Gremlins newbie advice please

[Rikk]

Hi All,

 

bit of background, I’ve been playing for 2 years but only get games at tournaments and probably 4-5 tournaments a year, so learning curve is interesting. Especially first ever game (didn’t get spoon at that tournament).

i usually finish bottom or close to bottom table but have more fun playing than trying to win games, and with such a great community it’s not difficult having fun.

Im switching from Ressers to Gremlins this year and a friend has started playing Guild, so I’ll now get regular-ish games in.

last night first game I beat Sonia with ophelia 6-4 in a game that felt I was on back foot whole time while only pulling off a win taking Sonia out turn 5 (leadership) and denying him picking up evidence markers.

i really struggled against burning, he also summoned about 3 models (stalkers) which from turn 3 was out activating me.

 

(sorry for long intro)

 

so so my questions are;

Slop haulers, I don’t see how they are that good having such a low healing per 2 AP, unless I bunch my models up, are there better healing options to consider?

 

burning, was horrible, I had an upgrade to remove conditions but my models were being burnt after they had activated. Any models/upgrades good for this?

 

i had spread my crew out a reasonable amount as I was nervous about blasts, should I keep closer together and focus on taking out enemies nearer to me before going for schemes?

 

taxidermist, until I committed to throwing him into charges he was pretty useless. I didn’t hire any stuffed pigs and couldn’t get to a corpse marker to summing one until turn 3. Would you hire any or have tricks to get them in quicker?

 

sorry for daft questions, rereading seems I’m more whining than asking questions.

have had a good read of most of the posts in the past few months and will be listening to schemes and stones pod casts later tonight.

any help, pointing in right direction would be much appreciated.

i don’t have a huge amount of gremlin models but could get hold of things fairly quickly.

 

thanks

rikk 

 

[Griautis]

I play a lot vs Gremlins who field Taxidermists - and in my opinion, they have to be in melee. If all you're doing with them is ressing pigglets - they're useless. However, as soon as they get one charge in - they get plenty of corpse markers, and do some decent attacks too. 

[Haagrum]

I'm not exactly an old hand, but I'm happy to help where I can.

Sonnia is unusual in that she can punish you more than most opponents for grouping up. Slop Haulers are a bit less useful when being close enough for heals means you're very likely to get blasted and taking Burning. This match-up isn't as good at showcasing their true value.

Extra condition removal options other than Gremlin-see include McTavish or Mancha Roja (with Mud Toss upgrade) and Johan (mercenary, Rebel Yell action). McTavish is good enough to be worth taking anyway. Johan's decent, especially against constructs. Mancha Roja isn't really doing his job if he's assigned to condition removal. Also, remember that models can take a 1AP interact to reduce Burning by 1 point for any one friendly model within 2" - which can include the model taking the action.

Your deployment and spacing really depends on your opponent's crew and the strategies and schemes involved. No easy answers there, sorry. As I said earlier, Sonnia is particularly good at punishing models which are near one another, so take that as a worst-case scenario.

I've never used Taxidermists. However, my read of them is that you'll either need to accept a few crew losses early on to have ready access to corpse markers nearby (one Young LaCroix totem is cheap and expendable enough that it's not a great loss for a Stuffed Piglet), or just try to get in close and use his triggers to summon directly when it kills an enemy model.

Edited January 13, 2018 by Haagrum
Extra info about Burning removal and error correction

[Griautis]

3 minutes ago, Haagrum said:

I've never used Taxidermists. However, my read of them is that you'll either need to accept a few crew losses early on to have ready access to corpse markers nearby, or just try to get in close and use his triggers to either summon directly or use your extra AP from Reckless to summon a Stuffed Piglet after the charge.

Taxidermists summon as a 0. So, in reality, you reckless to walk into position, then charge to carve up someone's face, then summon more trouble for him. 

Or if you're already in position, you replace the walk with another opportunity to attack. 

[Haagrum]

Just now, Griautis said:

Taxidermists summon as a 0. So, in reality, you reckless to walk into position, then charge to carve up someone's face, then summon more trouble for him. 

Or if you're already in position, you replace the walk with another opportunity to attack. 

Well spotted! As I said, never used them before. I'll fix that misleading comment now...

I suppose there's also the double Crow trigger when they kill something to summon a Stuffed Piglet, but that's hardly reliable.

[Rikk]

Thanks all, really appreciate the responses.

I think against Sonia I need to be less nervous and can bunch a bit closer than I did.

will try hiring a stuffed piglet as well as a Taxidermist and throw both into combat ASAP.

hopefully having the crew closer together will assist putting out burning.

we were fairly close together starting off on flank deployment and Raph and Rami in addition to poor flips and bad hand on my part didn’t last too long. I think a gremlin gun line could probably deal with the witchling stalkers reasonably well.

 

thanks

[Dogmantra]

10 hours ago, Rikk said:

Slop haulers, I don’t see how they are that good having such a low healing per 2 AP, unless I bunch my models up, are there better healing options to consider?

Slop Haulers are hands down the best healers in the game. Compare them to other healers like Librarians or Low River Monks: those models each need to hit a TN to cast their heal, and they heal a single target for 1/2/3 for 1AP. Slop Haulers heal twice as many models with no TN. A couple of things to note about them too: you can use Reckless on the Hauler, move 4" then heal for a total heal range of 7", and one of the four healed models can be the slop hauler. You can also use Bayou Two Card on the healing flip (if the healed model has it), which you might as well if you flip weak. And finally it doesn't actually need LoS to heal, so you can hide Sloppies behind terrain and still heal your frontline. Fingers or someone with Quality Mash Liquor can put out a bit more single target healing, but that's a much bigger investment. They also have pretty nasty combat capabilities too, I'd give them another chance.

 

 

[Rikk]

Wow, didn’t realise they could do all that, esp to heal themselves, thanks for the info. Def keeping one in the crew now 😀

[Davie]

I would like to add, that Slop Haulers are not only excellent healers but also are really okay at fighting. The Appetizing-Condition is perfect for any offensive Gremlin Crew! Yes, a Walk of 4 is not very much, but a Charge of 8 is great! sometimes I even use them to drop a scheme marker here or there.

 

Taxidermists really are made for fighting and summoning a stuffed Piglet per turn and Close to the enemy. I am not sure if you really Need to hire the stuffed piglets though. Since their cost got increased I tend to just summon them. Also: Taxidermists can take Upgrades. A Dirty Cheater-Taxidermist is surprisingly tanky

 

If you are struggling with Blasts try Merris.

Remember that you can use interact-actions to reduce burning.

[Rikk]

Hi all,

 

thank you you for the feedback and useful advice.

I have a tournament this weekend where I’m looking to learn more, try out and see how things go.

a generic list that I’m not constantly changing models and just learning gremlins will be the plan.

Im thinking of going with

Ophelia with full 7ss cache and useless junk upgrade

Fingers with stilts and dirty cheater (haven’t read cards yet to check all this is legal)

Burt with dirty cheater

taxidermist 

slop hauler

survivor

survivor

young la croix

 young la croix

9 models some heals and hopefully a bit of longevity to get some VP

i seriously cannot locate my Franc and Raph models hence why they haven’t made the cut (sock gnomes have grown tired up hiding my socks and upgraded to plastic)....

Are there any other suggestions to swap models out/in?

thanks

[PolishSausage]

Ophelia (3ss) +4 Cache  "7 total"

Young x 3 +6

Franc (do over) +9

Raphael +6

Pere +6

Iron Skeeter +6

Banjo +5

Survivor +4

Survivor +4

[PolishSausage]

Fingers is ALOT, consider using more survivors/slops/banjos/bugs

I would not spend any SS for Ophelia upgrades, make sure to take all 3 youngs

 

I would swap fingers for 2nd taxidermist, add 1 more young and throw in another survivors/slops/banjos/bugs 

 

** Find Raphael+Franc as they are still bread and butter for our faction

[Clement]

Fingers can get great work done, but Polish is not wrong that he's a huge investment.  I'd likely drop dirty cheater from him as he can heal himself already pretty easily and you might have some trouble coming up with enough cheating opportunities to make it really work.

Based on your existing list, I'd look at perhaps moving that dirty cheater to Ophelia in place of useless junk (The Young can load her on it anyway) and think about adding the last Young and just going in with 5 instead of 7ss. 

I'm kind of torn between bringing one more young and burning SS for Rams when you have high cards to shoot at people with.  Against Sonia, Young Lacroix will not last; take the soulstones and shoot her in the head.

[wizuriel]

21 minutes ago, Rikk said:

Ophelia with full 7ss cache and useless junk upgrade

Fingers with stilts and dirty cheater (haven’t read cards yet to check all this is legal)

Burt with dirty cheater

taxidermist 

slop hauler

survivor

survivor

young la croix

 young la croix

So some quick thoughts

1) Ophelia shouldn't buy any of her upgrades as the Young or her can equip them in game for just an AP. Keep in mind though they can only equip her upgrades and I personally tend to like liquid bravery on her (Though I take that upgrade on most of my leaders).

2) Fingers I find doesn't tend to attack much to make use of dirty cheater. One fun thing he can do is cheat his healing flip to heal and heal off dirty cheater, but I find that is better spent elsewhere (ie taxidermist). Stilts is amazing on him. Keep in mind though Fingers is a lot of points and best used in schemes/strats that require a lot of interacting. He is great for both making interacts easy for you while denying your opponent. If you just need a model though to drop scheme markers you can hire Merris who is cheaper and an amazing scheme runner and helps a lot against Sonnia

3) General rule is Gremlins tend to prefer more models over stones. I would hire the 3rd young 

4) If you have them Iron Skeeters pair well with Burt. They also don't tend to use  which both Ophelia and Burt love

[PolishSausage]

Rami with DC and Ophelia sort- of works for range pressure.

She can (0) action obey him to focus, and he can Shoot/Focus/Shoot with reckless.

Against Blasters with low DF like Crid/Raspi this gives you at least some counter play.