Prototypes what do you take and why?

[DerangedGamer123]

Prototypes what do you take and why?

[Harkevich]

Be curious to see what people take. I tried Explosive Rocket on The Lord of Steel, but he never ended up using it - his movement is so extreme. Likewise I'm finding Shock Batons pretty useless, most of our melee is already 5 or 6. Grenades seem nice, but there isn't much reason for your opponent to bunch up outside of melee 

 

[Clement]

53 minutes ago, Harkevich said:

Be curious to see what people take. I tried Explosive Rocket on The Lord of Steel, but he never ended up using it - his movement is so extreme. Likewise I'm finding Shock Batons pretty useless, most of our melee is already 5 or 6. Grenades seem nice, but there isn't much reason for your opponent to bunch up outside of melee 

 

What Shock batons brings to the party in my (limited) experience is 2 things.  First, it's the easiest access we're going to get to accurate. Period.  If you have adjuncts or commanders to kill, Shock baton is often worth the trade off.  Second, it's "an action on a prototype" so once your line has engaged, Prince Unathi can roll up behind and make the fireteam keep swinging with the batons.  That's not only more attacks but also free cards since the batons don't require discarding to use.

[Jinn]

In my last game against cult I took 3 Flare Guns and a Chemical Fogger. I used Prince Unathi to glory two of my units before they activated using the Flare Gun's Zeppelin Bombardment on some Df 3 Stalking Portals, eventually killing the entire unit. The main advantage of the Flare Gun is that you can target almost anyone which makes the low AV not so crippling. I later used the Overclocked stratagem to put an Explosive Rocket on the Basotho Cavalry (because they were the only unit in my crew without an Asset) which they used to snipe a Breachling and flip to glory.

I want to try bringing Electrocutioners in a two commander game with four Prototypes attached so that they can make something like 8 attacks a turn (including the adjunct action) and provide some free card draw with Unathi.

[DerangedGamer123]

2 hours ago, Jinn said:

In my last game against cult I took 3 Flare Guns and a Chemical Fogger. I used Prince Unathi to glory two of my units before they activated using the Flare Gun's Zeppelin Bombardment on some Df 3 Stalking Portals, eventually killing the entire unit. The main advantage of the Flare Gun is that you can target almost anyone which makes the low AV not so crippling. I later used the Overclocked stratagem to put an Explosive Rocket on the Basotho Cavalry (because they were the only unit in my crew without an Asset) which they used to snipe a Breachling and flip to glory.

I want to try bringing Electrocutioners in a two commander game with four Prototypes attached so that they can make something like 8 attacks a turn (including the adjunct action) and provide some free card draw with Unathi.

This is awesome

[solkan]

I didn't realize that you could take duplicates of the prototypes.  The stratagem card's additional restrictions misled me about what was possible.  😭

[DerangedGamer123]

16 hours ago, solkan said:

I didn't realize that you could take duplicates of the prototypes.  The stratagem card's additional restrictions misled me about what was possible.  😭

Me as well!

[spooky_squirrel]

Duplicate prototypes changes a lot of things.

I'm pretty sure the GH player who felt soul-punched by Electrocutioners is really going to wonder how some stuff made it through playtesting if the other Aby player starts using duplicate prototypes.

[solkan]

12 minutes ago, spooky_squirrel said:

Duplicate prototypes changes a lot of things.

I'm pretty sure the GH player who felt soul-punched by Electrocutioners is really going to wonder how some stuff made it through playtesting if the other Aby player starts using duplicate prototypes.

I double checked the Prototype cards.  Out of six prototypes:

• Active Defenses Armor is Unique, Non-Titan
• Discus Grenades is Unique
• Chemical Foggers is Unique, Titan
• Experimental Rocket is not limited in numbers
• Flare Gun is not limited in numbers
• Shock Batons is Unique

So it just ends up with the two prototypes that you can takes duplicates for.  (You get to ignore the rules about how many assets can be attached to a unit, not the Limitations.). And if you look at Prince Unathi's Field Test action:

Quote

Target Fireteam takes an Action printed on one of its attached Prototype Assets, then draw a card.

That's evidence that the effects have been checked for the cases where a unit has more than one Prototype attached.  If anything, using duplicates of the Prototypes is just going to be boring most of the time.

I present to you, therefore, the claim that these cards have in fact been tested for spamming and putting all of the prototype eggs in the one unit sized basket.

Really, otherwise if you got roaring mad with models and decided to play a three commander game, you'd have terrible options for Prototypes.  🙃

 

[retnab]

Don't forget, if an upgrade isn't Plentiful it can't be given to the same unit multiple times.  You could have an Electrocutioners unit with Discus Grenades, Experimental Rocket, Flare Gun, and Shock Batons attached though  

[spooky_squirrel]

Definitely, I just know that the GH player was feeling completely flogged by the Gloried Electrocutioners without there being multiple copies of Flare Gun or Experimental Rockets in play. I know it's been playtested, and I know that there are hard counters out there (ECB BlackOps is a good reason to not stack a lot of anything on your shock troop elements like Electrocutioners, and that's Cult stuff that could be envoy'd in for any of the Malifaux forces).

But yeah, short of Machinations (6 tactic tokens to buy), you're not going to see a whole lot of excitement due to limitations on number of actions, even with Prince Unathi prompting shenanigans, and even then, it's spending a lot of resources to do something that's cute and can swing momentum, but it's not going to break the game.

[solkan]

53 minutes ago, spooky_squirrel said:

Definitely, I just know that the GH player was feeling completely flogged by the Gloried Electrocutioners without there being multiple copies of Flare Gun or Experimental Rockets in play. I know it's been playtested, and I know that there are hard counters out there (ECB BlackOps is a good reason to not stack a lot of anything on your shock troop elements like Electrocutioners, and that's Cult stuff that could be envoy'd in for any of the Malifaux forces).

The thing is that I think the game at dual commander ends up being balanced in the crazy, screaming, “We both have an equal shot at being broken” sort of way that 1st edition Warmachine was.

Take a unit of Karkanoi, put three reinforcement tokens on it, put it in Glory, and charge that Gloried Electrocutioners, and the Karkanoi are probably going to eat half the Electrocutioners.  What’s worse, is that with good cards, the Electrocutioners might have shot first and taken out one of the Karkanoi’s Fireteams, but if they’re in Advance range, then they’re going to be reinforcing with a trigger to ignore the “reinforcing during activation” limitations.

And then when the Karkanoi gets killed, it’s a tactics token to summon a replacement that can start advancing across the table again, leaving a trail of egg clutches and regenerating back to full strength.  Accept bad flips and save tactics tokens for chain activating (Karkanoi spawn an egg, then chain activate to whoever needs to eat the egg).

Disclaimer:  My brother got GH, I got Abyssinia.  

[Skitt_Happens]

A neat trick I've found is using the flare gun on Mech infantry: because it's a  it benefits from tracer rounds, so in Glory you can get the Walker to AV 10 on its Battle Cannon. Which is fun!

[Tris]

On 12/6/2018 at 8:38 PM, DerangedGamer123 said:

Prototypes what do you take and why?

Flare Guns, because having the longest shooting range on the table without needing LoS or care for cover seems like the best option - let them close the distance while bombarding everything with av 4 (at least average in comparison to other attacks as you ignore cover) and abys stupidly powerful hand doing the rest

[quiescence]

I tried out loading the Electrocutioners with prototypes and had a great time, but my friend has now pointed out the January FAQ as below which has put a dampener on that :(

Abyssinia Allegiance Card: Change the text of Advanced Prototypes Ability to: “During Scouting, you gain two Prototype Assets per friendy Commander. Any number of Abyssinia units in this Company may Attach a single Prototype Asset, ignoring Asset limits.”

TheOtherSide_FAQ-Errata_January2019.pdf

[spooky_squirrel]

14 hours ago, quiescence said:

I tried out loading the Electrocutioners with prototypes and had a great time, but my friend has now pointed out the January FAQ as below which has put a dampener on that

Abyssinia Allegiance Card: Change the text of Advanced Prototypes Ability to: “During Scouting, you gain two Prototype Assets per friendy Commander. Any number of Abyssinia units in this Company may Attach a single Prototype Asset, ignoring Asset limits.”

TheOtherSide_FAQ-Errata_January2019.pdf

Good. They needed to do something like that in order to protect game balance. With all the cards at our disposal, it makes Electrocutioners absurd.

[Tris]

On 2/8/2019 at 7:49 PM, spooky_squirrel said:

Good. They needed to do something like that in order to protect game balance. With all the cards at our disposal, it makes Electrocutioners absurd.

They still seem to be with Thrace, Unathi and Overclocked all letting them fire their Flare Guns multiple times a turn and using Abyssinias absurd hand advantage to kill fireteams without any fear for retribution^^

[spooky_squirrel]

3 hours ago, Tris said:

They still seem to be with Thrace, Unathi and Overclocked all letting them fire their Flare Guns multiple times a turn and using Abyssinias absurd hand advantage to kill fireteams without any fear for retribution^^

Fortunately Thrace, Unathi, and Overclocked are separate cards and have separate costs. Thrace and Unathi cost precious actions during limited activations, and Overclocked costs a few Tactics Tokens. The thing that makes Electrocutioners bonkers when attaching multiple Prototypes is that Unathi would get two cards relatively easily on his draw without having to discard to use the Prototype attack. Since they can only be used once per activation, it calms down a little bit.

[Tris]

6 hours ago, spooky_squirrel said:

Fortunately Thrace, Unathi, and Overclocked are separate cards and have separate costs. Thrace and Unathi cost precious actions during limited activations, and Overclocked costs a few Tactics Tokens. The thing that makes Electrocutioners bonkers when attaching multiple Prototypes is that Unathi would get two cards relatively easily on his draw without having to discard to use the Prototype attack. Since they can only be used once per activation, it calms down a little bit.

Sure, it's better than before without question^^

[spooky_squirrel]

I say the thing like that's the only issue..  😂 Electrocutioners would get an absurd number of attacks pre-errata/clarification.