Trimming the fat from Colette?

[Kadeton]

I wouldn't run a Duet against the Dreamer.

The problem with this is that there's nothing to replace it with that will be any more effective against a Chompy sling. You could say that you'd take Angelica and an extra Performer & Mannequin, but then Chompy will just eat Angelica instead, for example. Other than Colette and Cassandra, the Duet has the highest chance of surviving the attack, especially with some Doves around. I'd prefer not to lose the utility of the Duet on the basis that it's a big target - it's always a big target, and plenty of Masters will do what they can to hunt it down and kill it. How else are you going to hunt down Daydreams to stop Chompy from just murdering whoever he pleases?

[Todd]

Anyone try running one Coryphee? They're good models by themselves, but probably too fragile. However, it would retain some of the synergy, but free up some points for other things.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Even my non-Kirai Ressers laugh at one Coryphee. Again, purely my opinion, way too fragile for 7 SS.

[Sholto]

I have tried a 35ss Colette list, swapping out the Duet for Killjoy (and a Performer/ Mannequin combo for Johan). It made for a very hard hitting list, which was good because I had Contain Power against Lady J!

Next up will be to try this:

• Colette
  
• Cassandra
  
• Duet
  
• Von Schill
  

A Master, a Henchman and two psuedo-Henchmen. Really looking forward to trying this one out, just for fun.

Vs the Dreamer, presumably the risk to the Dreamer is the Duet killing the Daydreams Turn 1. Is it possible to shield the Duet with Cassy and three Doves, meaning the Dreamer has to go for either a much weaker Minion Turn 1 or Colette herself?

[Shadai]

I actually think any list that doesn't include mostly showgirls actually hampers you in the way the crew is supposed to actually work. However, I've been toying with the idea of adding Johan to the crew, especially considering Colette can hire him for a mere 5 SS. Johan is serious firepower for that low cost, and considering both Colette and Cassie can play the roll of APC with him, using the Duet as scout really has me intrigued.

Seriously, the thought having the Duet, Cassie and an untouchable Johan around midtable at the end of Round 1 has me giggling a bit inside.

And at 5 SS, he is definitively a better buy then Angelica, who I generally regard as terrible. Is he better then Performer/Manq? Well, I guess it depends on the game/matchup/strat/etc, but it would be a close call in favor of the Performer/Manq just because those two models bring sooooooo much to the table.

[Ayezik]

Was Wondering what people thought of this list idea as an non-duet option.

Arcanists Crew - 35 - Scrap

Colette Du Bois -- 8 Pool

2 Mechanical Doves [4ss]

Cassandra, Magician's Apprentice [9ss]

Performer & Mannequin [6ss]

Performer & Mannequin [6ss]

Renegade Steamfitter Johan [5ss]

What are people's thoughts? I know Johan will be foot-shlogging his way up the table but the showgirls dancing around should kinda help, shouldn't it?

[Q'iq'el]

"Foot-shlogging" is not really a problem, because you can cast Disappearing Act on Johan and use Colette to deliver him where you need him.

I feel though as Convinct Gunslinger and Gunsmith may be better suited as the non-showgirl supplement to the diet. In bigger games Jack Daw is also pretty good.

The way I see it damage dealing is the biggest weakness of the crew. If you bring Coryphée Duet, you have that part covered somewhat, but it still makes sense to bring more damage. Models that offer damage as support (i.e. ranged in Malifaux) are quite good, as regular Showgirls will be good enough to deal with objectives on their own.

In smaller games the Duet drops off and the situation becomes even more dire.

Performer and Mannequin are great for Colette's mobility (Showgirls), but they are support models with almost no damage output (even including the poison, because it's hard to pull off). Taking 2 pairs when you lack damage dealer isn't the best idea IMO.

You also have to consider the fact that a smaller game means the opponent has fewer models too. Almost everyone has more models than Showgirls, but that doesn't mean you need the same level of mobility as in 40~45SS games.

[Kadeton]

Incidentally, Jack Daw is also amazing against the Showgirls, as I found out when I tried him recently. His aura of screw-you hurts them more than most, since they have so many models that rely on using Soulstones.

Anyway, if you're looking for some ranged support, I'd also strongly suggest that you consider Sue. His damage is great, and he provides numerous other benefits. He even fits nicely in theme - someone has to play the music for the girls to dance to.

I'm not sure I'd consider the Duet a primary damage dealer, regardless. Its damage output is pretty low, honestly... if using it offensively, I treat it as a debuffer and aim for paralysing people rather than killing them outright. It's obviously great for assassinating key weak models like Daydreams, Hollow Waifs, etc but it's poorly suited to a damage role. Fortunately, Showgirls work best when they just stay away from the enemy and focus on objectives, so damage is rarely a necessary role in any case.

[Q'iq'el]

Duet & Cassandra, as long as we stay within Showgirls. They are not typical damage dealers and they are definitely not the top end damage dealers, but they have some stuff going for them. The chief is, at least in theory, the Showgirls are going to have more Soulstones and Cards to spare than the opponent. In such situation it is better to do three smaller attacks and have one blocked than do one big strike and have all the damage nullified.

Jack Daw too presents this kind of asymmetry - while he does hurt Showgirls a lot, they can easily move out of range. The opponent on the other hand may be in trouble when Jack is dropped on his crucial model at the end of the turn.

I'll get Sue at the beginning of the next month, but it is somewhat sad he can't be hired together with Gunsmith.

[Odin1981]

Incidentally, Jack Daw is also amazing against the Showgirls, as I found out when I tried him recently. His aura of screw-you hurts them more than most, since they have so many models that rely on using Soulstones.

Anyway, if you're looking for some ranged support, I'd also strongly suggest that you consider Sue. His damage is great, and he provides numerous other benefits. He even fits nicely in theme - someone has to play the music for the girls to dance to.

I'm not sure I'd consider the Duet a primary damage dealer, regardless. Its damage output is pretty low, honestly... if using it offensively, I treat it as a debuffer and aim for paralysing people rather than killing them outright. It's obviously great for assassinating key weak models like Daydreams, Hollow Waifs, etc but it's poorly suited to a damage role. Fortunately, Showgirls work best when they just stay away from the enemy and focus on objectives, so damage is rarely a necessary role in any case.

No Jack Daw is not good against showgirls. The only other master in the game besides colette that actually wants to see him on the table against them is leve.

Here is why both colette and leve have sacrifice effects on spells. So you don't get to pitch one card and keep him alive. Add in that he costs 10 ss and essential if your opponent ever takes him up against you they are essentially starting a game at a -10 ss handicap.

[Shut Up]

well having just taken a colette crew to the uk doubles GT, my opinion on list makeup has changed considerably. in this doubles tournament all the games were brawls which does alter list selection. i dont think i ever realy used the coryphee as well as they can be used, just to hand out -ve resist flips and teleport cassandra onto objectives, however i dont think they are as 'must take' as everyone thinks. i think the only thing which is 'must take' in a colette crew is casssandra (allthough im sure there will come a matchup where i decide not to take her, i was thinking more general rule) a gunsmith or two can be nice, dealing more dammage and very good against hoffman-tank totting guild grews (ignore armour on a +++atk with dmg 2/4/6, yes please!) but i find them very squishy for a six stone model, also the leadstorm spell can fill many of the roles that orchestral creschendo is used for. in the five games I played at doubles (partner was running Avatar ramos) i only used coryphee twice, in claim jump and destroy evidence, if your using a mobility based strategy then they are worth their weight in gold, in a kill/survive strategy like slaughter or secape and survive they seem more of a liability, dragging on the soulstone cache to stay alive.

[Kadeton]

No Jack Daw is not good against showgirls. The only other master in the game besides colette that actually wants to see him on the table against them is leve.

Here is why both colette and leve have sacrifice effects on spells. So you don't get to pitch one card and keep him alive. Add in that he costs 10 ss and essential if your opponent ever takes him up against you they are essentially starting a game at a -10 ss handicap.

With Levi, sure, Jack Daw is totally useless, because as soon as Levi sees him, he's instantly dead with a single spell. With Colette... no. For starters, you'd better be able to judge ranges accurately, because you have to be within 8" but not within 6" in order to have a chance of getting your sacrifice trigger off (if you're within Jack's aura it's impossible). Then you need a high Tome in hand, and flip another one on the Soulstone flip (about a 43% chance on an untouched deck with the + twist). If you don't get a Tome (or your flip was low and Jack resists), you've wasted two Soulstones. If you do get everything to go off right, that's awesome, but that same trick will also remove any other non-Master model in the game, so it's not like Jack is any weaker against it than anyone else.

Yes, Colette can sacrifice Jack, but she's nothing like Levi, and crews like the Viks or Sonnia have a much, much easier time killing him than Colette ever will. He seriously screws with the Showgirls' ability to use stones, which is what the survivability of their crew relies on, especially the Coryphees. His ability to mess up their crew is far more reliable than Colette's ability to sacrifice him.

[Q'iq'el]

@Kadeton

You make it sound far worse than it really is. She doesn't need to pull of her trigger at all. Sure, if she does and gets a free Mannequin out of the deal, that's perfect. But if she gets too close or fails to flip three :tomes, she will still succeed in casting Disappearing Act, after which she can teleport somewhere far away and drop him there at the end of the turn.

Jack Daw stuck away from action, with his speed, will waste turns to get back to relevance.

Coincidentally the same ability makes Jack Daw work better than OK for Colette if she is the one to hire him.

[Kadeton]

@Q'iq'el

Definitely, I was just objecting to the "Colette just sacrifices him like it's no big deal" argument. She really doesn't.

I can see Jack working pretty well with the Showgirls as well, but you'd have to give up a lot to get him unless it was a really big game. The girls just have so much synergy with each other, it's hard for other models to get a look in.

[Odin1981]

Granted I will preclude this by saying I am a carpenter so in terms of 6-24" I am really good at estimating ranges in these areas. If you are capable of keeping track of # books you flip during a turn and our in your hand (really not hard to do this). Manne replacing models becomes really easy. You know when to activate colette via book count remaining in hand and library. With ss+ in built in her and simply tracking if the majority of 13 cards our still live it is not hard to get the trigger off when you need it (one is in your hand plus the red joker you can make a book so from the start of a turn lets assume 1-2 books you are holding its not hard to figure). Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying you will always get the trigger but you don;t always need it. Between a mask being flipped or being played via your hand the spell is "free" in that the trigger that gives you a ss back when you cast it (having had to discard one to do so) you will generally have around a 75-80% chance of getting the trigger off if you keep track of books and if not and you just want to bury him save a 9+ of masks to do so then port and put him in a corner of the board so he will be irrelevant for the majority of the game.

[Shut Up]

even if manequin replacement doesnt trigger, i prefer to cheat in a high mask for the slight of hand trigger and soulstone it, sure it makes manequin replacement impossible but instead with ca7, a 9+ mask and a +ve soulstone flip he will have a job resisting, if he doesnt then he is off the board and therfore his aura ceases to have an effect, end of the turn dump him next to something nasty or out of the way of anything, reducing his ability to be a pain next turn, 3x orchestral chreschendo on the first activation with a coryphee duet forces your opponent to pich 3 cards, thats half his hand in a scrap, going to cause him some serious problems later in the turn if he wants to keep jack alive, or just bury him again using a mask and colettes free ss. hes annoying to play against but for a 9-10 ss model he is quite easy to deal with, run in most crews anyway.

[Kadeton]

Burying him and putting him far away from the action isn't making Jack 'irrelevant' - you're giving a free VP to your opponent by putting him in a safe place. You can also do this to, as I mentioned, any other minion in the game just as easily (I2I models not quite as easily, requires the Coryphees to help).

Basically, what you are saying is that expensive models in general have a weakness against Colette's ability to remove them from the action... duh. That doesn't make Jack, specifically, bad against Colette... and if you fail to pull off your shenanigans (or you don't win Initiative) he will make you suffer for it more than most other similar-cost models.

[Q'iq'el]

Heh, not sure if you are arguing the merits of taking Jack Daw with or against Colette, or trying to theoryfaux the relative power of abilities. I'm personally not interested in the later at all.

The fact Disappearing Act is a very powerful weapon against other expensive models doesn't make it particularly worse or less relevant as a tool making Jack Daw a poor choice against the Showgirls. It may be an obvious argument, but it drives home the point the trigger is merely an icing on the cake and isn't necessary to deal with Jack Daw at all.

There are three things at work here:

1. Colette and the Showgirls have mobility on their side, but their damage is limited. Splitting and dealing with the opponent piecemeal is the only way to kill stuff, assuming you cannot just go for the objectives (depending on Strategy and the opponent you face).

Consequently: Whether you go for the objectives or not, you want to separate Jack Daw from the rest of the crew and then deal with him when his debuffs do not help the rest of the opponent's minions as well. Teleporting him away from the opponent's centre of attention, either to isolate and deal with him later or to deal with him immediately, is a very powerful tactic to use against him. The ability to do it on demand, with very high probability of success, means it is a bad investment of SS for the opponent. Other big & expensive minions can obviously be in the same boat, depending on their mobility and ability to get back in combat (or fight for themselves when they are on their own).

2. The very same spell you use to disable Jack Daw also happens to sacrifice him, should you flip well enough to pull the trigger off. Whichever way you go, you want to cheat and soulstone it just to ensure you can get him away, so chances for the sacrifice are good.

3. A crew that brings Jack Daw to a 30~35 point game isn't going to have too many models besides him. If you take him away early on, you are playing with 35 points of Showgirls against 25 points of the opponent crew. You are mobile enough to kill him at the end of the game (or when you discover your Control Hand just got better) and deny these extra VPs.

As the games get bigger, the relative impact of Jack Daw's removal lessens, but it still is a very expensive model to loose that easily. Even in 50SS game. Only crews which can relatively easy bring him back to fold should consider taking him against Colette.

Either way the bottom-line is there's very big disparity between how useful Jack Daw is for Colette and how weak he is against her.

Colette can take Jack Daw and give him considerable boost in mobility, deploying him exactly where he is needed and pulling him away from danger just as easily. I suppose only Kirai and maybe Lilith can achieve similar results with him, in terms of the ease of moving him around. Colette can use the same ability to either disable him for the entire game (and kill when convenient) or outright sacrifice him.

[Odin1981]

I thanked you Q because you responded in a very good way that I didn't have the time or the patience for thanks for putting that down.

[Kadeton]

Ah, you're assuming that instead of taking Jack Daw, the opponent would be taking a swarm of cheaper models for some other purpose instead of an alternative expensive model for general murderising. Fair enough. If your overall point is that a single expensive model is more easily neutralised by Colette than several cheap ones, then I agree with you.

Regardless, I'll still be taking Jack Daw against the Showgirls when I feel it's appropriate to the mission, because no other model has the ability to turn off their Soulstone use at will, and that wins me games. Sometimes he'll get sacrificed - bad things happen. Other times, he will guarantee that Taelor beats the Coryphees to death when they would otherwise be basically unstoppable. Each to their own.

[Q'iq'el]

Not exactly. My argument is that Jack Daw is even worse of against Colette than Nekima, Mature Nephilim, Riders or some other big and expensive models. For the simple reason, that those other models more often than not can get back where they are needed within one or two turns (obviously depends on the terrain) and the whole Disappearing Act isn't much worse than Paralyze or Fall Back in their case.

Jack Daw on the other hand is moving 10" a turn and needs to get his placement quite precisely to influence the game. Colette is taking him up to 42" away (even more in some circumstances, but this is assuming she needs to move in range to cast the spell first and then uses entire reactivation to teleport away). From my experience it means 2-3 turns lost and that means 9~10 SS which don't work for you for a big chunk of the game. Bad choice.

Consider, he is a very good choice for Colette, even though his anti-SS aura affects both the opponent and the friendly crew. This alone should tell you how little problem Colette has with manipulating his positioning to her advantage (and she can do it almost as well with the opponent's Jack Daw, though she has to beat the resists then).

I perfectly agree he looks good on paper. He simply doesn't work against competent Colette player - he can be easily displaced, relatively easily killed or repositioned to Colette's advantage. Even if all these fail, she has no problem positioning herself to be just out of his Aura, while you still suffer from the effects of the aura (obviously, not all crews need to get close range to cause damage, but the mobility is usually on Colette's side).

Edited March 23, 2012 by Q'iq'el

[Kadeton]

I don't see a massive difference between a 10" move and a 12" move, but okay...

You're also suggesting that Colette is using both her activations in one turn to move him around and then (presumably) another to get back to the fight... I'm not sure I'd be disappointed that my model will be out of the way for two turns when he's used up three full Master activations, plus kept one or two other models out of the fight as Illusionist targets on the other side of the board. Many other Masters could almost certainly kill him outright in two full unmolested activations, so I'm not seeing Colette's huge advantage here.

One turn of careful placement is all he really needs to allow his crew to brutalise the Showgirls, in my experience. Perhaps I need more competent Colette opponents...

[Q'iq'el]

I don't see a massive difference between a 10" move and a 12" move, but okay...

Because it isn't just the move. Perhaps it is only my experience with Jack Daw, but for his most powerful abilities to work he needs to be placed so that he catches some models in the aura, while it leaves the others out (Yourself, you call it "careful placement" later in your post). Not only does he need to spend some AP on setting these debuffs up, he needs to move into precisely defined locations. Spirit may help, but other models can be far less demanding in that aspect - often it doesn't matter that much what they attack as long as they tie up something in combat or go grab other objectives. From Colette point of view, spending 2-4 AP on removing Mature Nephilim out of combat, only to see him go after some other model, is meaningless. Better to paralyze it or lure it away from the target.

You're also suggesting that Colette is using both her activations in one turn to move him around and then (presumably) another to get back to the fight... I'm not sure I'd be disappointed that my model will be out of the way for two turns when he's used up three full Master activations

You are trying to bring the argument to particulars, which is difficult when we speak about general experience. If Jack Daw threatens Cassandra or the Duet, for example, I can teleport Colette close enough (1AP), cast Disappearing Act (1AP) and grab Reactivation. In my next move I teleport twice or once (then I still have an AP for a new Dove or Soulstone factory). Jack will be dropped where I need him in the Closing Phase. That is not even mentioning Siren Call, the other method of messing up with the placement (which can often save Colette at least 1 AP in this combination or even close the entire operation within a single Activation, so effectively speaking half a turn for Colette).

It is hardly two-turns, one turn yes. Perhaps half a turn. After all, unless you bring a master with Reactivate yourself, Colette already has the advantage of having twice the number of activations during the game. It isn't all that expensive for her to sacrifice one or two of those to deal with 1/3 of the opponent's crew in one go.

, plus kept one or two other models out of the fight as Illusionist targets on the other side of the board. Many other Masters could almost certainly kill him outright in two full unmolested activations, so I'm not seeing Colette's huge advantage here.

The advantage lies in reliability. Many crews will have to drain opponent's Control Hand and commit excessive resources to do it. Colette does need to commit an activation or two, but she does it rather easily. That obviously is just a personal experience, but it matches that of Odin - I play Lilith and Nicodem and both have much harder time dealing with Jack Daw than my Showgirls. In fact, there was no single game I didn't dispatch Jack Daw as soon as he threatened my positions and I haven't seen him facing my Showgirls for months now.

One turn of careful placement is all he really needs to allow his crew to brutalise the Showgirls, in my experience. Perhaps I need more competent Colette opponents...

The problem is that for Jack Daw the placement is the challenge (as you say it needs to be careful). For Colette and the Showgirl the placement is what they do the best (they can be entirely careless about it ). Even if they completely ignore Jack Daw in terms of direct attacks, they'll still be able to outplace him and avoid his Aura. That's what they do when they bring Jack Daw of their own.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Q'iq'el

[Kadeton]

Fair enough... glad we had this discussion, it's been interesting. Obviously none of this happens in a vacuum, and my opinion could well change once my opponents start to wise up.