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Help me learn to play Lucius


oistene

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I have played one game so far. I felt like I was stumbling a lot in my own feet, and I didn't move up the table fast enough. Four guards didn't seem worth it, I think I rather want another Austringer. This is the list I used:

 

Declared Faction: Guild 

Crew Name: Lucius 50ss 

Leader: Lucius - Cache:(4)

   Condescending 1ss 

   Deep Pockets 2ss 

   Secret Assets 2ss 

The Scribe 2ss 

Captain Dashel 8ss 

   Arrest Him 0ss 

Peacekeeper 11ss 

Guild Lawyer 5ss 

Guild Guard 3ss 

Guild Guard 3ss 

Guild Guard 3ss 

Guild Guard 3ss 

Guild Austringer 6ss 

Any thoughts on how to improve the list and generally on how to play Lucuis? I am still a noob who like to play poison McMourning. :P

 

 

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Lucius is about as powerful as his best minion so in your case you've turned him into a 3ss guild guard. Your list has far too many "filler" models that will not threstrn the opponent, so many guild guard and a lawyer means there is no threat kerping the opponent honest, they can just charge in and kill you.

In an interact heavy pool you could get good use out of maybe two-three guardsmen, maybe a single lawyer and only two guild guard. The peacekeeper is nice and sturdy but pretty much the only threatening model so you are making it easy for your enemy to pick their first target for killing and plenty of models just ignore most of the peacekeepers defensive abilities leaving your list without a threat. If you had another threatening model to get vengeance after the peacekeeper dies it gets a lot trickier for them. Witchling thralls hit hard and are minions so Lucius can target them with all his tricks.

He and his totem also have the condition where the enemy get double negatives on all attacks against minions and mimics so if you use beaters like thralls, mr Graves and doppelgänger you can make it really annoying for the enemy to hurt you back. 

Some people get good results using a gunline with a few guild riflemen. I personally haven't been successful with this because my local group is far to alpha-strikey. Austingers can be nice since they hit very reliably and can mess with thr enemy control hand which gives you an advantage.

In general I think Lucius requires a lot more finesse than many other master because the lack of a master that can just delete any enemy model is a big thing. 

Btw: what were you trying to do that the guild guard couldn't get to fast enough? Lucius can make them take a walk and push 3" with issue command so they should easily cross the center line turn 1. He can also forcr them to walk qhen he walks himself withhis horror ability. Turn one Lucius could walk, force himself to take a horror duel to walk again and force another model to do something since the second walk he just took for free lets him do it to another model. That's three ap for one. After that Lucius shouldn't need to move much (sometimes two walks is even too far into the board) and can use issue command on his minions. Secret assets is tricky, unlesd you have a high ram in hand you will need to use a soulstone for it, these days I oftrn play without it and usr his other (0) instead to interact in engagements. The marker placement thing aounds cool but compared to how easy Titania does the same thing it quickly makes secret assets seem very overpriced. On are occasions you can remove an enemy marker with it but the price for that is high and it requires your opponent to not realise you can do it. Lucius should rather use his aura of interact to make setup really easy after the enemy charges into you with their super beater or he could put condescending or red tape on them to neutralise the threat.

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I'd second what Ludwig said. Your opponent just has to take care of the peacekeeper and then everything else takes care of itself.

I haven't played the new Lucius although he is my favourite master. He used to be quite a chore, but on paper now seems much more functional.

You'll want to double down on the synergy to get the most of him. Thralls are an obvious choice, as is cross-hiring Mr. Graves and/or a doppelganger. They could each pull nearly as much weight as a peacekeeper with the added synergy from Lucius as well as giving the rest of your crew a speed boost.

At that point you can ask yourself how much you want dashel. I find him better with the more expensive guardsmen but the whole guardsman theme has been something of a yoke around the crew's kneck since the get go. Basically you're relying on synergy to make questionable models worthwhile, rather than sending good ones over the top.

In terms of general gameplay Lucius's style (assuming it hasn't changed drastically) is about carefully managing activations and ap to get ahead on points without decimating your opponent. It's a bit of a balancing act but now that he has the power to take out select models it should make it a lot easier. And it's extra satisfying knowing you've won by outplaying your opponent at Malifaux, not some generic list-based slugfest. 😀

 

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I usually play him with Frank and 2 x Witchling Thralls as my core list and then salt to taste- usually a combination of 2 x Guild Guard, Guild Lawyer, The Judge- you can swap in a Thalarian Queller- once the Guild Investigators come out I will substitute in one of them. 

As mentioned above he is best used to get mileage out of your good models- give Frank an extra action, push the Thralls and give them AP, allow your models to interact while engaged. I use the Thralls and Frank s beaters (obviously), Frank (and the Judge/or Witchling Handler if I take one of them) can increase mobility for the crew while providing some more damage output. The Guild Guard and Lawyer are cheap expendable activations and the Lawyer can stall things as well as buff my crew. They are also there for Lucius to use Devil's Deal on and stay in the stones (and draw another card from the Queller). They also give more AP to the Thralls by dropping scheme markers (which will be more cards once the Investigator is released). 

Primarily I use Lucius for things like Symbols where I need/want the extra mobility and Don't Mind Me Interacts to pick up symbols, Supply Wagons where with the movement tricks from Frank and the Judge and extra AP from Lucius you can push the Wagon across really quickly and then concentrate on their crew and denying their points. It works pretty good in ours as well as it is surprisingly mobile so can get/stay in the right quarters and challenge while killing out their models. It can kill pretty well too and scheme but generally in a pure killy game I prefer Sonnia or Lady J. 

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1. Lucius, Scribe, Dashel, 12 guild guards

Guards get (0) Focus from Dashel and :+flip:ToS-Range:.
Lucius gives them :+flip:melee.

Yep, guards have only 4 MI and 4 SH, but with such numbers they can attack +/- 12 times with :+flip:+flip and :+flip damage

They will always have Def 6 if you position them right, some will have Def 7.

Very vulnerable to Sonnia and Rasputina, very good vs most other lists.

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Just to "defend" my choices - I painted the box for the local league and wanted to use as many as possible of the models, and I also wanted to see how the new, buffed Guild Guards fared. The Thralls I knew were good here, but the local store messed up the order and sent handlers instead... I have ordered Graves and a pack of Thralls now. Will start painting Frank and a couple of other models and give it another shot. For tomorrow's game I shall see if I can take something out and add another beatstick, an Executioner or whatever I have handy.

The fact that Lucius can scare himself into moving blew my mind! That is a great trick! Also, my problem was not that the guards weren't fast enough, but that I held back and didn't move them up. I also hampered myself by avoiding the table center (we were playing Reconnoiter).

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41 minutes ago, oistene said:

Just to "defend" my choices - I painted the box for the local league and wanted to use as many as possible of the models, and I also wanted to see how the new, buffed Guild Guards fared. The Thralls I knew were good here, but the local store messed up the order and sent handlers instead... I have ordered Graves and a pack of Thralls now. Will start painting Frank and a couple of other models and give it another shot. For tomorrow's game I shall see if I can take something out and add another beatstick, an Executioner or whatever I have handy.

You don't always need to go full dirty, there is nothing wrong with having fun with his box but against a well tuned list you will have to work really hard to scratch out a win if that matters to you.

41 minutes ago, oistene said:

The fact that Lucius can scare himself into moving blew my mind! That is a great trick! Also, my problem was not that the guards weren't fast enough, but that I held back and didn't move them up. I also hampered myself by avoiding the table center (we were playing Reconnoiter).

It's pretty much an exploit based on the errata removing the word "minion" from the ability but he is hardly a powerhouse so I don't feel bad using it.

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1 hour ago, Rostislav said:

1. Lucius, Scribe, Dashel, 12 guild guards

Guards get (0) Focus from Dashel and :+flip:ToS-Range:.
Lucius gives them :+flip:melee.

Yep, guards have only 4 MI and 4 SH, but with such numbers they can attack +/- 12 times with :+flip:+flip and :+flip damage

They will always have Def 6 if you position them right, some will have Def 7.

Very vulnerable to Sonnia and Rasputina, very good vs most other lists.

The two times I tried guard spam I ran into Sonnia so I gave up. :D Still seems not great in a lot of pools and against a lot of fairly common list setups. Plenty of melee killers can end up engaged to a bunch of guild guards so they have huge trouble shooting into the ml even if Lucius pushes a couple of them out. Have you played it a lot? If someone ever declares anything else than guild around here maybe I should give it another go.

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I don't care about my list being the "best" - we are a new meta, and we have no really good players yet. People are playing, trying things and having fun. Having fun is the important thing here - the list need not be perfect, but it needs to work in a way. The list I used made me think too much about my choices, and a lot of the time I felt that I was only positioning and keeping the opponent back, not working towards my own goals. So it wasn't as fun to play as it should be.

We ended at 7-9, and agreed that it was a good learning experience for us both, so it was not a total waste.

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22 minutes ago, oistene said:

I don't care about my list being the "best" - we are a new meta, and we have no really good players yet. People are playing, trying things and having fun. Having fun is the important thing here - the list need not be perfect, but it needs to work in a way. The list I used made me think too much about my choices, and a lot of the time I felt that I was only positioning and keeping the opponent back, not working towards my own goals. So it wasn't as fun to play as it should be.

We ended at 7-9, and agreed that it was a good learning experience for us both, so it was not a total waste.

I've had a lot of fun playing Lucius since the previous edition. I can very much recommend trying a pacifist game where you hardly kill any enemies (sometimes you need to handle their deathstar alpha model). A lawyer or two, doppleganger, Francisco, Tannen and stuff. Apply the debuffing conditions and only do schemes like hold up their forces and the trap one with markers. Francisco can do his finesse to give people negatives and tie up something decent while buffing someone who already has a decent defence to silly levels so they can also tie up a beater. Someone near the scribe with Francisco's buff can get to ridiculous levels of defence. Lucius or the doppleganger can take the discard for negatives upgrade and the dopple can use a (0) to make certain attacks have negatives against her, when they focus to be able to cheat anyway you discard a card to put them back at negatives. Tannen prevents cheating and interacts in an aura. I've won a couple of games while being tabled or left with a single model. :D Edit: It does run into trouble if the enemy has a lot of positive flips on their attacks. Now that lead lined coat is cheaper that might also work well.

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It depends on what you want to do.

 I played this list against the Vicks in symbols this weekend.

Guardian protected one symbol and Lucius and thralls went up the middle with the scribe upping the DF. Jury/Austringer/Queller went on the other flank. I won 9-4.Vicks only managed to kill one Thrall as they heal back up when they attack and Lucius can also heal. Thrall Killed both Vicks with their attack and Lucius commanding them and even the scribe put down a scheme marker to get another attack, which also counted for search the ruins(Scored 3 pt) which Scribe and Lucius did on their own. Scored 2 pts with recovered evidence, would have scored 3 if I had waited to turn 3 to reveal it. Lucius and Austringer does wonders for taking the Symbols markers, even the Guardian move forwarder to take the last marker as there were no threats to take his.

Declared Faction: Guild
Crew Name: Lucius 50ss
Leader: Lucius - Cache:(4)
   Deep Pockets 2ss
   Condescending 1ss
The Scribe 2ss
The Jury 8ss
Guild Austringer 6ss
Witchling Thrall 9ss
Witchling Thrall 9ss
Thalarian Queller 6ss
Guardian 7ss 

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1 hour ago, Ludvig said:

It's pretty much an exploit based on the errata removing the word "minion" from the ability but he is hardly a powerhouse so I don't feel bad using it.

It actually reminds me of how he used to use his casting expert ap to command himself to do other actions in v1.5.

 

Pretty snazzy that he can command himself to walk plus command though!

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Being able to throw a single (risky) obey to my non-minions is always critical to my Lucius play so I dearly hope that stays. At one point I absolutely NEEDED another minion 0 to happen to score, so I walked Lucius to scare Queeg into walking to scare the minion to re-use its 0 action....

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2 hours ago, Gnomezilla said:

Being able to throw a single (risky) obey to my non-minions is always critical to my Lucius play so I dearly hope that stays. At one point I absolutely NEEDED another minion 0 to happen to score, so I walked Lucius to scare Queeg into walking to scare the minion to re-use its 0 action....

Witchling stalkers can be nice with Lucius also. If you reaaaaly need to get rid of paralyze you potentially have two hands to filter through for the tome, assuming the poor paralyzed model has already activated this turn. They also hit a bit above their weight in melee with his support, even before the errata. 

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27 minutes ago, lusciousmccabe said:

Witchling stalkers can be nice with Lucius also. If you reaaaaly need to get rid of paralyze you potentially have two hands to filter through for the tome, assuming the poor paralyzed model has already activated this turn. They also hit a bit above their weight in melee with his support, even before the errata. 

I still remember my wave 2 ish lists for lucius with 2 dms, 2 hunters and 2 stalkers.

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26 minutes ago, lusciousmccabe said:

Back in the good old days of guardsmen being unambiguously trash. Now I'm going to actually have to actually think about running some of them.

Also, Lucius buffs pine box now doesn't he? Because if so that's awesome.

It gives the pine box a plus flip (both on the initial and the keep in the box flip iirc), which is good, but 6wd hard to wound means that they are just dead models walking.

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I played three games with Lucius this weekend to start preparing for the Capitol City Meltdown in May.  I won a game of Squatter's, tied a game of Symbols, and lost a game of Squatter's.

(oops, posted raw notes.  This is a little cleaner).

Lucius:  Great at ordering people around , had a hard time coming up with offensive things for him to do because my crew was light on beaters.  I used What Lackeys are For to swap Mr. Graves with Lucius against Nekima.  My opponent didn’t want to bother swinging at me because I had a fist full of cards.  Guild Intelligence has a LOT of potential in schemes like Set Up or Dig Their Graves.  Even Inescapable Trap could work! 

The Scribe: Two point minion who can lay down scheme markers is sweet and when he can do it while engaged thanks to Lucius is super sweet.  

The Jury: always awesome.  Even with Hard to Wound and Armor +1 she isn’t the best sponge.  Take another model like Frank or Phiona to absorb damage then heal them with the Jury.

Mr. Graves: I thought he was OK, but my opponent (long time Neverborn player) doesn’t like him much in my crew.  What are your thoughts on Mr. Graves compared to the other Guild beaters? 

Doppelganger:  She was pretty useful, being able to use her far away from Lucius.  I need more practice with her. 

Thalarian Queller: almost an auto take vs Neverborn to trump Hooded Rider and incorporeal things.  They are good vs. Ressurs too, less so in other factions. 

Ferdinand Vogel: He didn’t blow me away, but the idea of a model that you can swap out each turn if they don’t die has a LOT of potential.  Plus he’s a werewolf with a cute little hat! 

Guild Lawyer: not too flashy, but I think he has hidden depths.  Fees can be handy, so can giving out slow, and tanking other models with highest authority. Combined with the Jury and Lucus letting the Lawyer hand out fees several times could really make a model like Nekima/Hooded Rider cry.

Beckoner: A good model that I need more practice with.  Lures are great in GG2018 so well worth practicing with.

I will have to try a Guild focused list with thralls and monster hunters!

 

Edited by jchrisobrien
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The beckoner no interact aura can be nice in certain pools and lures are always good in my opinion. Lots of lists don't like it when you suck something out of position and pile onto it with your crew. They also attack wp with ca which isn't super common for guild, even if the damage track isn't great it can be very handy against incorp, certain triggers and models with very high defence. I had Marcus on low wounds left vs a couple of beckoners in my game just an hour ago and he was planning to just pile all the enemy attacks onto a patsy I had made into a beast but they just didn't care at all. In contrast the enemy Teddy just ended up hurting his own crew because of the df trigger.

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5 hours ago, jchrisobrien said:

I played three games with Lucius this weekend to start preparing for the Capitol City Meltdown in May.  I won a game of Squatter's, tied a game of Symbols, and lost a game of Squatter's.

(oops, posted raw notes.  This is a little cleaner).

Lucius:  Great at ordering people around , had a hard time coming up with offensive things for him to do because my crew was light on beaters.  I used What Lackeys are For to swap Mr. Graves with Lucius against Nekima.  My opponent didn’t want to bother swinging at me because I had a fist full of cards.  Guild Intelligence has a LOT of potential in schemes like Set Up or Dig Their Graves.  Even Inescapable Trap could work! 

The Scribe: Two point minion who can lay down scheme markers is sweet and when he can do it while engaged thanks to Lucius is super sweet.  

The Jury: always awesome.  Even with Hard to Wound and Armor +1 she isn’t the best sponge.  Take another model like Frank or Phiona to absorb damage then heal them with the Jury.

Mr. Graves: I thought he was OK, but my opponent (long time Neverborn player) doesn’t like him much in my crew.  What are your thoughts on Mr. Graves compared to the other Guild beaters? 

Doppelganger:  She was pretty useful, being able to use her far away from Lucius.  I need more practice with her. 

Thalarian Queller: almost an auto take vs Neverborn to trump Hooded Rider and incorporeal things.  They are good vs. Ressurs too, less so in other factions. 

Ferdinand Vogel: He didn’t blow me away, but the idea of a model that you can swap out each turn if they don’t die has a LOT of potential.  Plus he’s a werewolf with a cute little hat! 

Guild Lawyer: not too flashy, but I think he has hidden depths.  Fees can be handy, so can giving out slow, and tanking other models with highest authority. Combined with the Jury and Lucus letting the Lawyer hand out fees several times could really make a model like Nekima/Hooded Rider cry.

Beckoner: A good model that I need more practice with.  Lures are great in GG2018 so well worth practicing with.

I will have to try a Guild focused list with thralls and monster hunters!

 

When I pick Mr. Graves I always pick for his pushing. Other than this ability, or maybe the no-charging aura, I do not think he is outshining our models. If we want a beater we always have access to Frans, Jury or thrall. If we want a tank Phiona or Judge maybe a better choice.

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10 hours ago, jchrisobrien said:

Ferdinand Vogel: He didn’t blow me away, but the idea of a model that you can swap out each turn if they don’t die has a LOT of potential.  Plus he’s a werewolf with a cute little hat! 

Guild Lawyer: not too flashy, but I think he has hidden depths.  Fees can be handy, so can giving out slow, and tanking other models with highest authority. Combined with the Jury and Lucus letting the Lawyer hand out fees several times could really make a model like Nekima/Hooded Rider cry.

 

Agree one million times on Vogel. He could have literally no stat line and I'd find an excuse to field him.

I found uses for a lawyer when they were 6ss and didn't get the melee buff from Lucius, so I really like the look of them now. Think stacking fees is a bit of a trap, there's probably something better you can use that ap on. It is rather nice to tag things with it opportunistically or do some chip damage on something with a low wound count using it and poison.

Think a lot of the lawyers strength comes from the ridiculous base stats for such a cheap model. He can do a bunch of small annoying things and your opponent will often have to decide whether to burn good cards or let him away with it.

It's also easy to forget he can use highest authority against disengaging strikes and has finish the job. Meaning late in the game he can sit in melee with something to stop it scoring and you can be pretty certain he'll get a marker down in that area one way or another.

Plus, cute hat once again.

In terms of Graves you're really taking him for Show Ya the Door. Guild has some better options for tanking and damage for a similar cost, but Graves is a better taxi service. He'll also get you some added card efficiency if you keep him within 6" of Lucius, and the fact that both he and a doppelganger could use show ya the door turn one with plus flips is just gravy.

He should wear a bowler though, let's face it.

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