McMourning vs the Neverborn

[Archangle]

So in our club we just started to try out Malifaux. Were still on Crew boxes with Little changes here and there on 35 Stones.

 

So the first two games of Ressers vs my Neverborn where totally onesided. First game Lilith, standing behind LOS Blocking Terrain teleporting terrortots in Exchange for his key models, so he killed some tots and i killed McMourning and Sebastian and still had all my big bad beaters.

 

Second Game was Pandora/Box, Strategy Turf War. Pandora and her Sorrows, Poltergeist took the Center of the board. To stay relevant in the Strategy he charged his melee models in, killed one sorrow. Pandora started bombing away killing McMourning and damaging 4 other models at the same time. Mood Swing + Candy permaparalysed his Flesh Construkt. He had Nothing he could do an conceded on the end of turn 2.

 

This onesinded games are no fun for either Player, so the Question is how to bring the Fun to the game.

Is McMourning just bad as a starting Master? He is right now considering to switch to Nicodem as a new master, that any better?

Is McMourning just very bad against Neverborn wo seem to beat him at his own game?

Is 35 Stones not enough and we should hurry to get to full 50 Stone games?

 

His list was:

McMourning (Moonlightting) Cashe 6

Sebastian (Those are not ours)

Chihuahua

Flesh Construct

Nurse

Crooked Man

Necropunk

 

Seemed allright to me but on the table it just didn´t wort out. So please help us to get fun into this game, we really want to love it, but it is hard this way.

[Clement]

Looking at that list, 2 things I'd change are as follows.

1) Get "Those are not ours" out of there.  It's a good upgrade, but not in this list.  I'd swap it over to Plastic Surgery on McMourning if you only have access to the box upgrades, maybe decaying aura instead if you have the generic upgrades or Transfusion on Sebastian if you have that also.

2) Assuming that's his only flesh construct, think really hard about it's inclusion.  The typical McMourning crew plan is  to spray poison around everywhere and then let it tick down for kills (getting 2 poison on a sorrow is a death sentence with Sebastian around).  McMourning himself will tend to either juice up something with a load of poison, then expunge it to death for a free flesh construct (this is why you might not want to start with it, you'll pull one out of a terror tot or whatever).  He's also hilariously mobile with Plastic Surgery if you can monitor his health.  If you do drop the FC, put in the other nurse.  Take your Meds will basically ruin a model on most of it's triggers and is an easy way to juice up McMourning so he can go skiing around on his poison.

In the Lilith game, McMourning wants to try REALLY hard to go after Lilith because he will not survive two consecutive turns of Lilith beating on him, no matter how many soul stones you use (and you'll likely use a few)

edit:  If you have some points to throw around, another rock solid model for that list would be a rotten belle (likely swapping out the crooked man for it).  They can be used to drag enemy models out to die of poison or McMourning out of the angry pile he got teleported in to.

[Alexifer]

Another issue is that neverborn masters are very potent on their own right out of the box, while resser masters are much more support-based in their application. Also resser crew boxes, while very thematic, are usually kinda bad.  Take McMourning for instance. You almost never want to take more than one nurse and flesh constructs are more for summoning off his Abra Cadaver trigger. The box itself doesn't have a great way to stack poison on enemy models either, as this is often done on a friendly model and then transferred over via the Transfusion upgrade. McMourning's def stats are also fairly shit against your high neverborn attack stats. 

I'm not complaining as McMourning is my favorite master, just pointing out that this could just be the case of you're playing low stone games and it's a fairly one sided matchup because of this. Advise your friend to use this period to really learn his models and how they build on each other's strengths so that when he gets more pieces of the puzzle onto the table it'll all fall into place. And get those Transfusion upgrades! They change McMourning's whole game! 

[Sagrit]

On 9/13/2018 at 12:09 AM, Alexifer said:

And get those Transfusion upgrades! They change McMourning's whole game! 

And Rafkin  

[Ludvig]

If he starts with a couple of guild autopsies or flesh constructs he can transfuse from them onto enemies. In your game I would expect a McMourning player to get a flesh construct out of those dead terror tots by Expunging them and triggering Abra cadaver.

 

If McMourning can deliver a nurse within attack range of Lilith she is toast. I've seen her paralyzed for entire games by a nurse.

 

You also need schemes to balance crews. Turf war is a strategy where both players usually score full points and the schemes decide who wins.

[Archangle]

We had schemes, but his crew was desintegrating so fast, that he couldn´t see himself scoring neither scenario nor shemes, while my Madness was already on his way towards his deployment zone to lay down the markers.

McMounrning never had any Tots in his LOS, he ran up turn one, was teleported in the Neverborn backfield on top of 2 tried to melee Lilith a bit, found some aces in his deck and then died to Teddy and BabyKade.

As long as lilith uses (abuses?) her LOS shenanigans she should be well out of reach of the nurse? Still i watched battle reports where peaple played her agressivly and it seemd like perfektly normal games, but i can´t see much reason not to abuse her LOS shenanigans. On the other hand, I dont like that so couldn`t care less for her to become dead mans hand.

 

His third game was against the C.Hoffman Crew Box, he took the advice here to heart, used his poison more efficently, McMourning survived the game this time around, still he lost hard on VP. 30SS this time, McMourning really seams to want the full 50 to flesh out his poison engine.

[Ludvig]

When facing Lilith it is advisable to measure so that you aren't within 12" of a place where she can hide. My group has plenty of buildings and forests which makes this easier, if a map has many walls and other linear blockers this can be more challenging. 

I'vr never played McMourning in small sizes but I can imagine he isn't the strongest there. Against Hoffman he has the luxury of ignoring armour but Hoffman can whack him pretty hard and can potentially keep his whole crew in his armour safebubble.

[Sagrit]

9 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

Against Hoffman he has the luxury of ignoring armour but Hoffman can whack him pretty hard and can potentially keep his whole crew in his armour safebubble.

McMourning can't ignor Hoffman's Adaptive Armor aura  

[Ludvig]

4 hours ago, Sagrit said:

McMourning can't ignor Hoffman's Adaptive Armor aura  

That's what I meant with the safety bubble. Unless adaptive armour is Hoffman's defense trigger. Belles are the natural counter to Hoffman but in a 30ss game you are once again limited in what you can bring (and for new players what models you own).

In my opinion the emissary does a lot for McMourning. It provided terrain to hide behind, extra activations from zombies and the attack to poison a bunch of models is nice with Sebastian. I'm a bit hazy on the wording for Hoffman's armour aura but I brliev it onl applies to enemy models so poison goes through it even when boosted by Sebastian.

Against Lilith I would avoid overextending the doc and going for easy summon-kills early game. Flesh constructs are summoned with 5 poison so they allow you to transfuse the poison to the next opposing model. Turf war is pretty easy to score against a non-ranged opponent since you can sit in your extreme edge of the scoring zone. With belles you suck in an already activated enemy putting pressure on them to come to you.

[Sagrit]

On 9/20/2018 at 10:00 PM, Ludvig said:

I'm a bit hazy on the wording for Hoffman's armour aura but I brliev it onl applies to enemy models so poison goes through it even when boosted by Sebastian.

To be honest i'm not sure will Adaptive Armor reduce Sebastians Induction or not..

Adaptive Armor: Friendly Constructs within 6" Aura of this model may not have their Armor ignored and may reduce damage regardless of any enemy effects that state otherwise

[Adran]

I don't think it does, because the rules that say you can't reduce damage from poison is in the rule book, not on an enemy model. 

[Ludvig]

Yeah, I'm fairly sure poison gets around that ability, thanks for quoting it here Sagrit. An important note on Sebastian is that induction just makes the poison cause more damage, the ability isn't considered to cause damage.

Either way you can ask @Gnomezilla how much Hoffman likes to face belles.

[Gnomezilla]

*swaggers into thread in full Lord Flashheart construct glory, warden cape flapping in the vented breeze*

Well, I’m here now! And—WHO is THAT?!

*many, many pounce attacks happen*

(yeah, poison circumvents Improved Harness as well)