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Grave Golem woes


marke83

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Hi, I've been making somewhat of a comeback and Ressers are my current faction in M3E.

For a new-ish resser/thunder who owns Yan Lo, Seamus and Molly, The undying box seemed like a decent value containing Manos, and some other less relevant (but super-cool!) figures - such as the Grave Golem.

GG is versatile min 3 beater, which certainly helps with newer players struggling to fill 50 pts sensibly, but my joy kinda stops there.

The problem(s)? Archie. Archie seems out of stock in many EU stores, and GG can't stand the daylight in comparison. Even OOK Archie costs the same, has same/similar abilities with more triggers, better survivability (tbh GG looks about as survivable as a Rotten Belle) and Terrifying 12, which has seemed like kind of a big deal.

Grave Golem is hilarious with his zombify, but then again the free action looks like rubbish in comparison with leap.

Is there a universe where GG is worth hiring? I think the model needs a small buff, and Archie needs tuning (+1 ss cost, terrifying 11 perhaps).

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Grave Golem is more survivable because of his demise ability...

That’s really all he has over Archie. Archie is pretty OP in my opinion, so if you are looking for something comparable to take instead of him you aren’t going to find it. 

The universe to hire the GG over Archie is:

1) you can’t get ahold of Archie and your opponent won’t let you proxy, or you don’t want to proxy.

2) There is some reason that staying alive via burying actually scores vp in another version of Gaining Grounds.

3) You are building crews with some other metric other than what is most optimized for cost.

Archie would be more fair if he lost leap, or flurry, or had a much lower dmg line. Having all 3 pretty much makes him the beast non-master beater for cost in ressers, maybe the game, but I haven’t delved into all faction yet so I certainly could be wrong on that point.

 

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42 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Grave Golem is more survivable because of his demise ability...

Is it though? Demise denial exists, and unburying him in a favorable position requires setup, which you may or may not have time to do. Either way, extra resources are needed. Terrifying, numbskull and leap seem much better surviving tools in normal situations. Just spitballing, I don't really know anything 😛

Btw, does he return with essentially 6 wounds? 4 from demise, 2 from reg.

Looks like I gotta hunt for Archie or just suck it up and play an UP model. How fast Wyrd usually does errata? Can't remember..

 

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2 hours ago, marke83 said:

Is it though? Demise denial exists, and unburying him in a favorable position requires setup, which you may or may not have time to do. Either way, extra resources are needed. Terrifying, numbskull and leap seem much better surviving tools in normal situations. Just spitballing, I don't really know anything 😛

Btw, does he return with essentially 6 wounds? 4 from demise, 2 from reg.

Looks like I gotta hunt for Archie or just suck it up and play an UP model. How fast Wyrd usually does errata? Can't remember..

 

I said he was more survivable. I didn’t say anything about unburying him in a favorable position. Grave Golem is harder to put permenently in the ground than Archie, that is all. The one and only advantage he has over Archie. But if 2E taught us anything, just existing on the board and being hard to permenantly remove doesn’t win games unless that is a Victory condition. You have to pair it with something else, and Archie has everything else multiple orders of magnitude better than the Golem.

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Just chiming in to say that as a Molly player who's had Archie for a while, and who never bought the Undying box, this thread makes me happy 😁

Speaking of the Undying box, I just noticed that the Mourners have Revenant. Does anyone use them with Reva?

Also @marke83, here's Archie in-stock at a store in the Czech Republic: http://www.fantasy.cz/fantasy-cz/eshop/0/3/5/8124-MAL-Archie

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Archie has been insanely good for me, but half of that is his synergy with crooligans.

I can imagine he is still the best option for lots of crews, but a few things to note:

1. You can have both in a crew, which is possibly a good plan for some scenarios.

2. Archie has to jump (hehe, leap) through a lot of hoops to stay alive. The GG is likely superior if you just want to bog down the enemy/get into a slog fest. If they waste attacks killing the GG, great! Archie dying to attacks is a tragedy.

As long as you can keep churning out corpse markers, a grave golem seems superior for digging in and holding your ground (claim jump, turf war centre, defending your base from plant explosives, etc).

Archie is a beater and scheme runner on steroids, grave golem is a zone control tank. The models appear similar, but their roles are very different IMO.

Overall Archie is better, but I'd not say he is strictly better at everything.

One last thing to note: grave golem is size four and better for blocking LOS.

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A lot of things have to happen before I’d include the golem in a crew, because while correctly pointed out you can have him and Archie in the same crew, you can also have Archie and the Rogue necro, ormArchie and the Dead Rider. Honestly the  Golem is near the bottom, but not THE bottom, of models in its price bracket. 

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I dunno, I'm starting to think grave golem might be better than rogue necromancy in Forgotten (if you generate corpse markers).

Rogue Necromancy is a bit squishy for my tastes. I feel Forgotten lacks a really good zone control tank, which Grave Golem could provide.

Rogue necromancy just feels like Archie but worse. Grave Golem feels like it could genuinely play a different role.

The big question being can a gravedigger fit into the crew... He is extremely solid if 'dig their graves' is an objective, of course!

I imagine people are dubious, so I'll see if I can proxy it up to test it out!

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Sample list for reckoning + dig their graves (a combination that has come up a few times for me)

Molly + machine

Dr Mcmourning

Archie

Grave Golem

Gravedigger

9 SS for upgrades + cache.

Edit: probably 1x crooligan?

Dig their graves means you're going to score a point if they try to turtle, and if they come to you, will be very hard to score points.

Not sure about McMourning, flex spot!

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The Rogue Necromancy is certainly squishy. He doesn't look like he would be on paper with terrifying, HTW, HTK, and pseudo-regeneration through poison (which he can acquire pretty easily), but I've used him in several games and seen him destroyed pretty quickly in most games. In the past few weeks I saw him taken out in the first activation of round two twice - once by Lady J, which is pretty understandable, but the other time by the Dreamer. Yeah, the Dreamer. I still don't know how that happened (I think it involved summoning two alps and dropping both on me alongside two successful attacks). My experience is that he is pretty squishy. I played three games in a tournament yesterday through, and the RN played in two of the three games. In one of them he got really lucky by charging the Copycat Killer, killing him and pouncing to Seamus, and getting a hit on Seamus with the triggered attack. Then he killed Seamus with a pouncing strike and jumped to the Dead Rider. He didn't hit him, but blocked his push which could have stopped my outflank. The RN also did pretty well in the other game for me, although he only killed an Arachnid. He did survive both games. 

I can't imagine taking the golem over the RN in Forgotten or Experimental though. Even though he has proven to be squishy. I could see him in another resser crew where Corrupted Idols was the strategy. His built in regeneration and resiliency could be good for that. I think there could be some cool synergies with Seamus and Hurl Corpse. It could also be a fun way to move zombies, but Archie can do that as well and, as has been pointed out, Archie is better. 

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Ironically, I think corrupted idols is the strategy grave golem is the worst at.

Turf war: can control the centre

Reckoning: does not award points

Explosives: can defend your base against explosives.

Corrupted idols: will spend his time lumbering around trying to capture idols, or sitting on the centre for an idol that may never come.

I think his lack of mobility/but extra durability is key to his role. He can't do anything that requires running around the board.

 

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Perhaps, but you don't always lumber all over the place in Corrupted Idols. In standard deployment you can arrange for the Golem to be on the centerline at the end of turn one and you do have some control over where the idol is placed. I wouldn't consider him in explosives under any circumstances. Turf war I play a bit more aggressively, but if you're playing defensively I could see some merit. Reckoning could be a good one for him. Idols easily the best in my opinion. Having said that, I don't see using him in Idols. There are absolutely better options! 

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On 7/7/2019 at 5:28 AM, Fetid Strumpet said:

That’s really all he has over Archie. Archie is pretty OP in my opinion, so if you are looking for something comparable to take instead of him you aren’t going to find it. 

Agree that Archie is a bit much for 9SS. The fact everyone always points to him, even out of theme, as the best beater to take is saying something. He could go to 10SS and still be a good buy. Or I could see dropping Terrifying to a 10 or 11 or maybe dropping his Wp down to 3 to give him some weakness.  

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Archie is just too good for 9ss, he should cost 10 and he would still be good.

The main advantage for the Grave Golem, like almost everyone said, is the survivality, but also his Size. Being Sz 4 can help you to cover some LoS. Mv is 5, which is not bad, and he can heal a bunch of people if there are corpses around. I would only bring him in a list that has easy access to drop corpses (Nicodem for example, or Asura). With Nicodem, using the Vulture you can "teleport" the Grave Golem 16" away after he dies, while protecting Nico from attacks as long as both of them are within 2" (and you discard a card).

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16 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

I think he’s better mechanically than the Dead Rider is, so I’d price Archie at 11, personally. Flurry and Leap shouldn’t be on the same model without paying a premium for it.

He would be 11 with everyone except for Molly, what would put him at the same price as the Rider. 11ss seems a bit too much for me, but I've only seen him on paper. I think that would be better reducing its Terrifying to 11 and keep him at 10ss than raising him to 11ss.

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3 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

Agree that Archie is a bit much for 9SS. The fact everyone always points to him, even out of theme, as the best beater to take is saying something.

It's more a meme than anything. Everyone that tested Archie thoroughly in Beta had him die over and over. I never found a single report with Archie being over-the-top. Even @Flippin' Wyrd Jamie had the same issues and fought hard to get Archie where he is now. He'd lost flurry at a certain point and he was doing tickly-non focused attacks in an edition full of damage mitigation. There were several tournaments and not a single complaint about the guy except well, he was dying too much.

The game just released and there's already talk about nerfing models based on perceptions from what they look like on paper.
Let's let the tournaments roll in a bit first.

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21 minutes ago, Saduhem said:

The game just released and there's already talk about nerfing models based on perceptions from what they look like on paper.
 Let's let the tournaments roll in a bit first.

I can agree to an extent, but I was involved in the Beta and saw his progress. This isn't just 'on paper' as a lot of people have been playing with him as he is now for some time. I just think that last buff swing went a little too far. It's either that or some of our other models aren't worth their points. Does he really need a high Terrifying, Flurry, Ruthless, Leap, and great healing? If dying all the time was the main complaint, well the Rogue Necro dies all the time and always has, yet he still gets taken. 

The problem arises when people talk about other 9-10SS models and all I hear or see people saying is, why take model X when you can just take Archie. He does everything X does and more often for the same cost. I know there are bound to be some other examples of this issue across other factions, but M3E has done a great job of mostly removing them or reducing the number of 'always take' models. I do think that Archie is going to see a lot of play competitively no matter the theme as things shake out. Maybe that's OK, but it does make me think somethings off somewhere.

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Also, don't discount "on paper" analysis. This is a numbers game, and while the numbers aren't too simple, the in-faction comparisons are relatively simple to make.

What bothers me here  is both models having almost identical abilities, cost and stats.. but the other one has so much more on top. Maybe I still struggle to identify GG's burying niche, but I'd feel good if he (it?) could do something unique if he is just going to be a strictly worse Archie combat-wise. Wouldn't have to be powerful & unique, just..something..

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18 minutes ago, marke83 said:

 I'd feel good if he (it?) could do something unique if he is just going to be a strictly worse Archie combat-wise. Wouldn't have to be powerful & unique, just..something..

It does have differences from Archie.

It can gain focus, making it far superior for damaging certain models (Archie really struggles against armor 2 with minus on damage flips, for example).

It is also far more durable. EDIT: this makes a big difference against mobile, hard-hitting crews like Nekima and Reva, as well as having strategy/scheme relevance.

That's not to say it is good enough to see play (although, as above, I'm now sold on paper for this model), but it definitely has material advantages compared to Archie.

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My perceptions aren't based on paper modeling, I'm basing my opinions on use on table. I get more out of him than I've gotten out of any model in faction, without exception, outside of Masters. I'm in total agreement that more data is needed before an official change is made however. I'm just stating my personal opinion, based on the games I've played with him. I can totally accept another person's opinions on this aspect, but I've just found he is way under costed. I'll totally admit he could be properly costed, but if that's the case, then a good deal of models in faction are WAY over costed. 

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