New player needs advice

[Cer0]

So I just picked up the game today and here is the Von Schill army I have put together...

Von Schill - Master

2x Friekorpsman

1x Friekorpsman Specialist

1x Friekorpsman Librarian

1x Friekorpsman Trapper

1x Friekorpsman Strongarm

So the army is pretty swiss army knife. Its got good mobility, 3 models with 12" or longer range, good amount of CC, and decent melee. I don't know what I think of the Specialist or Librarian though. What do you guys think?

[Drool_bucket]

I like the boxset + strongarm as a crew for a lot of missions. I also like them against all the other Outcast Masters.

The Viks are glass cannons that Von Schill can hurt before they get there and the (Friekorps) crew works well spread out so that hampers the Viks movement and whirlwind gimmicks.

Levi likes big mean things (i.e. higher SS cost models) that he can dissemble quickly and the two highest SS models (and Von Schill as your Leader) can keep away from Levi and remain effective. With a lot of shooty models you can actually threaten the Waifs a bit too...

Hamelin does well ignoring your armor with death by 1000 cuts, but with stubborn your can counter his WP spells a bit and have the ability to shut down the Rat Catchers. Nix can be troublesome without a magical weapon (SAS aethic projector aside) but VS with a Red Joker can one shot him easy enough. But the nice thing about the Freikorps is that you can stay away from cheating and use your control hand as a discard tool to power up the Suit and the Librarian and deny Hamelin a decent control hand.

I am not a Specialist fan... I do use him because opponents often target him and the Librarian is often close by, so if the opponent uses up resources to kill him at range, he can often survive and then be healed up by the Librarian.

The Librarian I love, but understand that she often lags behind and doesn't make use of many of her spells aside from Healing, which is still awesome in a resilient crew like the Friekorps. One thing I do look for his high Tomes cards, and if I can collect one or two of them, I do look to attack enemy bunched Minions with her ranges attack because no one else loves the high books. (I think the SAS trigger is meh at best... I like high Crows for his ranged attacks... Masks and Rams for Von Schill himself...)

The Freikorps are a legit crew if you dedicate some practice with them. Even with VS only being a henchmen they can compete if you realize what they are... humans with neat armor and guns in a world of nasty Neverborn/Ressers and other things that go bump in the night. Play conservatively and to the Strategy and you'll succeed.

[Pagan Wolfe]

Right schemes, right enemies and they are awesome.

Healing flips are rare, so having a model that can hand these out, especially to other models, is very handy. Really there is nothing I can say that hasn't been said on the Pull My Finger Wikki, but they are great although not as swiss as some of the other models.

Neither of them is an auto-include in my crews and it depends largely on what my opponent is playing at what schemes and strategies I have drawn/selected.

Oh, and GET A CONVICT GUNSLINGER, really. They are awesome even though they don't have the same synergy as some other choices.

By the way, welcome to the game... hope you love it!

[MisterSparkles]

I love the Friekorps and I always have a good time playing with them. I feel like they can handle most things pretty well. For heavy hitters VS is a beast, range 12 pew pew of doom and Strongarm is amazing in melee. The rest are mobile enough, decent survivability, and with focus shots they can put out some damage.

The glue of this crew is the librarian, plain and simple. This crew can be a hassle to take down normally, but when you add in the heals that she can put out, you win games. Consider SAS, the guy that has an armor that can ignore damage and normal armor 2, but he then has the support to receive 3 healing flips in a turn. This causes an opponent to make a choice of ignoring SAS, try to kill him before he gets healed, or going for the librarian. I'll break this down a little.

Ignoring SAS: I love when they try to do this as its hard to do. So long as you have 6+ mask he can leap 7 inches and cause a bad day for something. Also his effective threat would be 14+ 2 inch melee with a pretty nasty damage track. So the longer they ignore him, the more he gets to kill.

Kill SAS first: Also not something easy to do. Armor 2 is a pain to bring down, and charge up could give him armor 3. Also Enhanced armor is just great! He requires a lot of attacks, or luck, to kill quickly. For example, last weekend I faced 'dita. She, Santiago, and an Austringer tried to take him out in one go and failed. My response was for VS pew pew and give the Lib an action to heal.

Kill lib first: Firstly, this should cause your opponent to over extend themselves, which could likely win you the game. I've never used the lib for anything but healing support, so when she goes down I cry a little on the inside, but that's about it. As I already said, the Korps isn't too bad at staying up without her. Something you also have to consider is that if VS is nearby, she gets slow to die. If she has already gone and has that ram to her casting, she stays alive on a 4+. Killing her might take a lot more effort than the opponent might think, and maybe more than going after SAS.

Moving on, I'm also not a big fan of the specialist. He's good.... So instead I've been running Lazarus, with limited success. I've sadly not figured out how to get him to kill stuff, but generally I feel like he's worth the points. He has a lot of the similar attributes of the Korps; armor, evasive, and i2i. But the main reason I like him, beyond possible blast damage, is that he has a built in free heal. As I've already confessed my love for the librarian, he is a natural include for me. 4 relatively easy healing flips a turn!!! Oh, and did i mention everyone in the crew has armor? Plus this gives 3 big targets for the opponent to think about; VS, SAS and laz. So I've been able to have the Korpsmen do what needs to get done (scheme/strat) and the trapper to do focused pot shots.

Now in closing, I want to say the another big reason I love this crew is that the fate deck hates me. I'm serious. I usually have a 10, and the rest of my hand is below 5.... five out of six turns. I rarely win initiative, then somehow still flip poorly throughout the turn. This crew can survive through all my bad luck and still win. Sure there are crews out there that would dismantle it, I'm thinking kirai in particular, but lucky for me I don't face kirai.

[011121]

So I just picked up the game today and here is the Von Schill army I have put together...

Von Schill - Master

2x Friekorpsman

1x Friekorpsman Specialist

1x Friekorpsman Librarian

1x Friekorpsman Trapper

1x Friekorpsman Strongarm

So the army is pretty swiss army knife. Its got good mobility, 3 models with 12" or longer range, good amount of CC, and decent melee. I don't know what I think of the Specialist or Librarian though. What do you guys think?

Librarian's really close to an autoinclude. Healing is just too good a thing to pass up, even leaving aside her other nice abilities.

The specialist is a bit more, well..., specialized. In some fights you may need him badly. In others, not so much. If I were fighting collodi, for instance, I'd buy him before anything else.

[Cer0]

Thanks for all the insight guys. So Librarian is amazing almost all the time and Specialist is... well a specialist. What would you guys switch out the specialist for in a 30ss army? Also what are the normal sizes your armies?

[MisterSparkles]

Size is really up to you and your local crowd. However 35ss is about the standard for tournament size. My normal opponent is getting prepped for adepticon so i've been running 35 ss.

I'd suggest running the box set plus SAS for a few games to really get your feet wet and see what they can do. I'm sure after your second or third game you'll love the librarian as much as the rest of us and see that the specialist has... some uses.... Then at that point you could see that you'd love to add something that the crew it might be lacking. Maybe you'll love the long range shots of the trapper and want to pick up another one of them or maybe you'd want to do a swarm of base freikorpsmen. It will just come to what your play style is with them!

Good luck and i hope you enjoy them!

[Claymore65]

Don't forget to take a look at other mercenary options. Even if you only use Von Schill, you can take any mercenary you want. Taelor is great for killing constructs and has a magical weapon for spirits. If you meta is very construct heavy, Lazarus may be a great choice to buy. He can copy other construct's abilities which rocks. If you need cheap 5pt killers, give Ronin a try. They are fast, strong, and ignore armor. Take a look at the other mercenaries and you may find one you like a lot (or at least the sound of).