Fetid Strumpet

Maybe because she can hire belles as well as Horrors...? I don't know, I realize I'm not the greatest at actually discovering synergies, but I'm not seeing much synergy between the Horrors and Belles currently released and Molly. Not anywhere near the ridiculousness of Collodi, although to be fair not many henchman have a ton of synergy anyway with their appointed Special Forces. Kaeris might come close though. As to why she doesn't seem to get any love, given Wyrd's release schedule it was bound to happen that one of the Henchman would fall along the roadside in the quest to flesh-out their forces. Molly just had the bad luck to be sitting on the sidewall of the truckbed when they hit a pothole. I doubt very highly that is has been intentional.

I was under the impression that if the Leader of the Special forces was in the crew, regardless of wether they are the leader of the crew or not, that restriction was waived. Molly doesn't need to be the leader, she just needs to be in the crew to lift the limit, correct?

Crooligans also have the Scout ability, so they are not affected by severe terrain.

I'll try to be there.

September for Kaeris.

Hey Nilus, very sorry for the late notice but I'll need to drop my slot. I've been very looking forward to coming and meeting the Chicagoland peoples but unfortunately some slackers at a job I'm helping fill in at called out for tomorrow so I have to go in and cover for them. Once again I'm very sorry for the late notice and very disappointed I can't make it out.

Yes, for the same costs as an Onryo.

It's not that she's difficult to kill per say, but the fact that she requires only 2 wounds for Kirai to take and one spirit sacrifice means that if you kill her, and Kirai wants her to stay on the table, it will be back. Very swiftly. The other thing that makes her very scary is that she has Siren Call, and an ability that gives her all the suits she needs to cast it. Paralyzing one very important model on a critical turn can mean the difference between a loss and a win in some situations.

She is board control personified.

I haven't tried them against Alps. I'll give you an example I have tried them, however, in a mirror match game between dueling Kirai. My thinking from the get go was that I needed to rip the opposing Kirai apart, and the way to do that was to cripple her Seishin. Kirai vs. Kirai very quickly turns into a chess style match as you often can't out activate each other and the only way to seize tempo is the make a definitive, and successful, first strike or through carefully planned attrition. So in the game I played I took 1 Drowned intending to use it to try to wipe out a cluster of four Gaki he had brought. Doing so would give me activation control and place the game more firmly in hand. To my surprise he scattered the Gaki and jumped Kirai into the last of the Gaki. At the end of her activation she pulled three Seishin to her. My activation saw me Swirl the Drowned into attack position, ran it forward with its dmg for push ability, and then cast riptide twice, the result of which killed it, triggering it's slow to die for another riptide and a pulse blast of dmg. If I'm remembering correctly it killed the Gaki, itself, and all three seishin. Of course that gave Kirai back 2 Seishin (for the Gaki and the Drowned's Death) but the wounds on Kirai, the Gaki's Death, and a net loss of one Seishin....I feel that was a worth while trade for a 4SS cost model.

I am finding there are two minions out of the third book that I've tested I really like, one is Jaakuna Ubeme, which I won't discuss here, the other is the Drowned. The Drowned are far better than I originally thought. They are very very useful for destroying, or at least severely weakening clusters of enemies. With their ability to take damage to push themselves for extra dmg on themselves, they have the potential to get in range to use two casts of riptide which can play havoc with opponents minions who like to cluster. Add to the fact that once you kill it it will burst for additional dmg, and then cast riptide again and you have one effective anti minion missal.

September for Kaeris, October for Molly.

For hammers in a Kirai crew you can't go wrong with a Shikome. Also, at least the way I play Kirai, you should think of her more as a scalpel. She can quickly isolate and kill individual models very easily with the Ikiryo, and add the Shikome and things die fast. The most success I've found I've had with Kirai is when I stopped throwing the Ikiryo after the strongest thing in the opponents crew. Throw her against things that NEED to die first (like austringers) and then focus on killing little models that are helping him achieve his victory conditions. Remember you get a healing flip on Kirai whenever the Ikiryo kills something. As for Seamus... I don't know. Before the summer I was undefeated with him, so I shifted focus to Kirai. I've started playing him again and I've lost every game so far.

I've used him a few times, and yes his Avatar form is much easier to kill than his regular form. That said, and even because of this I'm pretty much auto-including his Avatar form every time I play Seamus. Anathema is a wonderful ability, and I've found it is very useful if Seamus gets ganged, especially by things that would normally be immune to Terror *coughnightmarescough*. Seamus also has a 3" reach so its a big bubble. He is also Wicked, so trying to leave his Melee range can hurt you badly. I also enjoy the fact that his fists can trigger Terror Checks, and that one of his abilities is "Bellowing of the Big Bastard".

I would disagree that she is useless. True I've said I tend to use her as a distraction, but my play style with Kirai tends to treat her like a scalpel. I have tried and am becoming more enamored with running Kirai, Datsue-ba, Lost Love, Full Seishin, and then all the Gaki the list can handle. This not only lets me swarm the board, out activating anyone else, but also gives Kirai even more Jump Points, and more models to use via Evolve Spirit. Datsue-Ba in this instance serves an an additional objective runner, by casting guide spirits on herself, but she also does quiet well for me in cutting down the opposition if the situation warrents it.

Spirit Food can only target an enemy living or undead model.

Champaign, IL

I find it useful to take her. Even if she does nothing directly she is difficult to kill, and is too much of a threat with the ability to summon models for the opponent to completely ignore her. I tend to look at her as a distraction against most opponents. She does tend to do quite well against living swarm armies. Drop her into the middle of a clump of living models and then harvest sinners. I've had very satisfactory results doing that. I also use her as an objective runner, and often try to cast guide spirits on herself. If it works, great, if it doesn't it I don't sweat it much.

I think sales of Nekima would be the more interesting to track. The twins are just plain awesome for all of the Neverborn masters, so an increase of their sales could be attributed anything. But Nekima really only works well in a few lists, so a definite increase in her sales could be more readily attributed to an increase of FILTH lists. As to your question Nix, I'm not sure. If the public perceived perception altered in favor of said winning player/players' faction I'd say yes. However, if the win did not significantly alter the perception, I'd say it was doubtful. I'll use the results of Adepticon as a reference, a small sample to be sure, but it does help to illustrate my point. At the time of Adepticon your friend Dixon won using the Vikkies in most of his games as I remember. Now at the time I remember people being very impressed because prior to Dixon's win the general thinking was that the Vikkies were o.k., but not stellar. I think there is a greater appreciation for their abilities now, but I don't personally see people flocking to the Vikkies because Dixon won with them. They still require a greater understanding of the game, and great tactical play to use very effectively. Add this to the fact that the tournament players that I'm aware of that use the Vikkies tend to use Von Schill, and the general advice is that they regard Von Schill as the real master of the crew, and the Vikkies are meat cutting additions. Now faction wise the Outcasts offer a great diverse selection of lists and masters. They have some very solid masters, and very solid lists spread across those masters. That is the outcasts Strength. They have done very well in Tournaments lately and seem to be well represented. We have to ask ourselves if this is the case why are the Neverborn the faction that is overwhelmingly the most whined about? My opinion, ease of play and synergies. Now let me clear this up right at the beginning, I am not saying that playing Neverborn are the "Easy Win Button". I have played a few games with the Dreamer and he does take some getting used to and if you misplay you will get punished very hard. However, when you play against most Neverborn masters you are playing against severe control with multiple minions that are very effective across the whole spectrum of masters, and that is very tough to deal with.

I think you'll like him. One of the players in the league I organized over the summer got him, and any time I played against it it felt like my whole crew was balanced just against him and his four Marionettes, and that everything else he took was just freebies. Very frustrating, especially if he gets Plant Evidence. But enough thread hijacking! I'm looking forward to the remainder of your gen con podcasts nix!

Ressers got 8th as the highest they went to.

To be fair pgbsamurai, in our area at the time I left for the summer there were only 2 Neverborn players, you and another person who isn't on the boards. 3 Resser players, Me, Mydnight, and someone who isn't on the boards, 3 or 4 Guild players who aren't on the boards, and one Gremlins player who also isn't on the boards. You are also one of the better players in the area. So the fact that you don't get to play other Neverborn all that often isn't all that surprising. Also couple this with the fact that most of the players in our area aren't really competitive players. I have been a competitive player in CCGs for a number of years, and looking at it from that perspective if I had the money, and only cared about winning, I would never take any faction to a Tourney I wanted win other than Outcasts or Neverborn. Outcasts because they have the flexibility to make a variety of powerful lists depending on assigned strat, and the fact that sitting across from Outcasts gives no clue as to what list might pop out. Neverborn because the design philosophy behind their faction emphasizes tricks and synergy more than any other. I would do this not because they are unbeatable, but because from a Win at All Costs mindset you want to go in with every advantage to can get in your corner from the outset. Now please understand, I do not in anyway say that a good player cannot beat Neverborn, or that the faction is broken. The fact remains however that they are on the stronger end of the power curve than other factions, as a whole. They have more masters generally agreed to be in the upper tiers than other factions, and their minions are more synergistic across the spectrum. In any system where different options are available to players, certain options will inevitably be found to be stronger than others. That doesn't mean that it doesn't take skill to play them, often it does require a great deal of skill to play them correctly. But from a purely statistical examination of them, Neverborn do come out on the upper end of the power curve. Now do I feel that this is a problem, no. Certain factions are just going to end up there. Do I feel the game is unbalanced, again not really. Neverborn may be a bit stronger, but often that strength can be offset by a number of in game and out game factors. The crux of the issue is that this particular combo is in my opinion a little too strong, and at the same time, creates a severe NPE. The combo is not "broken", it does not create an instant win scenario. To be fair however, Nicodem's 10+ Graverobber Dog list didn't create an instant win scenario either and yet it was definitely worthy of a relook. I feel that this is a similar situation. It is a combo that doesn't require a great deal of skill to employ, doesn't require any exceptional hand, or really any kind of hand to work, requires an immense amount of skill AND luck to survive, and exceptionally unfun to even play against. To me, at that point, it requires looking at. If I was in charge of rule development I would be examining this issue closely, but it would be awhile before I'd officially change it. I would want to make certain it in the long run was an issue both in the tourney scene and casual scene. Also the fix, should it eventually come, should not involve modifying abilities that other models use as well, like Lure. It should be entirely be fixed via the abilities on the few models that make up this combo. This is my opinion on the matter and by no means the definitive answer however. Oh, and as a side note, if you think that dealing with Kirai's bringing back models is annoying, let me proxy a Collodi crew against you at some point. He pulls the resser bring models back trick better than we do, is faster than us, and way more synergistic. I have definitely learned to fear the Puppet Hit squad.

Actually, that was a good point. Looking at the original Nico, 10+ Dogs, Graverobber takes an all action to dig up a counter, list. Now please understand I'm not advocating a return to that list, I'm just tossing it in for discussion, but why did that list deserve to be cuddled, (the solution of which took away the ability for Graverobbers across the game to gain counters) and the FILTH list does not. I could once again see the arguments that are being used to say that the FILTH list is perfectly ok, and that the solution is to "play the game". The same could have ben said of that list. Use pulses, use blasts, use auras, use abilities that destroy counters. Really its not like the zombies are that tough, concentrate and your schemes and strats. If the dogs are digging up counters every turn they aren't doing anything that contributes to victory. Just ignore Nicodem and focus on what you need to do to win. Good grief even if he has 40+ Mindless zombies they aren't significant and really that don't hit well. Just save some cards to cheat when they come in to hit you. Not only that but in order for someone to use that list they will have to have all the zombies that they want to use, If someone wants to spend $150+ dollars just to use that list I think they deserve to. Now once again I'm just using that list as an example, and I really am glad that it no longer exists, but if that list deserved to be fixed, why does this one not?

I agree Nix. I don't in anyway think the list is "Broken". My personal feeling is that it is too strong for the reasons I've given. Is the list autowin, no. Is it something that in many ways is bad for the game in m personal opinion, yes. I however have already explained my reasoning so I won't repeat it again.

I agree having two Shikome is nice, but I've not once in the time I've played Kirai felt that I needed the second Shikome. She would be nice to have if you have the money for the initial investent, but not necessary. I will however say, you DO definitely want at least one.