Maniacal_cackle

If it helps, cover's primary effect is to lessen the damage you're taking. So if Lord Chompy Bits hides his face behind a fence, he's a bit safer, but his butt still gets shot.

Haha, I didn't get it until someone explained it on the forums either! It is not an intuitive interaction.

So the trick is... Necrotic machine uses its activation to put 2+ cards into the opponent's hand Sometimes you cheat fate to succeed the attempt with a low card (like a 4) to get your hand even lower (even if you flip high enough to pass) Accomplice for molly, making her discard a card Molly activates. Your opponent now has a huge hand, and you just discarded/used all your low cards. Redraw heaps! So you're spamming out cards to get your hand as low as possible, and get their hand as high as possible, and get heaps of redraws. And since you're accomplicing into Molly, they don't get an activation to burn down their hand.

No problem! One thing I glossed over is the Necrotic Machine redraw trick (and by extension, Molly's activation as well) is one of the most change-able things about the whole sequence. Since it relies entirely on your opponent's discard pile, you don't want to do it when they have 9+s really. Weak cards are great, the lowest moderates are best. So that takes the most practice (and knowing when not to bother as well).

4 of the crossroads feels like it should be pretty darn good in at least some setups, but I'm not sure it could handle all setups. If I was against crossroads seven I'd go super wide, plant my bombs quickly, and then just bog them down the rest of the game. Their bubble would be super strong, though. And maybe they could deploy bombs quickly with wrath's bring it?

I've only played against her twice, but you have to take into account that Nephilim change how your opponent plays. Nephilim force the enemy to bubble. If anything leaves its crew, it instantly dies. Everyone is talking about Nephilim as glass cannon, but I believe Kharnage has said in other threads that he plays them quite scheme-y. The mere existence of Nekima + mature nephs means your opponent is playing it a bit safe and clumping. This makes it easier to keep Nekima alive, and then scheme like mad with a crew that will kill anything that comes near. So looking only at her killing/tanky power is not getting the full picture. The crew can be anywhere and everywhere at once. That is super good for schemes while having killing power on call everywhere on the board. I'd be curious for stats on how often Kharnage's Nekima uses the interact action. As I'd bet it is a surprisingly high number.

So a few things; Gravedigger pulse focus (if applicable) Activate minions Crooligans tend to focus and drop a scheme marker Rabble risers move and focus. Necrotic machine redraw trick into accomplice for Molly (if needed). Molly move forward five inches, pulse focus, constructive criticism 1-2 times, lost knowledge if necessary, focus if got a spare action Minions again (rabble risers move and focus, crooligans focus and do anything). Rabble risers should have 4-5 focus. Any non beater, non minions like P&N Dead rider rides with me something (necrotic machine, molly, etc) Necrotic machine if it hasn't activated yet Rest of beaters Archie Dead rider is quite variable depending on when I need moves.

Real tournament. Last time we had super balanced pools, so this time we have super skewed pools xD

Awesome How do you usually do power ritual with Molly? I find I need to dedicate Archie for a lot of the game to get to the opposite corner(s). And why take prisoner with Yan Lo? Yin?

I've only played one game against Parker, but I imagine he will struggle to get Outflank. Breakthrough will be tricky as he doesn't want to get that close to your crew. So Search and Harness seem pretty likely (though harness + outflank is pretty good combo). Not sure what the fifth scheme is? I don't see a fifth scheme listed, but in a vacuum I'd go for Outflank + something (probably Breakthrough for one point). If you're taking Outflank, you'll be in a solid position for several idols and denying his outflank and harness, while giving you the opportunity to score. If it comes to a brawl on the flanks, you'll probably win (although careful of him shooting you down and then snagging the flanks turns 4/5). If you take outflank, Rider seems crucial. No other model that I can think of is as good at securing that turn 5 Outflank positioning. Parker has CRAZY healing, so make sure to finish off pieces. He'll be doing lots of 'move an idol, heal up, do it again.' So you want to punish him in any window with low health models (although you're so kill-y that you can possibly kill all his healers). Pandora (the model, not the crew) is going to be very strong in this matchup - At Gunpoint, chesterfield shotgun, all the 2/4/5 damage tracks, stick up, etc... Focus would be super helpful (for the 2/4/5 damage tracks), so it may pay to focus turn one with Pandora and then use a rider to give her extra move. Iggy seems like a given. His crew heavily relies on dropping scheme markers (friend and foe), so having constant ammo for Iggy seems sweeettttt. EDIT: Wicked dolls with ancient pacts could be really useful here, but you don't have them I assume? There could be a funky build with 2x daydream with ancient pact, Teddy + Carver... So worth considering doing something completely out of the box like that.

Good points, but it isn't like anyone hires wind gamin (I think?). The crew needs to summon those to reach parity (although access to soulstones miners means that this argument breaks down when including versatile hires). Minako rei... Non-master summoning did not receive the Beta upgrade rebalancing, so these tend to be broken I agree. Corrupted idols - I find that as my games get more cutthroat, idols is more about board coverage than dominating initiative. Ten thunders emissary for example just means nothing in ressers can keep up on initiative. So summoners seem much stronger on idols (though I used to think Molly dominated it due to initiative and Archie, she isn't top tier for it I realised).

Jakob Lynch is now ten thunders only. I suggest downloading the app and looking at all the Neverborn cards.

Just curious what people would bring to this tournament. I'd like to get an idea of other people's playstyles/preferences. Round 1: Turf War with Corner Deployment Breakthrough Hold Up Their Forces Take Prisoner Outflank Claim Jump Round 2: Plant Explosives with Flank Deployment Detonate the Charges Harness the Ley Line Search the Ruins Dig Their Graves Power Ritual Round 3: Reckoning with Wedge Deployment Hold Up Their Forces Take Prisoner Assassinate Deliver a Message Vendetta Like most pools, I'm tempted to just bring Molly to everything. Maybe McMourning round 3. But curious what others would bring!

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 don't know anything about Mah, but in a vacuum I'd say Teddy is going to struggle with this pool (unless you want to hold the centre or really lock down a flank), and Serena is probably not necessary. Coppelius feels like a better option than either, and could possibly consider coppelius + stitched to replace the pair. Outflank and deliver is a sound plan! Summons are also super good at Hold Up, and search the ruins or breakthrough are doable single points (not double point).

I've never had a situation where I don't have enough misery procs for Pandora's bonus action (I have run out of procs during an activation, but never during a single action). Although yes it feels strange xD

There's also the common sense problem (if you can apply multiple miseries, a single bonus action can do 5+ damage that can't be reduced...) Unlikely this is the intended functionality.

Agree stitched could easily be overnerfed into oblivion. Gotta be careful there. Molly being stupid efficient is part of my point. IMO the scary crews include Parker, Zipp, Molly, Seamus, etc. Which is meant to rebut the "summoners are OP." In my experience summoners fold to pressure (like Archie turn one leaping a bomb into place followed by two crooligans doing the same thing). When I first played against summoners, I got stomped. But I adapted. Caveat: I've not played against top tier tournament players. Maybe it dominates at that level (wish we had more data). EDIT: overall, I agree with another point you made: hyper efficient movement is top tier in this game. If you're not being crazy good with movement, you're probably not a top tier crew from my limited experience.

I think this is not the right way to look at him. He is designed to grab beasts from other keywords, so of course he doesn't bring anything unique to the table. But he does bring unique combinations. Grootslang, Bandersnatch, WW and Rougarou bring a pretty crazy mobility suite, and he can field any or all of those for at most 1 SS tax. Throw in combos (onslaught on Bandy is a bit ridiculous, and those poison combos are decent), and it may be he is just overall super efficient even if no single element dominates anything else.

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.

@Bort sounds like you're reasoning it out pretty well! Nothing to do but play heaps more games! And when in doubt, doing something that sets up scoring more points is probably a good path (if it helps, I had a draw that should have been an easy win recently precisely because I was too aggressive with killing models in reckoning).

Whoops, reading fail, sorry!

Not necessarily. No point in playing too safe, you can keep every model alive and still lose a game. Did you have any pass tokens to boost initiative? Did you have a high card in hand to save for initiative? Did you have other things to do if he won initiative and killed joss? Note you were virtually guaranteed killing the golem, right? It was just a question of how much damage it did before giving you a point. In a vacuum initiative is 50/50. So that is a 50% chance of going first and smashing the game, and 50% chance of an outcome you could probably salvage (a point for each side with you each killing a major piece). That is an oversimplification, but it is a good way to do risk analysis. If your split outcomes are fantastic/mediocre, you take the risk. If your split outcomes are good/bad, it is a much harder call. I can't say which was applicable to your situation, but the one takeaway you should absolutely avoid is thinking: 1. There is a definitive best. 2. Safe play is always the best option. A good opponent forces you to take risks to win the game.

All the M2E stuff has build instructions, and most of the M3E models are reboxed M2E ones. So depending on what you're building, the build instructions may be online!

I think it basically comes down to... Are you ahead/likely to secure other points? If so, kill the golem, shut down the game, and coast to victory. Do you need the points to have a chance of victory, or are behind? Then take the risk and leave it up.