Macumazahn

Sammy works incredibly well with Brewmaster. The problem with many of his upgrades (one of the problems anyway) is that it always better to use Swill 90% of the time and Obey the rest. But with Sammy you can go crazy with "Binge"; allowing her to have two, really disrupting, attack actions at her disposal, and what amounts to an obey without limitations, that cannot fail. Sammy becomes a really powerful model at just 8 stones. She can use "Hold Their Head Back" too, wich is particulary useful with Mancha Roja in the crew, but this is not a very good upgrade as you need a ton of poison going around. It's great because, even without upgrades, she has a lot of synergy with Brewie.

That's nice and all, but why would you want to play her, if she's nothing but a boring version of those three? Some upgrades to give her some spice wouldn't go amiss at all.

I, however, thing Ophelia is the easiest master to make viable, simply because her main shctick is not really insane damage, but the ability to get upgrades on the fly. Change her upgrades to ANYTHING aside from dealing damage in slightly diffrent ways, and allow her to cicle trough upgrades, without needing to use them and that's it. I don't know, she could have guns that strip cover, or somethign like the net gun of McCabe so she can paralize, or something that messes with the DF, or armor, of the enemy models... anything but raw damage, and suddenly she brings things to the table that no other gremlin master has.

I use Mancha Roja a lot with Mah Tucket and the Brewmaster; the extra layer of defense that "Challenge" brings to the table is great, especially for Brewie. Imagine the amount of Wp duels you force with some careful positioning, and you can make use of the "Pull their hair back" upgrade of the Brewmaster to one-shot some models.

Pigapult, I'm sure I don't even need to say why. Well now that I mention it: any model in the game that can ignore cover AND LoS.

I don't know how you people manage to engage or even attack the pigapult before being torn to shreds by it's shoting specialy against Ulix, or maybe Somer too, crews. (Excluding the example of the malifaux raptors, but those fall really easy and you probably are outactivated) I used to take rooster riders with Mah and go nuts, but that doesn't work anymore. Somer's skeeters can do the job though. In any case I consider the pigapult an extremely broken and unfunny model; both to use, and to play against.

Look, Brewmaster is my favorite master, but choosing him in a competitive level is a waste of time or, to be more precise, a handicap, especially against guild. Sammy works very, very well with the brewmaster, so does the sow. Apart from that I recommend monsters with very high severe damage like François and Raphael. In any case the crews that have worked better with me, are the ones that can be used with almost any other master: basic gremlin stuff, no fluffy Tri Chi models or any of that.

But good ol' wishkey golem already needs an ap to give himself defense 7, or else he's done, and although he's nimble he also has a pretty big base and a baffling 1 inch reach melee attack (for whatever reason) so not a lot of actions left to do much of anything. Fingers not only gives you your schemes, he also destroys your opponent schemes in two different ways. Same with merris: she's not nimble but she's reckles, she can fly and and she can drop markers for 0 for much less of the cost of the golem. Comparing both of them with the golem is a bad idea because they're not designed for the same purpose. the golem is a tank trough and trough. But the problem is that Gracie cost the same and is more resilient, with more damage and, since she can reactivate, technicaly faster and with more opportunities to make schemes, as needed, in a pinch. Sure she hurts herself, but she can also heal without needing a specific suit. Another model that can take a lot of punishment is Mancha Roja; he can get to defense 7 with a 0, has 10 wounds and hard to wound, and he's a henchman. He also deals more damage and has a variety of triggers that can be very useful for the entire crew. I think as a tank Wishkey golem can be better because of his defense trigger, and Macha Roja is more geared to pure combat and, as such, less flexible, but that would be a problem depending on the rest of the crew.

Well, I don't know how useful it will be, but Taxidermist leaves corpse markers with his melee attacks, and Akanmes push 2 inches and gain +1 poison everytime a model in 6 inches leaves a corpse or scrap marker. So there's some sinergy there. Also first turn both Wesley and the Brewmaster can put enough poison on the akanames to last the rest of the game, and Brewie can use them for his (0) action "One for the Road". But I haven't tested them yet so, no idea really.

I really want to try these lil' fellas, they seems to help the brewmaster to spread poison around, and he really needs that.

So it's like the title says: Why Take Ophelia Lacroix over other gremlin masters? Now, I know the answer will probalby be "Because I feel like it" and, to be honest, that's the perfect reason to take any master. But from a competitive standpoint, why would you take Ophelia over the likes of Somer or Wong? What does she bring to the table?

I actually love to give the upgrade to Sammy, to make the most of it while the Brewmaster goes around swilling everything. But I think that, although is good, is pretty much a nuissance to the opponent and that's about it, very rarely will be an actual danger or something to take into consideration. But for 1 stone that's good enough for sure, and if luck is on your side it's a pain to deal with.

Wait what? What makes you say that? I think is a nice upgrade but not in any way as useful as that, I'm missing something? I'm always very worried about making elite lists with gremlins, less than 9 activations feels extremely wrong to me because the majority of gremlin models, even elite, are very easy to take down with dedicated effort (it's not like a Hoffman bubble for example), and the Hangover of the Brewmaster can only do so much to aleviate that. I guess I should try more these sorts of crews but they haven't worked all that well for me in the past.

The problem I see with the Lenny change with Ophelia is that the combo was very powerful, and made Ophelia the killing machine she's supossed to be. Now she needs quite the amount of resources to actually be that way. If that's the case, why use her at all when you can take the likes of Somer or Wong? They can do the same damage with very little resources, maybe a little less damage? But not much less, and they can do much, much more for their crews and strategies than Ophelia can. I know this was the case before, to some extent, but at least, thanks to Lenny, she was a massive threat and a relatively resilient one at that. And making Lenny keep up with the crew was never a problem, I don't think he limits the mobility of Ophelia at all.

Oh man... The Lenny change is really depresing, specially for Mah.

With Zoraida you can make some interesting things with that poison, specially if you hire a Performer too. You can make moonshinobis very mobile outside of a brewmaster crew too. I don't know, I haven't tested the little fellas yet, but they seem to me like the key to make Poison Brewie viable, at least in theory.

Lucky Emmisary works very well with Mah by my experience, and as has been said in this thread the rooster riders are great, in fact I would say they work even better with Mah than with any other master.

Oh! Wow!

We need more vodoo stuff. The only characters with that are Zoraida and Sammy, but theoricaly there's plenty of gremlins, and humans, dabbling with that magic in the lore. Also more Tri Chi stuff, because there's really not a lot to choose from, and I never see any reason to take the Brewmaster's running tab.

Awww, they're so cute!

I would never take the Emmisary and Trixie at the same time, at least not with the conflux of bushwacking. For me The emmisary brings some safety in the chores selection (with trixiebelle I always prioritize cheating high, not an specific suit), meaning if I didn't get rams or masks I'll discard a weak card of that suit. The reason I really take the emmisary is because he performs like Mah does: he's fast, does a lot of damage, melee range 3, and has a lot of pushes too. He and Mah are a tag team of annoying green destruction.

Yeah but that minimum damage it's what more often than not you're going to flip, unless you focus, and if that's the case that means you're going to shot only once, maybe even twice, with Ophelia. Also she needs rams for that, so better bring lenny with you, or stone for rams, or hope you have a high ram in your hand. Not only that, Rg 10 is not a safe range at all, plenty of things in the game can destroy you there (Mah, for example, can reach to a threat range of 15", but she's only one of many). In that situation you're already using Lenny or stoning for rams, so it's exatcly the same situation that Mah is in, but since Mah can get to 4 attacks with minimum damage 3 (that can also get higher) Mah actually does plenty more damage. Now the real point of Mah is that she can push a ton of models, both enemy and ally, pretty easily, wich opens many possibilities. And if something nasty gets a little to close, or is in a very juicy spot? You wack'im with the spoon and it's probably going to die. You can also use her 3" reach to tie in melee a bunch of models, but that goes for any model with that range (like the emmisary)

What part of Ml 7 (or 8) minimun damage 4 (or 5) with no backlash mind you, is less reliable than Ophelia's? She doesn't even need triggers, unlike Ophelia, to at least deal respectable damage. I would say Ophelia is made to prepare a very damaging shot with focus (witch means things like hard to kill, and incorporeal are super annoying to her) and that's it, while Mah just brute forces against enemies with a bunch of attacks (wich means armor and pushing triggers like squeel are a problem), but they are pretty similar in that regard. I actually don't use Trixiebelle a lot, oddly enough. She's super useful, but a little expensive and fragile to use her with a very aggresive Mah crew (everyone charging in turn 2). I tend to use the Emmisary, but both he and trixie aren't really autotakes, only Lenny (witch is a problem when making a crew agaisnt Neverborn). Also the Rooster raiders are even faster in her crew and can get to melee 7, so I guess there's no reason not to use them, they're even better than in other gremlin crews.

I'm certainly a Mah lover. Platonicaly because she's really ugly, but a lover nonetheless. One of the most basic tricks she has, and one that I use often, is to hire Lenny and use the ram he gives to all duels to trigger "cripple'em" (from the "Out for blood" upgrade). As long as you have Lenny close she can charge for 1 ap, and ml range 3, dealing 4 minimum damage (or 5, or 6...), and she's melee 7 at least, so that's scary. That takes some care in positioning, but between her (0) "Let Mah handle this" and her (1) "Horrible hollerin" you can basicaly push 5 models a turn, witch is a perfectly fine way to use Mah's ap. In fact I would give priority to this positioning game she has to her raw damage dealing, but she's great at both.

Usually Fingers is very problematic and annoying, so the opponent just focuses on him and blows him away. His abilities lead him more often than not to be into the thick of it, and being the most durable gremlin henchman doesn't really mean much, a good chunk of models can destroy him in one activation. I also think Mancha Roja is more durable. I like the guy and I used him to great effect many times (and he survived) but usually I will have to leave him aside and use another support a.k.a Trixiebelle or Sammy, even in heavy marker schemes, of wich there not that many anymore, I think. That's why I'm dubious about his price. Maybe 8ss would be more appropiate?