Cult Lists?

[Beetle941]

What kind of lists are people using for single commander games? Outside of Fenton + Twisted Horrors I'm kind of struggling to come up with something solid. Has anyone been able to run the ECB at the single commander level? I really like the look and rules but seem tough to fit in the smaller games. Any thoughts/lists would be appreciated 

[Rathnard]

Well you can't go far wrong with the starter box, and then either two Raving Madmen or (my favourite) an Immolated Rhino.

I think ECB Black Ops can work in 1-commander games, but you'll probably want to mostly use them against Abyssinia or Kassa Okoye, where you can expect asset-loaded units to be plentiful.

[LexLock]

I went with Adeodatos, The Warped, some Doomseekers and The Broken. Put Raving Madman on The Warped and the Doomseekers so their first couple of gloried attacks aren't at -2 and I like Relics of Ancient Malifaux on Adeodatos for the healing.

One thing I've had success with is using all four of my tactics tokens first turn to buy the Burning Man Descends stratagem and positioning my crew on top of a portal in my deployment zone so that a single mask will send them all forward and hopefully let The Warped kill something as an alpha strike.

[Rathnard]

3 hours ago, LexLock said:

One thing I've had success with is using all four of my tactics tokens first turn to buy the Burning Man Descends stratagem and positioning my crew on top of a portal in my deployment zone so that a single mask will send them all forward and hopefully let The Warped kill something as an alpha strike.

Not bad - you can do a similar thing with the Stalking Portals. With an advance order you can move them into base contact of a portal marker (or each other) and as many other units as possible, which teleports the lot to any other portals you want. 

One thing to remember about ECBs - their strength bonus works with any assets on the target unit, including Prototypes and Adjuncts. In fact if I'm reading this right, the ECBs should still get the +1 Strength even if the adjunct is killed, since the Asset itself is still attached to the unit.

[retnab]

One other thing to consider with the ECB.  They can be great into Corners deployment  

[Beetle941]

12 hours ago, Rathnard said:

Well you can't go far wrong with the starter box, and then either two Raving Madmen or (my favourite) an Immolated Rhino.

I think ECB Black Ops can work in 1-commander games, but you'll probably want to mostly use them against Abyssinia or Kassa Okoye, where you can expect asset-loaded units to be plentiful.

Are the stalking portals worth taking outside of the starter box ?

[retnab]

They're a must-have for Adeodatos IMO

[Rathnard]

8 hours ago, Beetle941 said:

Are the stalking portals worth taking outside of the starter box ?

I think they would be. At 3 scrip they're good for grabbing objectives on the cheap, plus the ability to teleport other units out of activation by bumping into them is pretty damn useful. 

They've got the obvious synergies with Adeodatos, but even without him they're still worth the scrip. 

[SilentEric]

For my first Burning Man game I ran

Fenton Brahm with Flaming Effigy and Corona of Flame

Gorysche with Bad Breath, Splitting Tails, and Writhing Coils.

Breachling

Stalking Portals

Twisted Horrors with Raving Madman

 

Strategems were Burning Man Descends, Time Paradox, Deranged Laughter, From the Aether, Chaos Fissures, and Fire from the Sky, 

 

I found that I could easily go to Glory with everything by turn 2, but that with a single Commander, it was very difficult to go through the entire deck for Twisted Horrors. In addition, the shaken tokens were detrimental after they went to glory since they aren't removed. I think I will replace the Flaming Effigy, which I never used, with Icon of Malifaux so I can remove my Shaken tokens from my fireteams that can't take a Raving Madman once they go to Glory.

I lost to Storm Siren, but it was close, by the by.

[LexLock]

Yeah, I don't think I would ever take Fenton Brahms over Adeodatos, the extra portal and cycle/card draw from moving through portals is too good and I don't even think Fenton beats out Adeodatos ignoring that anyway.

The only things Fenton has going for him are his shaken token that costs a card when you activate him, his morale action to give a single action to a fireteam and a super RNG card discard attack that can have between 2 and 12 strength (which is fun to use admittedly) and I don't think that even beats Adeodatos' attacks + his Morale action, disregarding his passive abilities entirely.

[SAYNE]

I think there are times I would take Fenton over Adeodatos in something like Scavenge or maybe against KE since his token generation helps mitigate all the inspiration they can make. He seems to be the "staying power" commander, when blitzing won't solve anything or when you're going against Cult yourself.

[retnab]

I actually regularly take Fenton over Adeodatos, he can go through 24 cards a turn which makes mill crews work much better (I almost always go double Twisted Horrors with him for their Unpredictability)

[LexLock]

9 hours ago, SAYNE said:

I think there are times I would take Fenton over Adeodatos in something like Scavenge or maybe against KE since his token generation helps mitigate all the inspiration they can make. He seems to be the "staying power" commander, when blitzing won't solve anything or when you're going against Cult yourself.

If you were going against Cult yourself I would think you'd need Adeodatos' strength 1 hit against anything near portal markers trigger, given you would have so many targets for it.

[LexLock]

On 11/25/2018 at 1:15 AM, retnab said:

I actually regularly take Fenton over Adeodatos, he can go through 24 cards a turn which makes mill crews work much better (I almost always go double Twisted Horrors with him for their Unpredictability)

How does Fenton go through 24 cards in a turn? The only way I can see him doing that is if you somehow took Disintegrating Blast twice and his Morale obey action specifies squad fireteams, so he can't use it on himself (if he could he would be much closer to Adeodatos in my opinion).

[Beetle941]

I have been able to pull it off using 2x twisted horrors, The Burning Man Decends, and Arcane Tome. It's tough on turn 1 but after that it's a bit easier.

[LexLock]

12 minutes ago, Beetle941 said:

I have been able to pull it off using 2x twisted horrors, The Burning Man Decends, and Arcane Tome. It's tough on turn 1 but after that it's a bit easier.

I mean Fenton on his own. how does he, individually, go through 24 cards in a turn? Given he can only use Disintegrating Blast once and as far as I can tell there is no way to obey or reactivate a commander in a game where you are playing as Cult.

[Beetle941]

3 minutes ago, LexLock said:

I mean Fenton on his own. how does he, individually, go through 24 cards in a turn? Given he can only use Disintegrating Blast once and as far as I can tell there is no way to obey or reactivate a commander in a game where you are playing as Cult.

Oh I misunderstood. I can't think of a way to mill 24 with just Fenton. Not unless there is a way to pull of Disintegrating Blast twice a turn

[retnab]

2 hours ago, LexLock said:

How does Fenton go through 24 cards in a turn? The only way I can see him doing that is if you somehow took Disintegrating Blast twice and his Morale obey action specifies squad fireteams, so he can't use it on himself (if he could he would be much closer to Adeodatos in my opinion).

Give him Arcane Tome and Uncanny Instincts, then when he activates:

• Draw a card (1), discard it to draw another (2)
• Mill 3 cards for Arcane Tome (5)
• Use Disintegrating blast, flip for duel (6), mill 10 for the effect (16), and for penetration (17)
• Use "Kill Them!  Kill Them All!" on Twisted Horrors, flip for duel (18), flip for their duel (19), mill 4 for the effect (23), and for penetration (24)

It goes up if you flip tomes for Arcane Tome letting you draw cards, and using Tactics Tokens on any of the duels/flips increases it further too

[Sybarite]

I found ECB black ops to be scarily effective in the first game I played, which was this week. It was against Hordes and we did some things wrong, but not with the action I spammed, I think. Setting up Tearing down the pillars of reality wasn't terribly hard, and it did a lot of damage. 

I played the allegience box, minus one unit of warped, plus ecb black ops and a few upgrades on Adeodatos. Can't play 2 commander games until they release more commanders ^^

[retnab]

Yeah, Tearing Down The Pillars is really solid if you can get enough enemy fireteams in the triangle, but losing the ability to use it if they're down a fireteam makes it hard to rely on

[barrettjdea]

My buddy and I have played 25 scrip games thus far and I have really liked a list that uses the following:

 Fenton in the commander slot with Corona of Flame and Flaming Effigy. (2 scrip on upgrades) 2 

The Warped with 2 Raving Madmen (9 scrip +2 for Madmen)  11

Doomseekers with 1 Raving Madman (7 + 1 for Madman) 8

Stalking Portals. 3

24 scrip total.

This basic setup really wants you to use Fenton to quickly flip all your stuff to Glory. If you draw even just 1 card you can start a model off on glory by activating Fenton and pitching it. You could even get 1 extra if the pitched card is an ace. This goes a bit further since he gets an action to give out shaken tokens off Flaming Effigy and can trigger 2. The Madmen let you get an extra attack when you have shaken tokens that has strength equal to the shaken tokens up to 5. Having your Warped start turn 1 with a Melee 7 strength 4 attack that has built in suit for penetration flips AND a morale action that is a 5 vs Willpower and ranges from 1-5 power is tasty as hell. 

Upgrading to a 50 scrip game I would add Adeodatos and go slim on upgrades for him. I feel that abusing Fenton to power up troops is the way to go in this kind of list so another set of Warped and 2 sets of Twisted Horrors would finish it off. Being able to quickly get all of those into glory gives you a damn good damaging melee beater with the Warped and Twisted Horrors just don't die when flipped. Slap Hovering Portal on Adeodatos and now you get either shaken tokens to flip your guys to glory when they port, or reinforcement tokens to let them just never die. This is especially nasty when you dump Twisted horrors on someone early to lock them down, as now they are gonna replenish any losses. Hell you get those tokens as they die, and mill your deck which is great for activating their reactivate when you burn through the whole thing.

50 scrip

Fenton with Corona of Flame and Flaming Effigy

Adeodatos with Hovering Portal

2 Warped with 1 Madman in each.

1 Doomseeker with 1 Madman

1 Stalking Portal

2 Twisted Horrors.

[retnab]

You can only have one Adjunct on each unit as it's an asset, and unless the asset is Plentiful it can't have duplicates on the same unit

[Gloomy]

So I'm about 4 games in to a tides of battle league. First 2 games were 1 commander and second 2 games were 1 commander with +10 scrip. Its in these phase 2 games that I've been adding the ECB and they haven't disappointed. I'll maybe try them in a normal 1 commander game at some point if it's against Abyssinia but I think they're a little too pricey unless you know there'll be a lot of assets in the opposing company.

I haven't managed to use Pillars of Reality yet as both games I needed them in one area to concentrate fire on a titan. Seems quite hard to do unless you set it up early?