mistake and your benefit. Enjoy the 3VP differential that they gave you. It's much more cost-effective for me to play Arcane Conflux Emissary as my potential FFM target--10 stones, Cg 10, lots of utility until it dies, not immune to poison--but when picking schemes I already know my opponent's crew, so I won't pick this one versus McMourning on the Emissary.

 

Outside of that, Sandeep is better off spending his stones in another direction. His summoning is hard-capped at 3 Gamin in play/buried, so if he wants an activation advantage, he has to hire for it. McMourning is very mobile, and can get where he needs to be to do work. If I'm playing Sandeep into McM, I want to be able to respond to that and put things into positions that will score. Since I have to hire for that advantage, I'm putting quantity not quality of models on the table, and as has already been pointed out: those Mages aren't very tough. Maneuver into them and 2/3 can no longer shoot without getting away via pushes/places, make them undead, maybe poisoned, and start handing out transplants. Sure, the mages that haven't activated yet won't care about the transplant side effect damage, but if they're activating later someone more important must activate early. That could go badly for me as the Sandeep player.

[godswearhats]

Carrion Effigy and Chihuahua can both remove immunity to Poison. 

[Ludvig]

6 minutes ago, godswearhats said:

Carrion Effigy and Chihuahua can both remove immunity to Poison. 

Most models immune to poison are immune to consitions in general and the chihuahua places a condition to remove the poison immunity which means it's more or less useless.

[godswearhats]

36 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

Most models immune to poison are immune to consitions in general and the chihuahua places a condition to remove the poison immunity which means it's more or less useless.

True. It's why I bring the effigy. I think McM really needs the Lure to effectively manage the enemy positions too. It's not hard to get a single model outside of all the auras.

The Carrion Emissary helps a lot when enemy models bunch up - activating early and dropping Shards in front of them will really slow down your opponent. 

If you have trouble engaging, likely they do too. If most of the schemes require engagement, then you can prevent points. You don't need to score 10 to win, you just need to score 1 more than your opponent.

Biggest piece of advice: stop worrying about killing your opponent's models and think about how you score your points. You have a limited number of activations and AP: every single one of them should be about scoring you points or preventing your opponent from scoring.

[Clement]

50 SS Arcanists Crew
Sandeep Desai + 5 Pool
 - To Command Another Plane (1)
 - Unaligned Sage (1)
 - Arcane Reservoir (2)
The Valedictorian (10)
 - Warding Runes (1)
 - Imbued Protection (2)
Kudra (7)
 - Warding Runes (1)
 - Free of Mortal Shackles (1)
Oxfordian Mage (5)
 - Blood Ward (0)
 - Temporary Shielding (0)
Oxfordian Mage (5)
 - Doom Ward (0)
 - Temporary Shielding (0)
Oxfordian Mage (5)
 - Nemesis Ward (0)
 - Temporary Shielding (0)
Wind Gamin (4)
Wind Gamin (4)

So this list showed up at a tournament and won all three rounds.  I'm honestly at a loss as to how to deal with this since it has activation control out of the gate with 8 guys and gets worse since Sandeep is often dropping banasuva and a buffing ice gamin on your head late on turn 1.  The whole pile is also crazy mobile thanks to the Oxford mages cast trigger.

 

The best I could think to do was drag blood mage out of position and kill him, but their weirdly durable for 5 stones thanks to all their damage reduction.

[spooky_squirrel]

I've run a list similar to that a few times. It's not the worst thing they can throw at you in terms of activation control, but it also depends on who you drop into it.

As has been mentioned, go after the Sandeep player's hand. Temporary Shielding is once per game and must be discarded with a card from the hand to work. Furious casting requires discarding a card. Sandeep reliably summoning in Turn 1 (and subsequent turns, depending on what's happening) requires having several good cards in hand. The thing that's missing from that list is the ability to make up for a lousy hand draw and to recover from an early hand drain.

For maximum impact of Sandeep into the Strat/Scheme and board state, I would need to activate him relatively late in the turn. I don't want him committing and popping out Banasuva into an opponent who has several activations left, including their biggest control/beater models--it leaves too many options for dealing with Sandeep, Banasuva, supporting Gamin, etc. This means I'd need to activate the two Wind Gamin early, at least one of the Mages to push things into position early-to-mid, and then I'm looking at the rest of the Mages, Kudra, The Valedictorian, and Sandeep (likely in that order). Mess up the ability of the Sandeep player to avoid committing their workhorses until the last minute, and their activation advantage won't really matter.

In return, you'll want to make sure that you don't activate anything of consequence and leave it somewhere unsupported early in the turn. Sandeep can reach across the table and put expendable Gamin into things that you need to do work that isn't just killing Gamin. Similarly, this crew can project The Valedictorian into something with relative ease if you over-extend too early. Due to the Terrifying (All) on her, it'll draw cards out of your deck and/or hand if you're trying to respond to it.

Which brings me one of to the most Malifaux comments: play the Strat and Schemes that you hired your crew for. If you brought Reva or Seamus in order to kill things with a quickness, McMourning for mobility and sheer hard-to-kill nature of him, or someone like Nico or Molly to summon in the right tools for the right job, make a note of what everything you hired is there to do. Anything that doesn't have a job that results in you scoring or denying a VP is something that you can use to jam up your opponent. You pick your schemes after the crews are revealed, so look at what your schemes are and what you have to complete them with and whether or not they're reasonable schemes to attempt against the opposing crew.

 

To that end, it might open up the discussion more (especially for ideas and experience) if the strat and schemes for each round were available to dissect. I imagine that @godswearhats and some of the others in here that have a lot of practice playing into Sandeep can describe their hiring thought process for a strat/scheme pool and how they would answer the Sandeep problem in that pool. Everything after that is practice and learning how to exploit your opponent's mistakes.