Assistance against Levi

[Jugan0ght]

I have been playing against Outcasts alot recently and I have been struggling with countering Levi. 

Sonnia was my first go to and I had some good results with  Counter spell but it is a short range and she is only DF4. Levi puts out irreducible damage so her shielded 2 doesn't do anything. 

I have tried running the Jury but Levi can just stone for a mask and stay out of 6. As soon as she does this her Df trigger no longer works!!

The annoying thing is Outcasts can bring this:

Levi with the upgrade to allow him to heal 2 after healing and a 6 inch push turn 1

Alyce

Ashes and Dust

2 Abombs

Deso engine

2 waifs 

All these beaters with 10ss left to reduce any damage you put out. 

 

Side rant. Levi now seems stronger then before as his anchors no longer need to be in a specific place, every bit of damage including his DF trigger ignores everything, just activating near him or his crew do damage and heals models!! Your Soul stones are useless and if you get close he can put even more damage out by taking damage himself. This is then healed by killed you which he can do as he has positives to everything

 

Any advice is appreciated. 

[longfanz]

Hi,

Well, Waifs and deso are undead so judge is the first thing that comes to my mind. With Risk of Reason on a crow you do 2 dmg in LoS for each crow revealed, you also have crumble away to do 2/4/5 at 12'. You can try a full Marshall crew, Domadores have obeys against undead so you can try to make his deso charge his own Levi, etc.

Other good trick is try not to kill Levi but leave him at 2 wounds so he can't do his damage to get positives.

 

How did you play Sonnia? with his hazardous aura, the Spellcaster aura and counterspell hitting her is very resource consuming

[Jugan0ght]

With Sonnia the first time i managed to get in close and the counter aura made a huge difference. I used Samual to soak up the hits and return fire to keep the centre of the board clear whilst using the 0 from sonnia to heal him and give him focus. 2 thralls on a flank took down Ashes and dust solidly on their own.  As I was in close with sonia and the witchling handler i managed to drain cards with attacks and counter spell, stopping the DF trigger from doing damage on attacks.

The second game I took the jury and frank to add some more hitting power (and to try and take out the bigger models in melee) I only lost by 1 but i lost the judge turn 1 which means i was 8ss down. It was flank and Levi pushed 6 and began shooting which put me on the backfoot.

 

I shall try the Judge

[longfanz]

2 minutes ago, Jugan0ght said:

With Sonnia the first time i managed to get in close and the counter aura made a huge difference. I used Samual to soak up the hits and return fire to keep the centre of the board clear whilst using the 0 from sonnia to heal him and give him focus. 2 thralls on a flank took down Ashes and dust solidly on their own.  As I was in close with sonia and the witchling handler i managed to drain cards with attacks and counter spell, stopping the DF trigger from doing damage on attacks.

The second game I took the jury and frank to add some more hitting power (and to try and take out the bigger models in melee) I only lost by 1 but i lost the judge turn 1 which means i was 8ss down. It was flank and Levi pushed 6 and began shooting which put me on the backfoot.

 

I shall try the Jury

Just to point out you can't heal Samael with Sonnia as he is not a witchling

[Jugan0ght]

4 minutes ago, longfanz said:

Just to point out you can't heal Samael with Sonnia as he is not a witchling

Ah then i cheated. That's on me

[Gnomezilla]

Now that I’ve slept on the question...

This opposing list has one source of irreducible. I’ve been needing to bring two with my Leveticus crew to gnaw through crews with reduction (plenteous use of soulstones). You (and I) might be undervaluing reducing the high minimums of everything else in the crew with armor or whatever Shielded Guild can scrounge up. Just be careful when aiming an armor 2, -1 wound stompybot at Leveticus himself and the built-in Unmade.

I still stand by the advice to whittle down Leveticus/A&D to the point they can’t channel/proc necrotic decay, but won’t die/heal unless Leveticus spends actions forcing friendly deaths/heals.

Would the concealing Severe dust clouds of Basse and co. slow down the incoming damage any?

 

Heck are the aboms doing, anyway? Waiting for a third one to pop? They aren’t tough enough for my liking just to provide the no-heal aura.

[Jugan0ght]

He was using them to go round the flanks or to draw fire away from the main beaters. I do ignore them but they give him cheap activations and he can kill them to heal Levi

[4thstringer]

I think @longfanz said it in the other thread, but it bears repeating here.   If you build up the burning on levi and/or rusty, their ranges go way down.

[Morgan Vening]

1 hour ago, 4thstringer said:

I think @longfanz said it in the other thread, but it bears repeating here.   If you build up the burning on levi and/or rusty, their ranges go way down.

And it's not like Outcasts are swimming in Condition removal. AFAICT, there's none in Keyword, and your options outside that are Hannah (10+1SS), Scion (6+1SS, but potentially punishing), and Johan (7SS). If they only take Johan, wreck him first, and then it's nothing but gravy.

I also liked @Gnomezilla's Frontier suggestion. Either by themselves, or as a hire into a Sonnia crew. Being able to keep Levi firing into Concealment, will really mess with his damage potential. If they weren't using Scavs to Focus Levi, now they have to, if they were, you're making them much less effective.

[Cathaidan]

Another thought is to take Hoffman into him.  Hoffman with a PK is one of those combinations that requires an insane amount of damage output in a turn or obeys.  I haven't faced off against any Outcasts, but Levi doesn't look like he's got a great deal of obeys in his crew.  Hoffman being able to negate Levi's bypassing Armour and healing the PK for 3 damage an action is very strong unless you can force them to attack each other or split them up in some way.

Using the "guide" from Schemes and Stones for Hoffman (holding one part of the board with Hoffman and a PK while hunters and watchers jump all over the place in other areas scoring points) allowed one of our local group to force a concession from a Nekima crew a little over a month ago.  (Hoffman's ability to make it very difficult to actually stack damage onto the PK, and then to heal the PK meant that any AP spent trying to damage Hoffman or the PK was just wasted.)

[Gnomezilla]

I’m still not sure who wins in Tempered Steel armor vs. irreducible damage, waiting for the FAQ on that one since neither side has a flaw in its argument. (If nothing else, Corrupted Idols would like a ruling on whether the idol damage can EVER be deflected*, whether absorbed by Tempered Steel armor [if allowed] or shunted onto Marlena.) Until that is decided and decided in Hoffman’s favor, I wouldn’t rely on believing Leveticus’ damage can be ignored.

 

*At this point, we should probably just flip a card before the game for rulings like this, Rams or Crows it’s illegal, Tomes or Masks it’s legal and have fun.

[4thstringer]

3 minutes ago, Gnomezilla said:

I’m still not sure who wins in Tempered Steel armor vs. irreducible damage, waiting for the FAQ on that one since neither side has a flaw in its argument. (If nothing else, Corrupted Idols would like a ruling on whether the idol damage can EVER be deflected*, whether absorbed by Tempered Steel armor [if allowed] or shunted onto Marlena.) Until that is decided and decided in Hoffman’s favor, I wouldn’t rely on believing Leveticus’ damage can be ignored.

 

 *At this point, we should probably just flip a card before the game for rulings like this, Rams or Crows it’s illegal, Tomes or Masks it’s legal and have fun.

I'm not taking Hoffman into outcasts in general if irreducible gets past tempered steel, so I hope they flip before the crew selection.

[Gnomezilla]

27 minutes ago, Morgan Vening said:

And it's not like Outcasts are swimming in Condition removal. AFAICT, there's none in Keyword, and your options outside that are Hannah (10+1SS), Scion (6+1SS, but potentially punishing), and Johan (7SS). If they only take Johan, wreck him first, and then it's nothing but gravy.

I also liked @Gnomezilla's Frontier suggestion. Either by themselves, or as a hire into a Sonnia crew. Being able to keep Levi firing into Concealment, will really mess with his damage potential. If they weren't using Scavs to Focus Levi, now they have to, if they were, you're making them much less effective.

Burning can be removed via the Assist action, but the conditions not touched by Assist make Outcasts unhappy.

Almost as unhappy as a Leveticus who must channel just to counter engagement or concealment. 

2 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

I'm not taking Hoffman into outcasts in general if irreducible gets past tempered steel, so I hope they flip before the crew selection.

Why, what else have they got? Besides Pride for a second ranged irreducible vector...at least Tempered Steel will slow Mad Dog waytheheck down.

[4thstringer]

5 minutes ago, Gnomezilla said:

Burning can be removed via the Assist action, but the conditions not touched by Assist make Outcasts unhappy.

Almost as unhappy as a Leveticus who must channel just to counter engagement or concealment. 

Why, what else have they got? Besides Pride for a second ranged irreducible vector...at least Tempered Steel will slow Mad Dog waytheheck down.

I'm so used to seeing Levi or Viks i just assumed Viks still do too.   Looks like I was wrong.

[Gnomezilla]

5 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

I'm so used to seeing Levi or Viks i just assumed Viks still do too.   Looks like I was wrong.

We also field up to rare-four sturdy carriers of Crowd Control, a debuff some other factions can’t access. Viks don’t like Guild at all...not after Vanessa dies, anyhow.

[4thstringer]

13 minutes ago, Gnomezilla said:

We also field up to rare-four sturdy carriers of Crowd Control, a debuff some other factions can’t access. Viks don’t like Guild at all...not after Vanessa dies, anyhow.

Since I haven't played against it yet, why do M3E viks hate crowd control?

 

[Morgan Vening]

32 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

Since I haven't played against it yet, why do M3E viks hate crowd control?

Stops the Masks trigger dead for melee attacks.

While their gun isn't THAT bad, their melee is so much better, that putting both Viks on the same target and getting up to 12 attacks off the paired activation (with Syncronized), means whatever they want dead, is usually dead.

Crowd Control means they're on their own.