Man Behind the Mask

Having returned to Guild, one of the first Masters I’ve gotten back onto the table has been the Governor’s Secretary, one Lucius Mattheson.

 

Lucius and I have history together. We won a tournament way back in July 2015, which remains the event I’ve had to work hardest at. The target numbers Lucius need to hit or caused his crew to need to hit were that bit too high to be reliable, and the consequences of failure were a Paralysed model because he uses Terrifying checks on his own crew to make them do things. He was also heavily restricted in what he could order around. Only Minions who weren’t Austringers. Nothing else. So getting that particular mess over the line was very hard work but still very rewarding.

It was an odd situation. Lucius’ backstory and fluff is brilliant, and in my opinion his story in Crossroads (M2E book 2) is the standout of any of the Master stories. His crew box looks lovely. His rules had some great ideas. But they just didn’t work properly, and we all really wanted to see a strong Lucius on the table. I know of a lot of new players who picked up his crew based on the imagery and aesthetics and ended up being bitterly disappointed.

Since then though, the January 2017 errata has happened. Lucius’ core mechanics were unchanged but the target numbers were changed, the models he could influence were changed and a very useful action became a 0.

The difference has been night and day. Dave Laing from 2 Guys 1 Paintpot up in Scotland (aka the Scottish Wizard) was the first person to pick up ‘new’ Lucius and he’s done really well with him. There was an utter schooling of my Ramos crew in there as well, and I remember saying afterwards “Lucius didn’t do anything that well before…” shortly before taking off the last of my models.

 

So I finished painting my Lucius model and have given him another go. Lots of test games and club games so far, culminating in using him on the top table at a 48-player event yesterday and winning handily.  

I’ve had a lot of tweets and messages asking for my thoughts on him, so here we go. Most of them are on crew selection – with support masters like Lucius, you want to make sure you’ve got the right models for them to support. Most of the battle with him is making sure you’ve got the tools to do the job on the table.

Anyway.

Panzer’s dos and do nots for new Lucius!

Painting by the incredibly talented Elinore, aka SybariteVI

 

Do… treat him like a new Master.

If you’ve ever played pre-errata Lucius, put all that out of your head and start afresh. The target numbers on his actions are different. Guild Intelligence, which essentially confers Don’t Mind Me on all friendly models within aura 6, is now a 0 action. He confers positive flips on more models. He can use his Commanding Presence ability on any type of model, not just minions. There is now way more depth on that card of his.

Don’t… get carried away with Mimics and Guardsmen.

Yes, it’s cool that he can bring in out of faction Mimics and Guardsmen, so Guild have Doppelgangers and Mr Graves whilst Neverborn can bring over Austringers. But they’re all quite fragile models. If you build a crew of them then you run the very severe risk of it all collapsing like the England cricket team’s batting order. And that’s a very bad thing.

Only bring over what you actually need.

 

Do… use the Scribe.

This little guy has gone from being a bit of a joke to arguably the best use for 2SS in the entire game. He’s a Minion. If he’s within aura 6 of Lucius he can take Interact actions. If Lucius is engaged then the Scribe can push him clear (and the action is called Do You Have an Appointment? How thematic is that!). And best of all, any of your models within aura 3 get +1 to their defence just for standing there.

 

Don’t… over-rely on Witchling Thralls.

Don’t get me wrong, these bruisers are fantastic models. 9 SS gets you 12 Wounds Impossible to Wound with a strike that does 3/4/6 and built in triggers to either force the enemy to discard or to heal the Thrall. And in a Lucius crew he can attack 5 times (his 2 AP, Lucius using both Commanding Presence and then Issue Order, and a scheme marker being dropped nearby triggering Prone to Frenzy) at positive flips (Lucius’ Elite Training aura).

BUT.

If they come under sustained attack then they will go down. Pandora tears them to pieces in a single activation. A big beatstick will rip chunks off. And so on. For that reason I would be very wary about taking 2 in the same crew. That would be 18SS of squishy before you’ve started adding in the support pieces.

Taking 1 Thrall allows you to add some beef in there. A Peacekeeper. The Judge. A Guardian. The Brutal Emissary. Basically something that can take the hits from the enemy and just grin, and ideally do some damage back.

 

Do… test your support Henchmen.

I firmly believe that much of the strength in the Guild is in the Henchmen. Just about all of them can throw out damage. But they also all have support abilities too, whether it’s as obvious as Francisco’s El Mayor ability or as discrete as Dr Grimwell’s Doctor’s Orders.

My two support favourites are Master Queeg and Allison Dade. Queeg is a model I’ve spoken about before, but to recap briefly his ability to carry Promises is a real bonus. He has a very good shooting attack with his pistol, a whip with built in triggers to push the targets around, and if he walks he can make friendly models take 0 actions. Hello, Guild Pathfinders summoning 2 Clockwork Traps per turn. Plus with the beautifully named Welcome to Hell and I am Your Devil, he can put an aura up that allows friendly models to take 1 Interact actions for a 0. Combine that with Guild Intelligence and a model can double-walk into the auras and place a scheme marker right next to an enemy model if you need to, or flip that troublesome Squatter’s Rights marker the enemy thought they had locked down.

Allison Dade was only released recently but I don’t know a Guild player who doesn’t own her. She’s that good. She’s normally Fast herself, and her passive auras can either heal friendly models that are attacking or damage enemy models that are attacking. With her attacks, she can hand out Slow and damage enemy models and do something else horrible to them like forcing them to discard scheme markers. I’m still getting to grips with her but there’s a lot of potential there!

 

Don’t… overdo the support models.

I know, I just said take some. Some is the key word there. Lucius has access to so many outstandingly good support models it is very possible to spend 50SS on nothing else. What you end up with is a crew that will only have 1 or 2 models that can actually threaten anybody. Lucius is a great support master who can make models take actions. His forte is taking one of his AP and turning it into 2 or 3 AP split across models. But you have to make sure he has multiple models in there that you want to take actions with!

The key to it is knowing what you want the crew to do and then taking the best enablers for that role. For example, Terracotta Warriors are great at swapping upgrades around and protecting a Minion or Enforcer model – if you’re starting with the right upgrades and your models don’t need his help, don’t take him. If you don’t have shooting Guardsmen and don’t want to summon Guild Guard, don’t take Dashel. If you’re running with minimal upgrades and mostly Minions without 0 actions, you won’t get value out of Master Queeg. And so on.

 

 

 

Anyway. I'm off to pretend to be hard at work at the day job. Hopefully this gives any potential Lucius players some food for thought. Whilst it's been written with Guild Lucius in mind, a lot of it does translate to Neverborn as well.