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A Different McMourning 'Build'


Ender101

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I’m often drawn to attrition style lists in games, and Doc McMourning has always been a favorite of mine on the table and in the fluff, so it seems like a natural fit, or at least the natural place to force two bits together and sew into place.

To that end I’m …experimenting… with the idea of playing him with a heavy summoning theme.

Thus, my fellow necromancers, I’m considering the following pieces and positing to you for your intellectual, and philosophical pleasure, from what was once a mass of dead tissue, I give you a cultured, sophisticated, man about town.

Mindless Zombies: The Zombies counting as corpse markers via Walking Dead is very interesting to me, they can move farther up the field to allow the good doctor to summon the Flesh Construct in more interesting locations, and since it gets summoned with Slow, the farther up the board the better (upfield, . Also, it is sort of a one stone discount on the Flesh Construct by taking three Mindless Zombies for six stones instead of the Construct for seven. Added bonus you can use them as ‘dead’ activations to see where your opponent moves their models (and see what I did there), and if they get shot off the table, then unless the opponent has special tech, they just drop the marker when they got blapped (blapped is the technical term as well as the sound some make when they explode).

Gravedigger: A digger can get the doctor 2/3rds of the corpse markers he needs to summon a fresh Flesh Construct turn one through Recent Funeral and Grave Robber. Canine Remains can pick these up and carry them further upfield for the Doc with Carrion Away for a turn 2 construct. If taken as a pair, they can generate all the corpses one needs for turn one AND two for constructs, paying for themselves quickly from a cost perspective. And as the game goes on, they aren’t exactly bad pieces, continuing to drop corpses to hand out focus easily, or help the doc get access to that third construct. They just don’t want to be poisoned, so positioning is more important than usual, or just be cool with them kicking off eventually. They can be surprisingly fast if you keep them close to one another, getting free pushes if the other drops their corpse marker in a convenient place.

I’ve broken my thoughts into two directions:

Mostly normal:

McMourning (Whisper) -2 Cache

Sebastian (8)

Zombie Chihuahua (0)

Rogue Necromancy (10)

Thomas Rafkin (8)

Nurse (6)

Kentauri (8)

Mindless Zombie x3 (6)

-This is mostly a normal McMourning list, the Mindless Zombies only used to get a one-point discount on the Flesh Construct. It does require order of activation considerations, and one of McMournings AP, but a stone is a stone. Kentauri can Ride with me the Construct off on its merry way, and/or doc can just doctor’s order it to go forth and scheme into the wild as go-errr McMourning intended.

Grave Concerns:

McMourning (Whisper) -3 Cache

Zombie Chihuahua (0)

Thomas Rafkin (8)

Dead Rider (Grave Sprit Touch) (13)

Nurse (6)

Gravedigger x2 (12)

Canine Remains x2 (6)

- Now, this is a departure from the normal list design for sure, so we may need to make a cut, an incision if you will, of a piece that’s normally found in McMourning lists. In my mad, feverish considerations, I think Sebastian isn’t as important to the list as he is in the standard build. The Dead Rider can ride with me one of the creations away, and gain Regenerate 2 from the upgrade, putting him inline with the rest of the crew’s inherent tanking (just not from poison) his ability to make a lot of mindless zombies if the gravediggers have been busy, hopefully getting a lot of value out of the extra activations and corpses to make a third Flesh Construct if needed.

I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on this line of inquiry, I think McMourning is probably stronger in a push the poison list, but I don’t think this ‘build’ would hamper itself too much.

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I like odd builds like this, especially for Experimental since they're pretty good at adapting to situations so having an off build doesn't affect them much. If going full summoning gimmick I'd suggest a few things. First I'd try to summon turn 1 if able because of the extra cost of Slow on the FC and Distracted on McMourning. The sooner you acquire the conditions the sooner you can get rid of them rather than have hampered activations later when it'll likely matter more. Second,   have you considered taking the Restless Spirit? It's Grave Robber is second only to the Gravedigggers and combined they could provide you with the 3 corpses you need to ensure every turn has a new FC. Maybe toss the GST and a Canine Remains to afford it then have it use Strength From The Grave on the Dead Rider to make up the lack of Regen. Finally I'd take Sebastian over Rafkin. Though Rafkin will be better for stacking up poison on the fresh summons I think for the summoning theme Sebastian might work better. Since you'll probably hit the FC cap on turn 3 or find some corpses in odd places for Twisted Genius to easily reach his action to summon Canine Remains will fill in the gaps. Plus more dogs means more corpses can be moved for Blasphemous Ritual, Twisted Genius, or The Dead Hate the Living.

Just to clarify I don't think my suggestions are good for making this list necessarily competitive, but just to maximize on the summoning aspect without breaking it.

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These are fun lists and strategies and I'm really interested to see how they work. My guess is that they're going to be fun but force you to spend too much time accomplishing things that don't really further the in-game goals of achieving strategies and schemes. They will likely force you to spend actions working toward summoning new models that don't pay effective dividends for your models. For instance, you're saving 1 stone by summoning a flesh construct our of three zombies and using actions from those zombies to gain activation control and positioning. In the process you're using one of McMourning's actions (of his 15 per game) and handing out pass tokens (net 3 because of two extra models turn 1 and then summoning). Is that a good trade off?

Regardless, the cool thing about lists like this is that you can put it on the table and find out! It may be an awesome new direction for McMourning - let us know how it goes! 

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Your second list looks similar to the lists I've been ending up with but I always want to bring Sebastian. He can get you more dogs! I don't believe hiring zombies for a cheaper construct is worth it because your are spending master ap. I'd start with the construct and get more when stuff dies. I've also been looking at the emissary and Mortimer for more corpses and nice actions all around. 

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That

On ‎7‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 9:02 AM, Ludvig said:

Your second list looks similar to the lists I've been ending up with but I always want to bring Sebastian. He can get you more dogs! I don't believe hiring zombies for a cheaper construct is worth it because your are spending master ap. I'd start with the construct and get more when stuff dies. I've also been looking at the emissary and Mortimer for more corpses and nice actions all around. 

That's interesting to me, what are you doing with McMourning on turn one that you would miss? I kind of look at it simply as using that AP to earn a Soul Stone, which doesn't seem like a bad deal. I'm not too concerned with Distracted, as the Nurse can strip it for free since she gains fast.

I'll also freely admit this is a theory and haven't had the opportunity to throw the doc down yet (hopefully starting a regular game day with some friends again, finger's crossed).

Sebastian does seem a better choice all things considered. I was thinking too hard about the suit requirement on Man's Best Friend, but between nurses and potentially Whisper, that seems less important.

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@Ender101 haven't played him yet but I might use his actions to charge an enemy schemer that got cocky or for setting up strategy points of my own. Starting 3 zombies and summoning from them likely means giving your opponent a lot of pass tokens which let's your opponent be very aggressive since they can almost guarantee turn 2 initiative from pass tokens. Knowing you will have initiative e turn 2 is an extremely big advantage since the early activations turn 2 can swing a game. All the podcasts and friends I've heard talking about m3e stress how important early tempo is. 

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@Ludvig the pass tokens are an interesting point, I also haven't played him yet, so don't know how swing-y an issue it will be. Watching and reading battle reports on youtube leads me to think that the early tempo really comes down to scheme and strategy pools. That's one of the interesting parts of Malifaux and something I sometimes struggle with, the game isn't always about 'value' which most minis games are about.

With the game being 'I go, you go' the first activation can be important, but my kneejerk reaction is that if they want to use the tokens that's ok, I'm mostly going to be doing my own thing anyways (especially with the Gravedigger list).

What podcasts are you listening to? I've been looking for some.

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I would consider something like McM, chihuahua, Sebastian, Rafkin, Rogue Necro, gravedigger, mindless zombie, nurse and then whatever for the last 10 stones (possibly swap the zombie for another digger or something)

The zombie and the digger give mcm 3 corpses to make the construct. the nurse uses pills to remove slow from the construct and assist to remove distract from mcm and gain fast. requires a bit of positioning but could be pretty effective.

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26 minutes ago, Ender101 said:

I like the general idea of it. How do you see yourself using the Gravedigger after the first turn (I haven't thought too hard about one gravedigger on their own yet)? 

I would use it as a schemer if there are scheme marker things in the pool, since as long as it is close to the corpse it has a bonus action to lay scheme markers. Also if a ball emerges, having it there eating corpses for focus pulse is pretty ace. Remember also that even if there are no other corpses dropped in the turn he can himself drop a corpse and push towards it. To be honest i see a funny scheming build where you have 2 diggers and restless spirit dropping corpses so that the diggers can push up faster

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@Ludvig

Very possible. It may make the mindless zombie plan dead on arrival, but I think the build with the gravediggers doesn't mind as much, as you're giving them pass tokens, but creating big, scary, reckless models. As I've already implied, I'm not always good at judging value of points vs value of order of activation.

 

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1 hour ago, Ender101 said:

@Ludvig

Very possible. It may make the mindless zombie plan dead on arrival, but I think the build with the gravediggers doesn't mind as much, as you're giving them pass tokens, but creating big, scary, reckless models. As I've already implied, I'm not always good at judging value of points vs value of order of activation.

 

A single pass token is very different form four pass tokens, that means they can't be certain of going first so they'll need to plan for more eventualities. Grave diggers seem very handy. 

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If you're really set on summoning a FC, the best combo I know of is:

Gravedigger + zombie.

For 8 soulstones and some turn one actions, you get a gravedigger + flesh construct.

Actions are pretty valuable, so not sure it is worth the 5 points you save... But 1 gravedigger adds a lot to a crew, while 2 seems to be too much.

This would hit the sweet spot.

One major issue though is either McMourning misses out on poison, the flesh construct does, or you don't move McMourning on the first turn. All three options seem bad.

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7 hours ago, thewrathchilde said:

I agree! Lots of good content lately.

Favorite episodes?

From what I hear there is more Resser content coming soon that Craig and various guests have done!

I really liked the Marcus episode. Good tips and good disposition/editing. I aso found the guest very enjoyable to listen to. He had a low pace of talking instead of quick speech with lots of pause sounds. I usually turn podcasts off because I can't stand all the "uhms" and weird tangents (podcasts are not an ideal medium for me). 

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In general I lean towards this style of play. That said, I don't think a single AP and giving the opponent a pass token is worth a Soulstone. You are better off taking models that generate mindless zombies and summoning the Flesh Constructs mid game, either from the Mindless Zombies or the corpses left behind when your opponent kills models. Offhand...

Dr McMourning
Zombie Chihuahua
10 Asura Roten + Whisperer
11 Dead Rider
10 Carrion Emissary
8 Kentauroi
6 Nurse
= 45, Cache 5

Asura Roten doesn't move herself. Instead, Dead Rider and the Kentauroi move her into a forward position. Then you use her and the Carrion Emissary to summon as many Mindless Zombies as you can. It is fairly possible to get 3 Mindless Zombies or Corpse Markers spawned per turn between Asura and the Emissary. A Graverobber can be swapped for the Carrion Emissary depending on Schemes, as this is a fairly kill-y list.

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