RCT 10: Facing Arcanists.

[Maniacal_cackle]

For our Community thread this time, we're going to take a detailed look at what to do when facing Arcanists! As always, this thread is intended for new and experienced players alike. Share your insights, share your questions, and let's all get better together!

Some questions to get the discussion rolling, but feel free to add your own.

1. Your opponent has declared Arcanists and you've declared Ressers - what are you thinking as you pick which master to declare?
2. What do you do about master X, Y, or Z?
3. Are there masters that are particularly brutal against our faction?
4. Are there some rough matchups we should be aware of?
5. Are there some good matchups we should try to capitalise on?

Some of this is going to be pool-specific, but let's try to pull out some general advice for Arcanists and some specific advice for specific matchups.

Bonus points: If you're playing against Arcanists this week, please post here about it! Would be great to get some real world examples into the thread.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Against keyword Kaeris or Rasputina, I've found Molly to be pretty nuts. She can remove any annoying markers, turning them into an advantage by drawing cards. Archie being immune to conditions can be quite brutal, and the discard for Rasputina's pillars hurts Molly's crew less than others (and in some cases I intentionally set it up for extra Fading).

Bone Piles are another great condition-immune option, and I assume their condition removal helps too. A nurse could do the same.

[HomelessOne]

I think the Mecharachnid is a (Versatile!) Minion that Ressers should be particularly wary of, as Precise ignores Hard to Wound and Hard to Kill and it has an Onslaught trigger.

[Maniacal_cackle]

6 minutes ago, HomelessOne said:

I think the Mecharachnid is a (Versatile!) Minion that Ressers should be particularly wary of, as Precise ignores Hard to Wound and Hard to Kill and it has an Onslaught trigger.

Good point!

We can take it down with McMourning, irreducible damage, or student of steel?

Armor 2, 5 health means negating its armor should make it trivial to kill.

[HomelessOne]

Yep.

Versus Ressers I will consider the Soulstone Cache upgrade. That spider becomes a hefty 8ss investment but it can really start snowballing if you don't out-maneuver it. It now gets to use Soulstones defensively or to Onslaught at will, and Recharge Soulstone only requires an enemy model (rather than a Living one) die to recoup the expense. It pairs really well with the Mecharachnid's Creative Salvage ability, which causes enemy models it kills to also drop a scrap marker, and its free action Temporary Limb that gives it a + to its duels in exchange for eating a scheme or scrap marker.

It's hardly the end-all be-all, but it can even cut clean through Transmortis models if you approach it carelessly.

[Maniacal_cackle]

True! In general Arcanists have a lot of Armor/other damage reduction + Soulstone cache combos that can be difficult for us to crack, as we don't have much irreducible damage. In general we have to tackle each reduction by type.

Although our Effigy/Emissary can shut down soulstones!

So it's possible to have a combo to shut down their reduction combos xD

[Wyamphri]

I think Reva is also good against Kaeris as I find the injured to not be as big of a deal in ressers since most of the time we getting hit anyways 😛

Jack Daw realllllllly craps on Toni and her crews mechanic as you often target Mv instead of Df/Wp.

Mcmourning/ Seamus is pretty good against Hoffman as you either ignore armor or have a cannon xD 

[dannydb]

2 hours ago, Wyamphri said:

I think Reva is also good against Kaeris as I find the injured to not be as big of a deal in ressers since most of the time we getting hit anyways 😛

Jack Daw realllllllly craps on Toni and her crews mechanic as you often target Mv instead of Df/Wp.

Mcmourning/ Seamus is pretty good against Hoffman as you either ignore armor or have a cannon xD 

I think your overestimating ressers advantages in all these match ups 

 

Injured is great vs anyone regardless of how low your stats are as it still increases are chances to kill you, plus kaeris and totem can manipulate where the pyre markers and get more benefits out of them than reva does 

 

Yes Jack ignores a lot of toni's defensive tech, but also toni more reliable passes terror with positives to wp duels a lot of time. 

 

Yes mcmoring is good vs armour for him vs Hoffman but that's the only model in keyword and mcmoring is still going to be generally outhealed by hoff or have his precise ignored 

 

Armour vs seamus is also great especially when stacked with the captain (or snowstorms I guess) anti gun damage ability (which I've forgot the name off) sure seamus you spend two severs do do 4 damage to me and then I'll just heal my big stompy bots up with hoff and Co for minimal resorces) 

[Maniacal_cackle]

29 minutes ago, dannydb said:

I think your overestimating ressers advantages in all these match ups 

 

Injured is great vs anyone regardless of how low your stats are as it still increases are chances to kill you, plus kaeris and totem can manipulate where the pyre markers and get more benefits out of them than reva does 

 

I've heard several different people say that Reva is favoured against Kaeris (though they may be talking keyword games).

Reva can pivot away from burning-based strategies quite easily, whereas Kaeris can struggle to turn it off. So Kaeris can accidentally power up Reva's crew while Reva focuses on different synergies.

The threat range of Reva can be a serious issue as well. Reva can single-activation Elijah from ~18 inches away for example.

That said, I've heard it can be a hard-fought matchup, so not exactly a massive gap.

[Sagrit]

Quote

Are there masters that are particularly brutal against our faction?

I would say - be aware of Mechanical Rider, not masters. This guy win games. Soulstone Cache is really strong faction upgrade.

[dannydb]

I don't think there are any particular arcanists that hard counter ressers just certain models

 

Mech rider is great for lots of reasons, card draw, stuffing the deck full of severes and reactivating models 
Mecharachnids have precise, and can fairly easy get positives to hit to make molly cry 

Captain and snowstorm have middle of the storm to make seamus hit less hard and most models have armour or some other kind of damage reduction, very few of them rely on hard to wound as there df tech so that can be an issue 

 

Raspy, Joss Rider and Borgmann are all good ruthless models which can hurt terrorfying, where as M&SU's unionised can also reliably get round it. alternatively Willy can do some real hard hitting shockwaves 

Envy,effigy, Scorpius and oxford mages all have ways of making poison bad for experimental models

 

 Howard and SS miners stop resistance triggers to hurt riders

 

All the Golems, Howard, The Emissary, Elijah, Cerberus are all Min 3 to do lots of damage despite hard to wound

[Paddywhack]

4 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Reva can pivot away from burning-based strategies quite easily, whereas Kaeris can struggle to turn it off. So Kaeris can accidentally power up Reva's crew while Reva focuses on different synergies.

Seems like it would be a swingy, but fun match up. In keyword:

• Both have access to Embrace the Flame (Kaeris wins this though as she can take 3 cheap minions with it while Reva can only cast it twice)
• Both have access to Draw Off Flame (2 Draugr vs 1 Fire Golem)
• Both masters get a + from Burning, but Kaeris only if it on her. Reva can pull from any friendly nearby
• Kaeris gets better use of Pyres as she can push them and cause a duel for 2dmg, plus whatever effect
• Both hava Blaze of Glory (3 Firebranded vs 2 Draugr - Draugr can hit harder, but only in melee - Firebranded can shoot from range)

I think it bends in Kaeris's favor as she has more cheap but effective models (Fire gamin, Firebranded) and a good tough beater in the Fire Golem. Reva can be a good beater herself and has some range, but feels more fragile than Kaeris if you can get to her. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

2 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

 

I think it bends in Kaeris's favor as she has more cheap but effective models (Fire gamin, Firebranded) and a good tough beater in the Fire Golem. 

Just note Reva can pull off all the flame from any model with her bonus action. So the Fire Golem can go from tough to dead very quickly.

The fact that Reva can explode fire markers (often with a minus flip for the WP duel) may also be a major factor.

[Paddywhack]

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Just note Reva can pull off all the flame from any model with her bonus action. So the Fire Golem can go from tough to dead very quickly.

The fact that Reva can explode fire markers (often with a minus flip for the WP duel) may also be a major factor.

Yep, but FireBranded have the same Bonus action, so Reva and her crew will face the same issues. Reva and Draugr without Burning can fold pretty quick.

Her Pyre Attack is pretty good and Kaeris' crew will like to stay near them, so definitely a thing to consider. 

[Speedguyjp]

9 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I've heard several different people say that Reva is favoured against Kaeris (though they may be talking keyword games).

Reva can pivot away from burning-based strategies quite easily, whereas Kaeris can struggle to turn it off. So Kaeris can accidentally power up Reva's crew while Reva focuses on different synergies.

The threat range of Reva can be a serious issue as well. Reva can single-activation Elijah from ~18 inches away for example.

That said, I've heard it can be a hard-fought matchup, so not exactly a massive gap.

I’ve played Reva into Kaeris 5 or so times and I’m 4-1 in those matchups (regular games, not keyword only). In general the matchup favors Reva. The injured hurts but the negative tends to be Offset by the shielding. 

[Speedguyjp]

I’m playing against arcanists tomorrow! Not sure who he will bring because he hasn’t declared yet. Usually brings Colette, Kaeris, Mei Feng, or Marcus. Will post follow up when he’s declared

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 minute ago, Speedguyjp said:

I’m playing against arcanists tomorrow! Not sure who he will bring because he hasn’t declared yet. Usually brings Colette, Kaeris, Mei Feng, or Marcus. Will post follow up when he’s declared

 

Awesome, would love to hear about it however it goes!

[Speedguyjp]

8 minutes ago, Speedguyjp said:

I’m playing against arcanists tomorrow! Not sure who he will bring because he hasn’t declared yet. Usually brings Colette, Kaeris, Mei Feng, or Marcus. Will post follow up when he’s declared

 

Corner, corrupted ley lines, breakthrough, assassinate, martyrs, leave your mark, spread them out

I’m going to give Seamus a spin I think

 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

6 minutes ago, Speedguyjp said:

Corner, corrupted ley lines, breakthrough, assassinate, martyrs, leave your mark, spread them out

I’m going to give Seamus a spin I think

 

 

Awesome Do you play that Seamus can teleport to/from the markers?

[Mycellanious]

From an Arcanist perspective, something that should not be ignored is that Arcanists have ways of reliably getting double positives to the damage flip to punch through Hard to Wound.  I like Marcus into Ressers because he can take Cojo, who can easily obtain a triple positive to the damage flip from Charge Through, Bonus Action Focus, and Puncture (plus Wp7). While Cojo is uniquely strong, remember that any Arcanist Construct can easily obtain a double positive from Focus and the Diesel Engine upgrade. 

[Paddywhack]

Seems like a lot of people are mentioning the Mech Rider (for good reason). So does anyone have a good way of dealing with it? Anything that works well for you?

When I hear Arcanists I like to try and bring something to help with armour, as they seem to have a lot of it. I used to favor Shikome, but now that she has to kill something first to get her auto-trigger I'm less inclined. Student of Steel is always good and has other uses as well. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

30 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Seems like a lot of people are mentioning the Mech Rider (for good reason). So does anyone have a good way of dealing with it? Anything that works well for you?

The common local wisdom is the riders are invincible and broken 😜

But on a more serious note, here's some tips that apply generally to taking down riders:

• Irreducible damage (Molly/Ikiryo) of course.
• Stunned forces them to either activate or die (and so is especially effective if tacked on at the end of turn for the next turn). Also means an activation where they lose 1/3 of their actions.
• Ping damage x9 (not that ressers are that great at ping, but Vengeance for Urami is pretty cool).
• Poke (if you just keep hitting them enough they use up all their tokens, their threat potential diminishes significantly for the first few turns).
• Red Jokers - since they have to declare triggers before seeing your damage flip, it helps to flip the Red Joker. Practical application: if you have 20 cards in your deck and haven't flipped the red joker yet, consider smashing their rider. There's a decent chance you'll flip the red joker on either the attack or damage flip (opposite logic applies to black joker).
• Shutting down soulstone reduction (Emissary, Efficy, Machine) can help with their attuned upgrade.
• Forcing them to spend actions moving can be a pain (they can't use both their ultimate and ride with me).

EDIT: Note if you don't use the stun, it effectively does nothing though. Just means they save tokens for the next activation.

And I'm sure there's much more!

30 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

When I hear Arcanists I like to try and bring something to help with armour, as they seem to have a lot of it. I used to favor Shikome, but now that she has to kill something first to get her auto-trigger I'm less inclined. Student of Steel is always good and has other uses as well. 

Yeah, this I think is probably a weak area of Ressers (and helps explain why Plaag the Arcanist thinks ressers are weak). But we're not completely helpless:

• Irreducible damage.
• Ping damage
• Armor pen (McMourning as a second master, Student of Steel)
• And this one is really useful: strand their models somewhere. High armor models tend to not be very mobile. If you come across such a model, consider using a model to just dump it into the middle of severe terrain somewhere and then abandoning it to be useless for a while.

In all cases: have a plan for their healling. No sense grinding an armored, soulstoned model down to 3 health and then letting it get healed back to full.

[Stumpyfjord]

Attacking a non Def stat also is good against them. Tormented does plenty of MV attacks and there is a variety of WP attacks as well.

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 hour ago, Stumpyfjord said:

Attacking a non Def stat also is good against them. Tormented does plenty of MV attacks and there is a variety of WP attacks as well.

I always forget you can't use it against Willpower attacks! Hope I haven't been cheating my opponents...

[Plaag]

On 9/18/2020 at 10:45 AM, Wyamphri said:

I think Reva is also good against Kaeris as I find the injured to not be as big of a deal in ressers since most of the time we getting hit anyways 😛

Jack Daw realllllllly craps on Toni and her crews mechanic as you often target Mv instead of Df/Wp.

Mcmourning/ Seamus is pretty good against Hoffman as you either ignore armor or have a cannon xD 

kaeris vs reva, funny) stand on your pyre, take injured))) kaeris destroyes reva