Wave 5: Ashwood Coffin and Perditas upgrades

So Wave 5 is finally out! The Upgrade packs sold out the first day. In this post I will sum up the second Lady Justice  upgrade as well as Perdita`s upgrades. I will continue with the rest of Guild Wave 5 this week.

Lets start with:

Ashwood Coffin

What the card does:

• Gives a (1) Ashwood Coffin that is basically a non-master Ca7 Pinebox
• Gives a (1) Punishment  that allows you to damage buried models.
• Costs 2 Soulstone and is Limited

What it allows to do in game:

Lets analyze Ashwood Coffin.

Pros: Allows burying (with a high chance of not getting out) a non-leader enemy. Its an option to play around Frame for Murder as well as getting rid of double threats in the perfect situation (kill one and bury another). It can also be funny just to block 1 Sandeep summon (preferably Banasuva or the + gamin). It also reduced AP cost of getting rid of Hard to Kill models (as you will need a minimum of 2 hits)

Cons: With Swordfighter Lady Justice has such hitting power that sometimes its pretty easy to kill something instead of risking the Coffin and dying (which puts you at a big disadvantage).

Now lets move to Punishment

Pros: It synergizes with Death Marshal`s Pinebox, the Emissary and model with Glimpse the Void (Recruiters and Aionus). The damage track is solid but worse than the sword. It also shuts down Malifaux Raptors and Killjoy/Tara Bomb strategies.

Cons: In most games it won`t see play that often. Death Marshals and Emissary aren`t really top competitive picks (although I think a lot of Guild players undervalue a Death Marshal). Glimpse the Void on Recruiters blocks the built in Crit Strike and Aionus is pretty expensive. But your opponent picks KJ it will probably autowin you the game. "But hey, you can attack something buried with the Coffin itself" you say. I doubt I`d use it on a model buried by myself unless I`m about to die and have no other targets.

Summary:

So the main issue with the upgrade is that it is Limited which makes you choose between this one, Badge of Office and Vendetta. Now before Swordfighter came out, I found Vendetta to be shit but now with all the + from the new (0) it actually becomes viable (and even more with Jury nearby to get some Onslaught attacks) so you have to make a choice and I found Justice with Badge of Office a real pain to take down. On the other hand if you bury the main damage threat it suddenly becomes pretty easy to avoid damage.

Verdict: 
7/10

Fastest Draw in Malifaux

What the card does:

• Gives a +2 initiative bonus. If you lose initiative, you can draw a card.
• Costs 1 Soulstone

What it allows to do in game:

Pros: This upgrade is pretty straightforward. The initiative bonus is nice and you get something when you lose initiative. It works really well as a lot of Perdita models have Companion so that Initiative in some turns can be crucial

Cons: All I see is that it takes up an upgrade slot and a SS. There are no real drawbacks except you might want to lose initiative sometimes to get a card and end up winning it but that`s just me being super picky :D

Summary:

Its a pretty simple upgrade. Its bonuses are good enough to make it almost an autoinclude.

Verdict: 
9/10 (Why doesn`t it give reckless?!)



Shooting Cans

What the card does:

• Gives a (1) Shooting Cans that lets you discard Scheme Markers. Its a Sh7 Action and the TN is 5+ distance to the scheme marker rounded up. It has a trigger on tomes to do it again (but the second scheme marker must be further than the original one) that can be declared once per turn
• Costs 1 Soulstone

What it allows to do in game:

Pros: Shooting a scheme marker 10" away requires an 8. Thats big. Most of the time enemies will have to have 1-2 extra markers at least to score VP. The action doesn`t have the projectile icon so you can even do it while engaged which is also huge as your damage output is far greater in melee due to the extra ram. Whats important is the action doesn`t specify "enemy" so when someones moves your marker and makes you drop one that will block you from scoring you can remove it (as you normally can`t remove friendly scheme markers)

Cons: Its pretty dependent on the scheme pool and what schemes your opponent picks but since in GG17 more schemes require markers, you`ll get to use it pretty often. With Fastest Draw and Trick Shooting being pretty obvious choices with no drawbacks you will have to decide if you want this, Aura Ancestral, Badge or Vengence Bullet.

Summary:

I think Wyrd is hinting they`d like Perdita to be less of a push-push-shoot-shoot-shoot Master and they start upgrading her with non-damage stuff. First the Emissary gave her the masks for Obey. Now she gets a scheme marker denying action (and it looks like Jury also can give the mask for the Obey but I`ll talk about it soon). Initially I wasn`t a fan of this upgrade but the more I think about it the more I realize that the fact you have it changes how your opponent will pick schemes and play the game as they will most likely need to anticipate losing 1-2 markers.

Verdict: 
8/10 (It should also have Latigo Two Cards ;))

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