Necromorph

And some are aMarcus.

Kidding.

Kind of.

Is put him under the"focus on what they already do" category, but...yeah...its still amarcus, haha.

Curious to see how nico will do with his avatar. I mean, he's one of the few that can get an easy turn 2 manifest, and he can be summoning 2-3 punk zombies per turn so long as the walking corpse engine keeps going. Plus he gets a bit faster, and keeps his 2 offensive spells. I'll be trying him Monday, so we'll see.

This is not the case. Some of the best avatar are on the current better masters, some of the best avatars are on mediocre masters. Some of the worst/middle ground masters also got the worst avatars. There's no correlation.

Sadly, yeah, this is the case. In some cases, the avatars of great masters aren't that desired (I.e. colette) and some definitely brought the master into line with better crews...like ramos. Some just focused more on doing what they already did, as in the case of hamelin and Pandora.

Ugh, yeah I think I only have 12, I need to buy at least 2 more blisters. I've got too many damn crews, hard to keep up with all this stuff, haha.

Honestly, after seeing Ramos and Raspy's avatars in action, I'd say that Ramos is an auto-include...always, and Raspy is rather situational. As was said earlier, there is no reason not to take Ramos' avatar, he's probably the most balanced of them. He does everything the normal Ramos does, but has most of his weaknesses corrected.

Raspy is a bit different. ARasputina is primarily melee, and most of the crews I've seen her with are primarily ranged (gunsmiths, silent ones, etc...with only SnSt being able to hit anything decently in melee). She seems great against really fast melee based crews (i.e. Kirai, dreamer, etc) who can get to you before you can shoot them, but otherwise...i'm not so sure. The ability to sacrifice any Ht2 model is pretty boss, and just the threat of that will make opponents think twice about getting close to her, even if she hasn't manifested yet...I had a full wd Shikome get eaten by this when I failed to kill her Master form...I was a sad sad Necro. As a side note, getting her into a swarm of rats wouldn't do anything...as they would just come back...and vs hamelin's avatar, you would be getting blight counters x #of rats each time. Last game I played with him I hit SnSt for 30wd with a bleeding disease after killing my rat swarm a couple times, pretty gross.

Marcus, though he doesn't seem like anything particularly amazing, would be an autoinclude, personally. Like Ramos, I don't see a reason not to take him.

Colette...well...idk, yeah it's nice for keeping her alive and getting some more actions, but losing any consistent way to generate ss seems like a big loss to me. Sure, card shenanigans seem great, but your Duet and Cassandra are going to be hurting without all those ss. Then again, I haven't seen her played in her A form yet, so we'll see.

Rats generate off of anything...anything...that is killed within 6" of Hamelin or a Rat catcher. They also generate off of your Stolen when they are killed OR sacrificed (which you do quite often with Hamelin) regardless of where they are.

Hamelin's Avatar can (0) to summon up to 3.

OFC there's also the option of starting with lots of rats as well.

Last 35ss game I played I started with 5, and ended the game with 15-17.

Normally starting with lots of rats isn't advised, but I was trying his Avatar, and he seems to do best with a huge rat swarm.

Can't wait to get Pale and Mech riders for Levi!!1

Yeah, though, I'd say Pale rider and wardens will be pretty damn awesome with Hoffman...Mech not so much mostly due to OOF cost and what you get out of it for that many ss.

While I do agree that popping a half dozen bayou gremlins in and just focus-pelting everything to death is pretty decent...I just love the Lacroix so much.

I'm starting to do test runs of the outcasts' avatars, and I'll likely do somer next (so far I've only done Hamelin...ewwww 30wd bleeding diesease on Snow Storm...be afraid of that mofo).

I'm probably just going to run him with my Lacroix (not that I have much else). I feel like if you go for the turn 2 manifest and then just pull him along with "Oooh a girl" he can provide some great buffs, some decent summoning when he gets to combat, and just be a big tank/pain in the ass while the Lacroix set up for shooting.

^ That I dont get where people have got this whole Nico is so bad he's not even worth considering from..

If you play him as a straight summoner, he's not great, as too many units don't drop counters and you're gimping yourself against 70% of crews. However, played as an offensive master, he's pretty damn good. High Ca with a spell that straight up paralyzes things? Yes please! A spell that can do dg with blasts and heal at the same time...hellz yeah. Super buffed punk zombies are nice too .

@Calmdown

Just to clarify, I didn't say ressers couldn't win tournaments, I said "a ton of tournaments" poorly worded, I agree...but I meant that as a roundabout way of saying "are they going to consistantly top the tournament charts"...which, it seems we both agree is unlikely.

we are too reliant on our opponents.

Bingo.

Which is why I've moved my Ressers away from summoning pretty strongly. I run solid lists that can stand up to punishment and run screens for the master to do their thing. If I do start losing models, sure, maybe summon something to get my model count back up. Mcm's in combat? Sure, summon a RN into the middle of their crew. Nico needs more activations, or needs to tie something up? Why not summon a PZ into melee with something to buy myself some time. Basically, I've moved summoning to a very* situational thing instead of the focus of the crew.

As for being competitive, I agree with a lot of people in this post, on both sides of the argument. Can ressers be comepetitive, sure, to an extent. Are they going to win tons of tournaments, probably not, but they easily have the opportunity to place top 3 often. Local Meta's are huge for ressers, as certain crews do more hurt to us than others, but there's nothing glaringly wrong with ressers that makes them uncompetitive. However, bad matchups (with the exception of vs. Kirai) usually effect all the masters and not just 1-2.

Riders will be awesome with him, and I would plan on buying all 4 at some point (I know I will!).

Ryle hasn't done squat for me, but the new Lazarus model from book 3 seems to be a much better ranged construct for him if you're going for shootiness with Levi and Alyce.

I still need to buy more SPA's but 6 should be OK unless you plan on running Ashes and Dust in which case I'd have at least 8.

Other than that, you seem to have a pretty solid group of models for Levi.

Right, it'd be kinda lopsided if it was just Simu vs Seamus...throw mcm in there and it gets interesting. Granted, you'd have to burn high cards for the terror resists, but if you could pass the duels I think mcm and Simu would prolly win.

Ramos is "and/or"

Idk, the way I keep reading it, you would still have to cast one of the spells twice.

It's spell x (twice) and/or spell y (twice)...I think the and/or is implying you have options, and not forcing you to do one or the other (or do one specifically before the other), and also pointing to the fact that you can cast both of them in 1 turn, so by t2 you could have both of them cast twice. I know there are other avatars with manifest req's or minions with spells that say and/or, but because it's naming spells by name, in that context, I don't think it's the same. With as good as Ramo's avatar is...I don't think it's that easy.

Ramos is pretty easy, but I think somer is likely the easiest.

He really only has like 3 abilities that deal with pigs, the rest are general buffs or gremlins buffs. He will likely be beat in a standard gremlins list, but he had plenty of synergy across the board....should be pretty awesome for all varieties of lists.

I don't know how many of you all have book 3...but it sure does seem like Som'er's avatar kicks ass...especially for an all comers kinda list. I mean, hell, I'd even use him with my Lacroix's just for the buffs, and something big to tank / distract my opponent from the big, shooty kin gunline waiting to blow them to itty bitty pieces.

I think he's asking why the spell is referencing an action that can't be done. A (0) spell cannot be channeled, so the reference to it is what is causing confusion (if I'm understanding the situation right).

Pretty much what I got from it, haha. Looks (just a guess) like it was a copy of the wording for the lure bonuses from belles/lilitu and that part was accidentally not omited.

In time another faction will most likely eclipse them in their turn.

This has been brought up rather directly and indirectly in this thread and others. I'm curious as to what people think will happen to the other factions to "bring them in line" or "eclipse" the NB?

Its possible, sure, but if they continue to design each faction based on the current trends for those factions, then little will likely change, barring a unlikely addition of insane minions that are so strong that they can break/make irrelevant other crews' synergies just through sheer power, but without having any of their own synergy. I say this, because as has been pointed out, NB do have strong synergy, it's a core foundation of NB imo, but the other factions are not designed like NB, they focus on other things (I'm not saying they don't have any trans-master synergy, but it's not as largely focused upon), but this "across the board" synergy we're talking about just happens to be one hell of a strong factor in the game as it is now.

Models like the Exorcist are patches that shore up big gaps in some faction's designs that leave them more vulnerable to certain things than others. However, these little patch minions will not stop the NB from having synergy, and they don't really give their own crews a whole lot of direct "synergy" they're just a means to an end in the eternal quest for balance.

Unless they start making all of the crews have wicked, across the board synergy like NB, then I'm not sure we will see that much of a power swing in further books. We could also see NB just get garbage minions while everyone else gets awesome ones in a future book, but will that really be enough? More importantly.....that really isn't very likely to happen though is it?

So back to my question, what do you think, faction / minion design and progression wise, would really tip the balance and see a faction knock NB from their top spot?

Tbh, I always forget he can use them, lol. I will probably start running them when I get back into outcasts some more. The only issue is that I'm trying to test his avatar, and unfortunately it seems like you would want rats and rat catchers when using him, which forces you back into those traditional Hamelin lists.

Not a whole lot really. The best things are-

Canine Remains

Terror Tots

Crooligans (book3)

Effigies (book3)

Guild Hounds (though they're far less desireable than the other 4).

I must have missed part of the discussion, but I'll throw my 2c in with Lalo, and nothing against you Jonas, I just happen to agree with the core of Lalo's argument.

So, yeah, all masters play different, but their core models will not be the same as often. Would you run an Ice Golem with Colette, no, all smart-assery aside. You can however, run the Twins, stitched, Nekima, Coppelius, etc, with 3/4 if not all of the masters in NB. Then, depending on which master they are used with, the crew plays completely different even with the same / similar core models. If you have a guild list with the same core models, you can guess that they will probably be shooting at you a lot, even if LJ is the master, the crew (barring the occasional model like the executioner) will likely be pew pewing away. With the exception of Kirai, many of the ressers use similar models, and the crews work just about the same (unless you run a ton of belles with seamus, but people expect belles) with the master fulfilling a different role. Kirai is the x-factor for ressers, but thats 1/4 that could throw you off, not the whole faction. Sticking with that line of thinking, if you expected Kirai, and got Nico as a matchup, you may still be able to make it work..."Ok, so the Viks crew with all Magical weapons won't be as effective, but I can use the Viks speed to outmaneuver the slow undead, while Taelor and Johan....blahblahblah," or something along those lines (please noone get hung up on the models I used in that example, they were the first things with Magical Weapons that popped to mind). NB capitalize on those kinds of odd matchups because all of their masters are generally pretty strong and manipulative. If they encounter a slightly off comp, they are much more likely to succeed at cripling a force that isn't positioned to deal with their specific master.

Outcasts are just as varied, but you can't cross over models, so it's a bit of a different examaple. Sure they're just as hard to counter initially, but then again, once the cat's out of the bag as to which master said player is running, there really aren't that many surprises they can throw out.

Yeah, I think NB do benefit more from it. Each NB master has a completely different way to go about denying you your objectives while maintaining the speed to complete theirs. As I said in my earlier post, it's hard to take an "all comers" list against anyone, especially the neverborn, and if you screw up hiring, the neverborn will take you apart if you get even a bit of a mismatch.

Not that their aren't isolated examples of this for other factions, (mostly the book 2 masters) but in with NB, it's not just 1/4 of the masters that could throw you off if you build your crew to counter the 3/4, it's all 4/4 masters being completely different in their operation and that much harder to predict.

No problem. Levi is tough to learn, he was my first master, and it took me a long time to learn malifaux and all the wired things he does at the same time haha.

Unfortunately this doesn't work. 1- Levi's spells can only be cast on enemy models and corpse counters, so you cant just blast a canine remain for a waif, you need to kill it first to make it a corpse counter and than make a waif. 2-Stolen are soulless models, meaning they are not living and do not drop counters.

I believe, (and please, Hatchet, feel free to correct me if I guessed wrong, haha) that this thread was created in response to a section of the debate in the "Neverborn Blahblahwhatever" thread.

I'm probably going to screw this all up, but here goes. The neverborn faction, imo, feels very...well...strong in the "Choosing Crews" phase. The point being that, you can generally expect certain things from most factions (with the exception of Outcasts but that's a bit different, and neverborn). Because all of the neverborn masters are very competitive (strong, good, blah blah, don't get hung up on that word to mean that I'm only refering to tournaments here), but have wildly different play styles, you could find yourself with a crew that is ill suited to take on dreamer, but may have been perfect to take on Lilith, for example. The problem is, all of the neverborn masters are strong enough to capitalize on things like that, and this makes it much less likely that an opponent will make due with a crew designed to take on (example) the dreamer but you get stuck playing pandora. That being said, because of the specific strengths of each NB master, if you try to make an all comers list, the models that aren't good counters to whatever master you end up playing against will likely be the only things left on the table in short order.

I'm not sure if this is making any sense, but basically I know if I'm paired against Guild, that i'm going to get shot, so I take models that can close that 12-18" gap quickly and get in their face(or something along those lines). With neverborn there is no "faction standard" like that. Sure many NB crews will use the same minions (twins, stitched, etc), but they use them in very different ways depending on the Master. Neverborn are very master centric and the overall flow of their game is determined by the master with a similar, strong, core group of models...IMO anyways.

I'm not saying that that makes Hatchet's suggestion any more or less valid, but I'm just putting it in perspective as this thread was created in a vacum outside of the original argument, and it doesn't look the same without references or when you step back and take all the other factions into consideration.