The society to save Carver

[Regelridderen]

Hi and welcome to the Society to save your friendly neughbourhood pumpkinhead. 

Carver’s gotten a bad rep over the years, not for cutting up the nrighbourhood children, but for not doing a good enough job of it. So we’ve created this society in order to think of great ideas and combinations to make the most of our favorite scarecrow. 

For any negative comments please post them in the nearest Cadmus thread before returning to this one. 

[Regelridderen]

My first thought was, Pandoras Carver is a great anvil, being able to take quite a beating while pulsing out damage via Breath of Fire and Draw Essence. 

Trouble is its quite resource intensive and rarely enough to hold a real beater.

Then I thought, if resilience is the problem, why not pair him up with a couple of OOK Insidious Madness. Great little anvils on their own, but their attacks heal the Carver and themselves from what damage he might cause them. And a ball of Terrifying is a great resource drain.

So I made this little crew in the app :

Mad Panda (Neverborn)
Size: 50 - Pool: 6
Leader:
  Pandora
Totem(s):
  Poltergeist
Hires:
  Candy
  Sorrow
  Sorrow 2
  The Carver
  Insidious Madness
  Insidious Madness 2

You might be paying a two Stone tax, but you’ve still got 8 models and 6 stones. You might sub a Sorrow for Kade for some mobility sheananigans. But you’re getting two hard balls to approach the enemy. 

[Rosenzweig]

This topic is dear to my heart and I'm following with interest ... 

Is the Carver equally problematic in a Dreamer crew?

 

What about Serena Bowman instead of a second Sorrow?

[ooshawn]

i'd be interested to see how it works. I've got so few pandora games under my belt

[katadder]

I like carver, even the threat of him is enough for opponents to not build up focused and don't forget he can do that from range too.

I tend to take Inhuman Reflexes on him, this means if they cheat the terrifying you only have to suffer one attack as you can scamper away

[Regelridderen]

4 hours ago, Rosenzweig said:

Is the Carver equally problematic in a Dreamer crew?

 

What about Serena Bowman instead of a second Sorrow?

If anything, I’d say Carver has a harder time in a Dreamer crew. Only because the Dreamer has such sweet options available. Although the above pairing would work as well. 

Serena is of course always an option to consider, particularly when you’ve got Nightmares on the board. I currently steer around her, as she is such a crutch. 

[SEV]

This is interesting. I think Carver is quite good with Dora and a nice tech piece to have with Dreamer and even OOK. 

As a tech piece, I'll take him against crew that tend to stack focus on their beater. He's also one of the 2 ruthless models in faction. So he tend to be quite good against resser.

With Dora I like him even more. He does several little thing. First of all he's a decent beater. Dora can guaranteed the suit he needs for a 4/4/6 track or a timely execute. His main problem is being so slow, but in a bubble crew like Dora, it's not that bad. Opportunist focus + Dora own opportunist means that you pretty much denied focus stacking (and even focus attack since it will trigger misery). Finally Brreath of fire is an amazing attack. Near Dora (or iggy if you take him) this is an other misery trigger. Carver give you an other way to glimpse. He's also a nightmare to relay Serena attacks. Finally as you said, he's quite durable... Recently I found myself taking him way more often than T3ddy + Kade. I just wish he had an engagement range of 2" 🙂

[Regelridderen]

@SEV So from what I’m reading, you like to bring him close to ‘dora? Does this not interfere with his Draw Essence?  I find that to be one of my favorite abilities for its resource drain. 

And I agree Breath of Fire is another of my most used abilities. Particularly the marker removal trigger has saved my bacon multiple times. 

[SEV]

18 minutes ago, Regelridderen said:

@SEV So from what I’m reading, you like to bring him close to ‘dora? Does this not interfere with his Draw Essence?  I find that to be one of my favorite abilities for its resource drain. 

And I agree Breath of Fire is another of my most used abilities. Particularly the marker removal trigger has saved my bacon multiple times. 

Yep. I keep him in the bubble most of the time (he's a great body guard). For that reason I don't use draw essence to often. But when I do, it could be fine to damage your own models to get him heal back since he's taking most of the heat.

[Azkral]

I dont know with Dora, but with Dreamer I think you prefer to spend these Stones in Minions with Lucid Dream, to get an upgraded deck faster. 

[Regelridderen]

10 hours ago, Azkral said:

I dont know with Dora, but with Dreamer I think you prefer to spend these Stones in Minions with Lucid Dream, to get an upgraded deck faster. 

Shh!

You need to stay positive, come up with ways to use the Carver and work from there 😉

[Warharan]

I really like the model.
Does that count?

[Azkral]

3 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

Shh!

You need to stay positive, come up with ways to use the Carver and work from there 😉

Maybe in a melee oriented dreamer, where you just summon 2 daydreams to get +2 damage to your cricket bat and then you charge with dreamer, use the trigger to place Carver, and then you use Your nightmare to give Carver focus and the oponent adversary (nightmare), with the posibility of placing Chompy too.

Its difficult because it requires good placement and winning two duels:

You can also use daydreams to move Carver to the front .

[Nathan Sells]

Maybe bring Carver with Dreamer against a low willpower/low ruthless crew to double down on terrifying?

That's right, Carver was Cadmus' Achilles heel the whole time!

[SEV]

38 minutes ago, Nathan Sells said:

Maybe bring Carver with Dreamer against a low willpower/low ruthless crew to double down on terrifying?

That's right, Carver was Cadmus' Achilles heel the whole time!

Breath of fire is usually quite good against bubble crew... Than you go a parasite on your 10ss henchman and you cry.

Honestly Carver being one of the 2 ruthless in faction, hen I oaly Dreamer, I'll bring him especially agaisnt crew where that will be useful and not against anything else.

[Roadhouse]

In Dreamer he competes with Teddy, IMO, and in that there is no competition, Teddy is a hoss. Carver has a niche though. He has Ruthless which is only on one other NVB model (Titania and Luci can both access out of faction keyword models with Ruthless though), and anti Focus stack. He's probably worth it VS Daw and Hamelin, probably not in any other match ups.

Model is lit though.

[Nathan Sells]

1 hour ago, Roadhouse said:

In Dreamer he competes with Teddy, IMO, and in that there is no competition, Teddy is a hoss. Carver has a niche though. He has Ruthless which is only on one other NVB model (Titania and Luci can both access out of faction keyword models with Ruthless though), and anti Focus stack. He's probably worth it VS Daw and Hamelin, probably not in any other match ups.

Model is lit though.

Yeah, the only time I've taken him in Dreamer over Teddy was in a game over Mah, to get around her focus stacking; and his great at that, but with Gremlins and their darn Ruthless upgrade you really the loss of Teddy's Armour and Regeneration. 

[SEV]

4 hours ago, Roadhouse said:

In Dreamer he competes with Teddy, IMO, and in that there is no competition, Teddy is a hoss. Carver has a niche though. He has Ruthless which is only on one other NVB model (Titania and Luci can both access out of faction keyword models with Ruthless though), and anti Focus stack. He's probably worth it VS Daw and Hamelin, probably not in any other match ups.

Model is lit though.

I agree ... I also take him against Dora since he's less vulnerable to Her and Candy attack and ruthless is great in this matchup as well. 

[Mac_Atk]

Carver is absolutely brutal into a Apex crew. He has Terrifying to force additional cheats, Ruthless to deal with Rex, strips off Focus using Misery which the dogs handout and other models like Cooper really want/need, and the stunned for 1ping of dmg or the push is pretty awesome to get models out of position.

He was a very successful in-keyword add to Dreamer & Pandora into Apex.