Talk to me about Zipp

[Math Mathonwy]

How do you play the little green Rocketeer?

What do your crews look like? Which models from the keyword do you love? Which ones do you seldom take? Which OOK stuff is the best with Infamous? Any important Upgrades to take?

What does your first turn look like? What does Zipp do? Anything else important?

Which ones are your favourite Strats and Schemes to take Zipp into?

What about opponents? Is there an opposing Master (or Faction) that Zipp hates? Anyone that he completely dominates?

[Jesy Blue]

Unless the opponent declares a marker heavy master (Titania, Kerias, Rena, Misaki, etc), I play one list: 

Do A Barrel Roll  (Bayou)
Size: 50 - Pool: 4
Leader:
  Captain Zipp
Totem(s):
  Earl Burns
Hires:
  Lucky Emissary
  Flying Piglet
  Flying Piglet 2
  Flying Piglet 3
  Iron Skeeter
  Iron Skeeter 2
  Iron Skeeter 3
  Merris LaCroix

If Its a condition heavy master (Pandora, Youko, Jack Daw, etc), I may swap in a wrastler or 2,  or Roja, for Toss in the Mud.
If marker heavy crew, I do some replacements with the wrestling faction:

ECW (Bayou)
Size: 50 - Pool: 6
Leader:
  Captain Zipp
Totem(s):
  Earl Burns
Hires:
  Mancha Roja
  Wrastler
  Wrastler 2
  Lucky Emissary
  Iron Skeeter
  Iron Skeeter 2

I can run Infamous in any Scheme Pool and any Strategy and win… I prefer not to do with Reckoning, but I can do it.

Zipp excels vs Zorida.  Position yourself late turn 1 to be close to her, turn 2 charge her, and throw her away from her crew at least twice.  She’ll be too far away from things now to affect with her Obey and you can’t Obey Zipp, and his attack targets Size so her resistance trigger is of no use, plus with Boring conversation she or anyone else coming to help will waste more resources, and since Zorida will be in Zipp’s Sputtering Exhaust aura, people will have trouble helping her too!

[Rufess]

Zipp is a controlling/disturbing master with high mobility. With Mv 8 and Flight, he easily becomes the fastest master in the game. As a control master, most of Zipp's abilities are to removing opponent's resources. Zipp has 2 aura that consume opponent's hands and cards when they take action, and both his melee and range attacks can move enemy around. And the Pianos, the signature of Zipp, can draw enemy's action to destroy or move around. The 12 Coffee upgrade can add another layer of control aura to Zipp that denial enemy from using bonus action. It is not always useful, but when it does, it does impact seriously.

My typical turn 1 move is to fly Zipp to the face of opponent's crew with the Boring Conversation popped in the 1st activation. If playing in Standard or Wedge Deployment, Zipp then should have spare action to throw out Pianos to block the bottleneck. Zipp will be focused by whole opponent's model and take hit for sure, but with stones and the Df trigger, he has high chance to survive the first turn. By drawing most of the attack into himself, Zipp lets his crew to do anything without being threaten.

Not only the first turn, I always consider if I can activate Zipp first in every turn. Boring Conversation is a great control aura that I always want to activate before most of enemy models activation. The Wp 10 duel may seems weak on the paper, but it has distributed a lot in every single game I played Zipp. Dropping Pianos is another main action of Zipp to me which I always takes in every Zipp's activation. Other than these 2, Zipp is quite free to do anythings in his activation. Half of his power comes from his passive aura, so he can just double walked are still impacting the board. I personally prefer his melee over range due to longer threat range and higher accuracy, but it is just the issue of favor.

 

Just like their master, Infamous is a keyword that full of movement tricks and anti-scheming. The First Mate is the auto include. He is the best beater and the best schemer within the keyword at this point. Beside him, other models are situational bases on the opponent and S&S. Mancha and Johan are the beater if you want to kill something. Gracie is a tank that if you need to stay alive until the end of game like Claim Jump or Vendetta. Iron Skeeter and Flying Piglet are the schemer. Wrastler is a tech piece to bring against marker-placing crew.

Also let not forget the Showboating ability. A good trick is to cheat small card to an already failed attack, such that you can recycle that card to another new one. Be aware that the ability says "cheat from hand" so the aura of effigy and emissary do not count.

So the keyword will have advantage in all S&S that requires movement: Explosive, Idols, Breakthrough, Ritual and etc. Also with the common action Free Loot, you can pressure opponent in a marker-heavy pool like Ley Lines, Dig Graves or Detonate Charge. My favorite scheme with Zipp is Take Prisoner. With Up We Go and the Pianos he can easily isolate any one of the enemy model, which makes Take Prisoner way more easy.

 

Talking about master that Zipp hates to see, my vote goes to Nekima. As mentioned above, Zipp relies on his Df trigger to stay alive, while Nekima can keep up with Zipp with Flight and multiple charging. Plus she ignores the Pianos and is immune to Zipp's melee, all make Nekima become the most counter to Zipp in the game. Other than her you may also need to be careful about models that can attack Zipp's Wp.

On the other hand, Zipp and his crew preform very well when facing shooting crew. With the concealment from Zipp and Iron Skeeter plus the cover from Pianos, projectile attack hardly hit your model. Also models with extra action and/or low Wp, like Arachnid Swarm, would never want to stay near Zipp. 

 

[Math Mathonwy]

Thank you so much both of you, so far! Very interesting insights! Some further questions/comments.

22 hours ago, Jesy Blue said:

Unless the opponent declares a marker heavy master (Titania, Kerias, Rena, Misaki, etc), I play one list: 

Do A Barrel Roll  (Bayou)

So I'm thinking that the list plays somewhat like a Colette list running circles around the opponent doing Schemes while Zipp and Emissary provide a distraction?

No First Mate? I've been playing him with Zoraida and he has always performed amazingly well.

Three Flying Piglets? Are they really that good? How do you use them? How do you keep them from dying an inglorious death when an opposing model looks at them funny? Do you simply team them up with Skeeters to basically extend the Skeeters' Scheming range to ridiculous lengths?

22 hours ago, Jesy Blue said:

If Its a condition heavy master (Pandora, Youko, Jack Daw, etc), I may swap in a wrastler or 2,  or Roja, for Toss in the Mud.
If marker heavy crew, I do some replacements with the wrestling faction:

ECW (Bayou)

Can you keep the Wrastlers alive against enemy attacks? They seem awfully squishy and that 0" melee range is such a giant weakness.

22 hours ago, Jesy Blue said:

Zipp excels vs Zorida.  Position yourself late turn 1 to be close to her, turn 2 charge her, and throw her away from her crew at least twice.  She’ll be too far away from things now to affect with her Obey and you can’t Obey Zipp, and his attack targets Size so her resistance trigger is of no use, plus with Boring conversation she or anyone else coming to help will waste more resources, and since Zorida will be in Zipp’s Sputtering Exhaust aura, people will have trouble helping her too!

What a fantastic guide against a specific Master! Love it!

Finally, a general question: who do you usually ferry with the Skeeters? And do you tend to form little tag-teams or is the ferrying more opportunistic in nature after the first turn?

20 hours ago, Rufess said:

Zipp is a controlling/disturbing master with high mobility. With Mv 8 and Flight, he easily becomes the fastest master in the game. As a control master, most of Zipp's abilities are to removing opponent's resources. Zipp has 2 aura that consume opponent's hands and cards when they take action, and both his melee and range attacks can move enemy around. And the Pianos, the signature of Zipp, can draw enemy's action to destroy or move around. The 12 Coffee upgrade can add another layer of control aura to Zipp that denial enemy from using bonus action. It is not always useful, but when it does, it does impact seriously.

My typical turn 1 move is to fly Zipp to the face of opponent's crew with the Boring Conversation popped in the 1st activation. If playing in Standard or Wedge Deployment, Zipp then should have spare action to throw out Pianos to block the bottleneck. Zipp will be focused by whole opponent's model and take hit for sure, but with stones and the Df trigger, he has high chance to survive the first turn. By drawing most of the attack into himself, Zipp lets his crew to do anything without being threaten.

Not only the first turn, I always consider if I can activate Zipp first in every turn. Boring Conversation is a great control aura that I always want to activate before most of enemy models activation. The Wp 10 duel may seems weak on the paper, but it has distributed a lot in every single game I played Zipp. Dropping Pianos is another main action of Zipp to me which I always takes in every Zipp's activation. Other than these 2, Zipp is quite free to do anythings in his activation. Half of his power comes from his passive aura, so he can just double walked are still impacting the board. I personally prefer his melee over range due to longer threat range and higher accuracy, but it is just the issue of favor.

That seems kinda suicidal but I suppose I'll have to just try it out in practice.

I do very much appreciate the in depth description!

20 hours ago, Rufess said:

Talking about master that Zipp hates to see, my vote goes to Nekima. As mentioned above, Zipp relies on his Df trigger to stay alive, while Nekima can keep up with Zipp with Flight and multiple charging. Plus she ignores the Pianos and is immune to Zipp's melee, all make Nekima become the most counter to Zipp in the game. Other than her you may also need to be careful about models that can attack Zipp's Wp.

On the other hand, Zipp and his crew preform very well when facing shooting crew. With the concealment from Zipp and Iron Skeeter plus the cover from Pianos, projectile attack hardly hit your model. Also models with extra action and/or low Wp, like Arachnid Swarm, would never want to stay near Zipp. 

Nekima is unfortunately in the same Faction as Zoraida but I suppose you need to weigh the chances when declaring Zipp against the Neverborn. And there's also the fact that Nekima can be a bit difficult pill to swallow for most of the Bayou Masters.

The note about the Arachnid Swarm is great!

[Jesy Blue]

Do A Barrel Roll is a loose list, there is no pattern.  with it I'm able to pick and choose what I can and need to do every game.  sometimes Zipp is the distraction, sometimes he's the heavy, sometimes he's support, sometimes he's backfield; it is flexible.

Flying Piglets are supposed to die... in the right place for scheming.  they are 3 souk stine flying non-Insignificant models that drop a scheme marker when they die... they can do most schemes.  they can hold up their forces nearly anything, detonate charges the model that killed them, Breakthrough/Search the Ruins die & score, die on the center line for Harness, set up Dig Their Graves on the model that killed them, maneuverable enough to Take Prisoner, Power Ritual dying in the corners.... and in a pinch, you can kill them yourself at range to get that scheme marker down!

Skeeter often ferry piglets... gets them where they need to be faster, yes.  Earl sticks with Merris typically; getting those pianos from 2 vectors.  Some tables are not conducive for the Emissary, so I will drop him for other things based on the situation:  Gluttony, Big Brain Brim, and yes The First Mate once in a while.... I just find him meh in my play style.

Wrestlers typically being used against marker or condition crews typically don't have a lot of non-condition ranged attacks, and staying in the shadow of Sputtering Exhaust helps.

[Mxbedlam]

My go to ZIpp list is pretty elite:

Zipp (12 cups)

Earl

Mancha

First Mate

Gracie

Merris

Skeeter

[wizuriel]

I also tend to like elite Zipp lists (helps to use pass tokens to drop pianos).

usual list is something like

Zipp + 12 cups of coffee

earl

first mate

merris

whiskey golem

slop hauler

war pig + inferiority complex

slowest thing in this list moves 12" a turn

 

usually change warpig to Mancha if against marker heavy crews. If I think going be facing an obey master usually use a very different list. 

[Math Mathonwy]

@Jesy Blue Thank you so much for the in depth explanation! Also, sounds like a very skill intensive list with lots of decisions points and ones that change heavily from game to game, which is certainly always fun.

Very cool to see these very different lists! But I can easily see Zipp slotting into various playstyles as funneling the enemy through pianos can be exploited by fast Schemers and fast beaters just as well (though for a very different feel and playstyle, naturally). Elite list special Zipp advantage of Pass Tokens is certainly a cool note.

@wizuriel Slop Hauler + War Pig with Inferiority Complex OOK is rather an expensive pair - are they worth it? How do you normally use them?

[wizuriel]

3 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

 

Slop Hauler + War Pig with Inferiority Complex OOK is rather an expensive pair - are they worth it? How do you normally use them?

They are expensive, but also very flexible (as long as the opponent doesn't target WP). With reckless the 2 can move 18" up the board in a turn and gain focus (and the slop hauler can heal that 1 damage and focus for T2). If something costs under 9SS with Bully the War Pig can easy get extra attacks if they group up, heals or ignore armor on a min 3 stat 6 attack. 

with the speed of my crew and the amount of fast heavy beaters I can usually choose my fights forcing my opponent to react.

 

threat ranges

warpig 18" (needs to reckless)

golem 16" 

Zipp 26"

first mate: 19" (needs to use leap)

Merris: 14"

 

[Sol_Sorrowsong]

On 2/24/2020 at 5:58 PM, Rufess said:

Boring Conversation is a great control aura that I always want to activate before most of enemy models activation.

What is the order of Chatty and Boring Conversation, or is it up to the opponent?

[Adran]

13 minutes ago, Sol_Sorrowsong said:

What is the order of Chatty and Boring Conversation, or is it up to the opponent?

Boring conversation is when you declare the action, Chatty is you must discard to take the action.

Take is the whole process, so you have to discard the card to take an interact action. Then when you declare the action (which is the first part of taking an action) you have to pass the duel.

Discard, and then take the duel

[Rufess]

I had never think of the other. Basically no opponent's had even took Interaction Action within Zipp's aura.

[FredSpaghett]

We've drawn Public enemies and a very killy schemepool for our next game. 

How would you guys make a killy Zipp list? 

I was thinking something like:

 

Killy Zipp (Public Enemies) (Bayou)
Size: 50 - Pool: 9
Leader:
  Captain Zipp
    Twelve Cups of Coffee
Totem(s):
  Earl Burns
Hires:
  Mancha Roja
  Gracie
  Lucky Emissary
  Whiskey Golem
 

 

What is everyone's thoughts on Zipp with a killy crew ?

[touchdown]

He's not super killy but he is super survivable so I'd consider bringing the First Mate. What faction is your opponent? Ranged armor piercing will give the Whiskey Golem a bad day if your opponent expects it.

[FredSpaghett]

Opponent is bringing Misaki. 

How would you go about making a lidt for public enemies with zipp then? 

 

If he brings a thunder archer I would make sure to either lock it down with zip or go nuts on it with Emissary. 

[Jesy Blue]

Killy Scenario (Bayou)
Size: 50 - Pool: 3
Leader:
  Captain Zipp
    Twelve Cups of Coffee
Totem(s):
  Earl Burns
Hires:
  Mancha Roja
  The First Mate
  Lucky Emissary
  Iron Skeeter
  Iron Skeeter 2
    Two Gremlins in a Ghillie Suit

 

[FredSpaghett]

2 minutes ago, Jesy Blue said:

Killy Scenario (Bayou)
Size: 50 - Pool: 3
Leader:
  Captain Zipp
    Twelve Cups of Coffee
Totem(s):
  Earl Burns
Hires:
  Mancha Roja
  The First Mate
  Lucky Emissary
  Iron Skeeter
  Iron Skeeter 2
    Two Gremlins in a Ghillie Suit

 

Thanks. How do you use and take advantage of the skeeters in a killy strat and schemes? 

Can you give a few examples? 

[touchdown]

iron skeeters might be more vulnerable than normal against Misaki as archers and snipers ignore concealment

[Jesy Blue]

Skeeter without upgrade screens for Skeeter with upgrade; Skeeter with upgrade will get 2 uses of Fly With Me actions on Roja to get him up field.

There are only 2 Archers, it's unlikely to take both of them out that quickly.

[SEV]

You can also bring Spark ook (+ porkshop in some case). He'll give a little more durability to your construct and more importantly put bombs in the belly of your expandable models. Than fling them at your opponent face. 

[Scoffer]

6 hours ago, SEV said:

You can also bring Spark ook (+ porkshop in some case). He'll give a little more durability to your construct and more importantly put bombs in the belly of your expandable models. Than fling them at your opponent face. 

It's very important to keep in mind, that Packed with explosives is a non-melee attack action and therefore suffers [-] from concealment even when you target friendly models. Be careful with concealing auras of Zipp and Skeeters.