Maniacal_cackle

In general, the obey rules have slanted towards not being able to score points controlling your opponent's models, so this is probably not too big an issue. In very early M3E, the degree to which you could score with opponent's models was really quite broken by all accounts. So this is probably an overall improvement.

Obey does not change the friendly/enemy status of the model being obeyed. So if you obey an enemy model... It must discard a card for Chatty to Interact. Crowd Control prevents the model from taking any actions, so Crowd Control is very much a non-bo with obey. As far as I can see.

Any of the crooligans could grow up to be little terrors Except they're undead, so they'd still have the body of a child... Oh gosh, terrifying. Also if one becomes a master, does that mean the minions drop to plentiful two? also, you make fun posts!

Awesome! I don't play Von Schtook yet (largely as the models released so late), but will get my friend to try it out! (Or borrow his crew xD)

Oh, another thing worth emphasising is his Reap trigger. It is insanely good, and arguably a stronger reason to take him. I use Reap more often than his mega bonus action.

Kirai plus Dead Rider plus Molly move can summon in the opposite deployment zone on standard deployment. He was definitely exposing himself to retaliation (at least from summons). This was certainly worst case scenario for me. However, I still thought it an acceptable risk (if I had had hidden martyrs scored, even the assassinate point wouldn't have saved him). I also figured he wouldn't take assassinate - only a lunatic sacrifices their master so freely 😜 This game definitely confirmed my suspicions that it is an incredibly strong combo. I think it will be my default combo for when I want to win games (aka, national tournaments). Seems like one of the top options available to Ressers - though I need to try McMourning + Reva which has similar summoning potential with better beaters. Thanks for the feedback! Love hearing everyone's thoughts! I'd argue the Reap trigger is what pushes Dead Rider into a truly strong model. His bonus action is a bit circumstantial, but there's no scenario where Reap isn't good (although it is limited in leylines since it can't move lodestone). You can also use it on your own models for a paltry three damage!! I play Molly as a denial master. Almost all of my games involve my opponent scoring 3 points or less. So definitely expected! It does hurt my tournament tie breakers, though, as I tend to win with a narrow margin and both of us with few VP xD

I'll mark it in Vassal next time, thanks! And good point, I hadn't considered your doves doing that!

Makes sense! And if I couldn't kill him, your crew has INSANE healing. I didn't realise it was that strong.

Yeah, that red joker on the rider was pretty lucky on my part. And saving your red joker allowed a successful execute on Kirai. I think I'd have saved the red joker there as well. Although since Rider can attack at ranged, maybe keeping him further back to avoid all my melee guys could have helped?

Haha, true, but I'm totally going to claim it anyway But yeah, realistically only Wyrd can determine that with their access to data and playtesting. I did find one of my other major claims in doubt though - am much more open to the idea that double masters aren't *that* strong (although they are on Recover Evidence). Thanks for the feedback, glad to see the parts I was stoked by are exciting to others!

Since it doesn't say "may" attach an upgrade, I read it as you MUST attach an upgrade (but you don't have to succeed). Let's say you had every upgrade maxed out on models already. If it was in italics, you could not do the action (because doing it is a cost). With it being part of the effect, you'd have to attempt to do it, and then ignore that part since it isn't viable to attach. So that's how I see it.

Full writeup here:

😂😂😂 at 1:26:00, my screen looked totally different for the Goryo's position. I see why Plaag was confused by what I was doing now.

Lots of people are keen to hear the strategic insights into my game last night, so here is a writeup! You can see the video above. Big thanks to Plaag for the game. I was quite scatter-brained and am not very good at Vassal, but he kept a great attitude. Overview: With Molly & Kirai vs. elite Colette, what I was really looking to do was bog down the game. I had an immense AP advantage, so what I wanted to see was him wasting AP on things that didn't score him points. Walk actions, hitting my masters, staggered & slow, guarding markers, and whatever else I could do to make him use his small number of models on something other than scoring was critical. I had the privilege of selecting the scheme pool AND the battlemap, so I had a massive advantage from the get go. I wanted to capitalise on it! As you can see, the terrain on the board worked massively in my faovur throughout the game, which goes to show how important it is to work the battlefield. Most of the game I hid key pieces (models with intelligence tokens) somewhere safe behind terrain. I took Leave Your Mark and Hidden Martyrs (Archie & Crooligan 2, but the app is bugged and displayed it as Crooligan). He took Leave Your Mark and an unknown scheme (either Claim Jump or Runic Binding I think). So it ended 3-2 (4-2 if you count my hidden martyrs point). Things that delivered the victory: There are too many factors to list, but here's some noteworthy things that especially deserve comment: Luck - I had a great turn 1 hand and got two useful red jokers on damage flips. Turn 1, I really narrowed his presto-chango options. Molly was basically his only option (and she wasn't carrying a token). Turn 2, Kirai/Archie/Crooligan shenanigans - killing the silent one with no VP penalty swung the game Timestamp 49:30-1:00:00 I did NOT try to pick up the first evidence token he dropped on turn 2 (it was still there end of turn 5). Instead of me spending resources to pick it up, he had to dedicate resources the entire game to prevent me from picking it up. Dead Rider dragged his Emissary off into severe terrain, effectively negating it for the rest of the game. Crooligans are very, very good models. Turn 1: Here, everything was about activating my models at the end of the turn, so he could not get an activated model holding an intel token in the middle of his crew with Presto-Chango. That'd have ended the game right there! So I used pass tokens, and won initiative to make him activate first. Molly has an amazing trick for this as well. By reactivating a crooligan, I gain an extra activation so I can delay activating the rest of my crew even further. And then I forgot to activate the crooligan the second time. Luckily it didn't end up hurting me too badly as he couldn't punish me for it. He kidnapped Molly, but I was fine with this. Either he doesn't have assassinate (in which case he gets no points for lots of work to kill Molly), or he does and he can't kill her until turn 3. Happy with the outcomes either way (compared to the alternative of me keeping her so far from the battle that she had no impact on the game). This was one of the toughest decisions of turn 1 - expose Molly to danger or not. But ultimately I decided it was better than her not doing anything useful for those early (decisive) turns. Turn 2: We went back and forth hitting each other, but the most noteworthy thing from my end was Kirai/Archie/Crooligan. You can see this at 49:30-1:00:00 in the video, but here's the sequence of events. Kirai activates with intuition, uses two cards herself and puts a mask for Archie to leap with on top. Kirai walks into a better position, but also a dangerous position. He passes. I activate a necrotic machine, do nothing useful with it. He activates coryphee duet, and runs it towards Kirai. This leaves the Silent One Vulnerable. Archie activates, walks forward, leaps (using the card from the top of the deck that Kirai put there) and beats on the Silent One. He reactivates Coryphee Duet, which is already committed to chasing Kirai, so runs up and smacks her... With an Execute Trigger! I choose to NOT discard, instead saving the last card in my hand. Kirai dies. I activate the crooligan, discard the card I saved to teleport over to the Silent One and kill it. And just like that, I now had two strategy markers on the board - he couldn't protect them both. I had also killed his Silent One, only having to trade Kirai in the process (who served her purpose via summons already). So I snowballed the advantage to victory. Granted, this was quite fortunate - if he caused any duels I would have lost the leap and the whole thing would have fallen apart. But this was a safe risk. In a worst case scenario, he would have been attacking something irrelevant (like the Goryo). I didn't mind the case where his coryphee goes and attacks something and I lose my leap card. If I had charged in Archie before the Coryphee Duet moved, he would have been the one to die (and by extension, no more crooligan teleports and he scores a point). That'd have been a loss if I was overeager with Archie. Being patient and biding my time, hoping for the payoff but being comfortable with not achieving it that turn, was something I was pretty proud of for that game. Slowly building up pressure was my plan, and I think it worked! Turn 3 onwards: I snowballed the advantage from there. Rider pulling the Emissary off into severe terrain was pretty useful, as Colette was too busy defending a token to presto-chango him back into the action. Happy to answer any questions! I hope this has some useful insights EDIT: P.S. It was my first game playing with Kirai, could you tell by how much I had to read the cards? xD

Haha, I always thought of them as my little assassins, but calling it "sneaky crooligan murder surprise" is so much better. I think a lot of people underestimate a focused crooligan. So often its activation can be: you take ~6 damage, no cheating. I was really struggling with having enough cards to do everything, though, so had to rely on luck a bit to land the crooligan hits xD

For Hidden Martyrs, if I select Archie and Crooligan 2... The notes on hidden martyrs when I click on it just says 'crooligan' (it doesn't specify crooligan 2). This makes it hard to demonstrate picking the correct crooligan for death. Let me know if you need any more info to reproduce.

I'll be honest... I would have been happy even if I lost by 1-2 points. Plaag is very good! But I got to pick the pool AND was lucky (two very relevant red jokers on damage flips... Although I was doing a lot of damage flips). That'll be my major project for the week, writing up as many insights to go with the video as possible

Thanks @Plaag, was a delightful game! Once the video is up I'll post some commentary about my thinking during the game.

I believe the trigger activates the zombies as part of the trigger.

The point about Whisper being able to heal him is an important one, seems much more flexible!

Awesome! If you can pickup Bete Noire or Bone piles, they will combo really well with the corpses. But should be nifty in the crew regardless. EDIT: or the combo with Anna Lovelave seems good if you want to go that direction. Lots of options!

Since focus can be removed, I'd still rate that below a model like Hinamatsu or Bete Noire with built in positive flips. Although I have hard to wound across my faction, so I think I often underestimate how strong focus is.

Once again the Russian players have some great advice on the subject of Guild, but unfortunately the screenshots have been lost to the forum cleanup. Anyone got the screenshots from this thread? From memory they basically said what Saduhem said, that those four masters are awesome.

I think there's a few approaches: Build the crew you want, then see if you have stones leftover for upgrades (in my base Reva crew, every model has a specific function, and the crew suffers if I don't bring every single one of them). Add the models you want with the upgrades assumed, and build from there (in my double mourner list for Seamus I want to try out, there's no point in trying the list without two GST, so that is a basic assumption of crew building is 2 GST + a whisper). If you find yourself with 2-4 upgrades, ask yourself "is this really worth not including another model?" For example if I have two shieldbearers with GST, I'm always going to ask myself if I should drop the two GST and pick up a third model. It can vary enormously, as some crews upgrades are a must have (many arcanist crews), whereas other crews you can get by with 0 (Molly).

I mentioned Archie in the other thread with GST, but basically my progression of GST with Archie in GG0 was: New player, use GST as a crutch. Bit experienced, ditch GST and make do without it. Better player, sometimes use GST on Archie as it opens up a lot of options when he potentially has another 8 health per game. GST is very good on models that are bobbing in and out of a fight. I'm not sure how much Jack qualifies, but if he fits that pattern, GST is probably very good on him.