A couple frustrations about Brewmaster

[lame0]

39 minutes ago, wizuriel said:

Personally would rather have moon shinobi over spark or wrastlers. Wrastlers require an additional model to be useful and are nearly as squishy and Sparks imo requires a lot of resources for little payoff in most gremlin lists.

I would say Raphael and pere are more or less on the same level, but they play a bit better with other gremlin/kin models giving them the edge

I was talking in terms of pure damage Sparks does more and is a henchman...not that I'd use him for it but yeah...also pere does way more damage 2/3/5with critical strike and reckless and charge 8...+ His gun can do 12 damage. Pere Is a model I actually use and I've one shotted a bunch of  models with him (even Nellie once)....not something a moon shinobi could dream to do.(and is actually pretty effective with somer rams + encouragement + focus or you know for brew master swill target + focus from obey +2-3x shots.

[wizuriel]

I would argue a moon shinbo does better damage than a single wrastler and sparks.

Sparks has an 8" threat range (as opposed to moon shinobi 7" for their better attack).

Sparks does 2/3/5 with best case burning 2 (so min 4 and 2 burning if lucky).

Moon Shinobi might only have a 2/3/4 damage flip, but they can choose to target the weaker of the 2 stats and because they treat  as  or a lot more likely to be able to cheat the damage flip. Worse case scenario they are doing min 4 with potential 4 poison, but imo are much more likely to do moderate or severe damage than sparks. 

 

[Math Mathonwy]

2 hours ago, lame0 said:

I was talking in terms of pure damage Sparks does more and is a henchman...

Huh? He may have a better damage track but the way Moon Shinobis treat negative modifiers (which are extremely common in damage flips) certainly edges them over Sparks in my books. Have you used Moon Shinobis lately, out of interest?

[lame0]

 

 

4 hours ago, wizuriel said:

I would argue a moon shinbo does better damage than a single wrastler and sparks.

Sparks has an 8" threat range (as opposed to moon shinobi 7" for their better attack).

Sparks does 2/3/5 with best case burning 2 (so min 4 and 2 burning if lucky).

Moon Shinobi might only have a 2/3/4 damage flip, but they can choose to target the weaker of the 2 stats and because they treat  as  or a lot more likely to be able to cheat the damage flip. Worse case scenario they are doing min 4 with potential 4 poison, but imo are much more likely to do moderate or severe damage than sparks. 

 

I mean comparing Sparks only for damage doesn't really work anyways but they are pretty darn close and Sparks has way more support with fast to constructs and armor +1 etc for (0). I was just pointing out that even not considering his support characteristic he's on a simmilar playing field damage wise....throw in armor +1, an extra wound, hostile work environment, can use stones and accomplice and its just no contest Imo. I don't think any model in the 18 that I stated is less playable than a moon shinobi and I think they are all to be considered far before a moon shinobi. Could it be the moon shinobi does a touch more damage in some situations over  sparks? Maybe? But it's close because Sparks is +1 ml has a better damage track and causes burning for his trigger so will at least do full damage the turn he attacks. Throw in support from other models like somer or w.e and I think in many cases Sparks can over take the moon shinobi in damage. 

Either way if I was trying to do damage I don't think I'd take either of them and instead take the slop haulers/ lightning bugs/ pere/ meris/ Burt/ franc/ swine-cursed and such. The fact that I gave other viable choices doesn't make what I said wrong it's just a bunch closer because I gave so many options that at the very least 90% of them are better than the shinobi (accounting for 2ish maybe being worse).

 

[wizuriel]

Okay imo you can't compare Moon Shinobi to everything at the 5-6SS range. If you're taking Moon Shinobi imo they are flankers and damage and need to be compared against similair options. 

Fair comparisons imo would be (picked models 5-7SS that would have a similar function).

• Bushwhackers
• Gator
• Lightning bugs
• Rooster Rider
• Slop Hauler (Yes I would take a slop hauler for damage/flanking and still put them above Moon Shinobi)
• Survivor
• Boar
• Wrastler
• Burt
• Francois
• Taxidermist
• Pere
• Raphael
• Swine Cursed

Models in green imo are strictly better than Moon Shinobi won't bother comparing them.

Models in yellow  I feel are equal/arguable better and red are worse (see below)

 

So bushwhackers are imo useless and would put them below Moon Shinobi

Gators: About the same speed (though unimpeded) and bring melee expert. They are insignificant though which limits their usefulness imo. Damage wise they can get  with  making them slightly card hungry (espically with their 0 to push). Overall I think they have potential to do more damage than moon shinobi, but at the cost of needing  and being less useful than Moon Shinobi. imo would put them below 

Rooster Riders: Significantly faster than Moon Shinob, 1 AP charges with potential to chain chargers. Both are very glass cannony but I would give this battle to rooster riders. 

Survivors: With Armor and Hard to Kill they are somewhat tanky. They have reckless for that nice extra AP. Their attack isn't bad but they have low WDs and lower stats. Imo they are about on the same level 

Wrastler: Imo are worse than moon shinobi. Wrastlers require another model to start to do good damage requiring a fair amount of setup. They aren't much faster and their trigger imo isn't going keep them alive long if something wants to take them out. 

Pere: I would probably take him over moon shinobi depending on schemes. His suicide attack if strong and not hard to setup. 

I've never used boars. Just looking at them I think they are probably a bit worse than Moon Shinobi. From the shadows is nice and so is their 0, but Bayou Rampage is a pretty bad drawback imo. 

 

so imo Moon Shinobi aren't the worse pick we have at the 5-6SS damage range, but they are pretty close

 

[Dogmantra]

29 minutes ago, wizuriel said:

If you're taking Moon Shinobi imo they are flankers and damage

I think they're valuation warpers more than strictly damage. Their role isn't to deal hits, it's to warp your opponent's ability to correctly value their own resources (e.g. hard to wound, mid value cards)

[lame0]

39 minutes ago, Dogmantra said:

I think they're valuation warpers more than strictly damage. Their role isn't to deal hits, it's to warp your opponent's ability to correctly value their own resources (e.g. hard to wound, mid value cards)

That's going to be the case with any of our "good" models. 3x Ca 6 lightning bug attacks are going to make your opponent have to value their resources just the same. (+ 1 ca vs average df so usually your on top.) That's the same with frank and taxidermist etc. Yes sometimes on  hard to wound the shinobi can do a touch more than normal but just taking a lighting bug or slop hauler with min damage & reckless will do very simmilar damage on average (obviously depending on what the df/wp of the opposing model is). 

Also in general the more attacks the opposing model has to deal with the more cards they have to burn to avoid damage.

Lol moon shinobi may not be our very worst mod but it's in the running.

Lastly @wizuriel I agree he is not the very worst model but he is cool and buffing him correctly could make brewmaster an interesting choice. Also the wrastler is simmilar in many respects but ml7 is interesting and it costs 1ss less. Also many of the best models in the game are min 3 damage so he can become unkillable for a turn with one low cheat which I think is better defensively in the current meta.

[spooky_squirrel]

4 minutes ago, Dogmantra said:

I think they're valuation warpers more than strictly damage. Their role isn't to deal hits, it's to warp your opponent's ability to correctly value their own resources (e.g. hard to wound, mid value cards)

Exactly this. If someone's counting on their Hard to Wound, positives closing up differential, Impossible to Wound, or auras/effects that give out negatives to keep them safe, these guys with their drunken boxing keep everyone honest. This is why it is I don't typically use Moon Shinobi in learning games.

 

Related to why you hire people:
I hire Sparks quite often in Mei Feng's Foundry crew. In dozens of games I've had Sparks' damage track come up once. He's not being hired to hit things, he's being hired for his Hostile Work Environment bubble, his ability to make Constructs Fast, and his ability to make other models into Constructs.
With how many other beaters Gremlins have, judging a model on its damage track does a couple of things: 1) sets up utility models for failure, and 2) demonstrates a lack of imagination/sideways thinking. Gremlins have a lot of models that can put out some serious damage (some at some risk when they get the Dumb Luck trigger, others by virtue of whichever master they're hired under), so if your metric for value is on damage output, many models aren't going to measure up.
There are people who look at models like Fingers and think that these models are fundamentally useless, which might be the case for them and their playstyle, but is definitely not the case in general. Fingers can win games by being on the board and just going defensive. Sparks interferes with opposing crews' abilities that require targeting (including condition removal, skill borrowing, friendly pushes, prompts/obeys, etc.) while providing a way to make things interesting on your side of the board with Constructs and manipulation thereof.

So with that in mind: if your hiring criteria is limited to raw damage output viewed in a near vacuum, then there will be a lot of models that look/feel useless to you.

Which comes around to the Closing Time box and crew. There's no A/S tier beater in the base crew. The Moon Shinobi can go in as beaters, but you're going to want to support them with other things that this crew's box has and your control hand. Swill puts them on negatives, which they treat as positives. Cheating to a tie while swilled puts them on triple positives to damage anything that they hit. If your opponent is using I2W or H2W, you don't need the tie for the triple positive damage flip, and they'll have no way to put you on actual negatives (11+ differential gives single positive, swill cancels that positive, I2W/H2W leaves them at a single negative). This means that they have to make sure you miss to not get hurt by lucky swings. This is a different kind of problem than other attack models present, where the defender might not have the ability to cheat to win, but they can at least cheat to reduce your ability to spike damage. Alternatively, you use swill to put your target on negatives, giving you a better chance of having or cheating to the tie or narrow margin.

Which ties into areas in which the Moon Shinobi might need improvement. Similar to my earlier comment about their using poison +x to improve their Df, maybe being poisoned might improve their Ml (again, limited) or have other effects (Fermented River Monks come to mind). I would lean away from mithradatism-type healing because of Brewmaster's sharable ability being a healing flip (and being a flip that the Moon Shinobi takes, gets the Drunken love as well) that hands out poison.
Before we start talking how to improve on it, we also want to make sure that we're not trying to have a fish climb a tree. Utility models aren't supposed to be beaters. Scheme runners that have tanking/defensive and/or hitting ability get expensive to hire, so cheap runners should not be expected to stand up to a focused attack.
The design and testing teams will be working to make sure that any improvements don't accidentally create a problem, but they won't catch every combination that is unintended.

[HellecticMojo]

While the topic has kinda moved away from Brewie to Moonshinobis,  I think really the brewmaster fix alone could fix the moon shinobis barring their crappy roundhouse kick.

It's pretty obvious that even if wyrd reworks the brewmaster, there are some design goals they won't deviate from.
Judging from the current build and the latest upgrade I think it's safe to say that Wyrd will:
1. Always push for poison being an enabler for his abilities and for his crew. I know people are saying that he's still two steps behind, but I don't think that will ever change, nor do I think it needs changing. If brewmaster doesn't hand out booze, then what's the point?

2. keep the CA value high at 7, since he requires a two step along with the debuff. It seems Wyrd wants him to be hard to use, but guaranteed to stick when he bothers to do anything

3. want his abilities to be dual purpose for enemy or tri-chi. All his ability can be used to enhance your own thing or debuff and screw with the enemy.

4. never be good at killing. His actual damaging stuff is resisted by something that he doesn't debuff and doesn't even do much. I think they made the last upgrade to make up for the drinking contest heals on the enemy, but I don't think Wyrd wants brewie to exceed the damage of his Good Stuff upgrade.

5. Moshpit gameplay. They are still sticking with the 3 inch aura things with the last upgrades and I don't think he will every lose the 3 inch range and I don't think Drinking contest is a thing that will ever disappear even if it's very inefficient or even relevant.

I don't think any of the design choices above are bad, but they hinge so much on poison distribution that he's just plain awful at.  I think there's a way to make him work while maintaining the design bullet points above. I'm going to write the following under the assumption that Wyrd doesn't touch the upgrades and address the ways the above design choices can be kept.

1. I think being poison dependent on his ability is actually fine, the issue I believe is that his poison distribution is absolutely garbage. He can't move conditions, he can only do it at range only once, and he does it at poison +2, which doesn't even fill the cap necessary for his other abilities. The drinking contest is also dependent on the opponent which is never a good sign. I think drinking contest either goes away or is a permanent ability. I think his zero actions need to be a poison distribution ability and not compete with anything else.  I think he really needs a 6 inch pulse poison cast. Just something to vary up the situation where the One for the Road is a single target movement method while the pulse is for enabling the moshpit point number 5. I don't even care if it does the backward stupid thing like the drinking contest where it heals the models.

2. on the topic of high value CA actions, I question the need for Obey to exist on his card. We already got Zoraida in the mix and nothing will nor should beat her in that regard I think. I understand the new upgrade is there to exclusively help with the Obey action, but I think Brewie just needs to expand his other casts and abilities. I understand that people don't want to lose Yasunori combo, but it kinda sucks that trichi-gets almost no real benefit from it. He's got so much masks built into everything that doesn't need masks built in. Would it kill for him to actually have some mask based triggers? I think swig -o shine desperately need some more trigger, because it's a pretty garbage action right now.

3. This is why I wanted the pulse ability. something to fill up the friendly poison resevoir and spread enemy poison. Brewmaster really has damn near nothing to do turn 1 or 2. Filling up monk defense stock or enabling turn 2 psuedo swift/reckless for moon shinobis would be such a nice help.

4. I'm actually very ok with Brewmaster being a complete pacifist. It's interesting challenge and if the poison support is good enough, I think the crew getting the work done for him is perfectly fine. if the poison distribution is also easy, then liver damage is also something worth taking as he digs at the enemy.

5. I gotta admit, I REALLY hate the 3 inch auras. I don't like the new upgrade's damage abilities, I hate drinking contest's range and I hate that drinking contest working properly means that I'm landlocked. But if we must keep the moshpit gameplay, I would wish that his defensive trigger was easier to use but less severe displacement. It really sucks for both sides on the table where nothing goes anywhere and nothing gets accomplished. I wish I can just move people out of the way so I can walk where I need to or push people with swills to set up for the rest of my crew. It's just really unfun for both parties involved.

 

TLDR: I want a poison pulse tactical action.

[lame0]

2 hours ago, spooky_squirrel said:

Exactly this. If someone's counting on their Hard to Wound, positives closing up differential, Impossible to Wound, or auras/effects that give out negatives to keep them safe, these guys with their drunken boxing keep everyone honest. This is why it is I don't typically use Moon Shinobi in learning games.

 

Related to why you hire people:
I hire Sparks quite often in Mei Feng's Foundry crew. In dozens of games I've had Sparks' damage track come up once. He's not being hired to hit things, he's being hired for his Hostile Work Environment bubble, his ability to make Constructs Fast, and his ability to make other models into Constructs.
With how many other beaters Gremlins have, judging a model on its damage track does a couple of things: 1) sets up utility models for failure, and 2) demonstrates a lack of imagination/sideways thinking. Gremlins have a lot of models that can put out some serious damage (some at some risk when they get the Dumb Luck trigger, others by virtue of whichever master they're hired under), so if your metric for value is on damage output, many models aren't going to measure up.
There are people who look at models like Fingers and think that these models are fundamentally useless, which might be the case for them and their playstyle, but is definitely not the case in general. Fingers can win games by being on the board and just going defensive. Sparks interferes with opposing crews' abilities that require targeting (including condition removal, skill borrowing, friendly pushes, prompts/obeys, etc.) while providing a way to make things interesting on your side of the board with Constructs and manipulation thereof.

So with that in mind: if your hiring criteria is limited to raw damage output viewed in a near vacuum, then there will be a lot of models that look/feel useless to you.

Which comes around to the Closing Time box and crew. There's no A/S tier beater in the base crew. The Moon Shinobi can go in as beaters, but you're going to want to support them with other things that this crew's box has and your control hand. Swill puts them on negatives, which they treat as positives. Cheating to a tie while swilled puts them on triple positives to damage anything that they hit. If your opponent is using I2W or H2W, you don't need the tie for the triple positive damage flip, and they'll have no way to put you on actual negatives (11+ differential gives single positive, swill cancels that positive, I2W/H2W leaves them at a single negative). This means that they have to make sure you miss to not get hurt by lucky swings. This is a different kind of problem than other attack models present, where the defender might not have the ability to cheat to win, but they can at least cheat to reduce your ability to spike damage. Alternatively, you use swill to put your target on negatives, giving you a better chance of having or cheating to the tie or narrow margin.

Which ties into areas in which the Moon Shinobi might need improvement. Similar to my earlier comment about their using poison +x to improve their Df, maybe being poisoned might improve their Ml (again, limited) or have other effects (Fermented River Monks come to mind). I would lean away from mithradatism-type healing because of Brewmaster's sharable ability being a healing flip (and being a flip that the Moon Shinobi takes, gets the Drunken love as well) that hands out poison.
Before we start talking how to improve on it, we also want to make sure that we're not trying to have a fish climb a tree. Utility models aren't supposed to be beaters. Scheme runners that have tanking/defensive and/or hitting ability get expensive to hire, so cheap runners should not be expected to stand up to a focused attack.
The design and testing teams will be working to make sure that any improvements don't accidentally create a problem, but they won't catch every combination that is unintended.

See what makes this really frustrating is that if a model takes a very specific scenario to work as well as cheaper models then probably it's over costed.

Also it schemes worse than every reckless model and is barely good enough to be an anti scheme runner.

For me I don't like to consider cheating when I look at the statistical odds of a low ss model because I would much prefer to save cards for more important stuff. In a real game situation I might cheat to save / kill something important but it's more the exception than the rule.

Moon shinobi

Ml 5 vs df/wp 5 hard to wound

53.7% chance to hit per attack (2x attacks)

So let's say average damage per attack of 3.5 + maybe trigger. So let's call it 4 being a touch generous.

Lightning bug

Ca 6 vs df 5 hard to wound 

61.11% chance to hit per attack (3x attacks)

Assuming no trigger and average damage per attack of 2.228(double negative flip on a 2/3/3) the bug does 4.08 damage. 

Now put that on a stone per stone comparison and 

Moon shinobi 4 damage/6 stones=.666 damage/stone.

Lightning bug 4 damage/ 5 stones=  .8 damage per stone.

So even considering the perfect scenario for the moon shinobi and ignoring the lightning bugs triggers/ ignore armor against what the moon shinobi is supposed to be best against the lightning bug comes out on top.

Also one thing to note if you consider cheating it is easier and more likely the enemy tries to deny damage vs the moon shinobi because each attack does more damage thus motivating them to cheat more. 

So this is my justification for why I wouldn't never take a moon shinobi as is because they don't have the damage track to justify using it as the "value warper" A model like the lightning bug is extremely consistent. Lastly the way many of the best gremlin models damage tracks are distributed hard to wound is less of an issue than one might imagine. ( Burt 3/4/5, taxidermist 2/3/4, lightning bug 2/3/3, and slop hauler 2/3/3). For models like francois and McTavish it's more of a pain in the butt.

[I'm a Teapot!]

Just wanted to say this:

Try glowy Pere with Wong: It's stupid!

[Dominion]

10 hours ago, lame0 said:

See what makes this really frustrating is that if a model takes a very specific scenario to work as well as cheaper models then probably it's over costed.

Also it schemes worse than every reckless model and is barely good enough to be an anti scheme runner.

For me I don't like to consider cheating when I look at the statistical odds of a low ss model because I would much prefer to save cards for more important stuff. In a real game situation I might cheat to save / kill something important but it's more the exception than the rule.

Moon shinobi

Ml 5 vs df/wp 5 hard to wound

53.7% chance to hit per attack (2x attacks)

So let's say average damage per attack of 3.5 + maybe trigger. So let's call it 4 being a touch generous.

Lightning bug

Ca 6 vs df 5 hard to wound 

61.11% chance to hit per attack (3x attacks)

Assuming no trigger and average damage per attack of 2.228(double negative flip on a 2/3/3) the bug does 4.08 damage. 

Now put that on a stone per stone comparison and 

Moon shinobi 4 damage/6 stones=.666 damage/stone.

Lightning bug 4 damage/ 5 stones=  .8 damage per stone.

So even considering the perfect scenario for the moon shinobi and ignoring the lightning bugs triggers/ ignore armor against what the moon shinobi is supposed to be best against the lightning bug comes out on top.

Also one thing to note if you consider cheating it is easier and more likely the enemy tries to deny damage vs the moon shinobi because each attack does more damage thus motivating them to cheat more. 

So this is my justification for why I wouldn't never take a moon shinobi as is because they don't have the damage track to justify using it as the "value warper" A model like the lightning bug is extremely consistent. Lastly the way many of the best gremlin models damage tracks are distributed hard to wound is less of an issue than one might imagine. ( Burt 3/4/5, taxidermist 2/3/4, lightning bug 2/3/3, and slop hauler 2/3/3). For models like francois and McTavish it's more of a pain in the butt.

 

again, comparing apple with oranges

moon shinobis can kill Lilith, Lightning bug can't

moon shinobis can kill the riders, lightning bug can't

moon shinobis go around many many DF Triggers, usually the damage prevention ones, lightning bug can "only" deny armor and incorporeal

moon shinobis are buffed by the intoxication bubble of The Brewmaster, putting some poison with his 0 or the swig o' shine (triggering pisswater, with MI7 you don't need a 13 and you can always stone for suit)

putting swill on shinobis is, most of the time, useless, you will always prefer putting it on enemy's, denying it's ability to cheat and giving the moon shinobi an effective MI7 with their green fists

and up to MI9 with poison +3 and brewie + wesley aura just doing brewmaster stuff without interacting with the shinobis

 

[anumberone]

 I'm certainly going to try out a moon shinobi some more and see how he performs in random crews. I can see he is useful in certain situations and I didn't think he was terrible when I did use him a few times with Brewmaster. Just overcosted by a stone and maybe missing a little something. I can say the same for a Bushwhacker, who should have a min 2 damage rifle or zero/card discard focus. 

  I still think compared to a lightning bug the shinobi is a niche take. If I suspect I'm going to face Lilith, riders, etc, yeah a shinobi looks ok. Even facing Ressers I'd probably take a taxidermist at 1-2 stones more instead since I think he'd be more impactful.

 I could take a lightning bug in any crew and get some work out of him. He's reckless so reliably more mobile. He can potentially get an extra interact at the end of the turn for a suited card. He can hit reliably and as a cast action so also gets around incorporeal or bullet proof. With the right cards he can slow a model or heal a group of models. 

 I just don't see taking a moon shinobi over the lighting bug 9 times out of 10.

[Runeman]

15 hours ago, HellecticMojo said:

While the topic has kinda moved away from Brewie to Moonshinobis,  I think really the brewmaster fix alone could fix the moon shinobis barring their crappy roundhouse kick.

It's pretty obvious that even if wyrd reworks the brewmaster, there are some design goals they won't deviate from.
Judging from the current build and the latest upgrade I think it's safe to say that Wyrd will:
1. Always push for poison being an enabler for his abilities and for his crew. I know people are saying that he's still two steps behind, but I don't think that will ever change, nor do I think it needs changing. If brewmaster doesn't hand out booze, then what's the point?

2. keep the CA value high at 7, since he requires a two step along with the debuff. It seems Wyrd wants him to be hard to use, but guaranteed to stick when he bothers to do anything

3. want his abilities to be dual purpose for enemy or tri-chi. All his ability can be used to enhance your own thing or debuff and screw with the enemy.

4. never be good at killing. His actual damaging stuff is resisted by something that he doesn't debuff and doesn't even do much. I think they made the last upgrade to make up for the drinking contest heals on the enemy, but I don't think Wyrd wants brewie to exceed the damage of his Good Stuff upgrade.

5. Moshpit gameplay. They are still sticking with the 3 inch aura things with the last upgrades and I don't think he will every lose the 3 inch range and I don't think Drinking contest is a thing that will ever disappear even if it's very inefficient or even relevant.

I don't think any of the design choices above are bad, but they hinge so much on poison distribution that he's just plain awful at.  I think there's a way to make him work while maintaining the design bullet points above. I'm going to write the following under the assumption that Wyrd doesn't touch the upgrades and address the ways the above design choices can be kept.

1. I think being poison dependent on his ability is actually fine, the issue I believe is that his poison distribution is absolutely garbage. He can't move conditions, he can only do it at range only once, and he does it at poison +2, which doesn't even fill the cap necessary for his other abilities. The drinking contest is also dependent on the opponent which is never a good sign. I think drinking contest either goes away or is a permanent ability. I think his zero actions need to be a poison distribution ability and not compete with anything else.  I think he really needs a 6 inch pulse poison cast. Just something to vary up the situation where the One for the Road is a single target movement method while the pulse is for enabling the moshpit point number 5. I don't even care if it does the backward stupid thing like the drinking contest where it heals the models.

2. on the topic of high value CA actions, I question the need for Obey to exist on his card. We already got Zoraida in the mix and nothing will nor should beat her in that regard I think. I understand the new upgrade is there to exclusively help with the Obey action, but I think Brewie just needs to expand his other casts and abilities. I understand that people don't want to lose Yasunori combo, but it kinda sucks that trichi-gets almost no real benefit from it. He's got so much masks built into everything that doesn't need masks built in. Would it kill for him to actually have some mask based triggers? I think swig -o shine desperately need some more trigger, because it's a pretty garbage action right now.

3. This is why I wanted the pulse ability. something to fill up the friendly poison resevoir and spread enemy poison. Brewmaster really has damn near nothing to do turn 1 or 2. Filling up monk defense stock or enabling turn 2 psuedo swift/reckless for moon shinobis would be such a nice help.

4. I'm actually very ok with Brewmaster being a complete pacifist. It's interesting challenge and if the poison support is good enough, I think the crew getting the work done for him is perfectly fine. if the poison distribution is also easy, then liver damage is also something worth taking as he digs at the enemy.

5. I gotta admit, I REALLY hate the 3 inch auras. I don't like the new upgrade's damage abilities, I hate drinking contest's range and I hate that drinking contest working properly means that I'm landlocked. But if we must keep the moshpit gameplay, I would wish that his defensive trigger was easier to use but less severe displacement. It really sucks for both sides on the table where nothing goes anywhere and nothing gets accomplished. I wish I can just move people out of the way so I can walk where I need to or push people with swills to set up for the rest of my crew. It's just really unfun for both parties involved.

 

TLDR: I want a poison pulse tactical action.

In many ways I agree. Brewmaster currently is one of the weakest masters in the game, and so it would be fine to give him a hand. And since he has a couple of upgrades that are never taken anyway, one way to do it might be to change one of those (The Good Stuff) to something like being able to discard a card at the beginning of the turn to use a (0) or just make the Drinking Contest always be on. That would really do something for him. It could be balanced a bit by as you mention removing Obey and perhaps adding more triggers to some of the actions. That would of course require his new upgrade to be reworked as well. It could for instance give a trigger to his other abilities that if it targets a friendly (Tri-Chi) model that model gets a build in suit of choice or just a mask until the beginning of his next activation. But this does border on a complete redesign.

I really like the Drinking Contest aura, it really makes him into something special, and there is some fun to be had in seing your opponents master just spending his or her entire activation shouting for another round. And his pacifist way of life should stay and in my opinion be furthered by The Good Stuff no matter what else might be done with him.

Right now, his defensive trigger might as well not be there, so that should definitely be reworked, especially if Obey goes. I think changing Obey to something more like the Nurses ability, or modifying Binge to be a bit more control-like so that it could be used to some positive effect on your own models or to give some control against enemy models, while also giving him the ability to throw masks or a suit of choice to friendly models would make him more interesting.

One posibility could also be to give him melee expert or even melee master allowing him to spread some poison in close proximity and possibly giving out a bit of Swill too.

 

[Nukemouse]

Well this is probably a crazy idea but i think one way to "fix" drinking contest (but only as part of a wider revamp) would be to extend its range greatly and just make it a WP duel on declaring an action or gain poison. No losing the action, no healing, just having the whole enemy crew chug if they declare actions within a giant bubble instead of the tiny bubble. Maybe then make the "on the house" action stronger for friendly models to take and also a larger aura. I don't know though this could all be stupid. I think Wyrd is worried new players will be unhappy about being stuck in drinking contest but its really not as annoying as challenge, paralyzing or the ever spooky "have my whole crew killed by turn 2".

[Omenbringer]

12 hours ago, Dominion said:

putting swill on shinobis is, most of the time, useless, you will always prefer putting it on enemy's, denying it's ability to cheat and giving the moon shinobi an effective MI7 with their green fists

1

This is my largest complaint with the Moon Shinobis. They don't have a method of generating their own modifiers (not damage) without the Brewmaster. Without this extra benefit, you are really paying a premium for severe damage potential of 4 compared to many other available models both in faction and out.

Again compare the Moon Shinobis against the Fermented River Monks targeting a model with multiple instances of Swill on it. The Fermented River Monks are going to come out ahead every time...the Brewmaster can provide Posion+2 as a 0 action (during those early turns when it is less important to have Drinking Contest up) making the Fermented River Monks match the Moon Shinobi's Df while also increasing their damage profile at all categories by 2 with their inbuilt trigger (which means their weak damage matches the Moon Shinobi's severe and also that  damage flips don't really matter anymore baring the possibility of that Black Joker showing up which is really a concern no matter which way or you affect the damage flip) for 1 attack, and they don't take damage from or lose the Poison Condition like the Moon Shinobi do.

If the Moon Shinobi could generate their own modifiers thru either a 0 action or accumulated Poison Condition then they could potentially edge out the Fermented River Monks but as is they really are the less optimal choice.

As always your experiences may differ and if nothing else the discussion may at least incite the Wyrdos to at least take another look at them for possible rebalancing.

[HellecticMojo]

8 hours ago, Runeman said:

In many ways I agree. Brewmaster currently is one of the weakest masters in the game, and so it would be fine to give him a hand. And since he has a couple of upgrades that are never taken anyway, one way to do it might be to change one of those (The Good Stuff) to something like being able to discard a card at the beginning of the turn to use a (0) or just make the Drinking Contest always be on. That would really do something for him. It could be balanced a bit by as you mention removing Obey and perhaps adding more triggers to some of the actions. That would of course require his new upgrade to be reworked as well. It could for instance give a trigger to his other abilities that if it targets a friendly (Tri-Chi) model that model gets a build in suit of choice or just a mask until the beginning of his next activation. But this does border on a complete redesign.

I really like the Drinking Contest aura, it really makes him into something special, and there is some fun to be had in seing your opponents master just spending his or her entire activation shouting for another round. And his pacifist way of life should stay and in my opinion be furthered by The Good Stuff no matter what else might be done with him.

Right now, his defensive trigger might as well not be there, so that should definitely be reworked, especially if Obey goes. I think changing Obey to something more like the Nurses ability, or modifying Binge to be a bit more control-like so that it could be used to some positive effect on your own models or to give some control against enemy models, while also giving him the ability to throw masks or a suit of choice to friendly models would make him more interesting.

One posibility could also be to give him melee expert or even melee master allowing him to spread some poison in close proximity and possibly giving out a bit of Swill too.

 

well you are heading into the upgrade territories. I specifically avoided doing those (yes kegger is pretty worthless, jesus christ, why doesn't it have have infiltration tri-chi?) because I figured there's a way to make things work for him with minimum work. I'm a very lazy fellow.

I also specifically avoided doing upgrades because I feel like all of them are bad due to the context of the Brewmaster's current statcard, not necessarily the upgrades themselves.

Binge: competing with Swill, honestly don't care. Sammy can have it and it's perfectly adequate. I would like if the discard was random, since everyone just ditches tomes for booz always.

Running Tab: Kegger is awful, but let's ignore that as what's done is done. Pay up: perfectly adequate for someone like Zipp who can go places or the new Mah Tucket, but absolute garbage for the moshpit that is brewmaster. How's he going to get there? He's stuck in the stupid moshpit.

Good Stuff: honestly, ok if brewie didn't have such awful, unreliable poison distributions to make the attack worth using in the first place. I don't need brewmaster to kill stuff, but the set up is so bad to use now.

Hold their hair back: Losing all poison while having no way of getting the 3 poison stack reliably. Again, awful poison distribution system dependent.

Barkeep never sleeps: again, no reliable poison spread to make this good. I'm not going to judge this whether it's rubbish due to being countered by the drinking contest healing. I think Wyrd doesn't want brewmaster to have damage, so I'm going to go in favor of that intent. It just kinda... "evens out" and if that's the goal, that It's perfectly adequate.

Friendly Ear: Explosive mixture is bad. No damage for you my friend. Friend of Drunkards: The flaw of everything hinges on the fact that Brewmaster has no mask triggers and unreliable poison distribution.

Drinking "Problem": So this is bit of a weird one. It's obviously meant for Fingers, but I think since it's open to tri-chi, needs some look for brewmaster himself. The lack of efficient healing is actually quite the conundrum. This is the upgrade that made me say that the poison pulse could be made to heal and I wouldn't care. Healing costs AP in a brewmaster list and it damages so I don't see why anyone would take this over quality mash liquor. It really is an upgrade that does nothing for anyone right now and I think it needs to be looked as a brewmaster upgrade rather than anyone else's.

Conflux of Inebriation: Thats the stuff. Again, where is the poison coming from? Better poison distribution please. Same with blind drunk.

 

So from what I can tell, vast majority of the problem lies with the brewmaster card. Every upgrade is meh to ok until you imagine all of them having a cost of +1 AP to them, opponent having no card, or opponent being an idiot and it all becomes irredeemable garbage.

Oh, I think I figured out what I want for defensive ability on brewmaster now. It came to me while typing this. Give him the whiskey golem defensive ability where they got to take a WP duel for end activation and +2 poison. or give them paralyze at much lower TN.

[Runeman]

23 hours ago, HellecticMojo said:

Oh, I think I figured out what I want for defensive ability on brewmaster now. It came to me while typing this. Give him the whiskey golem defensive ability where they got to take a WP duel for end activation and +2 poison. or give them paralyze at much lower TN.

That would be harsh if he kept his Wp shenanigans and his Drinking Contest.

When I think about it, giving him Melee Master and removing Obey would both improve his poison distribution, though only at very short range, and make him somewhat more versatile. If the Moon Shinobi were then given Embalmed or changed to not take damage from poison when using That's the Stuff, he could really use his additional attacks for something interesting, either giving poison to nearby enemies or to nearby Moon Shinobi / Fermented River Monks, with a chance of giving swill to the Moon Shinobi on top. He would probably still need to have something done to Hangovers to avoid it being his goto action.

Thematically it might be fine to change Obey to Lure, which would still be a really nice ability for him, though of course not quite as versatile. If you add in some trigger for poison or card discard, it might actually compete with Hangovers in some situations.

[anumberone]

 I like his obey as is since you still need a suit or poison to use it with the upgrade and Zoraida's new upgrade really expands her obey to be very powerful. She's still not the only obey master but she can get probably the best results from it. 

 I think mostly everyone agrees he needs a better way to passively spread poison to make several actions both on his card and thematic models work.

 I personally think he's too easy to neutralize. Besides finding extra slots for Stilts/hide in the mud that just don't seem worth taking in lieu of Binge and one or both new upgrades. Drinking contest ending at beginning of next activation might help. I also think changing "You're drunk, go home" to be a reverse squeel that pushes the enemy model up to 4 inches and give out poison 1 after resolving might help out a few issues. Make it on a tomes too so it doesn't conflict with all the masks, rams and to a lesser extent crows triggers we need in bulk.

[Nukemouse]

Looking at the TTB Core Rules Moon Shinobi are enforcers with some more wounds, drunk and reckless, no thats the stuff, protection from crits, roundhouse turned into a trigger for tiny green fists and rather than targeting wp with fists they have a wp targeting "have a drink" spell. I don't know if this provides any insight into how wyrd might change the moon shinobi or what changes people would want, but it does show a very different image of the same model.