Bodiless

How do people solve the following problem? Suppose your opponent has a key support piece (slop hauler, pigapult, sniper, Sonnia, Rasputina, etc) that can have a large impact on the game without pushing very far forward and can stay safely tucked behind the lines. How do you go about reaching and neutralizing that model? I started thinking about this because a friend who plays 10T was talking about a game against Gremlins where his first activation was to have a katanaka sniper focus and then shoot the slop hauler dead. And it occurred to me that without hiring on a sniper myself I don't really have a good idea how you solve that particular problem in Neverborn. If a model doesn't need to move up to have a big impact on the game I can't think of an easy way in faction to reach that model and take it out. I'm assuming here that the opponent is careful enough not to just leave an easy charge, and has some piece in position to counter-charge a model that just races forward to engage. Thoughts?

I'm tempted to give it to Lilith on occasion, because there are times when flipping the black joker on one of her actions can wreck an entire turn. Either in tangling a friendly model or in placing her illusionary forest. I always end up dropping it in favor of something else, but I can definitely see its use with her.

Not at all. I'm totally fine with it getting reworded so that it doesn't work this way, since that is what I think they intended. The part that was clear is the text of Whisper. It was so clear that I didn't go hunting through the main rules to see if that wording broke something else.

I agree with Carcosa. I used this combination in the one game I played with Lucius because the wording of Whisper was so straightforward that I didn't think about it any further. When this model spends a stone means that model is spending the stone. I agree that they probably didn't mean to have the master be the actual model spending the stone to draw cards, but that is what the plain text of the upgrade says.

Doppelganger. That ability to cheat the initiative flip is such a buffer against plans gone awry. Not to mention interacting while engaged and the ability to double up on a key ability in a give turn. Every time I leave her at home I end up regretting it.

I like him with Pandora, a lot. I also give him Dreaming Wings, and have him stand near Widow Weaver and Teddy on turn 1 to help them up the board. Then he either jumps into the mix to force some terror checks or chases down scheme runners.

I've only run him once, but I stole the middle marker on ALITS last night to use for Protect Territory. He hadn't declared ALITS and only got 4 markers down, so he get zero for the scheme and I got +1 on PT. Four point swing.

Lucius can also convert opponent's markers into friendly markers at the end of the game. That is an amazing ability.

Yes.

I got my first game in last night with my Lucius crew, against Pandora of all masters. I didn't make a detailed battle report, but I will put down some impressions. The Dashel-Riflemen firebase does indeed put out a crazy amount of damage. Riflemen accounted for Barbaros, a Sorrow, Teddy, and something else I am forgetting. If the Strategy had not been Guard the Stash with its two giant blocking HT5 50mm markers that he could just tuck models out of sight behind and still score it would have been more. To complement the rifles I took two Illuminated and a Beckoner. The Illuminated made fantastic Devi's Deal targets and were their usual stalwart selves. The Beckoner was incredibly useful, a real star of the show in this crew. A couple of times she used her lure to pull riflemen away from jamming models which then got gunned down. As for Lucius himself, Devil's Deal + Wings of Darkness + Primordial Magic let me draw 10 cards to start each turn, which still didn't save me from at least one hand of utter junk. But that was still 10 useless cards not in the draw for the rest of the turn. What Lackeys Are For basically auto-scored Deliver a Message for me, and Legalese kept him safe from the Pandora Inflict bomb as well as allowing me to snipe out the middle of his ALITS markers.

Except that with + flips to attack and damage against many models (anything with WP6) and another +flip to damage from Hold This my list was basically all of the models that I expect to survive long enough to get that good look at her. I'm also thinking about my shiny new riflemen, who also have crazy ranged damage and the glassiest of jaws. Although since I am headed out now to my monday night game I should have a better sense of what kills them in a few hours.

What do you find is usually killing her off? Is it models like Marcus that can cross the field in an activation? Return fire from some other nasty ranged threat? Something jumping cover until it reaches her?

I would say that the fact that the buffs last to the next activation, when so many abilities like that last until the end of the turn, adds to the perception that they are overpowered. Whether or not that they are actually overpowered is in many ways a separate issue. The fact that they stand out as something that can be applied to masters and made pseudo-permanent makes them more noticeable in some ways than some of the other crazy abilities out there.

Thanks for the write up! One question that comes to mind is that if I am remembering my models right, Francisco has "Enfrentate a mi" or some correctly spelled version of that ability, which lets him engage a target and then move all other models away. Was there some reason your opponent didn't use that to get Sonnia away from Marcus on turn 1?

I would love to see you, or Dgraz, or Dirial, post up a set of Vassal screen shots showing how you would counter this kind of crew for Sonnia. Not only would it be helpful to those of us who struggle against her, but it would also be very helpful to people starting the game with her to see where the crew is vulnerable. Especially since it is true that a huge amount of Guild crew advice given for her defaults to "add Papa and Frank". It would also take the discussion out of the internet vacuum and actually give some concrete situations to discuss. How about it? Is anyone willing to set up a chess problem type of scenario showing the weaknesses of the papa-in-a-box sonnia list? Edits made to address embarrassing number of typos. I clearly need more coffee...

This sounds like a job for Vassal!

Isn't Kirai a bit of a special case though, since she essentially gets a free instant engage against Sonnia the first time someone near her in her crew takes damage? Edit: In the interests of this not totally getting derailed from "Where to go with Sonnia", I should say I am starting a rifleman heavy Lucius crew in Neverborn, so I am very interested in both sides of the question of dealing with a powerful firebase that does not want to be engaged or targeted in melee. Since that seems to be the obvious, potentially only, counter to Sonnia I am interested both in how people accomplish that tactic and how they defend against it.

I'm curious though, how have people had this go wrong for them from the Guild side of the table? From where I have been sitting there doesn't seem to be much more to running a Sonnia crew than having Papa give her Hold This and then having Sonnia kill anything that strays within 14". If a model does somehow make it across the table you pine box it, have Francisco swap her out of combat, or murder it with Sam. Where is the weak link that is keeping Sonnia from completely running riot? Edit: Sort of ninja'd by Dgraz. Assuming the guild player stays safely inside the box and brings the obvious papa-francisco-dm combo with Sonnia, where does the game go from there that isn't just Sonnia blitzing the opponent off the table?

Yeah, I would hardly say they are wasted points. In my most recent game against Sonnia Papa stayed in the box until Sonnia had blasted away half of my crew... which was turn 2. After that he hopped out and the Death Marshal boxed the only model that had survived to potentially threaten Sonnia. We called the game at that point.

Looking at this from the other side of the table is just bizarre. From the times I have played against Sonnia as Neverborn it is hard to see how someone could lose with Sonnia as long as they stayed awake for the entire game. Otherwise the game tends to look like "Ok, I'm going to activate Sonnia now. I'd like you to pick up those three models over there and put them away please."

A Black Blood Shaman would go really well in this crew. Hand out Black Blood so you give out some damage with Devil's Deal and then heal models back up. The idea of Dashel with Black Blood just amuses me to no end for some reason....

Yes, it would just be the four times unless you brought some other form of healing. One nice thing about this though is you could more or less pick the time to have them die and explode on someone.

This is a very legitimate concern...

Yep. This a route that Lynch, for example, is never going to take.

I think Obey and Obey-like effects are it. Zoraida, for example, could Obey him to focus. That's hardly free though, since you are investing an AP from your master.