A resurrectionist's best friend

[Somnicide]

I am, of course, referring to the canine remains. I am hoping to start a discussion of some tips and tactics on zombie pugs with specific casters in mind.

 

I see with it's speed that it is a solid scenario piece, and if I understand it correctly, one can add a corpse token on turn 1. 

 

I was wondering with Seamus, if it is worth it to do so on turn 1 to give a body to activate his back alley trigger (with the appropriate upgrade, of course).

 

Is this something you Seamus players normally do?

 

 

Is there value in using the dog's def debuff to try and take a shot or is the chance of randomizing on the canine remains too great?

 

I am looking at McMourning next, and he doesn't seem to use corpse counters in quite the same way, does the dog with him become primarily a scenario runner? 

 

I am not sure what value they are to Molly - I am not seeing anything obvious popping out especially with her fondness for crooligans but maybe I am missing something?

 

Likewise Kirai seems to have no use for them whatsoever. 

 

Thanks again!

 

[Fenton Crack]

I imagine on turn one, you could often deploy Seamus as to not be in LOS (if the terrain is dense as it should be) that the corpse marker would not be as necessary turn one to effectively use Back Alley if you wanted to. Our group's Seamus player often has the CE dig up the corpse marker turn one so Seamus can use Arise My Sweet on his first activation and summon another Belle. Obviously the sooner you summon, often the better, as a Belle summoned turn one will statistically use more AP over the course of the game than one summoned turn three or four ( their durability having them often stick around).

[David Blank]

The dog and seamus can work as it will allow you to summon Belles, However I think this is a waste of a turn and a model as Seamus is your hard hitter and will move past the summoning of the dog. With sybelle and the right upgrades your models all get movement 6 inches so I would not bother with him.

 

McMorning works with canine remains a lot. because the charging with poison, and the ability to summon them by sebastian.  Great for him.

 

Nicodem is great with these guys as they drop corpse tokens that allows Nicodem to summon lots of stuff. With the right cards and one or two canine remains in his army Nicodem can get a seriously large army pretty quickly.

 

I don't know or play Molley yet so no idea and my understanding is they are not great with Kurai.

 

Hope this helps

[Fenton Crack]

I am not so sure you are losing much by having the CE drop corpse counter for the summon, as although I guess an argument can be made that one wasted the CE's turn, Seamus has lost nothing:

 

You deploy the CE near Seamus (who you deploy out of LOS )

 

Round 1 activation 1, CE drops the marker for 2 AP

 

Round 1 activation 2, Seamus summons a Belle via his zero action. 

 

Outside a generic upgrade, I do not know if there are even any zeros to compete with Arise My Sweet (unless you were going to use the same 2 AP from the CE to Back Alley because there was no terrain to block LOS, which is rare in my experience).

 

Thus at this point you have only used 2 AP in the game, not "wasted" a zero if there are no other choices, and in return have gained an 8 stone model (at full health no less), another activation, and potentially 9 more game AP from the Belle over the course of the game, giving you a net gain of 7AP and an activation.

 

Anything else you were going to do with Seamus you can still do since he is still sitting on 3AP an right where he started, and you can still Back Alley

 

Sybelle can even call the newly minted Belle up to her if she activates first and moves, and despite the Belle being Slow because of the summon, she will still get the +1 walk for great mobility, after already getting the free push getting her way mid- field, and often in "threat range" due to the massive 18" range of Lure.

 

Granted, the scheme pool and the like may swing things one way or another, and if including a CE as an objective grabber one might consider using his initial AP for a 12" movement, but in smaller stone games where your summoning can create a bigger swing, or things like reconnoiter, getting another significant model for 2AP from the CE and a moderate crow can really be beneficial in my experience.

 

If your hand is poor out of the box and you don't have a 9 or higher crow you can spend, you are then looking at having to spend a stone, of course, but I still would say it is usually worth it, but all of this is opinion only.

[Wake of Godzilla]

Personally I started taking the cainine remains but found the Mortimor acted as a much more reliable buddy for Seamus.

 

With corpse bloat he can drop the corpse counter straight away and then has a late game 0 action which can do some damage. With My Favorite Shovel you can move a lot of your crew around with Fresh Meat. 

 

I always set them up together so Seamus summons 1st activation to get a Belle or Doxy out. If I can I activate a model to walk out in front of the crew 1st so that I can fresh meat and get some free movement. Mort won't do a lot on average on turn 2 or 3 but that can be good for bodyguard or lining up someone to be finished off by his shovel.