Assassinate Do’s and Don’ts?

[Yore Huckleberry]

I’m curious what masters guild feels confident bringing down, and which ones you just ignore for an Assassinate strat?

Have people had success with this scheme? I almost got Seamus yesterday by clipping the copycat early, but we called the game on time before I could fully drop him.

[Starrius]

Masters i wont donassination against.

 

Mei fang far to jumpy

Seamus cant guarantee his positioning as he jumps about a lot

Insuspect Colette may be trouble some (not faced her yet)

Zipp again to fast

Leveticus potentially

Tara unless more melee focused she teleport about and has a trigger vs projectiles that is annoying

Misaki unless I know my opponents play style well

Yab lo because if you dont get him early he gets to much of a sink later in the game I've found

 

[explorator]

Jack Daw and Hamelin would be the one's I would add, both are killable, but demand too many resources to do so.

[Mycellanious]

Ill throw Shenlong into the mix. He has a LOT of healing. Ironsides too is tough to kill because the crew has a lot of damage reduction.

[Hagisman]

I tried to Assassinate Sandeep and my opponent managed to get his health back up to full in one activation.

[Cursed25]

I never take Assassinate! the reason why is most masters are really tough (some are downright unkillable ahah!) and you never know what your opponent will do!

 

Oh! He took Shenlong, he will surely go straight in my crew and try to kill everything! I will take assassinate! but instead your opponent decide to use Shenlong's awesome mobility to scheme and kill your schemer so you now have to chase him and will surely not kill him!

 

Also a lot of players will do everything to protect their masters so it will be hard to do it! But knowing that, you could bluff having Assassinate and while he's using his ressource to protect his master you have an easier time scoring your true scheme!

[4thstringer]

One fun time about assassinate is that your opponents, if they think you are going to kill the master anyways, will often let you kill them rather than sit at half wounds.  What a great opportunity.

[Irritated Walrus]

Our meta is super in your face. No matter the faction the idea is usually, "The enemy can't score if they are dead!" There is no master that can't be killed. That being said, I hate going against the ones with built in to your attack. 

[Irritated Walrus]

As a Guild player, you also have to be really careful not to wipe something out completely so you can score full on the scheme. In attempts to lower a model to half wounds, I've flipped the RJ on damage and murdered a model before scoring the first point. 

[Starrius]

17 minutes ago, Irritated Walrus said:

As a Guild player, you also have to be really careful not to wipe something out completely so you can score full on the scheme. In attempts to lower a model to half wounds, I've flipped the RJ on damage and murdered a model before scoring the first point. 

If you flip the RJ you dont have to pick it and you can cheat it down

[Irritated Walrus]

2 minutes ago, Starrius said:

If you flip the RJ you dont have to pick it and you can cheat it down

Good point. Poor decision making on my part. 

[Irritated Walrus]

7 minutes ago, Starrius said:

If you flip the RJ you dont have to pick it and you can cheat it down

That's providing you were at a on the attack though. 

[Starrius]

23 minutes ago, Irritated Walrus said:

That's providing you were at a on the attack though. 

The RJ may always be picked even if at a negative tindamage you can always pick the other card, if it's on the attack a rj just probably means you've hit ( I've missed with RJ, also hit with BJ too)

[Irritated Walrus]

I think you are wrong there. If you flip an RJ for damage it MUST always be chosen unless you flip the BJ for damage. 

[Adran]

1 minute ago, Irritated Walrus said:

I think you are wrong there. If you flip an RJ for damage it MUST always be chosen unless you flip the BJ for damage. 

I suggest re-reading the joker section, its a may always be chosen for the red joker and a must for the black joker

[Irritated Walrus]

1 minute ago, Adran said:

I suggest re-reading the joker section, its a may always be chosen for the red joker and a must for the black joker

You are right:

"As long as the Black Joker is not also revealed,the Red Joker may always be chosen during a flip, even if there are one or more cards revealed because of-Fate Modifiers".

Taken from the 3e rule set. 

[Myyrä]

7 hours ago, Irritated Walrus said:

As a Guild player, you also have to be really careful not to wipe something out completely so you can score full on the scheme. In attempts to lower a model to half wounds, I've flipped the RJ on damage and murdered a model before scoring the first point. 

If you can kill the enemy master quickly, you probably should do it even if you lose one potential point for assassinate. Letting it live one more turn will fairly likely lead to the opponent scoring one more point or the master healing up and escaping. Plus you can spend that AP next turn somewhere else.

[AK1979]

Agree  kill first ask questions later 

[Ogid]

22 hours ago, Irritated Walrus said:

I think you are wrong there. If you flip an RJ for damage it MUST always be chosen unless you flip the BJ for damage. 

Lol, imagine this with friendly attacks relenting (trying to get min damage and a trigger that push or do something good for you)

• Black Blood Shaman A: "I'm going to cut you a bit to get just a bit of flesh for the ritual" (Damage 1/3/4 trying to get the Blood Sacrifice trigger)
• BBS B: "Ok, but be careful"
• * RJ flipped *
• BBS A: "DIEEEEEEEE!!!!"

Which is probably what happens too often according to the BBS lore btw:

Quote

"...all eventually die in the service of the brotherhood,..."

 

[Cursed25]

33 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Lol, imagine this with friendly attacks relenting (trying to get min damage and a trigger that push or do something good for you)

• Black Blood Shaman A: "I'm going to cut you a bit to get just a bit of flesh for the ritual" (Damage 1/3/4 trying to get the Blood Sacrifice trigger)
• BBS B: "Ok, but be careful"
• * RJ flipped *
• BBS A: "DIEEEEEEEE!!!!"

Which is probably what happens too often according to the BBS lore btw:

 

this happened to my opponent this week! He nearly killed his 2 Black Blood Shaman by flipping moderate dmg on each even with  on attack! xD Also on 4 attacks he only got one ! So his deck really screwed his grow list for the whole game! ahah! (I managed to kill one of his BBS turn 1 with my Samurai!  )

 

BBS 1: don't worry it will be ok! You're my friend!  ''Stabs him for 3 dmg, than stabs him again for another 1 dmg! xD''

BBS 2: You bastard! ''Stab BBS 1 for 3 than finally manage to get a mask on the last attack!''

[Ogid]

3 hours ago, Cursed25 said:

this happened to my opponent this week! He nearly killed his 2 Black Blood Shaman by flipping moderate dmg on each even with  on attack! xD Also on 4 attacks he only got one ! So his deck really screwed his grow list for the whole game! ahah! (I managed to kill one of his BBS turn 1 with my Samurai!  )

Haha, poor guy! However that sounds like he trusted too much in the heart of the cards... the moderate damage on a double negative flip is something that could happen, 2 out of 4 times is bad luck. However what's bad planning is going for that trigger with no mask in hand to cheat... 4 times lol.

Just out of curiosity, Do you remind how his grow list looked like?

[Cursed25]

54 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Haha, poor guy! However that sounds like he trusted too much in the heart of the cards... the moderate damage on a double negative flip is something that could happen, 2 out of 4 times is bad luck. However what's bad planning is going for that trigger with no mask in hand to cheat... 4 times lol.

Just out of curiosity, Do you remind how his grow list looked like?

It was a 30ss game because we are playing in a grow league in my meta to bring new players into Malifaux! Henchman only allowed for leaders at this point of the league. So no Nekima and blood hunter for easier corpse generation!

 

30ss is really tight when you want to do the strat and schemes so he didn't had any ss left to try getting  on his opening hand of turn 1. Sadly for him he didn't had any mask and any good hands for the first 2 turns. His bad hand continued for the whole game! We just laughed at his bad luck because bad things happen! ahah!  I think he never got more than one severe per turn from his starting hands on all 5 turns!

 

Strat was Corrupted Idols. He took Vendetta (Angel Eye and Samurai) and Claim Jump (one of his BBS) for his schemes. I took Detonate charges and Assassinate (He knows me well and knows that I never take Assassinate so I wanted to surprise him)

 

For his list he had:

Hayreddin

Effigy with Effigy of Fate upgrade 2

Black Blood Shaman 6

Black Blood Shaman 6

Angel Eye 9

Tuco 7

 

My list was:

Huggy

Shadow Effigy with Effigy of Fate upgrade 2

Kitty Dumont 9

Samurai 9

Low River Monk 5

Depleted with Silent Protector upgrade 5

 

He got really unlucky with his BBS as said earlier and with the help of Kitty and Huggy's Obey, the Samurai manage to be in range turn 1 with one of his BBS and kill him! Which really slowed his focus stacking and grow list. Last time he used it against someone else was the opposite for his luck and he had 2 mature during turn 2 with 3-4 fcus on nearly all his models.

 

In turn 1 he managed to kill my Samurai with Hayreddin because I had misplaced my LRM a bit and was out of range for one heal attempt and this would have saved him because he was already injured because of Angel Eye. In the subsequent turn Hayreddin put some work by killing my low river Monk and my Depleted. But with the dmg from the Samurai's demise attack, Strat markers ping and finally the demise form the depleted he got under the half health ratio for assassinate which gave me one point and I got the initiative for turn 3 where my Emissary slaughtered him for a guaranteed point at the end.

 

The final score was 7-3 for me at the end but this was mostly due to my good starting hands that permitted me to place the idols exactly where I wanted. I never got threatened score wise because I played the denied game a lot and by the end of the game (turn 4) he finally got his mature but it was too little too late and even tho he killed most of my models, my 2 important ones (Huggy for his obey and big engagement range and Kitty Dumont for  Detonate Charge) were still alived!  It was a great game and I was really afraid of Nephilim because 2 matures with lots of focus in low points games can be really hard to bring down but luck was on my side!  

[Ogid]

Haha, that kind of hands happens; but the most important thing is that it sounds like a fun game! 

I do like his crew, if all goes as it should his list is very scary in turn 3 with the 2 matures plus the Emissary. However I think he pushed his luck a bit too far. When relying so heavily in suits some resource back up to be sure that those suits are gotten is good to have... maybe changing Tuco for a Wicked doll would had been a good call. The doll may put adversary in Angel Eyes/Hayreddin so the 2 BBS may stab with a (twice the chances to get masks!), the 4 SS cache may be used to cicle 2 cards looking for better cards/suits or stone the corpse with Hayreddin in a pinch and having some chache is good when playing with 2 Henchman with good triggers like Hayreddin and Angel Eyes.

I like Angel Eyes (they move idols, she pick off the wounded ones); but in idols and with this grow strategy another interesting choice would had been Vasilisa (for a 5SS cache or Vasi and an extra doll for 2SS cache). Vasi may make a BBS consume 2 corpses in turn 1, which will give a mature with 8 Wds (taking in count his luck, 6 in his case XD) and the bonus action in turn 2 instead of in turn 3, and 3 Focused Pulses in turn 1; that may let the list put out some agression in turn 2 instead of in turn 3.

Vasilisa is also great because she is a summoner, so the player may suicide a doll moving idols and use that scrap to summon another doll or an stitched to keep moving the idols, she would need a 6 for the doll and 9 for the stitched which isn't that high (and she may even move them herself and then use her other bonus action to recover the Wds). She is even better being a henchman leaded crew because puppets will give staggered, and that synergize very well with the Emissary attacking Mv.

My personal choice would had been this one: Hayreddin, Effigy(Fate), BBS, BBS, Vasilisa, Doll, Doll, 2 SS.

[Cursed25]

I will talk to him about Vasilisa! I'm pretty sure he didn't looked at dolls but since he wants to get the dreamer crew next that will surely interest him!

[Ogid]

18 hours ago, Cursed25 said:

I will talk to him about Vasilisa! I'm pretty sure he didn't looked at dolls but since he wants to get the dreamer crew next that will surely interest him!

Good to hear!

Yes, puppets go quite well with Dreamer, the scrap can be used also by WW, Teddy/Stitcheds are constructs (can be healed by Vasilisa) and Stitched are puppets (may give Staggered thanks to Vasilisa).

I'm not sure how well Vasilisa would go in a Nekima leaded crew tho. Nekima may use "Hurl Corpse" with the "Fast Food" trigger to also grow matures in turn 1, so she isn't needed for that in a Nephilim crew. But she is a very solid model anyway, it could be worth it for a less agressive Nephilim style.