Bodiless

I don't see where he kills Dreamer. Dreamer has always lived or died against cast attacks based on his Df trigger. I don't see anything here that will prevent that, am I missing the trick?

That ability to manipulate any marker that is not part of the strategy is amazing. Annoying forests, pillars, flame walls blocking your way? Never fear, Father Time is here!

My relationship with the Neverborn has been on the rocks recently, and it is finally time for us to start seeing other people. Looking forward to see what life is like with the Outcasts, and that nice young man with the hood and the noose has really caught my eye...

I could see this being a puzzle for people to solve, but honestly any time my opponent declares Guild and there are interact heavy schemes and strats I make sure I have a plan for what I will do if I see Nino across the table. I think it usually only takes one game of him completely hamstringing you for people to do the same. So unless you are playing against someone who has never seen this trick before I wouldn't expect it to cause them too much trouble; if they decide to take Power Ritual it will be because they have a plan to deal with Nino.

I would second Nekima as a scheme hunter, particularly for tricky models with leap. Flight and melee expert means she can chase them down, and her combination of high min damage and the ability to splash black blood means she has a decent chance at taking a silurid down in a single activation. I wouldn't rely on shooting too much unless you know you can out activate, since that built in negative often means your odds of hitting are pretty low.

Pretty sure Hexed Among You is minions only.

I've taken him a few times without his Eternal Fiend upgrade and always regretted it. He is not that difficult to kill so he tends to vanish pretty quickly without it. I think he works particularly well with Lilith - move up something fast or use Hexed Among You to get a model upfield and then replace it with Juju. You can put very immediate pressure on with a model you don't really care about dying. Just make sure you have a swampfiend you can reliably get killed to bring him back!

You didn't mention Headhunter, which is one of my favorite strategies for him. Between Lure and Heed My Voice it is pretty easy to move models to your side of the fighting and then murder them. Lynch and his crew don't focus on ranged damage, so you don't have to worry about killing something in the midst of their crew or holding fire.

Dreamer, hands down. In a game that is all about having more bodies in more locations summoning is even more powerful than normal.

With armor and Hard to Kill he is already pretty survivable, but everything has limits in this game (well, except Levi). A Viktoria to the face kills pretty much everything.

Try adding a performer to your brewie crew. And I would say Trixie is essential for him, because you need to get that aura up before Bad Things Happen.

I would have Silurids available. They can allow you to almost auto-success certain schemes/strategies.

I often use them in conjunction with Collodi so that I have potent attacks against both WP and DF. It's pretty rare to find a model that can reliably defend against 7vWp and 6vDf simultaneously. With Dreamer I use them far more casually and am willing to gamble more with Gamble Your Life if I don't have a good card in hand since I can always summon it back if it dies.

I had missed that trick with Tannen also. Even though it only helps if you have the mask to play rather than stoning it's still good to know! I also tend to take Graves with Lilith so this would also let you exploit their interactions.

If you have them, I would keep Kade and Candy. Kade works well to murder things that get dragged in with Tangle, and Candy is a particularly nasty piece to swap into the middle of someone's crew with Fears Given Form.

If I need a piece to hand out damage Graves with Retribution's Eye is my go-to. Obviously costs more than an Illuminated, but hits very hard without any set up, is much more durable, immune to WP duels during his activation, has movement tricks, black blood, etc. In that 6-7ss range I am much more likely to take Waldgeists/Silurids/Beckoners/Lilitu. They just have a lot more flexibility than Illuminated when it comes to scoring VP.

I'll cut against the grain a bit here... my local group is well acquainted with Illuminated, and generally they will leave them alone unless they have the resources in place to kill them outright. I find I am leaving them at home more and more often these days.

b. Widow Weaver is the model forcing the Horror Duel with Exhale Terror. After the target takes the first one it is immune to Horror Duels generated by WW, including for Terrifying, for the rest of the turn.

No, but Zoraida can hire various pigs that do.

10ss for 9 wounds and armor 1 on a model whose job it is to take fire is just a little too fragile for the cost for me. If he was cheaper, had more wounds, had better armor, had a defensive trigger against ranged, hard to kill or wound, etc I would rate him more highly. But at a base cost of 10 it is a significant part of my crew lost when he dies, and he will die if people focus on him. Yes, they have to invest some activations to do it, but the payoff for that is pretty high.

Barbaros is a little too pricey and squishy for my tastes.

I've had reasonable success with Collodi too. Collodi + Brutal Effigy can match them on the Fast+Healing, and Collodi dishes out enough damage at range and steals enough AP that he can also start picking the ball apart. I might take Lazarus too, since people don't generally think blasts when they hear Neverborn and he has some good tricks with Collodi. But more and more often in any game with NB I find myself asking "Why am I not just taking Lilith here?"

The most general advice I can give, and this is advice I got from an extremely good gremlin player, is to spread out and make them chase you around. Gremlins, as noted above, like to cluster up around Lenny, Slop Haulers, etc. With your models I would go with Lilith and the swampfiends as a base. And I can't recommend getting some Waldgeists strongly enough. Do NOT attempt to go head on into the Gremlin Death Ball for the exact reasons you list. Take schemes that let you spread out your troops and make him try to catch you, then pick things off with Lilith. Don't forget to use Wicked Vines either - that will hand out 3 points of damage to anything pushing away with Squeel. If you can tangle away Lenny or the Slop Hauler (I assume all gremlins crews have Slop Haulers) do it asap.

Which, I have to say, is easier said than done for a faction that basically doesn't use guns.

Good point. I still sort of forget those models exist - probably will continue to do so until I actually own a starter set.