What are the best crews for new players?

[Baka Al]

Hi, I was hoping some of you experienced players may be able to help me out here..

Just found out about this game, and am currently awaiting delivery of the rules, along with the cult of december and death marshals crew boxes.. (I'll be honest.. I picked those two as really liked the models there!)

Now are these crews good ones to start the game with? I ask as I will be dragging the game around to several of my friends to get them playing, but I don't want to be using crews that are really complex to play with, as will be showing this off to both people experienced with mini games (specifically the whole gamut of GW's releases) through to total novices.

I am tempted by Pandora's crew, but I assume that this one will be using all of those rules I'm hoping to avoid here!

So, any advice on this matter will be gratefully appreciated!

[Lucidicide]

I think those are probably good choices. Pandora is seen as a bit more complex, Lilith is another one that people think is good for beginners, and I think the Ortegas (Perdita and crew) are another fairly straightforward bunch.

Good luck, and welcome to the game!

[Baka Al]

Thanks for the reply... Lillith is a bit of a surprise one actually, as looking at the models, I thought that it might have been one of the complex options as well!

Nice to know that I've got a couple of simpleish crews on the way then!

Out of interest, how do the various factions generally play? (I'm sure the rule book will give some idea.. just interested to know what/how much variety in play styles there are here..)

[Buck Dog]

Actually you have picked up two good crews to start with : Lady J is a monster in melee, whereas Tina is fantastic at long range but crumples if anyone who gets up close and personal with her. Its a nice contrast to start with.

I think you will find that as you get more experience under your belt Lady J remains fairly straight forward, whereas there are a few more nuances to Tina. Having said that, you need to be on top of your game with Lady J when you go up against some of the more tricky crews.

[Lucidicide]

Out of interest, how do the various factions generally play?

Better players than I have answered this question in other places. I'd suggest just poking around the forum some and I think you'll find a lot of what you're looking for. Every Master has a thread somewhere discussing them, and many have tactics posted.

I know I've seen some good summaries of the factions overall, too.

[Baka Al]

Thanks for that Lucidicide, I'll have a hunt for those threads then!

And Buck Dog, I'm sure I'll end up playing one of the more tricksy crews as I get to grips with the system.. well, i am one of those weird players who'll run weird setups which will either work fantastically well, or fall apart (hell, I constantly played Skaven in WFB for that very reason and constantly make up weird combo decks in WoW TCG!)

[Buck Dog]

Check out this thread :

http://www.wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11712

Rathnard gives a very useful faction overview, and Dgraz has a similar guide linked in his signature.

Enjoy !

[Rathnard]

Check out this thread :

http://www.wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11712

Cool, I thought my post had been ignored and lost in the ether. Nice to know it's been useful to some people.

In general, most crews are fine for players to start with. The exceptions to that are Leviticus and the Gremlins, both of which require an excellent grasp of the rules. Pandora is tricky to use as well but it's not as if you can't learn with her (I did - she was my first crew). That said, Pandora plays so differently to the other crews that I definitely wouldn't recommend introducing people to the game with her.

Some of the other crews are traditionally harder to win games with - the common ones that pop up being Marcus and Zoraida. That's not to say that they're bad. It's just that like Pandora, they require more practice for players to figure them out and use them effectively (on the other hand, once you figure Pandora out she's a Nuke on legs).

[Flikfutch87]

The only thing I can really add is that you should stay away from Resurrectionists for the time being. Two of the three heavily rely on creating new zombies from corpse counters to flood the field, which takes quite a bit of getting used to.

[Baka Al]

Just want to say thanks for that summary post Rathnard.. it is very useful.

I'll definetly be pointing my friends towards that one for their reference!

And cheers for the heads up on the ressurectionists filkfutch87.. I wasn't too enamoured by some of the models there, so wasn't looking too much at them.. but I know a couple of my friends might be intrigued by them, so helpful to forewarn..

Looks like I might be getting a Lilith and Pandora crew next then!

[Gremlin Swarm]

Definitely avoid the Gremlins until you've got a good grasp of the rules. They really need sneaky/crafty playing to do well. (I have a lot of fun with them, though, even when I lose.)

Leveticus is complicated. Though I haven't used him yet, I think he'd be plenty effective, but his player really needs to be ready to keep track of all his quirks and abilities to make him work right.

The Death Marshals and the Ortegas are definitely good starter crews, with Lady J being the slightly more complex (relatively speaking) in my experience. Both are fairly straightforward.

The Resurrectionists, as mentioned, do need to raise undead on the field, but I played against a first-timer (to Malifaux--he's a veteran of other miniatures skirmish games) who had read the rules and used Samus. He did fine, which makes me think that if you're good a picking up/spotting tricks with new forces fairly quickly, you could do a lot worse than this crew. (That gun Samus has does an egregious amount of damage, even if he can only shoot it once per turn, and the Copycat Killer has it, too.)