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Wendigo v. Essence?


swingjunkie

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For Raspy who has most of her punch in her damage causing spells the :+fate is a very, very nice edge. It essentially gives her dangerous spells the sort of potential to kill that makes your opponent sweat.

I love the Wendigo myself and adore the model while I do not like the Essence at all, but Wendigo really enhances her crew in ways they already have for the most part. Essence enhances the Raspy spell damage output, for maximum utility, damage and generally the best all round game wining support......

Essence of Power + Rasputina = Game winning, crew slaughtering spell fun potential.

Also remember that with 'Tinas horrible slow speed extra damage with spells is even more vital as they are the main way you can grapple with your enemy.

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Wendigo's stats may be better, but it's still just a totem - it's not going to provide much in the way of true combat potential.

The :+fate from Empower is huge. The flip itself can be nice, but the critical point is that it helps you avoid :-fate twists which prevent you from cheating. When you start flinging December's Curse, you want those blasts. It's actually fairly difficult to avoid all :-fate on damage, but you'll typically only have one (the big exception being Hard to Wound targets). Getting to the even flip by counteracting that with Empower not only increases your chances of getting a blast in the first place, but opens the door to cheating it if needed.

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It's not uncommon to target something with Raspy and spend a Soulstone to boost your December's Curse attacks. With the Essence of Power though, you can spend less SS when targeting most minions, because you only have to worry about beating their Df total by 1 or more. So I find that the Essence helps me save a lot of SS for use against a Master later (or for preventing Wds on Raspy).

Definitely EoP all the way with Rasputina.

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If your goal is damage output EoP is the way to go, I agree that the :+fate lets you get the high damage and more importantly the :blast, it will save you a soulstone or 2 because you don't need to spend extra to get into guaranteed cheat range.

The reasons you might want to take the Wendigo over EoP is when you need Frozen Heart for Ice Mirror. I think Wendigo will see more play when the MSU assets are released. They have enough punch and mobility that Rasputina can use elsewhere. Another reason to take Wendigo is the fact that it does not need to stay in base contact with the master, and can be 6 inches (ice mirror range) away to cast Ice Pillars giving it extra reach.

Some think I'm nuts for saying this but student of conflict has potential as her totem, I know 4 SS is expensive but the ability to give fast is an excellent benefit. admittedly you will only use it twice if you lucky in a game.

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Another reason to take Wendigo is the fact that it does not need to stay in base contact with the master, and can be 6 inches (ice mirror range) away to cast Ice Pillars giving it extra reach.

By using Magical Extension to cast Ice Pillars the Wendigo can be anywhere on the board. with such a low casting cost spell, no real reason not to use the totem to cast it.

You only get to use Magical extension once per activation but its better to use it for the Ice Piller.

A second reason to use the Wendigo is in those cases of Corpse Counter denial, using him and the December Acolyte to run around to pick up corpses helps quite a bit, especially in cases of reconnoiter and claim jump, since they both have Graverobber.

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With a Silent One in play, Ice Pillars has an effective 15" range from the Caster. Combine that with a 4" walk of the Essence, ignoring terrain since it's a Spirit, and I really don't think you need to worry about a piece that can run on the opposite side of the board from Raspy just to cast pillars. You can pretty much reach anywhere you want to with the EOP anyways. And even if you move the EOP to cast Pillars, it can still link back close to Raspy later in the turn. :)

I agree that the Graverobber aspect is about the only reason to run the Wendigo. Personally, I don't see that as being all that strong.

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By using Magical Extension to cast Ice Pillars the Wendigo can be anywhere on the board. with such a low casting cost spell, no real reason not to use the totem to cast it.

You only get to use Magical extension once per activation but its better to use it for the Ice Piller.

A second reason to use the Wendigo is in those cases of Corpse Counter denial, using him and the December Acolyte to run around to pick up corpses helps quite a bit, especially in cases of reconnoiter and claim jump, since they both have Graverobber.

I said 6 inches because most times you want to have something to use ice mirror for raspy other spells.

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You really only lose 2 inches with the Essence, though. Rasputina gives everything with 4 inches Frozen Heart anyway - if you really need the bounce more than the :+fate, companion-activate, move the Essence wherever you need it (basically 4" in any direction since it's a Spirit), finish with it, activate Rasputina and bounce the spells, then snap the Essence back into base contact at the end of the activation. You lose a bit of the potential range, but gain the flexibility of choosing Empower, which is nice.

It's important to remember that the Essence can boost multiple casters in a turn, too. I frequently ping-pong it back and forth between Raspy and a Silent one - activate Raspy, shoot, move the Essence and Link with the Silent One, then activate her. Next turn do the same thing in the reverse order. Can easily do the same thing with Kaeris as well.

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I like the option of being able to move the wendigo forward casting ice pillars, them moving rasputina up to use ice mirror off it. So its effectively a lot more than 2 inch difference if you want to hold Rapsy back until end of turn.

But in the end its a matter of opinion. I switch back and forth, based on my mood. If I want a hammer I take EoP, if I want a swiss army knife, Wendigo.

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I like the option of being able to move the wendigo forward casting ice pillars, them moving rasputina up to use ice mirror off it. So its effectively a lot more than 2 inch difference if you want to hold Rapsy back until end of turn.

You can only use Ice Mirror with a model within 6" of Rasputina. She gives Icy Heart to everything within 4" - which means that any model within 4" can be used for the bounce. So if you're using Ice Mirror, the difference is exactly 2 inches, really no matter what.

But even with what you're describing, I'm not sure why the Wendigo does this any better than the Essence? They're the same speed (although Spirit makes the Essence more mobile), same casting, and nearly the same wounds. The Df advantage goes to the Wendigo, but the split between 4 and 2 isn't going to keep one alive where the other doesn't. If you're going to send the totem solo to fling pillars down range, you can do it equally well with either one.

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That's precisely why I like the EoP better, because it can walk forward 4, then cast ice pillars. Then you can have it in place for ice mirror (though why you'd cast through the EoP rather than a Silent One I can't figure out) and then at the end of Raspy's turn, the EoP will snap back into base contact anyways. The Wendigo would be left out front alone.

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Do I think EoP is better than Wendigo: If I had to choose one then yes the EoP is better.

Have I played games with EoP where I wish I had a wendigo Instead: Yes.

I'm not a fan of the 2 wds, there are too many spells with :blast and :pulse that take him out. Yes he is a spirit, but there are a lot of 3 dmg secondary damage effects out there. I've had a couple games where it was destroy as a bonus to another attack. The Wendigo at least requires the cost of having to point an attack at it to kill it. With 4 life(?), it will survive an single uncheated attack from most models.

In any miniature game, never underestimate the value of 2 inches of extra range. I'll seen games won/lost based on 2mm.

All that being said, I'm 60/40 in favor of the EoP. I'm planning on trying the Wendigo in my next few games with Raspy as I want to try a couple crew mixes without ice gamin.

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It's important to remember that the Essence can boost multiple casters in a turn, too. I frequently ping-pong it back and forth between Raspy and a Silent one - activate Raspy, shoot, move the Essence and Link with the Silent One, then activate her. Next turn do the same thing in the reverse order. Can easily do the same thing with Kaeris as well.

when you have kaeris you can have an extra essence for her

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when you have kaeris you can have an extra essence for her

You can, but my point was it's not strictly necessary. The extra soulstone cost can be balanced against the redundancy (and more open movement) that you'd get from having two. I haven't looked at Kaeris that closely since I only play models once they're released, but there could be solid advantages to taking a different totem with her as well, while keeping the boost from the Essence.

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  • 5 months later...

I somehow missed this topic when it first came up, cause I always wondered why everyone said the EoP was the only way to go and that its not even worth buying the Wendigo. I of course have been consumed with Malifaux and just can't seem to stop mysefl from buying models so I picked up a Wendigo, with the rational that even though I may never play this model I really like the way it looks.

Well I decided to try him out on a few games and I have to say that if you play him really close to Raspy then yes you would have been much better off playing the EoP. It seems to me that playing Raspy's crew really does naturally lean itself into close formation.

However, one of the games I played I decided to split my crew and flank my objectives from oppisit sides of the board while I was using him and he played so beautiflly. I was able to setup pillers from either end as I needed them and I was running him with a silent one who I was able to then bounce spells off of him so that I could still utilize there Ice Wind ability and not wast the 0 action on Freeze Heart on him.

So all in all depending on how you play or want to play your crew. if you want to add more punch to some of you spell damage, then EoP all the way. If you want more board control then I would go with the Wendigo. Its true you can do some of those things with EoP but that model does have to stay fairly close to other models otherwise it looses its true potential.

The other thing to consider now that the avatar's are out is he does have the graverobber ability so that will (in the case no others exist on the board) mean that corpse counters will be left behind so that if/when Raspy manafests then there will already be counters for her to use.

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Irrespective of how useful they are in game, which would you rather put on the table? A rabid looking little beast or a camp looking guy in a posing pouch? I always use the Wendigo and find he suits my style of play a lot more than EoP does. I'm sure most people will think I'm stupid for going down that route but Wyrd wouldn't give options if there wasn't a benefit to each one.

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I've only played one game with Rasputina but in it I used the wendigo and was quite happy with the little guy. Rather than looking for something to maximize tina's strengths i was looking for something to cover her weaknesses. In particular the wendigo acted as a bodyguard/blocker for her, and did very well, what with being able to heal itself. It finally took the attention of a peacekeeper to take the little scrappy bastard down, and tying that guy up for a turn probably won me the game.

To be fair it was an odd game, in that we chose masters before flipping for scenarios so my Rasputina had to waddle her butt all the way across the field to the opponent's deployment zone (which she managed on the 6th turn). I also wanted to go with a themed force using Miranda, wendigo, hoar cats, and december acolytes. We were ALL about eating corpses. :)

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I would say:

-If you want a really strong Rasputina, take the essence

-If you want a awsome looking creature that fits into the Ice Fluff take the Wendigo!

I took the wendigo!

It's a good Totem - nothing that really frightens the opponent, but strong enough to distract him or to use it in important situations. Wendigo isn't completely useless!

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