I was wrong about the Dead Man Walking

[Azahul]

16 hours ago, Zebo said:

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? 

I think the main conclusion I've come to is that Parker's AP aren't "Master's AP", Perdition is doing all the heavy lifting. Broken Man's Lasso is:

-A Perdition pulse (only on the first one of course)

-A marker to fuel Benny's Rat Summon (which at minimum is +1 damage to a future Swarm Them action, but if that rat lives it could well be much more and if it dies then it's usually a card cycle and another Perdition pulse)

-A push to ensure your opponent has some models clumped for when Mad Dog/Pearl blasts them or when Perdition pulses kick in

-A point of healing if Pearl is nearby when that marker gets removed

-Staggered making it easier to land additional Lassos or, ultimately, Benny's Swarm Them

In effect it has a delayed rolling benefit rather than just the initial action, ultimately turning into all kinds of different benefits as the rest of the crew takes their actions.

[Morgan Vening]

2 minutes ago, Azahul said:

I think the main conclusion I've come to is that Parker's AP aren't "Master's AP", Perdition is doing all the heavy lifting. Broken Man's Lasso is:

-A Perdition pulse (either when the marker gets dropped or, more commonly, at the end of Parker's activation when he turns the marker friendly and can control where it goes

-A marker to fuel Benny's Rat Summon (which at minimum is +1 damage to a future Swarm Them action, but if that rat lives it could well be much more and if it dies then it's usually a card cycle and another Perdition pulse)

-A push to ensure your opponent has some models clumped for when Mad Dog/Pearl blasts them or when Perdition pulses kick in

-A point of healing if Pearl is nearby when that marker gets removed

-Staggered making it easier to land additional Lassos or, ultimately, Benny's Swarm Them

In effect it has a delayed rolling benefit rather than just the initial action, ultimately turning into all kinds of different benefits as the rest of the crew takes their actions.

I'd add...
- There's a few other models that benefit from your opponent being lower Mv. Drachen Flamethrower (which works well with your 3rd point), a few Shockwaves. And to add to your delayed rolling benefit, if you put this Parker in a Von Schill crew, Land Mines and Arik and the Staggered and Push start to add up.

- To expand on your 5th point, -2 to Mv means being able to regularly hit Execute should you have other hand pressures. When your opponent is down 4 (Average Mv5-2, needing to get above a tie), they're going to have to cheat first ~72% of the time. Meaning they either cheat in a card, which you can cheat a Crow up to 3pts less to force them to discard another, or you can cheat in an even lower Crow.

- It's up to a 6" move penalty, more if they aren't in range with 1AP. And screws with some crew's movement shenanigans.

- The Staggered is optional. Which means it can be used to move your own models in a beneficial manner. Or, if need be, Execute them to avoid giving up points in some Scheme/Strat pools.

[Azahul]

Yeah, using the Lasso as a no TN action to freely move a friendly model 4" is pretty neat. Especially since Parker can run and gun to move both himself and, say, Mad Dog for one AP. Not something I do every turn but it's a common play Turn 1 and I use it in a pinch to score a lot.

[Da Git]

10" ranged Staggered can be absolutely brutal, especially combined with a push. That could be psuedo paralysed if you get a Mv4 beater 5-6" inches away from your models (imagine doing that to say a Peacekeeper or Izamu!). Then it has built-in drop-it for Perdition/Life of Crime/other tricks (this is especially relevant if you hit them with Stare-down, so it's after resolving) and Execute is always great for resource drain or late game kills.

[Thatguy]

On 3/17/2022 at 6:09 AM, Da Git said:

That could be psuedo paralysed if you get a Mv4 beater 5-6" inches away from your models (imagine doing that to say a Peacekeeper or Izamu!)

I agree that ranged push+ stagger is pretty brutal. I think you're unlikely to see many slow melee beaters as Parker though, since the opponent knows they'll see a lot of Fast, Run and Gun models. 

[Azahul]

One of the more entertaining aspects of running Parker this way is that I have found the uncapped nature of Swarm Them to be more relevant more consistently than Bleeding Disease ever has been I've played Hamelin since I started Malifaux about two years ago, and I've hit exactly one 9 damage Bleeding Disease. I've barely got into double digit games of Parker and I've hit that mark with Swarm Them a couple of times and it isn't even all that hard. Eight rats can be a surprisingly low bar if your opponent didn't pack AOEs, and unlike Hamelin Parker doesn't immediately signpost that he will be bringing anti-swarm tech. In one game for example I only summoned two rats with Benny on Turn 1 and had him move onto the front line, where he got punched twice for two more rats, then another two times on Turn 2, and then he again only made a two rat summon (well, three, because he killed one of the newly summoned rats himself to get a Perdition pulse plus card cycle plus another marker for Pearl to heal him with when he summoned) and there we have it, eight rats in the brawl.

[admiralvorkraft]

5 minutes ago, Azahul said:

One of the more entertaining aspects of running Parker this way is that I have found the uncapped nature of Swarm Them to be more relevant more consistently than Bleeding Disease ever has been I've played Hamelin since I started Malifaux about two years ago, and I've hit exactly one 9 damage Bleeding Disease. I've barely got into double digit games of Parker and I've hit that mark with Swarm Them a couple of times and it isn't even all that hard. Eight rats can be a surprisingly low bar if your opponent didn't pack AOEs, and unlike Hamelin Parker doesn't immediately signpost that he will be bringing anti-swarm tech. In one game for example I only summoned two rats with Benny on Turn 1 and had him move onto the front line, where he got punched twice for two more rats, then another two times on Turn 2, and then he again only made a two rat summon (well, three, because he killed one of the newly summoned rats himself to get a Perdition pulse plus card cycle plus another marker for Pearl to heal him with when he summoned) and there we have it, eight rats in the brawl.

That's funny. One of the reasons I like Benny is my regular opponents just don't attack him 😛

[Azahul]

7 minutes ago, admiralvorkraft said:

That's funny. One of the reasons I like Benny is my regular opponents just don't attack him 😛

If they weren't attacking him and forcing me to activate him early in the turn for the healing from his summon I could have put a lot more markers down than just the handful left over from Pearl and the Emissary's Turn 1 activations

[Azahul]

Honestly I do think leaving Benny alive is pretty problematic from an opponent's perspective into this crew. He generates so much healing, damage, a good bit of card draw, ping damage, etc. that it can be hard to keep up. But killing him had better work because there's nothing worse than punching Benny a bunch and making several rats only for him to heal all that damage and just be in a more dangerous position.

[admiralvorkraft]

Fair enough, I'm running him in Hamelin where he's very much not the most problematic thing going...

[Azahul]

2 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Fair enough, I'm running him in Hamelin where he's very much not the most problematic thing going...

Yeah he plays very differently in Parker. Much more of a front line model, and a great deal more dangerous. 

[Burnin4tor]

On 3/22/2022 at 11:28 AM, Azahul said:

One of the more entertaining aspects of running Parker this way is that I have found the uncapped nature of Swarm Them to be more relevant more consistently than Bleeding Disease ever has been I've played Hamelin since I started Malifaux about two years ago, and I've hit exactly one 9 damage Bleeding Disease. I've barely got into double digit games of Parker and I've hit that mark with Swarm Them a couple of times and it isn't even all that hard. Eight rats can be a surprisingly low bar if your opponent didn't pack AOEs, and unlike Hamelin Parker doesn't immediately signpost that he will be bringing anti-swarm tech. In one game for example I only summoned two rats with Benny on Turn 1 and had him move onto the front line, where he got punched twice for two more rats, then another two times on Turn 2, and then he again only made a two rat summon (well, three, because he killed one of the newly summoned rats himself to get a Perdition pulse plus card cycle plus another marker for Pearl to heal him with when he summoned) and there we have it, eight rats in the brawl.

How often do you turn all these rats into rat kings and so on, or not that often without Hamelin to support them? Seems like a good way to add in all your rat shenanigans etc 

[Azahul]

14 minutes ago, Burnin4tor said:

How often do you turn all these rats into rat kings and so on, or not that often without Hamelin to support them? Seems like a good way to add in all your rat shenanigans etc 

I did it a lot initially. I'm increasingly of the opinion that doing so is a mistake. The kinds of crews Parker typically sees don't do as much AOE damage as the ones Hamelin typically faces so four rats are usually more difficult to deal with than one, as well as being harder hitting as the rats accumulate. And you get a lot of benefits from those rats dying (Kings dying too, but rats give more opportunities to proc the card cycle and marker drops).

 

That said getting a Rat Catcher on the table early is quite attractive so you don't find yourself tripping over your own rats. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

53 minutes ago, Azahul said:

The kinds of crews Parker typically sees don't do as much AOE damage as the ones Hamelin typically face

Although I think you're going to change this part of the meta

[Azahul]

28 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Although I think you're going to change this part of the meta

At which point I'll need to sit down and make hyper elite Parker1 crews work for me again and make my opponents just hate all their choices.

[Azahul]

Ok so I decided to do some toying around with Parker2 in a competitive environment, so soloed him in the April Malifaux World Series event. Worked out well in the end, since I spent the latter half of April down with COVID so wasn't getting real life games.

 

The April event had a 15 stone limit on OOK and Versatile options. Given that my Parker2 core includes the Hodgepodge Emissary I was essentially locked into picking a Bandit model with my last 15 stones. Ended up settling on the Convict Gunslinger and running it in all four games. A 7 stone cache felt about right, and in my view the Gunslinger is an outright better model than Sue (who does at least have Fistful of Scrip for Perdition synergy, but in my experience Sue is a tougher model who does less damage and is worse at scheming than the Gunslinger) and I like the Gunslinger's ability to reposition Mad Dog/Parker for effective turns and contribute potshots while scheming with Run and Gun over the Wokou Raider's improved durability and occasionally better personal mobility.

 

That Gunslinger would ultimately contribute in a big way, scoring nearly all of my points in the last two rounds of the event himself. I was actually really impressed and will probably be hiring him to round out the crew a lot even in games where I'm not constrained by the OOK limit.

 

In terms of key takeaways from the experience, I think I will start with saying Parker2 absolutely has competitive legs. My games were close, every game bar Round One (in which Parker engaged Sonnia1 in melee on Turn 1 and Staggered her so that her Disengage actions would be Mv 2 duels vs Stat 6 in which even a weak prevention flip would keep her locked in melee, ensuring she spent the entire game just making sword attacks) had a diff of 1 or 2, so there weren't really any blowout games. The general rule for most of the matches was that Parker and Mad Dog absorbed all the attention while either Benny or the Convict Gunslinger quietly stole the game, and thanks to the formidable healing in the crew most games finished with the crew largely intact (emphasis on "most" there).

[Azahul]

If anyone happens to be interested in listening to me waffle about Parker2 at length for... uh... about two hours, including referencing this thread a bit, I was on the Rage Quit Wire podcast for an episode specifically on the subject:

https://ragequitwire.podbean.com/e/rage-quit-wire-episode-167-dead-man-walking-malifaux/

[Krom]

Just getting back into Malifaux after a multi-year hiatus, and I'm starting w/ Parker 1, but Parker 2 looks intriguing thanks to this detailed  thread.  Such a great detailed analysis by all.  

How much better will Parker 2 be competitively if/when Wyrd fixes his Perdition LOS blocking issues?  

[Azahul]

6 hours ago, Krom said:

Just getting back into Malifaux after a multi-year hiatus, and I'm starting w/ Parker 1, but Parker 2 looks intriguing thanks to this detailed  thread.  Such a great detailed analysis by all.  

How much better will Parker 2 be competitively if/when Wyrd fixes his Perdition LOS blocking issues?  

I do think Parker2 is pretty solidily competitive with this specific build. Removing the LOS issue would be a minor buff for this way of running him (since the whole point of this build was to mitigate the LOS issue), but more importantly it would increase the viability of different builds. Honestly, odds are this crew composition would still be one of the strongest ways of running him, but it would definitely up the value of the Bandit minions with him and perhaps give some viable alternatives to players who don't want Benny in their Bandit crews.

[Burnin4tor]

On 9/9/2022 at 9:22 AM, Azahul said:

…alternatives to players who don't want Benny…

You misspelt “fools”

[ElPuto]

Hey guys, coming back after a while and still trying to wrap my head around Outcasts and ES choices. Always loved my Parker, so I wanna give a try to Parker2 in an upcoming tournament. What do you think about this?

PERDITION SPAM (Outcasts)
Size: 50 - Pool: 3
Leader:
  Parker Barrows, Dead Man Walking
Totem(s):
  Doc Mitchell
Hires:
  Benny Wolcomb
  Hodgepodge Emissary
  Mad Dog Brackett
  Pearl Musgrove
  Prospector
  Prospector 2
References:
  Malifaux Rat
  Memento
  Pretty Floral Bonnet
  Vitality Potion

3SS cache seems so low but honestly I don't know what to take out.

[Axelst]

With two Prospectors, 3 stones is no problem.

[ElPuto]

10 minutes ago, Axelst said:

With two Prospectors, 3 stones is no problem.

What do you say about 2 Prospectors? Is that too much? Should I add another model (like Sue or a Gunslinger) and just take one Prospector?

[admiralvorkraft]

I run Tara Timeless with two prospectors as a matter of course.

[Azahul]

On 1/4/2023 at 9:00 AM, ElPuto said:

Hey guys, coming back after a while and still trying to wrap my head around Outcasts and ES choices. Always loved my Parker, so I wanna give a try to Parker2 in an upcoming tournament. What do you think about this?

PERDITION SPAM (Outcasts)
Size: 50 - Pool: 3
Leader:
  Parker Barrows, Dead Man Walking
Totem(s):
  Doc Mitchell
Hires:
  Benny Wolcomb
  Hodgepodge Emissary
  Mad Dog Brackett
  Pearl Musgrove
  Prospector
  Prospector 2
References:
  Malifaux Rat
  Memento
  Pretty Floral Bonnet
  Vitality Potion

3SS cache seems so low but honestly I don't know what to take out.

This is exactly what my very first Parker2 list looked like. Great minds!

 

I eventually moved to cutting the Prospectors for a higher starting cache and one more workhorse/scheming/support model (that final choice after the Mad Dog, Benny, Pearl, Emissary core is pretty flexible and I vary it by pool) but I don't think the Prospectors are a poor choice by any means.

 

I would lean away from bringing a small cache and one Prospector though. Two is ok, if you eat Pearl's marker turn one you should have a 6 stone cache to work with early and that should be fine, but this crew's front line lives via soulstones and healing and you really want to be able to burn stones to live through a strong alpha strike if necessary. 2-3 stones and one Prospector won't cut it. In my view you either go a big cache and one other model of choice or a small cache and two Prospectors. Small cache and one Prospector is too risky for me.