What do you like with your

[Rameses]

Tara!

Personally I am looking at the following build for a 50ss game.

Ressurectionists Crew - 50 - Scrap

Tara -Echos of the Void 2ss, Dead of Winter 1ss, Knowledge of Eternity 2ss- 6 Pool

Karina [5ss]

Void Wretch [4ss]

Void Wretch [4ss]

Crooked Man [5ss]

The Nothing Beast [10ss]

Death Marshall [6ss]

The Hanged [9ss]

My thoughts are pretty simple (go figure) the Hanged is a Distraction that can't be ignored, The Death Marshall provides both ranged support and another way to bury things. The Nothing Beast will be a beat stick with some mobility, Void Wretchs will do what they do: burn buried things. Finally the Crooked Man sets up Shafted Tokens for when Tara unbury's a model and controls the model to end it's activation near a shafted token.

thoughts?

And what kind of builds are you looking at for Tara?

[Helm]

Not that I've put her on the table yet, but bearing in mind some of Hypoking's observations in the other thread;

Tara (Obliteration Symbiote, Knowledge of Eternity, Dead of Winter) 0SS

Karina (Long Forgotten Magics) 6SS

The Nothing Beast (Voiceless Words) 11SS

Void Wretch x3 12SS

Taelor (Tally Sheet) 11SS

Ronin 6SS

4SS cache

Basically, the plan is to really leverage the Crew's ability to throw cards away for a higher Df and offset this a little with some card drawing ability. Drawing cards mid-turn is the only way I can think of to make Void Wretches and the Nothing Beast workable while keeping some ability to Cheat effectively. Thus, Tally Sheet is on the Crew's main beatstick and a Ronin supplies Seppuku.

The Crew's burying capability is really reliant on either Death Marshals in close combat or controlling the deaths and sacrifices of the Crew's models. This makes Taelor and the Ronin a really attractive option with Hard to Kill. Taelor is in there anyway as insurance against opponents that attack Wp, and to get dropped next to enemies with a high Wp in order to flatten them.

Having not actually used Tara herself, I'm playing the safe game. Obliteration Symbiote is necessary to control who exits the Buried state, Knowledge of Eternity is the only way Tara can make herself Activate before the enemy Crew does, and Dead of Winter makes the whole Wp-based shenanigans possible in the first place. The Nothing Beast acts as a bodyguard for Tara against Ml-based opponents and helps her control a wider area. Meanwhile, a couple of Void Wretches can act as objective runners while one remains to give Fast to anyone entering the Tara 6" -2Wp bubble.

So basically, Taelor gets dropped using the Crew's teleporting abilities, but after that it's just snatching up the odd enemy. With few cards the Crew will have high Df, but Taelor drawing cards and the Ronin helping in emergencies should keep the ability to Cheat alive. Nothing too complicated with no particular Strategies or Schemes to tailor for, just an all-round goodstuff Crew.

[hypoking]

Well now I feel redundant

Tara/ Obliteration Symbiote, Dead of Winter, Knowledge of Eternity

2 Malifaux Child

10 Nothing Beast

10 Taelor

4(12) Void Wretch

6 Death Marshal

5 stones of flex room to upgrade for Karina with LFM if you need her, upgrade some roaches to, marshals, by Taelor and/or the Beast Oath Keeper to ensure sustained bombardment, etc.

List should be able to go for the big push turn one or load up for hit and run attrition depending on what seems more fun/dickish in the moment.

[Mike3838]

Knowledge of Eternity is the only way Tara can make herself Activate before the enemy Crew does

Why is that important? She only has to be the first *friendly* model to activate in order to be able to get her Reactivate off

[Helm]

Why is that important? She only has to be the first *friendly* model to activate in order to be able to get her Reactivate off

My thinking wasn't so much the necessity of getting Reactivate off, but rather her needing to use Temporal Shift as early as possible. I'm not leaving the Nothing Beast at Df 3 and the Wretches at Df 2 for my opponent's first Activation. Maybe not so much of a problem against all Masters, but my housemate's Sonnia crew would tear me apart in that sort of situation, and it really would only take him one activation; I haven't faced anything capable of decent Chain Activations yet, but I imagine that could be even worse.

[Malicte]

I was actually considering a list that looks something like:

5 Cache

Tara

-2 Obliteration Symbiote

-1 Dead of Winter

-2 Knowledge of Eternity

5 Karina

10 Nothing Beast

-1 Voiceless Words

28 Void Wretch (x7)

The plan here being, use Tara to deliver the NB upfield, using Dead of Winter to reduce enemy WP by 2 to better enable the NB to take down whatever the biggest threat or lynchpin of the enemy crew is. Meanwhile, Tara uses Temporal Shift to make as many models as possible fast, and then dumps down to no more than 3 cards. If you have fewer good cards, spend cards for defensive stance on Tara and the NB to improve their survivability, or if you need them alive another turn longer to kill another lynchpin.

You then have 7 Void Wretches with Df 5-7, incorporeal, getting ++ to every flip against every model you can manage to make Fast. Some of them are probably fast themselves. In addition, any of them that can see the NB potentially send an enemy unit home (and out of contention for scheme markers) if killed. This probably nets you an advantage in the mid board where most of the schemes are handled.

All theoryfaux since I haven't been able to get a VASSAL game in yet, but it seems solid enough in theory. 1 stone of wiggle room to give Karina her upgrade if it's necessary. Dumping so much of your hand that fast makes me nervous when looking at instant-kill triggers and the like, but a defensive stanced NB at 7-9 Df still looks pretty survivable to me.

Edit: Further thoughts. I see the NB as an auto include in every Tara list I run. I just don't see why he'd ever be left out. Furthermore, aside from a few niche situations, I can't think of a reason I'd prefer the Child over Karina. Those seem pretty core. Looking at the Wretches, my thoughts are basically, "Pretend Pure Nothingness wasn't on their sheet. At what Df number would I consider them worth 4 stones? At what point would I consider them better than Steam Abominations or Desperate Mercenaries or Freikorpsmen? At what number would I consider them a bargain?" Those answers, for me at least, are looking like Df 4 to be worth their cost, Df 5 to be better than any other low-cost option for just about any situation, given their synergy, and Df 6 or 7 to consider wanting to spam them all over the board. The biggest potential problem with spamming them is what happens if Tara dies and I'm left with no way to easily dump cards? You'd have to think the best option at that point is to activate something near an enemy and cheat as many cards as possible into duels, even if they'll fail, just to dump hand size. Clearly at least some of this dumping would be via Defensive Stance.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Malicte

[Fetid Strumpet]

The problem I see with this list is that all it's teeth is in the NB, and to a minor extent, Tara. Once the NB goes down, and it will, it's going to be difficult to stop the opposing models, lots of wretches will of course be more difficult to control, but not impossible.

It looks interesting though.

[Malicte]

That was my worry as well. You have to probably drop the "alpha strike" with Tara and the NB turn 2 and hope whatever you've held onto from turn 1-2 in terms of cards + stones keep you alive against the retribution.

Bete or Killjoy or Taelor or Bishop are all pretty valid as a secondary threat if it turns out not to be enough.

[hypoking]

Tara really does not have to risk retaliation unless she wants to. It's trivially easy to sling a threat into the enemy, have it do its thing, and then end the the turn with only a void roach sitting outside of your deployment zone. Tara, much in the manner of an early eighties valley girl, does what she wants.

[Parker Barrows]

I haven't quite moved on to Beta yet, but here's me starting out:

Tara (Dead of Winter, Eternal Journey, and I'm not quite sure what's better, Obliteration Symbiote or Knowledge of Eternity): 4

Karina: 5

The Nothing Beast (Voiceless Words): 11

3 Void Wretches: 12

3 Death Marshals: 18

SS Cache: 4

Or in short, her basics. Once I get a handle on that, I plan to start experimenting (2 DM and 1 Punk Zombie maybe?).

[hypoking]

Bete or Killjoy or Taelor or Bishop are all pretty valid as a secondary threat if it turns out not to be enough.

Given that we don't have the complete picture on of how multiple bury effects interact with each other we may be jumping the gun assuming that Killjoy and Betty are viable options.

[Ausplosions]

Given that we don't have the complete picture on of how multiple bury effects interact with each other we may be jumping the gun assuming that Killjoy and Betty are viable options.

What?

[hypoking]

Exactly what it says. Beyond the very broad strokes we don't know how two bury effects interact. I'm cautiously optimistic myself but we don't know if the abilities these models depend on are compatible with Tara's bag of tricks.

[Manic Mouse]

OBLITERATION CREW [REZ] (50SS)

Soul stones: 4

Tara [cache 4]

- Knowledge of eternity (2)

- Dead of Winter (1)

- Unnerving aura (1)

Karina (5)

The nothing beast (10)

- Voiceless words (1)

Void wretch x3 (12)

Death Marshall x3 (18)

I plan to bury as much of my opponents crew as possible and use Karina's burning to dish out the damage. The DM's can also bury the NB without dealing damage to be healed up by wretches if things go south.

I agree with the Bête and Killjoy comment, they don't have any immediate synergy that I can see.

Not using the unbury upgrade as it's too card/SS intensive for what you get out of it. If the friendly unbury didn't require a crow I would take it but I'm always wary of things that require flips just to make another flip - burns a lot of cards that could be better used elsewhere IMO.

Edited August 10, 2013 by Manic Mouse

[Ausplosions]

What in particular.

I honestly do not see an issue.

[Silas Cordell]

Exactly what it says. Beyond the very broad strokes we don't know how two bury effects interact. I'm cautiously optimistic myself but we don't know if the abilities these models depend on are compatible with Tara's bag of tricks.

Buried is buried. Multiple bury effects don't interact.

I'm not sure what you mean, either.

[Helm]

Buried is buried. Multiple bury effects don't interact.

I'm not sure what you mean, either.

I'm obviously not Hypoking, but I think what he means is that the Tara Crew's bury effects (barring those of Death Marshals) depend upon nothing already being buried.

This could lead to issues for the Tara player if, for example, she wanted to pull the Nothing Beast out of a bad situation by burying him. A smart opponent may be able to attack and kill Bete on another part of the battlefield. The Tara player will have to have Bete definitely die in order to later bury the Nothing Beast, or have Bete bury and hope that the Nothing Beast survives until she gets unburied again.

Then again, Tara can unbury Bete in another part of the battlefield, but will Bete then be in range to do damage? Will Tara be close enough to reach Nothing Beast without that extra AP?

Meanwhile, we may see Killjoy starting on the table for opponents of Tara, in case she just chooses to unbury him and beat him to death. I'm actually a little worried about the potential interactions between Tara and the Dreamer's Crew; I really, really hope that that's been playtested sufficiently.

Until we get her on the table for a bit, it remains to be seen if Tara can afford to take models that fill up that bury zone; it's potentially a complex issue.

[Parker Barrows]

Well, Dreamer will be in Open Beta Wave 2, so if there is an issue, we'll be able to find it there.

[Helm]

I know, and I'm sure it'll work out fine. It's just concerning to me that, between the new Crew using Bury as a main mechanic and the old Crew using Bury as a main mechanic, the old Crew is going to be the one that has to budge if games between the two end up as a NPE. Tara's already out and printed, after all.

[Adran]

For what its worth I like the Desolation engine as an outcast big hitter. Of course pendign onn what happens in the Wave 2 beta, but its current form is pretty handy, and its ability to add extra models isn't bad, especially when you can then use them to get you a new desolation engine.

[micahwc]

I just thought of a potentially big threat to Tara's crew. Headshot and decapitate. If you are tossing control cards to give big defense to the Nothing Beast, you are going to have a hard time against snipers. Kind of fluffy in a way.

[Malicte]

Hand balance is definitely an important factor. Having seen it in action a few times now, I will say that throwing away all six of your cards is as bad of an idea as it seems. Holding three cards in hand still gives you respectable defensive stats but allows for some contingencies.

[hackdZ]

Can't wait for my Tara to arrive!

Here's what I'm thinking;

Outcastes: 50ss (Cache: 5ss)

Tara 5ss

- Dead of Winter (1ss)

- Obliteration Symbiote (2ss)

- Knowledge of Eternity (2ss)

Karina 6ss

- Long Forgotten Magics (1ss)

Bishop 13ss

- Scramble (2ss)

The Nothing Beast 11ss

- Voiceless Words (1ss)

Death Marshal 6ss

2 x Void Wretch 8ss

1ss to cache

Total: 50ss

There's just something so appealing about a 4AP Bishop popping up in my opponents face!