Maniacal_cackle

Misaki doesn't use a trigger to unbury. She uses an ability: There's no may clause, so you follow the instructions on the ability. Same as with Catalyst, the poison damage isn't optional, it has to happen. An example of an optional one is Bedside manner: "this model may discard a card".

Re Paul Crocket - there is a lot of defensive potential with the worm combo as well. An enemy is going to have to think twice about sending someone in to attack one of your models if they know after the attack a sand worm might unbury and attack it, and then an activation after that they'll get blasted by crocket + worm. That means people will have to commit several models to chasing down one of your gunners, since a lone model can get picked off by the worm. That's all in theory of course, but I wonder if people should look at the Crocket/Worm combo as a defensive combo instead of an offensive one.

I don't know anything about the crew, but how does that usually flow? Say on Standard Deployment, I had assumed Frontier would deploy pretty far up. Then on their turns they would shoot up the enemy, and fall back. Over the course of turn two, enemy crosses centreline but is gunned up pretty well. Then stuff like the sand wurm should be great for cleanup. Other shooting crews have a real issue with needing to move forward to shoot, but then not being able to fall back again as easily. I had assumed Frontier could bypass that a bit.

I actually like that M3E is balanced towards killing models rather than board states where neither side can kill each other. Makes the game more lively IMO. I think there's lots of things slanted this way (focus favours attacking, attack stats seem to be higher on average, etc).

I always forget you can't use it against Willpower attacks! Hope I haven't been cheating my opponents...

In fact, from what I can see, Misaki MUST unbury. So even if you don't want to send her back to your deployment zone for some reason (perhaps she wants to hide from assassinate), she must unbury somewhere.

I don't see why she wouldn't. The cases where a model can't unbury in the deployment zone is when there is a cost (like Bete Noire must target a corpse marker, and can't unbury if she can't target one), or if there is a restriction (like Grave Golem will die if it unburies in any other way).

The common local wisdom is the riders are invincible and broken 😜 But on a more serious note, here's some tips that apply generally to taking down riders: Irreducible damage (Molly/Ikiryo) of course. Stunned forces them to either activate or die (and so is especially effective if tacked on at the end of turn for the next turn). Also means an activation where they lose 1/3 of their actions. Ping damage x9 (not that ressers are that great at ping, but Vengeance for Urami is pretty cool). Poke (if you just keep hitting them enough they use up all their tokens, their threat potential diminishes significantly for the first few turns). Red Jokers - since they have to declare triggers before seeing your damage flip, it helps to flip the Red Joker. Practical application: if you have 20 cards in your deck and haven't flipped the red joker yet, consider smashing their rider. There's a decent chance you'll flip the red joker on either the attack or damage flip (opposite logic applies to black joker). Shutting down soulstone reduction (Emissary, Efficy, Machine) can help with their attuned upgrade. Forcing them to spend actions moving can be a pain (they can't use both their ultimate and ride with me). EDIT: Note if you don't use the stun, it effectively does nothing though. Just means they save tokens for the next activation. And I'm sure there's much more! Yeah, this I think is probably a weak area of Ressers (and helps explain why Plaag the Arcanist thinks ressers are weak). But we're not completely helpless: Irreducible damage. Ping damage Armor pen (McMourning as a second master, Student of Steel) And this one is really useful: strand their models somewhere. High armor models tend to not be very mobile. If you come across such a model, consider using a model to just dump it into the middle of severe terrain somewhere and then abandoning it to be useless for a while. In all cases: have a plan for their healling. No sense grinding an armored, soulstoned model down to 3 health and then letting it get healed back to full.

Awesome Do you play that Seamus can teleport to/from the markers?

Isn't that for concealing? I thought dense ignored both ways?

Awesome, would love to hear about it however it goes!

Just note Reva can pull off all the flame from any model with her bonus action. So the Fire Golem can go from tough to dead very quickly. The fact that Reva can explode fire markers (often with a minus flip for the WP duel) may also be a major factor.

For Gozdilla, cover represents people ducking behind the terrain. So even if only Godzilla's tail is behind the building, they can duck behind it when the shooting starts. For rooftop sniper, the tactical advantage is seeing over obstacles. They don't get a "hard to hit" bonus I think. For that put them behind the cover sticking out.

Sunday the 27th Someone else is playing him this weekend with Von Schtook. Let us know how it goes, @Kharnage!

I've heard several different people say that Reva is favoured against Kaeris (though they may be talking keyword games). Reva can pivot away from burning-based strategies quite easily, whereas Kaeris can struggle to turn it off. So Kaeris can accidentally power up Reva's crew while Reva focuses on different synergies. The threat range of Reva can be a serious issue as well. Reva can single-activation Elijah from ~18 inches away for example. That said, I've heard it can be a hard-fought matchup, so not exactly a massive gap.

Adran's point about roles is a good one. For example, with this list on something like Turf War and Claim jump from last season... (Turf war is similar to corrupted ley lines) New The Dreamer Crew (Neverborn) Size: 50 - Pool: 7 Leader: The Dreamer Totem(s): Lord Chompy Bits Hires: Teddy Widow Weaver Serena Bowman Bandersnatch Daydream Ancient Pact Daydream 2 Ancient Pact My roles would be: Lord Chompy Bits (primary: scheme denial. Secondary: beater. Tertiary: scheme/strategy runner). Teddy (primary: centre control beater, secondary peeler, tertiary schemer) Serena: (primary claim jump, secondary beater, tertiary healer, fourth schemer) Spiders: (primary strategy scorers, secondary scheme scorers, tertiary peelers/obstacles/tar pits) Daydreams (utility, claim jump repositioning) It has been a while since I've played Dreamer (was back in last season), but as you can see in this sample scenario I don't even have anything assigned to killing as its main goal. Killing often happens, but that plays a supportive role to the models running around doing their roles. I also assign every (significant) model at least a tertiary role of scheming. Models exist to score points, after all!

The much anticipated guide! Thanks! It's pretty thorough, will be reading through this for some time to come!

Sounds like some focus on the fundamentals could be good (and possibly focusing on fewer crews, depending on how many games you play). I often say it takes at least 10-20 games to properly learn a crew. So rather than focusing on Neverborn vs. Outcasts, sounds like at this stage just focusing on the fundamentals might be a good idea. Each crew deploys very differently (Pandora has a lot of synergies that need to bunch up, and Dreamer's stuff needs to cover the board but be near the daydreams, etc). And that is also influenced by the deployment type & strategy pool. So practice, practice, practice. Can you give a strategy pool where you have felt a bit lost as to how to start out?

True! In general Arcanists have a lot of Armor/other damage reduction + Soulstone cache combos that can be difficult for us to crack, as we don't have much irreducible damage. In general we have to tackle each reduction by type. Although our Effigy/Emissary can shut down soulstones! So it's possible to have a combo to shut down their reduction combos xD

I agree this change would probably be fine, but there's likely some areas where it would start to feel nuts. Stitched pre-nerf would have been pretty happy to have it. Any tactical action that is one per activation will potentially be affected, as you get two looks at a card for it instead of one. I actually like that effect - Pandora on an empty hand can still get Fears Given Form or The Box Opens off even with no cards in hand.

I agree with LeperColony, can really help to give some specifics. Perhaps your next match you can plan out the crews in advance and ask for some help here?

Good point! We can take it down with McMourning, irreducible damage, or student of steel? Armor 2, 5 health means negating its armor should make it trivial to kill.

Against keyword Kaeris or Rasputina, I've found Molly to be pretty nuts. She can remove any annoying markers, turning them into an advantage by drawing cards. Archie being immune to conditions can be quite brutal, and the discard for Rasputina's pillars hurts Molly's crew less than others (and in some cases I intentionally set it up for extra Fading). Bone Piles are another great condition-immune option, and I assume their condition removal helps too. A nurse could do the same.

For our Community thread this time, we're going to take a detailed look at what to do when facing Arcanists! As always, this thread is intended for new and experienced players alike. Share your insights, share your questions, and let's all get better together! Some questions to get the discussion rolling, but feel free to add your own. Your opponent has declared Arcanists and you've declared Ressers - what are you thinking as you pick which master to declare? What do you do about master X, Y, or Z? Are there masters that are particularly brutal against our faction? Are there some rough matchups we should be aware of? Are there some good matchups we should try to capitalise on? Some of this is going to be pool-specific, but let's try to pull out some general advice for Arcanists and some specific advice for specific matchups. Bonus points: If you're playing against Arcanists this week, please post here about it! Would be great to get some real world examples into the thread.

So some want an alpha strike on the silent one, some don't. I think I'll play it by ear and see what models are vulnerable to attack each turn. Silent one is definitely high on my list of things to kill if I can do so without losing 10+ stones of models in exchange, but that sounds unlikely 😜