Barmution

My main issue with Zoraida as she is now is that there's hardly any reason to pick her as your main master unless you're a huge fan of the Swampfiends keyword (I am, but that's besides the point) and you'll probably want to pick up either the Hooded Rider or a Mature Nephilim to move her about outside her activation. With Enthrall you could cook up some fun combos but I understand why the designers want to limit out-of-faction-hiring. Since Zoraida's Totem is summoned for free she is a very solid choice as a secondary master in a crew but I'd like to see her get some kind of special interaction with her own keyword models so as to give an incentive to play her with them. My suggestion for the Insidious Influence is to drop the extra mask on the Obey action and instead give the hit model a 2/3" push away from Zoraida before the Obey takes place. Aiming to get in a some games with her in her current state and come back with my experiences.

Tried her as a secondary master w Ulix and she really earned her keep in that one. Helping pigs position is great and even better is "helping" a couple of injured targets get closer to said pigs...

1 hour ago, emiba said:

I first misread this one. It's worth pointing out though that the riders may choose not to take the out of activation action so if you're using Zoraida to move your own hooded rider, that's still fine, he can choose to take the action.

Indeed. Still a minor nerf to Obey models although one I agree with due to how token mechanics work atm.

Makes them excellent taxis for early turns tho. I'll be putting one into my Zoraida lists to give the hag a much needed lift.

Either just bring a Wicked Doll, or Zoraida with her Voodoo Doll, to generate scrap markers for her and just hope for/keep a high mask in hand with which to summon. I think Vasilisa looks pretty darn solid in her current incarnation.

2 hours ago, Adran said:

I honestly think the question you are asking is the wrong question

I think the question you should be asking is

Are the Zoraida rules we have here good enough?

After all a lot of the people here weren't in the closed beta so can't really comment.

With all due respect, I explicitly stated "I'd like to know if any other Beta participants felt that she was OP or giving their opponents a negative play experience" because that was the question I'd like to get an answer to. I agree that yours is a more important one from a testing perspective, though.

Thanks for replying in full even though you could still stand to lose the condescension. I don't agree with most of your assessments but that was the point of this thread to begin with; to air discussion about the changes to her from Open to Closed Beta.

The damage example was the best case scenario for using the Voodoo Pins on the Doll. If you can come up with something better then let me know.

Zoraida is my favourite master and I've won tournaments with her. You can kindly sod off with the insinuations that I try to use her like a hammer. You keep spouting obvious observations like they are some kind of divine revelations and you are frankly sidetracking the debate I was after when I started this thread. At this point I'm not even sure if you are trolling or just have really poor reading comprehension.

9 minutes ago, whodares said:

This entire section here shows you have fairly limited experience playing with Zoraida. Either that or you can't fully grasp combo potential, which is something VERY important for the current state of Zoraida. You only look at doing damage instead of other potential.

For example: Voodoo Curse is on an opposing Beater engaging Zoraida. You deal that model 1 damage + 1 Injured, which means said model will be less useful intil the end of it's next Activation due to Injured. You Obey your Voodoo Doll and steal an Action of that beater with a -2 to the stat. Attack said beater with his own Attack, which has a decently high chance of passing due to Injured +1. Bonus points if you Hexed that model first and used the Trigger to get out of it's Engagement Range.

If you did that, he'll have taken a total of 3/4/5 damage (2/3/4 Hex + 1 from Voodoo Pins) and gained Injured +2. He's not engaged anymore with you and your Voodoo Doll just took a swing with the beaters own attack while he's on -2 stat.

Yes, you spend 2 AP to get that done. Yes, that is a hefty price. It's the price you pay for actually placing so badly that an opposing model managed to get next to Zoraida in the first place.

 

DO NOTE this is only one of the many combinations possible. Zoraida awards creativity. If you just want to pump out high damage numbers, you're at the wrong Master to begin with.

Oh wow.

First of all, I never brought damage into it. I said I wanted more from a master action, you were the one taking it to damage land.

I am fully aware of the "combo potential" as one of my complaints were that the combo potential was limited by the changes between Closed and Open Beta.

Also the Voodoo Doll can't take a swing with the beater's own attack since it's limited to copying tactical actions with Unexpected Connection.

As for it being the "price to pay for actually placing so badly that an opposing model managed to get next to Zoraida in the first place" I am merely stating that the trigger on the Voodoo Pins seems to not be dealing with the issue that it is designed for, namely models that have gotten close. I'd also like to know how you would effectively stop a flying or incorporeal model that is dead set on basing Zoraida from doing that without clumping up your units to the point of it being detrimental to the rest of your strategy.

Unlike you I won't resort to insinuating anything about your play level so I bid you a good day, sir.

4 minutes ago, whodares said:

I do not completely agree with this sentiment. Obey is still a very strong mechanic. Yes, it is a nerf if you wanted to take another Action, but you are disregarding the fact that you are getting a suited stat 9!! Obey action on this Trigger now. On any 5+, you are already reaching your TN. You pretty much get a guaranteed Obey off.

However the major downside for me on this is that Obey can only target a model Once per Activation. Using this Trigger means you can't Obey said model anymore during that Activation and that's a major downside for me. Perhaps that could be reworded as to allow said Trigger to bypass this restriction. No point in gimping yourself.

EXTRA: a neat Trick you might have missed is that you can also use this on your Voodoo Doll. This could allow for some special interactions as Voodoo Doll can use Actions from Voodoo Cursed models. Using Zoraida's melee attack like this allows you to ping 1 damage and 1 injured uncontested to a cursed model AND lets Voodoo Doll take an Action. I'd say that's not a bad deal at all.

Zoraida now is rather reliant on her Voodoo Doll, or at least that's how my opponents have played her. She didn't have too many problems in Closed Beta and I don't see how she could have problems now.

The trigger only allows an Obey action at somebody that are in the 0" range of Z's Voodoo Pins. That's basically limited to a Disengagement unless your opponent has put other models inside the first model's reach, which seems like a rather silly thing to do.

Why would I waste an entire action on hitting the Doll w Voodoo Pins? Obey or not, that's going to do max 1 damage, +1 Injured and in best case scenario, with some serious setup, you can Obey the Doll into hazardous terrain for say 1 more damage and +1 Burning. If you think that encompasses value for a master action then I disagree.

And for Zoraida not having problems in the Closed Beta: That's exactly what I'm addressing. I had no problems with her there and neither did my opponents. That's why I'm asking "why the nerfs." I'm glad that she stills look viable to you but I'm not convinced despite the points you raise.

As posted in another thread, there are a lot of nerfs to the open beta variant of Zoraida compared to the closed beta. I'm not going to be hysterical about it but I'd like to know if any other Beta participants felt that she was OP or giving their opponents a negative play experience. Here's the changes that I've noted:

1. She lost Enthrall, which I understand from a game design perspective as it narrows down design space for future living minions, but really liked fluff-wise. If the Special Dispensation on Hayreddin and Domadores gets changed I certainly hope Zoraida gets something back too.
2. Trigger on Voodoo Pins used to be a Ram for making any kind of other attack action vs the same target, not just Obey. As it's written it's close to useless as your opponent will have to put something within 0" of Zoraida, the model will still be engaged with Zoraida when Obey triggers, severely limiting the actions you can do with Obey, and to top it off the additional mask is mostly useless as attacks from triggers can't activate triggers themselves as per the new rules.
3. She used to be able to draw LoS from any friendly model within 8". Now she's relying on being in position to put out her Voodoo Curse via the doll at the start of her activation to draw LoS from that. As a result I'm predicting that no (competitive) Zoraida list will be constructed wo Hooded Rider, Mature Nephilim or even Coppelius for moving her around outside her activation. Not saying that this is bad by definition but having some models be so good that they're almost mandatory parts of a list doesn't sound good to me.
4. All the Riders now have Unyielding to prevent them from taking actions outside their own activation. This is a major indirect nerf to all models with Obey but esp. masters as they are declared before force construction, making them a pretty obvious counter pick to Zoraida in particular. I understand the need to curb opponents using the models' Fate Tokens but I think a more elegant solutions would be to implement a Stubborn (opposing models get -flip to attacks targeting WP) mechanic and add a "During this model's activation..." clause at the start of the sentence dictating the use of Fate Tokens (or any kind of tokens tbh).

All in all there's several nerfs to Zoraida, both direct and indirect. If people were having negative play experiences playing against her they weren't reporting it in my beta forum (with a notable exception of one guy not liking Skeins/Threads of Fate, but it's a power that's pretty random in nature), so I'd like to hear the reasons for why she got hit this hard with the nerf bat. In the 3 matches I had with her she never steamrolled anybody but there's a lot of variables so I'd want to hear something that soothes my mind on this if she's going to stay the way she is now.

There are a lot of nerfs to the open beta variant of Zoraida compared to the closed beta:

1. She lost Enthrall, which I understand from a game design perspective as it narrows down design space for future living minions, but really liked fluff-wise. If the Special Dispensation on Hayreddin and Domadores gets changed I certainly hope Zoraida gets something back too.
2. Trigger on Voodoo Pins used to be a Ram for making any kind of other attack action vs the same target, not just Obey. As it's written it's close to useless as your opponent will have to put something within 0" of Zoraida, the model will still be engaged with Zoraida when Obey triggers, severely limiting the actions you can do with Obey, and to top it off the additional mask is mostly useless as attacks from triggers can't activate triggers themselves as per the new rules.
3. She used to be able to draw LoS from any friendly model within 8". Now she's relying on being in position to put out her Voodoo Curse via the doll at the start of her activation to draw LoS from that. As a result I'm predicting that no (competitive) Zoraida list will be constructed wo Hooded Rider, Mature Nephilim or even Coppelius for moving her around outside her activation. Not saying that this is bad by definition but having some models be so good that they're almost mandatory parts of a list doesn't sound good to me.
4. All the Riders now have Unyielding to prevent them from taking actions outside their own activation. This is a major indirect nerf to all models with Obey but esp. masters as they are declared before force construction, making them a pretty obvious counter pick to Zoraida in particular. I understand the need to curb opponents using the models' Fate Tokens but I think a more elegant solutions would be to implement a Stubborn (opposing models get -flip to attacks targeting WP) mechanic and add a "During this model's activation..." clause at the start of the sentence dictating the use of Fate Tokens (or any kind of tokens tbh).

All in all there's several nerfs to Zoraida, both direct and indirect. If people were having negative play experiences playing against her they weren't reporting it in my beta forum (with a notable exception of one guy not liking Skeins/Threads of Fate, but it's a power that's pretty random in nature), so I'd like to hear the reasons for why she got hit this hard with the nerf bat. In the 3 matches I had with her she never steamrolled anybody but there's a lot of variables so I'd want to hear something that changes my mind on this if she's going to stay the way she is now.