Nexus: An NPE like no other

[Azahul]

I had success with Hamelin into Nexus. Only played one game and my opponent wasn't running the Flush with Cash upgrades, which would have generated a ton of resources given the 11 or so corpse markers piled up around the centre by Turn 4, but then again I didn't attack Meredith or Nexus at all so they wouldn't have been all that useful. Hamelin got a Parasite token early and got chipped down low enough to have to be careful of the Archivist, but hadn't died by the time the Archivist did and there's only so much a blob crew like that can do against a quadruple Pustulent Tumour turn where every dead Eyes and Ears turned into two more rats (I think Hamelin's first AP did 14 damage across thr crew that turn...). Fast Rat Kings kill Nests comfortably in an activation and when they get Parasited they can take an action to swap out for a Rat Catcher. There's plenty to be wary of to be sure, but it's a game.

[Whut]

On 2/17/2021 at 6:16 AM, Azahul said:

I had success with Hamelin into Nexus. Only played one game and my opponent wasn't running the Flush with Cash upgrades, which would have generated a ton of resources given the 11 or so corpse markers piled up around the centre by Turn 4, but then again I didn't attack Meredith or Nexus at all so they wouldn't have been all that useful. Hamelin got a Parasite token early and got chipped down low enough to have to be careful of the Archivist, but hadn't died by the time the Archivist did and there's only so much a blob crew like that can do against a quadruple Pustulent Tumour turn where every dead Eyes and Ears turned into two more rats (I think Hamelin's first AP did 14 damage across thr crew that turn...). Fast Rat Kings kill Nests comfortably in an activation and when they get Parasited they can take an action to swap out for a Rat Catcher. There's plenty to be wary of to be sure, but it's a game.

I love this input, some great points here and I would have never thought of Hamelin. No FWC probably made a big difference. Declaring Hamelin into a possible Jedza I would assume is extremely dangerous though since every Rat is a Life Token?

[Azahul]

2 hours ago, Whut said:

I love this input, some great points here and I would have never thought of Hamelin. No FWC probably made a big difference. Declaring Hamelin into a possible Jedza I would assume is extremely dangerous though since every Rat is a Life Token?

I haven't played the Jedza match yet but it's certainly not easy on paper. She shuts off Hamelin's Demise too by preventing healing. I don't consider those insurmountable challenges per se, Hamelin has so many modes of play that I can sit him back from the front lines and not count on his Demise to keep him safe and rather than go for Pustulent Tumours I can keep the rats far enough back that Jedza would be putting herself in danger if she wanted to get the Life Tokens and save them until they're ready to become Rat Kings, but it's not ideal to lose several major pieces of your kit off the bat. At least you can hire Marlena to regain some control of the game with her anti-healing aura, which has the added benefit of making Hamelin harder to kill again.

[Plaag]

schtook vs cadmus

[Kharnage]

For those who don't have 3 hours of batrep time;
Strategy: Public Enemies
Deployment: Standard
Scheme Pool: Breakthrough, Spread Them Out, Vendetta, Claimp Jump, and Leave Your Mark.
Final score: 7-3 Cadmus over Schtook. 
Schtook player was Bryan Bauer, the currently top ranked player in the Vassal World Series. He had played into Nexus more than half a dozen times prior, even having won games into them. An early misjudgement causes Anna to gain a parasite token early. (Anna cheats to dodge, but based on previous cheats assumes that Nest doesn't have a king to cheat. It does. She has to play back for the remainder of the game, causing Hostile Work Environment to have no effect) The Nexus front line, being held up by Intrepid Emissary in both Take the Hit and Aura of Courage heals, outlasts Schtook front line. Schtook crumbles mid game after parasite tokens go out to Viscera and Valedictorian, causing undodgeable ping damage thereafter. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

50 minutes ago, Kharnage said:

For those who don't have 3 hours of batrep time;
Strategy: Public Enemies
Deployment: Standard
Scheme Pool: Breakthrough, Spread Them Out, Vendetta, Claimp Jump, and Leave Your Mark.
Final score: 7-3 Cadmus over Schtook. 
Schtook player was Bryan Bauer, the currently top ranked player in the Vassal World Series. He had played into Nexus more than half a dozen times prior, even having won games into them. An early misjudgement causes Anna to gain a parasite token early. (Anna cheats to dodge, but based on previous cheats assumes that Nest doesn't have a king to cheat. It does. She has to play back for the remainder of the game, causing Hostile Work Environment to have no effect) The Nexus front line, being held up by Intrepid Emissary in both Take the Hit and Aura of Courage heals, outlasts Schtook front line. Schtook crumbles mid game after parasite tokens go out to Viscera and Valedictorian, causing undodgeable ping damage thereafter. 

I only watched the first part of the video, and while Von schtook made a mistake (exposing Anna like that in the first place didn't really give much in terms of results, since the duels caused by her could potentially heal the opponent), I couldn't see anything else that could make a significant difference to the game.

Really the only strategy I can see working is using the Dead Rider to kidnap the Emissary and then everyone bursts it down (which is pretty hard, considering the Dead Rider has an inferior stat). So there's gotta be a fair bit of luck and/or planning there. Most of the time, Plaag's hand was too strong for something like that to work (not to mention the movement corridors aren't always there to do the kidnapping!)

Other factions might have better tricks, of course. Colette should be able to presto-chango the emissary out pretty easily? Although following up on that will be tricky, of course. And who knows how much damage/tokens you'll take in the meantime.

[ooshawn]

Can anyone break down what cadmus does? 

[Maniacal_cackle]

15 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

Can anyone break down what cadmus does? 

It is a LOT. But basically...

Cadmus creates a bit of a castle for its important models (Nexus, Meredith, etc). How Plaag plays them is he throws in an intrepid emissary, so if you penetrate the castle to attack them, he can use Take the Hit to protect important models.

Out in front of the castle/to the sides are all of the annoying pieces (nests, husks, eyes and ears, etc). These seek to punish anyone who gets near the castle. They've also got a LOT of wounds (the totems collectively give the crew 16 extra wounds, and they crew summons 10+ stones on first turn and some other turns).

Then he has a few powerful ranged models, so the castle is shooting lasers out at you (particularly Archivist) while you're trying to attack them.

Additionally, the crew generates parasite tokens on your models. These have all sorts of unpleasant effects, but the worst one is that when you damage one of their models, they can transfer one of the damage to you. So for example if you hit them for 3 damage, you take 1 and they take 2 (but can only do this to you once per activation). But they can also transfer to their friends, so if you hit their Master 3 times for 3 damage, that's only going to be 3 times for 2 damage.

They've also got a fair bit of healing/sustain, so you can't just charge into the castle and outlast them (especially with the parasite tokens causing the damage to transfer to you). As a result, Cadmus just utterly controls part of the board, and can have impacts surprisingly far out from that zone.

It isn't clear that they're overpowered (yet), but I think it is likely going that way. Certainly no one has been able to beat Plaag's Cadmus (although I still want to try a few things against it). And he has been playing some world-class players, so you would think someone could crack it.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Oh, and they get guaranteed last activation, which they can use to interact (even with insignificant models), so they are WAY schemier than you would think from the above description.

[ooshawn]

I'd surely beat plaag with my eyes closed with my 33 changeling list.

Also that does sound pretty annoying, but wouldn't they have a weakness to stuff like sonnia and flasks and other aoes

[Maniacal_cackle]

Just now, ooshawn said:

I'd surely beat plaag with my eyes closed with my 33 changeling list.

Also that does sound pretty annoying, but wouldn't they have a weakness to stuff like sonnia and flasks and other aoes

Yes, I've thought that too, but a few things to note:

• Thanks to the emissary, if they pass simple duels by 2 or more, they heal. This means if you spam flasks at them, they might end up taking no damage (as seen by the Von Schtook player where his TN duels ended up healing some models).
• In order to get close enough to a model that matters, you are extremely likely to get a parasite token (and subsequently die xD).
  • The Von Schtook player attacked with a 12" attack, and that was still getting too close to the crew.

But I do wonder if something like the Hooded Rider could zoom in and destroy them. Blast damage seems good, but you'll likely lose whatever does the blast damage, so you have to hit hard.

[ooshawn]

Sounds like something interesting to look into and theorycraft for certain while I'm drifting off to sleep. I wonder if you could somehow get fast onto Nekima, shove aside and smash into their master if you could just erase her in one go 

[ooshawn]

I just looked at the intrepid emissary. That thing is insane for ten points

[Maniacal_cackle]

5 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

Sounds like something interesting to look into and theorycraft for certain while I'm drifting off to sleep. I wonder if you could somehow get fast onto Nekima, shove aside and smash into their master if you could just erase her in one go 

Not against Plaag, since he has Emissary to protect him

Also don't forget that you're hitting for min 2 against Cadmus, not min 3. And in some cases hitting for 2 wont' even do anything, which is a problem for aoe (sometimes you hit for 2, and they reduce it by 1 with we are legion onto another model's shielded, and then their own shielded).

Also fast doesn't work on masters, since 3 actions is the limit.

[ooshawn]

Are there any fragile linchpin models that would fall to 2-3 shots from a focused sniper rifle like angel eyes or another good sniper like hans 

[Maniacal_cackle]

3 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

Are there any fragile linchpin models that would fall to 2-3 shots from a focused sniper rifle like angel eyes or another good sniper like hans 

There are, but again they spend most of the game next to the Emissary.

And even if they're not next to emissary, they potentially have shielded and we are legion, so even 10 damage over two shots may not be enough.

[Maniacal_cackle]

So then ordinarily for a crew like this you would deal with them by out-scheming them.

But with tons of summoning, and even their insignificant models being able to interact, that can be super tricky as well.

Oh, and they can turn your scheme markers into summons xD

[ooshawn]

Seems like the emissary and the archivist are both very strong. Im looking at the archivist right now. +2 to initiative is neat, and they can do the pandora activation control thing too. They seem real strong for a 8pt model 

[ooshawn]

Honestly nothing else looks too out there from all the cadmus keyword models in the app. Nexus seems good, but not real crazy

[Korrok]

Would the heal on the emmisarrys aura being made once per activation be enough to help this? Or even making it only work for opposed duels? Generally speaking the big guy sits way to close to the "too good not to bring" level for my tastes and I can't help but feel he's the biggest issue present for making cadmus seem so good here. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

26 minutes ago, Korrok said:

Would the heal on the emmisarrys aura being made once per activation be enough to help this? Or even making it only work for opposed duels? Generally speaking the big guy sits way to close to the "too good not to bring" level for my tastes and I can't help but feel he's the biggest issue present for making cadmus seem so good here. 

I'm not sure how big a difference once per activation would make, since generally it is the healing spread over a whole turn.

Putting emissary on df 6 feels like it makes sense, but also the model hasn't felt like a problem to me in any other matchup.

[santaclaws01]

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

There are, but again they spend most of the game next to the Emissary.

And even if they're not next to emissary, they potentially have shielded and we are legion, so even 10 damage over two shots may not be enough.

Also even if they aren't near the emissary, flush with cash turns 3 attacks into 2, and soulstoning to put them on a negative takes the bite out of focused shots. Now for most crews spending that many stones to keep a model alive is untennable, but good thing flush with cash exists and gives them up to 2 stones per model you kill, and you can't just not kill them because then you just get burried under weight of actions.

 

The crew pretty much has everything. Resource generation, summoning, ping damage, healing, threat saturation, irreducible damage, hand attacking, demise and htk ignoring, activation control, mobility, forced positioning, untrsistable damage. Only thing it's missing really is marker removal.

[Kharnage]

3 minutes ago, santaclaws01 said:

Only thing it's missing really is marker removal.

Versatile Henchwoman Jessie Halliday to the rescue

[Plaag]

1 hour ago, santaclaws01 said:

Also even if they aren't near the emissary, flush with cash turns 3 attacks into 2, and soulstoning to put them on a negative takes the bite out of focused shots. Now for most crews spending that many stones to keep a model alive is untennable, but good thing flush with cash exists and gives them up to 2 stones per model you kill, and you can't just not kill them because then you just get burried under weight of actions.

 

The crew pretty much has everything. Resource generation, summoning, ping damage, healing, threat saturation, irreducible damage, hand attacking, demise and htk ignoring, activation control, mobility, forced positioning, untrsistable damage. Only thing it's missing really is marker removal.

just take map on ngatoro for any marker removal and if we are talking abt scheme-cadmus will summon through them

[santaclaws01]

5 minutes ago, Plaag said:

just take map on ngatoro for any marker removal and if we are talking abt scheme-cadmus will summon through them

Despite running treasure map on my last few games I still somehow forgot about that marker removal.

 

7 minutes ago, Kharnage said:

Versatile Henchwoman Jessie Halliday to the rescue

And the botanist with the corrosive touch trigger.