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Question about NB v Outcasts


Marc Bowling

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Hello everyone,

 

So for my first post I would like to ask a question about Nevernorn versus Outcasts. Where I live it is only my best bud and I that play Malifaux. I main NB and he mains Outcasts. 

 

We are pretty evenly matched it seems skill wise. Out of 10 games I am 2-2-6 (losing 60% of the time sounds better than saying I've only won twice!) with most of those being within 1-2 points. My 2 wins were with Dreamer and 1 of the ties was Titania (other tie being McMourning (I dabble in Ressers)). I've lost with Zoraida and Titania (and haven't played Euri, Dora, Marcus, Lucius or the God Empress yet).

What are thoughts about this match up of NB versus Outcasts in general? Any hints or pitfalls I can avoid?

His 3 crews he has played are Viks, The God King (Leve), and Parker. 

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He is pretty aggressive but is very good at seeing where he should move. He is imo a better player than me. I tend to go on the defense and then let bloodlust take over which I am trying to fix. The 2 games I won with dreamer I was much better at positioning rather than beatdown.

 

I think one of my main problems is trying to take scheme market schemes instead of interactive schemes. Last game against parker I took take prisoner against Sue and Assassinate. If we had finished I would have scored all 4 points. 

He tends to stay in keyword with 1 or 2 versatile (usually miner and effigy to grow into emissary). 

 

For example with Viks he will being Bishop, Deed, Hans, and Midnight stalker. Slot lit bishop or MS for more Ronin here and there. 

Leve he brings Alyce, Marlena, AnD, Hans, Necropunks for scheme runners. 

His 1 game with parker (my 2nd with dreamer) that I won against he brought mad dog, 2 dead outlaws, sue, malifaux child, prospector,bandido.

I tend to deploy terribly and play a poor turn 1. I just tend to not have any clue where I should put my dudes and how I should start. I do better at reacting. 

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23 minutes ago, Marc Bowling said:

I tend to deploy terribly and play a poor turn 1. I just tend to not have any clue where I should put my dudes and how I should start. I do better at reacting. 

Sounds like some focus on the fundamentals could be good (and possibly focusing on fewer crews, depending on how many games you play). I often say it takes at least 10-20 games to properly learn a crew. So rather than focusing on Neverborn vs. Outcasts, sounds like at this stage just focusing on the fundamentals might be a good idea.

Each crew deploys very differently (Pandora has a lot of synergies that need to bunch up, and Dreamer's stuff needs to cover the board but be near the daydreams, etc). And that is also influenced by the deployment type & strategy pool. So practice, practice, practice.

Can you give a strategy pool where you have felt a bit lost as to how to start out?

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It sounds like you might want to focus on Dreamer for a few games.  Really try to reduce how often your models activate without a plan.  If you don't really care what a model does, that's an indication that a misplay was potentially made at some point.  Because the number of activations you get in a Malifaux game are actually quite restrictive.  So any time you're like "well, I'll just walk and focus" because you have nothing better to do, that is often (though not always) a sign that the model is out of position, poorly deployed, etc.  This isn't to say walking and focusing is wrong.  It's not.  There are many times it is the right play.  For instance, if you're trying to control the distance between models, if you're focusing in expectation of a specific pay off, etc.  It's when you do it because you don't have any other idea that there may be a misplay.

There is a school of thought that whoever walks least is more likely to win, because that leaves them with more actions to do other things.  Obviously such a brightline rule isn't going to hold, and the people who express such thoughts don't mean it to such an extreme.  But the point is that learning how to control where the interactions occur, and who had to spend more actions to get there, is an important skill.

Finally, my last piece of advice would be to minimize how often you offer models up for "free."  Try to always have some kind of defense for everything, whether it's inherent in the model, terrain features, friendly fire penalties, even just plain distance.  Anything you can do to increase the investment required to impact your models is going to be helpful.

Now, I should say that I am not talking as a top tier player.  But these little things have helped me improve, so hopefully they might be of some use to you too!

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The advice I am going to give is more of a general view rather than specifics for Neverborn Vs Outcast. 

Have a plan. You don't have to follow it rigidly, in fact its better to be able to adapt, but you should have an idea why you hired each model in your crew, and what their ideal role is in the game, as well as a second role for them.   You want to have at least 1 idea how you're going to score your points, and ideally a back up incase that one goes wrong. At this stage you might also want to think about ways you are planning on denying the opponent points. You don't know how he is going to score half them yet, so learning to deny schemes is harder, but you know what he needs to do for the strategy. 

Remember killing doesn't earn you points. (Obviously except when it does, such as assassinate, vendetta etc). I have lost games because I went and choose to kill a model instead of using it to earn a point. If you start an activation and haven't got a fixed plan, the first question should probably "how can I score points?" Followed by "How can I deny points?" And only after you have been through those two should yo uget down to the "well what can I kill?" (Although killing something might be the answer to one of the earlier questions).

I've not yet managed it in M3, but in both the previous editions of the game I have won games despite not having had a model left on the table, and sometimes without killing any of my enemies crew. 

You might find that playing a smaller selection of models lowers your cognitive load as you are learning. (You might not, I learn playing a wide number of crews, but my main opponent learnt largely playing 1 crew, so it depends on you). It can let you get a quicker idea of what your models can and can't do, and help you to know when you need a back up plan or not. 

 

Neverborn are currently without an obvious "scheme runner" (model that is clearly best at just dropping scheme markers). There are plenty of models that can run schemes, but most of them can be doing other things as well.  That's not a problem, but it is something you might need to bear in mind when you are hiring and planning. It does make it a little harder to do scheme marker schemes because you don't just have a model like a necropunk, who is very good at just going and dropping markers, you have to use something else that could be doing something else, so you have to choose when its best for those models to drop markers, rather than do what ever else they can do. 

 

Good luck

 

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Adran's point about roles is a good one. For example, with this list on something like Turf War and Claim jump from last season... (Turf war is similar to corrupted ley lines)

New The Dreamer Crew (Neverborn)
Size: 50 - Pool: 7
Leader:
  The Dreamer
Totem(s):
  Lord Chompy Bits
Hires:
  Teddy
  Widow Weaver
  Serena Bowman
  Bandersnatch
  Daydream
    Ancient Pact
  Daydream 2
    Ancient Pact
 

My roles would be:

Lord Chompy Bits (primary: scheme denial. Secondary: beater. Tertiary: scheme/strategy runner).

Teddy (primary: centre control beater, secondary peeler, tertiary schemer)

Serena: (primary claim jump, secondary beater, tertiary healer, fourth schemer)

Spiders: (primary strategy scorers, secondary scheme scorers, tertiary peelers/obstacles/tar pits)

Daydreams (utility, claim jump repositioning)

 

It has been a while since I've played Dreamer (was back in last season), but as you can see in this sample scenario I don't even have anything assigned to killing as its main goal. Killing often happens, but that plays a supportive role to the models running around doing their roles.

I also assign every (significant) model at least a tertiary role of scheming. Models exist to score points, after all!

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So for example, 2 games ago it was Viks v Zoraida and I most 5 to 3 strat CLL. Wedge deployment. Claim jump, hidden martyrs, catch and release,break through, assassinate. I took hidden martyrs on a bokors and wicked doll as well as catch and release.

 

My list was 2 silurids, grootslang,bokors, first mate, wicked doll. I took hidden martyrs on wicked doll and bokors. 

 

Right out of the gate I made a huge tactical error. I through GS up the middle and got him killed early turn 2. I rallied a but by killing his bishop with miss deed and then started to control the board. Midnight stalker got into my backfield and due to very clever positioning I just couldn't get to him.

 

Another fatal flaw was almost ignoring the strategy and letting bloodlust get to me. I then forgot who had the stone and moved the wrong models. The nail in the coffin was doing something really stupid and engaging the wicked doll and losing the 2nd point of hidden martyrs. 

 

I kind of answer my own questions a lot here but 1) conversation about malifaux natives is always good and 2) just wanting to get a conversation going that may bring ideas I haven't thought of. 

 

I do crew hop a lot yet usually manage to play a close game. Usually what happens, like I said above, is I play a poor first half and a good 2nd half. 

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As you say, you do seem to have a good idea of things you did that didn't work. That always helps, especially since we haven't seen your games so can't say what you do wrong. 

One thing I would have thought about doing was using the First Mate as an Anti-Midnight stalker.  If you think they have a mobile model that is going to be dropping multiple scheme markers to score points, then the first mate can be a good choice to deny those points. Between Free loot and Menacing Croak he has several good tools for removing multiple markers, with leap he can get basically anywhere your opponent can, and he is also capable of just killing several scheme runners fairly quickly. Free loot and showboating can be helpful in refreshing your hand as he does his job, which is often really helpful.  And its not too hard for him to re-position if you do finish the counter scheme job (or find it wasn't needed) and still be able to impact the table.

But again, that's working out the roles you want for your models, and then sticking with the plans, rather than getting carried away and throwing away points needlessly. 

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15 hours ago, Marc Bowling said:

What are thoughts about this match up of NB versus Outcasts in general? Any hints or pitfalls I can avoid?

His 3 crews he has played are Viks, The God King (Leve), and Parker. 

This is a very general question and it's not easy to answer... but you got solid general advice in this thread. I do recommend you to dive in this subforum as there is a good mix of lists, tactical breakdowns and Theorifaux that you may use to get ideas for your crews.

NVB is a tricky faction as first faction; don't get me wrong, it's a good faction and there are very good things here; but it's not the easiest faction to play when learning the ropes and staying on keyword isn't always the best choice. But hang in there, you'll start kicking ass sooner than you think.

One of the best tricks of the faction that you should know is the double Ancient Pact build with an elite list; that's something you can do with several masters, it focuses on striking first and twice using a powerful model in the last activation of a turn and the first of the next one.

For example, Titania has a good alpha strike list with that double AP that has been discused in several posts; for example in this thread you may see 2 versions of that list and here you can see myself ranting about how that Titania opening works. And I recall a thread about countering Vicks in particular that may help you (pre errata tho), this one.

As other comented, Dreamer is good to start as it's one of the top masters of the faction and he is also more forgiving than others; losing some models for misplays hurt less when you have extra summoned models.

Have fun!

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On 9/17/2020 at 7:50 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

Sounds like some focus on the fundamentals could be good (and possibly focusing on fewer crews, depending on how many games you play). I often say it takes at least 10-20 games to properly learn a crew. So rather than focusing on Neverborn vs. Outcasts, sounds like at this stage just focusing on the fundamentals might be a good idea.

I strongly second this. I played 20+ games with Titania before I picked up another master and I feel like it really helped me to learn the fundamentals of the game, but also to learn how to play a crew in a way that scores points and wins games. Because I knew my own models, I was never struggling with activation order or what a model's purpose was, instead I was able to focus on how to maximize my ability to score and deny my opponent.

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