Tactical Time Travel - An Obliteration Keyword Breakdown

 Hey folks, Azahul here with something a little bit different from my previous fare. My past few blogs have been a mix of tournament recaps and some deep dives into my favourite aspect of this game, the narrative writing inherent to its mechanics. Today though I am going to pivot a little bit more towards a straightforward tactical write-up and give a rundown of how I approach my second favourite Keyword in the Outcasts faction.

Well, kind of straightforward, because the Keyword in question is Obliteration and nothing about Tara is truly straightforward.

Some folks who know me and my abiding fondness for Hamelin might be asking why I chose Tara, but the truth of the matter is that I find myself fielding questions about Tara and how to play her a lot more than than I do Hamelin. Presumably that has to do with her simply being more popular than Hamelin, I will happily concede that those of us who rank Hamelin as our favourite Master in the game are a bit of a niche little pool. It also can't be ignored that Tara is particularly good in the current Gaining Grounds, which is Gaining Grounds 4 at the time of writing. The Obliteration Keyword brings unusual mobility, scheming, and activation control, all of which are incredibly useful tools in many GG4 pools. All of which drives my decision to take a look at the timey-wimey tricks of the void monsters today.

But before we begin with the tactical grist, I can't resist a little bit of happy ranting about the truly excellent rules-as-narrative writing in this Keyword. I took a look at the Bandit Keyword in a previous blog post and explored the somewhat scattershot and broken ways their lore translated (and failed to translate) to the table. Obliteration is a far simpler story than Bandit. The rules all work, the lore shines through at every turn, you feel at every turn like you are truly playing a crew that defies the rules of time and space that bind the rest of the models of the game. You flicker in and out of existence in ways that can feel thoroughly unfair, and enemy models blink from the table and race to escape the emptiness of the void before they are torn apart. The game mechanics even find ways to evoke the slippage of time, from Tara's double activating to Aionus's pass token production to Karina's ability to turn the Discard pile into your deck and reflip the same cards you've already flipped that turn again in sequence. Obliteration is one of those crews that I feel can be played comfortably entirely in Keyword, allowing anyone to pick it up and play them without necessarily committing to being an Outcast player more broadly to get the most out of it. I love it to bits, and I hope that comes through as we begin to dig a bit deeper into how the crew works.

One List To Rule Them All

I want to be upfront and make it clear that there are other ways to play Tara than the way I am about to suggest. I have certainly heard of plenty of folks finding competitive success while hiring Tara alone and every single other model in the crew being Versatile or OOK. That is not how I play her, however, and my approach can be loosely summarised as "Hire all the non-Minion models in the crew, then summon the Minions". This approach predates Ashes of Malifaux, but it hasn't really changed much. My default Tara list is as follows:

Lunch Time Doubly So (Outcasts)

Size: 50 - Pool: 9

Leader:

  Tara

Totem(s):

  Karina

Hires:

  Scion of the Void

  Aionus

  Talos

  Thirty-Three

  The Nothing Beast

References:

  Void Wretch

  Void Hunter

  The Endless Void

I am going to go through each component of this crew, how they all fit together, and what the new additions to the Keyword (Vee and Hard Stop Herbert) bring to the table. I rarely deviate from this crew, but there are some circumstances where I have found good use out of the new models.

To provide some context, I will usually play this crew in pools that require some mobility and scheming potential. In the current Gaining Grounds, that means primarily Plant Explosives and Stuff the Ballots, but I will play it even on Raid the Vaults if the scheme pool favours spreading out to score. And, for reasons we will get to later, the crew also has some nasty tricks on Cloak and Dagger, so Gaining Grounds 4 really has been a good time for it. While there is a good amount of killing power in the crew though, I will usually aim to avoid playing this crew if I think the pool is likely to be a bit of a bloodbath. Tara's crew has a decent amount of damage, but there is limited access to card draw and the models are only moderately durable and will fold to any sustained pressure.

The Master - Tara1

I am only going to touch on Tara1 in this write-up. Tara2 is a weird model that doesn't really play to the strengths of her Keyword. She is a bit more brawly in nature but the models in her Keyword don't support that, and losing the mobility of Tara1 herself massively reduces the crew's scoring potential. That doesn't make Tara2 bad, per se, but I will have picked a different Outcast Master for any pool where she might be useful (Hamelin, probably).

Now, this is what we are working with when we talk about Tara1:

For a Master, especially a Master with such a reputation for complexity, she is actually pretty straightforward. She has an ok melee attack, a summon that follows the format of all the M3E launch summoners, and a single other tactical action that basically functions like a Leap. Plus, much of the text on her front of card (From Nothing and Beyond Time especially) are found on basically every other model in the Keyword, as is her bonus action of Stutter Time.

I won't get too deep into the nitty gritty here. Tara is quite straightforward in play, as her card suggests. She is a schemer more than anything, even more central to her identity than her summoning. Her Adrift In Time rule gives her two activations, meaning she has five actions (and two bonus actions) to play with each turn and also incidentally giving the Tara player activation control because she will be an extra activation that won't be accounted for by the opponent's pass tokens. Timeslip makes her fast and gives her a way to get out of melee without Disengaging, as well as letting her bypass terrain. Tara's job is to avoid enemy damage dealers and take a lot of Interact actions. If she has an action to spare (she often does) she can try to summon her Minions.

A good rule of thumb is that if Tara is on the table by the end of Turn 5, she has probably secured you ~4 of your victory points on her own. Keep her alive, keep her moving, and keep her interacting to get you points.

The Bonus - Stutter Time

A quick sidebar on Tara's bonus action. As mentioned, this bonus action appears on most models in the Keyword. If you target a model in the crew with From Nothing, it buries them. If you target an enemy model, they gain Fast. You don't normally want enemy models to have Fast, so this reads strangely, but it honestly is quite simple in practice. You use Fast to unbury your models with From Nothing, so you do want to give a couple of enemy models Fast each turn. The rule of thumb that I almost never deviate from is to only ever use Stutter Time on an activated enemy model. That will prevent the possibility that they might activate and you will lose the Fast (since it goes away end of activation) and the knowledge that you just buffed an enemy model. Don't use Stutter Time on an enemy model near the end of the turn if you aren't going to have a way to get rid of it, either.

On friendlies, meanwhile, use Stutter Time to get your models away from enemies that are threatening to kill them, or to set them up in the void to rapidly redeploy to wherever you need to be to score. Most models in the game can't do anything to a buried model, so it is an incredible "break glass in case of emergency" button to keep the most flimsy Obliteration models safe.

The Girlfriend - Karina

 

Tara's "very good friend" Karina is the crew's Totem. She has two functions. She is a healer who can target buried models with her heal, and she has a really funky bonus action. You can safely ignore basically every rule on Karina's front of card. If she moves up the table to use them, she will die before they become relevant. I play Karina usually flush against the back of my deployment board edge, with a honking big piece of terrain between her and enemies. She doesn't need to be near my models to do either of her jobs.

Healing aside, the other part of Karina's toolbox is her Time Warp bonus action. I don't recommend paying too much attention to it until you have a bit of experience with the Keyword. It allows you to reverse your discard pile and your deck. Importantly, you do not shuffle when you do this. That means that you will then proceed to flip the same cards you've already flipped this turn, in the exact same order. If you have a good brain for it you can memorise a decent number of these cards and pull off some cool tricks. I often use it to get Tara to summon without needing to spend a card or stone, any severe Tomes flipped early in the turn gets earmarked for that. A string of high cards, meanwhile, can be parlayed into a powerful offensive activation if you time it right. It takes a lot of finesse to make it work and aggressive opponents making you flip a lot of cards can make the timing tougher, but it's extremely satisfying when you get it to work. You won't do this every turn of the game, some turns it's not worth the mental bandwidth and some turns all your severes will be at the bottom of your deck so it's not worth flipping the cards around, but in some games this will be the moment that turns the tide.

The Henchmen of the Void - Aionus and the Scion

 

Ok, now we need to discuss the reasons I hire the models that I hire. First off the starting block is Grandfather Time himself, Aionus.

Again, I will try to avoid getting too granular. Aionus is like Karina in that basically all the text on his front of card exists to get him killed. He doesn't want to be near enemy models. If they do come close, capitalise on From Nothing by having another model use Stutter Time to bury him. Aionus is squishy for a 10 stone model and he's important for the functioning of the rest of the crew.

So, the two important actions here are Tick, Tock and Sever Timeline. Tick, Tock is nice and straightforward. Whenever you want to have Aionus take a Walk action, take a Charge action instead and use Tick, Tock to punch one of your own buried models. Beyond Time means he can target them, and almost all buried Obliteration models will have Incorporeal or Armour so the damage will only be 1/2/3. He can make them Fast, then Karina can heal them back up if you keep them buried. 

You might not keep them buried though. The other important rule Aionus has is Sever Timeline. This action lets you unbury a buried model, and is the crew's main way of unburying models without having to win opposed Stutter Time duels with enemy models. This allows Aionus to function like a taxi service. I will send him down a flank, often hugging a table edge as far from enemies as he can get, and unbury my schemers into position without them having to walk there themselves.

Critically, this action also has the Fleeting Moments trigger. This trigger is after resolving, so it works with any Crow, and creates two pass tokens. This is absolutely incredible and is key to Tara's core gameplay loop. You want to do this as often as possible. It allows Tara to play really cagey, pass until the opponent is out of activations, and then score her points or attack enemy models with multiple back-to-back activations at the end of the turn without any opportunity from the opponent to respond.

Also, a small note. If you have a lot of buried models and aren't confident you can get them all on the table via Stutter Time, Aionus can charge, punch a model to give it Fast and then unbury it with Sever Timeline, which will allow a second model to unbury. This is better than two Sever Timelines in many circumstances because you, a) Move Aionus with the charge, so you get some extra movement, b) Get to delay the second model's unbury in case you want to keep that model safe until later, and c) has no Target Number. Bonus points for doing this with Thirty-Three as the model you punch, because you'll get a bunch of extra movement from her Two Places At Once rule.

...that got a little bit into the nitty gritty, so quick, here's the Scion of the Void:

The Scion is the only model in the crew who can take actions while buried. They can target other buried models or draw Line of Sight and Range from any Obliteration Minions. This is incredible. It lets you get an additional Stutter Time into a spot on the board where you really need to make an enemy Fast so that a different model can unbury there. It lets you hit really quite hard for a 6 stone model against any enemy model you manage to Bury, thanks to the Scion becoming functionally Min 3 against buried models. And, in Gaining Grounds 4, it lets you take Interact Actions on Stuff The Ballots and Cloak And Dagger because those two strategies (as well as the Deliver a Message scheme) add a range to the Interact action. The Scion can theoretically vote on different Ballot markers on opposite sides of the table if your Minions are in position, and it brings an incredible amount of action economy to bear that your opponent can usually do nothing to interfere with. The Scion will take damage with each action, so Karina is often healing them in her spare time, but you don't need to get a lot out of this model for it to be worth the cheap-as-chips price tag.

Worth noting that in older Gaining Grounds the Scion was really useful in a variety of schemes that required you to name models, especially cheap models, such as Hidden Martyrs, Vendetta, and so on. The low price tag and the essential invulnerability as a consequence of being buried all game made those schemes easy and reliable for Tara to achieve.

The Hirelings - All the other models you pay for

Ok, I've been waffling for a while. Speed running time. First up, the Nothing Beast:

This model is big and it hits hard but honestly it dies fairly easily for its cost with only 8 health. Keep it away from big beaters, use it to kill enemy models quite quickly when the opponent is all activated out, and keep it buried as much as you can. Having the threat of unburying the Nothing Beast potentially anywhere on the board and wreaking havoc is huge. There isn't really that much you need to know about the Nothing Beast beyond understanding that it has a Min 3 attack and it is often Fast thanks to Aionus punching it (which, incidentally, will mean that it is often damaged and even easier to kill). Because Tara doesn't have the card draw or resources for protracted brawls, I will usually use the Nothing Beast to prey on my opponent's cheaper models. Effigies, schemers, healers, etc., basically if it has a Cost of 6 or less then it's usually a good target for the Nothing Beast. Get enemy AP off the table fast and force them to spend their big, expensive models doing the jobs of cheap models while you run rings around them.

Second model, Talos:

Talos is not a proactive model, he is your response to what your opponent is doing. He is the only model in the Keyword without From Nothing, so he can't be buried. This makes him predictable and slow compared to everyone else. Nevertheless, he is a big threat to enemy models. I keep him hanging back, often in or near my deployment zone for most of the game. In Gaining Grounds 4 you have to cross the centreline to score in basically every pool, and you can often tell where your opponent will have to stand. Talos lurks in places where he can charge out and hit models that go to those places. He has a Min 3 attack, which is good, but even more dangerous is his Into the Furnace action. Most models in the Keyword can only bury enemy models by forcing them to make a Glimpse the Void check, a TN 14 simple duel that you can't meaningfully interfere with beyond spamming them. Into the Furnace is the only way to bury an enemy model that you can actually control. By holding onto a Severe card, you can force an enemy model into the Void which can be positively ruinous. 

Now, if that model had already activated this turn because it moved up to a scoring position, then it won't be able to unbury that round and every single model with Beyond Time (very nearly the whole Keyword) will be able to attack it. And those attacks are more likely to hit, because Flames of the Void reduces the buried model's duel totals. And to add insult to injury, they'll even take extra burning damage at the end of the round.

Honestly though, much of the time you don't need the enemy model to stay buried. When they activate you, the Tara player, get to place that model anywhere on the table near an enemy model. That often allows you to stick the model somewhere where it will be basically irrelevant for much of the rest of the game. If they have support models hiding near the back of their own table in fear of the Nothing Beast, for example, you can send their prime beater or scoring piece all the way back there and ensure it won't bother you for most of the rest of the game. Not bad for one opposed duel.

Dammit, the word length got away from me again. Quick, let's talk Thirty-Three:

The last model from the core list, Thirty-Three has two main things going for her. The first is her bonus action, which thanks to the built in Backtrack trigger allows you to draw two 7s. This is critical for the TN heavy Obliteration crew (every model bar Talos has a TN to hit, and there's virtually no other card draw). For bonus points it also lets you pick your suits, and that means you can get the 7 of Crows for Aionus's Sever Timeline to get both an unbury and two Pass Tokens. I'm not sure I can emphasise that part enough. You could get a second, weaker crow to guarantee another Fleeting Moments trigger if you want, or just a second 7 for your crew's other TNs. Your choice.

The other huge part is Two Places At Once. This free place is a great bit of incidental movement that will come up every time a model unburies near Thirty-Three, including Thirty-Three herself. It allows models to unbury from Fast enemy models and not be engaged by those models, an incredibly useful tool for the scheming pools where this crew likes to play. And it combines brilliantly with the Slippery rule to make Thirty-Three a very useful schemer in contested parts of the board where enemy melee ranges would otherwise obstruct you from interacting where you need to.

Scraps of Nothing - The Summons

I'm going to talk about these two models at the same time.

Why? Well, they're the same picture. Tara summons her models buried, but otherwise without any disadvantages like Stunned or Slow common to summons. You use both these models as speedbumps for your opponent. Their job is mostly to pop up, make a couple of attacks, then get killed. Sometimes you run one to set up the Scion of the Void's Interact actions, that's really it. You don't normally want to spend cards making their attacks work or protecting them defensively, you've already got good use out of them when the enemy chose to spend actions attacking them. Reserve your cards for your important tools, and just hope you get lucky and land a few attacks. The damage isn't even the real threat on these models, it's the fact that their Glimpse the Void triggers are built in and so they'll force the opponent to spend good cards keeping their models from being buried.

Of the two, I personally prefer to summon two Void Wretches when possible (requiring a 12 of Tomes instead of the Void Hunter's 11). More hit points between them, and you get two Stutter Times instead of the one on the Hunter at the same Stat. And when you aren't spending cards on the attacks, the difference between Stat 4 and Stat 5 offensively isn't really that big either, particularly when you get twice as many attacks. And because they start their first activation buried, and thus unable to be targeted, and will usually die shortly after they unbury and have had their first activation, they even get to often avoid the common problem of cheap models in giving up activation control.

That said, the Void Hunter has a place too, and can deal a surprisingly large amount of damage if you have a Ram to hand. More importantly, the Void Hunter can unbury models with its Existential Bite attack. It will damage your own model, and give them distracted, but it also has no TN and I find it invaluable for setting up late game scheming and denial plays.

The Newcomers - Vee and Herbert

So, I am aware that there are some folks who are confused that I don't run Vee and Herbert in my Obliteration crews very often. I don't deny that they are good models. The problem is that as it stands they are redundant. Vee can move models up the table, heal, and unbury models, as well as guaranteeing cards of a particular suit. Those are jobs done by Aionus, Karina, and Thirty-Three, and I like the unique aspects of those models more. I can't replace Aionus with Vee, for example, because I lose my pass token production and Aionus can make two Pass Tokens! Sometimes, just sometimes, Aionus makes FOUR Pass Tokens! Sorry Vee.

Herbert, meanwhile, is a nice, mobile model who doesn't rely on bury shenanigans to get around the table (but also he can benefit from bury shenanigans, so he can really zip). Problem is I'm usually doing that with Tara, I don't need to pay stones for that option. Plus, he has a much harder time getting out of melee than Tara does.

That said, there is a time and a place for each.

I will normally consider Vee if I am facing a faction that I think will be able to attack me in the void. This is usually Guild or Outcasts. The extra healing helps offset the fact that burying isn't a Get Out Of Jail Free card in those match-ups, and she has an extra layer of protection for those otherwise vulnerable models with her Out Of Sync trigger on Gather Intel in a pinch too.

I will normally replace either the Scion of the Void or Thirty-Three with Vee, depending on the pool. Most typically the Scion though, since being attacked while buried does make it hard for the Scion to do their job.

Herbert is a really easy call. If the pool I am playing requires a lot of regular, on the table interacting, I hire Herbert. By this I mean the kind of Interact actions that the Scion can't do from the safety of the void, so in Gaining Grounds 4 this means Plant Explosives. Typically a Plant Explosives pool where I want to take 1-2 scheme marker based schemes as well. In this scenario Herbert will carry a bomb or two and be ferried up the table safely by Aionus until they cross the centreline, then deposited with Fast to get all his bombs on the table really quickly without ever truly being at risk. In pools like Cloak and Dagger or Stuff the Ballots though, the Scion's ability to Interact from a variety of different positions all over the table is going to be more valuable.

When those key Plant Explosives pools do come up though, he will almost always come in as a replacement for the Scion of the Void. 

Back to the Beginning

And there you have it. Because of how tightly connected all those different synergies are, there are no Versatiles or OOK models that I ever bring with Tara. If you are a Keyword purist, hers is both powerful and intensely flavourful. The rules across her Keyword all get stronger the more of her Keyword you have. The Stutter Time/From Nothing rule synergy just gets more flexible when there are more models playing with it, which I find really incentivises me to pack in the Keyword models. And then there are the additional synergies. Talos's Into the Furnace forcing enemy models to Bury so that the Scion can capitalise on their vulnerability, Thirty-Three ensuring that Aionus has the crows to make two Pass Tokens, the Nothing Beast offsetting its vulnerability by only activating after the enemy models are all activated thanks to Tara's dominant activation control (boosted by the aforementioned Pass Tokens), they all click together in an intensely satisfying way.

If you're curious and want to discuss the Keyword further though, feel free to reach out. I did try to keep this concise and while that... definitely didn't work, there are still plenty of intricacies I didn't have the time to go into. I'm always happy to chat all things Obliteration on the Wyrd Discord or the sundry other Discords I've crept into over my Malifaux career.

Until next time.

Let's do the time warp again.