26ss Raspi crew

[graeme27uk]

Got a 26ss game on Thursday, not sure what the schemes or strategies are yet.

However, in principle:

Rasputina

Shattered Heart

Child of December

Ice Golem

Armour of December

Wendigo

2x Ice Gamin

3ss left in cache

[Fetid Strumpet]

With that few stones in the cache I'm not sure you will want Shattered Mirror. I could certainly be wrong, but part of the reason you want it is to use triggers through the mirror, and with that few stones you won't be activating triggers on command all that often.

[graeme27uk]

Hmm I am not sure either.

Shattered mirror gives me at least the potential to get triggers through minions. No upgrade means no possibility.

[Fetid Strumpet]

But you need to draw the cards to get the triggers if you don't have enough stones in reserve for it. I'd try it but if you can't get more stones in cache I'd probably go for the Armor of December on her instead.

[Fenton Crack]

It also lets you mirror without the -1 penalty on the cast, which is a great bonus to the allowing the trigger, but in a game that small, I'm not sure how many stones you want to throw at upgrades at the cost of other models that are to be furthering your strats and schemes.

Now you could be playing Assassinate or Make Them Pay, where Raspy is going to do all the heavy lifting, and it will pay dividends, but until you flip for your schemes at strat, it's hard to really say what to take, as in small stone games it's even harder to take a well rounded crew with the fewer options you have. Even if you are going blast kill Raspy, Fetid is right in how important the tomes will be. You might consider taking Shattered Heart with Arcane Reservoir to increase your hand size, and increase therefore your chances of a high tome, or take a full cache so you can stone the tome.

Keep in mind too that there are some potential matchups that will entirely make you rethink your Raspy upgrades. If your opponent declares Outcasts, and you think you might be going against Von Schill, that crew is mostly blast proof, so Decembers Curse will have to be cheated down to even hurt them at all. In that case I would suggest Child of December since you will be relying more on Freeze a Over for a potential Devour or at least AP denial, and while you have them paralyzed will want to use Shatter as your zero action (double negative flips until end of turn and either 4 damage on the ram, or up to 9 on kitted out Von Schill with a mask at 3 damage per upgrade).

Incorporeal crews also can give you trouble (and Lilith and flyers) by quickly closing distance behind cover then charging you or making your Ice Pillars worthless, etc. Sonnia with her Reflect Magic and Counterspell Aura and also do quick Raspy shutdowns with her punishing of missed attacks and suit stripping to deny you your triggers.

I am just rambling on at this point (sorry), but I am just stressing that the crew comp and the the potential upgrades, especially with low stones, are almost always going to have to be game tine decisions after you know what faction tour are facing to hedge your bets on opponent crew, as well as knowing what strats and schemes you are hoping to accomplish.

You might want to go in with a more modular approach, like Joel Henry suggests, with a list (mental or otherwise) of potential model/upgrade combinations for various aspects (objective grabbing, board control, killing, etc.) and then combine those pieces for your games crew, rather than trying yo compose an actual crew list ahead of time.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Fenton Crack
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