Maniacal_cackle

I agree Dreamer is massively overtuned and probably needs a nerf. He starts out strong and progresses to god-mode. That said, I'm going to go a different direction from the others here. I don't necessarily advise hitting Dreamer hard and fast. Even if you remove lots of models, he will summon lots more. That sort of grindy game is really where Dreamer wants to be. Instead I'd focus on quickly securing your objectives, THEN smashing him really hard. For example, last season I would plant three explosives turn one and then could send my team to smash the enemy/slow them down (at least, worked against Kirai). Against a summoner, they're generally going to be favoured to win a brawl, so you want to secure a lead in points before committing to a (losing) brawl. But if he isolates pieces/sends them out on their own, blow them up. N.B. I play and vs. mostly scheme-y melee crews, so my advice may not apply as well to all crews. But I used to main dreamer! I quit him because he seemed too overpowered.

EDIT: Ignore me, I misunderstood.

Battle report is up! @Adrenicider, @LeperColony, @Madsvg I know you asked to see it. Not sure who else was keen! Borgmann was definitely a relevant and annoying model. His 2" engagement range does serious work (and killing my shieldbearer with Elijah snags him a soulstone which saves his riders life which prevents me from snagging a point).

Battle report is up in the battle report forum.

In these battle reports, I'll try to put the emphasis on my strategic thinking during the game. Comments and feedback welcome! The first time I played Molly vs. Colette. This time I played Reva vs. Kaeris: Big thanks to Plaag for the delightful game. This one was absolutely nail-biting, with razor-thin margins for most of the game. Overview: So I initially went into this game thinking that Plaag would be the aggressor, and I could sit back. This is often a good dynamic when you've got a summoner and your opponent does not. However, McMourning isn't the best summoner around, and he had a rider while I did not. Additionally since Kaeris is so good at hit and run, I ran the risk of just getting pinged down over the course of the game. So a lot of the game you can see me dealing with the tension of figuring out when to go aggressive. Ultimately I took Vendetta (Golem vs. Rider, a doable point if I kill the rider, possibly 2 points) and catch and release with the Bone Pile. He took Vendetta on the golem and Breakthrough. Highlights: Turn one he disrupts my summoning engine by eating a corpse with my sloppy placement. A major setback for me. Turn two he further disrupts me by eating all the focus off McMourning with a trigger. Massive setback for me (it is the biggest reason McMourning didn't tear his crew apart). Envy is VERY good against focused models. Very effective model! Turn two my gravedigger just walks into danger and dies. I'm not sure if this is better for me or for him. On the one hand, I lose a relevant model. On the other hand, I get a corpse into position and he wastes an activation with his rider. This puts him behind on claiming leylines, which I abuse by keeping pressure on him for the rest of the game to get the rest of his leylines. He evens it up by turn 4 I think. Bone Pile is very good. Healing, two points on Catch and Release, etc... He could have prevented catch and release except I flipped the Red Joker... But I could have guaranteed it with better play. So still say Bone Piles are good. Grave golem is a fantastic disruption element. He had to work around it the entire game. And he forgot that it can just pop out of corpse candles, which was a major advantage for me. When I play against Plaag, I red joker the damage on his Mechanical Rider. Both games so far 😂 Early game: Turns one and two, the highlights mostly cover it. He does a fantastic job of disrupting me, and also really forces me to cross the board. He plays incredibly conservatively, which is a big pain for me. His crew has the range advantage, so just really forces me to accept that I have to cross the board. This is an especially big challenge for Dr. McMourning, but once he crossed over he went a bit nuts. Of comical note is that I black jokered damage flips twice at the start of this game, which felt like karmic justice (last time I red jokered damage flips twice at the start of the game). Turn 2, Reva really shines as a lodestone carrier. She charged into position and attacks through a corpse marker, having an effect on the game while still carrying the Lodestone. Mid game: Turn three, some shenanigans ensue. Reva continues her streak of being useful AND carrying the lodestone, putting herself into position to harass the mechanical rider (which I need to get down eventually to score with grave golem). He wins initiative on turn 4, which is super important. It allows him to bash my bone pile to near death, which forces me to activate and bury the bone pile to preserve a chance of scoring Catch and Release. The low health on the bone pile really makes turn 5 difficult as well for the unbury. This then leaves Dr. McMourning vulnerable who dies before he can activate. Activation/initiative management is a core skill in Malifaux, and that was a theme of our entire game. We were really working hard to try to out-activate each other. End game: Woooo, this was intense! Highly recommend watching this, it was back and forth the whole way through. He won initiative, which of course was priority one for both of us. But he got it. This meant my Bone Pile and Grave Golem were under intense pressure - both wanted to activate without him having a chance to kill them afterwards. I ended up solving this by getting the bone pile to heal up 4 with corpses and heal the grave golem. I forgot he could deny me a point just by engaging my bone pile, but I red jokered his Envy on a disengage so he couldn't move and engage my bone pile. His Rider's bonus action nearly got him Breakthrough, but Reva used a high mask to push him off the deployment zone (while continuing to run and ending her activation in contact with a leyline). This forced him to use Kaeris to score Breakthrough instead of using Kaeris to kill one of my models to deny me a point (or score a Vendetta point). And wee little Firestarter ran around scoring all the leylines after the Rider gave him a token, and I couldn't quite kill him to stop his scoring. Overall, extremely close game and super intense to play!

Sandeep vs. McMourning, Jack Daw or Yan Lo might be a good direction then. EDIT: or Seamus! I've never played Yan Lo and not played the others that much, so would be a fun learning experience too!

I assume because you can't leap with the lodestone. His Firestarter scored him two points when he had to use it for the lodestone (report pending). Sandeep is a great idea. Maybe Sandeep vs. Kirai on public enemies, or Sandeep vs. McMourning could be interesting?

You say WW was summoning stitched - just to make sure, he was using scrap or stuffing tokens to do that? He shouldn't (easily) be able to summon turn one with WW. EDIT: also if you can share the scenario and lists you played that'll help

Thanks for all the organising you do!

What Resser vs. Arcanist matchup would people like to see next? On either symbols or public enemies. Something even on both sides. We have done Molly vs. Colette and Reva vs. Kaeris. Or I could vs Colette on Symbols to see Colette at max power xD

What and when is the next big tournament? I seem for remember talk of one?

I won (EDIT) 7-6. Hell of a close game, basically came down to me flipping the red joker on the last activation (to stop him disengaging). He prevented my summon turn one with more aggressive use of Kaeris than I expected (eating a corpse marker). Definitely threw me off! EDIT: Will do a write-up as soon as Plaag posts the video

I think these all work better in theory than in practice. If the enemy model is attacking you and Scarlet Temptation is a factor, they'll either just kill the model they're engaged with or move out of engagement. So it isn't that relevant for terrifying (other than having to make them play around it a bit). For luring into contact with Seamus, that's some pretty precise positioning requirements (Seamus has to be within charge distance for the model, a very dangerous place for him to be, and the Belle has to be positioned perfectly in line with Seamus so the lure moves into him. Which would be fine on say McMourning, Yan Lo, or Jack Daw - they are reasonably durable and can survive wading into enemy territory. But Seamus is meant to cat and mouse with his kit, which just doesn't synergise as well as it could with all this stuff. Which doesn't really say anything useful, other than what we already know. Seamus doesn't synergise as well as he could with his crew, so he is one of our two (three?) versatile and OOK masters.

Maybe something like: Front of card: Terror of Malifaux - whenever Seamus kills a model, all enemies within LOS of the killed model gain a trauma token. Back of card: Psychological warfare - target takes irreducible damage equal to the number of trauma tokens it has (wp attack). (To a maximum of... 3?) Adjust rest of card to suit. Or something to do with stacking trauma tokens and using a wp attack called psychological warfare xD

I suspect this might be part of the point of the nerf bat. If nerfing a model is expensive (new cards?), then they probably never want to have to do it twice. So if they go a bit overboard with nerfing, then they're still sorted in terms of not having to re-nerf. Which I hope is not the case. I personally think over-nerfs are terrible for the game.

And his crew's theme is based on penalties to willpower... Can you imagine how good Belles would be if you just slapped the Forgotten keyword on them, for example? Not to mention Doxies. Bit of a pointless post perhaps, but thanks to coming to my rambling.

Redchapel out of keyword for scarlet temptation seems to be a big thing. Reva loves taking Bete Noire. It's frustrating that Redchapel seems to have some of the worst willpower attacks xD

Speaking of leap, it seems like a bit of a mistake that it isnt completely within. It is so weird Archie could leap so far. But I think ive brought this up before.

That's a fair point! Certainly Manos is still regarded as ridiculous, and he has a minor hoop to jump through for it.

Archie's Mournful Memories is another weird one. They took the suit off his leap, then gave him a bonus action to gain a suit (if he already has that suit), and he can't combine it with leap since they're both bonus. But he is already errata-ed so don't necessarily think they should take another crack at him anytime soon. Other models deserve it sooner.

Oh, I'm used to playing against melee. Against shooting, also worth abusing terrain (especially since you're incorporeal) and maybe even creating concealing terrain yourself.

Aversions can give it a little bit of survivability (by making it harder to get into melee range), and if you give it Inhuman Reflexes next to an Aversion, it will be extra durable. Of course, Aversions can be bypassed by just standing behind the poltergeist so the Aversion can't see it. You could do something like hire a Geryon for Extended Reach to protect the geist xD Ultimately, though, Poltergeist is designed to die. Anyone who plays against Pandora quickly learns that you have to kill it if it gets near you, so personally I'd suggest staying focused on timing. If you send the Poltergeist in at the perfect moment and get some good use of its auras (like having minus flips when Pandora blows everything up), that's probably a good outcome for you. Plus if they're hitting your Poltergeist, they're not hitting other models. Maybe experiment with it a bit. You definitely CAN protect Poltergeist, but it may not be worth the investment. But if you experiment and arrive at the decision that you're comfortable with it dying, that's better than just accepting its death without question.

A lot of people feel that way about the Archie nerf. Went from very strong to weak enough that many players ditched the keyword. Althoughhhhh I don't think I can make any claims Molly is too weak myself xD

I find Bone Piles to be very good, but you really need to pair them with corpse markers. So they seem off in a Jack Daw crew. Nurses seem like the Resser default answer to conditions.

@hydranixx all epic points! The Carrion Effigy one is particularly amazing. And it counts as a 4-cost model even with the upgrade