Tormented tricks and interactions

[Saduhem]

Not sure whether to post in the the Outcasts section or this one, but here is where the most interest seemed to be sparking from. Please forgive potential typos. It's late :}

 

Tormented Tips

I played Jack Daw a lot during Beta, and I think Tormented is one of the most fun keywords to play. That said, the Ghost of Malifaux requires some finesse to play due to how many interactions are available across individual models. Here are some of those interactions. Some might seem obvious, some might not.

For now we’re looking at movement, scheme marker manipulation, and how to get the staggered machine going (outside of handing out upgrades).
 

Movement tricks:

Tormented are overall slow as a crew, with several Mv 4 models. That said, the crew also has tricks to get around that aspect.

• Look for a 6 of crows in your opening hand! Have the Dead Outlaw put up Too Greedy To Die early in the turn. Then, use the Crooked Man’s I can Dig It trigger to drop a scheme marker as a bonus action within the Dead Outlaw’s aura. One of your models just earned 3 inches of movement! In this crew, that’s huge.
• If you manage to pull off a good Shifting Sands trigger with the Crooked Man, you could get several pushes with one bonus action.
• Jack and the Hanged have On your Heels. Expect to be burning stones for those as they will mean the difference between a slow crawl and an 8-10 “free” place. This is where your masks go. Remember that you can declare On your Heels against The Guilty! A low mask in your hand could let you jump across the map.
• Sadistic movement! You’re going to be inflicting some punishment on your own models in this crew, which is very thematic. If you really need movement, you can use Jack Daw to charge a friendly model instead of taking a walk action. On a crow, that allows you to use Punishment to push another Tormented model. Although less action efficient, you can use Suppressed Memories and have the crow baked in.
• Remember that you can use this to force irresistible movement effects on an enemy model. Once you attached an upgrade to an enemy model, they’re considered Tormented, and you can hit your own guys, declare Punishment, and push the enemy model towards you (through other models!) and your opponent can’t do anything about it. Obviously this is going to hurt your own models quite a bit, bit if it scores you points, it’s worth it.
• In a pinch, you can use Montresor’s Cursed to Watch to trade an action with something that really  needs to move.
• Using Run and Gun with a Dead Outlaw lets you effectively charge, shoot, put up the aura, and still have an action left. You can use this to give out Fast, potentially thanks to the markers dropped by the Crooked Men.
• Jack can grant a 6 inch push, through models, by using Drawn to Betrayal. Remember that this can also be used against enemy models!
• Although the average Mv of the crew is one of, if not the, lowest in the game, you have a combination of incorporeal, The Ghost of Malifaux, and Depths of Malifaux to make up for it!

Scheme marker manipulation:

This can get a little tricky, as you don’t really have an in-keyword scheme runner. You’re going to have to rely on a couple of different tricks instead.

 

• As mentioned, a 6 of crows goes straight to the Crooked Man for the I Can Dig It trigger on Malifaux Mining Law. That nets you a scheme marker for a bonus action and a potential 3 inch push from the Dead Outlaw’s Too Greedy To Die.
• With the Dead Outlaw, declare a charge action and shoot The Guilty with a low tome. You can decide to treat the Guilty as an enemy model when declaring the trigger, and have it drop an enemy scheme marker through Drop It!  - With a single action you moved your Dead Outlaw Forward, obtained (an enemy) scheme marker, and a 3 inch push to boot. You can then use the remaining action to give out fast or, if you want to be cruel  to The Guilty, use At Gunpoint to have him drop a friendly scheme marker for an additional 3 inch push. If you’re inclined to make him attack instead, you get the added benefit of having Buried Grudge baked in for +1 damage.
• Why would you want an enemy scheme marker? Well, the 3 inch push is nice but the benefits don’t end there! Dropping an enemy scheme marker allows you to place a friendly scheme marker right by it without having to worry about the distance between the two markers. Then, you can use the Shifting Sands trigger on Malifaux Mining Law to convert the scheme marker to friendly, getting an additional 3 inch push. While the crew is slow, they have a few more tricks to place scheme markers in close proximity to each other and/or without using interact actions. This makes Tormented pretty good at Harness the Leyline, Detonate the charges, search the ruins, and Dig Their Graves In fact…
• The Hanged has been my money-maker when it comes to scoring VP out of nowhere. Between the incorporeal, extra movement from Jack, and potential 10 inch jumps with On Your Heels, the Hanged can score you Take Prisoner, Detonate the Charges and/or Dig Their Graves on targets 18+ inches away. The Hanged is going to eat a chunk of your stones, high masks, and high tomes, but he can be well worth it. Use Horrifying Whispers and a mask to place into base contact with an enemy model (or The Guilty!) and dump 2 tomes/stones for Draw Out Secrets to place two friendly scheme markers anywhere you need. Remember that you can use Draw Out Secrets when attacking any model! That means that, against your own models, low tomes can translate directly into scheme markers that require no interact action. Within the Dead Outlaw’s Too Greedy To Die aura, that’s a lot of movement too! Those markers are also hazardous and hand out Staggered if within range of Malifaux Mining Law.

The staggered machine:

This crew lives and dies by handing out staggered. Your damage output changes drastically depending on whether or not the enemy model has the condition. In addition, the accuracy of the entire crew is enhanced as many of your models have some way of targeting Mv, which can get around annoying defensive triggers. A few things to keep in mind

• Do not expect Jack’s upgrades to be handing out most of the staggered condition. Jack is usually not going to be able to attach upgrades before turn 2 (sometimes 3). Considering that the staggered condition does not kick in until the beginning of the following turn, you simply can’t afford to rely on Suppressed Memories to get the staggered condition going.
• Your most reliable tool to spread out the condition is the Crooked Man. While the damage spread on Earthquake isn’t particularly impressive, you’re always guaranteed a blast on a hit, and all models damaged by it become staggered. For this reason, he tends to get murdered as soon as possible in my games, and his Df 4 doesn’t help much with that. If you get a Crooked Man in position to start blasting away, consider using Montresor’s Cursed to Watch to attack a few more times, or give him fast through Covetous Cravings. Additionally, you can also target a Guilty and consider him an enemy model to get a blast off him. Just remember that your Guilty will be staggered after that. This attack is very accurate as it both targets and lowers the enemy Mv stat. Oh, and your Crooked Men are going to get murdered. A lot.
• The Drowned are a bit less reliable than the Crooked Man, but tend to survive more and technically get one more chance due to having Startle as a bonus action.  That said, the Drowned have a couple of tricks up their sleeves! If you think you can get at least moderate damage, you can give out staggered by creating riptide markers on top of handing out distracted and poison. They have a really great interaction with Jaakuna Ubume, as described next:
• Jaakuna Ubume can create her own Hazardous Terrain through Drowning Aura. Any enemy entering such aura (from her Lure or Jack’s Punishment) will also automatically become staggered if in LoS of a Crooked Man. The Drowned can make this combo particularly effective by attacking Jaakuna on any mask, even a 1 (If you can/want to cheat for a moderate to get the blast, go for it). Since Jaakuna is incorporeal, she will not take damage, poison, or distracted, no matter what you flip. But since you used a mask, you can declare Undertow and push all enemy models within 3 of Jaakuna towards her, giving out damage and staggered.
• Remember that Toss the Noose on Montresor and The Hanged give out staggered regardless of triggers.
• Montresor has a built-in mask to hand out staggered on Noose.
• Montresor can deal 1 auto damage to models that start within 6 of him with the staggered condition, and 1 damage with a 6 of crows during Montresor’s activation to everything around him if the enemies are staggered, or 2 if they have a Curse attached too.
• Against staggered opponents, Jack does min 4 on a ram and forces a discard.
• Against opponents with upgrades, Hanged do min 3 damage with the baked in ram. Targets Mv. Forces discard on staggered opponents.
• Against opponents with upgrades, Montresor does min 3 damage on a ram, and targets Mv.

 

Alright, that’s it for now! I’ll post a couple more tricks when I have the time and lucidity!

[stonecrowe]

So looking at this run-down, does your average crew include one of each model? With no upgrades, Jack, Lady, Monty, Jakuuna, 1 Hanged, 1 Outlaw, 1 Crooked and 1 Guilty leaves you with 7 stones cache. With the crew's dependency on masks, I can't see taking another model at that point. 

Or do you tend to mix this up a bit depending on the pool? 

[Saduhem]

Definitely depends on the pool :} I often can’t afford Jaakuna. I also often take either a crooked man or a drowned, but not both unless I need a specific interaction. 

[Ming]

Not sure, whether it has been clarified. Can the Guilty relent on an opposed duel when you treat them as enemies?

[Adran]

 

21 minutes ago, Ming said:

Not sure, whether it has been clarified. Can the Guilty relent on an opposed duel when you treat them as enemies?

I think not. You have to be treating the model as an enemy for the action, so you're not able to treat it as friendly at the same time.

[Ming]

Just now, Adran said:

 

I think not. You have to be treating the model as an enemy for the action, so you're not able to treat it as friendly at the same time.

Yes, that's what I think, too.

[Saduhem]

I go back and forth on how I think that works. Technically it’s a “may” clause to consider them enemies for actions, abilities, and triggers. 

It’s unclear if I can choose one of the aspects. As written, It looks like I may consider them friendly for the action, but enemies for the trigger. The other interpretation lets you achieve the same result, you just have to cheat more cards.

I hope we get a clarification. If the Guilty can’t relent on that, it kinda defeats the purpose as you’d always need a high-ish card for your trigger and a lower card for cheating down. Playing Jack Daw on an empty hand is a death sentence.

There's a whole bag of tricks enabled by targeting your own guilty, having them unable to relent would really limit their feasibility.

[Daysleeper]

On 7/3/2019 at 8:14 PM, Saduhem said:

I go back and forth on how I think that works. Technically it’s a “may” clause to consider them enemies for actions, abilities, and triggers. 

It’s unclear if I can choose one of the aspects. As written, It looks like I may consider them friendly for the action, but enemies for the trigger. The other interpretation lets you achieve the same result, you just have to cheat more cards.

I hope we get a clarification. If the Guilty can’t relent on that, it kinda defeats the purpose as you’d always need a high-ish card for your trigger and a lower card for cheating down. Playing Jack Daw on an empty hand is a death sentence.

There's a whole bag of tricks enabled by targeting your own guilty, having them unable to relent would really limit their feasibility.

Do we have any clarification on this by now?

[Adran]

37 minutes ago, Daysleeper said:

Do we have any clarification on this by now?

The nearest I can see is in the FAQ you can be both Friendly and Enemy. Its in a question about Exclusive interview but its not unfeasible to apply it here as well, since it shows they aren't mutually exclusive.

As such, you can relent with the guilty whilst its being targeted by an enemy only effect, because its still meeting the requirements.

[Favilludo]

On 7/9/2020 at 3:06 PM, Daysleeper said:

Do we have any clarification on this by now?

Yes, you can Relent on the duel, however, this also means that you cannot blast off of the guilty. They are both friendly and enemy and you cannot blas off of friendly models. It has also been clarified that when attacking the quilty for the on your heels trigger from jack, you get to choose wether or not you want to curse him. With the hanged, it is different because you have to treat them as enemy for the action and cannot target them otherwise.