THAT’S IT!
RESSERS SUCK AND I’M QUITTING THE FACTION!
…Okay, maybe
it’s not that dramatic, but the point stands. After about 5 months of playing
Resurrectionists, I’ve decided it’s time to hang up the… corpse bag(?), and
move on to another faction. So why am I giving up on them? Well that’s a very
good question. But before I answer that I thought I’d at least do a rundown of
my thoughts on the Masters themselves;
Not a good end for Seamus...
Seamus
I had one game with Seamus this
year, in which he died in short order to a McMourning to the face (note to self
– don’t leave your Master next to three undead models when McMourning is nearby
to spam Rancid Transplant and Expunge!). So I suppose my overall impression of
Seamus is mostly based on one game turn with him this year, a game with him last
year and, of course, the odd game I’ve played against him.
On the
whole, I like the fact that his playstyle seems to vary between either stalking
the shadows to pick off victims with his Hand Cannon, and just getting stuck in
and taking advantage of his Bag of Tools and Terrifying to either kill or
neutralise everyone in range. Of the Masters here, Seamus is one of the Masters
I wouldn’t object to playing again – he’s not reliant on summoning, and his mix
of mobility and disruption certainly appeals.
Molly
Molly, was
my first attempt at using a Master who actually summons models as a significant
part of her playstyle. My only other game with Molly, from last year, was a three-way between Collodi and
Ramos. So while I got a basic handle on how she works, it was hardly
much of a test on how her crew performs in your average game against your
average crew.
Anyway, this
time around I managed three games with Molly, two with her Forgotten Life (Horrors) upgrade and one with Forgotten Path (Spirits). To save on space/time I’m not going to go
into detail on the games (sorry battle report lovers!). But basically, my games
were against Tara, Kaeris and Tara again and they all ended heavily in favour
of Molly. I found that she offered a great mix of summoning, mobility and support
to her crew. Whispered Secret allowed her to neutralise a problematic model
each turn, Ones Left Behind gave her
both summoning and crowd control and between her and the Necrotic Machine, she
was able to move both herself and her crew around pretty well. Pairing her with
a big Horror (or Spirit) like the Valedictorian was especially nasty, since she
effectively gave them an extra AP each turn with the (0) Whispers… action on her limited upgrade.
On one hand,
Molly seemed to offer alot of the things I like in Malifaux – crew support,
debuffing in favour of outright killing and a degree of mobility. By all rights
she should be a Master I’d enjoy. But in spite of all that, I still couldn’t
get excited about her.
Yan Lo
I decided to
bring out Yan Lo after seeing people rate him so low in threads on the forum (specifically
this one). At this
point I’d lost interest in Molly so it seemed a good time to see if the
concerns people were expressing had merit. The game I played was Turf war vs
John Metzakis, who was giving Ironsides a try for the first time (which was
also pretty interesting it itself!). Being only my second game with the old man
I made my share of mistakes, but I did get a better feel for how he works.
The approach
I took with Yan was to concentrate on his supportive side (Transcendence and
Healing) as well as generating Seishin with Datsue Ba and Izamu's Spirit upgrade
to get in the way and help generate Chi for Yan. In reality the Seishin weren't
that great. They're not worth my opponent killing and in reality they just
sacrificed themselves for a heal at the first opportunity.
I just didn't know what to do with Yan Lo this game. :(
As for Yan
Lo himself, he did alright when I focused on support with him. Reliquary was
awesome of course and between that, the Armour buff and his Heal, he was able
to keep Izamu up and fighting throughout the game. Lightning Dance was good for
sucking in an unsuspecting Essence of Power, but it required 2AP and at least
one high card (because you don't want to fail that second cast and leave him
stuck next to the opposing crew). Basically, a Rotten Belle would have been far
more effective and less risky for pulling in models. So I think Lightning Dance
has more potential if you're using Yan offensively, where you actually want to
leave him closer to some other models where Terracotta Curse or Humpo Assault
can really mess things up.
In any case,
I can definitely see where people are coming from when they say he's just not
as great as other Masters you could be taking. In fact, I kind of feel like I
could just replace him entirely with a Nurse, Chiaki and a Rotten Belle and
call it a day. Reliquary is pretty cool of course but again - if Yan Lo was
more of a threat I wouldn't need to resummon his Ancestors.
It's a good thing the game ended here - Ironsides had like eleventy billion Adrenalin to spend. :P
So it then
begs the question; if a bunch of minions can pretty much replace what Yan Lo
does, why bother taking him? Maybe you really need to use his offensive
abilities to get enough value out of him? It feels risky to throw him in with
Lightning Dance and mix it up in melee, but I guess the positive is that he's
not so essential to the crew that losing him would be any great loss.
I guess what
all this boils down to is that Yan Lo is a puzzle I’ve still yet to solve. Sure,
maybe he’s crap – the Marcus from Malifaux v1.5 if you will. I think with more
time I’d be able to crack him, and at least make him feel like he’s worthy of
his “Master” title. Part of me would love to dive into him and prove the nay-sayers
wrong. But I’m just not feeling motivated enough to do it. Certainly not as a
Resser Master.
McMourning
As the focus
of my Tale of Malifaux Bloggers challenge, I managed to get more games in with
McMourning than any other Master this year. As a result I feel like I got a
pretty decent handle on the intricacies of how he and his crew plays. And on
the whole, I really enjoyed my games with him! He was fast and dangerous, but
still a glass cannon that you had to use carefully. While Poison plays a very
major part in how he works, there’s enough depth to him and his crew to keep
him entertaining. In fact in my initial games didn’t even use the Moonlighting
upgrade. So while summoning flesh constructs everywhere is undoubtably good, it’s
not actually a necessary part of McMourning’s playstyle.
But possibly
my favourite part about him was the crew I built for him - Bayou McMourning. It was a labour of love
and I’m really, really pleased with the result!
Tara
I must
admit, I was pretty apprehensive about pulling Tara out again after my last game with her.
Fortunately, I learned from my mistakes and had two much better games with her
this time around. My first game was 50SS vs the Viks, and saw me take a crew in
which I basically spent the game Luring in my opponents models with a pair of Rotten
Belles, then Unburying a Fast Killjoy with Decaying Aura (previously Buried
with Pull the Void) on top of the
target to wipe them out. It worked like a charm. I spent the first two turns
taking his crew apart piecemeal (as well as giving my own crew Fast with Temporal Shift) while delaying the Viks
with my Drowned and Crooked Man. Then when my opponent finally retaliated with
the Viks, they were unable make enough of a dent into my crew to prevent
Killjoy finishing them off, one by one.
My second
game was a much smaller match – 35SS Squatters Rights against Perdita (with
Fransisco, Pistolero, Santiago, Nino and Enslaved Nephilim). With so few points
I decided to drop the Rotten Belles and see if the crew could work without relying
on the old “Lure & Kill” combo. I also dropped Karina but Killjoy remained.
In this game my opponents Perdita crew was just small enough to outactivate me,
forcing me to drop Killjoy on Fransisco (who died!) before Perdita activated
(who promptly slaughtered Killjoy in return). With the main beat stick and arguably
the lynchpin of my crew gone I didn’t have high hopes for the rest of the game.
However the rest of my crew were no slouches. The Crooked Man’s resilience to
melee helped him take down Nino and Tara’s proved that her sword wasn’t just
for looks, and she took down both Santiago and Perdita over the course of the
game. Of course Tara’s near immunity to shooting helped a little! ;)
Tara and Perdita eye each other off across the board...
So at this
point, I must admit I’m pretty satisfied with how Tara plays. Her ability to pull
key friendly models in an out of play with her is great, but she’s got more depth
to her playstyle thanks to Temporal Shift
to easily boost her crew and a pile of AP from being able to Reactivate. Her weakness seems to be
that her unbury tricks are less effective if your opponent can outactivate you,
and especially if they can steal the initiative from you with models like the
Doppelganger or a Seize the Day upgrade. I used to think that Rotten Belles
were an auto-include for her. There’s no doubt they’re useful, but I’m not
convinced they’re quite as necessary anymore. So if I play Tara again, I think I'll try her as an Outcast. If you can get over not using Rotten Belles,
I think the Outcasts offer a lot more to her crew. Not just in activation
control (Wretch plus Rats ;) ), but also in the array of solid, hard hitting
choices for her to support.
Before you ask, no, Izamu didn't last long against Lady Justice at all!
Kirai
I’ve said
before that I never liked Kirai’s background. The whole “my life sucks because
my boyfiend was murdered” vibe is just really unappealing to me. Despite these
reservations my game with her last last year gave me some
hope; the nastiness of Ikiryo and the ability to just drop piles of summons
(including cheap, expendable Seishin) was kind of neat to see.
Unfortunately my
recent game with her dashed those hopes. It’s not that she was bad, quite the
opposite in fact. The game was against Lady Justice and even with all her
killing power I was still able to summon like a mofo and take both her and her
crew down through sheer attrition. The moment when I summoned two Hanged and a
Shikome was great, but that was effectively all she did – summon, with a bit of
healing on the side thanks to her Swirling
Aether upgrade and the odd Seishin that popped out.
Looking over
her card again, the potential was certainly there for some spirit swapping and
other mobility tricks, but none of it was necessary in this game – she was basically
there to spew out spirits and keep them alive. So sure, I won the game. But
with Kirai’s playstyle it felt a bit hollow for me.
Nicodem
As of
writing this I haven’t yet played a game with Nicodem. But as a model who seems
to concentrate mostly on summoning, he really doesn’t excite me. I’m currently
painting him up and will at least give him a try within the next week or two,
but I don’t have high hopes for him in terms of interest level.
The Problem
with Ressers...
Okay, so onto
the meat and potatoes; why am I quitting Ressers? Well for me it comes down to
three main issues;
Aesthetics
Yeah, it
took me a while to accept this, but I just don’t like the models as much as the
other factions. That’s not to say that the models aren’t nice, but they just
don’t excite me as much as those models from other factions. A part of this
also comes from my inability to find a good theme for most of my Resser crews
(with one exception…). I love theming my crews in various wacky ways, so with
most of my Ressers more or less being the stock standard, unmodified sculpts, I
guess it’s not surprising that the crews didn’t interest me. Probably the most
telling example of this was that my favourite Master from this Faction was
McMourning… who’s crew had been converted almost entirely out of models from
another Faction!
Trading killing power for attrition
Resser
models tend to be pretty tough, but that toughness usually comes a relative
lack of damage output. There are the odd exception, but there’s not a lot so
when it came to, say, picking a beatstick for Tara to unbury there wasn’t a lot
of options. I guess what this all means is that I prefer my models to be cheap,
fast and/or damaging. Resiliance is nice, but it’s pretty low on my priority
list and unfortunately that’s one of the defining features of the
Resurrectionist Faction.
Summoning
While part
of this plays into the attrition aspect of the Ressers, the summoning playstyle
has never been something I’ve enjoyed. Basically at the start of your turn you
look at your hand, and earmark cards you’d want to use for summoning (usually
the 11-13’s). For most of the turn you’ll then play with the rest of your hand
and then when your Master activates, dump those high cards into summoning the
models you wanted. Given those high cards could be otherwise used to attack/defend
against your opponents models it’s a high cost (or at least it is if your
opponent plays aggressively enough). In other words the whole summoning process
feels a little like handicapping your crew for the turn, then playing Solitare
when your Master activates.
Is it
strong? Absolutely. In one game I managed to summon 3 Drowned and a Hanged with
Molly. That was in one turn (Tara made her fast)! And then in my game with
Kirai I summoned two hanged and a Shikome, again in one turn. When it happens
it’s brutal, but it still felt somewhat hollow. Basically, I’d rather spend
all those cards and AP actively engaging with my opponent, not putting out more
models for him/her to knock over.
I have an ass-load of crews. :(
For my next
trick…
So what’s
next? Well for one I won't say I’ll never play Resurrectionists again. If
nothing else I did find two Resser Masters I quite enjoy – Tara and McMourning.
I’ve also never won a tournament with the Resser Faction (just them and
Outcasts to tick off), so I still might pull them out for an event some day.
But as I said
at the start of this piece, it’s time I switched to a new Faction.
Unfortunately, I’ve no idea which one. Right now I’m swaying between Outcasts,
Gremlins and Ten Thunders. I’ve been trying to settle on one for days now, but
without success. Chances are I’ll stick up a thread on the forums about it, so
stay tuned, I suppose!
Later,
Adrian
