Maniacal_cackle

I've put that in the rules forum, and there is one answer so far which doesn't really make sense to me. If that is how Fiendish Gamble works, that makes Stitched even more ridiculous. I'm curious if that is how everyone has been playing it? Being able to turn a successful melee attack into an automatic-ish four damage is far more nuts than Gamble Your Life.

Where are you getting this part from? "Flip a card" appears twice in the rules (initiative flips) and 3 times on cards (McTavish, Stitched, Prospector). "Flips a card" is used twice (for soulstone use). And flips is clearly used generically/with different meanings at different times (otherwise flipping five cards to generate a scheme pool on page 42 would result in one scheme being selected). There's at least a noun (a flip is required) and a verb (flip a card) version of the word 'flip' that is used, so trying to pin it all down to one meaning seems contrary to the way the word is used. You seem to be referring to the noun ("flip a card is the process of..."), but Stitched use it as the verb version ("would flip a card"). It seems like it would be more accurate to say "a flip is the process of... and flipping a card is the act of revealing the top card of your deck for the purposes of determining a card for the conflict") Additionally, the rules provide for what happens when multiple cards are trying to enter a conflict (you pick the lowest or your choice of cards, and select one of them). Ultimately it could be just one of yet another set of ambiguities (the rulebook mentions 'flip' 116 times, without a clear definition), and people may have to play using their own judgement until an answer is reached.

If you have a few minus to your flip, how does Fiendish Gamble work? Fiendish Gamble says: Page 8 says: So since you can only have one card in the Conflict at a time, does Fiendish Gamble supersede everything else and get placed directly into the Conflict? Can you even use Fiendish Gamble when flipping multiple cards (it says 'when this model would flip A card", singular)? Do you just flip the cards normally, with one coming from out of the game and the rest coming from the top of your deck?

@Angelshard, huh, interesting interpretation. Probably best to shift it to the rules forum. Also note the possible interpretation that you can't use Fiendish Gamble at all for things with fate modifiers ("when this model would flip a card" is singular, it may not refer to instances of flipping multiple cards).

In my experience, most games are largely decided by turn 3, so having moderate damage for turns 4 and 5 isn't as OP as people make it out to be. At that point, most of your actions will be dedicated to scoring (or denying) points.

My bad, poor phrasing!

How will that help? Fiendish gamble only replaces one card, so you'll still have to flip a second card for manipulative and serene countenance and take the lower card. This fundamentally changes the ability far more than making it an attack action, as the flavour is supposed to be both players are flipping a card (luck based), but the stitched can influence the luck (fiendish gamble).

What's wrong with the reworked ability above that is essentially: So now you can focus offensively or defensively, use serene countenance, etc. It now gets a minus to damage flips in close calls, and a double minus on ties. If you focus, it becomes a straight flip as before. The stitched would now suffer more average damage on a loss, so you could address that by altering its damage track or just making it a straight 3 damage. The point is that it'd be as strong as before in most cases, but in those niche cases (like serene countenance or take the hit), the changes make a big difference.

@Bisounours, sounds like it is worth a shot to me! The main reason I put the Mature in there is to have early game beaters, but between Hinamatsu and growing a mature turn 1, it'd probably be fine.

I think you throw four stones into upgrades, unless Nekima is really needing them for something? Any mixture of inhuman reflexes and ancient pacts seems reasonable to me. I'd be curious about the Rougarou build someone mentioned.

So for instance, something like this? Nekima Puppets (Neverborn) Size: 50 - Pool: 7 Leader: Nekima Totem(s): Blood Hunter Hires: Vasilisa Mature Nephilim Young Nephilim Black Blood Shaman Black Blood Shaman 2 Wicked Doll Wicked Doll 2 Upgrades to taste. The number of movement bonuses is fabulous, and the whole team can start out with three focus pulses. If someone let's themselves get caught by Vasilisa, they could be slowed to a crawl for the rest of the game. Summoning dolls and stitched is a nice bonus too!

Reckoning has a clause that you score if there are no enemies left in play. So as soon as the leader is dead, all you have are insignificant models and it counts as no enemies in play. So you'd score every turn after the leader is dead.

I've not played Nekima, only against here, but I'll attempt it here! 1. I personally think 1 Mature feels like the best number. If you take two, the opponent can focus fire all your size two stuff down before taking down the mature, ensuring you can't grow any. If you take 0, you don't have enough pressure early game. Starting with one means you can just roll out mature neph all game (especially if it has inhuman reflexes, which I have found powerful against me in some matchups). I'm unsure about a mix of Young and BBS, but instinctively I feel like one young, two BBS is ideal if you can get it. The young can babysit a hound, the BBS can ensure a ton of focus is out the first turn, and load out some corpse markers. 2. Personally hounds seem great to me for efficient interacting, but you have to babysit them. A young nephilim plus one hound makes a good scheme-running team. The moment the hound goes off on its own, it'll die if the enemy has mobility left. Terror tots... Haven't seen them usefully used yet. Corpse markers are a limited commodity, so using four to grow one model seems like a lot. Hayreddin I've not faced yet, but his triggers seem ridiculous. I'd definitely try him out. 3. Unsure. 4. Unsure, but I think the small number seems right. If you have Hayreddin, you'll want extra stones for his awesome triggers (necrotic decay turns his attack into min 4+1 damage!!) There's also a combo of Lelu/Lilitu with 'infinite' healing around Hayreddin, but there is disagreement on whether or not the combo actually works.

I think he will be part of an Explorer's society keyword (Half blood), and so it is hard to assess until the rest of his crew is released.

Well, that is what came up in this thread. For 9 stones, Zoraida (and Collodi) can spam summon stitched all game. So you have to look at them standalone since they are so good OOK. But they don't cover any weaknesses of Nightmare beyond "minion that does lots of damage and is a bit tanky." Changing their GYL to an attack won't change that role. It will just even them out in a few matchups (for instance against all those masters I listed). I don't play against those masters, and stitched still feel strong to me. Maybe I'll just playtest it as an attack next year and see how it goes.

I think hitting defense/health just makes them even worse in the average situation (where they're fine), and does nothing about their problematic situation (spam-nuking them). Changing GYL to an attack action feels like the most appropriate thing, for the reasons I've listed previously.

I don't see much more productive discussion happening and the thread is devolving, so perhaps we should all just leave it at that.

You'll be at a double minus, so from memory you'll have at least one weak ~80% of the time. If you hit all moderates, you can't cheat. When you relent, your total is the same as the attacker (so double minus to the damage flip)

Presumably that means turn 3 fly with me at the earliest? How are you finding the tradeoff of early focus instead of movement? Very interested in the different views on BBS in lots of crews.

@farmoar the Dreamer and Pandora playstyles are entirely different and will feel super fresh. However, they're my first two NB masters and I'm finding a lot of pools are either great for both of them or bad for both of them. There is a lot of pool overlap (that is, deployment/strategy/scheme combinations). Dreamer is way better at Turf War, IMO, so there is that one advantage. Dreamer also covers a lot more deployment setups (he is good at all four of them, Pandora only at two). Pandora also covers crews that buff themselves with conditions much better. I don't think she is necessarily great against crews that flood her crew with conditions. EDIT: oh, and Dora has the Poltergeist, which is nuts in some matchups. It'll generally die turn 2 or 3, but that just indicates how much resources people will dedicate to removing it.

I'm still learning the faction, but Zoraida springs to mind as an excellent complement. Pandora wants to bunch up and bubble. Zoraida wants wide, sweeping coverage. Zoraida is great at corrupted idols, which feels like it will be one of Pandora's worst strategies. Pandora likes flank and wedge deployment, and Zoraida can handle the others (I think). Also has good model overlap (at least, I think they both should use hooded rider and maybe Hinamatsu). Dreamer is another good one for model overlap (Carver, Teddy), but I think they excel at the same pools too much. One good thing is Dreamer covers turf war much better than she does and can handle any deployment type. Titania is potentially quite good to complement as her crew can be built super mobile (I'm testing out the list next time I play, which might be after Christmas). Nekima also seems like a great complement for the same reason, although has a lot of other overlaps (glass cannons). Lucius seems good in theory, but I know very little about him. I suspect Euripededs is another 'too similar' case (slow, heavy hitters), but I know very little about him. Is there anything in particular you struggle with for Woes? That is a good place to start.

That low rams ability seems nuts, since the aura is already decent to great depending on circumstances. It is a model that also has useful rams, crows, and usually mask triggers, so is a good model to be making use of excess suits. But from what I hear of Transmortis, seems like a sometimes summon option? Definitely seems niche and not as good on average as the other students, but I imagine it can shine sometimes. Valedictorian summons it with a kill, it activates and obeys the Valley to charge something else (or just run away), then activates its aura to make it hard to counterstrike the valley girl for instance. But yeah, super niche. Requires the right board state, enemies, and cards in hand.

I've only seen it on paper, but don't forget you can 'transfer' suits by stoning for suits with Von Schtook and using the cards for the students. Obey is pretty awesome!

Unavoidable damage definitely is a thing (even a focused attack with stat 6 and cheating a severe will hit almost anything). But there seems to be a trend of: It requires a lot more stones than the stitched, or does less damage, or both. Generally requires more setup than stitched (gamble barely requires setup beyond what the crew is already doing) Some involve master actions Many are not as spammable as stitched. Sometimes take multiple actions (don't really count lucid dreaming as an extra action) Hamelin once one-shot my Archie by stacking unavoidable blight tokens, for example. But that is clearly a different beast.

The shockwaves and pulses all require the target to fail relatively simple duels, so aren't really of the nature of unavoidable damage (and are much weaker damage tracks as well). Area damage is such a different beast it doesn't really compare. How's the Katashiro one work? That just looks like attack spam with fate modifiers. Hayreddin is a good point. He and the summons are the only ones on the list that seems to fit the bill (though it is very telling that you also have to do four damage to your own model). Crossroads seven is only doable with a henchman leader, the opponent taking an action that gives them a sin token, and then that sin token has to be used. The models cost more than stitched, and can do a maximum of three damage instead of a minimum. Pale Rider - yup, is nuts! Although turn three onward for an 11 stone model, widely considered the best of the riders (which are often considered the best versatile models in their factions). The summon nukes are neat (shouldn't it be 3 damage on Sandeep?), but involve sacrificing a model. Ramos/DMH aren't as relevant since they're not balanced for competitive play (though are still only 4 damage per nuker, not 5, and require master actions). EDIT: oh yeah, I said non master as well!