A Nicodem Tactica? The Nicodem Tactica?

[nix]

Just pimping out an article from my local group.

http://tehmongoose.blogspot.com/2012/06/nicodem-tactica.html

To quote the article:

I say THE Nicodem tactica, because I am conceited and believe I am the best player with him ever. Really. But lets not get into that. What this really is, is the sum of my experiences with him over the past few years. A lot of people keep telling me he is bad and I think he's more misunderstood. So hopefully I can clear some things up about him and the models he works well with.

So, is he off base?

[ravenborne]

Its a good start, and I generally agree. I consider myself a pretty good Nicodem player. What I think would be helpful are discussing tactics for strategies and schemes. Nicodem gets really difficult to use in advanced play.

Harder stuff:

A strategy or scheme where you have to get somewhere early; trying to stop Arcanists Sabotage is really tough for example. Or where you have to get across the board or far away from where you want Nicodem to be (If they take or Hold Out for ex, or Distract)

When your opponent can generate a strong alpha strike and hits Nicodem hard and early before there are Mindless Zombies around.

Easier Stuff:

Stuff where by a big block of undead death can do the job well (Claim Jump, Supply Wagon).

Stuff Where you have to kill enemy models.

Nicodem can get draws very easily, but its harder to win with him for these reasons (or at least win with the big differentials). I would like to compare notes on how a good Nicodem player addresses these points.

[Gruesome]

The Mortimer hate is off, IMO. Extra CC are awesome and Fresh Meat can change the game in one casting when a death bubble is all suddenly in flurry range rather than charge range.

And Crooked men are not as great as he makes them out to be. (But certainly better than other discussions I have seen of them)

To me, Nicodem gets hate because of his "limited palette" of strats and schemes for which he is as good as or better than other Rezzer masters.

But, in the right circumstances, he is fantastic, which makes him somewhat of a conundrum.

When I read the "weakest master" thread and saw some people claiming he was one of our best, I could not help but wonder what sort of scenarios their experiences were in.

If people are only doing a very small subset of strategies and take BodyGuard and holdout every time, then its easy to have an inflated view of his effectiveness.

That having been said, against a crew that is not Immune to Influence and even BETTER, living(!), I would take him 10 times out of 10 for a strat like Shared Claim Jump. His glaring weaknesses are hidden there since:

1. Speed does not matter, so you can take the time to kill some dogs and bolster your crew that took a soul stone hit getting you to his needed 7 or 8.

2. He can be in nuking/rigor range of the Claim by turn 2 with his death bubble and really control the area very effectively.

Aside from situations like that, it can be a very rough go with him. He excels at buffing his crew, locking down key opponent models and replacing losses to keep things happening, but when there are situations around the board, he is simply not capable of using his strengths in as many areas as he needs to because of his crippling speed.

Not only that, but the number of schemes you can consider for him are very limited. The rezzer specific ones are out because he is the LAST master that wants corpses going unused.

Something like Breakthrough means that you are relying on only your crew to pull it off without your support as its unlikely that you will be anywhere near the other side of the board for support unless you take specific actions like Dead Rider dragging you there wounding you in the process. While somewhat viable, in my attempts at this, I seldom find the Dead Rider with much free time for taxi service. But, YMMW.

I am still learning the Avatar. I have about 6 games with him now and have found that while he can be MUCH MUCH faster, the place that he has manifested has still sort of found him rooted there as he is still busy supporting his crew, so I have not found extra AP laying around to make a lot of use of his great movement.

I am completely willing to grant that I have not learned the avatar well enough yet though or more likely, that I have not chosen the optimal manifestation points yet to take advantage of the transition in role.

So, to sum up, while I do think he is our #3 rezzer in terms of overall strength and versatility, I think he still has areas that he is our best option and the distance between him and #2 is much smaller than him and #4.

Edited June 22, 2012 by Gruesome

[ravenborne]

Mortimer is interesting. I find I can make him work in things like Claim jump. I use him this way:

He makes a corpse counter, then uses Fresh Meat to push everyone up the board. This will include Nicodem, so my Belle can then lure Mortimer up the field.

This creates a slow moving ever increasing block of undead that will easily win Claim Jump by the end of the game, but I wouldn't recommend it as a general plan of action.

[Zephir]

Wow, that guy is a genius! we could all learn from his tactics! *smug*

I stand by eveything I said in that post. I realize that others like mortimer, I don't understand it necessarily, But to them I say... well he's pretty terrible.

[Gruesome]

I realize that others like mortimer, I don't understand it necessarily, But to them I say... well he's pretty terrible.

Your logic is unassailable.

[ravenborne]

Rezzer Schemes I like with him:

Surrounded by Death: since you generally want to be moving up to the center of the board with him, by the end of the game you can use Arise and put one mindless zombie into each table quarter.

Army of the Dead: If I am playing against a crew that will drop lots of corpse counters and has a lot of lower SS models to kill, I will often take it (Usually most guild crews). Again arise allows this to work out pretty well. However, against crews that dont drop corpse counters its not so good.

Death after Death: This is very difficult. It can be done by taking a few expensive models that will break into lots of lower SS models, since Nicodem can make a decent amount of undead. However it requires you to really focus on this one task and so once again it needs to be used in strategies and schemes where Nicodem is going to be doing that anyway.

In tournament play, and I was playing rezzers, if I got say Claim Jump and my opponent was playing guild, I would take Nicodem and be able to get one or two of those schemes out of the way for the day, and be pretty confident I could win with a decent swing. But playing Nicodem all day long is very tough to keep winning in my opinion.

Thoughts on these sorts of subtleties are what I would like to get thoughts and tactica on.

[Gruesome]

Its interesting to me that you have the CC to spare for those schemes. I have found that I need my CC converted and on the front lines ASAP in most games and if you take those schemes and discover that you DO need to be reanimating everything possible, you are dead in the water.

Its why I hate the rezzer schemes, you have to make a choice before the game starts about whether you will need every corpse or not and its something you simply cannot know before the game starts. If it works out and you had corpses to spare, I'd say, just think how much easier another two flesh constructs would have made some other schemes, or 3-4 punk zombies, or heck, a couple crooligans even with their movement tricks...

[Zephir]

I dont like any of the resser schemes or Nico's. In a tourney I will take Army of the dead when I play Seamus, but thats about it.

Death after Death if I remember it right is a decent one for A-Nico since he makes Mindless Zombies friendly and all so you can just pump them out turn after turn. Also A-Nico can't use Corse counters so he can pick them up for Army of the Dead.

[ravenborne]

Its interesting to me that you have the CC to spare for those schemes. I have found that I need my CC converted and on the front lines ASAP in most games and if you take those schemes and discover that you DO need to be reanimating everything possible, you are dead in the water.

Really depends on who I am playing, but the fact that mindless zombies count as corpse counters make it generally not too difficult to have enough around at the end of the game.

But please note- I keep giving the caveat that it depends on what crew/faction my opponent is playing. I would probably never try those schemes against Neverborn for example.

Which is also why I am curious to hear other Nico player's thoughts/tactica on what Strategies and schemes they do like with him.

Edited June 22, 2012 by ravenborne

[Sandwich]

I think he's absolutely correct in pretty much everything he's said.

I'm glad to see a Nicodem player utilizing Crooked Men for the rest of their card and forgoing that stupid Shafted marker.

They're made more amazing with Nicodem because he can summon them.

I'd strongly suggest he puts out Scheme / Strategy explanations because I'd like to see his views on how to work out specific issues.

---------- Post added at 07:00 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:57 AM ----------

Also, views on how to use Mindless Zombies.

I think a lot of players could benefit if he dedicated a chunk of text specifically to MZ manipulation.

[Zephir]

grumble more work... aww who am I kidding, I love attention, I can do these things.

[Sevorin]

I think Nico is awesome, and always have.

I do not use him as a summoning machine but more as a paralyze gun. I keep key models paralyzed each turn so my models can do what they need to do. That said I do summon a lot, the extra model is nice, but really...the drawn cards are what makes summoning so good. I love summoning the RN for the 4 cards and the 1, maybe 2 turns of sheer attacks it can output (or at the very least, keep my opponents non-paralyzed models busy...which never fails :1_Happy_Puppet2:).