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Wanted: Nicodem. A Malifaux Musings tactica for playing and defeating the Necromancer


AgentRock

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This was a great post. Thanks for putting this together! I played against Mr Varney with this list at Nationals and got Smoked. The next time I played it I did much much better (still lost, but progress!). 

I really think you have to play vs this and get smashed at least once before you will be able to defeat it (a bit like the Viks missile). 

 

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Great post, but I think the bottom-line is that he pretty much needs to get hit with several nerf-bats at once. I deduced 3 ways of beating him from the article:

  1. Pray to God that the player is bad - unrealistic
  2. Pray that the scheme and strat pool allows you to get more points at turn 3 than he can get then - also rather unrealistic as he will outactivate you from turn 2 onwards
  3. Alpha-strike him with several beater models on Turn 1 - unrealistic unless you happen to be playing the viks or something that matches it, the terrain also has to allow said alpha strike and his model setup also has to allow it.

So pretty much all 3 scenario's are unrealistic for almost every other single master in the game, which begs the question why he hasn't been hit yet? Your article mentions "the boogie-man of the uk meta", so he is notorious enough as-is.

Considering how powerful he was BEFORE wave 5, Wyrd decided it was a good idea to give him Asura Rotten and Kentauroi, which are pretty much summonable rider models, which come in the game unslowed thanks to his aura. As a Thunders player, I would really like to be able to summon Yasunori's, or just any decent model besides Yokai ...

 

The entire article is dedicated to Nicodem and it requires 2 top Nicodem players' input to mention that he is beatable under ideal circumstances. I do not consider that as healthy gameplay and would find it great if you could get some additional reaction from the Wayworth and Varney on how to beat him. Just hope the stars align is not the answer I was hoping for in a fairly balanced game.

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7 hours ago, whodares said:

Great post, but I think the bottom-line is that he pretty much needs to get hit with several nerf-bats at once. I deduced 3 ways of beating him from the article:

  1. Pray to God that the player is bad - unrealistic
  2. Pray that the scheme and strat pool allows you to get more points at turn 3 than he can get then - also rather unrealistic as he will outactivate you from turn 2 onwards
  3. Alpha-strike him with several beater models on Turn 1 - unrealistic unless you happen to be playing the viks or something that matches it, the terrain also has to allow said alpha strike and his model setup also has to allow it.

So pretty much all 3 scenario's are unrealistic for almost every other single master in the game, which begs the question why he hasn't been hit yet? Your article mentions "the boogie-man of the uk meta", so he is notorious enough as-is.

Considering how powerful he was BEFORE wave 5, Wyrd decided it was a good idea to give him Asura Rotten and Kentauroi, which are pretty much summonable rider models, which come in the game unslowed thanks to his aura. As a Thunders player, I would really like to be able to summon Yasunori's, or just any decent model besides Yokai ...

 

The entire article is dedicated to Nicodem and it requires 2 top Nicodem players' input to mention that he is beatable under ideal circumstances. I do not consider that as healthy gameplay and would find it great if you could get some additional reaction from the Wayworth and Varney on how to beat him. Just hope the stars align is not the answer I was hoping for in a fairly balanced game.

Thing is though, Nicodem is the poster-boy of resser summoning/support masters.  The tactics you use to beat him down (remove the head from the snake) are exactly the same tactics you use to kill any of the other summoning focused masters.  Heck, Nicodem is *easier* because he doesn't have Molly's absurd defensive goodies or Kirai's avenging Ikiryo and parade of disposable Seishin.

General rule of thumb when you are dealing with any player, don't feed into what they want to do. Facing Rasputina or Sonnia?  Do *Not* bunch up.  Facing Nicodem?  Do *Not* attempt to roll up his crew starting with the disposable hitters in the front.  Instead, get past them and into the support team standing around.

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6 hours ago, Clement said:

Thing is though, Nicodem is the poster-boy of resser summoning/support masters.  The tactics you use to beat him down (remove the head from the snake) are exactly the same tactics you use to kill any of the other summoning focused masters.  Heck, Nicodem is *easier* because he doesn't have Molly's absurd defensive goodies or Kirai's avenging Ikiryo and parade of disposable Seishin.

General rule of thumb when you are dealing with any player, don't feed into what they want to do. Facing Rasputina or Sonnia?  Do *Not* bunch up.  Facing Nicodem?  Do *Not* attempt to roll up his crew starting with the disposable hitters in the front.  Instead, get past them and into the support team standing around.

I understand where you are coming from, but there is a critical difference between Nicodem and the other masters: he can stay in the back on the other side of the board and his crew will not be weakened by it. If he can get Turn 1 off without getting alpha-striked, he is very difficult to hurt with all the card setup he's gotten from Turn 1. Bring Philip, Mortimer and Asura, let them drop their markers and use Philip to generate 2 card advantage and then use the (à) action of the upgrade on Nicodem to turn those markers into zombies. Then sac those zombies into useful summons, aka Kentauri/Belles, and get EVEN MORE card draw for it. If you summon the Kentauroi half-way your own half, they will be around 9" on the board, unslowed and with a threat range of 13" while hitting with min 3 and giving poison built-in. People complain about Yasunori, but basicly being able to summon Yasunori is a lot worse in my opinion.

Hurting the support model can work, but then your opponent must have mispositioned the models. Asura, Philip and Mortimer are also Henchmen, so killing even just one of them will require a dedicated assault of several models as your opponent can just burn stones and keep them alive. Burning stones early doesn't hurt Nicodem as bad as other masters as he can get activation advantage on a (0).

Something that is also forgotten is the fact that Kentauroi do NOT have a rare limit. My last game involved playing against Nicodem and the summoned 4 Kentauroi in the first 2 turns due to the terrain not allowing alpha strikes. I was playing Ten Thunders with Lynch, Yasunori and the Emissary.A Fast, pushed-up Yasunori was not able to get onto a good enough target due to smart positioning from the opponent and Terrain stopping my movements as you're not allowed to end a movement partially into terrain. A smart nicodem also places his summons in such a way that you can't go for the bigger support. Models such as Yasunori only have a 2" engagement range, so placing a base on 2.5" from the support model gives it a free pass for that turn.

Keeping something overtuned because it's the poster-boy of a certain faction is not a valid reason. Wyrd has shown to be willing to tackle poster-boys, even as recent as the Januari errata on Misaki or previously with Dreamer, Leveticus, rat-engine and so on. I'm just wondering why they decided to give a master as strong as Nicodem even stronger stuff to play around with.

I know I've been harsh on the Kentauroi in my post, but my problem is not really with them. My problem is with the fact that they have rider-levels of mobility and damage, yet they are summonable on only a 12. Dreamer has to use Tannen and a 13 :mask OR Red Joker to summon Teddy, Asami can summon Jorogumo (lol forget this exists) on a 13(!!), but Nicodem is allowed to summon unslowed riders on a 12?

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A few things.

1) By poster boy I meant that Nicodem is a very 'typical' Ressers support master, not that he's some kind of mascot, my poor choice of words.  You say he's able to hide across the table and still project his full force, but unless he's within 6 of his herd, they're just running around at df 4, htw 1, and 5/3 wounds.  True he can get carted up behind, but now he's gotten close again.

2) Eating his soulstones for that crew is almost the best thing you can do.  The summoning engine wants severe cards, soulstones, and corpses to keep it all rolling.  Deny one of those and the whole thing slows way down.  If you have aspirations of tabling the crew and have decided that killing Nico is off the table, you'll need to remove 1 or 2 of these.

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10 hours ago, whodares said:

 People complain about Yasunori, but basicly being able to summon Yasunori is a lot worse in my opinion.

 

Can you stop with this gross hyperbole? Last I checked Kentauroi weren't able to attack 4 times on a charge, have :+fate to their Ml, Flight to ignore terrain in the way. Not to mention the fact that if the Kentauroi charges away, that's not a corpse marker gets to use again, and that they're only Df 4, 9 Wd and HtW. Really after they get summoned and charge in, they're going to be sitting at a measly 2 Wd, so they're not even a significant AP sink to your crew to get around.


As for your thing about not having Yasunori able to go in and put pressure on Nicodem, go after one of the key pieces of his engine then. Kill Sebastian, or kill Mortimer/Emissary, kill Asura, kill Phillip. Worst case secnario is you don't kill them but drain out resources so that Nicodem isn't going to be able to effectively summon that turn, then you get to kill them next turn, as to have a good turn of summoning Nico needs to wait for 4 activations to pass, whereas Yasuorni can charge in on the 2nd or 3rd depending on if you want a Charm Warder buff or not. An Alpha strike on a summoner is about pressuring their resources, not necesarily the summoner themselves, and for Nico that resource is as much, if not more so, his corpse engine as it is his hand.

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20 minutes ago, santaclaws01 said:

Can you stop with this gross hyperbole? Last I checked Kentauroi weren't able to attack 4 times on a charge, have :+fate to their Ml, Flight to ignore terrain in the way. Not to mention the fact that if the Kentauroi charges away, that's not a corpse marker gets to use again, and that they're only Df 4, 9 Wd and HtW. Really after they get summoned and charge in, they're going to be sitting at a measly 2 Wd, so they're not even a significant AP sink to your crew to get around.


As for your thing about not having Yasunori able to go in and put pressure on Nicodem, go after one of the key pieces of his engine then. Kill Sebastian, or kill Mortimer/Emissary, kill Asura, kill Phillip. Worst case secnario is you don't kill them but drain out resources so that Nicodem isn't going to be able to effectively summon that turn, then you get to kill them next turn, as to have a good turn of summoning Nico needs to wait for 4 activations to pass, whereas Yasuorni can charge in on the 2nd or 3rd depending on if you want a Charm Warder buff or not. An Alpha strike on a summoner is about pressuring their resources, not necesarily the summoner themselves, and for Nico that resource is as much, if not more so, his corpse engine as it is his hand.

It was indeed a hyperbole, perhaps comparing it to any of the other Riders would have been better. Still, he can summon them and they can charge with a min 3 attack with a 13" threat range. They die easily, but even just killing them takes away AP that you desperately need, while you have just taken a rather hefty amount of damage from said models charge.

Yasunori alone will not be able to kill any of the key models in his engine. Since they are henchmen, they can use stones to protect themselves. They live, drop the corpse markers and now you have Yasunori surrounded by punk zombies. Congratulations, you managed to drain some stones and wounds, but you just lost Yasunori and barely slowed him down. You had to commit at least 2 big models (Yasunori + the model that pushes him, probably Emissary) in order to even get him there to begin with.

If you manage to get into range of Nicodem's support model at Turn 1 with something besides a fast pushed-up Yasunori, I'd say that player made a very big mistake by placing his models way too much up front, not body-blocking your charge lanes enough and not using terrain to his advantage. It gets easier to do in close deployment and very hard to do in flank and corner deployment. A model needs LoS in order to charge (in general at least, there are exceptions such as Bettari) and placing models in a smart way can almost fully stop almost every model from engaging them. I think we only have Bettari that can reliably pull of such a feat if she is fast as it gives her a 6" walk + 7" charge + 2" range = 15" threat range. She will have to be rather far up the board in order to even have a shot at reaching them, meaning 2 pushes aka Sensei Yu/Shenlong with Wandering River Style.

 

Just for a side-note: I'm talking here about decent players that don't make blatant mistakes such as severly mispositioning and refusing to use stones on attacks because of MUH SUMMONING. Players that use terrain and/or models to block Line of Sight and stop engagements. Players that know the strengths and weaknessess of their crew and act accordingly. When I'm playing a summoner and I see a crew that can alpha strike me, I place myself more in the back and play safe on the first Turn. There are not many models that can make a 25-30" threat, even with help from their crew. At that point, you will have played your first Turn rather safely.

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35 minutes ago, whodares said:

It was indeed a hyperbole, perhaps comparing it to any of the other Riders would have been better. Still, he can summon them and they can charge with a min 3 attack with a 13" threat range. They die easily, but even just killing them takes away AP that you desperately need, while you have just taken a rather hefty amount of damage from said models charge.

Yasunori alone will not be able to kill any of the key models in his engine. Since they are henchmen, they can use stones to protect themselves. They live, drop the corpse markers and now you have Yasunori surrounded by punk zombies. Congratulations, you managed to drain some stones and wounds, but you just lost Yasunori and barely slowed him down. You had to commit at least 2 big models (Yasunori + the model that pushes him, probably Emissary) in order to even get him there to begin with.

If you manage to get into range of Nicodem's support model at Turn 1 with something besides a fast pushed-up Yasunori, I'd say that player made a very big mistake by placing his models way too much up front, not body-blocking your charge lanes enough and not using terrain to his advantage. It gets easier to do in close deployment and very hard to do in flank and corner deployment. A model needs LoS in order to charge (in general at least, there are exceptions such as Bettari) and placing models in a smart way can almost fully stop almost every model from engaging them. I think we only have Bettari that can reliably pull of such a feat if she is fast as it gives her a 6" walk + 7" charge + 2" range = 15" threat range. She will have to be rather far up the board in order to even have a shot at reaching them, meaning 2 pushes aka Sensei Yu/Shenlong with Wandering River Style.

 

Just for a side-note: I'm talking here about decent players that don't make blatant mistakes such as severly mispositioning and refusing to use stones on attacks because of MUH SUMMONING. Players that use terrain and/or models to block Line of Sight and stop engagements. Players that know the strengths and weaknessess of their crew and act accordingly. When I'm playing a summoner and I see a crew that can alpha strike me, I place myself more in the back and play safe on the first Turn. There are not many models that can make a 25-30" threat, even with help from their crew. At that point, you will have played your first Turn rather safely.

Sure, use all the stones to save Asura or Philip. How is he going to summon anything after that? Every stone for prevention is one less crow for summoning. Nico is strong, but these are all hyperbolic statements.
What factions/masters are you playing? Maybe the community can help with some tips against Nico. What you are saying is not really constructive. The post was meant to give advice, not promote general despair. 
What master are you playing? Maybe there are some things you can do differently. If you play thunders, judging by some of your comments with Yasunori + Emissary, Asami can be a nightmare for Ressers. You already identified how good Ohaguro Bettari is and, if you're playing against ressers, she's a safe bet anyway. The new Misaki is also very scary against ressers. hard to wound can get in your way, but the low defense on the models lets you hit a lot and the engine is usually clumped up. You can also try to use Yin to put casting on negatives, and the new crime boss helps with HtW. 
If you clarify the specific issue maybe a specific solution can be found.

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I´ve played nico lots of times and it has important weak points, maybe its like always in this game and facing a master for the first few times make them harsh to deal with. I beated that list "easily" with seamus last tournament as it needs a lot of models to stay static in its deployment zone and schemes really demanded to go to the center,(also punish the weak is a terrible scheme for Nico) I could handle easily those kentaurois, really. There are LOTS of masters which mean a terrible menace to this summoning engine. Sonnia and Rasputina can obliterate with ease, a well positioned viktoria can blow away that bubble, Ive myself lost Nicodem to a slow cerberus which mauled him to dead with only one Ap or a charging mei feng with easy targets around making lots, LOTS of atacka in just one activation. Im strongly convinced that nico while strong has no need to be tuned down. And the fact that yasunori cant kill an enemy master in turn 1 is something Im not gonna feel sorry for.

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18 hours ago, whodares said:

It was indeed a hyperbole, perhaps comparing it to any of the other Riders would have been better. Still, he can summon them and they can charge with a min 3 attack with a 13" threat range. They die easily, but even just killing them takes away AP that you desperately need, while you have just taken a rather hefty amount of damage from said models charge.

You're assuming that both attacks hit, or that they will somehow be able to charge you, when your fast Yasunori with flight won't be able to charge anything important in the Nico crew.

 

18 hours ago, whodares said:

Yasunori alone will not be able to kill any of the key models in his engine. Since they are henchmen, they can use stones to protect themselves. They live, drop the corpse markers and now you have Yasunori surrounded by punk zombies. Congratulations, you managed to drain some stones and wounds, but you just lost Yasunori and barely slowed him down. You had to commit at least 2 big models (Yasunori + the model that pushes him, probably Emissary) in order to even get him there to begin with.

How is Yasunori not going to be able to kill anything? He'll have 4-5 attacks with RT to give him double positives on attack and a positive to damage. Are you really going to say that your opponent spending 4-5 stones on prevention, because that's what they would need to do, to save one of their models is somehow not going to slow down Nico's summoning engine? And if you're really that worried about Yasunori just wait another activation and give him either Disguised or Vanishing from the Charm Warder.

 

18 hours ago, whodares said:

If you manage to get into range of Nicodem's support model at Turn 1 with something besides a fast pushed-up Yasunori, I'd say that player made a very big mistake by placing his models way too much up front, not body-blocking your charge lanes enough and not using terrain to his advantage. It gets easier to do in close deployment and very hard to do in flank and corner deployment. A model needs LoS in order to charge (in general at least, there are exceptions such as Bettari) and placing models in a smart way can almost fully stop almost every model from engaging them. I think we only have Bettari that can reliably pull of such a feat if she is fast as it gives her a 6" walk + 7" charge + 2" range = 15" threat range. She will have to be rather far up the board in order to even have a shot at reaching them, meaning 2 pushes aka Sensei Yu/Shenlong with Wandering River Style.

Bodyblocking his support models with what? His other support models? A Nico crew is like ~40ss of support. And again, all you need is Yasunori to start grinding the engine to a halt. And depending on what master you're playing in 10T there will be at least one more model coming in to help on turn 2. Lynch has got Huggy, Shenlong has himself or a 2nd beater, Misaki has herself, Asami has whatever shes summoning up field, McCabe will have another beater or himself(bonus because he can easily paralyze Nico on turn 2+), Mei Feng will be able to get in herself soon after, or Yan Lo can be right behind as well.

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2 hours ago, santaclaws01 said:

You're assuming that both attacks hit, or that they will somehow be able to charge you, when your fast Yasunori with flight won't be able to charge anything important in the Nico crew.

I added a bit of hidden nuance in my statements which was not picked up it seems. The Kentauroi don't have to do anything on Turn 1 except be summoned and block charge lanes or get into a good position. Yasunori HAS to charge something and he HAS to do this before Nicodem summons or he'll be too late. If Nicodem deploys fully in the back or behind terrain, Yasunori will not be able to get there on Turn 1.

Standard deployment gives Yasunori a 6" deployment, a 4" push + fast from Emissary pushes him to 10". At that point Yasunori has a 6" walk + 10" charge + 2" melee threat range IN AN IDEAL SITUATION. Since you can't end a walk partially in blocking terrain, the 6" walk is usually cut short, but for theories sake we'll say he has no problems on that behalf. So from 10" up on the board he has an 18" threat range, which is not enough as he still has to cross 8" to even get to the center of the table. Even then we are talking about moving in a straight line, which is hardly ever the case and probably never happening if the Nicodem player gets to deploy second. The only way to get there is if you have Shenlong/Sensei Yu with Wandering River Style pushing Yasunori about 11" up on the board and even then it's going to be a close call on whether or not he makes it.

 

2 hours ago, santaclaws01 said:

How is Yasunori not going to be able to kill anything? He'll have 4-5 attacks with RT to give him double positives on attack and a positive to damage. Are you really going to say that your opponent spending 4-5 stones on prevention, because that's what they would need to do, to save one of their models is somehow not going to slow down Nico's summoning engine? And if you're really that worried about Yasunori just wait another activation and give him either Disguised or Vanishing from the Charm Warder.

Turn 1 Yasunori can't have more than 4 attacks on his Turn 1 charge, unless you did something really crazy with Asami, which is pretty much impossible to do. I don't see a lot of people usually bringing RT on Yasunori as he already has a built-in :+fate on his attack. You are already assuming a scenario where you know your opponent will be playing Nicodem and are tailoring a crew in order to defeat him. That doesn't work if he just declares Ressers and you have to have a solution for all their masters.

You are also assuming all your attacks hit and you have the most beastly hand in existance to be able to cheat that many high cards on damage flips. Nicodem WILL force you to also dump cards in order to hit your attacks. You expect to win every attack duel due to double +, but reality has shown me even triple + can net you 4 low cards or just an average while your opponent flips a 13.

Spending 4 stones on prevention to keep a key model alive while still being able to get your summoning engine going seems like a fair deal to me. Worst case for you is he summons a belle + some punk zombies and ties up Yasunori. A most realistic scenario is that he summons a belle, lures away the key model and your Yasunori is left in the middle of his crew, unable do impact the rest of the game due to all the AP needed getting through the (0) summons.

2 hours ago, santaclaws01 said:

Bodyblocking his support models with what? His other support models? A Nico crew is like ~40ss of support. And again, all you need is Yasunori to start grinding the engine to a halt. And depending on what master you're playing in 10T there will be at least one more model coming in to help on turn 2. Lynch has got Huggy, Shenlong has himself or a 2nd beater, Misaki has herself, Asami has whatever shes summoning up field, McCabe will have another beater or himself(bonus because he can easily paralyze Nico on turn 2+), Mei Feng will be able to get in herself soon after, or Yan Lo can be right behind as well.

His engine is not halted at all as shown above. Stones don't mean a thing for Nicodem on Turn 1 and 2 as he brings 7 anyway. It doesn't matter that he loses 4 if he only needs 1-2 to get the engine going. So now you have a Yasunori stuck inside his crew getting meatgrinded by his summons and his next turn summons while all you accomplished was doing some damage on a support model that didn't even die.

Your above scenario works only on a best-case basis, which pretty much never happens in a game that has randomization in it. Also keep in mind that your model deaths ALSO fuel his engine. Kill that Yasunori and it drops a corpse marker. Kill the Asami summons for more corpse markers. Placing Shenlong next to a pile of punk zombies does not seem like the greatest of ideas. Only the McCabe trick seems viable, but expects the opponent to ALLOW you to do it. It only works because your opponent is ignorant of it's potential. McCabe also need Line of Sight for it, so it becomes even harder for him to pull it off as Nicodem can summon more models.

 

Again: I'm talking here about Nicodem in the hands of a good player. Not some new player that doesn't know how to deploy, use terrain or block LoS. Perhaps the terrain I'm used to is more densely packed than what you are using, but even using a max range beckoner lure is nearly impossible on pretty much all the maps we use. How you would move across an entire board with pushes and moves without being hindered by terrain is something that will NEVER happen on the boards our gaming community uses, hence why I see it as non-viable for any other model besides a pushed-up fast Yasunori to even have a ghost of a chance of reaching Nicodem or his support on Turn 1.

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2 minutes ago, whodares said:

I added a bit of hidden nuance in my statements which was not picked up it seems. The Kentauroi don't have to do anything on Turn 1 except be summoned and block charge lanes or get into a good position. Yasunori HAS to charge something and he HAS to do this before Nicodem summons or he'll be too late. If Nicodem deploys fully in the back or behind terrain, Yasunori will not be able to get there on Turn 1.

Again, Nico can't summon until after corpse markers get put down, there's 2 activations right there. Also not likely until after Phillip does the card draw, so that's 2 more. You have 4-5 activations to get Yasunori charging depending on who went first.

 

 

4 minutes ago, whodares said:

Standard deployment gives Yasunori a 6" deployment, a 4" push + fast from Emissary pushes him to 10". At that point Yasunori has a 6" walk + 10" charge + 2" melee threat range IN AN IDEAL SITUATION. Since you can't end a walk partially in blocking terrain, the 6" walk is usually cut short, but for theories sake we'll say he has no problems on that behalf. So from 10" up on the board he has an 18" threat range, which is not enough as he still has to cross 8" to even get to the center of the table. Even then we are talking about moving in a straight line, which is hardly ever the case and probably never happening if the Nicodem player gets to deploy second. The only way to get there is if you have Shenlong/Sensei Yu with Wandering River Style pushing Yasunori about 11" up on the board and even then it's going to be a close call on whether or not he makes it.

I have never played a 10T crew with only 1 model that can push other models.

 

 

5 minutes ago, whodares said:

Turn 1 Yasunori can't have more than 4 attacks on his Turn 1 charge, unless you did something really crazy with Asami, which is pretty much impossible to do. I don't see a lot of people usually bringing RT on Yasunori as he already has a built-in :+fate on his attack. 

It's really not impossible to do with Asami, as she can (0) place, can drag up other models, and then you have other models that can push up the rest of the way. Doesn't matter if you bring RT or not, we have a handy little minion that can swap off upgrades for you. If you go the normal Smoke Grenades route to keep him protected until he charges in, you can just swap it off for RT before charging him in, as you have the room to activate him later.

 

11 minutes ago, whodares said:

You are already assuming a scenario where you know your opponent will be playing Nicodem and are tailoring a crew in order to defeat him. That doesn't work if he just declares Ressers and you have to have a solution for all their masters.

What in anything that I've said is specifically anti-nicodem?

 

 

11 minutes ago, whodares said:

You are also assuming all your attacks hit and you have the most beastly hand in existance to be able to cheat that many high cards on damage flips. Nicodem WILL force you to also dump cards in order to hit your attacks. You expect to win every attack duel due to double +, but reality has shown me even triple + can net you 4 low cards or just an average while your opponent flips a 13.

I either hit all the attacks and kill the model and/or I force out cards+soulstones from Nicodem and then Nicodem isn't summoning. Who cares if I have to dump my whole hand to do it? It's turn 1 and Yasunori is going to be the only thing I need to use my hand for this turn. Asura, Sebs, and Mortimer are all Df 5 with around 9 Wds. Yasunori is default 6 with a :+fate and min 3. In what possible situation barring extreme luck for the Nicodem player do you see any of those models surviving 4 attacks? You seem to have this idea that everything must exactly for perfectly for the 10T player to come out on top in this exchange when it's the exact opposite case.

 

17 minutes ago, whodares said:

Spending 4 stones on prevention to keep a key model alive while still being able to get your summoning engine going seems like a fair deal to me. Worst case for you is he summons a belle + some punk zombies and ties up Yasunori. A most realistic scenario is that he summons a belle, lures away the key model and your Yasunori is left in the middle of his crew, unable do impact the rest of the game due to all the AP needed getting through the (0) summons.

Spending 4 stones on prevention isn't even a guarentee of keeping them alive. And that's 4 stones he no longer has to summon, doesn't matter if he's got a 13 :ram if he can't use a stone to get a crow for his summon. Mission accomplished, I depleted the Nicodem's resources.

 

20 minutes ago, whodares said:

His engine is not halted at all as shown above. Stones don't mean a thing for Nicodem on Turn 1 and 2 as he brings 7 anyway. It doesn't matter that he loses 4 if he only needs 1-2 to get the engine going. So now you have a Yasunori stuck inside his crew getting meatgrinded by his summons and his next turn summons while all you accomplished was doing some damage on a support model that didn't even die.

No, not as shown above. As you continue to assert without taking any actual statistical realism into account. You talk about Yasunori having bad luck but continue to assume that the Nicodem player has everything going their way all the time. They never draw bad cards. They never get bad flips. Apparently their entire deck is full of moderates and severes.

 

 

24 minutes ago, whodares said:

Your above scenario works only on a best-case basis, which pretty much never happens in a game that has randomization in it.

It literally doesn't. Your scenario is the one the requires a best case scenario.

 

25 minutes ago, whodares said:

Also keep in mind that your model deaths ALSO fuel his engine. Kill that Yasunori and it drops a corpse marker.

Cool, I traded corpse marker for 4-5. I'm okay with this trade.

 

25 minutes ago, whodares said:

Kill the Asami summons for more corpse markers.

You should take another look at all of Asami's summons.

 

26 minutes ago, whodares said:

Placing Shenlong next to a pile of punk zombies does not seem like the greatest of ideas.

Seems fine to me. Just misdirect onto each other with my multiple :+fate from Low River Style and ditching low :mask, and then just heal up whatever damage I took because in all my games with Shenlong I've literally only ever had him die, or be at risk of dying, in my very first one. Meanwhile I'm just stacking up Poison for 2-3 turns of double (0) actions, and when I get enough I just pop on over the Fermented River Style, and watch Nicodem try to pass a bunch of Wk duels or gain a :-fate to all his duels. I'd really like to see him summon models then.
 

28 minutes ago, whodares said:

Only the McCabe trick seems viable, but expects the opponent to ALLOW you to do it. It only works because your opponent is ignorant of it's potential. McCabe also need Line of Sight for it, so it becomes even harder for him to pull it off as Nicodem can summon more models.

I would very much like to see Nicodem perfectly block off any possible ways to get to him for 2 turns with a Wk 7, Ht 3 50mm model with a range 10 gun. I can just triple walk McCabe turn 1 after the summons happen to know where I need to be to not get engaged, and turn 2 I just take the final walk action to get in range and LoS. 

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1 hour ago, whodares said:

His engine is not halted at all as shown above. Stones don't mean a thing for Nicodem on Turn 1 and 2 as he brings 7 anyway. It doesn't matter that he loses 4 if he only needs 1-2 to get the engine going. So now you have a Yasunori stuck inside his crew getting meatgrinded by his summons and his next turn summons while all you accomplished was doing some damage on a support model that didn't even die.

Wait a second. Stones don't matter to Nico? Only one or two? I think all of this is pure conjecture. 

There are only 4 cards in the whole deck that can summon anything that can damage you if he's out of Stones. Unless you're afraid of getting mauled by crooligans I guess.

It really sounds like you are just waiting for "He's unbeatable" as a response to your comments. Before the podcasts from the UK started talking so much about him no one even thought he was that great. People who claimed he was good were criticized. 

He's really good. Top 3 summoners for sure. But all your cards and stones go to summoning, just like with other summoners. Prevent him from freely drawing forever with Philip and the Nanny and/or Sebastian and he's already in a worse spot. Put a strain on his stones and you are effectively preemptively removing one future model from the table for every stone you take.

I also think that wave 5 shifted the meta to a way more aggressive style. All factions have huge turn one openers and alpha strikes. It sounds like you want to leave Nico alone for the first couple of turns and still win. That's not how attrition works.

Wave 5 gave him Kentauroi, which are the resser alpha strike tech for this wave. The same tech is also very good at putting an end to him. 

If you're playing thunders, take your pick of Shadow Emissary, Sensei You, Yasunori, terracotta warrior and charm warder and go ahead and make summoners miserable. These are all very, very good models are not Nico specific, so you're not suffering having to pick them. Hell, after charm warders, declaring Molly into thunders is a nightmare, they are very good against Nico too, although not as destructive.

These suggestions don't even take into account the Master! Asami can use all those corpse markers for herself and have the yokai blast everything to shreds with the emissary's buff, Misaki can remove more wounds than Nico can summon. Once again, these are strong Masters against ressers regardless of the specific matchup.

Are you depriving yourself of the tools and tactics you need? 

Ask for solutions and you will receive them from a very helpful community. You're just screaming fire and not letting anyone put it out.

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