I was wrong about the Dead Man Walking

[Azahul]

Ok, so when the rules of Parker Dead Man Walking were revealed I was pretty down on him. Stat 5 on his main attack, a meagre 2/3/6 damage track, the one trigger that makes the attack occasionally formidable not being built in, Chaos in the Badlands just feeling like a really low impact action, Stare Down being a step below even that, and worst of all his coolest front of card ability, Perdition, seemingly being non-functional on arrival. It read like it was designed to work with the Drop It trigger, but because the opponent controls the placement of the Drop It marker they could usually just block Line of Sight to Parker and avoid the Perdition aura that way. All around, pretty annoying.

 

I got to thinking a while back though that the way to play him might be to toss any hope of making Drop It work out the window and instead hire models who make scheme markers in other ways, and finally had the time this week to sit down and hammer out a few games to really put my theories to the test. The core models for Parker2 in my view are the following:

 

Mad Dog (obviously, also usually gets a kill and with Fistful of Scrip he will proc a Perdition pulse most turns)

The Hodgepodge Emissary (makes a cheap and easy marker as a bonus action, provides some healing)

Pearl Musgrove (again, a bonus action to drop a marker, and the amount of healing she can put out as markers drop and are removed is genuinely impressive)

Benny Wolcomb

 

That last one deserves a little more attention I think. Benny in Bandit has a poor reputation, but he really, really does work in Parker2. Without Parker1 hoovering up scheme markers and with only Mad Dog and Benny himself as Life of Crime models you actually end up with a considerable number of scheme markers scattered around the table. That lets Benny do some awesome rat summons, and he isn't just doing them in his own deployment zone. Some games I forego Turn 1 backline summons just to get Benny up the table faster, and he will sit there in the middle of the opposing crew summoning rats on top of enemy models and just tearing them off the table with 5+ damage Swarm Them actions. Those same summons can throw out a good bit of healing thanks to Pearl, and with the Emissary around too Benny can actually play a role as a bit of a tank and that just gets more rats on the table. Finally, if the opponent tries to deal with these rats, Loyal to the Very End gives you Perdition pulses in the opponent's activation.

 

The last handful of stones (I think there's about 15 leftover) aren't something I am particularly settled on. I've been hiring double Prospectors for want of anything better to do, the starting cache of 3 can be rebuilt pretty fast if they're picking up Pearl's enemy scheme marker every now and again and the Appraise actions can do a lot between Pearl's and Parker's auras.

 

Obviously such a static build doesn't make Parker enormously flexible, you only have a little bit to play with, but in pools with a few scheme markers Parker is both good at scoring and good at denying. The Corrupted Leylines strategy works very well for him too, but I'm finding he isn't all that bad in any pool. His crew is a little susceptible to being spiked down, but against anything that can't rip them off the table in a single activation the unrelenting pace of healing in the crew actually makes them surprisingly durable for a crew where Hard to Kill is really the only reliable defensive rule.

 

Overall the amount of damage the crew puts out when you're hitting a Perdition pulse almost every activation is actually quite formidable, far outstripping my initial reading of Parker's card. 

 

I still don't necessarily think Parker's card is well designed, Perdition feels like it shouldn't be an aura or something so that it could at least synergise with all the unused Bandit minions and that would at least make Stare Down feel like it kind of does something. But I was wrong in writing him off so completely, he has a great deal more legs than I gave him credit for and I am having a lot of fun finding out what he can do.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Very exciting to hear about how Parker is coming together.

How often do you find yourself shooting stuff for 6, or at least threatening the shoot for six?

[Azahul]

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Very exciting to hear about how Parker is coming together.

How often do you find yourself shooting stuff for 6, or at least threatening the shoot for six?

Maybe once a game? It doesn't come up often, and when it does it's often a fluke. I don't always have the cards to make it work, there have been games where it only happened because the cards just made it happen.

 

Benny hits for six at least as often

[Azahul]

To clarify, if I'm trying to make six damage happen the simplest way is to cheat to hit twice with Mad Dog. Better stat and Min 3 damage. Has a blast too. So my Severes usually get spent on that activation. Or if I am set up for it Benny hits for 5+ only needing a single severe. Better in both cases than Parker needing two severes and often a Soulstone to force his to happen, so the cards are rarely there for Parker's activation and when I get it it's purely because my deck wanted it to happen.

[Thatguy]

Thanks for the write up. Looking at the card I thought he would be more like Levi hunting down a single minion a turn. 

[Azahul]

Yeah, that was my own initial take, but by that metric you would be better off playing Leveticus (who isn't even limited to hunting Minions). It only takes a handful of successful Perditions each turn on the other hand to do more damage than the gun ever would.

[Cuilion]

Great write up, thank you!

[LexLock]

Are you really taking him over parker1 just for Perdition? Parker 1 has sooo much stuff and more wounds and higher wp. Are you playing DMW as a challenge to yourself and finding that he can do something or is he actually a viable pick over the OG parker?

 

Also, who wants to bet that the wyrd designers don't play Drop It! as written when they playtest it lmao.

[Azahul]

5 hours ago, LexLock said:

Are you really taking him over parker1 just for Perdition? Parker 1 has sooo much stuff and more wounds and higher wp. Are you playing DMW as a challenge to yourself and finding that he can do something or is he actually a viable pick over the OG parker?

 

Also, who wants to bet that the wyrd designers don't play Drop It! as written when they playtest it lmao.

Perdition does quite a lot. A 2" pulse will normally tag at least two models, and the damage from pulse can't be resisted, so once you're hitting ~3 Perditions a turn Parker2 is out-damaging Parker1 without using any of his own AP.

 

Meanwhile he's able to a play more of control game, the Lasso can really shut down enemy beaters quite well, something Parker1 normally does by face tanking them and mining them for Soulstones. That same Lasso lets you force enemy models together, both guaranteeing more Perdition damage and setting up amazing Mad Dog turns where he just melts half the opposing crew in an activation. And then you get to have actual synergy with Benny, who is a great model that I always love to see on the table, so it's nice seeing him have actual play in Bandit.

 

Overall I think I like Parker2 more than 1, but I went off Parker1 a bit around the time they changed Wanted Criminal and removed his ability to play a full resource generation game. Parker2 has some very clear strengths with his ability to move models (friendly and enemy) and deal passive chip damage. Parker1 is tankier thanks to the ability to generate soulstones, though having +2 health vs Parker2 having Hard to Kill is kind of a wash in my view. Parker2's Abandon Hope does much the same job as Draw Their Attention, while allowing you to get scheme markers down in places you have no models.

 

And yes, based on Perdition, Stare Down, and Trigger Finger on the Bandido (another seemingly non-functional ability), I'm guessing that playtests haven't picked up on the fact that these markers can be placed such that the model with the aura can't draw LOS to them unless it's their own activation.

[Maniacal_cackle]

My take on the discord:

After playing Parker 2, I can definitely see the huge potential of the crew and see how it can be comfortably 'playable.'

Huge amount of power.

But I think the crew is probably a bit too disruptible for the MB meta and probably isn't going to make too huge a competitive splash except when people aren't prepared for it.

 

That said... Can't wait to see Azahul play it. I'm sure he will really get value out of the crew!

[Azahul]

3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

My take on the discord:

After playing Parker 2, I can definitely see the huge potential of the crew and see how it can be comfortably 'playable.'

Huge amount of power.

But I think the crew is probably a bit too disruptible for the MB meta and probably isn't going to make too huge a competitive splash except when people aren't prepared for it.

 

That said... Can't wait to see Azahul play it. I'm sure he will really get value out of the crew!

To be fair that is about my own take on the crew (in that I remain unsure if it has legs competitively). But even just achieving "playable" status is a big leap given my original take was "dead on arrival"

[Morgan Vening]

19 hours ago, Azahul said:

Perdition does quite a lot. A 2" pulse will normally tag at least two models, and the damage from pulse can't be resisted, so once you're hitting ~3 Perditions a turn Parker2 is out-damaging Parker1 without using any of his own AP.

How are you getting multiple Perditions off?

I get the concept, Staredown (and successful Drop It's), but given the opponent gets to drop the Scheme Marker, why are they not dropping it out of LOS of Parker2?  He's only a Ht2 30mm base, so that means unless the shooting model doesn't have LOS to the position directly opposite Parker, it can be dropped there. Are you putting him in an elevated position? 

I get that it works with Lasso (once per turn), but you're specifically talking about outside his activation, and I'm struggling to figure out how.

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 hour ago, Morgan Vening said:

How are you getting multiple Perditions off?

I get the concept, Staredown (and successful Drop It's), but given the opponent gets to drop the Scheme Marker, why are they not dropping it out of LOS of Parker2?  He's only a Ht2 30mm base, so that means unless the shooting model doesn't have LOS to the position directly opposite Parker, it can be dropped there. Are you putting him in an elevated position? 

I get that it works with Lasso (once per turn), but you're specifically talking about outside his activation, and I'm struggling to figure out how.

That's the whole point of the list.

Mad dog kills something? Scheme and perdition.

Rat dies?  Scheme and perdition.

Hodgepodge?  Scheme and perdition.

Pearl bonus?  Scheme and perdition.

He went looking for every other way to get schemes down.

[Azahul]

1 hour ago, Morgan Vening said:

How are you getting multiple Perditions off?

I get the concept, Staredown (and successful Drop It's), but given the opponent gets to drop the Scheme Marker, why are they not dropping it out of LOS of Parker2?  He's only a Ht2 30mm base, so that means unless the shooting model doesn't have LOS to the position directly opposite Parker, it can be dropped there. Are you putting him in an elevated position? 

I get that it works with Lasso (once per turn), but you're specifically talking about outside his activation, and I'm struggling to figure out how.

Aye, as Maniacal says the idea of that four model "core" I mentioned in the original post (Mad Dog, Benny, Pearl, Hodgepodge Emissary) was that they all fairly reliably make scheme markers in ways other than Drop It triggers, meaning I can count on multiple Perditions every turn. The idea behind the list was to cram as many such models in as I could find in order to actually make Parker2 function, and I've been pleasantly surprised by the result.

[Azahul]

As an aside I did recently have a game where Parker and Pearl were able to sit themselves atop a Height 2 hill and survey the countryside and boy it actually made it feel like the crew's core mechanic worked! 😆 Benny was getting Perditions in his own activation without having to kill rats, Mad Dog got a Perdition at one point without having to kill a model... just glorious.

 

Gosh I hope they fix that LOS issue at some point... whether it be by removing the aura element from Perdition to strip the LOS requirement or even by an FAQ so that LOS between two equal sized bases can no longer be blocked by a third base of the same size. I think this is the first game I've played with base to base LOS that pretends tangent lines don't exist, and it does my head in the way they apparently start existing again when you have a model standing exactly on top of a marker.

[Jinn]

My idea: give Parker2 an ability called Thousand-Yard Stare that lets him draw LoS ignoring models if he chooses to.

[Zebo]

The real solution: fix Drop It so the one controlling the placement of the marker is the attacker. 

[Azahul]

16 minutes ago, Zebo said:

The real solution: fix Drop It so the one controlling the placement of the marker is the attacker. 

Certainly, but that impacts so many other models I think it's the least likely fix. Even changing the core rulebook so that a single 30mm base cannot block LOS between two other 30mm bases seems more likely.

[Azahul]

One nice aspect of Parker2 I am finding is that is pretty card efficient. Parker can get by just fine on his own activation making three Broken Man Lasso attacks. If he leads with a Stare Down, which at Stat 7 will often win the duel and with its fairly small impact will rarely provoke a defensive cheat, you don't even need to win the Lasso Duels to be generating value out of them, and their odds of winning go up once the first one lands and Staggers the target.

 

Then, in turn, the highest damage attack in the crew targets Mv, so Benny can capitalise on the Staggered to win that duel quite easily (typically Stat 6 vs Mv 3) and maybe mine an extra scheme marker in the process if you have/flip a tome on his melee attack.

 

Mad Dog will use a few cards and if you try to actually use Parker's gun you have to be prepared to drop a few severes, but there is something to be said for how much work the crew can do without really trying to win duels.

 

I'm still experimenting with the last model or two to hire into the crew. Played a game with Sue last night where he didn't really contribute directly too much, which is about par for the course with Sue in my experience, but in this case it is on me for sending him down a flank as a schemer rather than direct combat. It did leave me wondering if I'd get more mileage out of a Convict Gunslinger. I doubt I'd feed markers to the Gunslinger often but they do give more mobility to the crew in a pinch.

 

In terms of pure support I also still need to test how I feel about a Scavenger or a Smuggler, so there's a bit of experimenting still to do.

[Maniacal_cackle]

I personally really like poking things with his main gun.

"Would you like to cheat a 13 or risk getting hit for 6?"

EDIT: Not to mention most support models you can kill pretty consistently from 19 inches away. I killed an enemy pearl in 2 shots and then ran away xD

[Azahul]

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I personally really like poking things with his main gun.

"Would you like to cheat a 13 or risk getting hit for 6?"

EDIT: Not to mention most support models you can kill pretty consistently from 19 inches away. I killed an enemy pearl in 2 shots and then ran away xD

It's just so expensive if they do call your bluff... the very opposite of what I was just describing where Parker2 can do his job with virtually zero need for cards.

 

Still, I'm sure I'll get around to actually using that part of his kit some day...

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 minute ago, Azahul said:

It's just so expensive if they do call your bluff... the very opposite of what I was just describing where Parker2 can do his job with virtually zero need for cards.

 

Still, I'm sure I'll get around to actually using that part of his kit some day...

Well, you're on a positive flip unless there's a minus, so on average the opponent is cheating first.

But depends if you want to play those averages (or just kill support models).

I found killing the healer as my number one priority felt good so I could attrition better. Though it turns out stoic nod was enough to undo me anyway xD

[Azahul]

10 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Well, you're on a positive flip unless there's a minus, so on average the opponent is cheating first.

But depends if you want to play those averages (or just kill support models).

I found killing the healer as my number one priority felt good so I could attrition better. Though it turns out stoic nod was enough to undo me anyway xD

That just sounds like you didn't do a good enough job killing the healer!

[Maniacal_cackle]

3 minutes ago, Azahul said:

That just sounds like you didn't do a good enough job killing the healer!

Exactly!

If I had just taken assassinate, I would have killed the real healer faster!

[Zebo]

I would like to know what is so good about Broken Man's Lasso. 

I only see a Master's action for a 4" Push and maybe Staggered. 

What I'm missing? What are the tricks I can't see?