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Barbaros as a Leader


PiersonsMuppeteer

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Is the combo of Noxious Nephilim and Yannic Waller giving outcasts a once per turn draw 2 for 1 dmg strong enough to give Barbaros the ability to offer a viable Henchman leader vs Master led crews? 

2x Mature Nephilim w/ Soldier for Hire also looks like a strong force to throw at enemies.  NN’s Corpse marker generation would make them even tougher to put down, or make BBS a strong inclusion (focus and effigy placement).

My initial thoughts are:

 

Barbaros - Leader

Effigy

Waller

Noxious

BBS

Mature w/ SfH

Mature w/ SfH

 

In what pools might this have what it takes, or is the Hench-Master gap too insurmountable?

 

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8 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

It's an interesting idea, you should play it and see what you think. 

Posting relevant cards.

WaldosWeekly_4_14.2021_Card-YannicWaller.jpg.c8194d0505313c10924fc4ae190f0abb.jpg

M3E_Card_NoxiousNephilim_30963.jpg.8d50e5e9675467c6c32dbc1f205bf4f8.jpg

I only play in person, don’t have the models, and don’t play often enough to justify a buy and try, so I’m only able to think about it in “Theory Land”. I own Alt Barbaros and he is my favorite model of the Malifaux lineup, but the rest of the Nephilim have never interested me. Now if I could take him as a leader and at least be able to put up a decent game with him, then money may flow haha. However, what I’ve read on these forums dealing with Hench vs Master has not been remotely positive. Just fishing for thoughts on if the use of Nepilim models in Outcasts with some of the new releases can bridge the gap.

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3 minutes ago, PiersonsMuppeteer said:

However, what I’ve read on these forums dealing with Hench vs Master has not been remotely positive.

I think Barbaros is a pretty g good leader pick. At least at 9ss he's going to get a little more utility out of an extra AP then cheaper henchman. And he opens a bunch of new model interactions.

I think my biggest concern is that it's a 16ss card draw engine. It gets 4 cards a turn +2 for every additional model you commit to it. 

I might try a  Lelu, or two, + Yannic. With just two models you don't have to worry about Auras as much and can be a little more mobile. With Yannic the Lelu can interact for a marker and then pick it up with Good For a Laugh for 3 card draw. 

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28 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

I think Barbaros is a pretty g good leader pick. At least at 9ss he's going to get a little more utility out of an extra AP then cheaper henchman. And he opens a bunch of new model interactions.

I think my biggest concern is that it's a 16ss card draw engine. It gets 4 cards a turn +2 for every additional model you commit to it. 

I might try a  Lelu, or two, + Yannic. With just two models you don't have to worry about Auras as much and can be a little more mobile. With Yannic the Lelu can interact for a marker and then pick it up with Good For a Laugh for 3 card draw. 

I hadn’t considered Lelu’s, that is good to know. I wouldn’t say it’s a 16ss card draw engine, as Nox looks like it does quite a but on it’s own and it’s upgrading card filtering to drawing. So Yannic is the only real “cost” for the engine imo. I think you’ve presented a decision between 16ss draw 2+ w/ additional benefits vs 14ss draw 3 w/ better scheming potential. I don’t necessarily think they overlap either, so Nox vs Lelu actually gives better pool diversity to Barbaros. Nox will probably shine in mid-brawls, and Lelu looks to support a more spread out game. 7ss might be a bit high for a schemer though, and is likely to be a prime target for the opponent.

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Barbaros is a niche leader, but as a henchman he's probably one of the better leaders.

Built in shove aside on his melee means you're able to get up to 4 attacks from him a turn - that's a lot of moderate 4 swings.  

You're right, the core of a Nephilim list in outcasts should be two Matures with Soldier for Hire (my preference) as hard to kill combos with combat finesse and Regen to make them way harder to kill than expected.  A black blood shaman is a good choice as well, to get that focus bomb and have a pocket Mature if one dies.

I'm intrigued by the combo option with Nox and Yannic, but I worry at how few scheme markers Nephilim can generally put out. It's a lot of expensive models, so you don't have a lot of throwaway actions to make markers.

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32 minutes ago, Diceman87 said:

You're right, the core of a Nephilim list in outcasts should be two Matures with Soldier for Hire (my preference) as hard to kill combos with combat finesse and Regen to make them way harder to kill than expected.  A black blood shaman is a good choice as well, to get that focus bomb and have a pocket Mature if one dies.

I don't have any practical experience with it, but wouldn't SoDP be a better option? Sure, you don't get H2K and some card draw, but the pre-move, heal and Terrifying just look like a great package. 

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35 minutes ago, Morgan Vening said:

I don't have any practical experience with it, but wouldn't SoDP be a better option? Sure, you don't get H2K and some card draw, but the pre-move, heal and Terrifying just look like a great package. 

H2K on a model with regen and  grim feast is pretty tough to beat from a general standpoint. I’d probably take SoDP against crews which don’t drop corpse markers on death and/or don’t have abundant access to ruthless. Terrifying is going to be hit or miss, as it has an equal chance of eating a severe and causing a weak flip for the attack duel as it does eating a weak from the top and causing a high flip for the attack duel. I think it’s strongest on Mature Nephilim vs a crew which needs a decent amount of moderates for tactical actions so they have to start cheating w/ severes in suboptimal circumstances.

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11 hours ago, PiersonsMuppeteer said:

 Terrifying is going to be hit or miss, as it has an equal chance of eating a severe and causing a weak flip for the attack duel as it does eating a weak from the top and causing a high flip for the attack duel. 

Sorry I just don't agree

Flipping a severe for terrifying and causing a weak flip on the attack- good

Flipping a weak on terrifying means that you don't get an attack flip  - good. (Or that they have to cheat cards from their hand which is also good. Slightly less helpful for the Mature since they can't cheat the attack flip against him anyway, so the reduced hand doesn't help him as much but it does help your crew as a whole. )Sure, there are times when they flip just enough to pass the terrifying, and they then get a good attack flip where the flip they got for terrifying was worse than your DF flip, so it overall saved them a card, but most of the time the need 6+ to pass, so they are going to fail and have to cheat something like 40% of the time. 

So yes, there will be a small number of times when Terrifying worked against you, but there will be a lot larger number of times when it caused you to survive an attack that you otherwise would have been hit or killed on. 

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Terrifying is a thing that is realllllllly matchup specific IMO.

For instance in my game against Hoffman this weekend, having more terrifying is almost something I went for - he doesn't have a lot of cards, and hand pressure is such a huge part of the game.

On the flip side, he has one terrifying model and my Archie basically can't spam 3 attacks into it - there is a good chance I'll have to use 2 or even 3 cards to even have a chance to hit... Not great.

However, if I'm against someone like Zoraida, she doesn't care about using cards to bypass terrifying (and the crew has super high willpower).

In some matchups, draining their hand does relatively little.

So it is really something you have to take on a case-by-case IMO.

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3 hours ago, Adran said:

Slightly less helpful for the Mature since they can't cheat the attack flip against him anyway, so the reduced hand doesn't help him as much…

This summarizes the point I was making about Terrifying on MN. I feel that HtK is going to force another attack action more often than terrifying, and combining it with regen can force another two attacks to kill the MN. Terrifying is going to be a minor inconvenience for killing the MN more often than not imo, and the card drain may or may not help the crew significantly. 

I favor the card draw from SfH since cheating is going to be a heavy part of keeping the MN up and running. I also generally favor card draw over taking cards out of the opponent’s hand (unless it’s random or my choice).

Now this is only in the context of Terrifying(11) on a combat finesse body with a good amount of built in healing. I’ll take SoDP on Hanged just about every time as Terrifying(13) eats a lot more cards and actions, sans ruthless of course.

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32 minutes ago, PiersonsMuppeteer said:

This summarizes the point I was making about Terrifying on MN. I feel that HtK is going to force another attack action more often than terrifying, and combining it with regen can force another two attacks to kill the MN. Terrifying is going to be a minor inconvenience for killing the MN more often than not imo, and the card drain may or may not help the crew significantly. 

I favor the card draw from SfH since cheating is going to be a heavy part of keeping the MN up and running. I also generally favor card draw over taking cards out of the opponent’s hand (unless it’s random or my choice).

Now this is only in the context of Terrifying(11) on a combat finesse body with a good amount of built in healing. I’ll take SoDP on Hanged just about every time as Terrifying(13) eats a lot more cards and actions, sans ruthless of course.

I find that hard to kill probably adds about 1/2 a successful attack to the number needed to kill something (I may be unlucky, but I very often find the opponent naturally reduced my models to 1 wound. That will go up a bit with the regen but probably not the the extent that I expect it to add a whole extra attack in general, (It is really rare in my experience that I get to heal a model that is on hard to kill when its only healing is activating it) but the terrifying probably multiplies the number of attacks needed to kill by around 1.3 (suggesting that it causes about 1/4 to 1/3 the attacks to fail). So for something with many wounds, like the Mature nephlim, I would probably find Terrifying typically causes it to live longer in terms of attacks it is going to face. Of course I may not want you to miss it all the time, as black blood can up my damage output, so I can see a more consistent safety net in Hard to kill being popular. (And Terrifying encourages the use of Focus rather than 2 attacks, which reduced my black blood). 

I think both upgrades will be helpful in some way, and its probably playstyle and matchup dependent on which is the best

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I find Terrifying just much better than HtK. 

More than half time I hire models with HtK the model is reduced to 1 wound without even triggering HtK, and the rest is widely more often HtK prevents 1 point of damage than 2+.

Maybe just my bad luck, but I'm tired of losing models with HtK without time to heal them. Almost as tired as failing Terrifying duels from the damn Cerberus. 

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I’m liking the Lelu over Nox suggestion a little more, gives room for something like a dead outlaw to drop scheme markers for the draw engine or to hit MN with fast.

I’ve also started to eyeball malifaux child to copy Nox’s draw ability. Seems decent since MN can fly the child up the board, and child can also copy the effigy heal.

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My preference for Soldier for Hire also comes from the fact that if I'm using the Herald move, then I'm not nicely packed to benefit from a Blasphemous Ritual or Two from the Black Blood Shaman - or I have to move the shaman, and have fewer chances to carve off that corpse to pulse out the focus.

It's definitely a taste thing, but if I'm not making use of Herald, then it's only Terrifying and heal 2 on kill - which doesn't change the math in my experience as much as Hard to Kill & Draw cards (which mimics what they do in a Nekima led, Kharnage style list)

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  • 4 weeks later...

The recent talks about Nox’s effectiveness, or lack of it, in Molly2’s thread got me thinking of other ways Nox benefits from being taken in Outcasts instead of Resser. I don’t really see much for corpse markers other than Sue and Prospectors, and both effects don’t look string enough for inclusion imo. However, I see Alyce’s Pit Trap markers and Bring It’s ability to trigger Hazardous twice for 1 AP, and I see some potential for inclusion in a crew which has 2 Bring It and several Shove Aside/Terrorize. Nox has Hazardous producers in Resser/NB, but I think Injured+1 on top of 1 damage warrants some testing. Barbaros/Mature hitting 1/2 Df models seems like it could be fun, and all the movement of opposing models would be quite disruptive.

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