Thread: Roll Call - if you play, or are thinking about it, please reply

Originally Posted by morella888

If she follows the trend with the trickier masters in the transition to M2E, I imagine she will maintain the basic flavor of her first version, which was largely centered on movement shenanigans, with some upgrades for buffing/debuffing, etc. The main thing with a Collette crew, and Gwen played her so could provide better insight maybe, was that she relied heavily on her crew to do the work while she distracted the enemy. So I imagine her basic playstyle won't change in that regard. That and she had Coryphee, which had the triple threat of being fast, killy, and resilient.

Basically, with a lot of the M2E masters, they simply lost some abilities or actions that were situational and not often used, but kept thier signature spells or playstyles (Raspy still ice bombs stuff, Sonnia still firebombs and attacks CA, Lady J is still a beast with her sword (don't let her get charged first), Perdita shoots things, Nicodem is supposedly the summoner he was akwasy meant to be) and in some cases brought them in line with what the designers had intended them to be.

Don't let Lady J get charged first? I'm sensing some residual grump from last night. Viks for life :P

Colette's crew focusing on three main styles: movement, soulstones, and being squishy as hell but pretending that they're not.

Movement. Most of the crew has average or below average walk scores. THIS DOES NOT MATTER. They all have some way to send them zipping across the table: extra walk actions, the ability to bury an ally and unbury them at end of turn right next to you after you've flitted across the table, the ability to switch places with a showgirl almost half a bloody table away...The coryphee (and their evolved form, the coryphee duet) instead have a ridiculous walk score (if I remember correctly, single is 7, duet is 8...), the duet is fast (both +1 action fast and actually speedy fast...) and they have a couple of triggers to move them an extra 3 or 4 inches when attacking...which they can do as part of a move action. Expect a lot of the abilities to still be there in some form or another in 2.0, but toned way down. It was not uncommon to move half your army from one side of the table to the other in a single turn, and the scheme to take a (1) interact action in each table corner? I've done it very early in turn 3 while still completely avoiding the opponent several times...

Soulstone use. The crew loves their soulstones. Several of Colette's abilities both require soulstones and create more of them. She gets a free soulstone a turn, can spend one to gain reactivate, can discard cards to make a soulstone, can summon her totem which any friendly on the table can burn to use like one, gets an extra + flip whenever she uses one and more. In addition, Cassandra got use soulstone when partnered with Colette (less impressive now as she'll probably be a henchman and get it anyway). The Coryphee again be pure awesome as an enforcer style minion who could gain use soulstone as one of their (2/3) 0 actions a turn.

SaHbPTN. Everyone in the crew has very low hit points, and except for the mannequin (who has high armor and high object, reducing most hits to 1 damage) no damage reduction style abilities. However, they have good to ridiculous defense scores, most of your key pieces will have use soulstone (one of the only real ways to kill the Coryphee duet is to win initiative and focus a chain of fire on it before it can gain use soulstone for the turn. That, and get lucky), there are some NASTY defense triggers (Colette can swap places with another showgirl in addition to paralyzing the attacker and has a slow to die action which kills a showgirl in her place), and the general defensive tech of running the hell away. The Duet is AMAZING again (Seriously. It's a 14 point model in a version where 35 point games were the norm) with an above average defense, some good triggers and + flips on every defense flip.

The cost for all this is they don't hit very hard, at all. Expect most of their damage tracks to be 2/3/4, which means to take down a master or tanky style minion (which now go up to 14 hit points in the case of stuff like Lady J and Nicodem) you're going to need to focus a lot of fire, get a little lucky, and do a lot of hit and run. However, in 1.5 they were nearly unparalleled in their ability to get movement based schemes done. It's really a shame they're so tricky combo based and hard to completely wrap your head around, because they make a cheap intro to the game: it's a very insular group, you want to max out your showgirls and have almost nothing else. Colette's box, Angelica, 1/2 blisters of Coryphee (depending on if you want to do some magnetizing shenanigans to make the duet) and a blister of mechanical doves is pretty much the whole crew. To be extra fancy, I've run her with Kaeris a bit (to bury a model with Colette, and then toss them into Kaeris' fire pillar at end of turn), but it's entirely unnecessary.

Ahem. Got a little distracted there. If there's interest, I'll see about bodging together a slow grow league (I love love love me some some grow leagues) leading up to the tournament I've got planned for in a couple of months. Just, I won't be there next week, as I'm taking the week off from gaming.

Expect Colette's soulstone for reactivate to be removed or toned down in 2.0. It was her cute little version of having a +1 ap ability (in this case +2 ap that cost a stone and were split over 2 activations), but with all masters being base 3 ap now, I can't see them letting her take 6 actions a turn. Maybe spend a stone for +1 ap?

Originally Posted by luckyjoemc

So all of my M2E stuff finally comes in tomorrow ( Yay for Tara and bury shenanigans ) Has anyone made any decisions about a Slow Grow league or maybe just a set night for play?

I'm always there Wednesdays, and it's sounding like that's the only day Morella can do easily. The one problem with that day is it's also Warmachine night, so it'll be harder to seduce those players into our game if they have to give up warjackin'. But if people want an official night named, Wednesday sounds like it.

Slow grow, I'm still trying to muddle through a few ideas for it. Maybe start low points led by a henchman and a set crew. Then every other week, add a X points worth of models to your "pool" of available stuff to pick during set up, and the other weeks up the points. So, something like:

Week #, Game points size, points worth of options to pick from*, options to lead your crew
Week 1 15 Points, 15 points of models, Henchman
Week 2 15 Points, 30 points of models, Henchman
Week 3, 25 points, 30 points of models, Henchman
Week 4, 25 points, 45 points of models, Henchman/Master
Week 5, 35 points, 45 points of models, Henchman/Master
Week 6, 35 points, 60 points of models, Henchman/Master
Week 7, 50 points, 75 points of models, Henchman/Master/Second Master
Week 8, 50 Points, Unlimited options, Henchman/Master/Second Master
Week 9 (Weekend?) End of League Tournament, depending on participation

*Maximum number of points to pick from. Not a requirement, you can get by with just the game size #. Also includes upgrade cards.

Each week, score two different sets of points. 1 competitive (did you win your game that week, vps earned in game) and 1 achievements (did you pull off certain non scheme/strategy related goals, painting scores, bribe the henchwoman, etc). End of league a winner based on competition and one based on total overall score.

I'd say the game lends itself to achievements to score extra points during the league, and the local group lends itself to "soft scores" as well (painting, modeling, etc. Morella, Warpaint and I are all big painters/fluff bunnies and more on the fun side of fun versus competitive. Even if I do turn into a "powergaming min/maxing edge of rules running take no mercy jerky cheatyface" sometimes. :P ) so I could set up some of those into it as well. Just points for painting always feel entirely subjective to me.

And yes...there will be Spanikopita tonight.

Originally Posted by Salubrious_vampire

Just points for painting always feel entirely subjective to me.

And that tends to encourage me to buy way too many models ...

I convinced Gwen to run a demo for me this evening at DL, thereby unwittingly foiling some insidious "plan." And also, incidentally, finagling some pastries. I picked up Marcus and friends to play until the rules are available for the other stuff I've got, so hopefully that'll work.