The Zinc Lich

And this is why Justin is my favorite person.

Has anyone thought about pairing Brewmaster up with a Samurai? With Favor of Earth and Brewmaster's healing ability, he makes a pretty good discount tank, and Obey makes that Shoulder Gattling a pretty cool ranged attack. Between the Fermented River Monks and the Moon Shinobi, I think that the Shinobi are the pretty clear winners for "poison-using minions" role. Drunken Gremlin Kung Fu is just too good in too many ways, and they can really get into some positions that annoy the enemy with their push shenanigans. If you are planning on taking the Kegger upgrade, there's not a lot of reason to not swap your monks for ninjas. Can Sensei Yu use Disciple to copy Drinking contest? Because with Stumble, that is pretty freaking gross... plus he gets access to drunken kung fu, a way to dump poison off himself, and a big toolbox of other stuff.

First off: Sidir Alchibal. Poor guy has a name that seems to invite all kinds of creative mis-spellings. I think he is in the running for one of the best Henchmen in the game, personally. I agree with a lot of the things that people have been singing praises for throughout the thread, namely his accurate shooting, large AoE damage and slow, high wound count with reliable healing, and Ruthless. Promises is one of the most broadly powerful upgrades in the game in an elite-heavy list, which Ten Thunders gravitates towards, anyway. Sidir and three Samurai is serious business, everybody. He is also a premier point-holding model, thanks to his excellent stat line, Riposte, and Laugh Off. While he is guarding an objective, he can still project force outwards with his excellent gun. All you need to do is top up his resilience a little, and he is a nightmare to get to budge. Fortunately, Ten Thunders has stuff to help with that, like McCabe's Strangemetal Shirt, Yan Lo's Trancendence, and Shenlong's free Defensive. He doesn't cover ground quickly, but Ten Thunders is number 2 on the list of factions with good push effects, so you shouldn't feel too put upon. By Your Side does increase the ground he can cover, as well, even if that isn't its major purpose.

Derp, you're right. I don't know why I thought it was a placement effect. Looks like I owe some people "sorry I cheated" chocolates... I suppose it does still help with forests and smoke clouds, which isn't nothing...

Yes, Street Fighter 2 is responsible for the "combo" system that we take for granted nowadays (technically, it is responsible for the idea of "linking", but this isn't a fighting games thread). You know what else originated in Street Fighter 2? Guile's handcuff glitch Look, the fact is that, barring tournament judges disagreeing, you have successfully argued that Mah's Let Mah Handle This exploit is, in fact, legal. With the wording on Temporal Shift the way it is, I guess the official ruling on broken clauses is that the rest of the ability resolves as normal. I'm fine with that; I haven't seen any uses of the exploit that really dramatically change game balance, and I don't want to throw out a bunch of rules that work well for one that sounds a little bit fishy. I understand Wyrd's reluctance to errata wording. Doing so would mean they need to print out new cards, and there will be confusion between people who have the original cards and those that have new ones. It also means that people that frequent the website will have a different set of rules known than those that just want to play out of the box. Errata-ing is really a last resort option in something like a tabletop game, so the real question is, does Mah's new (0) push her power level too high up the curve? Let's be honest with ourselves, Mah hasn't really been blowing up the tournament scene. She is, in fact, the only Gremlin master that I haven't seen people swapping stories about how awesome she is. A six inch push makes her faster and, for all intents and purposes, impossible to pin down in melee, but it costs her a card to do so. If the ability had been printed on her card as it works now, I wouldn't have batted an eye.

Stuff like this does sort of make me shake my head. It's pretty obviously a rules oversight from Wyrd, but their minimal errata stance means that it probably won't be fixed. It doesn't make a lot of thematic sense for the action, really. The ability moves Mah to a friendly model, then moves that friendly model. What we are doing is pedantically arguing the meaning of "target" so Mah can get a new ability: "(0): discard a card, push Mah Tucket up to six inches in any direction." While I don't think that it is a particularly game breaking new ability, it is nonetheless not something she was meant to have, and she only has it because of ambiguous wording. Unfortunately, RAW reading of it does mean she can target herself with it, so I will have to let it slide if someone tries it against me. I will just be rolling my eyes every time that it does, same as I do when Metal Gamin start with the flaming headbutt exploit. Really, that's what we are talking about here: exploits. In the past, I played a lot of fighting games, and I can't think of one I played that did not have some sort of weird game engine flaw that could be exploited to add more tools to characters' arsenals. The community, as a whole, accepted all but the most egregious of these because, in the end, once the game is out, the author's intentions only carry so much weight. Until we get clarification from a Wyrd rep, I'm afraid that Mah has a (0) push. Somewhat amusingly, we're having a similar fight in the Guild forum ( http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/108287-guild-mcmouning-core-crew/ ). There is argument over whether or not an action continues to function after one of the clauses is rendered impossible. A score of - is not a score of zero, it represents a models' total lack of ability in that area. The argument goes that you can't push - inches, so the rest of the ability fizzles out. In McMourning's case, I am comfortable saying that Injection simply results in a 0-inch push, but it does bring up an interesting conversation to have: How do people feel about house ruling that you can't take actions that result in impossible clauses? It would kill this interaction, and (maybe) Injecting traps. Are there any other cases like this?

Ah, but the trap is not performing a walk action. It is being pushed a number of inches up to its walk statistic. Due to the fact that it doesn't have a walk stat, its value is "0", resulting in a 0-inch push. You ready to have you mind blown? The Clockwork Trap is NOT insignificant. It can't activate, but there's nothing saying that it can't perform (1) interact actions. It is actually a viable target for OTAOTGS...ILST (we need a better abbreviation). be aware that, although they are significant, they are still Peons, which means they can't take part in Cursed Object or Distract, but you can totally use them to drop or destroy scheme markers.

Yeah, I think that you are going to hear a lot of "Witchling, Nurse, generic beater" on this. Witchling Stalkers and Nurses are pretty much the best combo in the game, in my opinion. My personal choice for the beat stick is the Peacekeeper (I am so excited to get that model, you guys have no idea). because the Nurse's Downers are split into two parts, you can use the Stalker to purge the negative twist off of it while keeping the armor +2. Armor +4 is serious buisness, and it benefits from all the stuff that MacMourning can do a lot better than the Executioner. Why do I say skip the Executioner? Well, MacMourning's Injection, his major speed boosting skill, works a lot better on a model with Wk 5 and flurry than Wk 4 and Trail of Gore. The Peacekeeper deals more damage, more reliably, moves faster, has a gun, and is more survivable than the Executioner, and the big things he brings to the table, namely the trigger denial and instant kill trigger are redundant in a MacMourning crew because the Exorcist exists. The Excorcist brings two really big things to a McM list. Number one: Damning Oratory. Undead and Spirit models within 3 inches can't declare triggers. McM's Plastic Surgery upgrade makes everything within 3 inches undead. Now McM himself can ignore triggers on the stuff he is in melee with, and he is a much more reliable melee killer than the Executioner. As an added bonus, enemies that survive will have their offensive triggers suppressed by the aura, as well. Number two: Banish to Oblivion. While the Excorcist's melee weapon is nothing to write home about, it does have the same instant kill-style trigger the Executioner has, making it surprisingly relevant as a melee threat. Just make sure to keep him out of the Plastic Surgery aura, because it *will* turn him Undead, subjecting him to his own Damning Oratory. All of this is on a model that is two soulstones cheaper than the Executioner, which moves faster and also brings a pretty nifty gun that covers the one defense McM's precision doesn't cover: Incorporeal. Other dirty, dirty things to keep in mind for MacMourning: -Injection just says "target friendly model". Clockwork Traps are valid targets, and they are immune to Poison, meaning that you can drop scheme markers on the center line very easily. You don't get to move them, though, due to the fact that they don't have a Wk score. -The Watcher's Relay Information action can allow McMourning to pass through walls using the This One's Ready trigger on his Scalpel Slingin' and Rancid Transplant actions, and he can use Injection to change its vantage point during his activation.

So I was doing some deep thinking about the factional identity of the Outcasts, and it kept leading me back around to Misaki and this discussion we've been having about her role in the faction line up. See, here's the thing: I've been combing over matchups and the more I look at it, the more I realize that, next to the Guild, the Outcasts are, by far the most linear faction. Rathnard hits upon it in his "the Professor Pontificates" in Wyrd Chronicles 10; "the Outcasts don't have many good movement effects". Next to, perhaps, the Guild, we have the most predictable angles of attack. The Vikotrias are very good at jockeying for a good charge angle, but it doesn't change the fact that the majority of their movement is going to be an 8-inch charge, which is subject to all the terrain rules in the game. You can take Scramble to increase the pure range and to avoid penalties for rough terrain, but there are certain terrain setups that just give the Viktoria's trouble, like impassable terrain or enemy models that don't allow a linear path between them. We do have a some incorporeal models, as well as a smattering of Augmented Jumps and Flight, all of which synergizes very well with Know the Terrain. In my opinion, Scout the Field is the single most important upgrade in the Outcast arsenal. Where the Guild has Watchers and the dreaded Austringer to cover their weakness to unusual approach angles, we have models like Ama no Zako and the Strongarm Suit. What Misaki brings to the table is the strength of the Ten Thunders faction: asymmetrical warfare. Misaki can squeeze through gaps that the Viktora's can't with Diving Charge, she can attack around corners Leveticus can't get to with Next Target, and Stalking Bisento and Scout the Field both give her ways of attacking models in places that other models in the faction couldn't dream of engaging. Torakage are nimble. Although their raw charge distance isn't remarkable, they're impossible to pin down or block with your models, and Smoke and Shadows gives them access to a cross-the-board teleport and, more importantly, LoS denial to prevent the opponent from engaging the more traditional members of your crew on terms that favor them. One good smokebomb has more impact on game tempo than a lot of the things masters do. Misaki covers a weakness the Outcast faction has that isn't really apparent from staring at the cards: our threat ranges are very good, but the way we approach is pretty predictable. We suffer from having a lot of straight lines in our faction, and Misaki can create better lanes for those linear approaches with judicious use of smoke bombs and she can cover a lot of the wonky angles that factions like Neverborn otherwise have free range to approach from. I'm glad this thread got me to sit and think more about Misaki; the more time I spend working with her, the more I appreciate what she brings to the table.

So I was sitting around and mashing models together in my head, as I tend to do, and I was wondering about the Nurse's Hallucinogens. It states that a model's Ml actions deal +2 damage, which is simple enough, I suppose. The question is, how does this interact with Ml actions that don't result in traditional damage flips? Let's say Taelor gets medicated, and uses Hammer Fall. The primary target suffers 5/6/8 damage and then everything nearby takes a Df test. Do the models that fail that test take 3 damage, or 5 damage? A Low River Monk gains Hallucinogens and hits someone with Over the Pebbles. Does the target still take no damage, or does it take a total of 2 purely from the hallucinogens? A Guild Guardian somehow ends up on drugs and misses a shield attack. It gets the Shield Press trigger though, so it deals either 1 damage or 3 damage, depending on the Hallucinogens ruling. Does the damage from a trigger count as being caused by the action itself, or is it a separate instance? Although technically not a question about hallucinogens, there is another thing I'm wondering about that is related to that last question. Let's say that Abuela Ortega fires her shotgun at a Rider and uses the Slug trigger. Does the Rider's defensive trigger reduce the damage from the attack but not the trigger, from the total damage dealt by the attack, or from the attack and the trigger separately? Deep thoughts.

I think that, to be honest, the big problem with 10TB being Last Blossoms was Protect Our Holdings. I can't help but speculate the ability to move Brothers anywhere on the table when the enemy moves minions out to remove your scheme markers, then returning to the fray if the enemy gives up on it. The only weakness they have is that, while they are pretty good at a bunch of different things, they can only do one well at a time, and making it less costly to use them for multiple things might have been a little bit much.

I literally had never thought of it until you mentioned it. Weird, I always think about it as something you get if Leveticus manages to have four Abominations running at the same time. I suppose the only hurdle the DE has to clear is the fact that it costs as much as Killjoy, and there aren't a lot of situations where the DE looks like the better choice. That being said, I'm not a big fan of the fat man, and I do kind of like the immense card drain dealing with the Desolation Engine is. Looks like I know what the next couple of games I play are going to be.

I personally like to take at least two heavy hitters when I'm taking Tara. I love the Nothing Beast, but the unfortunate truth is that it is going to be spending most of the game off the table. It is just too delicate (even with Void Shield) to be used as a catch-all elite melee combatant. One of Tara's biggest strengths is being able to make sure her important pieces are not valid targets during critical enemy activations. Sometimes, especially if the enemy gets activation control and can delay someone like Sonnia or Rasputina's activation until NB hits the board, you just have to accept that you either need to keep it in the ground or lose it to retaliation before you can re-bury it. Having a really brawly piece you can throw into the middle of the crew makes for more situations where it is safe for NB to do its thing. They can kill or engage threats to the NB. They demand the engagement of the enemy crew, allowing you time to set up the perfect Nothing Beast charge. They can also absorb some of the opponent's attention and AP during those time where the Nothing Beast exists, making it more likely for it to survive long enough to re-bury and heal. If I only take one beatstick in the list, it will not be the Nothing Beast. I, personally, like Taelor. People don't really shoot at Tara after the first couple of Through the Holes, so the only real time I find myself using stones as Tara is for the suits on her Obliteration Symbiote when I don't have a card in hand. Taylor can be a pain to take down if there are extra soulstones she can use for prevention, and she brings a pile of nice triggers (especially one to ignore armor, which the Nothing Beast does not like to see) on a decent pair of attack options. Faces in the Void fixes her main weakness: her wk of 4. She also sometimes just shuts down a summoner with her (0) action, which is a nice feeling when it happens. Bishop is probably better from a raw rules perspective: charge-flurry or flurryx2 and the option to target enemy Wp is just way too good, but I keep coming back to Taelor, possibly because I love having the flexibility of having soulstones and Tara doesn't mind if Taelor borrows some.

Agreed. The real reason everyone loves Leveticus is not because he kills what he wants and is impossible to kill himself (though that is part of it, to be sure), but because he has such an enormous hiring pool to choose from. No matter what kind of schemes or strategies are on the table, no matter what faction he's facing, no matter what kind of playstyle a player is looking for, Leveticus can take the perfect crew for it. Nobody who has access to Crooligans (especially since he can teleport to them) can be accused of having a slow crew. I agree that VonSchill is definitely the right choice for the Guild matchup. He easily cuts Sonnia's effectiveness by about 2/3 by completely removing her ability to spread burning with blasts and providing a reliable answer to stacking burning, while not really being vulnerable to anything the other masters bring. His crew fights perfectly happily from behind cover, forcing Perdita to choose between Bullet Bending and True Mark, they can keep Lady Justice comfortably at range, they bring enough anti-armor stuff to mess with Hoffman... People need to get over VonSchill's aura. It is good, yes, but it isn't like the crew can't function outside of it. I bring Freikorps in plenty of crews where they don't have access to HtK and +1 Wp, and they seem to do just fine. I'm not sure that I agree with your point about Misaki being too much of a generalist. Because she has above-average resilience and the ability to easily use terrain to block LoS for retaliation, she has a different class of models that she specializes in killing, as opposed to the Viks. Because of Mark of She'Zuul and Sisters in Fury, the Viktorias specialize in removing the hardest part of the opponent's list while Whirlwinding away anything that gets caught in the crossfire. Misaki, on the other hand, is best nibbling the edges of the opponent's crew, killing anything that moves away from the main body while still being fast enough to be relevant afterwards. There are a lot of Enforcers and cheap Henchmen that a Viktoria would be overkill for that Misaki is perfect for dispatching, after which she can place herself in such a way that she can survive retaliation where a Vik could not. Its not as corner case as a lot of people think. I've been trying to think of a good metaphor for the differences between the two of them; I agree that Misaki is a scalpel, but the Viktorias feel more like a rocket launcher to me. Of course the rocket launcher is more dramatic, and more out-and-out powerful, but you certainly have to make your one shot count a little better than with a scalpel.

Do you mind sharing why you think this is? In my experience, the Viktorias are the the opposite of brawlers; you don't ever want them to end their activation in melee with anything. Misaki on the other hand, has better stats across the board, a pile of (albeit situational) survival options, and all the tools necessary to extract herself from melee if things get messy. I mean, when I think masters I would describe as brawlers, I think about Lady Justice, McMourning, or Ironsides; masters that can take hits while dishing out damage. They trade the ability to get to whatever target they want (yes, I know McMourning has Belles, let's put that aside for a moment) for resilience that makes the opponent think twice about attacking them. In my view, they are both assassin-type masters. They both have high melee damage output, yes, but more importantly, they both have tools to engage in melee on their own terms. Because they can dictate when melee happens (via Misaki's Diving Charge and Next Target, and the Vik's Sisters in Spirit), they can stay out of range of models they don't want to engage while the models they do have trouble hiding from them. Misaki trades pure killing power for better tools to survive reprisal when she does come in, but their game plan is pretty much the same. The fact that they have very similar table presence is sort of the reason why we're only really talking about Misaki now, on the road to book three. People on the boards have always talked about how they have trouble fitting her into their lineup when the Viks do her job more dramatically, with a flavor that a lot of people feel is more "true" to the Outcast faction. For better or worse, Misaki is Ten Thunders first, Outcast distant second.

Unfortunately, Gremlins are a totally new faction that very few people, in the beginning, wanted to playtest. The power level on their stuff is all over the place, and, at some point, people are going to figure out what is on the top of that power curve, and they will be unholy terrors to play against. I understand that they are supposed to be a high risk/high reward faction, but I fear that the tools they have to mitigate the risks on their random stuff is just a little bit too strong. On the other hand, that is the reason why pretty much all of the new models in the recent beta were balanced around making Mei Feng more competitive and do comparatively little for the faction as a whole. Sorry, Gremlin players, but I think your toys from the first two books are a little bit too shiny, which means you'll be getting coal over the next few books.

Honestly, I'd be more tempted to bring Misaki against Arcanists than Guild. I find that Guild crews that rely on shooting *will* bring tools to shore up their weakness to cover and LoS blocking, but Arcanists don't really have that luxury. Rasputina and Ramos, especially, are easy to frustrate with smoke bombs; Rasputina can't Ice Mirror through models she can't see, nor can Ramos summon spiders if his vision is blocked. All of his crazy buff auras disappear, as well. Marcus doesn't particularly care about LoS blocking, but his minions are among the most killable in the faction and, assuming you bring her defensive schtick, Misaki is pretty much impossible to get into melee if she doesn't want to be there. She's also so fast that Collette might have trouble staying away from her. Then again, there is the fact that Misaki has a tendency to bounce off of stuff with armor, and I have yet to see an Arcanist crew that doesn't bring at least a little bit... More than picking Misaki to counter certain factions, I think she's more valuable as a resource on certain terrain setups. I think about taking her on boards that have a lot of blocking terrain and short, small alleys. Anywhere you can block off LoS to large portions of the board with a single smoke bomb is a great boon for her, and her ability to Next Target around corners makes Deadly Dance and Disguise that much more frustrating for opponents to deal with. Outcast Misaki can take Scout the Field, which makes blocking terrain a *fantastic* weapon to use against the enemy because you can just ignore it, and she has access to the best healing in the game, making her nigh-impossible to kill if she can reliably break LoS to heal up between engagements. Those same boards are great for Leveticus, but let's pretend he isn't around for this conversation. TT Misaki definitely beats Outcast Misaki for pure killy-ness, but Outcasts have some of the best defensive stuff in the game. Surely we can get some mileage out of it.

Honestly? Your Misaki list seems a little bit... scattered. I think you would have a lot more success if you added a little bit more support to the various models in the crew. For instance, instead of taking one Tengu and one Oiran, you can take two Tengu. They can use Shooting Star to leapfrog up the field *extremely* fast, leaving a trail of scheme markers behind them. Or, you can take two Oiran and put Smoke and Shadows on Misaki and Hidden Agenda on the Samurai or Izamu. Oiran are way better when they are Fast, Focused, and able to teleport around the board/block line of sight. I'd echo everyone recommending the Lone Swordsman. Misaki is really good at getting to and killing stuff that is not really tough, but she kind of bounces off stuff that has a lot of Armor. The Lone Swordsman can kill the heck out of something, no matter how tough it is. They go together like peanut butter and chocolate, in my eyes.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think Lady J and Killjoy are a pretty good match. It takes a really inordinate amount of force to kill either of them, due to their big pile of wounds and free healing. Against factions that traditionally rely on melee to kill things, namely Ressers and Neverborn, if they commit enough to kill Lady Justice before she can heal/murder everything in reach, they will have balled up a pile of their crew for Killjoy to sweep up. Likewise, Killjoy can be used as a forward tarpit while Lady Justice sets up for a charge. You can't ignore Killjoy while he is in the face of your crew, and if you devote your forces to killing him, Lady J can charge in and delete everything they sent to kill him. The double-melee beater punch is literally my major play with Outcast Tara. If you try and remove Taelor, you will be trading all the pieces you send for it to the Nothing Beast. I don't see why it wouldn't work here, as well. As an aside, I just realized that she is the single best target in the game for the Guild's unloved defensive pieces. The Guardian's Guard ability *triples* your chances of getting a riposte trigger, and the Hard to Wound provided by the Lawyer's Impassioned Defense spell becomes more useful the more a model's defensive capabilities skew towards wounds than Df. H2W is way better on Justice (df 5, wd 14) than on Perdita (df 7, wd 10). I hate you guys for interesting me in literally the only Guild master I was taking a pass on. Hate.

I think this is the secret power that Winged Plagues are going to bring to Outcasts. Wk 6, flying, armor 1 models for 4 stones are nothing to sneeze at. They are certainly worthy options to consider if you don't have Void Wretches hanging around. Of course, then you go from Plagues to Hamelin, and from Hamelin to Crooligans, and then you're sliding back down into the filth pit...

Yeah, it is pretty crazy how dominant Leveticus is in the Outcast boards. He is literally in every person's master selection pool, usually with Jack Daw and the Viktorias. I don't think I've heard anyone even mention Von Schill's name in the last few months, and I've never played against him. Misaki is also at a pretty low play percent, from what I can see, although there are people at least interested in changing that. It doesn't help that Leveticus is one of the best masters in the game, with a rich, rewarding pile of tools at his disposal combined with being, for all intents and purposes, unkillable. The five-turn game that balances out summoning master's ability to bring infinite forces to the table, unfortunately, swings Leveticus' survivability really far...

The Viktorias and Misaki are... less shenanigany? I call shenanigans on this list of shenanigans! I love me some Hamelin, but I don't really think he belongs in the top percentile of shenanigan-ers. Aside from weird activation stuff (which any Outcast master can do if they bring his themed crew), he mostly just gives other people's shenanigans the middle finger as opposed to doing cool stuff all by his lonesome. Aside from that, I don't disagree with anything else on the list.

So, we have seen another Beta cycle come and go, we have had a few weeks with new (rebalanced) strategies, and new blood has been flowing in, brought in by the sweet, sweet lure of Wyrd's gorgeous models. Has anyone else noticed a shift in the metas they play in, either local or general? From my experience, as Gremlins get more releases, people are flocking to them for the humor value and the pure, unadulterated winning power they bring with them. No other faction has gotten as many "Wait, that does what? Let me see that card!" as Gremlins have, and they have yet to even get their shiniest toys. With the release of the book two upgrades, Ten Thunders player's opinions on minions have suddenly skewed away from the various cross-faction models towards the in faction ones: Samurai, TT Archers, and Oiran have had their good names restored by creative upgrade use, proving that Wyrd's upgrade scheme is pretty smart.