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Allison Dade, what is she good for?


4thstringer

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I'm having a hard time seeing why I would take the uber field reporter rather than 2 reporters.   She's an aura henchman without the survivability to use those against my opponent.   And she just does too little with her action.  Outside of countering practiced production I just can't imagine her earning her points. 

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She does pretty good damage if there is Guardsmen around. Attack that basically does 3/5/6 damage and gives slow is nothing to sneeze at. If she popped A Debt to the Guild it's basically 5/7/8, and she can get Fast relatively easily without help from others, so she's pretty likely to be able to attack three times with that.

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The damage from Muckraker will occur before her manipulative test, so attacks against her will be quite draining to the opponent before they even try and beat that df/wp 6. 

She will probably spend 2-3 turns of the game fast, and as Myrra says, if there is a guardsman nearby then "One more Question" is a strong attack. 

Even if you don't have a guardsman around, its an attack that will typically cost the opponent 2 AP (the target becomes slow, and they have to lose a dropped scheme marker) . 

 

 

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On 14.10.2016 at 2:09 PM, Myyrä said:

She does pretty good damage if there is Guardsmen around. Attack that basically does 3/5/6 damage and gives slow is nothing to sneeze at. If she popped A Debt to the Guild it's basically 5/7/8, and she can get Fast relatively easily without help from others, so she's pretty likely to be able to attack three times with that.

Why do you add +2 from Debt? It adds +1 damage and not +1 per flip I think

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1 hour ago, Hidelfon said:

Damage reduction  treat them separately? 

Damage reduction reduces each source of damage.  So something like the Slug trigger on Abeula deals 2/3/4 damage then afterwards deals another 2/3/4.  If you have armor +1 it would reduce the first damage flip by one and then reduce the next damage flip by one.  So if you flip weak both times you would only take 2 damage (1+1).  As the upgrade says "for the remainder of the activation, all of its Attack Actions that deal damage deal +1 damage.".

In this case they are saying that Dade's attack action gives slow and if a guardsman is nearby it deals 1/3/4 damage, so with the +1 damage it would deal 2/4/5.  On the Ram trigger they must discard a scheme marker or it takes 2 damage and on the Tome trigger it has to discard a card or take 2 damage.  Triggers are part of the attack action but both these sources of damage are seperate from the damage if a guardsman is nearby.  So armor would reduce each and they are saying that Debt to the Guild which increases damage would be the same.  So they are saying if you take the 2 damage from the trigger, it would give a +1 damage to that making it a 3.  So you would take 2/4/5 plus after that 3 damage if you did not discard.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I would say it depends on what you are planning to use her for in the crew.  If you remove even the option of having a guardsmen for the extra 1/3/4 damage you are reducing her threat when it comes to actually injuring the enemy.  The Slow from her attack is still valuable but like many of her abilities it does not have the longest ranges.  Her biggest ability in this sort of case is that her attack action's triggers all trigger after succeeding.  Namely this is good for the Ram and Tome trigger as they force the enemy to take an action even if they would rather take the 2 damage.  For Ram they have to discard a Scheme marker that is on the board and friendly to them.  For the Tome they have to discard a card from their hand.  As a Ram is built into her Cast action it means every time you nail an enemy with it they can be forced to remove one of their scheme markers.  You get this off 1-2 times a turn and you can cripple attempts at certain schemes.  Their only work around for this is to drop additional scheme markers so that they can remove those ones first.  But if they are doing that, they are spending AP that could be doing something else plus losing AP from the slow that Dade is dishing out at the same time.  The fact Nellie can help her get around or get fast means she has a better chance to get more attacks off to put this pressure on.

This means she be a resource drain for opponents if the scheme pool favors the use of Scheme Markers.  Being DF6, Wp6, and Manipulative 12 can also create a resource drain if anyone with out Ruthless wants to have a go at her before she activates.  On top of it if she has not activated yet and they charge her, she will also do 1 damage to them for each attack from her Aura.  As they suffer the damage immediately when they declare the attack it happens before they take the Manipulative test which will make your opponent leery of throwing just anyone at her.  Also with the right cards with the crow suit in hand she can cause them to discard, possible removing the last bits of their hand in a turn.  Of course if you have Phiona you might want those good crows for her trigger.

So while I would say she has her use with Nellie, it is more for what Dade can do for your scheme pool and less with how she matches up to Nellie *if you lack any Guardsmen*.  But remember, it is off Guardsmen, so even something like a Guild Hound will trigger the damage.  If you have a couple guardsmen she becomes a lot more threatening on the offense on top of her disruptive traits.  If you have Guardsmen I would say she is good either in a scheme pool favoring scheme markers or in one that does nothing for scheme markers.  Cause if they are afraid of her doing 3/5/6 damage a cast they will be spending AP to have a few Scheme markers handy to reduce the damage to 1/3/4 but they will still be slow and if they are not careful the Guild Hounds can take advantage of scheme markers for easy (1)AP charges.

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trikk has it.  Her base attack deals Slow.  But if a guardsmen is within 6" of the target they take 1/3/4 damage.  She has a trigger on each suit but the Ram trigger which is built in forces them to discard a friendly scheme marker, if they lack any scheme markers they take 2 damage.  So if they lack a marker and are near a guardsmen her damage is more like 3/5/6 but from two sources *so armor will reduce both but it will get around Hard to Kill*.

Her two 4" auras work depending if she has activated or not.  If she has not activated any enemy model that declares an attack within the 4" aura immediately takes 1 damage.  The other aura is the same size but only works if she has already activated.  It heals a friendly 1wd after the Determining Success phase of the attack action but only of attacks taken during their activation *so no out of activation attacks will generate the heal*.  I am more leery of this aura as she really wants her Manipulative up as much as possible.  Sure she has Df and Wp 6 but she also only has 8wds.  So it will not take to many hits to drag her down.

Her (0) is worth noting a bit as well as it gives an enemy model a condition that lasts for the game where if they damage another model they take a 2/3/4 and then condition is removed.  Meaning if you put this on a model almost dead it would kill itself possible if they attack back and it lands.  This combined with her pain aura if they attack her before she activates, the ability to hand out slow, and the forced discarding just makes her annoying to leave alone so I would not be surprised if they are would use long range attacks against her to try and kill or at least soften her up before she is in range.

Honestly I think she works best outside an elite Nellie crew.  With an Elite crew you likely are better using those ss for a support piece that meshes better with Nellie or for another model that can dish it out that she can use to trigger attacks or the like.  I think she favors being in a large crew with plenty of Guardsmen or in a mixed medium sized crew were you can have a couple 'lesser' activations to give her more time under the manipulative umbrella to try and stay safe.

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12 minutes ago, Cadaverousbirth said:

Mounted Guardsmen are Guardsmen, right? So are Wardens if I remember right. She could fit into a fox hunt-ish McCabe list or help out Lucius with his Warden cronies.

 

Not all Guardsmen are as bad as Guild Guard :P

Certainly, all optional ;).

The thing is that Ive lost faith in Lucius and hope for something new akin to it but just largely better or tougher executed. Like a new Gov.

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18 hours ago, EnternalVoid said:

trikk has it.  Her base attack deals Slow.  But if a guardsmen is within 6" of the target they take 1/3/4 damage.  She has a trigger on each suit but the Ram trigger which is built in forces them to discard a friendly scheme marker, if they lack any scheme markers they take 2 damage.  So if they lack a marker and are near a guardsmen her damage is more like 3/5/6 but from two sources *so armor will reduce both but it will get around Hard to Kill*.

Her two 4" auras work depending if she has activated or not.  If she has not activated any enemy model that declares an attack within the 4" aura immediately takes 1 damage.  The other aura is the same size but only works if she has already activated.  It heals a friendly 1wd after the Determining Success phase of the attack action but only of attacks taken during their activation *so no out of activation attacks will generate the heal*.  I am more leery of this aura as she really wants her Manipulative up as much as possible.  Sure she has Df and Wp 6 but she also only has 8wds.  So it will not take to many hits to drag her down.

Her (0) is worth noting a bit as well as it gives an enemy model a condition that lasts for the game where if they damage another model they take a 2/3/4 and then condition is removed.  Meaning if you put this on a model almost dead it would kill itself possible if they attack back and it lands.  This combined with her pain aura if they attack her before she activates, the ability to hand out slow, and the forced discarding just makes her annoying to leave alone so I would not be surprised if they are would use long range attacks against her to try and kill or at least soften her up before she is in range.

Honestly I think she works best outside an elite Nellie crew.  With an Elite crew you likely are better using those ss for a support piece that meshes better with Nellie or for another model that can dish it out that she can use to trigger attacks or the like.  I think she favors being in a large crew with plenty of Guardsmen or in a mixed medium sized crew were you can have a couple 'lesser' activations to give her more time under the manipulative umbrella to try and stay safe.

Cool, thanks for the thoughts.  She does have an element of synergy with Phiona - both want to activate late in the turn.  Activate Alison as your second last activation, then activate Phonia who gets all her positive flip goodness but also heals.

Also works well with flurry - so Francisco can heal 3 wounds rather than 2 from the aura.

So I guess there is some synergy with Nellie, if not a whole lot.  Franc and Phiona can to some degree keep her kind of safe by engaging models that attack her and push them away, so they should only really get one chance to attack her.

She seems super interesting.  I'll probably work her into my Nellie crew regardless, Phiona and Frank can put out plenty of hurt, and 2 reporters is probably enough for most purposes.  The other two slots will be Alison and Loco.

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  • 4 months later...
On 10/15/2016 at 5:13 PM, EnternalVoid said:

Damage reduction reduces each source of damage.  So something like the Slug trigger on Abeula deals 2/3/4 damage then afterwards deals another 2/3/4.  If you have armor +1 it would reduce the first damage flip by one and then reduce the next damage flip by one.  So if you flip weak both times you would only take 2 damage (1+1).  As the upgrade says "for the remainder of the activation, all of its Attack Actions that deal damage deal +1 damage.".

In this case they are saying that Dade's attack action gives slow and if a guardsman is nearby it deals 1/3/4 damage, so with the +1 damage it would deal 2/4/5.  On the Ram trigger they must discard a scheme marker or it takes 2 damage and on the Tome trigger it has to discard a card or take 2 damage.  Triggers are part of the attack action but both these sources of damage are seperate from the damage if a guardsman is nearby.  So armor would reduce each and they are saying that Debt to the Guild which increases damage would be the same.  So they are saying if you take the 2 damage from the trigger, it would give a +1 damage to that making it a 3.  So you would take 2/4/5 plus after that 3 damage if you did not discard.

So do the FAQ's change this?

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  • 2 months later...
3 minutes ago, Cleezy said:

Just stumbled across this and as I am starting to incorporate Dade into lists is this correct? Would the debt add an additional damage to the damage caused from discarding a marker/card?

Thanks in advance.

From the FAQ

72) If a Trigger on an Action causes damage (whether a flip or a fixed amount), does that count as part of the original Action? Is it modified by effects like the Accuracy Modifier and Focus? Do fixed damage bonuses (such as from Hallucinogens or The Bigger They Are) apply to the Trigger? 

Triggers that cause damage are a part of the Action which caused them. Any damage flip on such a Trigger would retain any Fate Modifiers to the original flip including Accuracy, Focus, cover, etc. Any fixed damage (such as the +1 damage from The Bigger They Are) only applies to the initial Action (not any resulting Triggers). (3/30/17)

Which would suggest no, the discard a marker of suffer 2 damage don't get boosted. 

BUT if you don't deal damage in the initial part of the attack, then I can see an argument that the trigger ought to do the bonus damage. (Basically the attack action over all should deal +1 damage thanks to paid in blood, rather than every part). But that's not quite what the FAQ says, so its probably easiest to say no, you don't get the bonus damage. 

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I'm not sure if this matters. But Allison's trigger says "Opponent Suffers 2 damage" rather than "Deal 2 damage". Debt says when Dealing damage. I think, FAQ aside, this difference in wording would also disqualify A Debt to the Guild from working. And I believe it does so in similar cases, though I don't have any examples offhand.

 

y/n?

 

Also, I have been using Allison Dade a lot and she was heavily featured in my McCabe list that I ran during Califaux. She was integral to helping me win a number of games. She absolutely devastates Claim Jumpers and Incorporeal shenanigans. We don't have many CA attackers in the Guild.

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