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Dreamer Summoning, Is It Too Good?


E.T.A. Hoffman

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It is effortless. Think that's the point of this thread. It's what makes Dreamer such an awesome summoner. He's got by far the lowest overhead cost to bring more dudes into the game. He doesn't need to struggle for suits, eat corpse or scrap tokens, put wounds on his own toys, or even kill enemy junk. He just pops a, replaceable, daydream and drops a few respectable cards and out pops a tide of nightmares. There's a modicum of forethought that goes into making sure the new dudes don't get pasted but that's not exactly difficult.

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Just to clarify, effortless doesn't necessarily mean op. Ophelia offers effortless damage output, Seamus has effortless mobility, Lilith effortless board control, Somer effortless trigger control. Some models are just really damn good at their given nitches. We don't serve anyone by equivocating and pretending that's not the case. Dreamer happens to be a spectacular summoner, in my opinion the best in the game by a comfortable margin. This in itself doesn't mean he's bad for the game. For all his perks, and he's got plenty, he's still eminently beatable.

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excluding a handful of models, who can attack you on turn 1?

Austringers.

Rotten Bells.

Killjoy.

Hans.

Anything buried by Tara.

Nicodem via Vulture.

Mcmourning.

PigPult?

Rail Golem in a Kaeris crew. (Many things in a Kaeris crew).

Victoria's.

Things thrown by Ice Golem.

Rasputina shooting through things thrown by an Ice Golem.

There are many instances if you take a moment.

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Austringers.

Rotten Bells.

Killjoy.

Hans.

Anything buried by Tara.

Nicodem via Vulture.

Mcmourning.

PigPult?

Rail Golem in a Kaeris crew. (Many things in a Kaeris crew).

Victoria's.

Things thrown by Ice Golem.

Rasputina shooting through things thrown by an Ice Golem.

There are many instances if you take a moment.

 

Things with From the Shadows

Perdita

Sonnia *at least the way I play her*

Reactivating Enforcers such as Langston and Rail golem with Ramos and Brass Arcanid

Beasts of Marcus that get Alpha'ed

Alot of models with master's with Obey or similar abilities

Von Shill with the right upgrades

and plenty more

 

It is not actually that hard to start laying into your opponent first turn, just alot of times people are leery about taking that risk with out some clear goals or rewards.  With my Guild I often have the list designed to first turn be able to attack into the enemy deployment if I needs be.  It is how I threw a wrench into my opponent's plans with Dreamer at Adepitcon, I advanced so quickly on him while also going for VP that he had to spend some AP on movement and Empty Night in those first two turns.  Had his deck not been out for my blood and I made the mistake of attacking Chompy once *forgot he had turned into a henchman rather than enforcers so he could use SS to reduce damage* I would have easily won rather than tied, and it was even in Reconitter.

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Wow, yall take all of those in one game? Nice! Yeah Dreamer would be hosed if that many models were in play at once. 0.o

Models able to attack turn one, and disrupt dreamer, was being discussed, and  a comprehensive list has been providedt... the sarcasm does not detract from the fact a range across factions were given and the point answered.

 

You have dreamer rage...fine, no amount of sound arguement seems to be able to sort that. Is he good? Yes. Is he OP? No.

 

I always have a hard game agains Sonnia and have killed Seamus once in like 20 odd gmaes ive faced him. Ive said "wow, hes close to being OP- hes nigh unkillable..." sure, hes great, but does that make him OP? No. Masters all have their strengths. On paper he may seem broken- try throwing Joss at him, or using 3-4 bells to lure models away to Seamus can cuddle him...In a recent game against Tina I nearly lost him to ONE spell/APl- having played with and against him in a number of games I KNOW he is fine.

 

There are many cogent and valid points of view in this thread, and Justin's given the most decisive one. He good, he's very good. Adapt

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excluding a handful of models, who can attack you on turn 1?

 

The dreamer is one of those models that if you allow him to play his own game, you will really struggle.

I don't think anyone would disagree that if you ignored what he did for 2 turns, then you would be at a huge disadvantage. (Unless you were playing a similar style crew)

 

The answer is don't let him play his own game.

 

Pressure him, kill his support, remove the newly summoned models, they can all ruin his plan.

 

Personally I have found that so many crews enjoy set up and have some lynchpin models that they are in trouble with out that I typically have 2 or 3 missle models in crews to try and ruin their plays. The best exampel is when I use marcus, I notmally have a imbued energy Cerberus and am more than happy to charge Marcus into the enemy crew on turn 1 to break apart their plans, and follow up with the cerberus turn 2. I don't expect either to really be alive by the end of turn 3, but I expect to have ruined my opponents plans and have the rest of my crew to have earnt me points.

 

I don't think there is a master out there that can't be hurting the enemy deployment zone by turn 2 if they want to. And even if they can't, then they have decent models that can. Yes, you can easily build a crew that can't do this, but I don't think its fair to say 1 master is over powered when you aren't tryign to stop them. Its like sayign the Viks are overpowered because you didn't attack them and allowed them to get into whirlwind range of your whole crew.

 

It may well be my play style, but I don't find him the best summoner. I have much more difficulty with kirai and her summons.

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Models able to attack turn one, and disrupt dreamer, was being discussed, and  a comprehensive list has been providedt... the sarcasm does not detract from the fact a range across factions were given and the point answered.

 

You have dreamer rage...fine, no amount of sound arguement seems to be able to sort that. Is he good? Yes. Is he OP? No.

 

I always have a hard game agains Sonnia and have killed Seamus once in like 20 odd gmaes ive faced him. Ive said "wow, hes close to being OP- hes nigh unkillable..." sure, hes great, but does that make him OP? No. Masters all have their strengths. On paper he may seem broken- try throwing Joss at him, or using 3-4 bells to lure models away to Seamus can Cuddle him...In a recent game against Tina I nearly lost him to ONE spell/APl- having played with and against him in a number of games I KNOW he is fine.

 

There are many cogent and valid points of view in this thread, and Justin's given the most decisive one. He good, he's very good. Adapt

Mmm... I think the reason why the forum is perceived harsh sometimes, is just because we have too much fun producing Statements, as our word is The Word, and the last one... After all, the same approach was needed to deal with the Mechanical Rider, and she just received TWO erratas...

Then, it is obvious that Justin's Law is Da Law, instead u.u

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Okay...I have yet to play either against The Dreamer or as him but I do have some experience with Nicodem and although the summoning styles are markedly different I think they're close enough for me to be bale to say this.

 

In the first post E.T.A. Hoffman summed up by asking is the dominance of the Dreamer and his summoning ability appearing everywhere or is it just his local meta and luck with control hands.

 

From what I've seen in the discussion so far, and in my own experience with Nico is summoning as a whole can be very, dangerous and possess the ability to dominate the game. But this really requires a perfect storm of cards and your opponent to more or less let you summon without trying to stop you.

 

While it certainly is possible to summon two or three powerful models every turn for the first few turns and completely overrun your opponent it's not likely to occur every game, nor is it always a solid tactic. Even with the very strong healing a Dreamer crew has access to, the sheer weight of resources required to summon that number of dangerous models means that inevitably there will be weaker models who for one reason or anther don't get healed/buffed thus limiting their usefulness to the 'swarm' tactic that Hoffman seems to be concerned about. A clever opponent will strike at these weak spots to help even out the numbers. In addition to this unless a summoning player gets some truly stellar hands, once all the summons have taken place there won't be a lot of cards left to actually guarantee those summoned models will be able to achieve very much when their activations come up.

 

Moreover, a sizable portion of the posts on here posit that no, the Dreamer's summoning is not dominating their local meta and they don't think it's particularly better or worse than any other summoner master's. Therefore I think it's fairly safe to say that this concern seems to be limited to Hoffman's local meta and maybe a couple of others, but is not a widespread concern, so, as Justin pointed out, doesn't need any attention.

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Why would I have Dreamer rage? I love the Dreamer and being very well with him.

The sarcasm is because you throw a gigantic list of models at the thread and say, "This is the answer" but its not.

For one, you don't have all those models, you might have one or two. Of excluding a few snipers, who still why am I worried? The changes of them seeing Dreamer or even threatening Dreamer is not there. He'll throw a card away and let a stitch take the hit. He only needs 3 cards. If he's got the cards to summon new models, how hard exactly do you think he's going to defend the one or maybe two models you throw at him turn one and two? It wont be your whole crew making it up the board. You want to have Tara through a Killjoy up turn 1? Go ahead, you're not going to kill the dreamer and more than likely you just put KJ and Tara in a deadly reach of the whole Kid's crew because more than likely he out activates you. If he's any good, he'll see what your Tara list does. You want to reactive and toss a Desolation Engine? Go ahead, one model, turn 1 against a master with a full hand and his whole crew is not going to win the game. It's not going to stop him either. You get maybe three attacks off, Dreamer pawsn all three off on a stitched, maybe killing it. Dreamer still has three goods cards. He summons 3 new models and his crew together eat your advance model. Dreamer carries on without having broken a sweat.

 

THere is one combo that does threaten Dreamer very well. But, that's it. And at the request of the player who found it and wants to take it to Gencon, I'm not going to say what that is. It's also not relevent since its 1 master with 1 combo.

 

 

I'll challange anyone here who goes to Gencon to show me how they plan to jam the Dreamer up turn 1 and 2 to stop him from summoning? Barring bad draws, you can't really stop him.

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I don't think your assesment of Dreamer vs desolation engine looks valid.

If I put a desolatipon in his face on turn 1 i expect him to have decent wounds left (he will heal most up). He may also have summoned an abomination to help shut you down.

Then I probably don't actiavte it till its near death. And it heals up agaisn. And if you are hoping to get 3 summons off, and shift my 3 attacks against you, then you will have no spare cards. Desolation engine does reasonable pulse daamge which dreamer can't shunt, and will potentially hurt any of the nightmares close enough that you could shunt attacks to.

 

Yes, the engine will ahve to face most of your crew, but I have cards to use to support him. You don't have the luxury of your hand.

 

And killing the desolation engine puts 2 abominations out which remove your suits and stop your 0 actions.  

 

I hadn't thought of it, but it seems actually a pretty good way to shut Dreamer down.

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I hadn't thought of it, but it seems actually a pretty good way to shut Dreamer down.

 

The Dreamer's Incorporeal won't halve the damage from Industrial Nightmare or Desolate Supplications, either.  It's a pretty significant threat to the Dreamer, all in all. 

Alternatively, I've seen the Valedictorian rip him apart after hitting him with a Lecture Notes. 

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Actually, I don't believe you can, because the Dreamer passes off the effects of the attack, not dmg.

 

I could be wrong, but if it's the way I think it is, while yes, you could attempt to Lure the Dreamer, who would then pass the effect of the attack off onto a nightmare, and you could in theory Lure all the nightmares around him away to target him, in practice something you just Lured is going to activate again and get back to the Dreamer, or the Dreamer is going to activate and run into the new cluster of Nightmares.

 

I don't think Lure is very much a good solution to the Dreamer's vulnerability unless the Dreamer is playing badly and only has a single nightmare near him, and has messed his activation order up in such a way that you are able to exploit that mistake.

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