Molly Leading a crew

[rancor709]

Had a chance to get some games in with Molly last weekend versus my brothers Viktorias with vonschill. We played two 30stone games. I like molly a lot I like the models she can take to this point. But the crew felt so unfinished. Outside of the necromancy I felt I had so little offensive punch. Being able to bring Sybelle back from the dead was great. But she was lacking in sustainable counter punch.

I want to experiment more with just running molly as the henchman leader from time to time as its a good challenging excerise. but I wondering what the rest of you who have played with molly as a henchman think. What exactly is her current crop of available minions missing. And beings her limitation on model options is shared with a majority of Henchman what is your general thought on special forces henchman. Personally I like the challenge of having only what I have available I would just like a bigger hitter even at 7 stones for molly to be able to use.

[Malandres]

i havent played using her but played against her the other night in a game where she was used as a henchman but not a leader (used in a seamus crew) was a 35ss game and i have to say she was devestating as a second caster and necromancer....her action to paralyze was great and i spent most of the time with a paralyzed minion.

i think she will be limited as a leader at the moment though as she lacks the offensive counter and she can be overwhelmed.

[rancor709]

I would say that is extremely fair. I have used her in second postion and she is very strong as a complementary piece to a master. but on her own I find her fun but very challenging.

[Malandres]

i think as a henchman on their own von schill is the best...i think with later releases i could see molly be very strong but at the moment just not at the top tier of henchmen...collodi and von schill still up there on their own

[Fetid Strumpet]

Really all of the Henchman except possibly two are at the least very solid.

Collodi and Von Schill are Amazing, and fully capable of leading crews on their own and being competitive.

Kaeris I've heard is simply devastating as a Henchman, I've heard that currently she lacks a little in the minion department so she doesn't have the pure punch to lead on her own.

Lucius is a Henchman I don't often hear about other than as a support piece for Lady J lists, but I again don't have alot of experience with him directly, but there just isn't a buzz about him.

And then there is Molly...

I love Molly, I love the character, the art, and the sculpt. I love the idea behind her and she was one of the models that really drew me to the ressers and Seamus in particular. That said, and it hurts very much to say this, I am coming to believe Molly's model is just not very good. Without question she is definitely the weakest of the henchman.

Firstly she has the lowest model count of special forces of any other henchman at the moment clocking in a a measly 2, one of which she cannot summon or heal, and is relatively easy to kill, and the other shares its role with the already released Necropunks, and are only really effective in swarms.

Next Too many of her abilities don't do anything much, like Superior Dead, or affect Living Targets only, like Reveal Philip and Necrotic Spray. All of her offensive spells or debuffs only affects WP, which makes her useless vs models which are immune to influence, and she also suffers from the curse of ressers, she is exceptionally dependent on Crows, which in a faction which is already very suite dependent makes her hard to just add into a crew.

Finally there is her cost, 9 SS. This is very expensive for a model which lacks much offensive punch, has many of her abilities which are of limited universal use, and whose support is of limited utility.

I'm holding out hope for better synergies or utility when other, better Horrors are finally released. I really WANT to like Molly, but currently all the games she has been in she has felt like a waste of points. Others might be able to get their monies worth from her, but currently I'm comming up empty on her.

[ThePandaDirector]

Despite the love Molly gets fluff-wise, could she be the one who takes Marcus' place as the forlorn hope?

While I agree she is limited, plus there's match ups and scenarios that she will almost auto lose, that could be argued for some actual Masters. I think she has a reasonable selection, it's thematic and it's a challenge to play with.

It's a challenge I can't resist, if only to say I was there before she got nasty.

[i_was_like_you]

I haven't gotten to see Molly in action as a henchwoman or leading a crew. She seems like she should work, but, yeah, she is lacking in the horrors department. She can, at least on paper, lead the belles fairly well in Seamus' absence, which means she should really shine when paired with him.

Where Kaeris shines as a henchwoman, she is kind of lacking when it comes to leading a crew. They didn't give her her very own totem, and she has hiring restrictions that prevent her having any totem whatsoever (unless the Crew Creator has yet another glitch). As a member of one special forces team, she can't even fall back on an effigy.

[Wolfgar]

Molly is regarded as needing help. Until the Horror Special Forces really get rounded out more, she's a bit underpowered.

[JisaacT]

I have led a couPle games with her now and have found that having a couple belles around really helps. Yes she is limited by only having a few horrors at her diposal but get one or two rotten belles and dead doxy in there and it makes the game smoother.

Leading with Molly is not really about fighting. She has units to get around to grab objectives. Bringing belles to lure makes getting her midnrange spells off much easier, which has been a major problem as she in not melee oriented.

My strat with her is to deploy crooligans around the board to sit and wait for the chance to grab objectives. As she moves up the board belles are used to lure key enemies out of position to get the crooligan in to get an objective. After that he can simply Hold the position, if need be, or use his quick speed to return with objectives. All the while MOlly is paralyzing, OR busting out necrotic machines to magical extention philosoPhy to kill off dudes in one blast of awesomeness

I prefer to bring 2 belles at least and 1 or 2 crooligans. Seems people foget she can hire belles.

To me Molly parrallels seamus in that she is low to mid range and is a scary caster with powerful utilities. Seamus is low to mid range fighter who is all that is man. What ot boils down to for me when picking between Seamus and Molly is if I dont have a need to kill I lead With Molly.

Seamus can bring the hurt down but that always isnt enough especially against resiliant models. Say your up against a baddien who can heal quickly, well for Seamus it wOuld take a while for him and his crew to take it down, while Molly could single handedly stop large models with paralyze or necrotic machine, and then move on to supporting your crew and getting objectives

Edited January 14, 2012 by JisaacT

[Fetid Strumpet]

While I totally realize that Malifaux isn't about killing the opponent, many of the strategies or schemes do require it, and really killing an opponent's model is one of the ultimate forms of control. If an opponents model is dead it's no doing anything else for the rest of the game.

I've found more and more Seamus and Molly to be especially frustrating because they really aren't personally all that scary, and they don't offer major synergy to their crews like masters like Colette, Kirai, Pandora, Kaeris, or the Dreamer do. Those masters and henchmen have very direct synergies which make the masters more deadly, or more tricky. They make the crew as a whole work better and more efficiently. All Molly and Seamus do is make Belles really fast.

Maybe I just can't wrap my head around them in a way to make them very competitive, its very possible that its just me, but more and more I feel that Seamus and Molly are just too weak in the current environment. When playing Seamus after playing Kirai and Pandora I just feel like I'm wearing a straitjacket the whole game. Seamus isn't especially deadly, nor synergistic with his crew. If you want to pretty much neutralize him just send a model into Melee with him as all of his best abilities to heal or do dmg are ranged attacks, and with his low def he is not getting out of combat very easily, unless a Belle is positioned appropriately to lure him out.

Molly is more of the same. Now I want to say I still love Seamus and Molly, and they will always be some of my favorites, but until something better for them comes along I think I'll stick to playing Masters which in the current game do more for their crews.

[i_was_like_you]

All Molly and Seamus do is make Belles really fast.

Isn't that enough sometimes? I admit that a lot of book 1 masters (and minions) do need an overhaul. Maybe when / if a Malifaux 2.0 pops up, they'll once again just replace the stat cards, so that we can continue to use the same models, but to much better effect. We'll just have to wait and see.

With Seamus leading the crew, we do get other fun options, as in anything the Rezzers can field. Using the Crooked Men with the Belles' Lure does make for some dead enemy models. Seamus' avatar does mitigate a lot of the problems of getting him into melee. I wouldn't expect Jack the Ripper to be terribly efficient in fending off armed foes, anyways, as he preyed on harlots. Having him also turn into Mr. Hyde evens the odds a bit.

Sure, that does still leave the problem of Molly running the crew, but maybe we'll see more horrors in book 4. Book 3 did give us Avatars, which is certainly a game changer, and the Effigies. There wasn't much room leftover for more than a model or two geared towards specific crews.

[Fetid Strumpet]

No, making Belles faster is not enough. I have more to say on this topic, but I don't want to always argue for the negative aspects of the game, which I do love very much. Seamus and Molly's designs have just has too many flaws for the current environment of the game for me to really enjoy playing them very much, which very much saddens me very much.

That said if they work for you against the current environment of masters you are a better player than I and I wish you all the luck in the world with them. Till a later point when they are updated, or something better for them comes out, my Malifaux Gothic couple will have to remain sleeping in my case. I'll just stick to Kirai and Pandora.

[Sybaris]

I'm sure we'll see more Horrors in book 4. Didn't they mention that Special forces will be the focus of that book?

[rancor709]

First and foremost there is not a straight line comparision between Pandora the explora and Seamus or any other resser master. Pandora flat out changes malifaux and how it specificilly played in order to beat her. Kirari provides extensive movement tricks as well as summoning for her crew but doesn't boost their killing power.

Straight Seamus can be direct countered in a tournament because of the direct lack of living characteristic on models or the ability to build crews in all factions that ignore terrifying. The advent of Seamus Avatar eliminates that direct counterablity. I would tend to shy away from seamus in a fixed list enivornment however in a standard tourney I find myself gravating towards him. Seamus and molly do have some decent crew synergy making a belle move 8 inches a movement action with proper positioning is nothing to sneeze at. And Could be classified as a movement trick.

Ressers as I explain continually arent' neverborn and you can't play them the same way or expect them to preform the same functions namely spike damage output. Resser just dont' have spike damage, on a level with Neverborn or even archanists. Its about playing a grind you out game and utilizing the ability to summon additional models into play, making us especially reliant on our Masters. Killing a neverborn master doesn't matter as much as taking out a resser Master.

Kirari again its the combination of speed and summoning ability. Seamus isn't really a summoner, he's a replenishers who's built on board control. Molly is like seamus but with even lower damage output, excells at board control and against living crews which just aren't taken often enough int he meta. Again Avatar seamus who directly counters the weakness of terrfying only affecting living targets at least having the option to go that route helps make seamus more viable. Again your milage may vary but if your looking at ressers for killing power, your always going to be disappoint we do spike damage that is the realm of Neverborn.

[Rathnard]

Despite the love Molly gets fluff-wise, could she be the one who takes Marcus' place as the forlorn hope?

While I agree she is limited, plus there's match ups and scenarios that she will almost auto lose, that could be argued for some actual Masters. I think she has a reasonable selection, it's thematic and it's a challenge to play with.

It's a challenge I can't resist, if only to say I was there before she got nasty.

This is my exact thinking too, and probably the main reason Molly will become my first Resser Crew.

[JisaacT]

Molly can really be hard to use as a master. Her biggest weakness is getting her into position to cast her nasty spells. At least that's where I have had the most trouble. But if you employ a couple of belle's it makes it much easier to hit them where it hurts. Summoning Sybelle really helps this out with alpha lure.

Personally I find her great! Hard to use? Yes. Have I won with her? Yes. Have I lost with her? Yes. I think her weakness is just her lack of options.

As far as Seamus not up to snuff though I would have to kindly disagree. Rancor is right he's hard to compare with other crews. He can dish out some nasty damage and melee triggers, with the right flips.

Anyways back to Molly. I hope Sybaris is right when he says book four is more focused on special forces. A few more horrors to the mix would be great. Hopefully some more 30mm for Molly to easily summon. What I'm hoping for though is a larger unit she can summon. I know she cant right now but my case in point is rogue necromancy is "Hard to summon" (or something like that) well what if a larger unit is "Easy to summon"? Of course this is all speculation.

I will say though I have had some great luck with her and objective grabbing. Especially with the crooligans and "From the shadows". I have managed to kill off some big guys with rogue necro, summon him back and do it all again. At that point it definitely turned the tide of battle.

When I use her I put two belles very close to her most of the game. Other units run off and do their own thing.

If she is a henchmen again she is with 2 belles. Seamus runs around and does his own thing usually with another belle and someone else like a crooked man or something.

What makes Molly hard is her timing. I think that using Sybelle and two belles is pretty essential especially by late game so you can companion lure a couple times.

The thing is if you do it right and get her spells off it is pretty devastating when she can activate early and get her debuffs off on a couple strong units. It's just a matter of getting her in the right place at the right time.

[rancor709]

JissacT great points on molly, I agree if she can get some more horrors she will be awesome sauce leading her own crew. As it stands she is awesome when coupled with a master. Sybelle finds room again as molly can summon her and keep bringing her back. Perhaps my favorite comment from my opponent when facing my molly lead crew was "holy crap how many times is sybelle coming back this game."

Your absolutely right molly really needs a midgrade damage dealer to support the rogue necromancy efforts.

[(TV)]

this is my exact thinking too, and probably the main reason molly will become my first resser crew.

+1

[micahwc]

I have played against Seamus and Molly with Hoffman and Lucius. Belles were ridiculous fast, which was more annoying than anything. Seamus was a tank in the game, but mostly because he would kill his own belles to heal and then re-summon them.

Molly won the game for my opponent by being able to keep away enough that I couldn't catch her with anything. So close on turn 7, but oh well. I needed to kill her to win, which proved difficult.

The game seemed very one sided in my favor. I killed a lot more stuff, and just seemed to be winning overall. Turns out it was a very close game and I lost on turn 7 because I couldn't kill Molly. I think it would have been much more in my opponents favor if my minions would have had to take terror checks.

Her ability to summon Sybelle is very annoying to play against.