How in the crap do I deal with Arcanists?

[Core101x]

 I am honestly being demoralized by my local Arcanist player. It seems not matter the scheme/strategy or crew that I run.

He changes his crews . The only crutch he has is the soulstone miner in every game.

He uses Rasputin, Collette, Marcus, Hoffman, and Mei Feng. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

Arcanists are pretty brutal, that's for sure! One thought that springs to mind is Dreamer might be good, as 4 of his models can ignore armor. His summons also can unbury when Colette buries them using WP attacks, and Alps/Dreamer can do more damage if they have buried allies.

The main problem is that Arcanists have some really good ruthless models.

Hopefully some others have better suggestions!

[Jinn]

33 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Arcanists are pretty brutal, that's for sure! One thought that springs to mind is Dreamer might be good, as 4 of his models can ignore armor. His summons also can unbury when Colette buries them using WP attacks, and Alps/Dreamer can do more damage if they have buried allies.

The main problem is that Arcanists have some really good ruthless models.

Hopefully some others have better suggestions!

I've never considered Arcanists to have particularly strong Ruthless models. Mech Rider isn't a strong offensive model so Ruthless isn't a huge deal, Joss and Borgmann are both 2AP beaters that have no mobility and need to be taxed in OOK, and Raspy is low power and more of a debuffer than a blaster.

 

Dreamer is a very strong option against Arcanists due to their lowish Willpower (especially on contructs like Soulstone Miners) and the armour ignore. If you want to win bring Stitched and use Lucid Dream to pull face cards out of your deck and use them as a secondary hand for cheating for them.

[Maniacal_cackle]

35 minutes ago, Jinn said:

I've never considered Arcanists to have particularly strong Ruthless models. Mech Rider isn't a strong offensive model so Ruthless isn't a huge deal, Joss and Borgmann are both 2AP beaters that have no mobility and need to be taxed in OOK, and Raspy is low power and more of a debuffer than a blaster.

 

Dreamer is a very strong option against Arcanists due to their lowish Willpower (especially on contructs like Soulstone Miners) and the armour ignore. If you want to win bring Stitched and use Lucid Dream to pull face cards out of your deck and use them as a secondary hand for cheating for them.

True, I guess it depends on what they're declaring. Joss in keyword can be fast, focused, and irreducible, so will tear most things in the crew apart I imagine (except Serena)? EDIT: Plus he can disengage for free!

Rasputina can potentially take 6 attacks in one round, so I wouldn't write her off. I've underestimated her a few times forgetting that she can go nuke mode if needed.

Elijah is a bit weaker, but with some burning he's still hitting at min 3 with positive flips (and with triggers he can sorta be min 4). And potentially positives on damage flips if he doesn't have to charge.

Mech Rider's attack trigger is bonkers, although most people prefer to use Mech Rider as their primary schemer so you don't see it very often. But there's nothing stopping the mech rider from focusing and hitting you for 5 and drawing 5 cards. That's stronger than most ruthless models in the game. EDIT: Which of course also means you have the cards to cheat terrifying with the rest of your crew.

Maybe I'm just bad against Arcanists, but they've always seemed like strong ruthless models to me (with Elijah being the only one that's really middle tier).

[Maniacal_cackle]

That said, I'm not sure Arcanists have much anti-healing? So that's another strength of Dreamer. Nothing is more demoralising than getting Chompy down to 2 and he heals back to full, or killing Serena and her healing back to full next activation xD

[extremor]

I played a lot of games against rasputina in the last months and played puppets most of the time. Collodi once and Hinamatsu like about 6-7 times. It was armor and healing that kept my models alive quite well. High movement was the key to winning. Lure was the answer to his movement or auras. And I usually don’t get too involved fighting. I focus on scoring first.

[Regelridderen]

Pandora into Raspy causes the ice witch to cry as the Poltergeist melts all her pillars. 

[Adran]

It sounds like your problem is that you're facing a better player than you.  I'm not sure that there is a simple answer in how to beat all possible arcanists. Each has different strengths and weaknesses, so either you've been unlucky to always pick just the wrong combination for what they pick, or you have just faced someone who is a better player, regardless of who they are using. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

What Adran says is a good point, so one angle to consider is declaring crews in advance of playing. Then you can come to this forum for advice.

For example, if you know your pool, you may have some guesses as to what he will play.

[Roadhouse]

7 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

What Adran says is a good point, so one angle to consider is declaring crews in advance of playing. Then you can come to this forum for advice.

For example, if you know your pool, you may have some guesses as to what he will play.

2nd'ing get the pool and come here for help. People giving list advice and insights as to why they're suggesting those picks should improve your knowledge of the matchup.

[LeperColony]

If your opponent is a decent person, maybe try a game where he's willing to tell you why he's doing what he's doing and what he would find more difficult to respond to than what you're doing.

@Adran is probably right that the issue is one of player skill, since your opponent is always winning regardless of pool or match up.  In those cases, your opponent is probably seeing things happen in real time that they can exploit.  Rather than playing the game to win, if you ask if they'll play to teach, they'll be able to say "well, if you move there like you planned, I'll be able to do X and Y.  But if you move here, I can only do X, and if you move here, I can't do anything and you'll be able to do A and b."

Now, if your opponent is unwilling to be helpful, then A) maybe find a new opponent and B) give us some of his lists and we'll see if we can't offer suggestions.

[Adran]

One common suggestion is to switch crews. I'm not sure if this is going to work since you use lots of crews, and so does your opponent, but it might give you firstly an idea if how others might use your crews, and also you often see problems with crews when you pilot them that you don't spot facing them.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Oh, another possible method to skill up is to play some games on Vassal. It is a digital platform you can play Malifaux on and it works really well.

[Nagi21]

So a few things to decipher here:

1) Collette is probably the best master in the game currently due to her kit and just how much AP and mobility it has, and it's only going to get worse with the new EXS models, until GG2 comes around.  She's extremely hard to deal with for pretty much everyone right now, so that's an outlier.

2) Arcanists have extremely strong versatiles and upgrades, so basically all Arcanist crews have access to whatever tool they'll need in a situation, whether that be tanking up a model, concealment, extra AP, more cards.  The fact that they get these across the entire faction just makes Arcanists have very few exploitable gaps.

3) Mei Feng can be difficult in some NVB matchups since she can go in and out fairly easily, and her counters get countered by the more popular ARC options.  You really have to try and anticipate what your opponent is going to bring to get an even matchup as NVB, unless you want to run something like Dreamer all the time.

4) To the prior point, Dreamer has good matchups into a lot of Arcanists (Marcus, Hoff, Toni, etc).  If you're struggling with them, consider practicing just Dreamer vs them.  They usually only have one ruthless model they can bring (Raspy, Joss, Elijah, and Rider), and although Rider is pretty popular, it's not exactly the most deadly rider.

5) Marcus and Hoffman are under the curve, and I would recommend Pandora for both.  You could also run Nekima, but she has more counters (Toni, Sandeep, Collette, Kaeris, Mei) than Pandora (Collette, Kaeris, Sandeep).  The key with both is to find the core model and try and delete it as soon as possible.  Don't get big eyes and try and go for the jugular.  Both of those crews rely on keeping key models alive, whether that be a Sabertooth, Howard, or Joss, and removing one of those from the equation can rip the teeth out of that crew even if you get an unfavorable trade early.

6) This is a two-part answer: Don't leave yourself in a position where you have to walk into Rasputina's ice palace, and don't assume Pandora is a straight counter to Rasputina.  If there is no good way for you to get your points without going across the center, don't pick Pandora into Rasputina.  Reason being is that in the worst case scenario, she'll force a draw because you don't have a good way to get into a fortified ice palace.  Both of them want the other to come to her, and Pandora can get to the center faster, but that's about as far as she can reasonably get without reenacting Omaha Beach.  Also, while Poltergeist can remove pillars, remember that it's both short ranged, and you will inevitably leave it in a position where it can be nuked down afterwards with moderate effort (which any half-decent Raspy player will commit to without hesitation).  This means you're only going to get one good pillar clearance if you both play correctly.  Make it count.

Simplified, unless you're going to only play Dreamer, you are going to have to try and anticipate your opponent's crew to try and get an equal or better matchup.  Otherwise you will most likely end up in a worse position because of the availability of ARC versatiles and upgrades across the board.  It gets argued a lot, but there's a reason why Arcanists are considered a top tier faction and Neverborn (sans Dreamer) a bottom tier faction.

[Roadhouse]

On 1/14/2021 at 11:37 PM, Nagi21 said:

Simplified, unless you're going to only play Dreamer, you are going to have to try and anticipate your opponent's crew to try and get an equal or better matchup.  Otherwise you will most likely end up in a worse position because of the availability of ARC versatiles and upgrades across the board.  It gets argued a lot, but there's a reason why Arcanists are considered a top tier faction and Neverborn (sans Dreamer) a bottom tier faction.

I've never seen NVB referred to as bottom tier. Outside of summoning Obey is one of the strongest actions in the game and Z has it, stat 7, suited, with BFJ Stealth arc nodes and 2 extremely powerful triggers. Z is one of the top 3 non-summoning masters in the game (and she can even make the scrap from a Voodoo Doll that Vasilisa needs to summon a Stitched, then provides the card with a bonus that draws 6).

@OP, don't give up. My main opponent is ARC main and my record vs him is positive. NVB can compete.