Pandora- First Game Request for Feedback

[thewrathchilde]

so.....I was primarily a Guild player but recently picked up Pandora. I have played one game with her and welcome some feedback. I am posting this separate from the Pandora tactics thread to avoid clogging that with discussion that may not be relevant outside of the list/pool I played.

The game I played was: Flank Deployment, Ply for Information, w/Surround Them, Undercover, Covert, Inescapable, and Public Demo. I took Undercover (Pandora) and Covert. I also strongly considered Surround Them as an option as well but decided that Undercover and Covert were my best options and things I could score incidentally without dedicating any/much AP to them instead of shutting down my opponent.

My list was: Pandora w/Woe is Me, Fugue State, and Depression; Candy w/Best Behavior and Thousand Faces; Lilitu; Doppleganger; Lelu w/Satisfying Punishment; Iggy w/Enraged Tantrum; Will O’Wisp x 2; Cache: 6. 

In this game I took Fugue State because of The number of interacting strats/schemes. The Wisps were there for conditions, to stop charges, and copy the Sorrows and Poltergeist’s (2) actions. Most of what I took was designed to give WP checks or apply conditions so Pandora could summon. 

My opponent played: Lynch w/Cheating Bastard, Woke Up With a Hand, and Wanna See a Trick; Huggy w/Peaceful Waters; Yasunori w/Recalled Training; Shadow Emissary w/Conflux of Hunger; Terracotta Warrior; Beckoner x 2; and a Monk of Low River.

 

I had a lot of trouble with the Emissary and Yasunori though and never could get the summoning really going. I got the Poltergeist out multiple times but only got 1 sorrow in the first two turns which really slowed me down (I think). 

I would welcome some inout on how you deal with things like Yas- my answer was a focused Incite and have Candy stand next to her.....

Some people don’t seem to like Candy but I thought with the Lures, Copy  (Doppleganger), and Incites that I could use her Sweets/Sours to benefit. Plus it was Flank deployment to I could use her (0) to rapidly redeploy her from virtually one side of the board to the other if needed. In practice she got a few Ply/Gathered Intel for me and was really my only way to neutralize Yasunori with the Paralyze from Sweets and a focused Incite to make her activate first after turn 1.

Overall  I didn't feel like I was able to capitalize off of what I thought would be her strengths in this type of list. I almost never was able to summon- in the first two turns only getting out 1 x Sorrow- though I did get the Poltergeist out twice. 

I welcome your feedback and general thoughts. Also I would appreciate some tips and discussion on how you deal with models like Yasunori or any models with abilities that make Willpower duels less effective. 

 

thanks, 

[Sc4rpelli]

I recently start to use Mr. Tannen in my summoning Pandora lists and he is performing really well.

He has an attack against willpower that put a condition on target so It helps with the summons and passive damage from the sorrows.

His ability two make an aura that give +2 to masks enable Pandora to summon using the 8 and 9 of maks.

Also, I think his aura that makes the oponent discard a card when cheating is very good against Lynch.

I never faced yasunori before (I guess I'm Lucky) but a friend of mine started with Malifaux recently and is buying TT. So I'll be definetely following this thread!

[thewrathchilde]

13 hours ago, Sc4rpelli said:

I recently start to use Mr. Tannen in my summoning Pandora lists and he is performing really well.

He has an attack against willpower that put a condition on target so It helps with the summons and passive damage from the sorrows.

His ability two make an aura that give +2 to masks enable Pandora to summon using the 8 and 9 of maks.

Also, I think his aura that makes the oponent discard a card when cheating is very good against Lynch.

interesting. I haven't really looked at him with Pandora. Typically I have been looking at her for things like Ply and Symbols where the opposing crew needs to interact so I can also take advantage of Fugue State and the need for the opposing crew to close with mine or at least with the symbols. His condition is pretty interesting and I really like the discard to cheat aura but I don't have anything (yet) I am ready to swap out to try him....just not convinced he is a good swap or better than the things I am already using. 

13 hours ago, Sc4rpelli said:

I never faced yasunori before (I guess I'm Lucky) but a friend of mine started with Malifaux recently and is buying TT. So I'll be definetely following this thread!

The biggest issue is that Yas is Stubborn so all WP attacks against him are at a (-) flip so it effectively cuts my AP in half as I pretty much have to focus to force anything to an even flip where I can beat him or cheat. Additionally he is HT 3 so can see over pretty much everything in my crew, has Armor + 1, a boatload of wounds (12), and a charge of 10".....plus gets a ton of attacks with his triggers to attack again. 

When you put all this together he effectively cuts in half the AP of any model attacking with a WP attack since you need to focus (unless you have the Poltergeist sitting next to him maybe) and then even if you are hitting him with Self Loathing with the Armor you are probably only dealing 2/3 damage per attack plus Misery so probably takes at least 3-4 attacks to take him down which means 6-8 AP to get focused and that's only if he doesn't have the cards to out cheat you. Meanwhile he is wrecking anything close to him with his attacks and with the Emissary there to push him around and give him Fast he is even more of a threat. 

In my game I didn't have a good answer to try to kill him without committing an insane amount of resources so instead I would hit him with a focused Incite and park Candy next to him to paralyze him. This worked but only if I have Candy (which I like though others don't) in my crew but I am sure that other people probably have their "go to" solutions for dealing with things like Yas, Riders, or other models that are either Stubborn or just difficult to attack with WP based attacks. 

[-Loki-]

I’d suggest dropping Fugue State and adding Rile them Up. This lets Pandora drop 4 Mood Swings if you get the Tome triggers, giving her ample Summon targets and leftover control or summon targets for next turn.

You don’t need to super overload on conditions, nor aim for spamming Sorrow summons. Get Pandora close and let her get 4 Mood Swings and 2 Sorrow summons and it’s been a good turn of Pandora.

I’d suggest the Mysterious Emmisary though - it has a long range, no LoS needed Mood Swing which is perfect for forcing a far away model to activate first next turn if you don’t win Initiative. Pandora can then use the leftover Mood Swings from last turn to summon more Sorrows and have herself an action or two left to kill things.

If she gets 3 Sorrows summoned in close proximity this way, that’s 4 Misery auras to hit what you summoned off. Since she’s got Depression, the Sorrows all have Nobody Likes Me to cause 4 damage condition applications that make those models activate last. You’re basically guaranteed a Poltergeist this way too.

[Ludvig]

I'm not a Pandora expert but I'll chime in anyway.

I

m not sure why you would focus on summoning in a game of Ply for info where summons are a liability. If you had run Paralyze Pandora you could probably have paralyzed Yaz until you killed it/the entire game and just scored Ply every turn from it. Most Pandora lists also enjoy some form of attacks against Df if people bring anti-wp tech. Instead of Candy you could have used Bishop who can choose which stat he attacks and can probably kill Yasinori.

[Nikodemus]

17 hours ago, Sc4rpelli said:

Also, I think his aura that makes the oponent discard a card when cheating is very good against Lynch.

That's an amazing aura and reason enough to hire Tannen regardless of what else is on the card. But how so against Lynch?  Half the time Lynch is just going to discard an ace which he gets to pick up again.

[Adran]

He at least can't when you're attacking and he probably makes more use of a full hand and poor cards than most. 

[Sc4rpelli]

3 hours ago, Nikodemus said:

That's an amazing aura and reason enough to hire Tannen regardless of what else is on the card. But how so against Lynch?  Half the time Lynch is just going to discard an ace which he gets to pick up again.

I was thinking about Mulligan and cheating bastard, that makes Lynch cheating really good in a very consistent basis. I forgot about ace in the hole, so you are completely right, he can Just keep discarding Aces.

[Sc4rpelli]

6 hours ago, thewrathchilde said:

 The biggest issue is that Yas is Stubborn so all WP attacks against him are at a (-) flip so it effectively cuts my AP in half as I pretty much have to focus to force anything to an even flip where I can beat him or cheat. Additionally he is HT 3 so can see over pretty much everything in my crew, has Armor + 1, a boatload of wounds (12), and a charge of 10".....plus gets a ton of attacks with his triggers to attack again

I see, that's a tough one... I really like candy but she's not that survivable (like most neverborn). I Think Ludvig made a good point about playing paralyze Pandora. It's a Very reliable way to stop big guys.

[thewrathchilde]

7 hours ago, -Loki- said:

I’d suggest dropping Fugue State and adding Rile them Up. This lets Pandora drop 4 Mood Swings if you get the Tome triggers, giving her ample Summon targets and leftover control or summon targets for next turn.

You don’t need to super overload on conditions, nor aim for spamming Sorrow summons. Get Pandora close and let her get 4 Mood Swings and 2 Sorrow summons and it’s been a good turn of Pandora.

I will look at this as an option next time I play here and try it out.

I had taken Fugue State for the WP 15 duel whenever the opponent's crew interacts within 8" for more passive damage thinking that, with Sorrows, it could potentially be several damage every time the opponent Plys. 

Quote

I’d suggest the Mysterious Emmisary though - it has a long range, no LoS needed Mood Swing which is perfect for forcing a far away model to activate first next turn if you don’t win Initiative. Pandora can then use the leftover Mood Swings from last turn to summon more Sorrows and have herself an action or two left to kill things.

If she gets 3 Sorrows summoned in close proximity this way, that’s 4 Misery auras to hit what you summoned off. Since she’s got Depression, the Sorrows all have Nobody Likes Me to cause 4 damage condition applications that make those models activate last. You’re basically guaranteed a Poltergeist this way too.

I will look at the Emissary as well. I have it but as of yet have not assembled or used it. I could also see the benefit in copying the Poltergeist or some other abilities in a Pandora crew as well. 

7 hours ago, Ludvig said:

I'm not a Pandora expert but I'll chime in anyway. 

Im not sure why you would focus on summoning in a game of Ply for info where summons are a liability.

My thought process was with activation control from summoning I could still control the Ply game anyway.

Additionally in Ply they are putting conditions on their own models which should make the summoning easier.

While they can't summon the turn they are summoned Sorrows can still summon and then "teleport" (Misery Loves Company) into a better/safer position where they could continue to provide benefit from Misery or just tie up something until another model comes in to Ply as well. 

Quote

If you had run Paralyze Pandora you could probably have paralyzed Yaz until you killed it/the entire game and just scored Ply every turn from it. Most Pandora lists also enjoy some form of attacks against Df if people bring anti-wp tech. Instead of Candy you could have used Bishop who can choose which stat he attacks and can probably kill Yasinori.

However, to Paralyze would have still "cost" me two AP (most likely) to Focus and Cast or at least a Stone (for the + Flip to get even) and a cast from Pandora. The way I ended up doing it I could also focus and Incite from Iggy saving Pandora's AP for other actions and Candy was able to Paralyze him without using AP and Ply and then cast Melancholy at other models and get the passive damage from Fears Given Form. 

With Lures, Incites, and Melancholy the dream was for Candy to tie up multiple models, paralyze, Ply, get damage from Fears Given Form and get damage from Sours.....I wasn't able to get it fully in place but she was adding value for me with Ply and Sweets for sure.

Candy may not be the optimal choice and once I get my Emissary put together an painted I will try some games with it instead but I do think she is better than some people give her credit for. 

Primarily I am interested in running Summoning Pandora but will probably try out a game or two with Paralyze as well. I am not really looking to be able to solo her in all games/pools but think she is cool, wanted to get a few more Neverborn masters, and have another good option for events that encourage the use of multiple masters. 

other thoughts and comments from the group?

[Ludvig]

Against Pandora and Candy a  decent player will try to not bunch up so you will generally need to work hard to make better use of her than you did in this game. If you even got to use both her auras I'd say you got good value from her. I'm not really anti Candy, she works well with Pandora. It's just that if you were having trouble with too many wp attacks and too little damage my thought were that she would be easy to replace with a pure beater like Bishop. Bishop is also an enforcer so can carry the armour ignore upgrade.

 

[Corwin]

The last time I played Pandora against Yaz I was playing box Pandora and brought Kade and Barbaros, that's the only time I have had good luck vs hun with her.

[thewrathchilde]

2 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Against Pandora and Candy a  decent player will try to not bunch up so you will generally need to work hard to make better use of her than you did in this game. If you even got to use both her auras I'd say you got good value from her. I'm not really anti Candy, she works well with Pandora. It's just that if you were having trouble with too many wp attacks and too little damage my thought were that she would be easy to replace with a pure beater like Bishop. Bishop is also an enforcer so can carry the armour ignore upgrade.

 

I don’t think I ever got both Sweets and Sours in the same turn though I did get each of them at times. Sweets was definitely more important in this game fore the paralyze on Yas. By itself it isn’t too hard to get off- a focused Incite on Yas after he activated on turn one and then Candy stands next to him as my last activation. 

For sure against most players you aren’t going to be able to lock down a lot of models with her easily but with Lures from Lilitu or others you can pull their models into her engagement after which she just becomes the first model you activate to cast Charm because she doesn’t need to do anything else. You can’t do this is a game of Ply because they could still Ply her but with another strategy I think this would work. 

I do agree that I might need another beater in the list though but might just try to slip Baby Kade in and see if he can halfway fill the role and give me some more flexibility. 

I think I can address some of my concerns by just altering play style. In this case I was focused on denying Ply when I should have let him get Gathered Intel on someone early (as long ad I could get more later) and then start summoning off him fast and then switching to the Incites, Self Loathing, etc after I had a few Sorrows out. Probably I need to get a few more games in and then start swapping a model here and there to see what works. 

The downside is my one regular opponent plays Yasunori like he is a required choice so my games are always going to be a little slanted by the presence of a big anti-WP attack model. 

[Ludvig]

With Pandora you actually have a way to get good use of Candy's sweets. If you use her with any other master you'll have a much harder time getting use from that aura since Mood swings is difficult to get on outside of Pandora.

If your opponent keeps bringing Yasinori and you keep locking it down you are trading ap/ss in a favourable way so just enjoy it while it lasts. You can probably win Ply for info just plying Yasinori and no one else. When I play Ply I usually don't bother with out-activating, I aim for getting Ply on a few models early. As long as the opponent can't hit a lot of severes (which statistically they should not be doing) that usually wins me the strategy points. In my games out-activation did very little for Ply, having the raw strength to remove enemies is what usually denies points and chain activations are great for getting to both ply and attack before the enemy.

[thewrathchilde]

got another game in recently with Pandora against the same opponent. This time he was running Stalking Bisento Misaki. I did swap around a few upgrades and dropped a second Will O' Wisp in order to get Baby Kade in the list as well. 

Didn't work out so well for me this game......I didn't clearly communicate intent with my opponent so ended up thinking I had Pandora hidden behind a tower where Misaki couldn't see her. He said he could (and did by about a mm of clearance) so ended up getting a charge against Pandy on turn 1 with Misaki after stalking her. I had ended up behind the tower after a push and had plenty of room left on the push where I could have went the mm or so further right to ensure she couldn't be seen. Oh well, my fault for not clearly checking with my opponent as I did the push to make sure this wasn't going to come up. Shouldn't be an issue though as I had a 13 and a 12 in my hand. First attack I cheat in the 12 and he cheats in a 13. I stone against the damage and prevent the damage. Now I am pretty confident I can cheat in the 13 and push out.....I flip the Black Joker so can't cheat in the 13 and end up taking 6 damage and having to discard 2 stones to prevent the assassinate. I cheat in on the next attack and manage to push away. He is out of activations at this point so I end up positioning Candy for turn 2 and Lure Pandy away from Misaki to get her where she can get away and start summoning and beating until I can get her healed up with Candy.

The plan going into turn 2 is that I can cheat initiative if I need to with Doppeganger to ensure I go first and focus Incite on Yas to set up the paralyze. Force Yas to activate first for my opponent so he is paralyzed and I immediately get another activation (Pandora) to get out of dodge start attacking the other side. Solid plan and should neutralize his other biggest threat, get me away from Misaki, and position me to kill off a couple of his smaller models and start getting control with a Poltergeist and some Sorrows to augment the rest of my crew. Draw up my hand.....not a card above a 6.....flip initiative; he gets a 4 and I get the Black Joker......so I can't cheat, have no cards high enough to protect Pandora from Misaki, and can't force him to activate Yasunori first.....needless to say the game was over in about 5 more minutes with Pandora, Candy, and anything else that mattered dead in my crew. 

Didn't really get any play value out of the game so no further decisions on changes or modification. Next time I play it I will probably run virtually the same crew as in game 2 and see how it performs. The only thing I did get out of the game was a reminder that against this opponent to explicitly state everything ahead of hide with intent to ensure that if I think something is out of LOS then it is out of LOS. I thought I was being obvious the way I was positioning her.....but I never explicitly said I was placing her where Misaki couldn't see her or vice versa or asked if this hid her.....

I usually don't get salty when I play win or lose but this game put me off and I just packed afterwards and didn't play anything else that night.

Maybe tomorrow I will get another game in with her. Typically when I am playing something new (to me) I run that master for better or worse no matter if it’s a good pool or not to start getting a feel for them. With Pandy I think I will probably be more selective. 

Do any of you solo get or run her all comers or is she always a situational pick?

[Ludvig]

That sounds like a harsh way to learn the lesson of intent.  

Regarding the black joker on initiative you know you can still soulstone for a reflip, right? 

[thewrathchilde]

6 hours ago, Ludvig said:

That sounds like a harsh way to learn the lesson of intent.  

Regarding the black joker on initiative you know you can still soulstone for a reflip, right? 

I had only brought 4 so was out of stones.... first turn I had to use two for damage prevention flips and two because of the assassinate trigger on Misaki’s Bisento. 

[bsm86]

I generally don't like Woe Is Me that much but if it is your preferred way to play Dora then maybe here are some useful things:

• Drop Candy. Although she is pretty good and has a variety of tools, she won't be able to give you her money's worth in most games. Her attack is pretty useless as every opponent will have a pretty good guard against Wp duels anyway. 2 AP + Ca Expert can rarely be used to their full potential as you're either busy trying to heal or just stand there with Defensive +2 and one Attack that's probably going to miss anyway.
• The aforementioned Emissary is a perfect fit for Dora - Conflux of Sorrow is easy one of the better Confluxes out there. Even if you just copied a Misery aura you're able to drop one summon per turn that way in order to either Focus Incite or whatever the occasion calls for. And Hungry Lands are simply awesome.
• I'm not a huge fan of Lilitu and Lelu (especially Lelu). Sure, he's cheap and she has a great Lure. But the 13 stones between the both of them can easily be used to take Nekima. She forces Wp duels as well and her presence alone will make opponents less likely to head straight for Dora. If need be she's very capable of just tearing something apart (even Yasunori).
• Tannen is great.
• Insidious Madness are great. They're basically nasty little bastards that annoy the heck out of your opponent and don't even require any form of support. Just let one of those run through a wall into some enemy models, use Induce Phobia and have it just stand there.

Also, if you have difficulties keeping Dora alive: Consider taking Aether Connection. Sure, it blocks another Upgrade and you'll most likely have to decide between very good options, but the one more damage prevented may turn out to be the deciding factor - it has been for me on many occasions though I tend to play Dora with Box, FGF and Aether Connection.