gabrielpg

In two master games henchman do not count as masters, but if you decide to play one master you get 10 extra soulstones, which is lucius cost (but you won't get his henchman cache).

I have to agree that when I first started playing against them I thought the book 2 masters were ridiculously over powered, but really it's just a matter of learning new tactics to go up against them. Don't get me wrong, they are still more powerful than the first book's masters, but there are ways to play effectively against each one. However, Marcus against Kirai is an especially bad matchup because his main force lacks magical weapons and damaging spells. There are ways to overcome this like just through having a high enough number of attacks to wear down the opponents force even when they are taking half damage, but it is very difficult and he may need to hire mercenaries to fill in that hole.

Sonnia's Avatar is a beast if used correctly for three reasons: 1. Blazing Counterspell. Not only can she protect herself and any model within 3' of her she also punishes the caster. 2. Pyre + 2 Pyre commands. If you do this right you can either wound and give burning tokens to a large number of models or you can concentrate this on one model and just about kill anything in the game if it hasn't activated yet. Read what this spell says, you take 3 dmg whenever you touch a pyre for the first time and then 3 dmg whenever you activate touching one. So if you went first with Sonnia and put 2 Pyres on top of something, that 6 Dmg and 2 Burning tokens during your turn and another 6 dmg 2 Burning tokens whenever it activates where if it survives it still has to take more dmg or become slow to get rid of the tokens. 3. And then there is Light Em Up + Searing Wave. An excellent way to spread dmg around. And if you use it on something which you have already burned to a crisp with your pyres you could easily be doing a straight 2/3/4 dmg flip +3 dmg just from the burning tokens you put on it that round, so a minimum of 5 dmg if you wanted. (Only groups I wouldn't use this on are Rasputina and the Friekorps) So to add up, thats 6 Dmg 2 Burning tokens from Pyre, a 3rd Burning token from Light em up, then 5-7 dmg from Searing wave, then another 6 Dmg and 2 burning tokens when they activate for a total of 17-19 Dmg and 5 burning tokens (6 if you got searing wave's trigger off) if they somehow manage to survive they are at the least going to be slow unless they can just eat the dmg from the burning tokens. You just got to time it right and make sure you can cheat over their df with your cast on searing wave.

The mobile toolkit is something I almost always take with hoffman, and oh the evil joy it gives me to use it in two master games teamed with either colette or sonnia. One model I think you guys are over looking however are the steampunk arachnid swarms. I know there so bread and butter, but these guys are insanly good with Hoffman, not only do they already have melee master (so if Hoff taps their power they can still make three attacks) and a paralyzing trigger--they can also heal themselves, have pass through, arachnid, and can split apart into three smaller units if about to die and basically become three scrap counters for hoff.

If you know you're playing against resurrectionist or undead the Exorcist is also good for this.

A freind and I had a recent rules dispute about the difference between damage and wounds and while we resolved the issue between us after much arguement we agreed we should seek the opinion of some others. The question is does Damage have to inflict Wounds to be considered applied? Now here are the circumstances: During a recent game I made an attack on my friend's model inflicting 2 Damage and activating a trigger that states "When Damaging a defending model..." His model had armor which reduced the damage to 1, and he used a soulstone to reduce the damage by another 1 to 0, thus he contended preventhing the trigger from occurring. I disagreed, arguing two points, first that armor can not reduce damage below 1 and thus if something lowered the damage at the same time as the armor then the 1 damage would still get through the armor and the trigger would still go off. He argued that he could choose which applied first so I decided to consult the rules manual. There we realized the wording on the use soulstone ability is for the prevention of wounds and not damage. The manual also states that any effect which increases or lowers the application of damage does not apply to wounds or vice-versa as these are two seperate things with a wound being the possible effect of damage being applied. I then argued that since a wound is the after effect of damage being applied, preventing that wound does not mean that damage was not done and the trigger would still apply. While my freind agreed on this, he had actually been on the other side of this issue before, and the arguement that had been made in that case was that the prevention of wounds is tantamount to the cancelation of any damage and would stop the trigger. So is it Damage> Trigger> Wound or Damage> Wound> Trigger.