Leveticus, good idea/bad idea?

[E.T.A. Hoffman]

Hello World,

I have this idea for Leveticus that could be terrible or terribly brilliant! I want to run him and all the high priced constructs I can. Such as, when they come out, run Leve and all the Riders!

Here's a sample crew, what do you all think? Is it awesome or horrible?

Leveticus

Desolation Engine

Peacekeaper

Steamborg Executioner

Hooded Rider

39ss

Thanks

[Elazar]

Leveticus rocks the socks.

That crew sounds like it could be cool, you're going to be out activated regularly but everything there hits like a massive hitty thing! Mind I'd start the four Steampunk Abominations instead of the Desolation Engine though. The Engine takes wounds for moving whereas you can leap frog the SPAs across the table and have the Desolation Engine pop up where you want to throw him

[LoboStele]

Yeah, since it's 12 points either way, definitely start with 4 individual SPAs.

As for the other big hitters....it's a fun way to play Levi, that's for sure. I've been playing him with all 3 of the Riders lately, in one form or another. I REALLY dig the Dead Rider, since it has Regen and the ability to heal itself 2 more Wds every turn if it wants. With Hard to Kill, that makes it pretty tough to permanently kill.

After playing the Peacekeeper with Hoffman, I'm not as much of a fan of it with Levi. Too much chance to flip those low cards and have the Peacekeeper be hampered for the rest of that round. The Steamborg can be good with Steamcloud to help protect the rest of your crew, and the Hooded Rider's various time's of Day are awesome since you can set yourself up just right based on your opponent's crew.

Overall, it will definitely be a fun list, but you will be massively out-activated. So, make sure you advance carefully, stay behind cover, and set up in ways to trap your opponent, or bait him into areas where multiple pieces can converge at once. This is definitely a VERY hard hitting crew, so you should be able to dish out some pretty heavy damage.

[Necromorph]

Ugh, that list with the Dead Rider instead of the Peacekeeper would be amazing.

I ran a 2 rider list with alyce at 30ss and it was pretty sweet. Granted by turn 3-4 it was just Levi against like 5 belles, but he melted face as usual and won the game. The reason I like "big construct" lists with him is that the opponent has to dedicate so many resources to killing the big nasties that they don't have enough left to deal with Levi and his Waifs....and then it's too late.

[Necromorph]

So I'm gonna :tj: to ask something sort of unrelated about Levi.

So I feel like Levi would be incredibly strong against Hoffman (due to all of his direct Wd spells and Alyces' anit-construct ability) and I might be playing him in our League soon, and I want to know, has anyone used a Guardian with him recently?

So, I was thinking of running with something that would screw with him a lot and possibly give him a taste of his own medicine:

Levi-0

Alyce-8

Guardian-7

Jack Daw-9

Canine- 2

Necropunk-3 (if it's an objective game)

TOTAL- 29ss

The idea isn't to use the Guardian for Levi, but to use it for Alyce and one of the Waifs. See, I have this fear of Austringers with Levi...as they can make your day very very bad. So the idea is to keep one Waif and Alyce near the Guardian (Armor +4 Alyce /drool) so you know Levi will be coming back, and so that Alyce can stay alive long enough to make up her points. Jack will do what de does best, spamming his auras and nooses. The Necro...well...best 3pt model IMO, and they're damn good at capturing objectives.

[LoboStele]

Seems like a good list to me. The Coryphee Duet is another one that can REALLY wreck your day by taking out the Waifs, especially if it gets to activate late in the turn.

I hadn't thought about how frustrating Austringers could be though.

I did play a game against Hoffman a couple weeks ago though. Even though he one-shot killed my Mechanical Rider right at the beginning, and then killed Levi in 2 hits before he could activate one round, my Desolation Engine still kept him a bit busy, and then when Levi resurrected next turn, he annihilated Hoffman's crew. The Peacekeeper and the Guardian were turned into SPAs in back-to-back turns, and then Hoffman himself was an easy kill after that. Meanwhile, the DE cared for the rest of the crew, and ended up with 2 extra SPAs by the end of the game.

[Necromorph]

Yeah, idk, I might get rid of Daw for something else. My Hoffman friend loves to play lots of tough I2I models, so Daw would only be good for spamming aura's...which wont work well if he's too close to Hoffman. I might go for something more killy, but I can't think of much that I could take that would ignore armor...so I might just go for a rider or Desi to tie him up while Alyce and Levi set up to bring the pain.

[LoboStele]

Yeah, idk, I might get rid of Daw for something else. My Hoffman friend loves to play lots of tough I2I models, so Daw would only be good for spamming aura's...which wont work well if he's too close to Hoffman. I might go for something more killy, but I can't think of much that I could take that would ignore armor...so I might just go for a rider or Desi to tie him up while Alyce and Levi set up to bring the pain.

With Levi's spells directly ignoring the armor, and his 7 Ca being well higher than pretty much any Df on Hoffman's crew, I think 1-2 models for tying up a piece or two is really all you need. The Desolation Engine may not do much damage because of the Armor, but it would certainly be frustrating, and take a bit to get through, with it's Hard to Wound and Consuming Touch.

[Necromorph]

Yeah...game didn't go so well, I think we tied, but idk...I had somewhere to be after the game and my opponent was taking forever to do his activations (turn 4 took us an hour) and it was probably the least fun game I've played, so I had to pack up fast and jet after the game...which is saying something because I never have fun playing against guild.

Basically we flipped shared Claim Jump, and so I decided to go the "outactivation"/objective saturation route by taking Levi, Alyce, Guardian, and a bunch of Necropunks. So...he took 2 austringers. The rest of his list is irrelevant as they are just so brutally overpowered for 5 pts it's not even funny. I nuked down ryle and Francisco, but he managed to kill all of my Necropunks going for the Austringers, and then managed to Austringer Levi's Waifs down before I could pop the Armor +4 aura from the Guardian on Turn 5 (Actually I think the only thing that didn't die to Austringers was 1 Necro and Levi himself). I ended up losing Alyce turn 6 and I had a Guardian on the Objective and he had Hoffman near the objective with an Austringer close behind Turn 7 when it ended.

I should have stuck to my original strategy of using Daw, at least I could have killed 1 Austringer to take the pressure off of Levi so he could have continued the Nuking cycle, but I really didn't think he was going to bring 2, but I had no way of knowing until we started deploying.

Edited May 31, 2011 by Necromorph

[LoboStele]

With the Austringers, I know their range and LOS ignoring stuff is ungodly, but I would consider using a tactic of deploying a Waif as close as possible without being within 18". Then when Levi dies, he respawns next to the Waif, and then you put the Waif a little further back. Then on Levi's turn, he can walk for 2 Wds, then take another Walk, and easily be within 12" of the Austringer. I guess this depends on whether you can get LOS on them or not, though. Two hits with Necrotic Unmaking or Unnatural Wasting would kill them though. Guess it all depends on how heavy the cover is on the table as well. That does suck though.

Did your opponent KNOW you would be playing Levi before you started your game? If so, that's kind of cheap. He might not have brought 2 Austringers if he thought he'd be playing against the Viks or Von Schill.

In the future though, I would probably use the Guardian to cast Protect on one of your Waifs right away, trying to keep it alive as long as possible. Although, come to think of it, as soon as the Waif is sacrificed at the end of a round, the effect would go away. Darn it. Ugh, that is tough.

Claim jump with Levi is rough in general though, so I've found. Not a lot of non-Insignificant models, unless you go with the Ressers. And as you found, the Ressers aren't THAT resilient.

[Necromorph]

He probably did know I was playing Levi, as he know's I haven't had much luck with my Mercs againstg him, and I usually avoid playing Hamelin because everyone hates playing him and I don't want to look like I'm trying to easy-mode the league.

Thus, that leaves me with Levi, and yeah, it was rough...and since the majority of the terrain we use at the LGC is a mix of forests and old Mordheim buildings, there's plenty of little corners to throw Austringers into where you can't get at them unless you fight your way past their entire crew to get behind them. I guess the meta at the LGC, including the terrain, is kinda a huge buff to Austringers. Although, what idiot is going to put them out in the open or on top of a rock pile just to be theatrical, they are far too easy to protect.

IDK, Guild are kinda ruining this game for me. It's not that you can't beat them (I have plenty) but playing against Guild is like climbing uphill through a pile of sh*t, even if you get to the top and win...guess what...you're still in a pile of sh*t. It's just flat out not fun when you have to try 10x harder than your opponent to achieve the same outcome...especially where Levi vs. Austringers is concerned.

[LoboStele]

Are you having specific problems vs. Hoffman? I would think that the Viks along with some armor-ignoring Mercs should do just fine there, like Ronin, Taelor, Hans, Johan, or Hans.

I guess, otherwise, your only options would have been to try and use models with higher Def that the Austringers can't hit as easily. I hate the fact that the Austringer can one-shot a Waif with only Moderate Damage, and since they ignore Cover and LOS, it's not too difficult to get a straight flip on the damage.

Guild get on my nerves from time to time too, but I think a lot of the guys at our LGS have got bored with them. We had 5 Neverborn players and 3-4 Guild players in our first league, with no Ressers and only 1-2 each in the other factions. This league (now our 3rd one), we only have ONE Guild player, and like 5-6 Ressers, lol.

[Necromorph]

Nah...Hoffman is hit or miss...the Mercs games I always just have bad luck with crappy strats and usually don't have enough stones to bother reflipping....plus the viks don't ignore armor...so yeah. Without Austringers Hoffman is very manageable.

With Guild, I feel forced to play a certain way against them. Their shooting is just so strong that the only way you can take them is to bum rush them with as much nasty stuff as you can and accept the fact that 50% of your crew is dead by the time they hit. Once you hit, most of their models don't really have much Df and go down hard, but getting there could cost you the game if you don't have enough models to finish your objectives, especially against Hoffman and Perdita.

Idk, basically, I'm competitive, but I try to play Malifaux to have fun, and play Infinity to be competitive, but it's hard to break that line of thinking. I just don't have fun when my opponent doesn't have to do anything to win, and I have to bust my ass and rely on fate (har har) to do what they can do by just sitting there and flipping cards to shoot you.

As for Austringers themselves, I'd have to start a whole post about how I think they should be cuddled into the ground when they get v2 cards, but I'll refrain from doing so here.

Edited May 31, 2011 by Necromorph

[LoboStele]

Idk, basically, I'm competitive, but I try to play Malifaux to have fun, and play Infinity to be competitive, but it's hard to break that line of thinking. I just don't have fun when my opponent doesn't have to do anything to win, and I have to bust my ass and rely on fate (har har) to do what they can do by just sitting there and flipping cards to shoot you.

As for Austringers themselves, I'd have to start a whole post about how I think they should be cuddled into the ground when they get v2 cards, but I'll refrain from doing so here.

LOL I'll agree with you 100% there. Recent 3-player game (sort of a Brawl, with 2 guys on one side). I ran a 50 point Levi crew and opponents had 20 points with Perdita, and 20 points with Kirai. We made a mistake and forgot that 'Dita could only cast Obey once in a turn. So, letting her cast it twice in the turn, Nino took out a 9 point model early in the turn, then killed a 12 pointer, and another 10 pointer. All in one turn. Granted, had we not screwed up about Obey, I would've only lost 2 models, but still. In return, I had only killed about 8 points worth of models total, which took nearly my whole crew to do so (40 some points), while Nino and 'Dita alone destroyed half of mine.

So yeah, I hear ya when you talk about some Guild shooters being a real PITA to deal with.

[Necromorph]

Guh, that's nasty. Yeah, they are a pain...make my poor Levi unbearably frustrating to play. Hamelin will be my primary mode of taking on Guild, but he can still find himself in hot water if you get a bum strat (like slaughter) or go up against Perdita...outcasts are just as a huge disadvantage against her in general.

[InfamousChicken]

I'm just getting into Levi myself (shipment comes in this week!). Would using the Hooded Rider be effective against these shooting crews as with Night he cannot be targeted by ranged attacks?

[Necromorph]

Yes and no. He will get there, but the problem is that once he gets there he will likely get killed if they have anything melee oriented (which they should have at least something...Peacekeeper, Executioner, Lady J, etc). He's not very survivable once he starts taking hits, but he's great for making them take a step back and say "Aww hell, I'm gonna have to let that thing get close before I can deal with it".

Ha, actually the first time I ever used it against Perdita I thought I could use it near cover to make a little shield for the rest of my crew. He then proceeded to charge it with Francisco, and then Obey Francisco with Abuela and essentially 2shot my Rider...was quite depressing.

[LoboStele]

Yeah, the Riders are interesting, but I find they are tough to keep alive sometimes. The Dead Rider is by far my favorite so far, what with it being able to heal 3 Wds per turn if necessary. Plus, with it's own Hard to Wound, I find it survives much better. The Hooded would be decent against Guild lists in general though. Just keep it within 10" of Levi so that you sort of use it as bait. Make the opponent close in to attack it, and then have Levi wail on the attacker with Necrotic Unmaking.

Re: Hamelin instead of Levi: I'd say if you get Slaughter, that Levi is probably still your best option. Since the Waifs are Summoned, it's hardly worth it for your opponent to try and kill either them or Levi under Slaughter conditions (although I guess Levi counts for points the first time your opponent kills him, so try to make sure you kill him yourself ). Levi can just wipe things out SO easily with 2-3 spells, and since most of Levi's crew tends to kill themselves, I would think that Slaughter wouldn't be too much of a problem.

[Necromorph]

I agree...slaughter is Hamelin's bane.

Funny note on Levi tho. In that game, when he killed my Waifs turn 5, I had won Initiative and Killed Levi off (he didn't get to kill himself the last turn and I needed him dead for his scheme) and after he killed my waifs he said, "So does that count for my Assassinate?" I had a good laugh, and he complained because me killing Levi and then him killing my Waifs didn't count as him "killing Levi." Was a small moral victory in an otherwise painful game.