admiralvorkraft

I love this art to pieces, I hope that the sculpt is able to capture the character and emotion here.

Have you decided what to do with them? I'm interested in taking one or two pieces off your hands...

If you want to take Hopkins you need to drop Frank for Abuela or the Judge (so the emissary can box Hopkins early, move up end of turn, drop him out, light something on fire, have Hopkins kill it). The Mask isn't doing much for you, I would replace it with Expert Sleuth. Witch Hunt is worthless, Hopkins is already too expensive to spend ap on anything other than murder. I would, baseline, drop the henchmen. Killing things isn't worth the investment when Sonnia is brilliant at it already. You need some utility, a Watcher to help with scheming and los tricks. Then Guild has a number of brilliant 6ss minions - death marshals, Austringers, lawyers, Wardens - it's where a lot of our flexibility is. The other thing to look for is mobility enhancement - it's basically impossible to win the engagement game without some way to cheat tempo.

It's technically possible, but no. I usually summon about ten and never have more than 6 on the board at once. At that point he has something better to do with his AP.

Sandeep can do everything, but the way his card is set up he never will. It's impossible to draw enough of the right cards to fuel all of his tricks so you it's a matter of planning the optimal turn around the resources you have. I would compare him to a pre-Errata Lucius in terms of resource intensity but you get much more dramatic results for the effort. Comparatively, Ramos is very resource light - at most you need a couple activations of setup on turn one, a stone and an 8+ thereafter. Colette generates her own resources (stones for cards, free suit each turn, extra AP, etc.). Raspy is still dead solid, if dependent on her crew - her control game is second only to Pandora. Kaeris and Ironsides can play the isolate-and-eliminate game pretty well, and Mei Feng is still our premier Denial master (so long as your opponent isn't too Ml heavy). I think the master that suffers the most is Marcus. His strength is also in his flexibility and I'm struggling to imagine a time when he outperforms Sandeep except maybe on the Alpha Strike.

No, but they need to get flexible. The standard builds of the past three years (Sonnia or Perdita leading, Franc, Loco, Sidir, etc.) don't work in GG2017. The faction still has plenty of tools to get work done it's just that the meta - particularly here on the forums - is still locked into a mindset of murder first score later. Case in point, the first response in the other thread about an Arcanist thinking about starting Guild as a second faction that says what we do is "burn it to the ground." That mindset, outside of a small subset of pools, doesn't score points. Fortunately we have an entire varied faction, of fast schemers (Watchers, Orderlies) flexible schemers (Journalists, Dade, Gage, Queeg). We have one of the best Stake a Claim masters in the game in the form of Hoffman. We have two powerful, extremely flexible masters who love everything about GG2017 - Nellie and newLucius. We have Dashel summoning in Guild Guard that are actually making use of their start of activation place to deny schemes. We have newly improved Guardians locking down huge sections of the board, Hunters controlling movement and spamming slow while remaining hard to pin down, some of the best hand destruction in the game in the form of (still brutal) Austringers. My win record with Guild is better under GG2017 because it put an emphasis on the side of the faction that I've always preferred using despite it not being as good in previous formats as Perdita/Sonnia+. So no, I'm sure that Guild players are good at what they have learned how to do. Better than me by far because I'm a lousy aggressive player. But what they do isn't currently scoring them points so they need to change up their game and get creative. That's harder for us because, more than any other faction, we've locked ourselves into a rut; one approach, one playstyle, one mindset, a limited pool of models.

Sure, we do have to build to the strat/schemes rather than a killy crew with two scheme runners into any pool. With the journalists we have more movement tricks than Outcasts, we've always had marker manipulation but now we have great marker tricks. Nellie can win the activation game against virtually any master. Lucius has incredible scheming/killing/positioning. McCabe still has wonderful buffing. McMourning has good scheme manipulation, solid killing power and stellar mobility. It's really just the Sonnia and Perdita aren't scoring us anything and we need to get over that. They can still lead crews, but you aren't going to get away with sinking 13+ points into support/upgrades/etc for them any more.

Guild can be competitive, but with a different mindset and different masters. Nellie/Lucius/Hoffman/McCabe/McMourning have the tools to do anything in GG2017 as well as any master in the game (better than most for Lucius and Nellie). For a long time the Guild meta has been all about buffing our masters and using them to table our opponents - unfortunately that approach doesn't score any points in the current spread. We've been the faction of "Kill everything, score later," for so long that people have just forgotten - or never learned how - to focus on scoring points.

Anything with Frozen Heart works well with Raspy - Silent Ones, Snow Storm, and the Blessed of December are the important ones. For Colette you'll want Coryphee. They can both benefit from Angelica hanging around. Raptors are a good way to pad activations and mess with your opponents. You may want to pick up Sandeep Desai as your third master since you already have most of the Gamin.

That's a lot of stuff, too much to break down easily. Broadly speaking Raspi is great at killing things, Colette is great at scheme running. The Oxfordians are pretty cheap if you field all three and offer a good gunline, especially with Colette who can order them into position using Prompt. Ice Dancers are really good at getting schemes down near the enemy, and they hit pretty hard especially if you can put an Ice Gamin near your target with Bite of Winter up. The 'net generally considers the Ice Golem to be worthless and generally I agree that he's overshadowed by other things, but his Toss action can be fun for throwing gamin into place to be Mirrors for Raspy, or throwing them near something that has already activated and that you want to charge with one of the Dancers. The Wind Gamin are nice for denying certain schemes (Dig Their Graves and Hunting Party come to mind) because they never count as being killed by your opponent. They are also good in any strat/scheme pool where you need to cover a lot of ground. Are you interested in suggestions for things to buy that might round out your crew selection? Or are you mostly interested in learning with what you have even though it might not be optimal?

There's a print-on-demand service; http://www.wargamevault.com/browse/pub/5162/Wyrd-Miniatures?filters=0_0_0_44301

Useless Duplications is great for keeping Lucius alive, but I don't run him as a tarpit mostly so I don't use it much. Secret Assets is excellent in my experience - yes it is expensive but it's also quite powerful. Legalese is situational, I won't plan on using it to score me points but I like it as a denial vector if Hidden Trap or Search the Ruins are in the pool. In favor of both Secret Assets and Secret objectives it seems to be becoming more important to bring some ability to discard friendly schemes. This is particularly true into Outcasts given how many models they have with the Drop It! trigger, but there are enough schemes that won't score if you have markers too close together that being able to clear specific markers can be huge in the right circumstances.

I've gotta say I really only use Grab and Drop Kaeris, and that into marker heavy pools. She just gets markers down incredibly efficiently. Grab and Drop is also pretty useful for isolating models or getting them near scheme markers (for, say, Dig Their Graves) and Blinding Flame makes her a decent control piece. I agree that she's not the best that Arcanists have on offer, but I only play the M&SU side of the faction so she is probably my best schemer.

Honestly not as much as I expected, which is why I was surprised you were unimpressed by the potential I didn't think it would work when I first tried to pull it, but Sh 8 is insane. I once killed Raspy from full and then dusted a nearby Gamin with my second AP. And Guild has some nice-ish healing now so it's not necessarily a one-shot trick.

The right place and time are entirely under your control though - just don't pull the combo if it isn't worth it in the moment. Lackeys gives you an effective ~10" place (your final Lucius action will be to walk into Companion range and have Santiago take a free shot, declaring triggers) so you can get line of sight and deny cover if you plan ahead and your placement is good. But of course if you don't like it, don't use it. I've won enough tournament games with it that I don't feel the need to spend a lot of breath defending it. Just thought I'd share seeing as Santana is a gorgeous model that deserves more play time, and seeing as everyone is pressured to buy the Latigo box for a couple of crutch models anyway they may as well get some use out of the finesse pieces.

That's the idea, obviously timing is important, but I've never failed to do something impressive with it. Like nearly killing Nicodem from full wounds and emptying his cache in a single activation impressive. All it takes is a couple moderate masks in hand and your golden against anything with less than stellar stats or armor two.

Perhaps the key is that the combination is uniquely nasty. Santiago carries Debt which helps.

CAVEAT: What follows is all my personal opinion, based on what has worked for me in tournaments in a number of metas (from Minnesota to New Mexico, but none of the bigger scenes) The most powerful tricks in the game, especially in 2017, are positioning based. Therefore I would say that our top masters are the ones that can best break tempo or jump the positioning game. Jack Daw is my lovely, my pride and joy, the only master that I've soloed a tournament with and come out on top. Hamelin's denial game works well in 2017, but his positioning tricks are understandably limited. Tara rounds out the "top-tier" for me, she has tons of personal AP and her positioning tricks are some of the strongest in the game; now that her Void theme is substantially more viable thanks to the new Dead of Winter and the Nothing Beast upgrade I need to learn to play her better and she'll be a master to beat. "Tier two" is Parker - solid damage, some positioning tricks, resource manipulation, great scheme manipulation. His only real drawback is that a lot of his tricks depend on hitting TNs that need a 7-8 so, and his effectiveness depends on your ability to accurately predict where the action is going to be next turn. Disguised Misaki is an incredible disruption master now, without significant ranged pressure she will not go down (Deadly Dance, Disguised, great stats, and any kind of decent positioning) and the increased TN on her Downburst action makes it easier to break up synergies, push models out of scoring position, etc. as well as triggering into her Thunder attack. Sure, her Stalking Bisenot build is better with Sensei Yu around, but she has a very valid alternate play in Outcasts now. Levi fits in here thanks to his offensive summoning and wide board presence but I've never liked playing him much. The rest are "tier three." I've never lost a fair game to the Viks (there was one where I was literally falling asleep at the table, but...). They and Von Schill are decidedly one dimensional. Their plays are strong, sure, but they're almost as easy to project as most Guild masters.

Post-errata Tara works well in either faction. She wants more of the Void theme in Outcasts but Ressers have other models that play into her bury cycle tricks (the Forgotten Marshal and Bete Noir are must-haves imo). Two activations worth of Spare Parts a turn is theoretically nasty, especially since Autopsies reactivate when your opponent's hand is empty and Tara forces a lot of simple duels to resist burying.

Raspy is easy. Buy everything with Frozen Heart and you can build a competitive crew for any pool while staying completely in-theme. Sandeep is a little harder, and I don't know him as well. I'd recommend picking up Fire, Ice, and Wind Gamin with him (the Ice gamin come in Raspy's box so you may as well get that, the Fire gamin come with Kaeris who flirts with the line between M&SU and Arcane so I don't know if you want her or not). Those three and Banasuva will be your most common summons. Especially the Wind Gamin, those things are nuts. Oxfordian Mages fit well in the Academic theme, as do the Guild's Sanctioned Spellcasters. Shastar Guards and the Valedictorian (from the University of Transmortis box) make great beaters, as does Myranda in her own way (she comes with Marcus, which also plays into the Arcane side of the faction, and if you get her you'll also want the Blessed of December). And that is more or less that. I'd happily play some combination of the above models into any strat/scheme pool out there.

Union Miners are also solid budget beaters in an M&SU themed crew, though not as good as Railworkers at the same price point.

He works okay with Loco, but Jack Daw does that trick better. If you want something nasty with Lucius take Santiago. I'll let you all do the math on that.

Getting Nellie upfield with a good stack of evidence isn't that hard. Dade can push her 5" in exchange for slow (which a stalker then removes) or Queeg can charge to about 3" in front of Nellie and whip her twice for 6" of movement, 2 Evidence, and 2 damage. Then she gets an evidence from the Press, one from discarding a card, and she should be good to go for a turn 1 isolate-and-kill.

I can't see much reason to marry in any of the Reporters. Pistolero's are great for cheap-ish activations. A watcher is always good but they only come in the Hoffman box so maybe try and find an old metal single?

I'm sorry, life happened and I haven't gotten this posted. I'll get the prompt up in the next couple of days.