hellrai3er wrote:Am also hoping for some tactical help if anyone has any, obviously using m2e rules and the confirmed wave 2 stat/upgrade cards. What would the Dakka community take upgrade wise, are there any must have models I'm missing etc?
I've played a few times with Collodi and quite enjoyed him. Of his upgrades, you pretty much always want to take either
Bag of Props or
Fated. Those are his two limited upgrades (so you can only take one of them), and they really define how his crew works.
The Puppet Brigade
Fated is all about using Collodi to help enhance the rest of your crew, and then wiping the opponent out with an onslaught of many, many attacks. You generally want to keep Collodi in the midst of a 6" 'bubble' of his friends, so that they can get all of the benefits from being near him. With
Fated, each round you can share one Effigy buff and 1 personal buff with all of his friends.
Of the Effigy buffs, the ones I personally like the most are the Brutal Effigy and the Arcane Effigy. The Arcane Effigy lets all of their attacks now inflict Burning unless the opponent discards cards. So either you do more damage or you deplete the opponent's hand - both are great outcomes. The Brutal Effigy lets you heal when you hit an enemy. This pairs well with the
Strum the Threads upgrade, which lets Puppets take damage to gain fast. So you take 2 damage, then attack three times, and hopefully heal back up.
Meanwhile, Collodi can share one buff that he gives to himself via an Action. This usually means either Focus or Defensive, depending on whether you want to help your dolls with offense or survival. I tend to favor defense on turn 1 while I approach the enemy, and then offense once we are getting into the thick of things. When a 3
SS model can unload three attack in one round, and each of those attacks can inflict Burning (from Arcane Effigy), and Poison (from Wicked Dolls) and at least one attack is Focused... that damage can add up very quickly.
The main weakness of this approach is that the enemy can just try and stay away from your Puppet Bubble of Death. Still, that isn't always easy to do, especially if Collodi can land some command effects on them and force enemies to approach. This style works best with the Turf War strategy, and can also be quite good with Squatter's Rights. It is a bit more problematic with Reconnoiter (which wants you to spread out). Reckoning is risky - you have a lot of minions so your opponent can wrack up kills easily. On the other hand, if you focus on taking protective measures (healing and Defensive Stance), Marrionettes can be awfully hard to finish off. Your Wicked Dolls are the easier targets, so they are where you need to be more cautious.
The Puppet Master
If
Fated is all about Collodi buffing his horde of puppets, his other upgrade,
Bag of Props, is all about them buffing
him. It lets him swipe Focus and Defensive from his buddies. Given that he already comes with a very accurate attack and a bunch of tricks to help him stay alive, he suddenly becomes very, very scary when he has constant access to those buffs. Not to mention any number of Effigy buffs you want to pile on to him.
Now, his primary attack has very reliable damage, but it isn't very high damage. What it does have a great deal of is
control. He can inflict Slow on his targets (which gives them -1
AP), and he can also give them a condition where he controls the first action they take on their turn.
Note that most models only have 2
AP. If they are at -1
AP, and you control their first action... you basically have taken away their entire turn! Even on elite models, you can shut them down pretty thoroughly, especially if you make them spend their first action walking somewhere way out of position.
This is also exagerrated by the fact that, with so many small minions around, Collodi's crew has a lot of
AP of their own. So even if your minion's attacks don't do much, you are in a good position to out-activate your opponent - not to mention spend a lot of time moving around, working on Schemes, tying up models you don't want to deal with, etc.
This style can be very strong with Reconnoiter and Squatter's Rights, since Collodi can keep a few of his friends nearby for buffs while sending others out to control the board.
The Rest of the Doll Show
You've got a pretty good starter crew from the looks of it. If you are looking for other models that work well with Collodi, here are my recommendations:
Effigies: All the Effigies are great for him. With
Bag of Props, he can even summon new ones. The Brutal Effigy and Arcane Effigy are my personal favorites, but all of them have their benefits.
Mannequins: Despite being Arcanist models, Mannequins are Puppets, so Collodi can hire them freely. They bring several big benefits to his crew. They can inflict Slow quite easily, and also have a chance to inflict another debuff that gives models penalties while attacking, which is a good way to shut down the enemy Master or other elite targets. Additionally, even though they are Insignificant themselves and can't drop Scheme Markers, they can give the rest of your crew the ability to place Scheme Markers at a distance, which can be very strong with many Schemes. They only have 3
Wds, but have Armor 3, so some enemy crews will have a lot of problems hurting them - especially if you have
Fated and are sharing one of the Effigy healing buffs with them.
Coryphee: I haven't used these myself, but the Coryphee - another Arcanist model - is probably the biggest Puppet that Collodi can bring out to play. The Coryphee doesn't have a ton of wounds, but is otherwise quite exceptional in terms of offense, defense and mobility. So if Collodi's buffs can make a Marionette a capable fighter, it can make a Coryphee the scariest thing on the board. You can't turn a pair of Coryphee into the super-awesome duet, unfortunately, but they are still quite dangerous in their own right.
Lazarus: Not a puppet or a minion, the Outcast Lazarus doesn't benefit much from being around Collodi. Collodi, however, can benefit from being around him! Lazarus has the ability to, as a (0), copy an action belonging to another Construct. This includes copying Collodi's ability to command Puppets to take an action with extra bonuses. Collodi, notably, is himself a Puppet - so having Lazarus around can translate into a bonus
AP for Collodi each round. That's quite good. Lazarus also happens to be one of the toughest tanks in the game, so having him along with Collodi's crew of smaller, more fragile models, can make for a good complement to the crew.
Tacticool always trumps tactics
