touchdown

Has anyone tried Talos with the Freikorps? Seems like he'd have good synergy with Hannah and Lazarus, but maybe not worth the cost when Arik is the same price.

It seems like a bigger drop in power and fun than it should be to run either Hannah or Arik as your leader since all equipment actions are either Von Schill or the Steam Trunk. I think either the Steam Trunk should be special totem that Hannah and Arik can hire or there should be an upgrade with restriction Friekorps that you can only take if Von Schill is not the leader that gives an ability to attach equipment.

So I played game with Von Schill with the 1/31 rules last Friday. Now I played very poorly so it's hard to say where the crew failed me or I failed the crew. That said I have a lot of similar complaints to the rest of you. Lazarus: he absolutely needs backup to make him work. He needs targets for Assimilate (and other than the Steam Trunk that means at least another 9 stones spent on either Arik or Hannah to stay in keyword). He also needs help getting out of engagement in my experience. I couldn't reliably get his pull trigger off and Bayonet just isn't good enough. He's also somewhat weirdly designed in that he's outrageously tanky but doesn't want to be engaged. Now I know he has updates but some changes I could see: put the Pull trigger on 2 suits. Give him Knock Aside (he's a giant robot, shouldn't he be able to push models around?). Give him Unload Ordinance (does anyone really think a blast off a ram on a 2/3/4 attack is broken for a 10ss model?) This crew needs more card draw. Hannah should have Surge on Ancient Words (and you'd have to pick between that and Glimpse the Void so this doesn't seem broken at all). Maybe Von Shill should have Bloody Fate on his rifle.

The Viks don't really have trouble hitting anything with 7 attack, but if you can reduce damage in any way they are probably losing to you

Parker has support abilities. The Viks have none. Other melee masters can actually fight against models that have armor/shielded/etc

The Viks have no way to deal with damage reduction. They eat weaker models up but put anything with decent defensive abilities in their way and they struggle. It sounds like Parker's gun could use a boost but the Viks' doesn't need to be weaker.

This really depends on your crew. I like to activate early with the Viks. General loop is go early -> try to steal some activations by killing models -> heal from your kills -> hope that healing lasts until the next round -> use pass tokens to get initiative

One thing to remember is that the Child is significant now. Just being able to drop scheme markers for 3 stones could be worth it. I haven't tried it yet, but I think there are few interesting combos that could make it worthwhile. Parker to get that extra push + shot 1 extra time per turn. Maybe in mercenary with the Student of Conflict so you can hand out 2 fasts per turn

Engagement says you can't take walk or charge actions so unless an ability says model may take a walk a charge action any other movement is fine.

Wanted Criminal says: After an enemy Scheme Marker is placed within 6, this model draw a card. I assume that should be may draw a card, slim possibility for draws a card.

I like what the Engineer does now other than Sabotage which seems pointless.

On paper I thought this looked like a good matchup for me with all the blasts the Freikorps has. However, in practice they just swarm you so it's hard to get out of engagement and take shots. I think Lazarus has good stats and abilities but he basically needs support from something, another model to shoot off his pulls or something to pull him out of engagement. That's not great for a 10 ss model. To be honest I played this game pretty poorly. Exposing Lazarus early when I didn't need to, played both of my schemes awfully, and made 1 mistake that likely cost me a strategy point. That said, unless the majority of your models are killing 2+ gremlins per turn, you're probably losing against Bit Hat. That's a crazy amount of pressure. I think Freikorps has the tools to do it, but on one hand I don't think I brought the right models and on the other played badly as I said. Also land mines seem terrible, am I missing something?

What if soul tether put a tether token on the leader that you could discard to do the damage movement? Possibly much worse because this means it applies to max 1 attack per turn. Possibly much better because it's optional to use (so if you want to die can just not discard the token) and you would only have to be in range to attach the token. So you could go scheme runner hunting after putting a couple on. Maybe reduce the range to 6" for attaching the token.

Yeah it will say "other friendly only" if it can't target itself.

there are schemes and abilities that interact with cost