Teching down the explorers.

[Regelridderen]

So you're in some tournament, and suddenly you're paired up against the explorers.

What are you gonna do to improve the odds.

[Adran]

27 minutes ago, Regelridderen said:

So you're in some tournament, and suddenly you're paired up against the explorers.

What are you gonna do to improve the odds.

Practice. 

But seriously, for what game?

On the whole I would say Explorers are good at movement, but bad against hard to wound. They heal well, but rely on things like Focus to get to the good top end of their damage tracks. They are probably slightly lower wp than most, and have very little ruthless.

After that its pretty Master specific, - if You're facing Jedza, don't rely on regeneration, or healing in general, as a defence, and if you're facing Ivan, don't try and put out distracted, or concealing terrain, but you probably do want concealing against Cooper. Titania might be good, but they have access to more marker removal than any other faction (although its close with Bayou), so be prepared to lose Undergrowth markers if you do play that. 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

4 hours ago, Adran said:

On the whole I would say Explorers are good at movement, but bad against hard to wound. They heal well, but rely on things like Focus to get to the good top end of their damage tracks. They are probably slightly lower wp than most, and have very little ruthless.

I'm declaring Ressers 😜

A few things that stand out:

• Try to pick a crew that can be hit for 7 damage and not die (Cooper)
• Try to pick a crew that can mess with Ivan's summons (for example, he can't summon against Bete Noire I believe).
• Don't pick a crew that is super reliant on healing (Jedza)
• Etc.

So I would consider declaring Molly for flexibility. There's a whole lot of things with ES where you want to tailor your crew to the enemy master, so a master that can shift how they build the crew is good.

[SEV]

Declare Dreamer ( I tough, it's the universal call in NB :-)).

 

Seriously though, Dreamer Seem generally good against that faction with a lot of terrifying and incorporeal. The scatter on madness can mess with the positioning of a couple of masters in ES I guess... But I don't know I didn't tried Dreamer against them yet... So I guess I'll have to take Adran Advice first and just practice 😀

[santaclaws01]

18 hours ago, Adran said:

don't try and put out [...] concealing terrain

I don't think that's much of a issue. Ivan makes plenty on his own, he's going to have concealing terrain, some extra underbrush markers won't hurt.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Just realised this is a Neverborn thread xD Was confused when I couldn't find it in the Explorer's Society forum 😜

One big thing to note is that it is possible to over-tech against crews. Especially as people are learning ES at the moment, it may be better to have a strong plan of your own rather than be too focused on disrupting the enemy plan, especially if you don't know their crews well enough to know what versatile/OOK stuff they'll bring.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Well, as Adran says, hard to wound is tricky for them, so Titania seems great. She stops severes around her, and a lot of her models have hard to wound (and sometimes armor 1). Just not sure what to tech in for anti-healing, since that is pretty big in ES.

[Ogid]

I honestly haven't put the time to understand that faction yet (in fact, there are like 2 or 3 Master I haven't look at yet)... To be safe go with Dreamer or Zoraida, as I've seen some hardcounters for other crews.

Mind they have good defenses between the Emissary, upgrades (a expensive one, but as NVB is usually quality of attacks over quantity, it has to go well) and some other models (the robot they can hide models inside for example); so rushing or removing high priority targets isn't going to be easy. Also as they also have access to Ill Omens+2, they could probably rush well lol. Between that and the anti-healing, Nekima is probably a terrible pick into that faction.

There are a few powerful auras (take the hit, neurotoxins, distraction) in hard to remove models, plan around that; mind specially neurotoxins as it can get an overconfident master or Henchman killed if you are careless.

About Titania... I wouldn't be so confident about her, Jessie "totally not Lara Croft" Halliday has good marker removal and at least both Cooper's and McCabbe keywords can ignore or get enough  to ignore H2W. Also about Cooper, he may ignore demises and H2K from the other side of the table and he could do that with double  to damage, so Savages are going to be a bad pick and you better hide Serena behind something versus him.

Not sure how good the anti-condition is, if it's not that good maybe Pandora could be a possible pick into explorers. But again careful with Neurotoxins as it could make Candy much easier to kill than usual.

About Marcus, mind there is a versatile henchman with an obey in that facion; any model with adaptive evolution could get its upgraded discraded easily; avoid those models and careful with spiders because it could give Nexus free models or extra movement for her own beaters.

They look strong tbh, I hope it's just that the new stuff is always shinnier, not powercreep to sell more. I guess they have to had some weakpoints to exploit, but as I said I have yet to look deeper into that. 

Good luck!

[Maniacal_cackle]

3 minutes ago, Ogid said:

There are a few powerful auras (take the hit, neurotoxins, distraction) in hard to remove models, plan around that; mind specially neurotoxins as it can get an overconfident master or Henchman killed if you are careless.

Yeah, Neurotoxins is absolutely nuts. Expect Henchmen to be much weaker against these folks in terms of survivability.

4 minutes ago, Ogid said:

About Titania... I wouldn't be so confident about her, Jessie "totally not Lara Croft" Halliday has good marker removal and at least both Cooper's and McCabbe keywords can ignore or get enough  to ignore H2W. Also about Cooper, he may ignore demises and H2K from the other side of the table and he could do that with double  to damage, so Savages are going to be a bad pick and you better hide Serena behind something versus him.

They also have an upgrade that can give any model marker removal. That said, I think Titania can deal with 2-3 markers being removed a turn (especially if they're spending 4+ stones on it).

5 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Not sure how good the anti-condition is, if it's not that good maybe Pandora could be a possible pick into explorers. But again careful with Neurotoxins as it could make Candy much easier to kill than usual.

Adran says they have low willpower. Their masters seem to have high willpower, but it seems to be true for the rest of their crews. Pandora might be very strong even if they have condition removal (after all, if they remove stun, you can get misery again on them).

6 minutes ago, Ogid said:

They look strong tbh, I hope it's just that the new stuff is always shinnier, not powercreep to sell more. I guess they have to had some weakpoints to exploit, but as I said I have yet to look deeper into that. 

They look extremely trick-oriented. Ressers for instance have a much stronger baseline (my standard crew has at least three min-3 beaters), but I think ES have to rely on their synergies a bit more than raw power in most cases. Except a few things (like their Versatiles have me a bit worried that they got the balance wrong, but we'll see).

[santaclaws01]

On 12/23/2020 at 5:30 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

One big thing to note is that it is possible to over-tech against crews

This is important. Don't get so wrapped up in denying your opponents game that you forget to play your own. Throw in a speed bump, or take stuff that stops their speed bumps from becoming mountains.

The 2nd biggest thing is to remember to be flexible. If you end up going Titania into Jedza, you don't have to put Titania in their face. Awakened Hunger has an 8" range, life leach is just gravy.

[Ogid]

On 12/24/2020 at 9:26 AM, Maniacal_cackle said:

They look extremely trick-oriented. Ressers for instance have a much stronger baseline (my standard crew has at least three min-3 beaters), but I think ES have to rely on their synergies a bit more than raw power in most cases. Except a few things (like their Versatiles have me a bit worried that they got the balance wrong, but we'll see).

This is an interesting point... If RES would be the ones being released, a lot of players would be surprised by all that faction has (avobe average defenses, good healing, good punch, good schemers, very good tech, several good mastes...) so I guess it'd be about learning how to play against the new faction. On the other hand RES is one of the best, if not the best, faction.

However power level aside, RES it's a good example of a (mostly) balanced faction with several masters being good picks instead of the entire faction being carried by a few masters/models and it seems Explorers try to fit that mold, which is good. I guess in 2053, when all get perfectly balanced, this will be the best game ever! 😄

On 12/25/2020 at 8:49 AM, santaclaws01 said:

This is important. Don't get so wrapped up in denying your opponents game that you forget to play your own. Throw in a speed bump, or take stuff that stops their speed bumps from becoming mountains.

I really agree with this point, however another very important thing is learning how not to shot yourself in the foot when picking crews as several things in other factions hardcounter your crew just doing its thing (my point in the last post). Asuming equal skill, not everything will work into everything.

The first step is knowing which enemy masters go well for the pool in play and which ones of your own get crushed by these, first step is obviously not picking one of those. Second step is looking from the remaining of your masters which ones plays well into that, then checking if any of their master is good against them and how likely is that to happen as a pick or counterpick after declaring the master. With all that considered, the remaining masters are your safe picks for the game (and even in this case players into mindgames and gimmicks can still surprise you).

In this case, some examples of fails at crew declaration that could end badly for the NVB player:

• Nekima versus Jezra or not taking in count the Emissary and how the defensive upgrade works.
• Euripides versus Cooper.
• Titania into a good McCabbe/Cooper pool.
• Marcus going for blue beasts and facing Ngaatoro.
• Double spider builds (Dreamer/Marcus) versus Nexus (or even versus another master, an OOK Nightsilk Creeper can still kill the Bandersnatch in one activation easily even without Nexus helping with Omnipresent Influence)
• And several others that I'm not aware yet because as said before, I'm not familiar with that faction yet.

Obviously the pool counts, if the counterpick will hinder the other player ability to score, then you might risk picking something with a hard counter; but picking something that can get hardcountered by something good in that pool is a fast way to put yourself in a massive dissadvantage that game.

The bottom line is: know your enemy. Playing blindly into any faction will likely lead to a loss, specially when the other player knows what he is doing and has the perfect counters at his disposal.

[santaclaws01]

28 minutes ago, Ogid said:

In this case, some examples of fails at crew declaration that could end badly for the NVB player:

• Nekima versus Jezra or not taking in count the Emissary and how the defensive upgrade works.
• Euripides versus Cooper.
• Titania into a good McCabbe/Cooper pool.
• Marcus going for blue beasts and facing Ngaatoro.
• Double spider builds (Dreamer/Marcus) versus Nexus (or even versus another master, an OOK Nightsilk Creeper can still kill the Bandersnatch in one activation easily even without Nexus helping with Omnipresent Influence)
• And several others that I'm not aware yet because as said before, I'm not familiar with that faction yet.

I get your overall point, but most of these aren't counters at all.

Cooper isn't a counter to Euri.
McCabe and Cooper aren't counters to Titania.
Ngaatoro(either one) isn't a counter for arcanist beasts.
Nexus and the Nightsilk can't do anything with enemy web markers, so going Bandersnatch+WW into them isn't a problem at all.


As for the things that are actual counters, yeah, just don't play the master like you normally would. Nekima is still an actually great mobile scheming crew, so just go do that instead of trying to beat down jedza

 

[Ogid]

8 hours ago, santaclaws01 said:

I get your overall point, but most of these aren't counters at all.

Cooper isn't a counter to Euri.
McCabe and Cooper aren't counters to Titania.
Ngaatoro(either one) isn't a counter for arcanist beasts.
Nexus and the Nightsilk can't do anything with enemy web markers, so going Bandersnatch+WW into them isn't a problem at all.

I'm not 100% sure tbh, as this is still not curated info; I'd be interested in your reasoning or how would you build for facing those masters to start having ideas of how to face that faction. My reasonings:

Cooper can bypass H2K, Demises and ignore Cover; he and his entire keyword can also get a double  to damage once per activation if needed which is enough to get through H2W versus not-SS users (this also gives the crew the flexibility to go for min damage but with  in one attack, which helps with the consistency).

• The above goes around the 2 things that keeps most models from the Savage Keyword in the table (H2K that gives time to trigger the healing and Cover) and his keyword can give him extra shoots in the right circunstances . It seems able to kill gigants faster than other keywords (I'd say he can kill a minion per turn very consistently, even Geryons), which goes against their (supposedly) atrittion heavy gameplay. It doesn't help that Savages are massive modles so hidding them isn't exactly easy. Maybe going heavy into OOK/Versatiles, he could be a legit pick, but I'm not Euri player.
• For Titania this is the same, his Keyword relies on H2W to survive and he (and his entire keyword) can bypass that; in this case the underbrushes hinders him, but he has access to good marker removal and even shooting through concealing he can still pull off a double  to damage versus a model with Adversary (which he handles for free during the starting phase btw). Ignoring Demises makes Killjoy (and Serena) a worse pick, which also make picking him to boost Titania damage a worse option; the good marker removal of the faction also make the Emissary a worse pick as his markers are hard to put on the table and are another thing boosting that crew damage.

McCabe and his crew have good tools to ignore the underbrush markers (Unimpeded, Expert Getaway, Depths of Malifaux, Secret Passage, Favorable Terrain, in the Repeating Rifle...); also his Timeworn blade bypass most defensive tech of Titania's crew, and that putting aside all the damage that Master can do with all the TNs. His crew basically counters the 2 things that make Titania good, all the hindarance from the markers and being though to kill. Tho for a direct clash he will be probably more dangerous in TT. Again, adapting and going for OOK/Versatile crew might work, but in that case another Master could had been a better pick.

Ngaatoro costs 9, has bully and an obey; this makes it a suited Obey versus all 8SS beasts (which are all but Cojo), which also have bad Wp values. Any beast with Adaptive Evolution getting obeyed will be forced to discard 1 mutation upgrade (2 if the beast has Onslaught); that is a massive hit for Marcus (and even Cojo could be targeted if the other player gets a RJ). It's true Ngaatoro isn't very mobile, so that's the only saving grace that Marcus might try to exploit, but it creates a huge bubble where you don't want to have any model with that ability. 

Revising the wording you seem to be right with the last one... it says "Friendly Web Markers"... I had assumed those abilities worked regardless who dropped the markers (like happens with Pires or Ice Pilars)... good catch, ty!

[Hawkoon]

After reading through the book it seems indeed that the faction in general has low wp, and limited access to ruthless and condition removal, so I think Pandora should be given som extra consideration.

[Harlekin]

On 12/22/2020 at 9:11 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

So I would consider declaring Molly for flexibility.

That's your answer to everything 😜

[trikk]

Couldn't resist

[Maniacal_cackle]

3 hours ago, Harlekin said:

That's your answer to everything 😜

You know it is bad when it is my answer even in the Neverborn forums.

[Maniacal_cackle]

4 hours ago, trikk said:

Couldn't resist

I've been memed! This truly is an honour!

[Regelridderen]

17 hours ago, Hawkoon said:

After reading through the book it seems indeed that the faction in general has low wp, and limited access to ruthless and condition removal, so I think Pandora should be given som extra consideration.

She’s definitely a more viable choice than Molly

[Maniacal_cackle]

xD yes, back on topic.

Pandora, Dreamer, and Zoraida all look good to abuse low willpowers. Titania to alpha-strike key synergy pieces might be interesting, since Explorer's rely on a lot of synergies.

I'm not sure what card draw is like in ES yet, but it doesn't look like it has anything bonkers (although some good draw/discard). But as a result, starving their hands with Pandora could be good. And ES have tons of good triggers, so stuns are looking good there.

[Regelridderen]

So let's say you bring Pandora into Explorers - assuming the Strats and Schemes compliment her.

What would you fear for your opponent to tech in against her?

-

Maybe pose the same question for Dreamer, Zoraida, Titania?

[Maniacal_cackle]

2 minutes ago, Regelridderen said:

So let's say you bring Pandora into Explorers - assuming the Strats and Schemes compliment her.

What would you fear for your opponent to tech in against her?

-

Maybe pose the same question for Dreamer, Zoraida, Titania?

Be careful of taking Serena/healing against Jedza.

Also they have some obeys, so Rider is a bit weaker than he would normally be (although no Zoraida level).

One thing to watch out for is Ivan - you can completely shut down his summons with stunned, BUT you can't stun him before his totem is dealt with.

Watch out for the Emissary, as you'll be sad that your attacks aren't hitting the things you want them to (but Pandora's shockwaves and pulses help a lot here).

I'm not sure what else!

[Maniacal_cackle]

Oh, and Jedza is WP 8... Might not want to attack them directly xD

[Maniacal_cackle]

Oh.... Versatile Vernon and Welles produces an aura that makes all the nearby models protected. You get a minus to your flips when attacking their willpower.

That is a pretty severe issue?

[Regelridderen]

Maybe Lucius. 

You could really give someone a bad day with False Witnesses and Mimic’ing Obeys and Candy’s abilities?

New Lucius Mattheson Crew (Neverborn)
Size: 50 - Pool: 8
Leader:
  Lucius Mattheson
Totem(s):
  The Scribe
Hires:
  False Witness
  False Witness 2
  Guild Lawyer
  Doppleganger
  Candy
  Agent 46