InvokeChaos

Dude that would be epic. I knew it was non-master... for some reason that's where it stayed for me haha. At least I haven't accidently used it on someone! Though this does push us to the concept of maybe there are certain masters that are better at this trick simply because of card manipulation? Immediate thoughts: Lynch for obvious reasons Shenlong cuz 9-card hand Asami/Misaki for rush? And you can pad all of these fellows with gwyneth and/or sue. Just means that you lose a joro. But maybe that's the ticket? You only run two mega-spidres and another utility model that can get some work done? Sue is a pretty decent ranged threat, especially with Shen for the fast. Just mid-ranged. Great anti-cast tech, card draw... Lynch even gets a free mobile henchman in huggy. Perhaps something like this? Declared Faction: TenThunders 50ss Leader: Jakob Lynch - Cache:(4) Rising Sun 2ss Woke Up With A Hand 2ssHungering Darkness 0ss Smoke Grenades 1ss Yamaziko 6ss Smoke & Shadows 1ss Gwyneth Maddox 8ss Sue - 8+1ss Jorogumo 9ss Jorogumo 9ss Though honestly, shenlong has better overall card draw in general... so maybe just stick with him. That 0ss huggy activation is pretty awesome though.

You know I never noticed that. Fail! That’s what I get for never using that upgrade, lol. By pure chance I have never tried to use those abilities on her, but good to know moving forward!

Declared Faction: TenThunders 50ss Leader: Mei Feng - Cache:(6) Rail Lines 1ss Seismic Claws 1ss Vapormancy 1ss Yamaziko 6ss Smoke & Shadows 1ss Jorogumo 9ss Jorogumo 9ss Jorogumo 9ss Bunraku 5ss Bunraku 5ss rofl totally trying this out for fun

What is this tomfoolery!?!? They are not!! booooo and yeah I know. But yamaziko is last blossom. So she counts.

Remember that yamaziko can bury too! but you can stone for her, hehe. I feel like the problem here is that their entire crew is going to get to react to this. If you run yama + 3 spiders and 3 traps that's 40ss right there. So after master upgrades you're getting maybe one other model, and that's it. That means you have 6 activations at most. I've seen lower activtions overall this wave, but you have to imagine that if they have 8-9 activations, they're going to just bumrush those traps and nuke them to try to minimize the impact. Maybe in asami for summons to fluff the count? Super card hungry still.... Oh oh oh oh! Run it with Mei Fang and have the traps act as a railwalk ramp. Then have her just vent steam with misdirection (misdirect onto traps!) and drop your Joro next to her as a wall of spidery doom.

I like Ama no Zako but there's some things to note. Her obey requires a suit I want to say, but probably most importantly she's Ml5. That can be a huge deal, or not a problem at all, depending. I really don't have enough good things to say about the Crime Bosses. I've been running them a lot lately and they are just solid solid solid. Call onto chi is a great defensive ability when you're just a normal low wound model, but when you're a HtW enforcer with 9wds... it's amazing. Obviously high mins and spikes are a concern still, but with all the casts we have in 10T, it's not hard to get him to heal 5+ in a single turn. I had one in a tournament recently get dropped down to 1 wd, then activate and healed to full. Add in the laugh off and their other tech and I just adore them.

Seconding Gwyneth. She's amazing with a darkened any crew.

I have precious little experience here so take this with a grain of salt: The few times I've played henchman lead games, my opponents tend to bring either super utility to buff their heavy hitter, or a flat out heavy hitter hench. Because of the limited pools and such, it's just a lot to deal with if there's a nekima across from you. To that end, I'm not a fan of Toshiro with Sun Quiang is I don't like that you have no way of removing models. Via damage or otherwise. I will attest to Gwyneth being a nightmare to deal with in general and the double illuminated package works VERY well with her. I have only played her in full 50ss games, but throw equality or smoke grenades on her and she becomes a really tough nut to crack with her built in healing and flipping to for your opponent's attacks. She has a ranged scheme marker drop, and illuminated hit at 4/5/7 when attacking brillianced and are fairly tough on their own. I would agree throwing in a LRM over the Tengu for heals and scheme marker dropping as well. If you want to go with Toshiro, just make sure to bring some form of beatstick minion that he can properly buff. Fuhatsu might be an interesting choice now because of his drop to cost, and his Armor 2 with can't be lured or pushed. His gun is pretty insane. Crime Bosses are a new hotness for me if you have them available.

Good point on Misaki, that does make her much more viable. Especially if you run risk and reward so you have the guaranteed trigger by having "no" soulstones. I think this is why Crime Bosses are such a thing right now. Decently tanky, immune to lures and pushes, can punch out some nice damage, built in heal and if you don't need the heal potential card draw. Fuhatsu is also immune to lures and pushes, armor 2 with soulstones... and this is before counting in the numerous pushes and such we have access to as well. Yeah, maybe Izamu isn't the right pick, but maybe he is. Maybe you're totally ok with a min 3 with 3 attack model that wants to cheat damage to cycle cards being stuck in against rando summons. If your opponent summoned two models to bog down Izamu, then double lures him... they just used 4 AP on 1 model and 2 of that was master AP. That's a win in my book. As to outplaying: I hear you and I don't mean to imply it's necessarily an easy thing. I also don't mean outplay as in "hands down you just win because of better skill," I mean as in you play better. Which is what this game is entirely about. You play better and/or make fewer mistakes than your opponent. Some crews in GG17 you could screw up a lot and still pull out victories because activation control was that good. The reason ratjoy got nerfed was because anybody could pilot it. It was just an oppressive engine of activation control into ok I win now. I would concur that activation count is being downplayed more than it should. But 8 models seems to be a nice solid number of activations, so it's what you do with it at that point. And I've had some very strong wins with only 7 activations, including versus rezzers. Activations shouldn't be viewed as intimidating. AP efficiency matters more. It's no longer about flood the board, but more what kind of stalwart models you can bring to last the game and keep it up.

I mean they can do whatever they want with it. It's their IP. I have no issues with not being "historically" accurate. Even if it does make me scratch my head sometimes

@anencephalous I'm intrigued by your pick as Misaki top. Hard to Wound effectively nullifies her ability to blast, as even with a recalled training turn, you're still looking to get to straight by accuracy. Normally what makes her so devastating there is that she can pop a recalled or take a focused swing or two (if you can fast her) to guarantee the . You just don't have access to that really when most targets are going to be HtW. Even a focused shot is going to more often than not be on negatives. What are your thoughts there? Another thought to add to all this: I think we actually have a very strong tanking game. I agree that our "mechanical identity" is a bit more flavor than unique, but we have a couple of things we do better than anyone and the thing that immediately comes to mind is healing. A normally hard to find mechanic, we have it in droves. Usually on solid models that bring a lot to the table. From 10T bros to Obsidian Oni to the new Crime Bosses... we have the heals. 10T bros can get armor, we have a lot of HtW and HtK sprinkled and a few high armor pieces. We have self-heals and an emissary that passes out an armor aura when models are going defensive. It's an interesting situation. Shenlong, Yan Lo, McCabe all buff healing and defensive capabilities. Lynch can now too with Cheating Bastard. It's good stuff. I also would like to draw attention to GG18 no longer being really an activation game. Summons don't count for Ours. Ply is arguably benefitted by having a lot of models to ply with... but the converse is that if you spam the board, it gives your opponent way more options. Much better to get a tanky model engaged with a couple of others to ply and then go "come at me bro." Supply Wagon wants larger bases and is again a sit and babysit kind of scheme that benefits stalwart over fleeting. Public Execution wants tankier, less likely to die models too. Symbols is probably the only strat that likes to have extra activations for the purpose of trying to get a winger up in their back line for the markers. Also remember the strats are much more back and forth. Public and Ply only get one VP a turn to one player and Ours/Wagons/Symbols can be denied, even with summons on the board. So masters like McCabe and Shenlong do well in those schemes. They bring heals to an already decently stalwart crew choice. I played Lynch all month and the biggest thing I noticed was that I could run 7 models of tanky goodness and it wasn't a bad idea. Even when I got blitzed in an alpha that took one out... I could recover and keep the rest alive. Sometimes it really isn't about the numbers. I had Nico chucking Kentauroi into my face, but because my models were able to get healed up and took only minor hits, it was fine. I think Mei Fang is a really solid idea personally. Toshiro is a decent play too, but I'm not a fan of how card intensive he is. I would like to add into Asami that remember she eats corpse markers (and scheme markers) and Jorogumo are like the ultimate anti summoner tech. They can charge for 1AP when summoned, Ml5 with a min 3 and a 0 that ignores a lot of defenses. Summoning a Joro and charging it up can often wreck a wounded summon or two while potentially leaving a fully healed threat if you were able to get flicker 2 from where-ever. You don't have to mulch your opponent. And you don't have to out-activate them. You just have to outplay them. And if you can score 10 points before round 4, then who cares if they mince you round 4-5... you got your 10.

I'd love for some more oni for Asami personally. So I'm for that. Aren't they demons in real fluff anyways?

Please tell me Manos has a Hands of Fate ability!!

Can you give us some sample masters or even crews? Maybe a brief synopsis of what the game looked like? More information is better. Rezzers are a tough nut to crack in general because of summons, but we have the tools. I honestly feel the hardest part is that we are a faction that is notoriously pillow fisted on the low end, and they force a lot of min damage through. Though recent models have somewhat ameliorated this. Crime Boss I feel is a staple take against rezzers because they're a 40mm base with laugh off, an ability to effectively remove hard to wound +1 and min 3. Their ml5 is mitigated by lower than average df stats on the undead in general. His 0 action to draw cards on activation is great for using him as a tanking piece and the option to forego that for healing is solid as well. Charm Warders and Terracotta Warriors dial these guys up so they are great front line models against the hordes. Obsidian Statue is similar in this role, providing a nice bit of blocking LoS, Armor 2 and a heal. If your enemy is plinking 1 dam a hit, he's not going down. Df 3 is hard to deal with though and can be card intensive or invite mods and severes, so I'm not sold on him being "auto-take" but a solid consideration. Ranged to soften them up is great. Especially models coming in from Nico and Kirai, who are already wounded. Emissary is an all-star with hunting for that 6 damage on 1AP thanks to his focus discard ability. More specifically to your masters. My thread on Lynch kind of addresses how I deal with rezzers as I have taken a 7 activation Lynch into summoners and not lost more than a model and nearly tabled my opponents. It's all about being cagey and not over extending. Summoning engines all have a weakness, you just have to exploit it. Lynch is particularly good at this because he can delete 2 models a turn easily if they are coming in damaged already. Hell he can do it to full health models with a touch of luck between wanna see a trick and woke up with a hand. McCabe passing out saber is great for providing some much needed damage. I feel like badge of speed is a bit of a trap against rezzers. You don't want to get isolated. They prefer that. Strangemetal Shirt for the armor aura is awesome. Getting those + to WP from promises helps a bit against lures. The elixir is great for topping up a tank like the Crime Boss or Obsidian Statue. Fuhatsu or Izamu could fill this role as well. You can try to dive Yasunori into their ranks to try to break the engine, but if you don't guarantee that break, you've lost too many points. Misaki is dangerous into rezzers IMO. They're hard to wound mitigate her high top end damage and reduce the ability to exploit storm. Stalking somewhat makes up for this, but I feel like you have to play super conservative with her here. That or dive her in hard with misdirection, risk and reward and make sure you disrupt that engine. Murder asura or philip. Some models to take a look at: Kang obviously, though he's super slow and not as tanky as you'd like him to be. I honestly don't run him very often, but he's pretty nasty in a gunline as an anchor point. I think he may have some play with archers where he charges in, and the archers can just shoot what he's tanking, with if they're near him against those pesky undead. Any model that's min 3 to mitigate HtW Crime Bosses for overall tankiness and laugh off Lust is solid because she can take summoned, diving models and send them back with hopefully slow and/or some damage on them. Charm Warders give out entropy to summoned models and can give it as an attack. Pretty solid. Emissary as mentioned above. Samurai are actually a solid take as they basically ignore cover, and you're looking to spray damage, not pile it on. So it's a great take for slaughtering zombies and low wound summons. If you're looking for a new master, fight fire with fire and bring Asami. Her focused +2 action makes ranged threats super deadly even with HtW and she is incredibly AP efficient as a summoner. Mercs. Sue is strong for his anti-cast aura that basically makes Belles and Doxies much less reliable. Also a great pic in case they go Tara/Beast Bomb because NB is casts. Taelor is now a bit more affordable as well. Lazarus is a solid ranged tank as well.

@Amayasu I hear what you are saying. And I don't disagree per se. But no opponent is that isn't alpha striking is going to be in range for that monster hand turn 1. And by turn 2 it's not as viable a tactic I feel. Really it depends on the board state and scheme pool. I played with the melbourne shuffle quite a bit, and it was decently consistent. I just feel it's more of a cute trick than a competitive tactic. Yup. That is accurate. Or any time you flip a ram with an ace in hand. 10T bros are solid stalwarts of our crew choices. Rarely are they a bad choice. Are there better choices? Sure. But rarely are they bad. So let me clarify something here. I don't think the lust trick is bad. I don't even think it's ineffective. If you have fun with it, that's more important than anything. I just look at all the moving parts and what I see is bunching everyone up in a bubble with specific crew choices that may or may not be optimal for the sole purpose of exploiting a card drawing trick that is only effective if you can get an opposing model within 8" of lynch and brillianced. We can argue about the finer points of it all day long. Fact of the matter is, if you like it, cool... rock it all day long. I play a slightly more competitive than casual game and I feel you're giving your opponent a chance to maximize what they can do to you by better positioning. I've played against the melbourne shuffle as well. It doesn't scare me in the slightest. I look at it usually as a card fixing trick for a monster hand. I react accordingly. And if hand fixing is your primary goal here, Lynch can practically get a hand of 5-6 severes just on the standard tricks he brings without the Lust/draw mechanic. Most turns I never had less than 3-4 severes in hand with Lynch just from playing him. And I almost always walked into turn 2 with 5. It's what he does. YMMV, just my opinions

I think Fuhatsu is in a much better place than where he's been. Previously I would have said Envy was a better take at 1ss less, similar damage track and the ability to freely hand out focus. But Fuhatsu is Armor 2 with HtW, 8wds and stones. Even at Df4, he's solid, just not unkillable by any stretch. The SS reduction really helped in my opinion. He can be compared new statue who is df3, Armor 2 and not hard to wound. They have a similar can't be lured or pushed, but fuhatsu is rg 12, obsidian is rg 6. Fuhatsu is a henchman, obsidian is not. Obsidian is better for getting stuck in and the utility of pulsing away markers. Fuhatsu is just a ranged tank. They both have a heal. And both can bring some pain in different ways. But that's the thing, they compare now. Which is fantastic. I think my biggest issue with fuhatsu is almost his entire back card is meaningless. The heal is alright unless you have a great control hand. With this new upgrade the push is nigh unto useless. His primary attack is solid, but without focus it's still a crap shoot and any sensible opponent won't let you have the straight flip (a reason to support Brewie being a good choice for him). His sweeping gatling is just horrible. Not being able to cheat makes that an utter waste of AP. Again, you can pray to the card gods on a swill... but if you're opponent flips a couple of moderates and you don't, that's some salty salty tears. So basically he gets reduced down to a horror immune tanky mid range gun with a decent damage track. Not bad. And with Brewie I think has some play. He makes a solid misdirection target and does more damage than a samurai for 1ss more. Brewie's heal is better than his built in one if you have a solid hand. So there's some nice synergy here. I still think for 9ss I think I prefer Sue still. He isn't as tanky, but brings card draw, a solid defense aura and a decent gun that on average will do more damage (min 3-4 with crit strike instead of min 2). Putting something on swill makes the sh5 not matter so much, it's got a built in positive and same range as fuhatsu. I think you could argue one vs the other depending on faction. Versus rezzers/neverborn/arcanists I think i'd prefer Sue. Lots of nasty casts you have to be concerned about. Guild/gremlins/outcasts have high min damage so that armor 2 is much nicer. 10T depends on the master...

This is a modification on the "Melbourne Shuffle" that was thrown around a year or two ago. It used a samurai to walking fire between huggy and lust until you got the 2 aces, then spammed torakage rapid fire to draw 3 cards per torakage. The goal was run two torakage, get all 4 aces and have a 16 card hand. The engine was a bit silly, IMO, because you brought mediocre models to basically generate hand advantage. It only goes so far. I have a couple of viewpoints on this. First, I like what you're doing here much better than the melbourne shuffle. It also keeps the crew in a bubble, which is actually pretty solid for Lynch. I like that you don't need a samurai for it, and I do agree that Lust in general is a good model to run with Lynch. I think the double focus push is a great trick as well. That being said I still wonder if that's a valid tactic. For a couple of reasons. First this trick is limited by the number of ml5 models in your crew. And that's not entirely something you want to have a lot of. One or two, maybe. Second problem you run into is card management. With a 10+ hand, if you get the misfortune of not drawing many weak cards you are in an interesting position. You have to FIND ways to ditch cards out of your hand to get them back in your deck for round 2. Same with the aces. Otherwise you inadvertently create a spike deck. To get to a 14 card hand with this method you have to 1) draw into all four aces and 2) after drawing the 2 required aces attack into lust 4 times with a Ml5 model. I did the math on this, and it's basically as random as you'd think. Generally speaking you have a less than 40% chance of drawing an ace in your opening hand, and when rolling cards it varies from 20-35% chance. And that's AT flipping 5 cards a go. Just too much investment in my opinion. But there IS a silver lining here. As long as you have 2 aces, you can keep damage off her... which opens up some crime boss shenanigans. I would be interested to throw Gwyneth, Lust and 2 crime bosses in a list with the emissary and see what happens. Especially if you get that ace of tomes early. I think it's one of those if you get the cards cool, but if you don't, don't worry about it. Regardless it is an interesting and efficient way at hunting for aces without using the triple positive samurai!

Emissary can push and fast a model with an upgrade attached. If I don't have an upgrade on any enforcer/hench, I tend to pitch hidden agenda as it's a 0 cost upgrade that now allows the emissary to target them.

I think brewie has always been in a good place, just underrun. Maybe because as a bubble master in 10T I don't think he's very solid. We have no way to help "rig" initiative flips. And that critical model is usually enough to cause major damage if your opponent wins initiative. But as a swill/binge bot... he's insane. I've been looking at Yamaziko recently with Brewie. Swill makes her much more survivable, and her anti-charge allows you to play Brewie a little closer to the front. Plus she brings the very real threat of her 2AP action, which if your opponent is playing a more aggressive master, will cause mayhem. Imagine obeying/pushing Yamaziko up and she nimbles into range with a Master and just ditches 2-4 cards. You win initiative next turn, she ditches 2-4 cards again. Then brewie goes, swills a key model and binges to remove the rest. It's horrifying, and works much more often than you would think. My standard brewie kit for upgrades is misdirection, binge and the new obey upgrade. I don't like running wesley very often, but if I do it's with running tab and TW to swap to misdirection. I think card draw is a thing for brewie however, so I like the wonder weasel, TW combo. And gwyneth is a great piece with him. Swilling a target you need to move out of position with come play at my table works pretty well. Plus she's tanky, card fixing and brings some ranged scheme marker placement. Samurai are decent obey targets and great misdirection targets. Armor 2 and with favor of earth I think 9wds. And brewie can obey them to shoot, and you just walk and heal them during their activation. I've been debating swapping this out to an obsidian statue which is also armor 2 9wds with an arguably better heal. Sue is good for his card draw and anti cast aura, as well as having a min3 ranged gun on + flips. Swill again helps mitigate his Sh5. Charm Warders are overkill but vanishing on brewie in the bubble is just silly. I am really digging Crime Boss lately, and I like the continued manipulation of your opponent's fate. Swill to put them on negatives, fragile to put you on positive damage. Anything it takes to make the cards matter as little as possible. Plus Crime Boss has hard to wound, self-heals, 9wds, can draw you cards... min 3. It's just a really solid 8ss model. Tanuki and Whiskey Golem feels too cute to me. I mean, tanuki is only 5 pts, but to maximize the combo, you need to basically have another model drop a scheme marker next to golem, 0 action (or 1AP ) with brewie to get the poison 2, and then activate the golem to get the poison 3... do your thing. Then tanuki activates and gives it reactivate. It's either going to be a really solid tactic, or not going to happen as often as you need it too. As soon as he's out of range of brewmaster's melee or you can't use that 0 to push and poison 2, you have to use another model to grant it. Just... I dunno, seems a lot of work when I can just take an izamu and attack 3 times, then obey once... and i've got 4 attacks, just like if I had a reactivated whiskey golem. Have to get some table time with it.

Few things from my games I want to throw in: So I needed Gwyn to shoot a Kentauroi last night... she had to randomize with two targets. So when I did her rigged deck I left a low card second card in, hit me to draw the severe I saw, then attacked. I chose to flip randomization in the order of the enemy first, who got the low card and my dude got the mid card, guaranteeing the hit. This makes her interesting for shooting into melee, so if you have only 3 models engaged, you can guarantee who is going to get hit, then just hit me afterwards. Also good for getting that scheme marker down. I've left a 13 of rams in, just for the attack to get that marker down and drawn either after that or taken a mid card. Cheating Bastard has absolutely changed how I handle my control hand. I've found myself going defensive a lot more to pitch moderates back into rotation on early turns when there isn't a lot of action, stocking up on 4 severes and making sure to keep at least two masks in hand. I'll keep even keep a weak mask in hand if it gets me the 3rd, because getting the 2 heal on my whole crew is just flat better than MAYBE drawing a fifth severe. I try not to keep any Aces unless I really need it. You don't HAVE to pick them up. If they end up in my hand early turn, they stay obviously, but if it's obvious Lynch isn't going to murder anything that turn, I roll em to mulligan or pitch them as needed. It's not worth clogging your hand and the worst thing is to have a hand of great cards and two aces and you either pitch them at end of turn to not see them next turn or you keep them and deny yourself some possibly better cards. It also enables a playstyle where I don't cheat as often. Example: My opponent is coming at me with some attacks. Min 2/3 type things. The standard. If one attack misses, I'm almost always guaranteed to let the 2nd one hit me when I have three masks in hand. Unless they are hunting straight for cheating in severe, it's generally just ok to take the damage. And if there top end is 4... I totally take it and I don't care. What this does is keeps cards in my hand for CRITICAL attacks. And that definition changes completely with how the board state is and what's left. If I have obsidian oni up and my opponent has only 2 beaters and one has already gone... I'm probably just going to take blows to the face. Then obsidian heals, cheating bastard heals, and I've negated 2AP from my opponent (and possibly some cheated cards) with a 0 and a start of activation ability. It's just really strong. I've found my hardest issue is dealing with alpha strikes that realize how lynchpin my master is (hehe) and go straight for the throat. Same for Huggy. I find that the best way to deal with these threats is literally removal. If you don't kill Lynch in your charge, because of how I'm playing I expect that I have a full grip. And that means I'm going to activate, brilliance you, maybe hit you with an unload and then final debt into 52 pickup. With 2 aces in hand I've had one model survive this combo. One. And that's accounting for having to cheat to only do 5 on a final debt. Between a min unload and a final debt with 2 aces you are doing 13 damage. And that's leaving an AP left. I often will Final Debt, then cycle with mulligan to hunt for another severe or ace. The less experienced players I've gone up against I always warn, "if you are within 12" of lynch, I can and will delete you. Have a game plan." And so far it's been absolutely true. I had some real rough trouble with Sandeep (who doesn't?) but even Nellie has to respect Lynch's threat. He doesn't use damage tracks if I don't want him to, so you're at the mercy of stones. Armor continues to be our biggest problem. And the only way I've been able to trump an armor 2 high wound model has been to hunt for aces, keep them if I have to and engineer a final debt 6 + ace dump 8 to do 10 damage flat out. I shiver at the thought of dealing with a peacekeeper. Another reason I'm seriously considering making Crime Bosses a more major part of my lists. Their ability to ignore armor if you've taken a hit cannot be understated in its power for 10T. So for the other side of the fence, how do you deal with this? Honestly focus fire is hands down the best way to deal with Lynch. I WANT you to spread out and flank me, go after huggy and gwyn at the same time, tie up lynch with a tanky model. That is exactly what I want. I have absolutely gone from almost all of my models having damage on them to healing 10-14 in a single turn. That removes AP from your opponent. It's why obsidian are good. It's why cheating bastard is SO good. They both effectively remove an attack AP at no cost. Obsidian take a 0 to do it (and an ace) and Lynch can negate several AP with a single triple mask reveal. Armor is great with Lynch and is why I've started going tanky and bringing emissary here and there. I pitch aces to go defensive, say come at me bro and watch as their attacks do 1-2 damage tops... then Lynch activates and heals a bunch. This all gets mitigated (at least a little bit) by focusing on a single model. It forces me to change my activation orders to deal with the constant attacks, forces me to cheat to keep a key piece alive, etc. On my standard lists, I still can heal 6wds easily on any one model, but you're forcing me to devote attention. And because it's spread across activations it's a losing attrition battle. Focusing is also way better against this list than others. I want the min damage. Focusing makes you able to pump some harder hits in. Healing 2 damage on an activation isn't as impactful when you did 6 damage, not 2. It's why I try to take a Monk of Low River in all my lists now. I've had to dump 3-4 cards out of my hand to get 6wds healed so I didn't lose a super-critical piece (like Lynch!) from focused assaults. It all comes down to what I'm up against. 'Nother notch on the crime boss' belt... hard to wound negates focus's punch for the most part.

Yeah see, that's what I've been thinking. I had actually been mulling over a list that ran Samurai/Lazarus/Envy/Archer. Looks like this: Jakob Lynch (Cache 6) -Cheating Bastard -Wanna See A Trick -Woke Up With A Hand Hungering Darkness -Smoke Grenades Samurai -Favor of Jigoku Lazarus -Recalled Training Envy -Blot the Sky Thunder Archer Wastrel My issue at the moment is that Laz and Envy cost a lot of points. So I've been just tossing the idea around in my head. I might drop Envy for Gwyneth. But Archer's seem their strongest if I'm going to go in and engage things. Which I tend to not do willy-nilly with Lynch. After playing with Crime Boss last night, I may look at this: Jakob Lynch (Cache 6) -Cheating Bastard -Wanna See A Trick -Woke Up With A Hand Hungering Darkness -Smoke Grenades -Equality Gwyneth -Blot the Sky Katanaka Crime Boss Katanaka Crime Boss Thunder Archer Thunder Archer Wastrel Crime Boss is just a really solid looking model for me. Doesn't stand up against major hits, but I definitely think he's a mid-game bruiser. Can put out damage, take some damage and heal himself. It's just solid. Again, with Cheating Bastard helping the healing, it's maybe viable. No samurai does mean I'm not digging aces as much, but I've found that I tend to roll quite a bit of cards oonce the turns start going. I also only try to focus when I actually need the hit. If I'm just purging cards, I will absolutely shoot into cover on negatives for the extra cards. It's all about feeling out your deck. I keep an eye on my severes and if I have 4 in hand and have already flipped 4-5 more, I'm ok with wasting the cards to ace hunt if I don't have anything more pressing to do with the AP. It's all about the game plan. And if I can't kill you with my pinger and my goal is to have Lynch murder, then ace hunting is typically a better option than not, in my experience. It's totally a feel thing, with a bit of luck thrown in... and I'm totally ok with that playing Lynch.

I've recently tried 2 different lists that were 9 activations. First one got minorly changed with the errata. Originally it had a different six-stone minion (flux) but beckoner is really solid in that slot now. Lynch (4 cache) -Cheating Bastard -Wanna See A Trick Hungering Darkness -Equality -Smoke Grenades Gwyneth Maddox -The Peaceful Waters Samurai -Favor of Jigoku Obsidian Oni Obsidian Oni Charm Warder Beckoner Monk of Low River The goal behind this list in its initial testing was to use Samurai with Cheating Bastard to maximize the walking fire triggers. It worked really well. I typically got 2+ aces a turn from his constant attacks (I typically cycle between Huggy and a target, especially if I pull the ace of rams). Monk of Low River provides some support but he's really there to provide a second way of producing scheme markers at range with the enemy (alongside Gwyneth). Because Huggy and Lynch are effectively my kill models, I put equality and smoke on Huggy. But I find that Obsidian Oni can more than pull their weight between healing and a focused cast at 1/4/5 damage track. Beckoner is more often than not used on my own models for positioning, but she also is a third source of ranged brilliance for Wanna See A Trick. Plus she is a decent melee tarpit with the healing from Cheating Bastard and Monk of Low River. I don't tend to take this list in a heavy kill pool, as I need another beater. But it's proven to be a pretty decent catch all list in GG18, which focuses a bit more on being tankier. And Obsidian are pretty tanky for 6ss, as is Beckoner. No one tends to waste AP on a Monk of Low River, especially because it full heals on a 0 in this list (from all the casts) if they don't kill it in 2AP. Where this list has been shining for me is things like Guarded Treasure, Inescapable Trap and Dig their Graves. I can place Scheme markers pretty much wherever I want. If it's flank/close, Covert is almost an autotake. The other list was effectively the same but the idea was try out some new silliness. It actually worked pretty well. Lynch (4 cache) -Cheating Bastard -Wanna See A Trick Hungering Darkness -Smoke Grenades Gwyneth Maddox Yamaziko -Hidden Agenda Samurai -Favor of Jigoku Obsidian Oni Obsidian Oni Monk of High River Monk of High River The goal here was to see if Monk of High River was any good now. I was already running 2 Oni which want to see burning, and Lynch allowed me to pitch an Ace for their charge. So I figured if they were going to shine anywhere it would be here. And honestly, they do work now. They have the same HP and defensive setup as most of our 5ss minions (barring say a tome-d 10T bros) but they just bring damage. Three attacks on charge at Ml6 that auto applies burning is great on a 5ss minion. Their 0 push just means your opponent probably isn't going to avoid the charge if you really want to get it off. I've been running them behind blocking terrain and just pushing out to charge a key target and tie it up, drop like 3-5 burning on it and a few points of damage. Then obsidian walks up, conflagrates it from the heavens and if it's not dead it will be at EoT. I had a run of a couple of games where I literally landed 0 attacks out of 12... but that's because my opponents seemed to just want to flip 11+ against my monks. And I decided it wasn't worth cheating. So for a couple of games they were just severe wasters, still solid haha. But when they finally were allowed to hit things, I was surprised just how much damage I could put out. I even had a df5 pass to cheat first on a 2 flip, so I cheated in the ace of tomes for burning 2 . I don't think they're auto takes anymore, but they're definitely no longer never takes. Yamaziko was an experiment. We were playing an interact heavy pool and I was playing a gremlin player. I figured he'd bring Zipp to shut down the interacts and get passed some of my defenses (he knew I was playing Lynch as it's been a solo play for me for a while), and she did not disappoint. From Lynch's and Gwyneth's abilities, I always had a 13 in hand, and he lost 5 cards a turn to Yamaziko because he hadn't score any schemes and HAD to try to cheat or lose 4 cards flat out. Talk about a horrifying ability. She was a lot tougher than I thought she would be too with Obsidian's healing her and the occasional Cheating Bastard.

Ran this tonight against Nico Engine: Lynch (Cache 4) -Woke Up With a Hand -Wanna See A Trick -Cheating Bastard Hungering Darkness -Smoke Grenades Gwyneth Maddox -Hidden Agenda Shadow Emissary -Conflux of Hunger Katanaka Crime Boss -Equality Obsidian Statue -Servant of the Five Dragons Ten Thunder Brother Corner and Ours with Take One For The Team. Inescapable Trap, Guarded Treasure, Undercover Entourage and Take Prisoner. I ran Inescapable and Guarded. First thing I will say is that I was very hesitant coming into this matchup with only 7 activations with Nico on the other side of the table and his engine. First turn was mostly positioning and he got 3-4 extra models from summons and Asura/Carrion zombies. So my thought process was to turtle into Guarded Treasure and make him come to me for Insescapable. The pain started turn 2 when he began summoning Kentauroi. I have not played against them yet and I have never seen a model that so fundamentally changes a master like that model does. He spiked two severe damage flips on my statue, and then next turn charged into my Emissary. Due to my deck fixing I realized that I needed to avoid those hits, so I cheated, but the threat of those damned things was insane. The problem was, he wasn't really coming at me more than to poke my defenses, so I was running thin on ideas for Inescapable without risking committing something to his bubble of potential death. Third turn he summoned two more and I decided I needed to take out Nico if I got the chance. I was steadily scoring Guarded and resisting his pokes at my front lines with Cheating Bastard heals, reconstitute, equality and destined. So he started advancing a bit further to try to deny me an Ours. He used the Carrion for a sneak play on turning a corpse into a scheme and scoring Inescapable. Great play. His only hench was ASura so I was pretty confident he didn't have undercover. That meant take one or take prisoner. He had necros and doxies. If he had guarded treasure he would have moved philip and the emissary into position until Asura could move up, so I was confident. That meant I needed to not kill anything but summons and to prepare for denial of take prisoner somehow. It would come down to activations, which he had. Fourth turn I decided I had to commit. I pushed up my crime boss with the Emissary and basically said come at me bro. I really like Crime Boss. Does his job. Nico was in range and he tied up a doxy and the emissary. He did his job wonderfully. My opponent pulled Lynch to center of table. I thought he'd taken the bait of luring him now that he wasn't guarded by the unmovable crime boss. Turns out his take one target was his sole belle. But I checked range and was just within 6" of nico with 3 aces in my hand and 7 cards; 3 of them masks. It was now or never. Lynch activated, brillianced Nico, final debted then played twice into a 6 pt ace pitch. Only one stone left, so down went Nico. I capped out Guarded, he got another on Inescapable. I scored one as well off the belle and doxy tieing up Lynch. My only fear now was Take Prisoner. But if I could kill three models before they activated next turn I could do that. Two zombies and a summoned model later he realized I wasn't going to kill any of his main crew beyond Nico and we called it. 9-5 Lynch. Obsidian was nice. I'm not sure it's an auto take, and I think it would play better in a pool that required more mixing it up and less do your own thing. This pool has two schemes that score at end of game, one that wants a turn 4 score and a scheme & strat that requires zero interaction with your opponent. I think in this instance I might have preferred two crime bosses. The hard to wound would have worked better with Call of Chi. Granted the armor 3 that my obsidian had after defensive scales from emissary kept him alive, but if I was htw, I wouldn't have taken 2 severes. Hard to say. Laugh Off is really strong against rezzers, so I really think at least one Crime Boss is in vs rezzers. I think the Kentauroi were the right play, but if he summoned shikomi, I would have been crying at 2 severes eviscerating my statue. It was interesting to play such a passive game where I was turtling hard and just going "come at me bro." It worked though. My opponent didn't really make any bad mistakes, other than taking Take One, which being in the pool basically makes me never want to kill anything I'm horrible at guessing who's the sucker.

Hey there, fellow Wyrdos! It's been a while. Hope everyone is doing well. Haven't been on the forums in months due to life and work. You know how it goes. But I'm going to be trying to be a bit more active again, and I figured my tournament prep would be a good starting point! So I got asked by the infamous Alex Schmid to run mono lynch in an upcoming tourney here in NC. So I've been running exclusive Lynch for the last month as practice! And I've discovered some fun and interesting things I thought I'd share with everyone. What have all of you been looking at and doing with our favorite card shark/drug pusher? Wave 5 Gwyneth Maddox - First of all, for those who have not tried Gwyneth with him... do yourselves a favor. TRY HER. Rigged deck and Hit Me are cool, as is her Come Play at My Table. But what I've really been using her for lately is a point holder. She isn't going to stand up to a dedicated onslaught of beaters, but I've found she effectively has Hard to Wound, and her healing on missed attacks is fantastic. Pip the Ace to drop down scheme markers is fan-freaking-tastic and has won me games by itself. Being a henchman, being able to stone for that ram or just to help with damage prevention, she's not died in any of my outings so far. Cheating Bastard - This freaking upgrade, man. Ok so it's hit and miss on the masks in hand. I almost always have 1. And sometimes 2. But when I do get that mystical 3rd, it usually makes a pretty big impact. What I've found is that against really aggressive lists, you just can't hold onto the cards in your hand. So that makes getting to the almighty 3 a lot harder. But more control lists I'm usually able to do that, which makes this sometimes devastating. They may already be struggling to deal with some of my bigger models as it is. Adding in the global 2 heal just kind of makes the uphill battle even worse. The real money here though is cheating second while within 6" of huggy and lynch. It's incredible how that changes the entire dynamic of the game. I can't tell you how many times someone has flipped a 9 to my 2-5, and they have to cheat first. I've been on the side of watching a 13 get dropped to ensure, while I had planned on not cheating and watching them pass, only to cheat a 10 and get great value out of the high mod. I've only had huggy die once, and that was from a lucky red joker flip on cast when I was out of stones. Nothing you can do there. Every other time, I've found the healing provided by the crew innately alongside the adjusted paradigm to make him survivable enough (though I do also run smoke and equality). It's my new go-to upgrade for limited. I try to consider it as Huggy is free. Treat Lynch like an outcast master with a cache of 1, and just consider huggy the free bonus. That makes losing him seem less of an issue, and even throwing upgrades on him for added survivability, I'm just finding that it's worth losing the immortal huggy for having so much control on the field for the whole crew. Burn Out - I like this upgrade, or more I want to like it. But it's expensive and I just don't have the room for it in most of my builds with Lynch. I've come to just running Trick and Bastard, and using the rest of the stones for cache. Though I may start looking at going lower to add in Woke Up. Final debt is just so strong, it's hard to leave it aside, especially when you only need a single mask and someone within 8" to guarantee a debt attack right off the cuff. Charm Warder - I've run them several times, and pulled them out to try out the errata'd High River Monks. With moving away from Obsidian Oni, I'm going to go back to them. Vanishing on Huggy is amazing and disguised on Lynch helps tremendously against melee crews. I've had a samurai sit in the middle of the table getting wailed on, but because my opponent didn't have a great control hand, Vanishing basically kept him up vs 8 attacks, and then he got healed afterwards. Definitely at least a one-of unless you have some specific reason to not bring it. Obsidian Statue/Lotus Eaters/Crime Boss/Tanuki - Haven't played with these with Lynch. Though the more I mess around with my lists, the more I'm looking at using them. I had been testing out running double Obsidian Oni with double High River Monks (due to Jan errata) and actually, I quite liked it. But I recently went down to only one Obsidian Oni and I'm thinking of dropping them out entirely which removes some of the synergy from High River Monks. So I am thinking of bringing in a Crime Boss or two. Maybe a Lotus Eater. Lotus Eater just is a fantastic schemer and utility piece and I've got an 8ss slot lurking around for a beater piece. And I think that Crime Boss might fit that bill. Obsidian Statue is definitely on my list of "want to use this model" thanks to Dark Energies and it's overall tankiness. General Crew Thoughts So I've been running the Samurai regularly. And I find it's harrier potential and overall ability to take some hits (assuming you don't get red jokered for 8 damage ) has been good for me. I also feel like he makes a definitely noticeable impact on my ability to hunt aces. Which makes sense. I often walking fire between huggy and an enemy, dealing 1 damage to huggy per ping and just cycling through my deck A couple of lucky flips is normally all I need to load up on my aces. I've been debating on how much I want to keep him in simply because he is very easy to mitigate (only 1" reach) unless I keep him far back which doesn't help. That being said, I've thrown him up to mid table fairly early on as a "come at me bro" kind of thing that also makes opponent's a little wary. Triple positive is no joke, and even 2-3 points of damage is still 2-3 points of damage. For now I'm sidelining him just to get a feel for if he is "necessary" to help fuel 52 pickup or not. I do know that if I run him, as long as he doesn't die immediately I get all 4 aces fairly regularly. If I don't run him, I tend to not see more than one or two on my activations. As to the rest of my crew let's talk beaters. I've not been using Yasunori. I need to try him. I've been attempting to keep my activations up at 9, which is usually pretty easy, but that tends to lead to Lynch and Huggy being the major removal of the list. Which isn't necessarily bad, but they definitely have some bad matchups where they can be blitzed off the table. I have looked at a few lists with Yasunori, and am trying to get a list to 8 activations, but I feel like getting to 8 is done by running "fluff". I really want to keep gwyn and emissary in if I can. And if I run Yasu there, I've already accounted for 35 pts after ugprades on 3 models. I need 8 more for lynch in cache and upgrades give or take 1-2. That leaves like 7-10 points. Which doesn't account for a whole lot. Either my cache is a bit lacking or I'm running like 2 depleted or something. Which isn't exactly bad, but not exactly good either. As to scheme runners, I've been using huggy for that a lot lately. Walk 6, incorporeal, high damage, built in healing, terrifying and an obey all add up to a massive anti-schemer. He's been suiting that role well for and I've been splitting my forces up a lot lately. This crew seems to struggle the most when everything is bunched up in the center and all the dudes can swing on a single target and focus it down. By splitting, I tend to see my opponent either split as well, which absolutely benefits me, or push up center/towards a flank. This allows me to either play super cagey and hopefully control the far side of the table, or I pincher in. It's working right now, and minimizes my need for scheme runners in general. Though AP economy is at a premium in some pools, and in those cases I'm defaulting to charm warders, yokai, 10T bros and high river monks. You know, the usual suspects plus a new entry. I think Yokai are the strongest with 10T bros being the most versatile. But High River has some interesting combinations and charm warder is... well charm warder. 0 I really think I'm going to give a tankier 7 model crew a try and see how it plays out. I'm intrigued with running Emissary with a normal conflux purely to buff a sniper for triple positives on a single attack. It's more of a threat, and while it doesn't purge my deck like walking fire does, it's a more significant threat when I can do potentially 6 damage from across the board. It just creates a bit better board control. I've also considered throwing in a thunder archer with blot. May try that tonight actually. If I'm going to be running models designed to stick around and tie up opponents, having the ranged threat of a model that ignores engagement while passing out slow isn't a bad thing. It benefits from rapid fire and hail is a solid ability. Then there's lotus eater and charm warder... so many options for this last spot. Just need more testing.

I would also raise the point of "whichever one you like the most aesthetically." I would say of the 2, Dawn Serpent would get more work done because of ranged, burning, blasts, and high stat value. But the Whiskey Golem is a Whiskey Golem! If you are concerned about overall effectiveness, I would indeed look to a different beater that can bring more craziness to the party. You can also look at that 10ss slot as a tech piece... swapping in what you need based off what you are fighting. Izamu/Yasunori if you need a lot of attacks with some beef. Kang if you need to bypass armor. Serpent if you want some more ranged value. Etc. Jorogumo is a fair pick here as well because it is HtW, HtK, has eat your fill, is min dam 3 and can have 3 attacks. Putting your opponent on negatives helps ensure it does the dirty even with that middling Ml5. As to the terracotta, upgrade conversation. I personally take the upgrade because I'm guaranteed to take Misdirection on Brewie. I've always found it invaluable and I like to play a bit more forward with him. And I never consider terracotta a waste of points. I always want a 5ss slot and he's a solid piece for it. Maybe not as good as a 10T bros or Yokai, but that really more depends on your schemes. And wesley is pretty damned awesome. So for me it's not really a waste of SS to pull this trick, and I like access to wesley in my brewie list.