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How does the guild beat Nikodem?


Ludvig

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This helpful little article came up. 

http://www.malifauxmusings.com/2018/02/wanted-nicodem.html

 

Since I've struggled against Niko since wave 1 and he just keeps getting worse I'm turning towards doom and despair at the though of him these days. I figured I'd ask how other guildies handle him. Any suggestions would be welcome really but it would help if you stated Theoryfaux or Actually tried or somethingsimilar.

 

@Saduhem seemed to have a lot of good tips in the general thread about this article. Not sure if you have any guild specific ones?

Thanks in advance
/ Ludvig

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Theoryfaux all the way through in this post:

I saw someone mentioning that McCabe can paralyze Nico if he is pushed up a bit. Not sure if this translates from TT to guild. Francisco, Emissary and an investigator maybe? Seems like models that are likely useful in any matchup so you don't put all your eggs into a counterbuild. I like McCabe for many resser matchups.

Maybe LJ can be dropped in the enemy DZ somehow? At least a bit up. Not sure if such a list would be too gimicky.

Hoffman with a big pet going full steam ahead? Likely just get stuck on some model though.

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I think Guild has the hardest time against ressers in general. Sebastian alone can be a total nightmare with Under Cover, and it's not like he's doing much else with his AP. The only thing that scares the living hell out of me is Austringers with shoot 7 and the Jury giving them masks against an army of def 4 and 5. 

Outside of that, Sanctioned Spellcasters prevent easy "lure 6 times" victory points with everyone plying from whatever model those belles happened to catch, and make public demo look a lot harder.

The new Hoffman also looks a lot scarier. Ball vs Ball, the student of steel and Shikome are not doing much anymore, and the Emissary is probably never going to miss the repeated shots on his trigger. I usually like the peacekeeper more than Langston, but it's hard to survive the potential decapitates when your stones are going to summoning and your hand is fed to Austringers.

I really do think that guild needed better tech against ressers and perhaps they just got it. I'm not surprised that the sanctioned Spellcasters and the Domador de cadaveres (or cadaveros.. can't remember) came out in the past two books to address that.

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I haven't really tried it, but it sounds like from the article like going after nico with our big damage is our best option.  Just laying into him with a nellie or lucius superpowered McTav, a repeat shooting santiago, or even a second activation Sonnia all feel like ways to make your opponent rethink things.    

Honestly, I've really wanted to try to land a first turn Condescening from Lucius onto him, but I haven't actually pulled that off yet.   Maybe also a guild pathfinder throwing traps into the middle of their crew?(though those plus flips plus the huge hand really makes it more disappointing).

Kind of a funky option, but maybe a sanctioned spellcaster backed by a bunch of henchmen shooting at him or his support staff like crazy?  Putting shots into either sebastian, phillip or asura early might break down that engine a bit.

I don't think austringers will get the job done.  He just has too much card draw, and if you are losing one to make them lose two, you will still end up with way fewer cards than your opponent.

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I agree that the austringer discard seems like a drop in an ocean and meanwhile you are wasting your own precious cards and ap. Nico will have at least twice your hand size if not more. He should have low cards to drop.

Traps cause walk duels to hand out slow and Nico makes everything (well undeads) immune to slow so not sure how much the traps will help. Asura does everything she needs on a 0 and automatical abilities, Sebastian only needs one ap to set up under cover and Philip is undead. Mortimer can probably afford to cheat the duel since him and Nico are the only ones affected. 

Spellcasters have :ranged and I think you can assume Sebastian will put up his under cover aura to give all of those :ranged negatives (on top of it being pretty likely that the deployment zones have cover or LoS blockers to set up behind). McTavish can't ignore Sebastian's under cover because it isn't cover so he is also at negatives.

 

The article seemed to suggest yu need to kill Nico in a single activation before he just gets moved away with a Kentauroi or has someone kill you. If you kill any other part of the engine you are just feeding him corpses and will lose either way. Nico is 14 wounds and impossible to wound so you need three attacks at min 5 to even make him scared enough to expend stones (two stones are likely to save him from that). With min 4 you'll need four attacks to kill him but likely at least five if he stones. I'm not sure what models put out that kind of damage against him turn one in standard deployment and don't even mention corner deployment. Is it even possible to charge him turn one without flight? Seems like he could just clog up the space in front of himself with something? The assumption that you could hit him a few times with ml 6 or 7 seems fair if you didn't crap out completely on your hand.

Possible ones?

McMourning taking either a Cerberus with Debt or Myranda to run up and turn into a cerberus? The latter puts out the threat range but then you have a slow cerberus without debt that needs to connect at least 5 hits assuming Nico doesn't even bother stoning. That's banking on an awful lot of tomes in hand or on your flips (assuming he left you a 50mm spot to place in). McMourning and Francisco could push a Cerberus 9" up and the leap is another 7" which puts you outside of charge range even if Nico set up pretty far up without blocking terrain so it would need even more pushes. Assuming you luck out immensely and have some 10+ tomes that could push the cerberus into actually hurting Nico. He is unlikely to leave a straight path to himself though so hard to get that charge.

McMourning himself might be able to do a pretty wicked rancid transplant into expunge against Nico. It might not kill him but should give him a scare. If you can set up your pushes right you could trigger to push in for more attacks.

Hoffman bots can get there assuming scarce terrain but you would probably need to fly to actually get at Nico instead of a patsy he placed in the charge path. They certainly have the damage to hurt him with the extra ram and debt putting a Peacekeeper at min 6. Just need that flight to get it to actually hit anything worthwhile.

McCabe can reactivate and push a thrall or push an executioner perhaps. None of them are likely to reach Nico turn 1 though. 

A domador and counter-belling should put some stress on Nico. He hs a hwalthy walk even if you will need to expend very high cards to lure him and he has the card advantage.

Best bet?

Justice with the emissary would be interesting. Just having her buried by the emissary through an obey turn one and waiting pretty much makes Philip's card draw suicide for Nico. I guess a savvy Nico player will spot it and do the marker drop and Philip as his first two activations.

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You don't need to drop Nico in a single hit.  If you're going to take him out, he does need to be dead before you run out of hitters though.  Likely you'd need at least 2 credible threats to pull that off.  In the "scary zombie engine" Nico builds, he's got like 40ss of very fragile support models standing around making the engine go.   Like, Df 5 and not much else levels of fragile.  If you can blender one or two of them out, you will absolutely cut the legs out from under the big scary engine.  If they blow a bunch of soulstones to keep the pieces of their engine intact, you're already winning since each soulstone spent on saving Asura/Mortimer/Sebastian/Phillip is one less punk zombie/Kentauroi dropped in your lap.

 

Honestly?  Scariest things I see across the table as Nico are either Mounted Guard with a side car beater (executioners or Thralls), and Sonnia running just typical Sonnia stuff.  Worse if they're doing the whole expert sleuth/Papa/Francisco/whatever boat to crank her to 11.

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Hoffman should be able to reliably deliver his giant bots. I'm one of the few people that likes the Malifaux child with him using up a high card to loop and killing him right after so that the condition never ends and distance matters less after that. While Austringers use cards, it's not too bad since you'll rarely if ever have to cheat on the attack flip. All you need is one low df model out of cover. If you deliver something big in the lines, I'd want to kill Phillip and the Nanny anyway. Don't bother with Mortimer since he's just giving a corpse from now on anyway. Numb to the world on your beater also protects from the grasping hands condition and terrifying stops mattering. 

If you want to bomb Justice in the crew with the Emissary you might be able to use the markers dropped for Philip (can't remember if enemy scheme markers are usable). Might not always be an option, but it's nice to punish someone for not considering it. 

I'd be more concerned about Sonnia than lady J. Hard to wound is a pain, but high willpower is your friend. And blasts generally do more damage in wounds than Nico is summoning since he likes to operate in a ball.

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9 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Best bet?

Justice with the emissary would be interesting. Just having her buried by the emissary through an obey turn one and waiting pretty much makes Philip's card draw suicide for Nico. I guess a savvy Nico player will spot it and do the marker drop and Philip as his first two activations.

I also think that lady j with the emissary and an obey is a good combo. If you name nico you can get + to damage and take 3 min 4 hits, probably bumping it to 5 or 6 cause youre gonna want to put your high rams and stones into this alpha.

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10 hours ago, Saduhem said:

If you want to bomb Justice in the crew with the Emissary you might be able to use the markers dropped for Philip (can't remember if enemy scheme markers are usable). Might not always be an option, but it's nice to punish someone for not considering it. 

It's any scheme marker in LoS of the emissary and since it's ht 3 that should make it fairly likely depending on terrain. Forcing the emissary to bury could be the first activation so unless Nico wins initiative and drops two markers for Philip as the first activation or has chain shenanigans you should get an opening.

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1 hour ago, Joachim said:

I also think that lady j with the emissary and an obey is a good combo. If you name nico you can get + to damage and take 3 min 4 hits, probably bumping it to 5 or 6 cause youre gonna want to put your high rams and stones into this alpha.

She might not be charging either and ml 7 against df 4 when you get double positives to damage to offset impossible to wound and the duel difference is fairly likely to end up neutral or positive and that gives decent odds of flipping higher than weak. Placing and hitting with Acrobatic assault when Francisco'd up means she might even have a chance of lasting until she gets to go again? Acrobatic assault has a fixed place value as well so even with grasping hands from the activation between her and the emissary she can target models a few inches out. Not sure how well she will survive if they hit her a few times with grasping hands but you can punish anyone who tries and fails so you are possibly putting more strain on their hand.

Her totem is also pretty much guaranteed to get to draw cards against Nico which is nice.

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She should pretty much be able to oneshot Philip or spend a few ap killing him since he should be close to the markers dropped for him. With an angry LJ having taken out the card draw and standing around unsettlingly close to Nico I think you will at least have disrupted the landslide of summons somewhat. I've still seen Nico summon double hanged and a punk zombie without any form of card draw engine so she could be in for a tough fight but you should av least have given the opponent a slight headache and can hopefully disrupt some of their scheming. I'm not sure what Nico summons these days but double hanged and often double punk zombies turn one + two were pretty staple for my old Nico opponent without Philip as a draw engine and just from hands and the zombie summon cycle. I assume it has gotten even worse.

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