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"I'm a Basse Man"- A Cornelius Basse Discussion Thread


4thstringer

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5 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

Played against a zoraida list that was made to deal with the traps.  Grootslang, first mate, 2 silurids, mature neph with reflexes, and a wisp.

Called it turn 3.  Had killed both silurids, first mate and the neph, and was about to let sonnia loose on z.

How are you playing it? Trap spam near their deployment and running them in for the stagger attacks? What's your placement strategy been?

As a general comment: it seems to me that Basse is particularly good in corner deployment, and possibly flank, where you can really pin down their starting zone and your movement shenanigans offers a lot of early options.

As for Austringers: the 14" raptor attack is a stat 6 that also IGNORES LoS, so it's a great attack for late in the round when your opponent has spent their big hand cards. If you can get a good flip for moderate, you may be able to put 3 damage wherever you want, which is pretty powerful, and both of the triggers on the attack are good. Walking twice beforehand means they can ping something 24" away behind cover. Or they can move, focus, and send the raptor out from behind blocking terrain without exposing themselves. That's pretty good to my mind.

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2 hours ago, Yore Huckleberry said:

How are you playing it? Trap spam near their deployment and running them in for the stagger attacks? What's your placement strategy been?

As a general comment: it seems to me that Basse is particularly good in corner deployment, and possibly flank, where you can really pin down their starting zone and your movement shenanigans offers a lot of early options.

As for Austringers: the 14" raptor attack is a stat 6 that also IGNORES LoS, so it's a great attack for late in the round when your opponent has spent their big hand cards. If you can get a good flip for moderate, you may be able to put 3 damage wherever you want, which is pretty powerful, and both of the triggers on the attack are good. Walking twice beforehand means they can ping something 24" away behind cover. Or they can move, focus, and send the raptor out from behind blocking terrain without exposing themselves. That's pretty good to my mind.

Both corner and wedge are the ideal deployments, but it runs in all of them.  For the most part, yes the traps run up, try to stagger and engage as much as possible.  If you can't engage you fill a gap they could move through.  If they have tech to sneak by, you want to place a little further out with a couple, so the can creep along in later if you want or make it hard for those escaping models.  It's the rider and Pathfinders job to try to get Sonia in position for some turn 1 blasting, once they are jammed in place.  If there is a forest or severe terrain, basse can help with that too, really jumping Sonia forward with quicksand, for the low low cost of injured 1.   Basse can otherwise rush forward or even drop and pick up scheme markers for cards out of the discard pile, to help Sonia blast.

Pathfinder and rider also can shoot or focus first turn.  

Baby basse usually does a scheme related thing.

With any luck you will go into t2 with half of their crew staggered, burning and/or still in the deployment zone.  Never spend cards on a trap unless you think you can force a higher spend.  

Keep the rider safe for his big turn 3 move.  If your opponent isn't careful, you will often go into turn 3 with a plus to init and a rider pulsing and ruining their day at the start of the turn.  I can't tell you how many games I've called at that point.

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This trap spam list seems quite intriguing, so I started thinking about what other models could work well with it, in case you can't play with 2 masters or whatnot. The most promising ones I thought of, would be Grimwell and Melissa. The two of them together cost the same as Sonnia with an upgrade and

  • Melissa is the best non-master shooter in the faction. She can generate power tokens for herself by charging and from the scrap from dead traps.
  • Grimwell will greatly benefit from the staggered given by the traps. He will also put an additional strain on the opponent's control hand that's already pressured by the traps.

I would love to try out this myself, but probably won't get around to it, because I would have to proxy basically the entire crew, as I haven't bought Basse's crew box yet. If someone decides to try it out, let me know.

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9 minutes ago, le_wahou said:

Samael seems a good choice here for raw shooting power with a barrier of traps to prevent opponents from reashing him. But I am not sure that they will compete with Sonnia. You will need twice the focus used by Sonnia to be efficient, and you will never blast like her

Why would they need any focus at all? Melissa can use focus if there is a juicy blast target out there, but often she will do just fine without.

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16 minutes ago, Myyrä said:

Why would they need any focus at all? Melissa can use focus if there is a juicy blast target out there, but often she will do just fine without.

With a model that deals 2/4/6 damage, focusing to get to neutral flip instead of making 2 attacks is my choice unless I only need 2 damage. For Samael, that's different. The focus is only useful if I am sure to get ricochet trigger.

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22 minutes ago, le_wahou said:

With a model that deals 2/4/6 damage, focusing to get to neutral flip instead of making 2 attacks is my choice unless I only need 2 damage.

You probably shouldn't focus unless you are willing to cheat in that severe. I did the math a few years back, but CBA to look for the post now.

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I don't focus with Sonia unless something is putting me on negatives to the attack.   I think the math is the same for Melissa.  I like Sam for the job I think, because the stones difference in cost I can use for his trigger.  

The other option is to focus the build on getting CBasse up there himself to blast.  For that I'd probably put a LLC on him and take a mounted guard for a second ride with me. That list would probably focus more on running schemes than the Sonia list..

The one event with single master I ran this at I ran reichart and gave them both LLC.  It didn't do the early blasting so well, but my opponent still struggled with it still.  It was casual play, but it still really caught people off guard.  

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2 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

 

The other option is to focus the build on getting CBasse up there himself to blast.  For that I'd probably put a LLC on him and take a mounted guard for a second ride with me. That list would probably focus more on running schemes than the Sonia list..

With Home on the Range 4-5 and a Pathfinder or two to start you with free Follow My Path actions, do you really need the second ride with me? I think I’d just use Pale Rider and force them to deal with 2-3 big hitters in their face right away. I love the idea of starting the game ready to unload into any crew that needs time to build up.

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19 minutes ago, le_wahou said:

There is something I do not understand. You rely on Sonnia to demolish ennemy teams, and you do so with her 2 min dmg+1 burning attack ? The medium that happens 1/3 of time is just a bonus ?

Well its probably burning+2 because of the built in trigger, and also does blast damage, which also adds burning

If you get 3 models all within blast of each other, Sonnia can do 4 damage and 7 burning (with a tome flipped on one of the 3 duels or on the spending of a stone), which ends up as 7 damage to each of those 3 models, with a further 3 damage to each next turn without you doing anything.

It adds up pretty fast.  Yes, your opponent can try spreading out, but that only works in some games

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On 10/14/2019 at 11:20 AM, le_wahou said:

There is something I do not understand. You rely on Sonnia to demolish ennemy teams, and you do so with her 2 min dmg+1 burning attack ? The medium that happens 1/3 of time is just a bonus ?

 

On 10/14/2019 at 11:55 AM, Adran said:

Well its probably burning+2 because of the built in trigger, and also does blast damage, which also adds burning

If you get 3 models all within blast of each other, Sonnia can do 4 damage and 7 burning (with a tome flipped on one of the 3 duels or on the spending of a stone), which ends up as 7 damage to each of those 3 models, with a further 3 damage to each next turn without you doing anything.

It adds up pretty fast.  Yes, your opponent can try spreading out, but that only works in some games

that is most of it.  Spreading out helps against it somewhat.  The other thing that helps this crew work is you get lots of damage on lots of different models.  That is where turn 3 pale rider shines, because 5 already moderately damaged models becomes 5 dead models (or slow and about to die)more often than my opponents would prefer.

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12 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

 

that is most of it.  Spreading out helps against it somewhat.  The other thing that helps this crew work is you get lots of damage on lots of different models.  That is where turn 3 pale rider shines, because 5 already moderately damaged models becomes 5 dead models (or slow and about to die)more often than my opponents would prefer.

I understand what you mean, but how do you survive if you let his team survive until turn 3 ? The traps can delay your opponent, but how do you survive turn 2 ?

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4 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

I'm at closest 12" away, and I usually just back the rider off.  Haven't faced a serious ranged crew yet, but those rarely like damage from Sonia or dealing with traps

The thing with traps is that it seems like they're most effective in round 2 when the engagement has been drawn up: you don't want the opponent to have all of round one to deal with them. But if you don't activate them early in round one, then the opponent can easily get clear of the bunched-up positioning that they're seeking to hold them into. I guess with 5" of Home on the Range and a Follow my Path or two, you can probably close for some Round One work from Basse at least, but that feels like it leaves him exposed, and his defenses depend a fair amount on his dust storm.

I can see traps as useful ankle-biters to stop something like a Cursed Idol interact zone, but I'm having trouble mentally visualizing the hold-and-nuke strategy.

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8 minutes ago, Yore Huckleberry said:

The thing with traps is that it seems like they're most effective in round 2 when the engagement has been drawn up: you don't want the opponent to have all of round one to deal with them. But if you don't activate them early in round one, then the opponent can easily get clear of the bunched-up positioning that they're seeking to hold them into. I guess with 5" of Home on the Range and a Follow my Path or two, you can probably close for some Round One work from Basse at least, but that feels like it leaves him exposed, and his defenses depend a fair amount on his dust storm.

I can see traps as useful ankle-biters to stop something like a Cursed Idol interact zone, but I'm having trouble mentally visualizing the hold-and-nuke strategy.

I recommend giving it a try.  I thought it would just be ok, but I've seen it flummox some good players with masters I thought would handle it better.   

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6 minutes ago, Yore Huckleberry said:

What are your opponents doing? Do they tend to eliminate the traps in round one and then find themselves stuck?

Mostly spending time killing traps round one.  Even if they kill all the traps, the probably spend 5-6 activations on it, at which point they are limping 2-3 people forward if they aren't talking about support models.  

Occasionally I've had opposing crews that can jump over.    

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3 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

Mostly spending time killing traps round one.  Even if they kill all the traps, the probably spend 5-6 activations on it, at which point they are limping 2-3 people forward if they aren't talking about support models.  

Occasionally I've had opposing crews that can jump over.    

I'm glad I didn't use the list going into a Nekima player last week, though I feel like She spends enough time turning on the engine in turn 1 that it might be that much more devastating

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1 minute ago, 4thstringer said:

Mostly spending time killing traps round one.  Even if they kill all the traps, the probably spend 5-6 activations on it, at which point they are limping 2-3 people forward if they aren't talking about support models.  

Occasionally I've had opposing crews that can jump over.    

So the real advantage is that you spend 6 or 8 stones tying up their Round One AP so that their crew strings out in a line, and then you walk Basse and Sonnia down that line?

I'm a little cautious for, say, Reckoning, where they can easily leave traps up at 1 hp and force you to come to them while they have easy access to points in rounds 2/3, though a decent scheme pool might still mitigate that. It's definitely interesting.

And I keep hearing that Home on the Range stacks, which REALLY warms the heart of this old Imperial Assault player who liked planning out his deployments with great care. The idea of an extra 5 inches is pretty incredible on any combination of deployment/strat.

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41 minutes ago, Starrius said:

So with the trap list often has it changed your local meta to more anti armour lowering the effectiveness of the list?

Funny thing about that.  I currently have  a challenge out there to my players, whoever beats the list first, and they get to ask for it so they know it is coming, gets a trophy.  Its been tied once but not beat yet.  I'd say, between games with the challenge with that one (2-0-1), a few games before I put down the challenge, and games with trap spam with reichart and some LLCs, I think the list has gone something like 9-0-1 or something like that. 

I faced a Dreamer crew into hoffman the other night, that felt bad man.  I need to not play bad into that one.

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