Advice for balanced opposing crew to Mah Tucket

[TheNamelessOne]

Hi everybody,

 

I am a long time lurker, first time poster in these  forums. Although I discovered Malifaux already some years ago - and have been thrilled by the fantastic miniatures as well as the unique fluff/background ever since - my gaming experience is very limited, in particular since third edition has been released. 

 

Now, since I finally could convince my wife to give Malifaux a try, I thought to introduce her to the game with the help of "Tricksy McGee's Malifaux Mayhem" which I have found here at a different subforum some time ago. My wife chose the Mah Tucket Crew box as her starting point and I would like to ask the experienced players for a balanced opposing crew. Since I got a little nuts about the beautiful miniatures produced by Wyrd, I have quite a large number of crew boxes to choose from:

•  Nellie Cochrane
•  Sonnia Criid
•  Pandora
•  Lucas McCabe
•  Mei Feng
•  Catelin Abernathy (aka Hamelin)
•  the Viktorias
•  Tara

The idea is to use just the miniatures from Mah Tucket's crew box and one of the above crew boxes - no additional miniatures, no matter how reasonable - in a step-by-step way, starting with the identical minions first, then adding the henchman and finally playing with the complete crew box.  What do the Gremlin experts think? Which of the above crews is a balanced choice against Mah Tucket - preferably giving a slight advantage to the Gremlin crew 😉?

(I am almost sure not to take Pandora's crew because of the Incorporeal ability of the Sorrows which makes the Pit traps markers of the Bushwhackers quite useless…)

Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom with a clueless!

[muraki]

It's hard to find an exact match (in my mind) with what you have. But in general if you wanna give your opponent a bit of a boost v you, I'd go for cheaper models at the station on your side. Is an easy way of making things a bit unbalanced.

In general I'd think McCabe would be a good match up, wastels also have the melee + shoot options that bushwackers have (and are 5 SS to 6). And the masters are both mobile with some support option.  The henchmen are a bit diff as Trixie is more support than sidir. But you can always choose not to rock face with him.

Mei could also be a good option but I don't play her, so can't really tell. Viks are also a possibility, but as they're a lot for a new person to counter I'd stay a bit more support focused to start.

[Thatguy]

Mei might be a bit rough with her rude the rails, her crew will avoid a lot of pit shenanigans. I don't recall what's in her box though.

My vote would probably be Lucas and Sonnia, both pretty straight forward crews.

[TheNamelessOne]

Hi, 

Thank you both for the feedback! So, I am confined to McCabe and Sonnia right now, leaning more towards McCabe as he seems to have a more similar playstyle to Mah Tucket. 

[Adran]

Looking at your list, I would suggest Viks, as a mobile melee crew, they will have to move to engage, so making use of the pit traps.

That said most of the crews are not going to be too overpowered, especially if you do things like don't hire a largely incorporeal crew just because you can

[TheNamelessOne]

Thank you Adran for your Input!

I am not sure whether 3 Ronin vs 3 Bushwhackers (and adding the respective Hench(wo)men later) is in favor of the Outcast Crew, though. Being able to deal more damage and to "counter" the pit traps with Battle Tempo and On the Move seems to have a huge impact at this small gaming size, imho.

[Adran]

I did miss that you only had crew boxes, but that' migt not be a problem

I wouldn't say that battle tempo and always on the move countered pit traps that much. Yes they do mean that the ronin will probably be able to arrange her attacks to not happen inside the terrain, those movements will set the terrain off themselves. And they do mean that if the ronin was going for a maximum movement turn it could set off pit traps 4 times, once in battle tempo, once in on the move and then once on each walk action.  The ronin does more melee damage, but the bushwackers do more ranged, and careful use of scamper might allow you to counter flurry. 

You are possibly right, if not used well the bushwackers will be out performed, and it might take some time to learn the movement tricks tricksy need to survive the fight.