"flames of the pit" bug or feature?

[icebreaker]

Last days I am thinking about Lady. And not much intresting I've found there. The main interest was in "Flames of the pit" upgrade, but when I read it carefully I was realy surprised.(In bad meaning)

"Flames of the pit" affect only Death Marshals, but in all game such ubgrates affected by characteristic, not single model. Im thinking is it bug or feature? Because if it is feature it is real suck(((

[Hagisman]

I bet at one point it said Guild Marshal models. But a tester probably said if Lady J ignored terrifying she would be OP. 

Its never come up in my games, but yeah "Death Marshals" only is not as good as Guild Marshal.

[icebreaker]

As for me, Lady have to low DF and hight WP to became OP with the immune to Horror Duels. But the immune on Judge, Lone Marshal could be a good feature in time when the immune on Death Marshals just nice addition  

[Adran]

There are a few other upgrades and abilities that apply to a named model, rather than models with a characteristic so don't think Flames of the Pit is unique in that. As such I'm pretty sure it was intended to be as it says. 

The main feature of the upgrade is the Terrifying Undead it gives to the model. Probably works best with McMorning  and Plastic surgery, but I would guess the relentless to Death Marshall's is almost a freebie ability to make the cost seem worth while. 

 

[solkan]

Then again, I don't think it's a random coincidence that the page of the rulebook that features that card also happens to feature the Judge's upgrade card and a nice picture of the coffin surfing Death Marshal.   

 

[Ludvig]

It's a feature known as guild upgrade syndrome  

[icebreaker]

Hmmm, guild upgrade syndrome? 

[trikk]

Well, Lady Justice and Guild General upgrades are generally considered sub-par. 

[Ludvig]

3 minutes ago, icebreaker said:

Hmmm, guild upgrade syndrome? 

Guild general upgrades are fairly balanced internally but compared to the upgrades of a lot of other factions they're very lackluster.

[icebreaker]

All guild upgrades are very straight, they only increases power of models. The Guild don't have any master with 2 personal limited upgrades and many masters do not have any one at all. The flexibility not the strong side our upgrates.

[Adran]

Guild do have one of the best upgrades in Plant evidence. Its not quiet so good in GG2016, but for winning a game, it was stronger than Imbued energies or OathKeeper.

Not having multiple limited upgrades actually increases your flexibility.  

 

[Fetid Strumpet]

This isn't unique to guild. For example, Madam Sybelle/Seamus' upgrade Not Too Banged Up, while it does affect the trait Belle it only has any benefit to Belles that also have access to the Lure Attack Action, and thus only affects the Rotten Belle.

[trikk]

17 minutes ago, Adran said:

Guild do have one of the best upgrades in Plant evidence. Its not quiet so good in GG2016, but for winning a game, it was stronger than Imbued energies or OathKeeper.

Not having multiple limited upgrades actually increases your flexibility.  

 

I have to disagree. Well, I agree the limited upgrades thing increases flexibility but looking at the upgrade the choices would be pretty obvious. We also have Badge of Office as a limited upgrade. 

I disagree about Plant Evidence. We have a lot of models with Finish the Job already. Oathkeeper and Imbued Energies strongly increase threat ranges on stuff like Vik of Blood or Howard Langston (not to mention the rofl Myranda combo). Plant Evidence was nice for breakthrough but now that we have scoring at the end of each turn its pretty worthless.

 

I would say the best guild general upgrades are Badge of Office (Justice/Sonnia/Perdita) and Dampening Field.

 

[Adran]

I've seen 2 points spent on Plant evidence cause a 5 point VP swing after the end of turn 5. That's a pretty large swing, changing the result more than an extra walk or attack did in the middle of a turn. 

I will agree that in the game it had a much lower effect, but there is only 1 thing more broken than extra than AP, and that's extra VP. 

And the loss of so much end of game scoring has made it a much lower pick, so now I don't think it is as good as those other 2.

 

 

[LunarSol]

Non-Master specific Guild upgrades are by and large, terrible.  Of the general stuff, I'd really only rank Expert Sleuth and even that is often disappointing.  Things are worse when you look at the Wave 1 upgrades, which are both terrible and cost an extra SS for no discernible reason.

[Ludvig]

I find the models that can take plant evidence were rarely so far up the board that it could actually give VP for me. I have had fun with Lucius, legalese & plant evidence but that only works once against an opponent who's never faced Lucius. After that game Lucius will not survive or they will learn to block the push or simply skip the marker schemes in favour of others. If your opponent sees this upgrade they will not choose that model for take prisoner but since take prisoner can be any model you really haven't narrowed their choices by much, you usually want to trap crappy models and not the 9+ ss combat monsters that usually get upgrades anyway.

@Adran I would love to hear how that insane swing in VP occured since I'm always looking to improve, care to fill us in on the details?

I rarely find that it's an extra isolated walk or an extra swing with the AP upgrades. It's usually going from being stranded and killed because you have less threat range than your enemy to having enough threat range to kill them or walking around a house you you can charge etc. Set Samael and Rusty Alice up 13" away from each other and see which upgrade is more useful, Samael needs to walk once and can then shoot once. If Alice goes first she can gain fast, walk up and rapid fire, that's the kind of difference an AP usually makes. 

If executioners could take a fast upgrade they would probably be considered extremely worth their points instead of lacklustre. Peacekeepers and other already decent big beaters would also gain huge benefits from being able to walk up to the right target before flurrying.

If I had a fast-granting upgrade in guild I might be able to play someone else than McCabe successfully  The reason he makes everything so good is because he nudges models into the perfect spot before going bonkers and that is exactly how the fast upgrades are usually used.

 

[Adran]

The swing wasn't me, it was a club mate, but he was able to push and drop a scheme marker for Protect territory, giving him 2 VP as he had revealed it and already had 1. He was also able to push and steal an enemies Protect marker (putting them from the expected 3 points, to 1), and one of the pushes changed the number in a quarter to deny the opponent a reconnotre point they though they had. 

Whilst it sounds like a lucky turn for the guild player, its actually not that hard most of the time to arrange the board in the last turn to allow you those changes. Certainly a common Protect territory practise was to have 1 model protecting 2 markers, so with the extra push  it was normally very easy to take one away, so denying 2 vp. 

With fewer end of game scoring, and even fewer 2 VP swings for 1 interact, it really has taken a huge hit in value in 2016. 

 

 

[Ludvig]

The push is after you have calculated the end of turn VP for strategy on turn 5 since it's at the end of the game which is a later timing point. In what manner was the marker stolen? Only McMourning and Lucius can do that last time I checked. The upgrade just lets you place a marker, you can't remove and enemy marker (the interact part is just there to make it worse you you can't do it if you are engaged). You also can't deny the new gg-strategies from scoring turn 5 because of the sbove timing.

[Adran]

Good points, I think the scoring timing was done wrongly so makes one of them not a viable change. And he may have missed the "to drop a scheme marker", and thought it was just a (1) interact action (or it may have provided enough people near it to deny it from counting, I can't remember. We might well have got the rules wrong, but there is a chance that what happened followed the rules.).