LexLock

The thing about pointing out problems in playtesting is that there will always be defenders of the status quo regardless of how over/underpowered a model/upgrade is, so you need to get enough of a consensus to drown out the people who think that everything is balanced by default. It's harder to convince people to make changes than it is to keep things the same and even during a playtest people are very cautious about questioning balance and tend to assume that whatever is released must be at its intended power level already.

Their gun has great triggers that can really cripple important models from a pretty long distance and unlike most cheap things they can take a hit because they have HtW. At least one is good in parker to give Sue or an OoK beater fast, although I think a Scavenger is better as a support model, even for 7ss.

Trust me, the designers don't have to try to make a model bad, it's a natural part of the development process in a small game like this. Balance doesn't have to be perfect, but obviously bad models are a good candidate for changes that breathe more life into a game and let people feel like they've got their money's worth. 3E as a whole has problems with cheap models that can die in 1 AP, they almost invariably aren't worth hiring. Perhaps this can be fixed with a later GG but there is still a lot of room for balance changes due to the power disparity between cheap models. At the end of the day more competitive models lead to more variability in list building which leads to more interesting games.

Maybe build in a free chain activation to Pack Mentality? Go with one and then go with another, then your opponent discards a pass token. Pretty strong, but I really don't see another way for cheap models to see play without being super over-tuned like Necropunks/Crooligans.

Shastar Vidiya Guard suffer from the same problem as a lot of expensive enforcers/minions, they can be killed too consistently by high-tier models. The fact that the Shastar don't have stones or Hard to Wound makes them fodder for the sorts of models that they (being slow melee beaters) are probably going to be facing. Now, what can make the SVD decent at range (and therefore sort of survivable) is the silly but unfortunately RAW FAQ that Wyrd put out to nerf Nekima last year; which states that the "Another Model" wording in triggers always refers to the model whose card the trigger is written on, meaning that Ricochet (which is built in on their chakram) becomes a hefty damage boost that also inherits the to damage from focus, making it a bit more palatable to use when targeting into concealing or engagements. Still, if it's an 8ss model and your opponent isn't worried about how they're going to deal with it, then it is probably not affecting the game enough for its cost. Compare them to Arachnid Swarms, Cerberus, Blessed, Lone Swordsman, Samurai, Midnight Stalker, Hanged, Gracie, The Jury, Vasilisa, Widow Weaver, Serena Bowman, Student of Viscera, Yin or Minako. I'm not saying they're below average, they're probably better than most 8ss models! It's just that If you're playing with a competitive mindset, above average doesn't always mean worth hiring.

Use Lawyers to stack focus+shielded on Agent 46 and the Pale Rider, both with Lead-Lined Coat. Copy the Rider's gun with 46 and go to town, switch to Melee if anything gets close. Lawyer's tome trigger on Obeys should take care of scheming and Lucius gives AP to 46 and Lawyers.

I think you'll find that deck thinning ruins the Stitched. Who cares that you can get a slightly higher average card on turn 4/5, if you Lucid Dream out face cards wherever possible and then use them with your stitched they become disgusting. Playing with an extra hand made entirely of high cards is way better than slightly improving your deck for the turns where you (as a summoner) should be strongest anyway.

Maybe give her the Exorcism trigger on a and give her some healing with a Trusty Flask action. Increase the stat on Bring It so she has a shot at using it against enemies. Finally change Welcome to Malifaux into a once per turn ability that works on out of activation moves and places, now it works on all summons and functions as a better pounce that she can use on an enemy she lures in (which sounds hilarious to me). Mercenary wouldn't really have a way to abuse megapounce but some of the other keywords could, so limiting it to Once Per Turn seems necessary. But that all seems kinda complicated, maybe just bump her Bring It up to stat 6 and replace Welcome to Malifaux with Pounce.

Was Nekima's box delayed? The Nephilim box has disappeared from the Upcoming Releases page and they aren't in store. Must have been a problem with production, kind of a bummer. Ah well still plenty of stuff in the sale.

That's pretty much what they do, there are some focus spam shenanigans with Black Blood Shamans and you can combine that with Angel Eyes and the Doppelganger to make a gunline and Hayreddin can do some summoning but mostly Nephilim are just alpha strikey. Lelu and Lilitu would be interesting if they were less... bad. Nekima her self is pretty much a straightforward beater, she can spam the Fast Food trigger on her Hurl Corpse action to grow some Mature Nephilim but that tactic is inferior to focus spam.

I think you'd be best served taking the Guild Steward, a Spelleater and the Pale Rider for a pure blaster Sonnia build; sure, that's half your list but those models are pretty good on their own and Sonnia becomes decently scary with that much setup. 2-3 focused blasts on turn 1, yes please. I'm glad Sonnia's getting some focus generation in keyword but they definitely should have baked some friendly mobility into her core keyword (or not given her Mv 4 lol), Witchling Stalkers and Thralls are both missing actions and the Witchhunter keyword really wants some friendly movement (that works on Sonnia) or some enemy movement (Tuco's Disillusion action would have been great on something).

You can cheat/flip the Tome on Sonnia's defence or the Spelleater's attack which makes not relenting a decent idea.

11ss for eight wounds worries me, better hope they don't have too much armour ignore. I guess Earl can heal him given he's a construct, which makes it a bit less of a problem and you can't really put a price tag on Gravity Well in the right matchup.

Spam Stitched Together and then use Lucid Dreams to sculpt a disgusting hand for them to play with, then bring Widow Weaver to resummon them whenever they die. Because of Arik's Gravity Well and Freikorps generally high WP you're going to be having some trouble actually getting your summons on the table, maybe bring Hinamatsu for her speed and 12" lure, then try and hit something with low WP. If you want to be really cruel bring Zoraida as a second master for the hand refill/stat 7 obey. You can also use the scrap generated by the Voodoo Doll dying to summon Stitched with Widow Weaver. In general I'd say the scariest things about Freikorps are their hand quality and their melee alpha strike potential (Arik can hit very hard and then Hannah copying Arik hits even harder). Send in your stitched after you've lucid dreamsed out a few face cards and hope they take the bait and waste their beater AP and high cards on your stitched and then try and hit back (probably with Twist Reality given it ignores armour).

The Spelleater seems very good for stacking focus on Sonnia and I think that'll really help out her blasting, the only thing she's missing is some real card draw and then I think she'll be a real threat.

Blight is definitely unfun to play against, it always feels bad gaining a token or condition that you can't remove and once a model has 4+ Blight it feels like it's already dead. The reason Plague isn't OP is that its keyword models are squishy and bad. Rats, Winged Plagues, Rat Catchers and arguably Rat Kings are just plain bad at scoring VP. Rats do nothing because they're 2 costs, Winged Plagues are perhaps the worst 4ss model in the game and die to anything, Rat Catchers are almost good but they die to anything and are slow AF. Rat Kings are amazing against mediocre crews but because they need setup a good crew is going to snipe them before they do anything, they are like slower Arachnid Swarms with no defenses. Squishy minions + auto lose activation control/initiative = bad times for Hamelin.

If Hamelin had a tankier crew or if model spam wasn't so bad this edition he would be a lot more powerful. Unfortunately/fortunately the Pass Token mechanic does what it's designed to do and Hamelin will lose initiative turn 2 and assuming you have decent models you can pick one of his squishy things to kill or, if you get the opportunity, kill a bunch of rats and get activation control. Hamelin is one of those masters that is almost broken. The Blight mechanic is disgusting this edition (unremovable tokens are just unfun to play against) but Hamelin's crew is slow, squishy and doesn't really do much. If Winged Plagues were decent or if Rat Kings could take a hit the Plague crew as a whole would be less predictable, but that isn't the case and you're left with a bad crew desperately trying to support a decent master's overtuned mechanic while failing at everything else (including the most important thing, getting VP). If there is ever a scheme/strat that you score by doing the highest damage in a single action Hamelin's crew might have a shot, but as things are now GG0 and GG1 don't favour slow bubble crews, and if they did we'd be complaining about Ironsides and Yan Lo right now instead of Hamelin.

I think the biggest problem with Pass Tokens is that they allow you to auto-win initiative. One of the weaknesses of cheap models is being easily killed before being activated and if your opponent is sitting on a bunch of Pass Tokens on turn 2 or 3 they can easily capitalise on that. Activation control is useful, but it is most useful on turn 1 (for avoiding/initiating alpha-strikes) and on turn 5 (for scoring/denying pivotal VP from end of game schemes). Turns 2, 3 and 4 I find that I care about initiative way more than activation control because I'm usually getting in the thick of it, and I start looking at my opponents small models as a free Ill Omens +X. Pass Tokens should be used for activation control more often so that they are an equaliser for spam crews instead of a disadvantage. Maybe limit the bonus to initiative to +1? Maybe change it to +flips so that you will probably win the initial flip but are on equal footing when it comes to cheating?

You vastly overestimate how much thought and perfectionism goes into the design of this game. That isn't even a dig at the developers, there are just way too many interactions and cards to fine tune them to such a degree with such a small playerbase and design team (relative to say... videogames). I'd give even odds that Youko's obey could only do bonus actions accidentally and they just left her that way because it's not like anyone was losing to her in the Beta lol.

Puppets are a great keyword and now that Collodi is DMH Hinamatsu is the only way to hire a lot of them in the same crew. To really take advantage of the Puppet keyword you really need Vasilisa to hand out staggered at the start of every turn, then in faction you have Stitched (OP AF... again) and Wicked Dolls/the Effigy, I'd only hire the Wicked Dolls if you are also hiring Widow Weaver for summoning. Out of faction the Coryphee Duet gives automatic activation control and a lot of AP and the various Effigies are small and tanky enough to be perfect for Vasilisa's stagger ability. Overall you're not generally going to be as good as a true Master led crew, but I think you could really compete with some of the lower end ones and you'll blow most Henchman led crews out of the water.

Don't hire Aversions, they just don't do anything for the crew, replace them with Sorrows and really pile on the ping damage. Against a ranged crew you really want to get in their face with Candy and Pandora. Candy has On Your Heels as a trigger on her bonus action, so she can get in there pretty easily at the end of turn 1, but Pandora doesn't really have movement tricks. The most important parts of Pandora are her Mood Swings aura and her bonus action pulse, her main attack is inherently subpar because you're at best using another master's attacks minus triggers and that sucks but it sort of frees up her 3 AP to be used for movement. I don't think you should be hiring Carver as well as Teddy, pick one based on what you expect to face, Carver if they are going to have easy focus and Teddy if you want to deal damage. With the points freed up by dropping your second beater consider some versatiles. Serena Bowman is great for healing/condition removal and packs a punch. Vasilisa plus a Wicked Doll/Effigy can speed up your crew and handle scheming. Hinamatsu is a great independent beater in a crew with no card draw and brings another lure to the table. Changelings can give Pandora an inbuilt crow on her attack for slow, or a mask for her defense. Finally, always activate Candy as late as possible, she and Pandora are doing their best work passively through auras.

I think she was hated for her ability to put a bunch of almost unresisted (one duel) conditions and damage on models at super high range with the Voodoo Doll. She turned from annoying and clunky to scary and BS when Will 'O the Wisps were released. This edition she has some 2e Raspy vibes with drawing range through her own models, which I know from experience can be quite frustrating.

Arcanists Banasuva's "Lord of the Elements" seems like it should say other friendly elemental because as it is now he can give orders to himself. The "Fade Away" trigger can be declared while buried just for the damage reduction (are they fading away from the Void/Box and reappearing from a meta-void?), the place this really hurts is against Colette because it seems like anti burying crews would be a natural counter to her, but she's still crazy tanky. Guild Augmented's "Transfer Power" action looks like it should say other friendly construct, as it is they all pretty much have Battle Tempo as a bonus (not sure if Hoffman deserves a nerf though). Neverborn The Mysterious Emissary's "Roots from Below" action gives a to resist if you are in severe (intended), but its Quicksand Trigger causes a TN 15 Wp duel (already pretty hard) that inherits that which might be unintended (looks that way to me). Who knows what the hell is going on with Nekima's Enraged by Influence action; they "FAQed" it and broke the Ricochet Trigger, I definitely think it's too niche with that change. The Rougarou can use its "Intimidating Roar" action on allies, which can give you 12" of movement on your biggest beater without a flip, combined with Neverborn's "Ill Omens" upgrade it can make alpha strikey masters really broken if you don't see it coming (like 2e Viks, very harsh on new players). Serena Bowman's Bottle of Painkillers can be used on herself, which is probably intended design if I'm honest, but they could make her a lot less ubiquitous by changing it so that it only works on other friendlys. "Fiendish Gamble" on Stitched was looks like a way for them to tip the scales on their "Gamble your Life" attack but since it can be used outside of their activation you can just store up high cards with the rest of your crew and use them for defensive flips, which makes them a bit efficient IMO for a summoning keyword that should be feeling hand pressure. Outcasts Hannah Lovelace can copy her own "Adaptive Tactics" with... "Adaptive Tactics" to get the Purification Trigger. Pretty minor balance wise, but I think it points to a trend of tactical actions that can target their owner when it doesn't really make sense and I think some of these actions just slipped through the cracks in the Beta. Can Marlena Webster's "Aetheric Healing" choose not to discard a card and just get the surge Trigger for card draw? The Viks "Dragon's Bite" action seems intended to be combined with their Sisters in Spirit ability (lets them place the other Vik in btb at the start of activation), but because of engagement ranges, base size and it being a push, it is mathematically impossible to use them together if you're more than a 2-3" away, as the second Vik you push will bump into the first before it gets in melee range. Changing it to a move that has to end as close to the target as possible (or a Place if you want to get crazy) would make "Dragon's Bite" synergise with Sisters in Spirit the way I think it's supposed to. Resurrectionists The Dead Rider's Soulfire Trigger doesn't have a built into it and I think that's part of why it feels so unfair, it's unresisted and they can cheat the damage against you? Gross. Ikiryo's Kirai's Soul Ability (lets her be summoned by Kirai) seems like it should have one of those if Kirai Ankoku is this crews Leader clauses to stop a hired Kirai from getting a free Totem. Ten Thunders Shenlong can "The Dragon Commands it" himself (isn't he the Dragon?) which is a bit weird. Yan Lo's Demise (Shatter Reliquary) makes him pretty much unkillable as is (unless you're one of the factions that can counter Demise) and I think it could do with a bit more of an opportunity cost. Changing it to only work on other models in the aura would mean that there would be a way to counter it a bit, as you could kill his bodyguard model and then start working on killing him (still really hard to do) Youko Hamasaki really doesn't need a nerf but her We Own You trigger is AFAIK the only enemy obey effect in the game that can force them to take bonus actions and this gives it ridiculous power spikes against a few models (Teddy, Desolation Engine, Rat Kings) that must be unintended, because they can end up eating themselves, or if you are extremely unfortunate, your own master. The Masked Agent upgrade's With Me ability can be used on the model carrying the upgrade for an extra place at the end of a charge which doesn't really make sense, it also means that if they ever release a TT model with Made to Kill that is larger than the Katashiro there will be problems. Sorry for the wall of text everyone, feel free to pick one thing in there to vehemently disagree with me about if you want.

Just hope to get masks, you have a decent chance with two Ancient Pacts (although you don't want to go with the Rougarou before you've given Titania focus because it'll be pushing her up 12"), you don't really need to worry about consistently growing the Matures turn 2 because they're really just backup for Titania. BBS can also just fly off and do schemes pretty respectably provided you've thrown enough of a wrench in your opponent's crew that they won't just be killed. The main reinforcements for Titania is Killjoy, who is similarly hard to put down and has a spooky damage track with focus. You can kinda treat this list like a 2e Viks crew (not as wondrously murderous, but still), where you're trying to send your master in to do enough damage that the rest of your crew can act with impunity. I think BBS are almost worth 7ss for Blasphemous Ritual alone, it is just so efficient to hand out that much focus. Vasilisa is amazing but her Move Along aura doesn't synergise with Titania's alpha strike because you'll be relying on Germinate with Cradle of Life, maybe she's more efficient but it's hard to fit another enforcer into this list without giving up some of the benefits from Ancient Pact.

The Whisper would help with the crews card hungriness, plus double intuition with Tara would be gross.