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Rathnard's Marcus Diary


Rathnard

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As some of you will know I've decided to concentrate on Marcus as my next 'main' master. Poor Marcus seems to be getting (mostly) ignored on the Arcanist forums and I've previously found that recording my thoughts on each game I play can help alot with working out how best to use an army (or in this case, a crew). In light of that I've decided to start a diary of my games with Marcus.

Anyway, this was the last game I played with Marcus. It happened almost two weeks ago but I figured it's a good game to start with. :D

GAME 1: Marcus (Claim Jump) vs McMourning (Slaughter)

Marcus (Master-Specific Scheme & +2SS Cache)

Jackalope 1

3x Silurid 15

Sabretooth Cerebrus 8 (24)

McMourning (Bodyguard? & Master Specific Scheme)

Zombie Chihuahua 1

Sebastian 6

3 Necropunks 9

Bete Noire 9 (25)

In Short:

I won initative and Alpha'd McMourning two turns in a row, enabling me to turn Sebastian into a bloody smear and eventually kill McMourning from combined Silurid attacks before he had a chance to activate again. Bete Noir came out and I spent the rest of the game both avoiding her and concentrating on killing the Necropunks (also with an Alpha'd Bete Noir for a few turns). The Necropunks themselves came very close to killing Marcus, using Leap to get into range and Flurry to make their attacks. The Sabretooth charged something (Bete Noir I think) but fluffed his attacks, dieing soon after to the Necropunks and Bete. The Silurid were almost unharmed for most of the game, eventually finishing off the Necropunks, then Bete, before sitting on the Claim jump counter. It was a 4:0 win for Marcus.

What I Learnt:

- Defend me is no good against models that can easily get into melee without charging. In this case it was McMourning with Scalpel Slingin' and the Necropunks with Leap.

- Even against Necropunks in melee, Marcus still came very, very close to getting killed. He's clearly not a tank and you really need to treat him as such.

- Alpha won the game for me. With it, I effectively neutralised McMourning for two turns, killed Sebastian and neutralised Bete Noir for two turns. The negative is that it resulted in me playing a very risky game. If I hadn't taken initiative in turn 2 or 3, or if Feral/Alpha had failed against McMourning then the game could have very easily turned against me. It also forced me to burn most of my soulstones on getting the spell off, particularly against McMourning, and Marcus almost died to the Necropunks as a result. There's no doubt that Alpha can be very powerful but as I found out in this game, it's a risky spell to rely upon for your game-plan.

- In this game at least, the Sabretooth did very little. It failed to kill anything on it's charge and then died in short order afterwards. It probably didn't help that it got involved in a big melee brawl in the centre of the board, which left it open to getting hit back by both Bete and the Necropunks. At this point, I think a different approach is needed for the Sabretooth.

- The Silurid were amazing. They eventually killed McMourning and when Bete Noir arrived, they were able to Survival Instinct and Leap out of danger before concentrating on the Necropunks.

Next game I'll be trying more of the Book 1 Beasts (depending on the size of the game) and hopefully going for a more hit & run approach with Marcus, rather than letting him get stuck in combat while he abuses Alpha. ;)

Edited by Rathnard
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Mate as a new Arcanist player I am glad you are championing the Marcus machine. I really like his whole wild beast druid schtick, I imagine his fluff is interesting (waiting on the book for that read) but I play Circle Oboros in PP genre for a reason.

I checked out the forums and online store and Arcanists simply had to be the primary faction I liked all the Masters then while deciding on my first..... Well who would not want Collette to be their first, she is so saucy and oh the things I hope to learn. But Marcus despite the cool models and appealing background I am avoiding because the forums hammer him.

I will be watching this thread with interest, you may just inspire me to pick up Wyrd's psychotic PETA representative earlier than I'd planned.

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I play marcus as well a completely different route but will post my marcus matchups as well ..figure the more the marrier... Just wanted to say I enjoy your work a lot I play zoraida as well and tho we usual go different routes I learn a lot from your writings...

marcus alpha striking with the siluruds is always a fun thing to do and hard for most models to combat...I also take a coryphee duet and a malifaux raptor...turning the coryphee into a beast..which can also travel will with silurids and marcus...

Mechanical rider..and shikome are also two models I've had success with...looking to posssibly try rogue necromancy along with miranda somtime could be fun.

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Am really looking forward to this. I am sure Marcus is not as bad as people think, so I am hoping that this might show that.

Plus I really like seeing what other people are doing with him, to see what I can also try.

Question

When you are going for Alpha-ing an opponent, which method of beasting up did you go for? The extra strike from Wild Heart activating the trigger, Or the spell?

I can see reasons for both and am interested in which you chose/will choose.

And finally, I find the big pussycat just too fragile to achieve much. I feel I'm paying alot for the three headed ability, and one good hit and its gone.

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I am seeing the hate for the 3 headed Tiger, I personally love this model but I use it in my Raspy crew. I use it with her for the extra speed it really has and roar is a great ability if you have a good card in your hand and in my opinion is worth the red joker in some situations. It can also deal out a huge amount of damage because you can leap in and have 4 attacks.

I think it is key to have it make the alpha strike with at least 3 attacks because it will die rather quickly but having it kill Bad Juju in a turn and move on to killing silerids later on with no support was good.

I don't know if working with Marcus is good, but I have had success though I think it needs to stalk and run down a side of the table and pick models out to kill.

I am also looking at picking up big pimpin's marcus to go with my Harem of masters, also Kearis is not coming out any time soon so have to try something. I look forward to hearing your opinions on Marcus .

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Something I saw last night in watching a marcus V perdita matchup.

The rogue necromancy is an incredible model for Marcus to use. Its a melee beater with a ton of options. Better then the cat in every respect and a lot more resilent.

The Lawyer made for very good card denial. I recommend you give him a go.

Having a tunneling moleman near marcus to take the hits with its awesome armor 5 is also very very useful.

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I play marcus as well a completely different route but will post my marcus matchups as well ..figure the more the marrier...

Absolutely. You're more than welcome to post them here if you'd like, so we'd have all the Marcus game reports in the one spot (goes off to change the title to something less Rathnard-centric EDIT: Never mind...looks like it's too late to change the title)

Question

When you are going for Alpha-ing an opponent, which method of beasting up did you go for? The extra strike from Wild Heart activating the trigger, Or the spell?

I can see reasons for both and am interested in which you chose/will choose.

When Marcus was in melee with McMourning I did the (0) strike and wild heart, but I used Feral every other time. Honestly, as you say I can see uses for both. They both require your opponent to flip/resist on different stats (Wp or Df) so that's a consideration, as is the fact that Marcus' Cb is one less than his Ca, making Feral a bit harder to resist alot of the time. A melee strike has the advantage of dealing damage to the target and more importantly, being an opposed duel. So if you're winning on the initial flip you can see what your opponent's total will be before commiting cards/soulstones. That's as opposed to Feral needing a spell resist, so you'd need to cheat/soulstone your own total before your opponent tries to resist. On the other hand, Feral is worth while if you want to keep Marcus away from your opponents crew, and it doesn't require you to first cast (0) Wild Heart either. The latter is particularly important because it frees up that (0) action for stare down, which makes it MUCH harder for the target to successfully resist Alpha (as an aside, I forgot to take advantage of this last game :rolleyes: ).

I don't know if working with Marcus is good, but I have had success though I think it needs to stalk and run down a side of the table and pick models out to kill.

I'm thinking the same thing. He seems to fragile to just wade into a melee brawl otherwise.

The Lawyer made for very good card denial. I recommend you give him a go.

I'm planning to. The Lawyer seems like a model that not many people like, so I'm keen to see if I can make him useful with Marcus. If nothing else, granting Hard to Wound 2 to Marcus and his beasts seems like a very good option.

As an aside, I've started working on a tactics article. It's already pretty large but for the most part it's theory based on the model rules. So I'll probably be amending it as I get more experience with Marcus. ;)

Edited by Rathnard
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If you are looking for some book 2 models to try with him, fantastic choices by far are the gunsmith and a shikome.

The list I've been looking at is:

marcus

jackalope

sillurid x2

shikome

and either rattler or big kitty.

The big thing about the gunsmith is that he gives you the one thing you really lack in a marcus list - shooting. He has a solid Cb, paired, can tailor every shot to the target, and if he flips a tomes can double his damage!

Also, his Leadstorm ability is pure win when stuff needs to die right now.

A less appealing option is to swap the rattler/big kitty and gunsmith for the rogue necromancy and a convict gunslinger.

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It limits your targets somewhat, but a Shikome is an AWESOME boost for Alpha.

Getting Fast while you're trying to Alpha something opens up all sorts of options, including Stare Down, Howl, and using a regular Strike to give the target Beast. Even just using Hunting Partner to try and kill the big target, it's a huge boost for Marcus.

I'm eagerly awaiting the chance to see how Raptors help with Alpha too - Fast AND not having to use his (0) to turn the target beastly? Oh my.

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I used to use a tunnelin moleman until I started taking a coryphee duet/mechanical riders ... passing off the damage to a bulletproof 2 model who can heal itself easily is always fun.

somthing I will try in future is taking kaeris miranda and malifaux raptor turning kaeris into a beast and copying her spells with miranda..maybe taking lawyer or rogue necromancy to copy thier spells as well fir a more casty list option..

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I think Kairs´s Spells are to special to use tghem with myranda... because of the counters that are needed...

I have tryed a caster List around myranda that looks like this...:

Arcanists Crew - 30 - Scrap

Marcus -- 4 Cache

Essence of Power [2ss]

Malifaux Raptor [2ss]

Moleman [3ss]

Myranda [7ss]

Rogue Necromancy [10ss]

Silent One [6ss]

It worked realy good...

And don´t forget, that you cannot mix the necromancy with Kairis... :(

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Suscribing. Marcus is toward the bottom of my list for models to buy, but I figure I have all the other Arcanist stuff, so I should pick him up at some point. Plus, I plan to get Kirai eventually too, so I'll already have the Shikome cross over.

Using the Coryphee with Marcus is actually a pretty solid idea, IMO, especially since they have Bulletproof as well as the self-healing. So for the Ranged attacks portion of Marcus' Df trigger, they would be awesome. Plus, then you could use Alpha on the Coryphees in order to get 2 activations per turn out of them.

The Raptor definitely seems like it will be a must-take in most Marcus lists as well. The problem is, the 4 CB is relatively bad, and you have to have a Tome on top of that in order to get the trigger. So, still rather tough to pull off against many models. And if your opponent suspects you're trying to pull this off against their Master, it's a good bet they'll burn the Soulstones as necessary to stop you. Still though, I suppose there are enough low Df models here and there in the game that you ought to be able to pull it off in many games. Especially if you're running 3 or more Raptors, which wouldn't be that unusual anyways.

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Q: Would changing Alpha to a (1) spell make Marcus overpowered?

My first instinct was no: assuming a once per turn limit like Obey, it could be reasonable. Get a full activation and usable against masters is obviously better than Obey, but the Beast restriction makes it considerably harder to pull off.

But that got me thinking a little broader, and I think it actually would be. Not because of Alpha itself, but because it would so easily combine with Howl and Stare Down as to be almost an automatic success. Howl, Feral, Stare Down, Alpha, bam. I think that would probably be too much.

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Using the Coryphee with Marcus is actually a pretty solid idea, IMO, especially since they have Bulletproof as well as the self-healing. So for the Ranged attacks portion of Marcus' Df trigger, they would be awesome. Plus, then you could use Alpha on the Coryphees in order to get 2 activations per turn out of them.

That is not possible since the corrys are friendly and Alpha can only be casted on enemy beasts...

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