Avatar Marcus ideas

[anathema]

ReAs I have a while to wait until my bits come through for my Avatar Marcus conversion I've started looking at a bit of theoryfaux for his uses. Bear in mind that I like to use all beast crews for Marcus so there's probably a load of synergies I'm missing with non-beasts.

General changes and weapons

Overall, the loss of Wild Heart is a big one. He loses a great deal of flexibility and his Shillelagh without the +2 Dg and (+) attack flip is now quite frankly a bit balls. Onslaught is nice, but you really want those decent Rams for other stuff.

His stats are slightly tweaked, +1 Wp, Df and Wd are welcome additions, with -1 Ca not a huge deal IMO. He's still Ht2 as well, so finding cover and avoiding shooting in melee are not as big a problem as most of other Avatars.

I'm not sold on Chimeric Assault really, it gives flexibility at the cost of a card per strike and against some masters that mess with your hand, you really don't to discard even the low cards. The option to boost it with Evolutionary Confluence would be a no-brainer if not for the 1SS cost. When you're paying 2 for the Avatar its a costly deal for a weapon without a spectacular Cb or Paired.

Abilities

Mark of Instinct combined with the loss of Howl means that with your Beasts at -1Wp you don't really want to take the Avatar against Pandora or anything with a good terror engine. Against other crews it makes your beast more killy which is nice. Its also a good way to simultaneuously activate the Bear and Snake using Rise of the Beasts as it ignores Ornery. This ability (Rise) alone is fantastic IMO, really allowing you to nail a specific model or get some Strat/Scheme stuff done, especially when combined with:

Instinctive Behaviour

One of the first thing I noticed is that his Instinctive Behaviour (IB) gives the much-maligned Myranda a few new tricks. Apart from allowing her a free shapechange, you can quite happily send a big hitter in with Marcus casting it and then have Myranda cast IB again (using Animal Instincts) after she's activated using Rise of the Beasts getting another beast in the mixer or being the first one again.

You can also potentially get her to extend its effective range by casting it on Myranda, who can then use IB as her (1) action (using Animal Instincts)allowing you to get a beast 14" away to charge, hand off that treasure marker, trigger the dynamite etc.

Of course the Jackalope could potentially do this for a third time, but you have to wait until another beast is dead to get it back after manifestation and it has a worse Ca.

The other advantage is that you can obey a shapechaged Myranda (Myrandabear/cat/snake) to charge, activate next using Rise of the Beasts, rip some face off and then IB the other beast you've simultaneously activated with her.

You can of course try this on enemy models, but you'll probably need a high Ram to get it off unless you've already managed a Feral/Dominance combo (itself using a high card) for great justice and a -2Df for them. Its easier to do it on your own beasts IMO, but might not be as useful as putting that crucial model their Cg+2" way out in the middle of nowhere (as they don't have to charge a model they can actually reach).

The power seems to give a Marcus crew a great deal of flexibility, the only downsides being:

1. You need those 7+ Rams in your hand which may also be needed for Myranda healing.

2. If you want to activate an IB'd beast right after, you have to make sure its within 6". Good to use if Marcus gets forward and then uses it to bring something else up into the melee.

3. The affected model gets -2Df, so you really need to be carefully how/where they end up if casting it on your own crew.

Actions

Give in to it: This is situational, obviously being useless against non-living/undead crew. After the first time players lose the (reaonably do-able) WP-12 flip and suffer under Dominance they'll at least burn cards to pass it but it may work vs. opponents with empty hands. Most likely to get this off on the turn he manifests having already Howled for -3Wp.

Fast: Makes up for the loss of Serpent and Tiger IMO, plus greater utility so that's all good.

Diving Attack: Very useful but situational.

Smell Fear: OK, but without much causing Terrifying or Morale Duels in a Beast crew it won't happen much unless I'm missing something.

Spells

Feral: I imagine that most player will be at least trying this combined with Dominance as their Instinctual actions to nail that one model you want to paste this turn.

Roar: Not a huge fan as all of your beast are at -1Wp and if you want to use Rise of Beasts they'll definitely be in range of this. Could hurt you more than the other guy. If you can get it off and then move into range for Rise by the end of your turn it could be devastating but has a high cast requirement. Situational.

Please feel free to add or correct me where I'm wrong. I thought I'd have a crack at getting some ideas bouncing and a mini-tactica possibly.

Edited January 7, 2012 by anathema

[geistwald]

In my opinion the avatar of Marcus is kind of a safety valve. You don't always want it to manifest as early as it can, sometimes you don't want it to manifest at all. But you pay 2SS for an option to save your skin when you're between hell and high water. (In that respect it's the same as av. Kirai, for example, and the direct opposite of av. Ramos.) So I don't think it's well worth building lists around it, or looking for special synergies. Just use its obvious strengths in the endgame, if you have to.