Rotten Belles - a happier redux

[Ratty]

Yep.. 95% of the stuff the mods do is hidden from the public...

[MrG]

I started playing actively Malifaux 2-3 months ago and I switched from Neverborn (Pandora) to Resurrectionists (ALL OF THEM!) because I like more the fluff and the gameplay. When I started reading the previous closed thread and then this one, I felt like someone was complaining about the beauty of my belles. "Blasphemy!" I said, while my first thought was: "Here we are, someone lost to a good tactic and now is rage-quitting."

 

Now, I still don't think that the Belle is an OP model, but I can see how a Belles spam can be a problem. Changing the model because of one tactic can hurt badly those who don't use that tactic, but run the Belles in limited quantity.

Putting a "Rare X" on minions models that can be summoned affects also the summoner (especially if it is the only model one can summon), and all the Resurrectionists are in way or the other summoners.

 

Moreover, I really would like to understand how the Belles spam is pulled off. I don't think it is impossible but I don't think that is as easy as this discussion claims. It's going to involve cheating more than once (I'm unlucky enough to flip three 3s on 3 lures), the use of the whole turn and probably the whole crew to kill one model (?). All of this has to align with the astral conjunction that the opponent doesn't do anything at all. Is it "that" easy? I'm really trying to understand and I would like to see less theory and more practical examples .

[PolishSausage]

Here is the good part about flipping 3's on 3 lures

1- your opponent also has to flip a card in advence

2- your total is 11 at the time so unless he flipped higher that means a 7-8+ card HE has to cheat first

 

3- if he cheats first : GREAT he burned a card and you can pass

4- If he does not cheat you have a chance to throw a low crow and get your trigger off

5- if he does not cheat you can also pass, you have one less 3 in a deck and he burned a high card

 

The only bad situation is when both of you flip low and neither of you have cards to cheat with

[sharpobjects]

Reporting back from the Milwaukee tournament as I said I would let you guys know how it went. Two of our guys played Ressers, another played Neverborn and I played Guild. Victor played with his standard 6 Belle list that I already posted earlier in this thread and Joe played Tara as a Resser hiring 4 Belles and some other goodies. John was using the tournament to get some practice in with Collodi but he had a Dreamer list ready if he faced one of the Resser players. One of the counters to the Belles was models with Terrifying so he took summoning Dreamer and hired 2 Teddys and Coppelious.

 

Oddly enough I went 3-0 with Guild running a different master for each round. My first round I took Perdita against Lady J and won a narrow nail biter 5-4. The second round I faced Neverborn with Sonia Crid and won lopsided 9-1 because I damn near flipped severe on damage for every flame burst spell. The Specialist and Papa loco assisted in the nuclear carnage. It was clearly silly. I finally ran into one of the Resser players as Joe was 2-0 with Tara. With the random pairings for round 1 Joe and Victor had to face each other with their Belle spam. Joe pulled out the close 9-8 win which sent Victor into the losing bracket.

 

I put together what I thought was the best anti-resser list I could think of while still catering to the strategy of round 3 which was Reconnoiter. I admit that I had an advantage because I knew what Joe was running but he had no idea who exactly I was running from Guild. I hired Lady J, Francisco, two Exorcists, the Lone Marshal and 4 Guild Hounds. I gave Francisco wade in and Lady J got Implacable, Flames of the Pit and Justice Unleashed.

 

We played on a very nicely built terraclips sewer board that was mounted on plywood and had all the walls, bridges and rooms reinforced with foam or cardboard. We counted the sewer sludge that runs through out the table as severe terrain.  We moved up our models carefully. I gave Lady J the +2/+2 from Francisco and with my hounds I was out activating Joe and it allowed me to see where he was going to place his models and prevented all Luring on turn 1 against me. I triple walked Lady J and put her in position to either charge Tara or walk once and charge the Rogue Necro (RN). With the Mortimer and the assistance of Fast he pumped out two corpse counters and was lured up by Belles so he wasn't stuck in his deployment zone. Joe was getting setting up a turn 2 RN summon.

 

Tara took the wonderful upgrade giving him positive twist to initiative flips. Activated Tara and tried to hand out slow to Lady J but the Lady was at Wp 9 and the action failed. He then smartly moved Tara out of charge range. That left Mortimer and the RN as targets. I decided to deal with Mortimer since he was pumping out corpse counters like no tomorrow. I culled my hand between turn 1 and 2 so I had 3 high rams. I used a stone to add another Ram for each attack to put her min damage at 6 and killed Mortimer with the 2 strikes from the charge. I think he used one stone to prevent but gave up on the second hit. I think I had a moderate and a severe. She then walked once and used last rites to discard all the corpse counters Mortimer made.

 

Joe then started luring Lady J with several Belles. I allowed all the lures to go through and got off 5 ripostes using cards and stones killing one Belle and severely wounding another. Lady J was charged by the RN and brought her down to 6 wounds left. The RN had 3 wounds on him from a Turn 2 shot by the Lone Marshall. On turn 3 the RN killed Lady J but she was able to get one more riposte off bringing the RN below 5 wounds taking his bonuses away. The RN was then shot by the Lone Marshall and killed. Francisco killed a Belle and an Exorcist killed a Belle and another Exorcist put some wounds on Tara.

 

My opponents was suffering from attrition and unable to score for reconnoiter for more than 1 turn. Tara summoned one guild autopsy but it was too little too late. I ended up winning 9-3. I had Make Them Suffer and Out Flank he had Plant Explosives and Out Flank. Joe was caught off guard by the crew and after seeing what I did realized he should have stayed back a bit more and built up his crew before venturing out. I defiantly think the game would be a lot closer the next time we meet. I was killing the Belles too quickly for them to be affective in this game. Lady J at DF 7 and WP 9, 7 SS pool and Rams in hand was too much to handle. I know she got taken out on turn 3 but there wasn't any VP on her head so it didn't matter. She wrecked face enough that she put his crew back on their heels. Discarding all those corpse counters was an added insult to injury. The Exorcists and Lone Marshal performed like a champs.

 

Victor ran into John's Dreamer terror list and lost by one point I think 5-4. So he suffered two one point loss games and defeated another Guild player on round 2. There were only I think 8 total at the event. A lot of Milwaukee guys had to work or other family obligations so many of the Chicago guys faced each other on different rounds. Of course this proves nothing over all although it did at least help me keep the faith that I can hold my own if I hire the right anti-resser models. I didn't face both resser crews so I will be getting a game against Victor on Tuesday and report back on how I do against Seamus and the 6 belles. For now Tara is left licking her wounds

[Stargazer]

Here is the good part about flipping 3's on 3 lures

1- your opponent also has to flip a card in advence

2- your total is 11 at the time so unless he flipped higher that means a 7-8+ card HE has to cheat first

 

3- if he cheats first : GREAT he burned a card and you can pass

4- If he does not cheat you have a chance to throw a low crow and get your trigger off

5- if he does not cheat you can also pass, you have one less 3 in a deck and he burned a high card

 

The only bad situation is when both of you flip low and neither of you have cards to cheat with

 

Just to point out the Lure doesn't go off if you flip a 3 as it has a TN of 12. It's a tad ambiguous with your final point as to whether you mean you cheat or not, but I thought I ought to point this out. I think we are all on the same page though.

 

All of your other points are however good ones, although if you have to cheat yourself 3 times with reasonable cards it's still quite a resource drain especially if you have a split hand. 3 3s does suck though.

 

To add my own experience to the debate, I played a game on Friday vs Lynch with Seamus. As a bit of background, myself and my opponent have played Malifaux since the 1st edition, have previously helped with play-testing new bits for Malifaux. We both attend UK tournaments with my opponent having placed top 3 on a few occasions so I'd like to think we have some idea as to what we are doing lol.

 

Although I wasn't playing a "Belle-spam" list I did end up with 4 Belles on the table for the majority of the game. With the "Not too banged up" upgrade on Sybelle Lure is pretty nasty especially if your opponent doesn't have any movement shenanigans to get their models back out of trouble. I managed to kill Graves with the combination of 2 Belles Luring and double pouncing on him. (essentially 6 Ml AP from 2 Activations) I can now see much more how a "Belle-spam" list can output damage, with the shear amount of attacks normally on a isolated model the chances are you're going to do weak damage every time and you kill models with death by a thousand cuts.

 

My opponent wasn't aware of this discussion on the forum so afterwards we had a chat about it and discussed whether we thought from the brief experience in the game we played that "Belle-spam" was a problem. We both agreed that any situation where a model is spammed for any reason tends to indicate there's a problem in our view as we feel that varied, at least semi-thematic crews should be competitive. It is debatable as to whether Belles are being spammed in general as there's a clear example of someone in a specific group being very successful with such a list however we are yet to see it over here in the UK in tournaments or otherwise. We both also came to the conclusion (remember neither of us have actually played with/against a full on "Belle-spam" so this is just theoryfaux) that in our experience, with the level of terrain we tend to play on and with the crew compositions that we encounter etc, we were struggling to see how the Belle-spam could be so successful in one play group. We agreed that the NPE factor would be large for the opponent and the crew would be competitive but the utter domination seems a tad strange.

 

I think this thread is a brilliant idea and very constructive, however I think we need to be careful about saying things are overpowered, unbeatable etc. without the trend shown in the Chicago group of players being replicated elsewhere. Obviously that's what this thread is for and I hope to be able to get some games in with a pure "Belle-spam" list in future to see what's what.

[dgraz]

Here is the good part about flipping 3's on 3 lures

1- your opponent also has to flip a card in advence

2- your total is 11 at the time so unless he flipped higher that means a 7-8+ card HE has to cheat first

I think you're fudging the numbers a little in your favor here to support you're argument. You're assuming everyone has a 4 or 5 Wp. Just the two crews I play mostly are Wp 6-8.....Marcus with Howl are all 7's and 8's, and 'Dita with Aura Ancestral is all 7's and 8's....except Papa Loco who is still a 6, and you can Lure him all you want.

Reporting back from the Milwaukee tournament as I said I would let you guys know how it went.

 

Of course this proves nothing over all 

Thanks for the feedback. It proves one thing that seems to be in contention.....The Belle-spam list is not unbeatable.

[Fetid Strumpet]

I used to find the belles effective at the combat role, but with the recent clarification to to how pounce interacts when you are already in base contact I've moved away from it. Mainly because of the way a smart player plays against ressers.

The normal rules of hand management sort of change when playing ressers because almost all resser models, which a few notable exceptions, have terrible df but almost all have h2w. Whereas with a normal list you might have to use 2 high cards to hit, and then cheat dmg, you often can't do that against ressers. You are in general in a very good position to HIT them, even at the the odds if just beating them on the flip. Most resser players I know don't often cheat up defensive flips because it is so much easier for the opponent to cheat a less valuable card and still hit them that they just hope for weak dmg and their wound count to keep them up until they complete their job.

The upshot of which usually means that the opponent often has better cards to use for their df, as they often don't need them as much for offence. Massed belle pounces don't work as well for me because you need alot of them to have the potential to get one or two actually to land, and you need on average more than that to really have an effect because a belle player is hoping for a lucky severe or moderate to do the dmg .

I'm not saying pounce is bad, because it isn't, and if you can set up a pounced corridor with Doxies it does become painful. My Tara last night got fed into a Lilitu, lelu, tot pounce corridor on only narrowly survived. Just that since you lose the ability, to some extent, to get massive pounces off once you are in b2b it doesn't give enough if a bonus to take the risk of clustering belles very tightly.

[Nagash1959]

For me, this is what makes Dead Doxies such an even trade out between the two. The Dead Doxies can stop when they want, unlike the Rotten Belles. Doxies can use pounce more often because of it, and they can hit decently. The last few games I play I traded all the Rotten Belles out of Seamus's starter and replaced them with Dead Doxies to test run them. I really liked them, but I had a few fails for Take The Lead that messed with me a bit. In the end I felt you could make a great argument to include either belle over the other.  I did catch myself wishing I could use Undress when I didn't have it though, but Confused Feelings was an excellent replacement.

[PolishSausage]

Thanks for the feedback. It proves one thing that seems to be in contention.....The Belle-spam list is not unbeatable.

 

The problem in my games was the lack of terrain Seamus had very few vantage points to jump to and bells could not lure him out of line of sight. I also flipped black joker on checks/ damage on important models like seamus/sybelle/cckiller that simply ruined me turn after turn.

 

Example: cckiller about to finish off a teddy turn 1 but flips bjoker on the horror duel ><

 

 

Tho one thing on reckoning I do have to agree that I would gladly swap out 2 bells for a rogue necro as the killing power of just bells can by very wishy washy especially when going against other bells.

[PolishSausage]

The Dead Doxies can stop when they want, unlike the Rotten Belles. Doxies can use pounce more often because of it, and they can hit decently.

I see that as another great way to crank the dmg on the crew by summoning slowed doxies in and giving them a movement in for of a 0.

bells cb5 dmg 134 while doxy cb6 234 could give a nice burst of unexpected dmg from multiple pounces/attacks at weak of 2

[Csonti]

The problem in my games was the lack of terrain Seamus had very few vantage points to jump to and bells could not lure him out of line of sight. I also flipped black joker on checks/ damage on important models like seamus/sybelle/cckiller that simply ruined me turn after turn.

 

The problem is that when you start to point your finger to Lady Luck then we are not dealing with an omfgbr0kncuddleplz type of list. A good player with a truly OP list should easily deal with a pesky BJ per turn and prevail no matter what.

 

Example: cckiller about to finish off a teddy turn 1 but flips bjoker on the horror duel ><

The other problem is the usual player perception of luck. "I could have killed Teddy but that single bad flip ruined that. How unlucky I was, right?" Well, lets see the situation in more detail.

In order to kill Teddy in turn1 I assume you needed to shot him once with Seamus and twice with the CCK. So the flips you need to go through without a BJ are the following:

- 1 for Seamus' Terryfing test

- 1 for Seamus shoting Teddy

- probably 3 for the damage flip

- 1 for CCK's Terryfing test

- 2 for CCK shoting Teddy

- 2x 3 for the damage flip

That is 14 cards from which either one can make killing Teddy impossible if the BJ comes up.

Of course, you could kill Teddy during the 1st or 2nd hit in case you flip the RJ on damage (or flipping moderate and severe on double negative damage flips) but you can also fail the whole thing if your opponent flips the RJ when defending against the hit. In addition we havn't calculated with the Lures and/or using of Back Alley but most probably some of them was also needed to make the Teddy-killing a possibility. The calculation also assumed that all shots hit Teddy but even with Df3 there is a chance that a high card in the opponent's hand can force a miss. Especially vs the CCK's Sh4.

So for the sake of simplicity just stick with the mentioned 14 cards and see the odds. 6 cards for starting hand, 1 initiative and probably a few more cards were gone before you started to try to shot Teddy into fluffy pieces. Let's count with a low number for the later, say 5 cards. All in all you would need not to flip the BJ 14 times from a deck of 42 cards. If you calculate these odds you get a roughly 2/3 chance of success. So you had a 1/3 chance to fail those kill. In my book this is not an extremely unlucky situation at all.

 

Tho one thing on reckoning I do have to agree that I would gladly swap out 2 bells for a rogue necro as the killing power of just bells can by very wishy washy especially when going against other bells.

At least we are one step closer to each other.

[sharpobjects]

But you also have to take into consideration Csonti that he had a 1 point loss to another Belle spam list and a 1 point loss to a Dreamer Summoner list that was built to counter his list specifically. With everyone gunning for him I thought his list stood up very well. The black joker constantly appearing at the worse possible time during a turn or through out the game isnt something to dismiss. The majority of players are willing to play with a 5 card hand for either a few turns or even the whole game just to make sure that single card isnt the reason why they lost the game. I agree that the black joker coming out at the wrong  time once a game is never the reason why you lost but if it happened every turn it is very difficult to overcome, especially if you are playing against a good opponent who is running a strong crew. 

[Csonti]

I think I have made my point clear with the walkthrough about odds of killing Teddy (which is closer to a coin flip when we take into account all aspects). Fliping the BJ when you flip dozens of cards during a turn is NOT unlucky at all, it is more like a consequence. And if the 6 Belles list would be so blatantly overpowered as the previous posts suggested, a good player should easily absorb some bad flips and still win the game.

And I would not call the Dreamer list as a rare, specific counter setup. For example our last weekend's 18 ppl tournament was won by a Dreamer player with an almost identical list. That list is a solid one against anyone.

But we can certainly agree on one thing: the Seamus player's performance was very good despite of the two losses. The difference is that I credit that fully to the player's skill and not a bit to the Belle-spam.

[PolishSausage]

I dont know if I mentioned this before or not I felt that I lacked the angles to kills stuff due to lack of blocking terrain.

 

1st game was a giant open hill wit 2 small buildings on each corner so once I back allied and killed my opponents rogue necro  turn one I was not able to back alley any more.

 

3nd game was a canyon so past turn 1 where I hid Seamus behind  a rock and 2 bells on a hill I could never reposition him due to lacking los blockers.

 

 

This leads me to a conclusion that bells do in fact like plenty of terrain. When playing on our local boards there is plenty of small corridors and alleys where I can lure a model down to and force him to deal with the bells while forcing the rest of my opponents crew to follow that path to dispatch that single model. This can result in unwanted movement and strategy complication for my opponent.

[zFiend]

And I would not call the Dreamer list as a rare, specific counter setup. For example our last weekend's 18 ppl tournament was won by a Dreamer player with an almost identical list. That list is a solid one against anyone.

 

 

I wasn't able to find this list, just out of curiosity, what is the Dreamer list that is used to counter Belle spam?

[PolishSausage]

it involves 2 teddies and copelius to start out. The interesting part of it is teddy will smell fear if I try to lure one of my own models out of melee with him.

 

But like I said lets play some more games and if I keep falling short agains that list out of like 5 matches then we have some more precise data. Me flipping bj's on Sybelle/Seamus/ cckiler 4 out of 4 turns dampers me intensly

[Ratty]

Can I ask for the final placements for the tournament. I can't seem to find them?

[dgraz]

I don't get the 'lack of LoS blockers' bit.....unless you mean places for Seamus to Back Alley to.

 

2 Belles standing together (which is part of the whole 'Pounce tactic' anyway) is 60mm of blocked LoS. Unless your opponent has tons of Ht 3 models.

[Ratty]

I don't get the 'lack of LoS blockers' bit.....unless you mean places for Seamus to Back Alley to.

 

2 Belles standing together (which is part of the whole 'Pounce tactic' anyway) is 60mm of blocked LoS. Unless your opponent has tons of Ht 3 models.

 

Hmm in that case why aren't you taking the upgrade that allows you to TP to Scheme markers and using either corpse markers or Belles to block sight?

[dgraz]

Hmm in that case why aren't you taking the upgrade that allows you to TP to Scheme markers and using either corpse markers or Belles to block sight?

That too. (I forgot about that upgrade)

[Fetid Strumpet]

The standard list they are running doesn't take any of Seamus' upgrades other than the bag. The common Seamus build, that has been talked about most on here anyway, is Bag O' Tools, Decaying Aura, and Unnerving Aura.

[Ratty]

The standard list they are running doesn't take any of Seamus' upgrades other than the bag. The common Seamus build, that has been talked about most on here anyway, is Bag O' Tools, Decaying Aura, and Unnerving Aura.

 

But this is Malifaux, you get to choose your crew after seeing scenery, opposing faction, and Strats and Schemes.

[Fetid Strumpet]

I'm not arguing for it, just pointing out why he was having trouble with not taking one of this upgrades.

[zFiend]

it involves 2 teddies and copelius to start out. The interesting part of it is teddy will smell fear if I try to lure one of my own models out of melee with him.

 

Cheers! That actually does sound quite nasty

[rikowal]

I missed out on the last thread, and I am late on this one too.  I am the guy that E.T.A. was beating up on in the beginning of this thread, and I wanted to share my perspective.  Now mind you, I am a newer player (a little over a year and a half) so I please forgive me if I am saying anything that would be a "duhh" moment.  I have PTSD when it comes to Resurrectionists, as I have taken the most licks from them, but happy to report that I am in recovery!

 

I think Belles are annoying as hell, but the last game I played with E.T.A. showed me something that I have been lacking in my games.  I got so afraid of being lured that I have been hanging back and playing defensively, which in turn allows me to get lured on their terms (i.e. once I come out of hiding to advance toward scoring).  Rushing them down helped me much better, however, I learned you still need to be careful rushing them down.  I think it is part of that PTSD that I was referring to before.  I have been lured more times than one should be in one lifetime, along with Whispered from Beyond as well, but that is another therapy session for another time.

 

The Belles themselves are annoying, but its more of the combo meal that makes them good, IMO.  (luring into RN or gunline of Convict Gunslingers, or my favorite, the Hanged).

 

I know this post is lacking in substance, but figured I'd toss in the perspective of the victim.