Lj first turn

[4thstringer]

What does your lj first turn tend to look like?  I have a habit of activating her near the end and getting her stuck in.  Usually this is into either a bait model or a pretty beefy and fast opponent (arrrrchie or a rider for example). I always go into my games saying I'm going to be less aggressive with her, but Im rarely able to pull that off.

 

[Trample]

Isn't it her job to be aggressive? It seems to me that it would generally be the right thing to do. I haven't played her myself yet (but plan to soon) although I've played against her several times. I think she absolutely should be attacking late in turn 1 (after having hitching a ride up and perhaps gaining focused) and the real question is one of targeting. If your opponent can't easily ignore your soulstones (assuming you're bringing 7-10), defensive trigger, or LLC (if you brought it) you should probably seek to take out his lynchpin or key models right in the middle. If not, it's probably better to hit the periphery I would think. Either way, she is a battleship that doesn't do any good to you in port (although a broader question might be - is she a battleship pre-air power or post-air poser).   

I've had pretty good luck playing against her the last few times, but I think it was perhaps not the best targeting on the part of my opponent. Last game I played Zipp and he initially targeted The First Mate, who is really hard to pin down. He should have targeted Rusty Alyce, but he won't make that mistake again. The time before that I was able to slow her down with stunning (Von Schtook) but she still did plenty of damage. I've been able to shut her down by denying triggers with both Sue and the Necrotic Machine in the past. The point is, like any model, she has to be careful about where she goes when she makes her attack run, but she's gotta make it turn 1 in my opinion. 

[le_wahou]

The first turn is very aggressive too. Usually she gets a taxi during the turn and jump in the fray in the 2 lasts activations. I try to wound and not kill on 1st turn, except is there are still healers to go. I get here to engage and use her 2" range to tie up ennemies. I know she will not die in 1 or 2 activations on 2nd turn. On 2nd turn, I activate only if there is a really juicy target, but that's un common. I let the opponent hits her, and then I try to kill as many small models as possible to get healing and keep in melee the opponent's models that can still activate.

[Mortarion]

It depends on the deployment and how aggressive my opponent is. If my opponent rushes some model up the field she is an ideal counter-punch. But if my opponent is more defensive I usually do not charge ahead of the rest of my crew just to get a single attack in. In that case I'd rather hide her somewhere and focus. Leap and 2" range means she can threaten a quite large area even from behind a building. If I can get two or more attacks from her by rushing ahead... maybe. 

But overall I like a more defensive playstyle in Malifaux, so I may be overly cautious.

[Morgan Vening]

8 hours ago, Mortarion said:

It depends on the deployment and how aggressive my opponent is. If my opponent rushes some model up the field she is an ideal counter-punch. But if my opponent is more defensive I usually do not charge ahead of the rest of my crew just to get a single attack in. In that case I'd rather hide her somewhere and focus. Leap and 2" range means she can threaten a quite large area even from behind a building. If I can get two or more attacks from her by rushing ahead... maybe. 

But overall I like a more defensive playstyle in Malifaux, so I may be overly cautious.

I feel the same. If I can't get at least three attacks out of her (Walk, Leap+Sudden, two Attacks), I feel I'm underutilizing her, and will instead try to activate her late to put her in position to threaten as much as possible. One game, there was a large parapeted building on the opponent's half of the table. Walk, Walk, Focus, Leap on top of the building, putting me in a position on T2 to basically threaten everything my opponent had, while not really risking her.

The exception is when I can knock off a target that doesn't expose me to a T2 counter that risks her too much, but my opponent was hoping to score with (ie, a runner moving to get an early Outflank). 

[Irritated Walrus]

I feel like I'm way too aggressive with her as well. She can be killed, and more often than not I feel as if I put her in terrible situations! 

[Michael Curran]

Bingo 👆🏻

[le_wahou]

I disagree. She can be killed but if she dies, the opponent has usually spend way too many ressources for this and I will win the game. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

Depends on the master. There are masters that will each her for lunch, wipe their chins and go on the eat others without regarding her as any particular challenge.

[Meliondor]

36 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Depends on the master. There are masters that will each her for lunch, wipe their chins and go on the eat others without regarding her as any particular challenge.

Who can kill her with LL and spending soul Stones to prevent damage that easily?

[Legislat]

My LJ was killed multiple times by Levi and Seamus in one activation.

[le_wahou]

I am not really surprised by Levi. I was also thinking to a dual activation of Viktorias.

For Seamus, that's a little strange. He ignores HtW, but you can still stone on damage and to give to damage. How did he kill her without a lucky red joker ?

[Fetid Strumpet]

Models that do regular consistent chip dmg. Titania coming in on her can kill or cripple her generally in 1 turn, because a good portion of her dmg is just constant infliction of multiple 1 dmg bites.

Unless she’s injured first I tend to have issues with Seamus doing it. Her defenses are mostly set up to prevent the kind of dmg he wants to do.

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

31 minutes ago, le_wahou said:

I am not really surprised by Levi. I was also thinking to a dual activation of Viktorias.

For Seamus, that's a little strange. He ignores HtW, but you can still stone on damage and to give to damage. How did he kill her without a lucky red joker ?

With proper set up Seamus can do two focused shots for 2 ap and three melee slaps (one from his Ability, the other two for his regular actions) in one activation. Even if LJ stones for negative, Seamus can still flip two moderates (that's not so uncommon) or even two severes from his deck. Once I was able to kill Lucius and Dashel in one game and it costed me only 5 shots from Seamus (no jokers involved). I'm not saying that situations like that occur to me commonly (actually it was my most glorious moment with Seamus), but that's something that at some point can happen to anyone.

[Legislat]

This and you cant always hope to have ~4-6 stones at any time to live through some Serious whisper induced Seamus action. If you are lucky you actually can arange for moderastes and severes for the first shot even on the negatives.

[Banjulhu]

Generally my Lady J first turn involve me looking at the various marshal cards for 2 minutes and wondering why I picked any of them.

Then I remember I have Guild and there were no stand out options not called the Pale Rider and got on with things up until this week and from this week on I'll do the same thing except I'll just remember the Guild have no stand out options at all and just get on with being mediocre.

[Cursed25]

9 hours ago, Meliondor said:

Who can kill her with LL and spending soul Stones to prevent damage that easily?

Shenlong even with his nerf now can do some serious damage to LJ. Before is nerf he could easily kill her in one activation now it's more like around 2 activations if she's full. But it's still a possibility now if he uses focus and stone for irreducible dmg! he just need to use more ressources to do it (stones, cheat, more AP to engage)

[Trample]

Had a game last night where I decided to play Lady J against Zoraida. I drew perhaps the best hand I've ever had - RJ, 13(mask), 13, 12, 7, 6(rams). Since I was facing Zoraida I was really worried he was going to eat that beautiful hand , so I ferried Lady J forward on the Pale rider during my second activation, cheating my 7 to make it go off. The Pale rider shot and hit McTavish twice, hitting Moderate both times and forcing him to use a couple of stone. McTavish had been lured up by a wisp, so both were in striking distance. He used a Bokor to heal McTavish back to full, then I activated Lady J . 

She walked - leaped, stoning for a mask to get the extra attack. On the first attack I had to cheat my 12 to hit, doing minimum to McTavish, but not cheating. On the second attack I cheated my 13 of masks to hit McTavish, leaving him on 2 wounds, and swing on to the Wisp, leaving him on one wound . I still had the RJ and a 13 in hand for my third attack and with that, could guarantee killing both McTavish and the wisp. But, of course he flipped the RJ in defense on my attack,

I haven't played Lady J much, but that kind of thing sees to happen to her, at least when I'm at the helm. The Judge did end up taking out McTavish round 1 and took out the wisp and the gremlin McTavish produced from the upgrade, but she herself often leaves the job undone. She died during the first activation of round 2. He was able to whittle through most of her during round 1 with various obeys and voodoo doll shenanigans. 

I got my payback with my hand round 2 - 1,1,4,6,6,9. I guess Lady J did her job, and I did win the game, but an interesting first turn that I thought might be relevant to this thread.