LexLock

Inhuman Reflexes on Marathine, and access to puppet synergy would be the main reasons to bring Kastore in Nb, Eldritch magic might be good if one of the unrevealed models summons zombies or something.

Overall I feel Kastore is gonna be mid-tier unless his title version has a more powerful set of tools.

Kastore, Awakened feels like his card is a bit anemic (heh) to me, there's a lot of text on there but it doesn't translate into a lot of decisions in his activation, there are so many Once per Turn and Once per Activation restrictions on him and Marathine that it feels like you're starved for choice.

A lot of the time you're gonna end up doing a set routine on Kastores' turn;

(1) Is Marathine near an enemy or objective? bonus to move Marathine.

(2) Are there enemies within 8" of you? Either Dominate Dominate or walk Dominate.

(3) Do your big hit and heal/ping.

All the limitations on Kastore and Marathine don't leave much variety, and his game plan is gonna get stale quickly, especially on turn 1. Like, what does Kastore even do when he's not within 8" of an enemy? I'm seeing a lot of T1 double or triple walks in his future.

Not saying he's bad, invulnerable scheme marker creating/removing Totem and end of turn interacts are strong and he has tons of healing, but his activations feel one dimensional for a master.

Annoys me so much that they didn't give her anything to make up for not having a totem. Either give her the same ability as Zoraida1 or put a clause in the Lost Effigy trigger to let you do it more than once per turn if you summon the Voodoo Doll.

Stacking blight is pretty hard without triggers.

Maybe 33 kidnap? Either use it to grab key models or grab damien2 when he dives you.

Well someone has to go to Neverborn, right? It's either Kastore, who is still a nephilim despite his questionable diet and quibbles with the current Neverborn roster, or Tiri (who is technically a Fae I think?), who seems too... IDK, fashionable? to be in Nvb, she dresses too human-y for them I think.

I'm betting on Kastore, even though he seems like he really hates Nekima and Titania, soo... dual faction ressers-nvb.

I think you're way better off going for the hooded if you need ruthless, extra mobility is nice and his hazardous aura has way more synergy with pandora than anything the carver brings.

Are you really taking him over parker1 just for Perdition? Parker 1 has sooo much stuff and more wounds and higher wp. Are you playing DMW as a challenge to yourself and finding that he can do something or is he actually a viable pick over the OG parker?

Also, who wants to bet that the wyrd designers don't play Drop It! as written when they playtest it lmao.

It's true, and you should say it. Someone needs to stand up for the little guy! So many fluffy minions are untakeable if you're playing with a competitive mindset.

Servant of Dark Powers is pretty good and versatile, but the others... Soldier for Hire is basically HtK for 2ss and Wanted Criminal went from bad to near untakeable with their last "fix", maybe worth it for the movement on Tara1 and I'm tempted on a Ronin but you really want them to be disposable and 8ss is a bit much.

I feel like we, as a faction, need some defence against our little things being blasted off the board. Middle of the Storm or Stealth or Bulletproof +2 would be a great minion benefit that could help out some of our squishies.

Maybe they could release some new general upgrades that are focused on buffing crappy minions, the best way to buff bad minions without buffing things like Necropunks, Arachnid Swarms or Bokors would be to give them a strong demise, so that their fragility becomes a strength (Or limit it to 4ss only, are there any busted 4 costs?).

Hmm... I think there needs to be reason to hire low cost models, they should add a 2ss refund demise as a general upgrade rule in the next GG, so that you're simultaneously rewarded for bringing more minions and there's less of an opportunity cost if it's a fragile 4 cost and dies first or second turn.

My genius is unmatched, you're welcome universe.

Give Bishop Combat Reflexes, idk how people keep him alive lol, he feels like a 9ss minion whenever I bring him. Actually, make combat reflexes the minion benefit of Soldier for Hire and heckin make bishops adaptive last until end of turn/his next activation. I'm probably missing a minion that'd be broke with combat reflexes but if it's good enough for Mature Nephs, it seems fine for our living minions.

I hope they either rework some of the meh general upgrades or release a new wave of them, tinkering with upgrades in lists is part of what I miss from m2e and I don't think it's quite solved by master titles. If they try to target specific crews with useful synergies from general upgrades they can maybe affect balance without too many reprints.

I'd like it if they would rework Soldier For Hire to be more impactful. It feels like upgrades that don't have a crew wide benefit (like card draw or ill omens) have to be quite powerful to be useful. 90% of the time SFH is just hard to kill for 2ss and the minion-only benefit is kinda feast or famine.

Give Bandidos ambush andto their gun, save you spending cards on them even though they'd still have the problems 5 costs do in competitive play.

New Parker is hilariously bad but they're probs not ready to touch that mess.

Feels like they need to make a new Gaining Grounds that is focused on making crappy cheap minions takeable. Idk how they do that lol. Hidden Martyrs but as a strat maybe?

3 hours ago, Adran said:

Whilst you are partially right about the "magical Christmas land" feel to abilities like Cage fighter, I feel it really depends on long term play style. I know I rate these abilities higher than most people. I know the reason I do is because when I was learning my opponent would save high masks for Repost from Lady Justice. When your master activation ends up with you suffering more damage than your opponent, you start to question the choices you made. When they are prepared to cheat in the red joker to make you miss and take damage, you take a lot more care about random attacks. 

This sort of ability is something that you need to train your opponent to fear to get the best out of it. It can take several games against the same opponent who is prepared to push this sort of defensive trigger before most players start to worry about them, because, if the owner of the trigger doesn't value it, then you are right, its never going to come up. 

So in answer to

1, Most attacks in the game are vs Df. Sure, they can tech in WP attacks you avoid the trigger, but then you are still often affecting their game play. 

2 Bishop is very mobile. he has a threat range longer than most models shooting range. Also there are several factions that don't have lots of non attacks. Bishop wants to be in combat, because that is where his defences apply . So Yes, he is weak to ranged attacks. But he is a good answer to ranged attackers (Friendly fire helps against other ranged attacks, as well as preventing the model he is engaged with using any ranged attacks, so against a ranged heavy crew, he has 2 reasons to want to get engaged). I expect Bishop to be able to be engaged with something if he wants.  The rarest attack is one without and, and whilst they exist on plenty of models, many more don't have them than do, and they are typically weaker attacks because of the other advantages they have. 

3 This is where the "training your opponent to fear it" comes in. Cage fighter protects you if your opponent is afraid to make attacks against you that they aren't prepared to support with cards from their hand. Its one of those things that it is hard for the owner of Bishop to see all the attacks that didn't happen because they had Cage fighter.

4 You have to have the crow to damage them. You have to have the capability to have the crow to make them consider not attacking. When I face models like this against Players I know that use this sort of ability, I have to assume that if they have any cards they are prepared to cheat them to get Cage fighter off. So the ability has an affect on the opponent even if you don't have the crow in hand. 

5 Yes, you probably have to use high crows to get the trigger off. But most people expect to use high cards to get around 3 damage off. Either because they are cheating their attack to hit, or because they are cheating their damage to severe. The difference is you are using the high card on your opponents action. That is more efficient. 

Lets take an example fight. Bishop has a 13in hand. Bishops opponent wins all other flips by 1, but can't cheat. I'm going to compare each side making 1 attack against the other (I know this isn't a typical scenario, but it gets complicated to explain with a "true" scenario, and I think the end result is still comparable).

The attacker attacks Bishop. they win. They are on a negative attack flip. They flip and hit weak, probably 2 damage. Bishop attacks back. He misses, cheats in the 13 and hits, putting Bishop on a negative flip. He hits weak and does 3 damage (I'm going to assume he selected rams as his suit). End result Bishop took 2 damage and the opponent took 3. 

The Attacker attacks Bishop, Bishop cheats in the Crow. The attacker takes 2 damage.  Bishop attacks the attacker and misses. End result Bishop took 0 damage the attacker took 2. - Already a more efficient outcome for Bishop in terms of overall damage per side. Its a slightly lower total damage put out by him, but his card did 2 things rather than 1, it got him a 2 damage hit, and it also denied a 2 damage hit. 

 

But all this is dependent on the Bishop player being prepared to try and force cage fighter, and the opponent to apricate the risks of cage fighter. And you aren't going to really appricate the risks of cage fighter unless you have played several games against people that do try and force it. 

So in terms of damage spread, it can be more efficient to cheat it for cage fighter rather than staggering punch. 

And that's before looking at things like action efficiency, because the second Bishop got his damage off without spending any actions.  

 

Now in a full game you might not want to spend your 13on Bishop because you think you'll get more effect on a model like the Viks. And you will be right some of the time. But if you are known to hold the 13 and use that on Bishops Df flip, your opponent will start to think twice about attacks on Bishop. Even if they have stat 6, thy need to be prepared to put in a 13 of their own to keep them safe. They probably don't have a 13. They don't know if Bishop has that 13 or not. If you are engaged with Bishop, you probably have to consider that he is capable to do 9 damage in his activation if you are engaged. if you add in that extra 2 damage from his df trigger, you are getting to enough damage to kill most non master models in the game. (Damage reduction tech will change these calculations, but even so, its putting several more models in range of death by Bishop in those circumstances. 

I'm not too bothered in my attack misses because my opponent spent a 13 on making it miss. The chances are that over the course of the turn, that card use will result in one of their attacks missing later, or another one of my attacks hitting. But when the opponent gets double duty out of a card, I do have to consider it more. 

Yes, there are times when you don't care too much about that extra damage. But there are more times when you will care about it because it does change the risk to models. 

Cage fighter (and similar) is a magical christmasland ability if the owner of the ability doesn't value it, or if the owner does value it, but doesn't get the cards to support it. If the owner does value it and either gets the cards to support it, or the opponent also values it then it can be a good ability. 

Should you be relying on your opponent overvaluing abilities to get use out of them? Wait a second... does your post defending cage fighter surreptitiously make it ever so slightly more valuable because it convinces people to be careful against it? 🧠🧠🧠

Also the Infiltrator ability can be crazy sometimes, I played Klaus into Sandeep2 and was like... oh I'm immune to your shockwave? I count as a friendly Elemental when I want to so I'm immune to demises and pyre markers? Nice.

At a certain point tutoring severes out of your discard pile just means your opponent can't do anything meaningful and I'm not sure if bringing Klaus + 2 Changelings + 2 Ancient Pacts isn't just the play in, like, every crew barring extreme synergy.

#JustNeverbornThings

Yeah, the Changelings just copy Titania's "Behold Her Glory" action, which (at least for Changelings) requires a 7 (preferably of tomes). Overall I'd say that the Focused is a secondary benefit to dropping scheme markers and most importantly, drawing cards.

 Double Changeling, double Ancient Pact seems like the go with Twotania, at least if you can fit it in.

Probably worth hiring an Abom to get a Desolation Engine turn 2, you'll probably want to be hanging back building tokens anyway.

I reckon you really want a scheme pool you can turtle in for Levi2cus, TurtLeviticus.

I think the biggest advantage that 2cius has over 1cius is being a decent threat. Just having a big beaty model to back up your somewhat fragile crew makes them so much harder to dive.

Every Lucius player should make sure to pick up Klaus and Changelings now, Klaus is kind of obscene and you only really need one changeling to copy his tactical with "Just like you!" and then you can use mimic to dupe it as required.

2 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Wokou Raiders are the main reason, I think.

Which I thought was a brilliant combo, until I realised they need a tome for it to go off to move the marker

The only 8ss model I trust with stat 5 is Sue, Wokou's seem decent but most of the crew doesn't ignore friendly fire lol.

So, without Parker1 is there much point to generating enemy scheme markers?

Life of Crime seems easier with friendly scheme markers, kinda wish we had something with trail of gore or forage.

They should change Parker2's perdition aura to be LoS hazardous, kinda like a reverse Anya.

6df is such a huge deal with The Old Ways. Hepatomancy combines so well with The Old Ways that I think Neuripides is gonna be a much more fluid experience to play in keyword.

Why is Irresistible Dance so awful? So so bad, my god, I would prefer they remove it so we can see more of his art on the card.

Is this version of Marcus busted? At what point does a beater become too fast/tanky/hitty and begin to warp the game? It'll be interesting to see people get some games in and see how Barkus works in practice.

Definitely takes the sting out of losing Eyes in the Night. Also gives you a target for Moth-Witch when you take her out of keyword.

Anyone else think it kind of sucks that a lot of the time zoraida2 won't have a totem? Would have been nice to let us either hire the Voodoo Doll somehow or let us have the Mysterious Effigy as a totem.

Is it intended that new Zoraida can Moth-Witch herself? It says you can discard up to two cards to have an equal number of friendly Swampfiends take the same general action; Zoraida is a friendly Swampfiend. This makes her effectively have 4 AP, you can get two walks for 1 AP or have her walk and interact for one action.

Malifaux Child can copy Treasure Seekers... that's a lot of focus.

The Rougarou's Intimidating Roar is a great friendly movement tool; no flip and 6" of movement, just don't target minions and you can deadly pursuit to keep up with your crew..

25 minutes ago, santaclaws01 said:

You shouldn't be removing more severe cards than you need for gambles. Period. The only reason you should have 3 severe cards in your removed pile at the end of turn is if you just keep lucking into not needing to use them for gambles, at which point you're better off just leaving them removed to use that turn and putting back the weaks instead(assuming you've put back the mods first).

You know you can use Fiendish Gamble on defence right? Or on shockwaves or on damage. You can use Lucid Dreams to sculpt a hand of severes for your stitched, which takes all card pressure off the rest of the crew.