Slumming it: Calmdown's Rezzers 2012 Diary

[von Clausewitz]

Youre missing the point that Adanedhel was making, which was that just because "spells that target the caster have a range of C" it doesnt mean that spells with a range of C are automatically targeted.

However, upon further reading, I think that that is exactly what that sentence is meant to mean; that all spells with a range of C count as self-targeted. Otherwise, that sentence wouldn't actually have any relevance. I think it's just very badly worded.

The thread that you linked doesn't specifically answer the point we are discussing, it answers the question of whether Sonnia can counterspell spells cast on enemy models as well as friendly ones.

I think it requires RM clarification to be honest as the way its written is very ambiguous.

Agree 100%. It was simply a mistake on my part to present my argument as deductive. Alot of rules in malifaux (and games in general) require contextual inferences rather than deduction. In this case, the rule would be entirely superfluous if it didn't apply to all spells with a range of "C" because there are literally zero spells with a range of "C" that specifically state they target the caster.

[Toonook]

Heh, Valcurdra and I thought we had something to surprise your Sonnia with for a minute there Grayfox. Guess Bête stays in the case against you! On the topic of guild, at a recent tourney I placed second mainly due to getting trounced by perdita in a shared claim jump that had a decent amount of open terrain. How does mcmourning combat a strong gun line when he doesn't have terrain to help him?

[Calmdown]

How does mcmourning combat a strong gun line when he doesn't have terrain to help him?

Honestly, no board should ever be without terrain to help you. The game is designed around being played on boards with lots of terrain. It's the reason that new players always think Guild are incredible, because they don't put enough terrain on the board. If I were at a tournament and a board had pretty much no terrain on, I'd probably be more likely to ask the organiser why we're playing on newbie boards than anything.

In the case you have to face a gunline on a board that is not favourable though, you definitely want to look at the following. Remember almost all guns are only Rg 10" and very few gun users have AP bonuses. The only common outliers really are Austringer and Perdita.

McMourning - McMourning can be on top of most gunlines in two turns with fast and scalpel slinging. Also he has a pretty long threat range with a summoned Rogue Necromancy (13" with a single walk, 18" with a double walk, including 6" summon and 2" claws)

Dead Rider - will be on most gunlines on turn 2, can put multiple into melee at once with 3" reach, and with HtW2 and Grave Spirit should only take 1 Dg per shot. Also outranges most gunlines with his 13" threat range on the charge, 15" threat range for double move with no attack, 21" threat range with fast and no attack.

Summoned Stuff - Summon your construct and/or Rogue Necromancy into melee with their stuff, or near their stuff to force them to deal with it.

Von Schill - Shoot back! Shoot better!

Bete - For the reasons mentioned above in the Sonnia report. She gets there without walking then wreaks havoc.

Belles - Longer ranged than a gunline, brings the gunline to you. Unlike normal games where you tend to spend 1ap on movement to get something into LoS and then 1ap on a single Lure, vs Gunlines if you are smart you can force their models to have to be in LoS of your Belles if they're in LoS to shoot your guys, making Belles much more efficient with 2 Lures per turn.

[Calmdown]

2-0-1 with Nicodem today.

8-0 vs Somer, Shared Line in the Sand (DEFENDING!)

8-0 vs Kaeris, Shared Escape and Survive

4-4 vs Von Schill, Shared Contain Power

Came second overall on TP with VP difference of +16, so happy with the overall result (particularly since my girlfriend won!)

But, it was a real shame for Nicodem since the last game was pretty much lost by two turns of absolutely atrocious card flips (opponent flipped 12s and 13s for every action I took on the 2nd turn until I was basically done, I was flipped 3s and 5s with paired Bete attacks, etc. Then on turn 3 I flipped 1, 3 and 5 for soulstoned Rigor Mortis with Nicodem. Totally bleh). It happens, that's the way it goes, but it doesnt make me any less disappointed :/

[rancor709]

Nicodem isn't too shabby on either end of Line in the sand and glad you were able to pull second with having the last game have 2 turns of rubbish cards, which can negate anything your trying to do. I

[Agnelcow]

2-0-1 with Nicodem today.

8-0 vs Somer, Shared Line in the Sand (DEFENDING!)

8-0 vs Kaeris, Shared Escape and Survive

4-4 vs Von Schill, Shared Contain Power

Congrats on the good results! Any chance of getting Battle Reports or basic rundowns of these games?

[Calmdown]

Congrats on the good results! Any chance of getting Battle Reports or basic rundowns of these games?

Yeh a few people have asked now, I'll do some rundowns of them later on.

[Rathnard]

If u want to abuse Rafkins ability to produce Body Parts, i suggest to use McMourning.

Its possible to summon up to 36MZ or 16 Guild Autopsies at turn 2.

Looking at the rules, I don't think you can actually.

Turn 1

- Dog 1 goes def stance and close to dog 2-9

- Rafkin activates his aura, shot at Dog1 and place the poison AOE on Dog 2-9, hit on Dog 10 (+1 BP)

The Formaldehyde shot won't give you a body part and the Liston Knife only works against enemy models. So no BP. Also note that this means Rafkin can't cut the Nurse later on for BPs either.

- Dog 2-9 activate and die on poison

- Dog 10 activate kills Dog1 if he survive Rafkins shot (cant remember the dmg code of his weapon), collect all 9 CC and send em to McM (+9 BP)

That'll work. So 9CC on Mcmourning, 9BP on Rafkin

- Chihuahua (its getting cheesy now!) use Fetch 2 times on McM. I cant find anything that would forbid it. McM drops 2x 9CC and get em back (+18 BP)

You can certainly use Fetch on Mcmourning, but he only gains 1BP per BP OR Corpse counter discarded (ie. all you get are body parts). Also Preserve Bodies only works with corpse counters. So Rafkin will gain 9BP the first time you use Fetch, but then all you've done is essentially split the corpses in half, and divided the resultant BPs between Rafkin and Mcmourning.

So best case scenario, at the end of turn 1 Mcmourning's got 9BP and Rafkin's got 18BP.

I won't go on, but bascially the main things to remember here are;

- Preserve Bodies only kicks in with Corpse Counters, not Body Parts.

- Fetch only returns Body Parts, regardless of whether the model discards Body Parts or Corpse Counters.

- Liston Knife will only give you body parts when attacking enemy models.

[Hatchethead]

Professor Pink, why you gots to poop all over the Resser parade?

[Rathnard]

Because this particular Resser Parade is build upon LIES! LIES I TELL YOU!

Seriously though, when someone says you can summon 19 of those awesome Guild Autopsies by Turn Two with a McMourning Crew, you can be darn sure that this particular Professor would want to know how.

[Calmdown]

Must admit I also misread Fetch, I didnt realise it only gave BPC and not CC.

But as I've said before, this kind of "bomb" tactic takes two turns of full activations and all of your SS to get going, even if it did work (which it clearly doesnt, good catch Rathnard). Your opponent will have won the game by then most probably anyway...

[Calmdown]

Belated Battle Reports...

As promised gentlemen, some brief Nicodem battle reports from the recent Northampton tournament where I took second place. The tourney was 30ss fixed master. All strats were predetermined and shared. Schemes were unique.

Game 1 - A Line in the Sand (defender) vs Som'er

This guy was relatively new, playing what I imagined would be a standard Som'er gremlins list. Nevertheless Line in the Sand massively favours the attacker, especially when you're as short on fast minions as Rezzers are and playing vs Reckless Gremlins who can outnumber you. Ugh.

I took:

Nicodem (5ss)

Von Schill

2x Hanged

2x Grave Spirit

He had (something like)

Som'er

Mosquito

3 Piglets

Hog Whisperer

2 Gremlins

Warpig

Not quite the gunline I was expecting but I wanted to make sure I took an 8-0 from this if I could because I knew the strats and Nico were going to be hard for the rest of the day. I took Breakthrough and Stake a Claim on a building in the centre of the board.

The reasons I'd taken Hanged/GS were many. Firstly, armour 2 spirits need a minimum of 7 damage to deal 2 Wd or more to them, which makes them essentially immune to 6 Dg dumb lucks. Also, Nico can heal both the Hanged and its accompanying GS with a Decay. They're bitches to kill. Then, of course, we get to the good stuff; all of that Terrifying vs Gremlins. Removing Som'ers ability to heal himself. The board was essentially a town with buildings, so I wanted to be able to walk straight through them and float over them, and make use of the cover on the rooftops; so the table kinda makes up for the Hanged only having 2ap and Wk4 by virtue of utilising their maneuverability properly. I intended to sit then hanged on dynamite and stop anything getting near it.

The game started by him rushing out recklessly for markers, me moving up the board. On turn one I killed a Gremlin that had moved up; a Hanged double moved and then his Grave Spirit (Nicodem's attachment) channeled a Decay into the Gremlin for the kill.

Turn 2 we got into a fight in the middle of the board which ended in Wds on lots of stuff all round, including a Gremlin, the Warpig, and all of my Hanged and GS; then Nico threw decays around, healing all my stuff up to full and doing more damage to the Gremlins. He armed one dynamite and Von Schill move in its direction. My Hanged were sitting on the others.

Turn 3 I basically wiped the centre of the board; VS killed Som'er, the Hanged killed the Warpig and a Gremlin, I summoned 6 MZs with Arise to get all of those counters close enough to me to use for summoning later.

For the rest of the game, Hanged advanced and slowly killed/terrified what remained, I body blocked an alleyway with MZs, and at some point I summoned a RN. The game ended with just one dynamite lit on the edge of a board (testament to Nicodem's lack of speed that even with total board dominance, he still couldnt stop all of the objectives being claimed)

I was annoyed that I hadn't taken Death after Death

---------- Post added at 06:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:41 AM ----------

Game 2 - Escape and Survive vs Kaeris (Stern/Mitch)

This was gonna be a pain... Nicodem hates ranged stuff, and AE stuff, and Kaeris does both. Soulstone Miners also have a nasty habit of popping up and killing your squishy master. I play Mitch like every tournament and though my record is good, he always gives me a tough game and with Nico vs Kaeris I was kind of prepared for a loss!

I took:

Nicodem (7ss)

Grave Spirit

Von Schill

Bete Noir

3 Dogs

Mitch took:

Kaeris

2 Gunsmith

2 Soulstone Miner

Large Steampunk Arachnid

He had Breakthrough and Stake a Claim. I had Grudge and something I can't remember.

Mitch deployed first, with his living stuff on one flank and constructs in the middle. There was a large stonehenge-type piece of terrain blocking the middle of the table and a few large rocks around to hide behind, so I expected to be on the receiving end of the first strike in this game. I deployed all of my models on the same flank as Mitch's Kaeris and Gunsmiths.

Turn 1 was conservative; everyone moved up, both Soulstone Miners buried. My grudge target was hiding behind a rock. All of my dudes were quite close together under the cover of The Fog.

Turn 2 Mitch won initiative and his Gunsmith advanced and took a shot at my dog, missing. The dog charged the Gunsmith and did nothing. Kaeris came into the dog and Ignited it with Gunfighter, Mitch making a mistake here and forgetting Kaeris' followup attack couldnt be used at range since she is in melee, despite being able to use her ranged attack *in* melee). The next dog charged the Gunsmith, giving him -2 Df for two dogs and did some damage. The LSPA came in and hit the dog, wounding it but not killing it. The last dog went in against the LSPA; we now had a pretty big 6-way combat going on. Von Schill activated, and fired into melee. I hit a dog, decided to keep it, the dog died and out popped Bete next to Kaeris. His second shot damaged something. Bete paralyzed Kaeris.

From there it went mostly downhill for Mitch as he slowly lost his models in the center of the table, Kaeris staying Paralyzed by Bete/Nico and Nico throwing decays in to keep everything alive. My Grudge target got into my deployment zone and behind a very annoyingly shaped rock, and Von Schill and a summoned Flesh Construct went to hunt it but flipped appallingly and really struggled to kill it for a couple of turns. I couldnt move Von Schill back as he'd never catch it, and never get into Escape and Survive territory in time; same with Bete. I ended up with Bete, Nico, 2 Dogs and the GS staying in E&S territory. His Soulstone Miners tried to Breakthrough but Nico had enough corpses to put 2 Belles, as well as the construct and VS, into my deployment zone around his Stake a Claim (so I could lure them away if they tried to claim it) and also stop his breakthrough.

All in all, a pretty solid ruck in the centre where Decay+Bolster+Dog df debuff attrition won through, may have been different if Mitch had supported his troops more with his miners but luckily I blew through his combat force just fast enough to stop him getting his objectives.

Annoyed again that I didn't take Death after Death

Edited March 2, 2012 by Calmdown

[Math Mathonwy]

Good stuff - thank you for posting these!

[rancor709]

Nice write up calmdown. I am intrigued with the logic behind your escape and survive build. Also calmdown using hanged nearly had me fal out of my chair. Perfect use for them but do you see yourself using them again?

[Hatchethead]

Belated Battle Reports...

As promised gentlemen, some brief Nicodem battle reports from the recent Northampton tournament where I took second place.

Thanks! Great read. Very educational. I reckon we'll be hearing about the 4-4 draw soon?

[Calmdown]

Nice write up calmdown. I am intrigued with the logic behind your escape and survive build. Also calmdown using hanged nearly had me fal out of my chair. Perfect use for them but do you see yourself using them again?

Well, at the moment I'm just trying things out in tournaments. Some of the lists are pretty experimental. Also, no matter how much I may slate certain models, it does not mean that they will never ever see play (eg my recent game using 4 Crooked Men...) if there's suddenly a good reason for it. In this case, Gunline+terrifiable models+good terrain for it+positions I wanted to hold seemed as good an opportunity as ever.

That said, Hanged are still bad models really. If Hangman's Noose didn't need a suit, or if they were Wk 5, or ideally since they're 8 points had casting expert, they'd be fine but right now not so much outside of niche situations.

Thanks! Great read. Very educational. I reckon we'll be hearing about the 4-4 draw soon?

Yeh I'll expound on that one a bit more since it contains play mistakes by me, but will be nevertheless full of vitriol at my terrible luck

[omnivision6]

Kinda funny how people bandwagon on this forum. Calmdown says it sucks... it sucks. Calmdown uses it to good effect... its good now.

Goes back to the whole "play what you like" thing. Anyway, I actually liked those quick rundowns.

[Hatchethead]

Who's bandwagoning? The majority of models in Malifaux have niche utility. Some are very situational. Almost all have uses, it's simply a matter of recognizing what that use is. When someone details a scenario that justifies the hiring of a model that's often overlooked, it's good for everybody involved. Why wouldn't we support that?

EDIT: Not to go OT, but this also highlights why I support revealing Leaders BEFORE hiring crews. Knowing which Master/Henchman you are about to face really opens up the hiring process, forcing you to consider models you'd otherwise ignore.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Hatchethead

[Orboros]

While he is a heavily opinionated person there is always somt truth in what he is saying because he is spending a lot of time on the matter and is a really good player. There will always people who will be bandwagoning but the people who watch this thread tend to like it/support Calmdown because it is well written and a lot of effort was put into it. And that some models are better than others is simply fact.

[ravenborne]

Belated Battle Reports...

As promised gentlemen, some brief Nicodem battle reports from the recent Northampton tournament where I took second place.

How is this possible with a Tier 5 model?

[dgraz]

How is this possible with a Tier 5 model?

Funny. Calmdown doesn't need my defense, but he did say that the tiers were objective.....based on the same luck and same player skill. But it does illustrate why people say the tiers are useless....with the right player behind it, even the worst model can perform well......look at UKRocky with Marcus.

[Orboros]

So .. better cuddle Calmdown and UKRocky then?

[huntroll]

Funny. Calmdown doesn't need my defense, but he did say that the tiers were objective.....based on the same luck and same player skill. But it does illustrate why people say the tiers are useless....with the right player behind it, even the worst model can perform well......look at UKRocky with Marcus.

I find it really funny that a lot of people still consider Marcus weak. Imho even in Book 1 times, he was more useful in most scenarios than the other two Arcanist masters.

[Kadeton]

Funny. Calmdown doesn't need my defense, but he did say that the tiers were objective.....based on the same luck and same player skill. But it does illustrate why people say the tiers are useless....with the right player behind it, even the worst model can perform well......look at UKRocky with Marcus.

The idea of "objective tiers" is nonsense - even if it were possible to remove luck and player skill from the comparison, that comparison is still based on various players' subjective opinions of the Masters involved.

As for "with the right player behind it, even the worst model can perform well," I'll believe that when someone wins a major tournament with a Molly crew.

[Q'iq'el]

As for "with the right player behind it, even the worst model can perform well," I'll believe that when someone wins a major tournament with a Molly crew.

It's been said about Marcus before. Then people claimed the new models made him work, once they had been proven wrong... And now people say Marcus had been good all along.

The truth is Marcus has become good when someone put their time into figuring out how to play him.

I'm not saying Molly has some hidden power level, but there may be the combination of the above factors needed - a good player coming up with a way to play her after some new models get released.