admiralvorkraft

Oh, I've had a good amount of success with him (and, caveat, I'm again not saying he's bad, there are no bad masters in this game, but he is probably bottom tier). I've also had success proxying in both McCabe and McMourning who do Lucius' job and their own. My problem with Lucius is that when I drop him on the table I'm constantly on edge because I need the right suits for everything that I do, I need my minions to stay alive or my master becomes slightly less useful than a Witchling Stalker, there isn't a single turn where Lucius isn't dictating exactly how I can use my hand from activation one. On the other hand, when I'm playing one of the Mc's (or even Sonnia, my secondary master) I can sit back and enjoy the game. Each of those masters is able to reliably contribute without draining my hand, cache, and board. McCabe projects his presence almost as well as Lucius, buffs his units, schemes better (Luna helps), and he's fast enough that while he dies every game it's because there was a turn that I wanted 8+ AP out of him. McMourning is a more versatile scheme enabler than Lucius (Injection letting a model drop a scheme marker out of activation, while engaged is killer) he buffs his units, he takes a hundred percent more resources to bring down and he can kill off whole swathes of models without limiting his supporting options. Heck, even Ulix is able to hand out more AP to better models with less of a struggle, plus summon (sort-of), heal, and buff his units. Though I've only seen him from the other side of the table so I'm biased. The only thing I miss when I don't take Lucius is his sense of style, and the last two turns of the game. My meta is full of new players, I take Lucius so that I don't wipe people off the board because that's rather unpleasant for both of us. My two cents is that Lucius would feel competitive with other masters if he had the suits built in to his personal actions. Add the second ram to his (really mediocre right now) sword cane so that he can function perform some board control, and remove the ram requirement from hidden sniper so that he has a (0) action that you can top deck for. Then maybe your opponent has even a tiny reason to target him with any kind of offensive action ever (rather than just killing your super squishy Guardsmen) and you have a couple of meaningful actions you can take without spending a stone, card, or often both. I'm curious, what sort of cache do you run with? Do you use Dashel, because that's a great synergy for killing things (which, as I mentioned, is not why I reach for Lucius)? Do you reliably have a 7+ of masks, rams, and books in hand? Lucius is the most rage-quit avoiding master I've found in the whole game...

I enjoyed it, definitely chuckled a few times. Great opening paragraph. I think the last line is unnecessary and for me it undercuts the joke by stringing it along too far, but other than that it's quite good.

I should say, I've never played against this list. I have played against a weird piglet-spamming Ulix list and it was fine, I lost by 2 points which isn't bad against a new master. As far as my theory-faux goes SitR seems crazy good. But then, in my theoryfaux, Gremlins typically do just about everything better than me anyway whereas on the table it doesn't always play out that way.

Side point: I don't think that Ulix is unbeatable, there are no unbeatable builds in this game. That being said, Shot in the Rear is hands down the most efficient AP generating action in the game which seems wrong. I mean sure, Ulix is a support master, he supports pigs. Lucius is a support master who supports minions, Lucius can generate 2AP for one, but will have to cheat or stone to make 1 of those AP useful. Colette can transfer her AP to other models but doesn't really generate more of it herself. It DOES seem like a problem to me that Ulix can trivially hand out more AP than masters that are designed to do literally nothing else, and that AP can go to models that are much deadlier than any Guild minion. Yes he's limited in the kind of AP he can hand out, but those are the only actions you really want his big pigs taking anyway. I don't know, seems screwed up.

It unbalances the game hugely in favor of summoning masters, or it can. It also makes certain schemes almost impossible - ALitS for one. That being said, the game itself plays pretty much the same, put pressure on summoners and you'll still drain their hand, kill models early, play to the strategy and schemes. It's just your choices that really make a difference.

Absolutely. I pulled that detail from somewhere, it's one of those things that I read somewhere at some time. I think it was an anti-union tactic to keep people in different roles separate so that they're almost set in competition with each other, or at least that's why it's done in this town.

Something that has helped me (as a Guild player primarily, YMMV) is to find a core crew for a given master - for example Lucius always runs with an Austringer, a Rifleman, and his Scribe, usually a Pathfinder as well - then I build the rest of the list around the schemes and strategy. With McCabe I would look to a core of ranged support models and Sidir (or Queeg depending on how he makes it out of playtesting) carrying the Promises upgrade. Build the rest to strat/schemes.

One (more) thing to watch with Somer is that he'll try and make you dump your hand if you get too close to him. Especially a risk considering Lillith's low WP.

I believe you ignore the height of the terrain completely if the height of the attacking model is equal to or greater than the height of the terrain.

Just ducking in to say that I fully support any decisions that led to the creation of Ironsides.

I think your pacing is really good, I would just like a better sense of the stakes.

I enjoyed this, nice use of formatting. I would have liked to know a little bit more about Wire-Framed Glasses, not a ton, but enough to be scared of him. Maybe he tipped his first hand a little?

I've really only managed to use Guild Guard well when Watch My Back is in play, otherwise they get split up and taken apart too easily. Of course it makes them more like 1 1/2 activation, and 10 stones. It's useful, I don't know that it's the best use of those stones. Don't expect Guild Guard to kill anything.

Sadly, I love about two masters in every faction. I'm holding myself back, but it's only by being severely broke.

Lovely. Truly lovely. There's some awkward sounding word repetition in the first couple of paragraphs, but beyond that I've got nothing productive to give you.

Pathfinders are great for summoning in extra soulstones for Lucius...

I think he gets more mileage out of Surprisingly Loyal in NB (more Guardsman models than Mimics, and more of them are minions). I like him with Ryle, any time I can get a positive twist built into an attack I'll take it, as Lucius tends to burn through the cards I'd want to cheat with. I haven't tried Sidir, but he's always been great in other cases. If you want to get the most out of Elite Training I've found Witchling Stalkers are the way to go.

IF I ran Lucius as Neverborn I would justify it thusly - Lucius takes a group of handpicked guardsmen to accomplish some specific objective deep in the quarantine zone, due to a network of ancient and convoluted agreements, treaties, and favors elements from some other factions show up, agents given a specific set of duties to carry out for a leader they don't really no. None of the guardsmen make it back alive, with the exception of Dashel who knows well enough to keep his mouth shut about the horrible things that he has seen. Lucius is the consummate networker, I'm sure he can pull in favors from anyone he needs favors from.

I think (purely theory-faux here) that he can safely be more aggressive when you run him as Neverborn. Illuminated make the difference if nothing else.

I didn't know the engineer existed until the last 500 words. I'm sure we'll see more of her at some point, when or where? I don't know, it depends on the prompts we get. I had a lot of fun writing this piece, and I'm glad you enjoyed reading it!

Lucius can work well with a static defensive element (I use an Austringer, Rifleman, and frequently a pathfinder) and then a mobile element (graves and tanner or a doppelganger if you're using surprisingly loyal, Abuela/hunters if not). Lucius bounces between them.

Lucius can work well with a static defensive element (I use an Austringer, Rifleman, and frequently a pathfinder) and then a mobile element (graves and tanner or a doppelganger if you're using surprisingly loyal, Abuela/hunters if not). Lucius bounces between them.

Damn phone.

Devil's deal is a different ability, it would be cool if that were a passive generation, but you use it to damage a model instead of spending a stone.

My submission is up. Rage Turns Cold - http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/106035-the-iron-quill-the-duel-rage-turns-cold/