Lucius’ hand drain.

[Regelridderen]

I want to put Lucius on the table and completely drain my opponents hand. How would you suggest, I should go about it?

[eddy]

Start with Dr. Grimwell

[Regelridderen]

1 hour ago, eddy said:

Start with Dr. Grimwell

For sure, but how to procede?

[Dark Reaper]

Grimwell, Agent, Investigator, Reid, Lawyer. Make sure to get use of Scribe's betrayal aura. Quite a lot of discard effects between the 5 of them.

[eddy]

Alans aura is crazy card drain

[Regelridderen]

On 7/30/2020 at 3:50 PM, Dark Reaper said:

Grimwell, Agent, Investigator, Reid, Lawyer. Make sure to get use of Scribe's betrayal aura. Quite a lot of discard effects between the 5 of them.

I was wondering, what’s your take on Doppleganger vs 46 in a crew like this?

[Maniacal_cackle]

You probably want some payoff as well. Agent and Reid are going to need lots of soulstones and obeys to make sure they are ready to spam executes when the opponent is vulnerable. So might round out the rest of the crew with that.

Doppleganger will struggle to execute, but could be neat.

That said, I only vaguely know the crew from a Neverborn perspective!

[Dark Reaper]

23 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

I was wondering, what’s your take on Doppleganger vs 46 in a crew like this?

46 is necessary for your hand drain to actually result in something. Get him LLC, put shielded on him from the Lawyer, and he can survive for a little while as he is a SS user. Due to inhuman psychology, every middling crow is a possible execute. The doppelganger has quite a bit of utility, but this isn't the list for her.

[Ogid]

If it fits the list SS-wise 1 FW can also be a good addition; between Distraction (Wp attacks) and Tell no Lies (Df attacks) he can deny a lot of cheating and ensure most attacks will succeed. Also False Claim is very useful, not only for scoring but also to give the Investigator some mobility (or mess with other positioning thanks to his aura) and get extra cards.

[4thstringer]

6 hours ago, Dark Reaper said:

46 is necessary for your hand drain to actually result in something. Get him LLC, put shielded on him from the Lawyer, and he can survive for a little while as he is a SS user. Due to inhuman psychology, every middling crow is a possible execute. The doppelganger has quite a bit of utility, but this isn't the list for her.

I actually think Alan Reid is the better hand drain option. If you are trying to get execute kills, his garrote is just as good as agent 46 knives.  And his twin distract and boring conversation auras can be devastating, especially with either the scribes aura or an empty hand.

A newsie combined with a lawyer can force some nice discards too.

[4thstringer]

Its not lucius, but this is the hand drain Nellie crew I'm champing at the bit to try.

 

[Alerteddonkey42]

Has the rifleman in a Lucius crew with Dopple and Agent 46 fallen out of favor? I tried it recently and it seemed pretty good. This is the list I tried:

Lucius

The Scribe

Doppleganger

Agent 46

-lead-lined coat

Rifleman

Guild Lawyer

Guild Lawyer

Changeling

8ss cache

The crew had enough card draw that I could fish for crows and get a ton of executes off in a turn. Once you drain the opponent's hand, even low crows can threaten an execute.  It's not a super mobile crew (though you may be surprised given the number of obeys). It worked for the pool we had and I wanted to try out the concept. I do actually think Alan Reid is a great option for hand drain, but I'd set up the crew a little differently. I played against Ulix which worked out well because his crew has a lot of TN's and my opponent had to choose between getting abilities off or stopping executes. I think I only really needed one lawyer (especially with the high TN on their obey) but I'm not sure what to replace it with. You could add in Alan and go down to a 6ss cache, but I liked the 8ss cache because I had the resources to stone for damage or crows (for execute with Agent 46) if needed. 

Bare in mind that my opponent and I were both new to our respective crews (I hadn't played Lucius in 3e and he only had a few games on Ulix). 

[Regelridderen]

Well I tried it out, and it was... not a big success.
 

Strat was Recover Evidence with Wedge

Schemes were Vendetta, Assassinate, Hidden Martyrs, Sabotage and Research Mission

I tried to make it simple :

Lucius, Scribe, Alan Reid, Grimwell, 2x Investigators, 2x Lawyers - Assassinate and Hidden Martyrs, 7 stones

My opponent dished up with : 

Shenlong, 2 Broom boys, 2 wandering river monks, fuhatsu (trained Ninja), samurai (trained Ninja), tanuki, Huckster - Sabotage, Assassinate, 6 stones.

 -

So I learned a lot from a lot of mistakes. I had big trouble bringing all my muscle to bear, as they were getting in the way of each other. It was hard to rely on getting staggered to secure min3 damage, when my opponent had a lot of condition removal, and I had few sources of Staggered. 

My timing was off, its important for Grimwell to go early to profit from his hand drain, but this also requires staggered to go on the Target for the built-in Crow.

The crew really needs an anchor. Everything is made of wet toilet paper - although my opponent flipped nothing but severes for damage, so that didn’t make it easier.

[Ogid]

I haven't tested this kind of hand attack lists with Lucius (in NVB tho) yet; but it looks quite hard to play and very oponent dependent.

For the next game you want to try this list, you could consider adding some Lures to your list to bring good targets into your bubble (Dopple/Hina?). It's the same strategy than Youko use, bring some low Wp poor bastard into your crew (bonus point if he is under a distraction aura), use him to destroy his crew's hand and then punish the other crew for having no cards.

[Adran]

14 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

Well I tried it out, and it was... not a big success.

 

Have you considered it was  a bad match up?  Monk with the Chi Mechanic probably have less hand reliance than a lot of crews, and Samurai and Fuhatsu are both attacking with positives (At least on their guns) so also less hand reliant.

Anything that is based on hand drain is going to be quite tricky to get the timing, you need to spend the front of the turn burning the hand, and then need to tray and make use of the empty hand. Getting the crew to balance that pond is going to be tricky. Things like Lobotomy are going to be hard to pull off if they have a large hand, because they are going to cheat highly for it.

But things like Interrogate are only going to be of use if they still have a hand.

 

Given time you are probably best building a list that entirely focuses on removing their hand, and then slowly cutting it back until you are at the level you are consistently removing the hand fairly early, but still have things to do once they have no hand.  But that will probably require a lot of game time (and you will want to be able to adapt the composition as some crews have more access to card draw than others, so will have different "sweet spots").

 

[Regelridderen]

@Adran it was definitely a bad matchup, also it was my first time going against Shenlong (a seasoned player), with a crew I never used before, in a strat I’d never played. I wasn’t counting on winning anything, only to learn from my mistakes.

[extremor]

I tried a similar aproach in NVB Lucius. The things I learned back then:

1. you like to activate Lucius early for his misinformation and therefor such a List has to be played differently from „regular Lucius“. 
2. you want multiple sources of staggered to get all those buffs...

3. you like to keep alan and scribe close to each other for their auras are awesome. Therefor avoid AoE damage. 
4. this kind of list only works on some opponents... Some masters or effects are hard counters