How to hand out Burning

[Lugonn]

I just read the Samael Hopkins card and he looks amazing.  If target is burning his min damage is 5 for melee and 4 for ranged!  So it leaves me with the question, what are the ways guild hands out burning?

[Ludvig]

My advice: forget you saw it and move along... It's not worth it... :,(

That being said Nellie can give out burning, can't she? Samael will also likely need help getting to a useful position which she is good at.

 

[hydranixx]

It can be a trap, but if you really wanted to make it work, Nellie is the way to do it:

http://themostexcellentandawesomeforumever-wyrd.com/topic/121559-the-revenge-of-sam-hopkins/

 

[admiralvorkraft]

Nellie does it very effectively. As does the Brutal Emissary+Abuela Ortega combo I outlined in the "Competitive Sonnia" thread.

Outside of those options Sam is too laughably slow and fragile to make his points.

[Ludvig]

The emissary can make great use of Samael's attack along with it's own (0). The problem with getting a single point of burning on people is that it's too easy to remove for my tastes and Samael can't companion. I hate that generally available (1) interact to lower your burnign by one.

[admiralvorkraft]

Yeah, it's almost certainly going to be the bottom activations of Turn 1 for that reason and you need to pick your targets carefully, but it isn't uncommon that someone has overextended a model such that no one can get there to pat it out.

[Ludvig]

In theory I like the emmissary a lot more. It puts on the burning and thus buffs itself with no one removing it inbetween. It has the same ignore LoS trickery but no rapid fire. With how squishy and slow Sam is I feel he would need a similar (0) to be worth it as a general choice. His 2ss upgrade is an insult

[Corn]

Keep in mind Sam doesn't need to be in a Sonnia crew to do some work.

 

Lucius: both  Lucius and Back in the Box can help him move into prime position and his rapid fire will be devestating in a Diestro Emissary list.

Nellie: @4thstringer had a thread on this as already mentioned, but also note that Nellie can hot off the presses an enemy model, setting them on fire and place em right in Sam's sights.

McCabe: Hopkins really likes pushes from take this and is a good holder for Badge of Speed.  He also has no (0) on his card, so he isn't a bad shirt holder either. 

 

Like any rapid fire model, Sam just needs some way to move into range before firing.  Other crews often offer him increased flexibility to get where he needs.  Especially since most of Guild's mobility enhancers come straight from the Master Level.

[Ludvig]

A lot of models in the 9-11 ss range can be devastating when you put 18ss into buffing them (emmissary, terracotta, diestro). The problem is that in many encounters you can't have 30 of your solstones tied up in the same corner of the board. Especially if your opponent sees that you only have one model that can help him get burning on enemy models and targets that first. That leaves you sitting around with Sam really not pulling his weight. 

In a Lucius list you can pair him up with a doppleganger who walks up and copies his negatives aura (preferably with a tome so you can do it twice). That's also a decent setup.

[Corn]

The Doppelganger and changings can also borrow witch hunt setting things on Fire and discourage enemies from taking cover

Sam is also a decent counter pick vs Kirai, as Witch Hunt can do heavy damage to low wound incorporeal spirits without attracting the attention of ikyro

[trikk]

22 minutes ago, Corn said:

The Doppelganger and changings can also borrow witch hunt setting things on Fire and discourage enemies from taking cover

Sam is also a decent counter pick vs Kirai, as Witch Hunt can do heavy damage to low wound incorporeal spirits without attracting the attention of ikyro

If they are close to terrain, in range and you manage it with Ca5. Its not really impressive for 11SS

[Ludvig]

22 minutes ago, Corn said:

The Doppelganger and changings can also borrow witch hunt setting things on Fire and discourage enemies from taking cover

Sam is also a decent counter pick vs Kirai, as Witch Hunt can do heavy damage to low wound incorporeal spirits without attracting the attention of ikyro

I've never faced Kirai without Chiaki which greatly devalues conditions and the time I took Sam he didn't like getting charged by those harpies.  

[Ludvig]

1 minute ago, trikk said:

If they are close to terrain, in range and you manage it with Ca5. Its not really impressive for 11SS

On the bright side you don't lose out on very much by only getting a 4 ca from the changelings  

[Adran]

9 minutes ago, trikk said:

If they are close to terrain, in range and you manage it with Ca5. Its not really impressive for 11SS

I always thought the best thing about witch hunt was that it required you to be somewhere that would often give you cover. If you aren't in cover then he can rapid fire you, and if you are in cover he can just burn you. Granted, Damage by burning if often less powerful than actual damage (although not always, Riders, incorporeal and Frame for murder are all things, as is Sonnia...) but using  a stat of 5 to do 4 damage is fairly decent. You only need to tie to do that 4 damage so it is less card intensive than a damaging attack would be. 

Its not always the attack you want to use, but its presence on the board is something that potentially redefines the enemy placement. 2 ss might be a little too expensive for it all the time, but on occasions it is worth it. 

 

 

[trikk]

Yes, he can. But he`s 11SS with that upgrade. Thats Howard/Peacekeeper price range and they have a lot more threat range and can survive a lot more.

[Ludvig]

Too bad ai only have a single changeling. Sam, dopple and three changelings along with something that creates terrain would be sweet. Phiona perhaps? 

[4thstringer]

Its frustrating that Sam goes down to a stiff breeze.  I'm always hesitant to build combos around him for that reason.

[Adran]

21 minutes ago, trikk said:

Yes, he can. But he`s 11SS with that upgrade. Thats Howard/Peacekeeper price range and they have a lot more threat range and can survive a lot more.

I don't deny that they are much more survivable, that's Sams weakness, but does the peacekeeper really have a bigger threat range? 

I would say Sam is probably putting out more damage if you were able to burn the target before hand

[trikk]

I think I wrote my thought wrong. It has a similar threat range but has higher surivability and utility while requiring a lot less setup.

[Cadaverousbirth]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

I always thought the best thing about witch hunt was that it required you to be somewhere that would often give you cover. If you aren't in cover then he can rapid fire you, and if you are in cover he can just burn you. Granted, Damage by burning if often less powerful than actual damage (although not always, Riders, incorporeal and Frame for murder are all things, as is Sonnia...) but using  a stat of 5 to do 4 damage is fairly decent. You only need to tie to do that 4 damage so it is less card intensive than a damaging attack would be. 

Its not always the attack you want to use, but its presence on the board is something that potentially redefines the enemy placement. 2 ss might be a little too expensive for it all the time, but on occasions it is worth it. 

I have to disagree here. It makes Sam soooo expensive (Peacekeeper cost as trikk said) for a situational ability that the opponent can easily avoid, whether with board placement or by cheating through that Ca5 which is garbage if you need it to happen.

Make it a zero cost upgrade that gives Burning +1, maybe a tome trigger for more Burning, and call it a day. Cheap, effective, themey, and doesn't hurt a model no one is taking (in general) anyway.

[Rostislav]

You can hire Freikorps specialist, a merc with a flamethrower =)

He is a bad walker (WK4), but Emissary can carry him to enemy ranks.
 

[CiDevant]

The only way Sam works in my theorycrafting is with the Emissary as a babysitter.  When in position you get four or five min 4 attacks that don't need line of sight with possible ricochets.  That kills anything that doesn't have crazy amounts of armor.  I don't know if it's 19 stones worth or the best use of the emissary.  

Sam is the biggest glass cannon in the game and there are way too many models that can just get right in your face without issue.

Maybe a Death Marshal delivery system ala Papa Loco could make him a decent assassin with Debt and Vengeance.  I'm going to have to try that.  Still pretty expensive and gimmicky though.

[admiralvorkraft]

Nellie is great for isolating a model and getting it burning. Sam gets a lot of work done with her around.

[TeddyBear]

so for you, definitely in sonnia crew samael don't work well?

[Adran]

I have seen Sam work very well in a Sonnia crew, but I have also seen him work very badly. 

If you play in a style that means either he is not easy to get to, or that you can capitalise on the over extension your opponent needs to kill him, then you will get a lot of use out of him. 

If you can't do that, then you will find he often dies without seeming to have affected the game significantly. I will still argue that he can hit harder than Howard, in the right circumstances, for fewer points. If you don't generate those circumstanecs, then you won't see him at his best. When I've seen him used well, its in crews that are already trying to generate those circumstances (Set everyone on fire) so there isn't any additional requirements for him to shine. But thats probably a very different list to one that tries to utilise Papa loco, its much more one that trys to make use of re-incarnate to summon more stalkers for example.