Jordon

I like that I still get to use my Rollins Black (nightmare) model. Dismounted of corse.

I'm curious in what situations you'd take OG Marcus over Alpha? What is OG Marcus doing better?

Anyone else feel like the nightmare Rail golem (Fat Cap) makes a lot more sense as the Rock Hopper? (except for the base size)

Sandeep and Basse with the connecting model being a "Dust Devil" aka Wind Golem?

Does Salvage Site work for Reckless? Porkchops and Neil both have it (plus firestarter OOK). Seems like that can be a fairly significant damage savings. Might be difficult to get on subsequent turns but turn 1 shouldn't be tough

Luckily my OG kaeris can still give a flaming middle finger to anyone trying to ignore her pyre markers 😆 Mei always had sort of a weak burning sub-theme. I wonder if you could lean into that a bit more with this version?

Seems like Foreman Mei and either version of Hoff would be a dream team. My first impressions of Mei was that she seemed a bit too similar to OG Hoff (both doing the torch and fast shtick). However upon a further reflection, she seems to have her own little niche. With both Mah and Mei, plus all the incorporeal. It seems like hazardous terrain masters are going to find it even tougher to function.

It's been discussed to death elsewhere but I feel like Adaptive Evolution should get errata'd into moving onto the mutation upgrades. It makes even more sense now with this version of Marcus since you really don't want models locking up these mutations. Obviously this would be lead to a lot of changes to a lot of cards. This leads me to think that we're less likely to see such an errata happen. I guess the second best option would be to errata those who don't have it (and need it). That alone wouldn't be enough to hire say a Moleman, but at least they wouldn't be actively hindering the crews play style.

Seems like Myranda and at least two Initiates are going to be the staple. From there I think there is a stronger argument for Paul. Beyond those, I don’t really see a massive change from the models you’d want to hire from OG Marcus. Maybe less incentive to bring Vogel since he can’t discard. One thing I’m getting the sense of is how potentially demanding Marcus might be on soulstones. He’s got a lot of really great triggers and often I’d probably stone for a suit rather than remove an upgrade (for chimera strike for example). Not sure if SS cache is worth considering for Marcus or one of the initiates

I don't know, once you start stacking upgrades, I think he'll be pretty damn scary. If I had to rank the upgrades (without factoring in particular match ups). 1) Natural Camo - 4" severe terrtain, built in push on attacks, cannot be charged, cannot be shot outside of 6". This makes him an incredibly tough nut to crack. 2) Formidable Horns - 2/4/6 with positives to damage on the charge combined with chimera strike means he'll be 1-shotting most minions with a severe. Add in Onslaught.... yikes. 3) Feathered Wings - Leaping, flying, Mv6 is great. Especially with the prevalence of Call of the Wild, which he now benefits from. Butterfly jump also seems particularly nasty when paired with Wilds of Malifaux. 4) Teeth and Claws - He already has access to adversary but it's nice to just get it for free anyway. Puncture is quite nice as it gives him a trigger on every suit (tomes are made irrelevant with this upgrade) and he's got the damage track to really make use of it. 5) Armored Plates - Armor is always great but probably not as urgent as the other defensive upgrades. Besides I doubt he'll be still very often to make use of the shielded +2. I don't think there's really any bad choices. Sounds like he's going to be greedy and use pretty much all of them anyway so why even be picky.

Oh your right! I completely spaced on that. No Blessed (big deal), no hoarcats (not a big deal). However I suspect that this is even a bigger deal in NB. Yeah I'm sure that would make them good, but the investment cost is pretty extreme. As you said, there is less upgrades to go around and are you really going to invest so much in a 5ss model when you have much more deserving models who can do more with those same upgrades. This nails my problem with Marcus. Doesn't matter which version, he's always going to run into this same issue.

Marcus seems interesting enough. I do like the incentive to using adaptive evolution....... however not much of his crew really utilizes the discard so I sort of feel like this version of marcus will be even more restricted with his hiring. The bird kind of seem meh. I'd probably hire them over hoarcats and molemen but that's not exactly a high bar to hit. Mv7 and flight are really the only things of interest. Ariel strike looks interesting as a way to drop a scheme marker but Stat4 and requiring a tome makes it seem very unlikely.

Can we also talk about Stutter Time for a moment? This seems like the easiest access to pass tokens within the faction. For just a 3 targeting a friendly model, you get two pass tokens. This feels every bit as potent as anything else on her card. I'm wondering how much this can be abused? Obviously you'll be taking Aionus. However you can also look at Bishop and Hans who can also generate multiple pass tokens. Taking them does cut into Obliteration synergy so maybe your loosing out on efficiencies elsewhere. I am curious, though.

I do like 33, but the 8ss cost is a tough one to swallow. I'm trying to figure out when you'd want to hire him and what you'd be willing to replace. With incorporeal and Two Places at Once, he can dance around a rather sizable area when paired with an echo marker. Incorporeal means he wont be taking the damage, so you could likely be bouncing around key markers to prevent interactions, charges and blocking LOS. Or even if you manage to pine box something, you can reposition yourself at the end of your activation. If the opponent then activates, you can dump them off in a potentially bad position.

Overall I'm intrigued. I'm a bit disappointed in the artwork if i'm being honest. Not much of a change from her current sculpt (looks like a casual jog). Just based on the art, I'd probably just stick with my nightmare version since the base is the same size. Obviously activation/board control is going to be her thing and she's going to want to play forward. She doesn't really have a lot going on defense wise but her stats are at least decent. I feel like she's going to struggle against shooting and you'll need to be play really cagey with butterfly jump. Perhaps you'll be leaning on Karina a lot more with this build. So with Rewind, when would you actually want to suffer the damage? It only works after a full activation so the enemy will have done whatever it wanted to do, so obviously it'll just remove the marker. As a friendly ability, once you've teleported, what use is it to have it stick around? It goes away at the start of the turn anyway. Maybe it is insurance against lures/pushes? Sticking with Rewind. I do find it awkward that these markers are associated with particular models, so you need to keep track who who owns which marker. Maybe it's not a huge deal, but it's just odd since the marker doesn't actually attach to the affected model. I do think it's a really cool and powerful ability though. Expedite is also quite interesting. Being able to pop out 6" (8" with 33 and even more depending on base size) and drop a scheme marker is nice. You could even drop an echo with a model, bury them with stutter time, walk forward, place them Expedite, interact, and then have them teleport back to their original spot. Might be unnecessary, but it sure sounds cool. My gut reaction is that OG Tara is still likely going to see more play. Loosing 2 actions, summoning and her excellent teleport is a lot to give up. She was an enabler and now she's more of a dis abler. I still think she'll have a place and she looks very interesting.

The name of the ability does make it somewhat confusing I will admit. Basically it's an additional +2" when something gets placed. Quite spicy on OG Tara with her teleport

So I'm not super familiar with Hoff, but I am really liking the look of this new title. Could someone breakdown the differences in play style between the two? Does one seem obviously better than the other? Does the crew composition change much based on either title?

That is sort of how I was reading it as well. She can shrug off the damage caused by burning, which counts as damage from the burning condition, which the golem/gamin could reduce to zero. What is less clear is whether she then has to reduce her own burning condition or not. For example, say she has burning +3 and at the end of the turn, she passes 1 damage off onto the golem, which he reduces to 0. Does Kaeris then reduce her burning condition to 2, or does she remain at 3? My thinking is that she's still have to reduce since the golem still "suffered damage", despite him reducing that damage.

Can the damage from Scorching Radiance be reduced to 0 when passed off onto a fire gamin/golem? If so, would that cause her to reduce the burning condition by 0?

I'm also really liking Deacon. He's decently costed and provides something that wildfire desperately needed. I don't know how many times my golem got obliterated due to condition removal. Mind you it's still going to be tough ensuring the golem and Deacon stay close to each other, but at least it's an option when facing condition removal now. Aside from that, I feel like Deacon is better suited for Kaeris. His Translocation Ritual looks really nice but the required tome is a pain. Luckily it's less of an issue thanks to Burning mans Gift / Soulstone Cache. Crazed Ramblings could also be pretty nice as well.

This looks great! Still very pyre marker focused but I think that was to be expected. She's still seems all about mobility and board control, but this time she's a bit more up close than her previous version, which primarily focused on run and gun. I feel like she's a bit more killy but a bit less survivable. Loosing armor (and potentially positive flips on Df) and staying primarily at range. Compared to gaining H2W and a heal and needing to play closer. Pyre markers also seem easier to generate in this version. I had some questions: 1. Does Wings on Fire allow her to charge while engaged? 2. Does her Rampage trigger also prompt her Wings on Fire? Basically getting double duty from the trigger? 3. What counts as the "area in between" for her Eruption of Flame? Is it a line from the edges of her base to the edges of the pyre marker?

Firebranded are good if your willing to invest in them. They don't really work strait out of the box, which is mainly the issue I have with them. They basically need their own private pyre marker to farm burning from, which will usually end up hurting them, and keeping them immobile. However if you think of them as a turret, they aren't all that bad. Getting positives to attack and defence is solid and at the very least can chew up the opponents hand pretty quickly. I rarely regret hiring a single one, but it gets to be a tougher sell with two. Three is pretty much out of the question.

They're probably the least necessary piece in a December crew. I find that silent one's basically do the ranged game better, while also helping in other ways. As already pointed out, its very annoying having a gun in a crew that throws out so much cover. I really want to like them but rarely have I ever felt their worth.

I agree, I think this is great for Toni players, great for Arcanists and great for the game as a whole (provided they come out of the gate relatively balanced). I'm wondering if there are any vectors between both versions of Toni that an opponent could potentially lean into as a counter. I'm imagining that certain masters will still have some issues with counters. For example, I imagine Kaeris and Raspy will still lean heavily into markers, just HOW they do so may be different. However the fact remains that if you see those master, expect to see ice/pyre markers and plan accordingly. So with Toni, it doesn't seem quite as obvious. Models will still want to bunch up, but it'll be different based on which version. So maybe blasts/shockwaves could be a reasonable response to facing Toni?

I assume the nightmare crews will still be locked to their original masters? I guess it has to be the case for those alternate masters on different sized bases. It'll be interesting to see if new upcoming nightmare crews reference the new titles or if they'll have the option to play for either title.