Third master to round out my collection

[MuffinMan]

Hi all, I hope everyone is doing well.  I'm slowly building up my explorer's collection to have another faction other than bayou to play.  I currently have English Ivan and Lord Cooper with all their keyword models.  I am curious what third master would fit in nicely with Ivan and Cooper to allow me to cover most strats/schemes.

 

I am also curious what strats/schemes Ivan and Cooper excel at.  Sorry to sound like a noob but kind of having a hard time seeing where Ivan shines even though he does seem super strong. Any advice playing these masters would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time! 

[fire5tone]

10 minutes ago, MuffinMan said:

Hi all, I hope everyone is doing well.  I'm slowly building up my explorer's collection to have another faction other than bayou to play.  I currently have English Ivan and Lord Cooper with all their keyword models.  I am curious what third master would fit in nicely with Ivan and Cooper to allow me to cover most strats/schemes.

 

I am also curious what strats/schemes Ivan and Cooper excel at.  Sorry to sound like a noob but kind of having a hard time seeing where Ivan shines even though he does seem super strong. Any advice playing these masters would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time! 

I've heard Ivan has troubles crossing the board, and I don't know much about cooper but I'd rate McCabe as a 3rd

[NoisyAssassin]

Cooper can be pretty flexible, especially with OOK picks. But neither Ivan nor Cooper specifically excel at fast, mobile scheming. So Anya or McCabe might be good ones to round things out? As an added bonus, Anya's core box has Winston, who I think has a lot of potential in Cooper as an OOK high end support/disruption/scheme runner, and she has overlap with Ivan on some keyword models.  

[Rufess]

Both Cooper and Ivan have awesome synergy with Lamplighter, so you may want to have a look at Jedza. She and her Seeker keyword cannot help you out strategy like Symbol so you may put them on the 4th priority after Anya/McCabe/Basse

[Adran]

Probably not a truely helpful answer, but I would suggest playing what you have, find out where you find Ivan and Cooper good, what things you get them to excell at, and then you can work out which areas you don't like using either one for.

Its not so useful if I suggested Anya as a mobile scheme master, but you find that Cooper can excel at that the way you play him with Runaways and the blood hounds coverign it, but where you struggle with is large center brawls.

I think one of the best ways to learn a master is to play them into pools where they aren't good, and see how you can adapt what they do to still achieve it. It might cause you too lose more games as you learn it, but it will overall make you a better player, more able to adapt mid game when your plans fall apart, and gives you a different appreciation of models strengths. 

[NoisyAssassin]

Case in point: I just sort of assumed that Cooper would be terrible in Corner deployment since his overall vibe/stereotype is that of a static turret. But when a friend posted a sample pool with Corner and asked what everyone would play into it, I looked at my painted crews (Cooper, Lynch, Mei) and really started looking at what they could do.

Ended up discovering that I could put together a crew that got Winston, Model 9, and the Rex across the centerline T1, with Cooper in a spot to threaten most of the board, and enough AP left for 2 shots from Cooper and 2 from Model 9 against anything that left the opponent's deployment zone. Then T2 Artemis would be able to cross the center, and Ullr could teleport to multiple targets, meaning you could cover the enter board with your crew with ease.

Is this the best (or even an effective) use for Cooper? Idk yet, but if I'd had McCabe painted already I almost certainly would have just dismissed Cooper out of hand and gone straight to the more obviously mobile master. Now I'm actually excited to try him out in a pool like this to see how the idea holds up!