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M2E Marcus


dgraz

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Hello, another new player. 

Had my first game with Marcus yesterday. Schemese plant evidence, spring a trap, line in sand and squatters rights - so a swirling mess of conufsion, scheme makers and death along the center line.

List was claw and fang (myranda sacing for sabre turn three), kudra, 3xhoarcat prides.  I was up against a minion wave Macabe list, and was slaughtered... although having checked the errata I actually had 9 points spare, so some expansion is clearly needed. I have all the gamin and the shasta vidja at the moment, along with the medical autonomota.
 

I think I'm starting to like a walk of 7 and a fast moving game. Even with Marcus, Myranda and Kudra on the table I had trouble using up my soulstones. I was alphaing every turn, but with no big target on the other side it was mostly getting cojo to places quicker. In retrospect I feel like I gave up marcus's turn to double cojo's and I'm not sure that is a good trade.
The rattler was sent as a tarpit against the dawnserpent, mcabe and luna. It took up 2ap of mcabe before dying quickly. Cojo was where I learnt the perils of Danzey's Chaunt. Sabre was slowed and machine gunned to death in a single turn. Hoarcats are incredibly efficient guild hounds swallowers and good little scheme runners (and now cheaper!). 

Kudra and Myranda match each other for speed, can defend each other and work quite nicely (difficult to shoot them becuase of  Kudra's soft cover and butterfly jump, diffucult to charge them because of Myranda's skinwalk threat), but the duo is quite expensive.
 

Questions:

1) is my 'i like high movement' feeling becuase it's a compensation for being inexperienced at placement to start with, and I should focus on schemes and activations more? Molemen?

2) why have I never seen Marcus with warpigs or wild boar?, Pull My finger suggests he can take them: https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/1293024/pages/marcus
3) I'm not a fan of the models for the raptors, or the slate ridge mauler. I do quite like the waldgeists (which I know people recommend) and the grootslang (thoughts?).

4) Ranged options. I could just take some arcanist shooty goodness, but how do people find the dawn serpent?

 

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29 minutes ago, cromlyn said:

Questions:

1) is my 'i like high movement' feeling becuase it's a compensation for being inexperienced at placement to start with, and I should focus on schemes and activations more? Molemen?

2) why have I never seen Marcus with warpigs or wild boar?, Pull My finger suggests he can take them: https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/1293024/pages/marcus
3) I'm not a fan of the models for the raptors, or the slate ridge mauler. I do quite like the waldgeists (which I know people recommend) and the grootslang (thoughts?).

4) Ranged options. I could just take some arcanist shooty goodness, but how do people find the dawn serpent?

 

I will talk about 2e, but know that 3rd edition will release end of this month. New games. New rules. New everything. It changes Marcus significantly (and everything).

1) both I'd say. Lot of movement lets you power through mistakes if you make them. But positioning is really important and having high movement to facilitate that is huge. Schemes are what wins you games so... Yeah. 2e Molemen I wasn't a fan of.

2) I played him occasionally with Warpigs. In my opinion they're a "fun" choice. They're somewhat difficult to control. That's going to lose you games more often than win them. They are quite durable and hit potentially very hard if you can hit moderate or better. Wild Boars never convinced me on paper, just seemed a bit rubbish.

3) Raptors are defecting to Guild in 3e so give them a hard pass at this point. Marcus loses a lot of his out-of-faction Beast access in 3e, but becomes dual faction Arcanist/Neverborn. As such you can't field Waldgeists and Grootslang unless you play Neverborn in 3e. In 2e I got a lot of mileage out of Waldgeists. Never was a fan of huge Grootslang mini so I skipped it, but I liked what it did on the table for others.

4) Dawn Serpent, as an out of faction hire, will also be unavailable in 3e. I got good use out of it in 2e though. For thematic ranged option look to Paul Crockett. Generic Arcanist ranged options are fine. But probably not why you're picking Marcus into an encounter in the first place.

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41 minutes ago, cromlyn said:

Hello, another new player. 

Had my first game with Marcus yesterday. Schemese plant evidence, spring a trap, line in sand and squatters rights - so a swirling mess of conufsion, scheme makers and death along the center line.

List was claw and fang (myranda sacing for sabre turn three), kudra, 3xhoarcat prides.  I was up against a minion wave Macabe list, and was slaughtered... although having checked the errata I actually had 9 points spare, so some expansion is clearly needed. I have all the gamin and the shasta vidja at the moment, along with the medical autonomota.
 

I think I'm starting to like a walk of 7 and a fast moving game. Even with Marcus, Myranda and Kudra on the table I had trouble using up my soulstones. I was alphaing every turn, but with no big target on the other side it was mostly getting cojo to places quicker. In retrospect I feel like I gave up marcus's turn to double cojo's and I'm not sure that is a good trade.
The rattler was sent as a tarpit against the dawnserpent, mcabe and luna. It took up 2ap of mcabe before dying quickly. Cojo was where I learnt the perils of Danzey's Chaunt. Sabre was slowed and machine gunned to death in a single turn. Hoarcats are incredibly efficient guild hounds swallowers and good little scheme runners (and now cheaper!). 

Kudra and Myranda match each other for speed, can defend each other and work quite nicely (difficult to shoot them becuase of  Kudra's soft cover and butterfly jump, diffucult to charge them because of Myranda's skinwalk threat), but the duo is quite expensive.
 

Questions:

1) is my 'i like high movement' feeling becuase it's a compensation for being inexperienced at placement to start with, and I should focus on schemes and activations more? Molemen?

2) why have I never seen Marcus with warpigs or wild boar?, Pull My finger suggests he can take them: https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/1293024/pages/marcus
3) I'm not a fan of the models for the raptors, or the slate ridge mauler. I do quite like the waldgeists (which I know people recommend) and the grootslang (thoughts?).

4) Ranged options. I could just take some arcanist shooty goodness, but how do people find the dawn serpent?

 

Welcome to Marcus, although I will say he is going to be a big change with the new edition. So I'm going to talk M2E, but its worth checking with the people you play with what they are intending to do next month.

Facing McCabe, the dawn serpent is a decent Alpha option, or you can turn McCabe into a beast. That's particaully nasty as you get to emergency dismount, or desperate Gamble with him whilst you Alpha. I don't use Alpha all that often, only when I see a great opportunity.

I would personally hire the Cerberus, use it as a missile, and then when it gets killed, use Myranda to sacrifice into a new one rather than just not using it for the first few turns.

 

1 High movement is a very good ability, especially if you can utilise it across the game. It makes scheme running easy, and allows you to rapidly redeploy your forces covering up mistakes.

I would say you can't focus too much on actually winning the game, so remember that what you actually want your lost to do is score you points on the stratergy and 2 schemes, and deny your opponent the same. You can do this with out ever doing a point of damage if you wanted to. (That's pretty hard, but possible).

2 I have used war pigs with Marcus a reasonable amount, (I've certainly talked about it in several threads on this forum and have a few battle reports about them). They are fun, but I would not recommend them to a beginner, because they take a lot of effort to control in a Marcus list (or a good understanding of how to use them when they go out of control).  I'm not sure how many others have used them. The Set 'er off ability that forces you to charge if you're not engaged or near a friendly Gremlin is the problem, because if the only possible charge is one of your models, then the pig has to take that, and will then make 2 attacks against that model. You can cheat to miss, but its more resources used up. When I do use them I always take the jackolope to be my sacrificial target for the pig. I have used it to get the pig into my enemy on the first turn, often alpha'd so after 1 charge on my Jackolope I've been able to make 4 or 5 other charges into the enemy crew  which has the potential to wreck havock. But I have also had one spend the whole game fighting my own Slate Ridge mauler because I couldn't get the Mauler out of sight to stop it being charged.

3 There are several new sculpts coming up in the new edition. I don't know what ones are getting re-done, but you might be lucky and its the ones you don't like. There is also signifigant changes to Marcus' hiring. (And hiring in general). He is no longer going to be allowed to Hire Beasts from any faction, and the Raptor has switched to a Guild model.

The whole hiring has changed because of KEYWORDS, but Marcus has now moved to duel faction Arcanist and Neverborn. So you might want to consider furture purchases based on the new hiring restrictions as well (depending on what you and your friends decide to do).

4 I haven't had a huge success with the Dawn Serpent. It should be good, but you need to have several models with Ca abilities around to get its heals done to make sure its durable. I tend to not have a huge a mount of Ranged in a Marcus list because I have the mobility to go from out side of their range to in their face most of the time. Its also not something he can hire in the new edition.

 

 

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I like molemen as a relatively cheap model, but I found that they want to be run with a second model, which might be another moleman, or a silurid, or a canine remains, but they need something else to drop that marker up ahead to let them leap to it. They're not too bad at holding ground if you have a ready supply of :tome (and your armour isn't ignored).

(personally I'm addicted to the Blessed as another leaping damage dealer in Marcus lists, it has decent durability, good  mobility, and against a lot of foes it has the potential to do serious damage thanks to its triggers. I've never decided if Imbued energies or Well rehearsed is the best upgrade for it. It might depend on the amount of scheme markers expected )

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