Rasputina the Support Caster?

[Cats Laughing]

A little background: I come from a Warmachine/Hordes background, and especially a Protectorate of Menoth background, where direct spellcasting death is infrequently a path to victory and buffing your models (or debuffing your opponent's models) is often a better use of resources.

I picked up Rasputina as my entrance into Malifaux, though I have since fallen in love with the game as a whole and expanded out into every faction. Back in the beginning, I had several reasons to pick her box:

1) My local store actually had the box in stock (this is currently an issue for dragging new players in

2) The sculpt of the model and the box art (plus painting of the model on the box) are beautiful.

3) More experienced players with Malifaux and Warmachine/Hordes backgrounds told me that she has the only "arcnodes" in the game and can cast spell death from the relative safety of distance.

As noted above, I've expanded out and subsequently have not played Rasputina as much as I would like. I want to get back into her (minds out of gutters please and play her frequently in the near future. Now, I've read your standard Rasputina tacticas (Pull My Finger and some posts here), but I was looking over her spell list and wondering if the standard "spam Curse, moar Curse" should be supplemented with use of her other spells.

Can it be more worthwhile at times for Rasputina to be handing out +2 Armor and Frozen Heart (which allows the target to benefit from Bite of Winter), blocking LOS/movement with Ice Pillars, pinning down models with Freeze Over, and/or giving concealment (Obscuring) with White Out. Ice Pillars and the +2 Armor can be cast through Ice Mirrors. Likewise a Totem can cast the +2 Armor, Ice Pillars or White Out.

Can if be a worthwhile plan to let the Duet, Mech-Rider, Blessed and Sabertooth (and/or other models) be her speed and heavy hitters, while Rasputina and her Totem drop down her buff spells to keep them alive. With ice mirror and a totem, she can cover a large portion of the board and effectively keep up to her Minions that way. In this case a Wendigo might be a better totem choice, as it is moderately more survivable off on it's own (better DEF, more WDs, healing mechanism) and can occasionally do damage on it's own.

If feel that tossing out buffs may help her minion's complete various schemes and strategies, where Rasputina's own lack of speed keeps her from doing them.

Has anyone tried playing Rasputina as more of a support caster, rather than just a big gun? Is my background in Warmachine/Hordes (where buffing your models is a major aspect of winning) giving me strange ideas that won't work?

Naturally, playing only as a support caster, and never casting attack spells is probably silly. There will almost always be times where a juicy target is just sitting there waiting to be plaster by a casting or two of the Curse.

Thoughts?

[GamerGaeth]

The problem I think you'll have here is that Rasputina is very slow moving, and many of the models you have mentioned using (the Duet especially) are very fast, and do their absolute best when making full use of this. I'm not sure that Raspy would be able to keep up with them to keep them buffed. And in order to get the Frozen Heart buffs off, you'd have to either have a Silent One or two (which is a pretty large expense if you're not going to be using cheap models like gamins, especially if their primary function is to add Freezing Heart to things), or keep the models within 4" of Raspy, and this is a bad thing.

If you keep your bruisers within 4" of Rasputina, then that means that your enemy will have to be close to Rasputina in order for them to do their job. And having enemies close to Rasputina is a very, very, very dangerous thing.

I dunno, perhaps a Silent One could make it work, but I don't seeing it being particularly effective.

[TreeNinja]

I think you bring up a valid point, and yes I agree that it is sometimes better for Raspy to do some buffing by giving out the armor 2, and if the model doesn't already have frozen heart she can grant them that either by casting December's Touch or them just being within 4" of her. which means that those models can be used for Ice Mirror along with benifiting from things like Bite of Winter from the gaimen or Ice Wind from a silent one.

I agree with GamerGaeth that for models that you brought in to be fast moving brusiers this option won't come up alot especially if your playing them the way you should be, but that doesn't mean it won't happen or that its best for it not to happen. I think that positioning is very important in this game and in no crew is this more truthful then Raspy's crew. so maybe taking a coryphee duet in her crew and setting them up so that they are 12" from a gaimen or silent one who is 6" away from Raspy can then recieve Frozen heart so that maybe another silent one could use that model to bounce spells off the coryphee or even use the ice wind spell to heal them. or maybe even use Snow Storm's December's Command to pull the Coryphee out of melee range.

I do like how you brought up using the Wendigo. I started out using EoP like everyone suggested and EoP is a great totem for Raspy, and I will always consider EoP when I'm dealing with stratagies where killing is a must. I am however, like many here, a completest and picked up the Wendigo so that I could have it. And because I picked it up and so that I could say I tried him, I put him on the table.

I have to say that I actually prefer him now to EoP, because he does make her crew more manuverable. and the funny part is that I really didn't miss the extra + damage flip. I was able to do some interesting flanking tactics with her spells. And because he already has frozen heart I never have to spend a point to give it to him for the turn. Also with him having the graverobber ability it can allow for some corpse counters to hit the table befor Raspy avatar's if you choose to set her up to manifest.

It may be that I just really enjoy her fluff list, and that is why I'm very pro Wendigo now. Also Raspy is the reason I switched to Arcanist being my prime faction. I started out as Guild and I still play them from time to time. but my heart is with the Arcanist. Long may they stick it to the guild and anyone else who decides to get in their way.

[CN the Logos]

Well, keep in mind that I don't play Rasputina myself. My girlfriend does, however, so I very often find myself sitting across the table from the Ice Queen.

What I've found is that none of Rasputina's buffs bother me as much as the prospect of MOAR CURSE. Seriously, it's a powerful spell. It shouldn't be treated as her only option; I've had Freeze Over lock down models that were trying to get to objectives before, and Ice Pillars is great for controlling LoS (but you should have her totem cast it, since it doesn't matter how much you succeed by and it doesn't benefit from her triggers). And of course the ability to obscure oneself can be useful depending on the crew you're facing (I mostly run Nephilim-centric Lilith and/or Zoraida, so ranged attacks aren't my thing anyway). The problem with basing your strategy around those abilities though is that in each case, Rasputina must ask herself, "is doing this more advantageous than dropping a swimming pool full of liquid nitrogen on one of my enemies?" If the answer to that question is "no," (and it often will be) than she should cast December's Curse, using Biting Chill first if possible.

I'll also agree with some of GamerGaeth's points. Rasputina's got dedicated minions that already have Frozen Heart, and the armor buff to one of them from December's Touch is rarely worth not cursing an available target. If you're relying on Ice Queen to put Frozen Heart on things, it's easier for me to keep my distance until I'm ready to rush in for the kill. And God help you if those models within 4" of Rasputina need to get to melee range to be effective. That puts her in easy charge range of any number of nasty things, and her defense is so low that it's hard for her to reliably disengage from combat even if she spends a soulstone.

This is not to discourage you from trying to take a more battlefield control oriented approach with her, but if it were me, I'd use other pieces in my crew for that (Snow Storm, Silent One, and any totem that can cast Ice Pillars come to mind). Let Rasputina concentrate on killing things and making them afraid to leave cover because of the strong possibility that they'll be frozen to death. Remember, it doesn't matter what it is; if it's busy doing its best Boris impression, it isn't bothering you.

Hope this helps.

[GamerGaeth]

Long may they stick it to the guild and anyone else who decides to get in their way.

Sic semper tyrranis! >