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Vanessa the Treasure Hunter


Zerous

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I love her. I love her so, so much, and am incredibly disappointed no one's made a thread for her yet.

And if there is one, I'm incredibly blind. I saw someone else do a rundown of her in the TT Outcast thread, but that didn't have quite enough detail to bore people, so here I am!

Anyway, as with other threads I've made and replied to, for those of you without book 4 yet, I hope to inspire you to think about picking up this darling little treasure hunter. However, while reading this, keep the following in mind:

Vanessa CANNOT, by any means, be hired into a crew unless that crew is lead by the Viktorias.

In addition, she has Aetheric Demands, preventing the Viktorias from using totems

Her fluffy-fluff is that she's the REAL little sis of Viktoria, and while Vik carved a niche for herself by carving niches into people, Vanessa found her talent lay in acquiring rare, hard-to-get artifacts for rich supporters. And who's to say she can't keep some for herself?

Now with that out of the way, here I go. Where to start... Her stat line is pretty ok, matching her sister's for the most part. She does have a slightly higher Wp and Wd, the latter of which is a little odd considering she's supposed to be the weaker sister. her Ca has :tomes in it automatically, which is nice considering what some of her spells do, but we won't get into that yet.

What we WILL get into is some of her niftier abilities, like Arcanist Sympathizer, which allows you to hire a non-living Arcanist model into the crew Vanessa is in. The model in question gains Mercenary, to boot. Not breathtaking, but I'm not much of an Arcanist player, so I don't know of any particularly great models to take that can't be replaced with a normal Outcast.

Another fantastic ability is Intuition. At the Alternating Activation step, you can look at the top three cards of your fate deck and rearrange them as you choose. Amazing, especially for setting up her sister to start ripping people to shreds. To keep with her treasure hunting nature, she has Nemesis against the Black Sheep, who often steal things that she was trying to steal first. And like all good treasure hunters, she's been shot, stabbed, cursed, eaten, swarmed by scarabs and fried by glancing into the Ark of the Covenant enough to become Magic Resistant (1). This isn't mentioned in the fluff, but it's the only reason I can think of for her oddly high Wds and Resistance.

Keeping with her theme as Viktoria's sister, she has "One More?" which, in times of need, lets her shed her treasure hunter guise and take the place of a fallen Vik when the remaining one uses the 'Another One?' spell. She also possesses a (1) action that lets her be affected by Sisters in Spirit, for when she needs to leap around the field in a hurry. Though with (+1) Nimble and a great ranged attack, she's most likely going to be swapped out via Spirit to the back of the line so the twin swords can start turning zombies into confetti. Last but not least is her spell (1) Sisters in Need; when it's cast, you select one suit in the casting total and, depending on the suit, all Viktorias in play (well, either her or the Viks) gain one of the following abilities:

:rams Slow to Die

:crows Hard to Wound 1

:tomes Armor 1 (note she automatically has :tomes in her Ca)

:masks Hard to Kill

Fancy!

Other actions include her two (0) actions. One lets her discard one of your precious, delicious soulstones for three cards! You gotta discard one after, but still! Her other gives her +2 Ca, bringing it up to a very amazing 8:tomes. The +Ca one will probably be used most often, because the melee Viks will be greedily hoarding whatever stones they can get.

Speaking of :tomes, both her other spells (aside from Sisters in Need) require them. Her first spell is quite useful: It's a wide burst that adds one suit from the spell's casting total to the Cb of any friendly model caught in the :pulse, including Vanessa herself. The suit stays in their Cb until they use a trigger requiring it, after which it fades. Her own Cb trigger goes off on a :tomes, but if memory serves, no one else really benefits from reading. Her last spell is simple: The schmuck who fails the Wp resist discards one card while Vanessa draws one. Nice!

While I'm thinking of triggers, I might as well point out that Vanessa adds some much needed ranged support. Much needed magical ranged support. Sure, she has a katana, but the Cb is lower than that of her Arcane Staff, the range is obviously lower, and the Staff deals more damage on average, having an arc of 2/4/4. The staff, as mentioned, is magical, and if you hit an enemy during an attack where you cheated fate, you draw an extra card! You make up what you lost. I'm in love.

And then there's her trigger. Crowd control in fine form, her trigger goes off on a :tomes and anyone (aside from the guy who got shot) within 2" suffers 2 magical damage. This is not a pulse, aura or blast. It's simply damage in a certain radius, that is unpreventable unless you have Magic Resistant or are the Freikorps Strongarm. I'm in love.

And that is our treasure hunter. At 7 stone, she's a complete bargain and will be an auto-include in all of my Viktoria lists, no matter what the situation.

Edited by Zerous
I cannot grammar
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Indeed! Her Nimbleness and ability to become a Sister in Spirit will let the others get into position better. Sisters in Spirit is already an incredibly useful ability, and now they have a third to set up more combos!

I'm working at the gremlins as I speak, but homework has reared its ugly head again :( I'll make a new thread for them when able.

Edited by Zerous
goblins are in Magic
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Well, Spider swarm has melee master, and can disassemble to make it easier to hit harder targets.

Joss takes a turn or two to be awesome, and if you can keep him alive until then, will do massive damage.

The mechanical rider is pretty good all the time, but has the rider vulnerability of if you can focus fire, he dies.

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Ive been thinking of using the SS miner as it is something slightly different. I feel Joss does what the Viki's already do well (kill stuff in melee). Mechanical rider could be fun as it would give me a reason to purchase one.

But do you see anyone really giving up Von Schill with the Viks for a Soulstone Miner? I don't. Sadly. >.<

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Also if go by the crew creator if hire viky in a brawl with a Neverborn master you can still hire a totem

And snowstorm, but I think that is a bug

Wouldn't you be unable to take Vanessa in such a crew anyway since the leading master is still not the Vikkies? Unless I am mistaken, in Brawls you basically elect one master as your "lead" master and thus have your hiring restrictions for other masters based on that. Hence why if you take Kirai, you can hire the Dreamer as your second master, but you are still plying a Rezzer crew which is why you cannot bring over the other Nightmares with it.

Vanessa requires that it is a crew lead by the Viktorias.

Though in normal Vikky crews, Vanessa can bring along Snowstorm. He is an Arcanist non-living model.

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I am also extremely excited by Vanessa, I honestly think her Nimble, walk of 5, and ability to be part of Sister's in Spirit is the BEST!

Aggressively, (especially if your opponent has split his models up, your Sword Vik can make 2 strikes from more than 28inches away on turn 1. This is done by triple moving Vanessa up, then using Gun Vik to companion activate, switch places with Vanessa and then summon Sword Vik 3inches in front of her, then she charges forward and melee experts. (oh, how I'm so so so so so wishing to do this to a pack of Night Terrors deployed away from main party)

Strategically this can be used to make very fast and early interacts with Treasure counters or deliver messages.

I feel like Vanessa alone fixed an issue the Viks had with not having a cheap (or any tbh) objective grabbing unit, and she does it with an aggressive shell, I'm utterly stoked to start playing her, and I also believe she becomes an auto-include all the time.

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