E-Mail In - Seamus Sucks...Or Does He?

Haven't had one of these for a while...

E-Mail In : 

GMort,

I know you've been doing a lot of stuff on Malifaux but it's all been hobby rather than tactics. I'm fairly new to Malifaux but have done alright with the Resurrectionist faction with everybody but Seamus. I know he's meant to be the 'bad guy' of Malifaux city but I'm yet to come close to winning a game when using the useless bastard. I know you said that your not playing Malifaux competitively but judging by how you were with 40K you must have learnt some dirty tricks you can share. Even if you don't do a tactica I'll settle for a few do's and don'ts...I have the starter boxes for McMourning, Nicodem, Molly and Seamus.

Name withheld by request.

Reply :

I'll give you some advice on basic stuff to remember that may (or may not) help. Lets not call it a Tactica though...I'm not really good enough at Malifaux to start writing 'How to win like a bastard' articles yet ;-)

Lets start at the beginning.
Firstly let's get some 'stating the obvious' out of the way just in case it's not as obvious as I thought.

1) The two soulstone cache that Seamus starts with isn't anywhere near enough. His average Cb of 5 with his gun means that if you want to guarantee a kill with it your going to need to use a soulstone to add a card to the total. I like to have at least five.
2) Despite having 'Hard to Wound 2', Hard to Kill' and 12 wounds his low defence makes hitting him easy which by default makes him a lot easier to kill than you'd like. For this reason Seamus's best defence is having a Rotten Belle (or 3) between him and any threat.
3) The ideal position for Seamus is just out of danger behind a wall of zombie hookers Rotten Belles. You want him within 8" of the Belles so they gain the benefit of his 'Belles of the Ball' rule or 6" if you want to use his 'Womaniser' rule on one of them. Once some of his crew are engaged in combat you might want to be closer still as he gains a control card and regains 2 wounds should a living or undead model be killed* within 6" of him because of his 'Necrotic Ministrations' rule.
4) Rotten Belles and Dead Doxies have the 'Shambling' rule so they ignore severe terrain movement penalties this means they can be positioned to gain the benefit of cover without effecting their mobility. Not a major advantage but you have to take what you can get when using a Seamus crew.
5) Remember that Seamus and Sybelle are both Terrifying>12 which is useful vs many enemy models. At the very least this can strip control cards from your opponents hand in order to make 'Slit Jugular' more likely to result in a kill. Seamus also has a spell to up that Terrifying to >14 which also adds an area of effect to the ability which is yet another reason for Seamus's 'just behind the action' policy on positioning ;-)

* This rule quite specifically says killed so sacrificed models or models removed by other means don't give you anything.

Control Hand.
Seamus's casting value comes with a 'Crow' built in so with most of his spells you just need to reach the CC...However...

6) If you have a 'Crow' card of 10 value or higher keep it for the purposes of using 'Arise my Sweet' to raise new hookers Belles because you'll be using Rotten Belles as shields, they'll be dying and will need replacing.

The job interview didn't go quite as she planed...

7) Low 'Crow' cards are also useful as your 'Slit Jugular' trigger does no damage so it doesn't really matter what value card you use for it...just the suit of that card.
8) If your using Madame Sybelle then you'll also probably want to keep a 9 or higher of masks for the purposes of using her 'Call Belle' ability.

Basic Tactics.
Here are a few things worth remembering.

9) Seamus effectively has 3 AP rather than 2 as 'Fast +1' gives him an extra action that he can use for any purpose. This means that you can move into position, shoot his gun and then retreat back to safety if necessary. His gun can only be fired once per turn so if you really want the target dead you'll most likely want to use a soulstone to make sure that you hit. Should you need those actions for another purpose then you can always lure your target in closer...
10) Rotten Belles have a relatively poor Ca of 4 (with a Crow built in) but fortunately their 'Seductive' ability adds +4 Ca when they cast 'Lure' and this ability also adds a Mask to the total so your suit requirements are automatically met (Madame Sybelle has the 'Lure' spell but not the 'Seductive' ability so it's more difficult for her to pull this one off**). With a casting value of 12 this becomes an easy spell to cast and has a good range of 18". It's entirely possible to use multiple uses of this spell to drag enemy models towards you for a number of purposes...
a) It gets you a free melee attack if you manage to drag your victim into the casting models melee range.
b) Dragging models into the range of Seamus's gun, or other of the crews short range abilities.
c) Many crews rely on a particular model to 'Buff' their comrades or otherwise enhance them or synergise with other models. If you can drag such a model out of the effective range of these abilities then it makes killing the rest all the easier.
d) Madame Sybelle has the 'Flurry' ability so it's nice if she doesn't have to waste an AP to move into melee range and can instead just use 'Flurry' to get 3 attacks.
e) Seamus's 'No Escape' ability allows him to charge a model within 6" that's been moved during a movement effect. Obviously given Seamus's need to be positioned correctly you'll need to seriously consider whether you want him to be charging that particular model.....
11) In scenarios that require you to reach an area, token, marker or similar relatively quickly then you can use 'Belle of the Ball' to gain +2 Walk to Madame Sybelle which effectively gives her a range of 12". She can then use 'Call Belle' to summon a Belle within 14" to within 3" of her. As you declare Companion at the beginning of a turn you can 'Companion' a Belle before Sybelle moves.
The upshot of this is that you can 'Companion' a Belle (or Belles if you wish), move Sybelle 12", Summon that Belle to within 3" of her and then use the Belle to move to interact with it in whatever manner is appropriate. It's entirely possible to destroy a piece of evidence, or grab some treasure and start walking back with it on turn one...if you do things in the correct order. The downside to this is that it can leave those models somewhat vulnerable if your opponent is quick as well or has decent ranged attacks.

** Feel free to include your own 'pulling one off' joke at this point if you wish.

Crew.
The Starter Set for Seamus gives you all the basics you need and they work remarkably well together.

12) Sybelle and 3 Rotten Belles comes to 18 Soulstones. If you add two to your cache then your core 20 soulstone crew effectively becomes Seamus with a cache of four, Sybelle and a nice zombie shield of three Belles.
13) What the basic crew is lacking is something that can act as a beatstick as Sybelle isn't particularly good when compared to other 'kick-ass' units though she can handle herself against more middle of the road threats quite adequately. If you wish to stay in theme then you can use a Rogue Necromancy for this purpose...if you don't care about theme then 'Izamu the Armor' is an excellent choice and is tremendous value even at his 10 soulstones cost.
14) I personally use 'The Copycat Killer' as a Totem because I like having a 2nd .50 Flintlock but to be fair 'The Grave Spirit' is probably more use purely for it's ability to add armour to an undead model. Attached to Sybelle it ups her survivability rather nicely.
15) Some extra firepower would be nice as a Seamus crew doesn't have a lot of long range (by Malifaux standards) attacks. For this purpose I use a Convict Gunslinger.
16) Dead Doxies are 'Belles' so all the things that help Rotten Belles help them too. I rarely start with Dead Doxies but I always have a couple to hand to summon from Corpse Counters later on.
17) Molly is a 'Belle' and is jokingly referred to locally as a 9 soulstone tax on themed Seamus crews...however in missions that require speed of movement she can be useful...it can be argued (rather successfully) though that this same effect can be achieved by spending those 9 soulstones on something that's actually fast in it's own right like Night Terrors which are damn quick and only cost 3 soulstones a piece.
18) Seamus's Avatar is quite a powerhouse but loses the ability to Summon Belles. Whether this matters to you is the only real reason not to spend the two soulstones to take the Avatar...the other reason is not having the model ;-)

Synergy.
19) A Seamus crew relies on the models supporting one another and a big part of that is activation order and using abilities in the correct sequence. Listing all the possible options would take a lot of time but two examples are,
a) If you need to gang up on something then Seamus uses 'Womaniser' to activate Madame Sybelle and Sybelle then Companions all the Belles which then all get to activate after their Madame. Just because you can do this doesn't mean you have to by the way. Also Seamus's 'Slit Jugular' Trigger works better if your opponent is running low on cards and/or stones so you might want to activate him last in which case just jump straight to the Madame Sybelle part of the sequence.
b) Use 'Lure' to drag enemies towards you, then kill them while they're unsupported. If appropriate to your method of killing then you may wish to use the Belles 'Undress' spell to lower their defence or 'Distract' spell to slow them down first. Seamus's Trail of fear (0) action can also lower Wp by 2 within 12" but unfortunately this ability has to compete with 'Womaniser' and 'Arise my Sweet' which are also (0) Actions.

A List.
20) For your general edification, the following is the crew I'll be using once I've properly based my Izamu the Armor'. It's not optimised but it does work well once you've got the hang of doing stuff in the correct order.


Ressurectionists Crew - 35 - Scrap

Seamus, The Mad-Hatter -- 6 Pool
+ Seamus, Avatar of Dread [2ss]
Grave Spirit [1ss]

Izamu, the Armor [10ss]
Madame Sybelle [6ss]
Rotten Belles [4ss]
Rotten Belles [4ss]
Rotten Belles [4ss]

At 40 soulstones I'll add a Convict Gunslinger and just have a cache/pool of 5 stones rather than 6.

In Conclusion.
Well I hope some of those ramblings are helpful.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.