zavros

I've used the alternate 8 ball (green oni) from aristeia since he came out last year. Feels spot on for me.

Is the 2nd model interacting with the lodestone model able to toss the lodestone to itself?

On 2/12/2020 at 7:09 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

I have no doubt that you have a wider/more diverse range of experience than I do (and more competitive), but this part misses my main point.

Summoning crews on average are action inefficient in that they take more actions to complete the same task.

As an example, I was Molly vs Kirai in my last tournament. Turn one I smashed out 2-3 bombs. From turn two onwards, I was pressuring his bomb drops by threatening to pick them up/engage his carriers. Meanwhile my team swapped to attacking Kirai (with assassinate scheme in the pool).

I also smashed one of his key pieces on end of turn 1/start of turn 2 (Molly has an activation control advantage in this matchup), severely crippling him and ruining his early bomb plan.

He was having to expend lots of resources just to tread water/not lose Kirai and his bombs. I was pressuring him across every angle - having to deal with my bombs, getting his bombs down, protecting Kirai, etc. In the end I didn't even have assassinate, but I made him burn resources thinking I did.

If the game went 10 turns, he would have won for sure. But there was no chance for him in the five turn game with how the first two turns went.

A summoning crew generally can't pull off those shenanigans. They accomplish less per action and make up for it by having more actions. Not to mention they are spending cards on summoning while I am spending cards killing key enemy pieces.

Note this breaks down a bit with OOK or versatile shenanigans (Asami can get crazy efficient with versatile models from what I saw in my one game). So I wouldn't be surprised if some from you list do need a rework.

I agree that non-summoners have high impact actions that have the opportunity to make up the difference in power level; Such as Levi and Shenlong, molly in your case.

I don't agree that summoners don't also have high impact actions that are equal if not better than what other crews are doing. 

Just look at tara's crew, they can easily out activate you with the pass tokens they make which makes it easy for them to score/deny points. The master and crew have  good abilites, and on top of that she is throwing summons at you to slow you down or threaten glimpse the void to bury and teleport your models across the board. They can pressure you just as much as molly does, but they also get to attrition you out of the game for free.

I would say you were a much better player than your kirai opponent.

If this was 2E malifaux, I would agree that non summoners are doing things that are just as good as summoners, like Lady J could easily do 15+ damage a turn in 2E. With the edition change, everything but summoning was powered down, I don't think a lot of master actions in 3E are equivalent to getting a 9SS model, and that 9SS model can easily have a higher impact than hitting someone with an attack. 

17 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I have had a very different experience with summoners (though that may just be the individual matchups).

In general, summoner crews seem to be so action inefficient that I find them a bit behind say Forgotten for actually scoring points. That isn't universally true (Dreamer on corner deployment is a nightmare...), but there is a definite weakness there.

Especially if you remember to enforce the "no interacting the turn of summoning" rule, it makes a big difference.

On plant explosives, for example, the starting markers still have to be set on starting models. On turf war, extra summons mean extra chances for markers flipping. Corrupted idols... Is a summoning-favoured strategy for sure. Reckoning can go either way.

So I'd say it really depends (although I've not played top-tier competitive play).

But I rarely feel more powerful fielding a Dreamer crew over a Molly crew. Dreamer can wipe the enemy table, but Molly can secure and deny points with horrendous efficiency.

EDIT: I've only played against Asami once (Molly on corrupted idols) and got thrashed, but even then looking back I applied very little pressure to the enemy. If you don't pressure summoners, they'll carry away the game.

How are summoners action inefficient when a summoned model still gets at least an action even with slow (and not all summons get slow). Every turn after where a summoned model is alive they are generating 2 or more actions. Lets say you summon a model the first turn of the game and it lives at least 1 more turn, that's +3 actions not including bonuses assuming it came in slow; now account that you didn't have to move that model from your deployment, it gets to immediately start affecting the board. If you summon the first 3 turns of the game, your getting at least +9 actions over your opponent who just gets pass tokens that don't help affect the board. If your opponent kills it right away, you are still up on actions as it likely took at least 2 attacks from their high impact model to kill a 7+SS summon vs the 1 action you spent to summon it. 

Summoned models don't need to do objectives, thats what the other 50SS in your crew is for. Your effectively bringing 27+ SS that sits there and fights your opponent, most crews can't interact when engaged so your tying up multiple models from doing anything relevant unless they fight you. And there are still summons that are great scheme runners if summoned early (minako's katashiro summons are incredible at scheming). 

I know they can't interact the same turn summoned, but with 5 entire turns you have plenty of time for a summoned model to kill something and do a scheme the next turn.  For something like turf war, you summon stuff in their quadrants. Reckoning, its difficult to kill enough 7+SS minions to score on later turns so summoning is barely a downside. In explosives, your summons can kill their models with bombs and now you have twice as many to put down.

I have played at high level tournaments, that's why I'm answering your thread question.  Recently I placed 3rd at the blues brawl (15 players) and 4th at the NC December Decimation GT (40ish players), only losing on the 5th round at top table, with his tara vs my shenlong. The main reason you don't see summoners dominating tournaments is due to time, a lot of players have difficulty making it to turn 5 within 2 hours when playing a summoner as there's so many actions to get through each turn. A summoner's strength is overwhelming you with actions over multiple turns, but if the game cuts short due to time they don't get to their full potential. If my game the last round of the GT actually ended when time was called we would have tied, but the TO decided we should finish the 5 turns as it was top table. Neither player was slow playing, it simply took a lot time due to the amount of actions happening as malifaux is a complicated game. This is why I don't consider tournament results accurate as it doesn't account for time among other things. 

Factions aren't really domininant, its singular masters within a faction carrying them up. Info from tournaments is very unreliable at conveying the true state of the game.

Right now there's maybe 10 master's that are way above the rest due to how much stronger their mechanics are. It's not that they are unbeatable but if you aren't playing one of these masters it will be an uphill battle if you play against them. There are still other pushed masters but i don't think they are collectively doing as much as these masters.

Tara, Levi, Von Schtook, Kirai, Mah, Somer, Dreamer, Sandeep, Shenlong, Asami

A really big problem here is that most of the main action summoners are just broken mechanically, its like your crew starts with +27ss with how good most of their summons are and they still have faction abilities on top of that. Exorcism is the only useful anti summon tool and its not on that many models nor is it consistent tech against summoning. 

Another problem is how mobile you need to be to do a lot of the strats and schemes in this edition. The master listed above have great tools for scheming in addition to being able to out punch your opponent. 

Tara- Aionus generating 4 pass tokens is too much, it lets her crew always have initiative and guarantee out activating your opponent to score your points or deny their points. On top of that she's a summoner so she's generating an overwhelming amount of actions.

Levi- his crew is pushed but thats not really the problem, his irreducible damage boosting on top of abilities and models that give him free focus let him chunk through anything in the game risk free since he respawns on his totems. Anti-demise punishes his aggression but its a rare ability.

VSchtook- They are rediculously tanky (HTW + armor), draw lots of cards, have a summon ability that is easy to set up with Valedictorian, incredibly mobile(undergrads), and pulse focus. They have a pile of useful abilities that let them out punch all the non-summoners.

Kirai- she's a summoner, and if you kill any of her models they all start hitting you more consistently. 

Mah- Her crew is a bit pushed but what makes it over the top is the triple focus pulse happening on the first turn. 21 free focus is waaaay too much when it normally costs 1 action to get 1 focus. 

Somer- so he's a summoner, and then you get all these crazy bonuses on top of that. All their attacks are on stat 7 from bayou bash, and all their defenses are +1 from lenny's aura. then Bayou 2 card lets them cheat at no cost so their hand really only matters for summons. You kill one of their guys they get to shoot you for near free(discard a card). Good ol boys have swagger and richochet, letting them get free + damage flips on the ricochet trigger off their shotgun that's already laying down blasts. There's so many more useful abilities on their models, you wonder why guild even bothers existing as a faction compared to this.

Dreamer- At least everyone is on board with dreamer being broken. the focus is around stitched which are not costed correctly, but he's still a summoner with a pile of good abilities on all of his models. 

Sandeep- why does his faction get so many extra actions every time they concentrate, (draw a card, trigger demise, free movement, shielded +1, etc). It's bad enough that he can easily summon 2 minions in a turn. They easily out attrition non-summoner crews.

Shenlong- Fermented style + chi stacking. It's similar to levi where you can't really defend against it, you are hoping the shenlong player kills the wrong model that turn. The out of crew hires in 10T are strong, with 2 summons from Minako + Ototo and a card draw engine from yasunori + kitty dumont.  It doesn't help that wandering style can deny and score schemes so easily.

Asami- She has great aggressive summons and she also gets to hire the out of crew combos for a lot of consistency. 

1 hour ago, Cursed25 said:

you mean copy the charge action from the general action list?

All general actions are considered tactical actions as they do not have a resist. Hannah can effectively use her bonus action as a 3rd ap.

6 minutes ago, Yore Huckleberry said:

Other things that (alas!) foil Nellie:

- An enemy model can, in an Exclusive Interview aura, take the interact action in base contact with your scheme marker. Because the rules force an either/or and you cannot drop a marker, you must (control the action and make them) pick up the marker.

I'm not sure about this, what forces you to choose option 2? There's nothing in Resolving Actions that specifies you have to choose certain options over others, you should be able to choose option 1 which then fails in step 5  if you want to keep your scheme marker there. The can't place within 4" is not an italicized cost or requirement, its an effect of the action that is checked at step 5.

You can declare actions which will fail, the most notable example is wrastlers from infamous, they can charge and declare an attack on no one, pick up a non-scheme marker as part of the cost for declaring the attack, then fail the attack as it has no targets. 

I think you can still attempt to drop a scheme marker, it would just not happen according to step 5 of Resolving Actions. The cannot drop within 4" of another scheme is part of the effect, and is not a cost or requirement to perform the chosen action. 

I never realized Breaking News/Chasing a Story would not trigger if you used exclusive interview, it seems really counter-intuitive to what the crew is doing seeing as how Exclusive Interview is not optional. 

I like the idea of making it a difficult test on one of their stats.

I feel like taking away fiendish gamble takes out a lot of the fun of the model, despite it fixing the problem cleanly.

If we want to make minimal changes to the ability, the damage is the problem (outside of ignoring all the attack rules). If you make the dmg 2/3/4 and can't be cheated then its a lot more reasonable. It's still a really good "attack" that you want to use since it still has the auto  attached and gets by a lot of defensive abilities. 

@Maniacal_cackle with the crooligan attack it at least takes resources and effort to set up so you can cheat the attack/dmg flip in your favor. All of the defensive abilities work against it as its an attack which is definitely a lot more fair. Your opponent's defensive stats actually matter so there's no real problems with Sharp Debris.

Here's a general question. For Ice mirror, am I able to wait and see my flip before discarding to declare triggers, or do I have to discard when I declare the action?

So far from my games with raspy, Her abilities are fairly strong and the shockwave is actually pretty good with the range you get out of ice mirror. She is very good at sapping away ap from your opponent and making them do very awkward things with their activations.

I think you always want at least 1 silent one to help setup pillars for raspy and other models. Everything they do is useful and having a pocket heal can be clutch for the amount of armored models I bring.

Blessed is reasonable at doing objectives and hunting schemers but I've found steam arachnid swarms to be better in general at doing the same things but being tankier and less dependent on trying to focus hit things.

Ice golem is a great tanky model to block for raspy and threaten areas of the board with his aura. I don't think there's anything bad about the model other than how slow it moves.

Her other in keyword models are fine but unfortunately in arcanists you have really good versatiles that just do so much more for their cost. It feels like you really want to take 2 soulstone miners every game because she is so stone hungry and they have the mobility to do most objectives. 

Magical training is a must use upgrade, I usually put it on a miner or steam arachnid swarm.

Something I've liked recently is taking Allison Dade in Lucius. She can black mail to generate pass tokens for lucius' mastermind. Doppleganger and agent 46 can mimic it also if you want to generate more and even the guild lawyer could obey her to do it again on the same model.

Speaking of Lucius, expert marksman is interesting on him, it lets him hidden sniper from any of his models engaged models without friendly fire.

Doppleganger can mimic itself to have a stat 7 lure.

Only recently realized the Family Matters trigger is different than its beta version (you had to discard a card originally as a cost),  making Perdita's crew much better. It lets you keep dumping actions into Nino really easily and take 5 extra shots with him on turn 1.

Domadore de cadavers can command dead on the brutal emissary, perfect for charging him up so he can get great sword bonuses on his activation

I play youko.

If you don't want your hand to be attacked, do your reveal objectives quickly as it stops backroom dealings from hitting your hand as hard. Sure youko gets a bucket of pass tokens to use, but with something like urami you can out punch her crew if your able to summon goryos on top of her weaker models.

You can assist distracted off your models. In something like urami you have seishin that can easily run up and assist your bigger models at a low cost.

Concealment is reasonable, it makes it more costly to hit you with her actions.

Movement tricks get you past disguised on a lot of her models, seishin are good here for walking your guys up to hit something.

Youko wants to engage you with kabuki warriors/geisha early, their distraction auras let her near guarantee hit you with her actions. Those models are really weak to ranged attacks and can be picked off early if the youko player isn't careful when you have ranged threats.

Transmortis is one of the best crews in the game, they do everything well and could easily fight youko's crew.

Personally I would go with this. 

Shenlong is absurd and his crew has a lot of good synergies going. They are all effectively DF 7 because of chi.

Asami's summons are strong and you can fit good versatiles in like fuhatsu since the crew doesn't rely on any synergies. 

Yan luo's crew is just good, and yan luo gets mountains of abilities throughout the game making him really strong T3+.

Lynch has a great keyword ability but has trouble dealing with stuff outside their brilliance/tarpit bubble. Mobile crews can work around lynch fairly easily.

Mccabe is a really good master with a solid crew. I wish looted supplies was 2", but glad they changed it from the beta version of base contact. Their activation order gets awkward with hucksters wanting to stay in manipulative and when and where you can toss artifacts between models. 

Foundry is surprisingly mobile in addition to being solid in a fight. I would say anti-armor is a common counter that really hurts what they are doing as they can't work around it as much as yan luo can.

I think youko is absurd against certain crews and not great against others. Depends on how many ways they have to fight over their hand, for ex: sandeep can refill his hand really easy with mantra triggers, but something like basse will struggle hitting your models after you attack their hand.

Misaki's crew has some great mobility and damage potential but not a lot of defenses. Misaki herself is a good aggressor that's both hard to stop and impossible to hit, perfect for getting in and out like an assassin. I think they really excel when there's a lot of blocking terrain or corner deployments making your mobility shine; I also don't think the assassin ability is very good but their shadow marker bonuses are really what its about. 

6 hours ago, Barmution said:

Seems like you have found a way to get around the problem locally then. Just don't try to force your particular solution onto metas, players and tournaments that actively seek to play the game as the pick/counterpick and play/counterplay game that M3e is (way more than M2e).

That's the thing though, you'll eventually find that you pick/counterpick will start ending up the same for zoraida's matchup as the tools to fight it are incredibly limited and not available to every faction. There's only 3 models with unyielding in the game and not all masters are good secondary masters. It really isn't fun once you get to that point as there isn't much room to adjust your list. 

5 hours ago, Scoffer said:

When Zoraida is a secondary master, she usualy doesn't have many (if any) swampfiends to use Eyes In The Night from safe distance. So she has to come close enough to be shot to death. Also you can hide your models from her LoS, outflank her and so on.

She can still curse someone with her doll and extend off of that model. generally our local zoraida player is in bayou, so they just hire first mate out of keyword when taken as a secondary. Sneaking around terrain doesn't help unless its concealing since she can draw LoS through other models. She can also just obey her own models, her actions are never wasted even if you hide, 2 extra attacks from a beater like first mate is still very good.

5 hours ago, Ogid said:

But that's not exclusive of her, a lot of masters forces the other player to adapt...

What about talking with your local Zoraida player and switch crews? By playing it you could undersand his playstyle better and see the weak points; and his player will already know its weaknessess and would be able to beat it with other crews.

I agree, but for other masters there's usually more than one model that would be useful against that master. For example, hoffman has lots of armor and fighting him directly is bad. Instead I can take models with ap triggers or models that have status effect triggers on their attacks like slow/distracted to fight against hoffman. Against zoraida theres...Secondary Masters...Unyielding(3 models in the game)...and concealment(still more of a soft counter). You can still fight hoffman on objectives despite him smashing your face in and you can also just try to fight him by bypassing armor or attacking their WP. Against zoraida you can't fight her on objectives as her crew is slippery and mobile, so you have to specifically fight her and her models. There's only so many models that can interact favorably with her and her crew so your pool of options becomes fairly static as if you do anything else you just lose.

We have swapped, thats why I think there's problems here.

3 hours ago, Sol_Sorrowsong said:

In my games, if my opponent doesn't want his beater attacking his friends, he'll keep it away until late turn, and away from swampfiends. Maybe he doesn't push so far forward with it T1.  Either Z goes earlier and does something else or obeys a different target.  Outside of a specific table, I can't see a swampfiend getting close enough to not take a punishment T1, while being close enough to Z to be an arcnode. She HATES walking.  Old people get like that sometimes.  Blocking terrain hinders her, concealing terrain hinders her, severe terrain hinders, scatter terrain can block charge lanes.  I get that Obeys are annoying. We have two Zoraida players in our meta, I'm one of them and people find creative ways to avoid her strengths (I remember a particularly nasty game vs Nekima where blackblood was wrecking everything and healing the enemy sometimes!).  Playing against her is also tough, she's strong for sure, but just like Zoraida can RJ an obey that's unblockable, she can also get a hand with nothing above an 8.

My experience with card cycle has been a net gain for both players. I only use it to try and stack my hand after using my nice cards, and I get decent cards back but so does my opponent usually. I have more control over it, sure. It ain't guaranteed by any means though.

It's not that counterplay doesn't exist, its that its so limited that the games are just not fun. 12" arc node + 12" range covers 2/3 of the table, hard to get away from that without lots of blocking terrain and that doesn't include both players initial deployments. If your hand has nothing higher than an 8, you have an ability that gives you an entire new hand? 

54 minutes ago, Gaston said:

Zoraida aside, the issue I have with Obey is being able to spend conditions, upgrades, and tokens. For example, you can Obey a Chimera and force them to toss a mutation. Or I have had Hooded Rider Obey'd and they spent 10 tokens to generate 10 masks on an attack.

Agreed. Just burning focus on hitting their own models is brutal, your effectively stealing some of their previous ap.

I agree ConfuciuSay. There's barely any counterplay to what she is doing and it forces you to play in a very specific way which is just not fun (no one in our store wants to play against her). Concealment  and double masters help a lot and you have to aggressively kill her as there's no way to beat her on objectives until you kill her. Stealth actually doesn't work as she can draw LoS through other dudes near you ignoring it. You can't stack up a good hand to try and kill her, she cycles it every turn. No one in the game can actually resist her obey without being a master or have unyielding; I haven't seen a WP8 model yet.  An obeyed friendly model ignores a lot of defensive rules like terrifying and serene countenance, plus you can burn any focus stacked up on the obeyed model.  Shes always hiding behind something so usually you end up being forced to melee her, playing into the regret trigger.

If your opponent takes her as a secondary master it gets way more oppressive. There is no way to plan for it. Her cost should be upped to somewhere near 20-24ss if she stays the same to adjust for how absurd she is as a secondary.

I'm not sure if GG19/20 will fix any of her issues, it could actually get worse depending on the objectives. 

I'm currently planning on a proxy with this. [8-Ball, Greenskin Oni Skin] It comes out pretty soon.

I agree with Adran, 2 geisha could get enough lures, you might not even need that many as your opponent is probably also moving up the board. 

There's 4 schemes I can think of where lures are useful specifically for you.

Detonate charges- its easier to do when you can get their activated guy in the right spot

Dig their graves- lure them over, plant a scheme, and hit them with 1-2 beaters

Take prisoner- the perfect lure scheme, just get a guy by himself. Choosing a low cost guy for this can let even a geisha hold him down.

Vendetta- get your target near, hit them with other guys to get their health low enough, then hit them with the vendetta model to score.

In youko, there's other dirty things you can do with lures. Getting a model into a geisha or kabuki warriors distraction aura will let you get away with a lot of youko's and chiyo's actions. You can lure models just in range of someone with 2" reach, getting them engaged in an awkward spot. 

Offensively you can lure people off of scheme positioning like outflank or claim jump. For turf war, lure a model into the zone where you want to kill it.

I've played asami with youko. You usually don't need amanjaku, he doesn't have a whole lot to do compared to in keyword.  Asami is just always a great hire since she's a self contained package.

Haven't tried misaki + shang in youko, just seems so expensive. Will definitely put it on the table at some point just to get a feel of how impactful that is.

Youko's main defenses against aggressive crews are hand control and positioning.

Generally hinamatsu and bill can tank/pressure the bigger models but your smaller models have to rely on disguised and activation order to not just die. 

If your generating pass tokens, you can wait out your opponent's activations where your not already engaged. If your opponent hasn't scored yet, you activate youko early to attack their hand with shady dealings, hand out distracted, and generate pass tokens. 

Geisha can survive most single activations as  long as the enemy model isn't focused since they can't charge you, giving you the opportunity to effectively auto slow them and disengage making it awkward for your opponent to do anything.  I think up to 2 geisha is fine, but more than that makes your list really soft.

Kunoichi can pull models out of melee and work well with other disguised models. They are even useful with bill and kabuki warriors who have a 2" reach, a slight reposition with them will force your opponent to walk at you if they want to hit you. I find one kunoichi to be useful but more than 1 is not great.

Speaking of 2" reach, bill and kabuki warriors are great at fighting most melee models. Bill can easily maneuver people around and keep multiple models engaged.  Kabuki warriors will rarely get hit in melee. Kabuki warriors are probably what you want against aggressive factions most of the time.

Bunraku are just great in general, they can both fight and scheme efficiently.

You will definitely have problems with aggressive ranged crews, especially spellcasters. You will have to take things like samurai against ranged crews just to fight on even footing. I think youko's worst matchup is probably titania, they have lots of concealment, spells that attack defense instead of wip, and all the severe terrain makes positioning awkward for you.

Ohugaro is fine, there's just an opportunity cost in taking her as she's just another beater in a faction full of beaters. I would take her mostly for the assassinate objective.

Currently there is no reason to ever take a kamaitichi, its mostly a for fun model with how awkward it is to use. I really wish it wasn't insignificant.

@CaladanCid @LeperColony

If you want to play asami mostly in keyword without mccabe, you want to at least get all the oni minions. I would say the only must haves out of those are obsidian oni, akaname, and jorogumo. I end up summoning obsidian oni way more than anything else since they are such a big problem for your opponent when you push it into a group of models to engage them and turn on its fire aura.  There's usually one turn where you summon 2 akaname to 'drop' scheme markers for objectives. You want to summon jorogumo early if you have the 13, otherwise its probably always an obsidian oni.

Asami's activation generally looks like this: summon, mother's love the summon, push summon with tendrils. Later in the game she might go around denying schemes with her bonus and pushing around enemies with tendrils. Despite being a stat 6 melee with 2/4/6, she generally doesn't want to be in melee as it keeps her from using tendrils. If you want to use her aggressively, hiring a tanuki can help by throwing focus on her freeing up her actions for attacks.

Remember that Asami's violition of reality counts herself too, so she can charge just to teleport somewhere and get bonus movement out of it since its not completely within like flight.

Another trick is using flicker on defense for yokai, which lets them place away from the attacker, so it makes it hard to get multiple attacks on them.

Overall, the faction is a bunch of mobile glass cannons. They can get where they want and do a lot of damage with their 2 free focus(flicker). The range of summons are fairly flexible so really the only thing the oni keyword is worried about is exorcism triggers, armored factions like hoffman, and ranged pressure (they have really average defense).

Thank you for clearing that up. I had been told it worked the other way. 

They seem fine. The 0"  melee is rough but turning off your opponent's schemes is also really good. They really benefit from lucius/lawyers taking extra actions with them after they stab someone, they turn into stat 7 min3 beaters that are hard to disengage from. Hitting them with a big model is hard, you can just throw away cards to hand out - flips. 

They definitely have downsides, they don't want to fight more than 1 model at a time. They aren't super mobile and 0" reach will make you waste an action sometimes to hit someone.

I don't think you take more than one unless your against those factions that spam corpse/scrap markers (ressers/mei feng).

On 8/13/2019 at 3:41 PM, FrostHunter said:

I would say it's still count as flipped and for each Ace flipped. Look at the page 8 & 9 at Rules Manual - ctrl+c then ctrl+v copies without any spaces for me.

Looking at the Fate mods section on pg 9, here's what the example says:

For example, a player with a ++ might reveal a 4,7, and 10. The player may choose any of these cards to use, and will probably choose the 10 for the flip.

To me, it sounds like a single card is chosen as the "flip" and the rest are revealed cards. 2 paragraphs above that example, "The card that may be used for the flip is determined by the type of Modifier." Meaning that + or - restricts what you can choose to be the flip.

From lynch's card:

After an enemy model flips an Ace, it gains a Brilliance Token.

To me, that means that it has to be an ace chosen as the "flip" and placed into the conflict before cheating; then the ability will trigger.

2 hours ago, Wyamphri said:

As for the Beckoners, do you find you need both, or is that more for certain schemes and strats?

You should take both. They are just that good for the cost.

After re-reading charge I agree. You can get 3 burning path triggers in an activation on 1 model. The model is still a glass cannon in that it will run in and try to do as much dmg as it can before it dies.

Brewmaster and whiskey golem can  kill the wanyudo in 1 activation. Most of the crew will have trouble as they are meant to engage and tarpit enemy models and won't be doing much direct damage, so the wanyudo is free to keep trying to charge over as much as it can since your minions aren't as threatening.

If you were playing Mah's crew, you could probably shoot it down 1st turn with all of her good ranged models and put pit traps out to make it difficult to approach without getting injured.