Rufess

I would rank Somer in between the Good tier and God tier. He cannot play in Symbol and Ley Line, and struggle against opponent with blast, shockwave, mobility beater, displacing, anti-demise and etc.

Som'er without a doubt is a decent master who can be rough to fight against in certain setup, while struggles a lot in the others. Unlike other all-rounded top masters, he has some obvious weakness and hard counter, and can be punished by a prepared opponent with no effort.

Good call, and welcome to the Bayou. Zipp should be a good match up against Misaki with high mobility and marker removal. You can use Iron Skeeter (and of course other 40mm+ models too) to cover the shadow markers to force Misaki unburying via Sheng or in deployment zone.

Dead by D... oh I mean Dead by Hallow's Eve seems like a good mini game that can play between round and round in tournament. But why can't the Carver hang the humans?

Maybe next time you can put these lines in your first post so all of us can save half of the time and replies and get the discussion started more earlier.🙂 I just start studying Sandeep recently. I come from Bayou before so have a good understanding about quantity attacks vs quality attack. One single big Golem is however sometime more valuable than 3 small Gamins, by just existing on the field as a huge threat also a big target. Plus all the obey-like actions with the keyword are better on the Golem than Gamin.

Old Cranky also gives to initiative flip and randomly generates soulstone. But it is true that a large part of Old Cranky's value is to hand out Focus to Georgy. Georgy relies on his moderate/severe to do spike damage so the bonus Focus does mean a lot. Hence if you are not hiring Georgy then you can leave Old Cranky either. Georgy's damage output will drop significantly when attacking model with Hard to Wounds even with the Focus though. If I could foresee a large number of Hard to Wounds, like against Resser or Marshal, then I would seriously consider (but not necessary) to leave him home. Good Ol' Boy and Som'er would like to have the Focus as well if there were some good targets to blast off. Otherwise most of the time it is only 1 hand per turn for Georgy for Shouting Order.

Extra summoning sounds like a good solution to the mobility problem other than Emissary. I would say hiring both of them would be too costly. And I would choose Sow if I have to pick one. Sow can make use of all corpses generated from the crew and summons 3 Piglets a turn at most vs 2 Gupps. Plus the Piglet has higher utility with Delicious Bacon, Truffles and Reckless.

Here is my core crew of Som'er. Every single time when I am playing Som'er I start from here. Size: 31 Leader: Som'er Teeth Jones Totem(s): Skeeter 1 Skeeter 2 Hires: Lenny Jones Big Brain Brin Georgy and Olaf Old Cranky As mentioned above, Lenny and BBB are mandatory. Georgy and Old Cranky are not necessary, but I only leave them at shelve for good reason. I used to have 8+ stones when playing summoners so there are about 11~13 stones left to hire a minion or two. Usually I will go for one GoB for Focus stacking in the 1st turn. In schemey pool I may instead go for a Crier. And adjusting the stones pool with Bayou Gremlins and/or upgrades. If counter-tech pick is needed, I will start cutting down from the minions, followed by Georgy and Old Cranky.

I think Frontier has received a awesome boost from the explorer. The Sand Worm and the Emissary fill the lack of melee fighter. Rough Rider brings the crew some real mobility other than Home on the Range. The Rex also makes a interesting combo with Paul as mentioned at somewhere else in the forum. Not powerful, but interesting.

Swampfiends is not known for their inner synergy, but on the contrary. Zoraida is one of the most hated master since M2E (cannot speak of M1E without experience) because of her Obey and other control abilities/actions. It only comes worse in the new edition when all actions are now single action. Every activation of Zoraida can bring significant impact to the game by obeying other models, no matter friendly or enemy, and refreshing both players' hand. Her crew is there to handle any other works that Zoraida does not willing or able to do. Like placing scheme marker or engaging enemy models. Swampfiends models are not supporting nor receiving support from Zoraida, so in extreme case you can build a crew of Zoraida and no other keyword models, aka the good ol' "All Star" crew. It does not necessary means Swampfiends is a weak keyword. After all the crew with most inner synergy does not win the game, but the crew with most VP does.

It is not the most accurate description. As mentioned above, both effects are after resolved so the one of activating player, in this case it is always flurry, goes first. Which means the attacking model has to decide to discard a hand or not before the defending model decide to move away or not. And if the attacking model choose to use flurry, then the generated attack for sure happens after the moving of butterfly jump.

plus the Mechanical Rider?

Rule of Intent is an elegant tool to keep the game smooth and simple, and should be used more often in the real table too. In vassal we do have access to blast marker and aura which can help us to find out the prefect spot between 2" and 50mm. However fine tuning a model position, especially in minuscule distance, can be a tough task and wastes much more time than in the real world. Rule of Intent is the one of the best way to keep the vassal game within 3 hours.

When measuring distance there is no doubt that should be measured between the closest point per the rule. But when measuring the area formed between markers, I think it should be measured form the outermost edge, including the area occupated by the marker itself.

Somer's attrition game and resource recycling might feels unbeatable in the right pool and match-up, but he is far from the best-tier. To me a best-tier master should have proper tools for all strategies and most schemes, and has good chance against most crews other than maybe a handful of exceptions. Somer and Big Hat struggle with Symbols and any scheme that requires them to spread out or to travel a long distance. They also have tough counters among all factions. Plus the difficulty(fault tolerance) and the time limit in tournament, I would rank Mah higher than Somer within the faction, though he is close enough. I would put him in between the 1st and 2nd tiers.

IMO Focus itself has no issue at all. Using an action to enhance another action later, even with turn stacking, sounds like a fair trade to both side of the table. The real issue is all abilities/actions that can stack Focus to a single model, especially those can hand out several Focus in one action, like Mah and BBS. A reason of the overflowing of Focus imo is the design space. We have 11 conditions in total while only 3 of them is buffing your own models. So when Wyrd is designing, for say, an offensive supporting ability/action, Fast is usually too valuable to hand out easily and Shielded is a defensive condition. Thus Focus being the only choice in this case. So Wyrd could fix this issue(if it is an issue at all) by creating a new buffing condition A and replacing it with half of the Focus-giving abilities/actions. Though we are unlikely to see this happen before the next edition.

The chosen models are now Maniquinn A and Maniquinn A, which to me means only one chosen model. Hence Maniquinn A is exactly one of the chosen model imo.

per the FAQ, section 2 But after re-reading the rule I think you are right. So if a model is within 2" and LoS of Hungering Darkness, then the model is engaged and cannot leave engagement range NOR LoS. If a models is within 2" but out of LoS of Hungering Darkness, then the model is not engaged but still cannot leave the engagement range.

There is no such a prefect way to run a tournament, and I believe that the format which fits the local meta most is the best format to run. So I am writing here not to deny any of your decision, but just want to bring some alternate idea for your references. 1. Multiple Master The complaints about multiple master are mostly about handful combinations (like the infamous Dreamer/Zoraida) rather than some standalone master hired as a super solo model. The simplest way is the Ban format that allows opponent to ban the unwelcome master along with the keyword. Considering new player may not have enough understanding and knowledge to ban the most proper keyword, another way to do is have all players vote for the combination they dislike most. And the top X combinations are forbidden in the tournament. If you are, however, worrying the power level of all multiple master, an interesting method is to limit the number of master a player can take during the tournament. Let's say a player can take only 6 masters in the tournament. Which means they can have 1 game of 3 masters and 3 games of single master, or 2 rounds of double. Note that in this case double Viks should be count as 1 master if they are the leader. 2. DMH The intent of DMH is allowing players who already own the crews can keep playing the game, while stopping new players buying these crew. So I think it is okay for that kind of "unfair". It is issue though for players who cannot practice against DMH master. The only concern to me is the unbalance of master number of every Faction. My solution is that if a player decided he want to play DMH in the tournament, then he had to pick 8 masters from all available choice from his Faction. During the tournament the player can choose from the picked masters. 3. Pools All pools look fine to me. I just want to share my special rule regard of the final round of top table. We want both top players playing in a pool they feel comfortable and can unleash all their potential. So we decided both players can each kick out one strategy they dislike, while choosing one scheme they want to see in the pool. Then the TO randomly pick from 2~3 strategy and 3~4 schemes combine with the chosen scheme(s) to generate the final pool.

A supplement to the 2nd question. Engagement is determined by engage range and LoS. So during any point of a normal Walk action, a model cannot leave another model engagement range NOR LoS. Using your example. If a model is engaged by the Hungering Darkness, no matter it was already engaged before or it moved into engagement range during a Walk action, the model now cannot leave the engagement range with a Walk action. It either cannot walk behind the wall (assuming the wall is high enough to block the LoS in between) while stay within 2" of Hungering Darkness to try to leave engagement.

1.) Onslaught generating a new action, and per the core rule, all generated actions are always resolved after the previous one and all "after resolving" effect. Scamper is an "after resolving" effect, hence it does happen before the onslaught (and other similar) attack. 2.) Ulix can and only can target the replaced model with "Take the Herd 'em" action. If it was intended to make him targeting another model beside the replaced one, it would say "targeting a different model" to align with other effects. 3.) Stunned does not turn bonus action to a normal action. What the condition does is removing the "bonus actions do not count against a model's action limit" only, while the restriction of "once per activation" remains the same.

That is so true that new players do want to play their new bought shiny master. My solution is to cross out some abilities and/or actions on their master that are complex and not the core part of the master's strength. For example I recent had played a demo game with a new player who love Lucius at first sight. I made him an entry-level Lucius with only Serene Countenance, Arcane Reservoir, Entourage, Misinformation and Issue Command. In the result he picked up Lucius in a short time. And during the demo game, he can focus on how to maximize the value of Issue Command and Following Orders without being confused by other attacks on Lucius' card.

If Honeypot was staying in Neverborn, the chance was Mr. Graves and Mr. Tannen would remain dual factions/keywords. So Nephilim would get a new beater and Woe/Mimic would have another control piece.

Dreamer and Somer (and maybe Yan Lo?) are top tier masters without a doubt. However their strength is on the late game, so they might not be preforming as well as usual in tournaments where you need to finish the game within 2~2.5 hours.

Thanks for the game ^^ I was flipping some lucky severe on the late game, otherwise I might not able to make it a draw.