Maniacal_cackle

I think there is some room for ambiguity, but yes, many people on here play it that way I believe. For an even clearer example, look at Nekima's black blood, which many people argue the damage occurs and resolves before the demise model's damage finishes resolving. I think overall, I'd just identify what your playgroup thinks is the correct interpretation and use that until an official answer is given.

Not every time, but is a doable average. For every model you double move and bonus action in 15 seconds, that is another model you can take 2 minutes on.

Fair call, I should have said nested effects!

Note there is a bit of a history of similar issues of 'nesting' and whether or not things can effects can happen within effects. I think the majority of the forums thinks that you can nest effects (and effects can occur within each other), so then I think it'd be possible under that interpretation. Burt's ability is 'after resolving' Nekima's Black Blood is after damage. Page 35 of the digital rules 2e-2f tell us that you resolve these sorts of effects during the current action. You can also see similar on page 23 of the digital rulebook, where after resolving effects happen during the sequence of completing an action as step 6: Similar can be found in the damage step. Thus the majority view at the moment when these 'effects within effects' issues arise is that you can have an effect resolve within an effect, and so for example you get to make the decisions regarding demise triggered by hitting Burt or Nekima. However, my personal interpretation is that the rules work a bit differently, because of this passage in the book: Page 34 (of the digital book) on the way to handle anything that says 'after': So my interpretation is that all these 'after' effects resolve after the effect in question is finished resolving (and you just 'queue' anything that happens while resolving an ability, and resolve abilities one at a time). So to recap: the majority view is that you can resolve effects within effects, in which case you're going to have control over demise in that scenario (as long as the abilities involved all occur before obey finishes resolving). My minority view is that you generally can't resolve effects within effects, which would prevent you from using obey in this fashion. As another tidbit, there apparently used to be something in the beta rules that dealt with this very issue, but was removed for some reason. So we'll need some FAQs from Wyrd for a final official answer I suspect.

Ah, sorry, I picked up Neverborn Nightmare recently, so was referring to that. But Seamus can do it in Ressers!

Agree with this and is my preferred play style. Note the preplanning the game realllly favours those who like to form strategies ahead of time. If we preplan a scenario, I get to spend way more time planning and make much better decisions. Some others in my club make decisions on the fly better and prefer on the spot strategy/scheme generation.

I would recommend buying something to start with (McMournings core box?) and playing a few small practice games. You'll find that you have a much better feel for understanding the roles of models in your crew. There are thousands of possible strategy/scheme combinations, and probably 10-20 meaningful variations (plus deployment setups, plus matchup possibilities!) So you really need to get a feel for your crew beyond just theorycrafting. Starting small can help with that, as you'll see what you're missing. As an example, I didn't think much of the 'Terrorize' ability on paper for my crew until I actually played a few games. Now I'd say it is one of the best abilities in the keyword for my crew specifically. The experience of playing gives so much insight into the roles of your crew and what is missing. Another example: when I started Molly with the crew box, I was lacking killing power, so picked up some beaters.

I'm new ish to the game, but my impression is counterpicking is HUGE (edit: at the competitive level. For casual play, you can get by with virtually any basic crew, and skill will be the big determinant). But not in the master/crew sense. In the individual model sense (think Magic the Gathering sideboards if you've played that). You'll have your core models that you use most games, your niche models you use for specific strategy/scheme combinations, and occasionally some models that just really boost a matchup. But to do this, you don't really need a whole faction. With ressers, I basically would need to buy Molly's keyword stuff + another 5-8 models or so, and I think I'd be set for (almost) anything. I could run multiple masters/crews, but it is the niche models that I personally think will be more relevant (especially as it is hard to perfect your gameplay; you can't be an expert at every crew in your faction).

Nice tip! I was thinking of grabbing Pandora next anyway!

In September, anything that is hard to get because of redoing crew boxes should be able to be ordered via special order. Or rather, they're releasing the details in September. There's a couple of things that are awkward to buy with the transition, and I think they aim to have the above plan to help alleviate that. Or so is my impression, anyway! Edit: from memory, some 2e crooligan boxes were available, so you might be able to snag some of those and grab the cards separately. Or they might be able to include the cards with the boxes.

I find the 2E cards super useful for my models because I use the 2E cards to track health/conditions, and use the 3E cards as references for the rules. This way I can easily hand them to my opponent without messing up my health trackers or anything. If you were at my club, I'd happily pay a few dollars for the ones I'm likely to play (neverborn and maybe some ressers), but can't imagine they're valuable enough to post online/ship. So I definitely find them useful, but not sure if they're worth the space if you don't use them that way. Specifically what I do is I have an area of the table with the 2E cards laid out (with the appropriate identifying image so it is easy to connect them to models). I toss a die on them to track health and condition markers to mark conditions.

UPDATE: I've written a followup post which you can see here. Having a few games under my belt, I thought I'd share some of the my thoughts on the Dreamer. Would love to hear others' thoughts as well! Crew building Lucid dreams spam is what initially drew me to the crew and is what everyone talks about, but honestly it seems overrated in many games. In another thread, @solkan gives a great breakdown of the math as to why it can be a bit of a boost but nothing crazy. But I think it also worth drawing attention to the 'opportunity cost' of lucid dream spam: if you're filling your crew with minions that can lucid dream, you're not leaving much room for everything else! Almost every henchman/enforcer is solid in a nightmare crew (haven't tried Carver), and you can't fit that many of them if you're spamming lucid dreams. Most of these have very powerful abilities (sometimes not even needing to flip a card to do them), and losing out on those abilities is not worth boosting your deck a bit. Similarly, I find two daydreams to be a good number if I'm tight on stones. I like a cache of about 8, and often find I'm down to about 5 stones, dropping the third daydream is a good way to get that up. You can always summon it later. Stitched together are also neat, but you can just summon them later and you don't really need the full three. With all the minions, I am starting to feel that they're more of a summoned tool during the game than necessarily for crew building. My current "core" list is to take 3-4 henchmen/enforcers that seem appropriate for the scenario, and then fill in with a small number of minions and leave about 8 stones for cache. Maybe I'll try lucid dream spam in reckoning, but I think the core of the more powerful models just seems like the way to go. Which brings us to... Summoning You can do up to two summons a turn if you have Widow Weaver, and can summon multiple models. Summoning is a fantastic tool, but like all tools, you use the right one for the job. Sometimes you want to summon a stitched together, but sometimes an alp + a day dream is the best use of the cards in your hand. In my experience, I generally summon the highest value model(s) I can, but I will use the lower card if I'm holding a 9 of masks and some high cards for instance. I might summon a stitched over an insidious madness if lucid dreaming has gone wrong and I have high cards I need to filter back in ASAP. Summoning is fairly intuitive except for one issue, I find. Using the right tool for the job sometimes means NOT summoning at all. Sometimes you want to move the Dreamer ten inches and use his ranged attack for the trigger (more on that later). Also don't use summoning as a crutch (as I did in my first few games). You need a strong, winning strategy right from the start of the game. Summoning can then augment and support this. I try to be in a position where I'm doing pretty well if they deny my summon, and doing fantastically if I manage to summon the minion where I want. Positioning notes. The crew has powerful positioning abilities, but require pretty precise setup. A typical deployment and first turn for me looks like: Set up as many models within 4" of the Dreamer as possible for his 2" push (but note it is only 2", so it is not worth going out of your way to set it up). Make sure you're not blocking LOS to your own models for the Dreamer's pulse! Cheat the pulse if necessary to win it on the first turn. It can easily give you 10"+ of movement over your crew. Next, use Coppelius' frightening reminder to get someone moving along, then start Coppelius on his way. Daydreams have to balance between using lead nightmare to get stuff in position this turn, and using the walk action to lead nightmare in future turns. Bandersnatch and Widow Weaver web shenanigans: absolutely insane. Honestly, if you're using Bandersnatch and Widow Weaver, every turn of the game you should be carefully considering what your web marker options are, how you can grow those options, and how your opponent can disrupt them. Drop your markers as far away from enemies as possible so they have to work to destroy them. If left undisrupted, their movement shenanigans will win games. Also note the models with a two inch engagement range. Abuse this constantly. Even if you're not landing your attacks, the 2" engagement range puts models with 1" range in a terrible position. They either have to disengage, which is awkward, or move forward and attack you. Either way, you're costing them actions to do what they want. Abuse the crap out of 2" engagement range. Also worth noting that this crew is EXTREMELY resource-intensive, especially when summoning and in the first few turns. Your key way of surviving is your positioning advantages. Don't let the opponent land a single attack that you could have avoided with better positioning. You don't have the cards to spare to cheat to stop them from hitting you. Make your opponent work for every drop of nightmare... Blood? Goo? What do figments of the imagination leak when wounded? Anyway, on to... Noteworthy abilities and triggers Honestly there's so much to say here, but wanted to give a shout out to a few MVPs/note some key suits. Terrorize is absolutely nuts. Somehow I didn't realise how good it is when reading the cards. An enemy has to use an entire action walking back to where they were, and it helps secure territory (like claim jump or turf war markers). And since it is a willpower duel, it drops a summon into base contact after the push, just bogging down your opponent. And if you have a tomes trigger on Widow Weaver doing it, you get to drop a web marker, hitting them with severe terrain and giving yourself more teleport options! Speaking of tomes, Serena Bowman can also reposition enemies with Tomes. These two triggers seem like the most important tomes triggers for the crew, as they just give you a huge positioning advantage against others. For masks, summoning is obviously king. You've got both your summons requiring a mask. But also don't forget the Nightstalker trigger for the Dreamer. Sometimes repositioning Lord Chompy Bits by teleporting him across the battlefield is more important than a summon (thus, sometimes you will be moving the Dreamer ten inches and trying to land your LCB teleport instead of summoning). Coppelius also has a powerful scheming ability on masks, shifting sands, allowing you to convert all enemy scheme markers to friendly ones. Occasionally you may also want to use spare masks for Teddy's bowled over, particularly for Take Prisoner (this last tip courtesy of Third Floor Wars podcast on the Dreamer I recently listened to)! But the nice thing about Teddy is he is strong without triggers. On rams, you have a few useful abilities, and especially worth noting the 'tear off a chunk' to heal 2 on some key models like Teddy and Lord Chompy. Even if your damage ends up being at a few minuses to flip, if you're on a rams trigger you don't care as you got your heal. Crows, I'm not certain about, but the Bandersnatch being able to use false suspicion to get enemies to attack each other seems promising... But the setup required is pretty huge, so I am not sure I'd save cards for it. Both Teddy and Coppelius have nice crows triggers, but they have it on the stat already. I think crows is the most expendable suit, unless someone else has suggestions? Overall, these powerful effects are worth setting up for, and you can see why the crew is so soulstone/card heavy. I use heaps of stones on the Widow Weaver and Dreamer, and I'm still struggling to get all the suits I want for key abilities. And I suppose we really can't miss mentioning Lord Chompy Bits' bonus action, Trail of Gore. This is the crew's most efficient way of removing scheme markers, and is absolutely critical. Really plan your positioning of Lord Chompy Bits around possible scheme denial (even if that is just having Dreamer in position to teleport him if your opponent suddenly goes for a scheme you weren't expecting). The crew struggles with the interact action, and if you're not abusing Trail of Gore on scheme-marker-heavy matchups, you're going to feel it. That's all for now! Well, those are my thoughts for now! Have read tons of helpful advice here on the forum, so thought I'd share this in the hopes it is helpful for other Dreamer players. Would love to hear if people have further thoughts, I'm sure I still have lots to improve on!

If you're brand new, I'd recommend browsing around a bit, then settling on a master to try. Buy a core box, get a feel for the crew and decide if you want to change master/factions. I bought three Resser boxes before realising that although I loved one Resser master (Molly), I wanted to try more masters and Neverborn really appeals more. From a competitive standpoint, I'd probably be fine to just play Molly. But I'd get bored of one master, so am going to try to pick up a few neverborn so I have some flexibility/can cross hire.

To give an example - I activate my master and use my bonus action and fail it. I should know instantly if I'm cheating or not. Once I'm experienced enough, I know whether or not Im cheating based on my hand and how badly I need it to go off. True, sometimes you're learning the matchup or your opponent does something you've never seen before. Those games are going to be long. But familiar matchups, speed play will get you down to two hours I reckon.

I find a game takes 2-5 hours. The biggest determinant is people knowing their crew, their potential triggers, and what they're doing with all their cards. Once you get to that level of experience, most models can complete their activation within 10 seconds to 2 minutes depending on how much combat there is. The next big factor is a scenario/crew combination that plays fast. Two grindy crews in melee all game is going to take longer than crews maneuvering around each other or crews where lots of models die. The single biggest thing is decision making though. If the moment you're passed activation you know what model you're activating and what you're doing with it, you're going to have fast games.

I don't really know Neverborn well at all (about to do my third Neverborn game, using the Dreamer), but Dreamer seems pretty fabulous at Plant Explosives and Turf War. Reckoning and idols look promising, but I'd have to playtest them more to say for sure. I find Dreamer is really more a question of whether he can handle the scheme pools. The scheme pools having the wrong schemes (or picking the wrong schemes) are really what have mangled my Dreamer play so far/made picking hypothetical scenarios difficult. Heavy scheme marker scheme pools make me question using the Dreamer. That said, Lord chompy Bits is a solid counter to enemies scheming, but we really don't have the action efficiency to do sufficient scheme marker shenanigans while also doing the interact actions necessary for plant explosives/turf war/corrupted idols. I've yet to do a Reckoning pool with heavy scheming, maybe that'd be okay. Disclaimer: Normally I play with Molly, who is simply absurd for scheme-marker-heavy scheme pools. So that may be distorting my perception.

So would you say Nekima (damages stuff when she is hit by attacks and heals when she kills enemies) would survive being killed by a one HP enemy? If you resolve black blood at initial step 5, you then go through the damage process of it and Nekima kills a model, so when you get to initial step 6a, Nekima heals? Is that how you'd apply your logic? Sorry, not fully following it yet.

Currently how I get new players into the game is: * do a battle with two minions against two minions, first to clear the board. Just to learn combat. * do a scenario with a henchmen leader and three minions each, objectives of one strategy + one scheme (plant explosives/assassinate works really well). * teach them about scheme markers. * do a proper game. That allows for a few nice intro games before working up to a proper game. May want to repeat the second stage a few times if they find that easier. A starter set would be ideal, but this works for me in the meantime! The key is to not overwhelm them with lots of different models at once. If they only have to learn two models (henchmen + three identical minions), the core rules of the game are very doable. In general, I find it easy(ish) to get people to try the game, as the cost of entry (one crew box) is so low if you can lend them everything else (and for the intro game, we usually find someone to lend them some models).

Oh, the corrupted idols seems like it will be very unbalanced. That strategy basically seems to come down to who can cheat initiative with the suit they desire. Either give everyone the option to cheat the card that determines idol, or no one (just have an extra flip that determines idol positioning)? Edit: also make sure reckoning applies only to models you kill, not enemy models killed? From memory the wording on Reckoning counts any enemy models killed to prevent self kills.

Cool! Would love to hear how it goes in testing. I wonder if you should reduce soulstones count to make the game a similar game length? Also have you looked at the team play rules released at the same time as henchmen hardcore? Might have some useful things in there.

Some masters definitely seem like solo material. My Molly for instance has fantastic idols and explosives matchups, and pretty good reckoning and turf war matchups (especially if claim jump or harness the Leyline are present). Throw in the fact that you can fill gaps with versatile and OOK models, and you can be prepared for everything. I just picked up my second master, and honestly I now feel so stretched mastering both, going solo master might actually be optimal. I think the bigger deal is picking up "sideboard" models that you bring in only for specific matchups/scenarios. If I was aiming to play competitively, I'd have a much bigger focus on that. Disclaimer: I'm still new, only been playing 3E for maybe 4 months.

Oh, good point! So can't even dart out?

I'm not sure! I'm hoping to find out! They seem hyper-mobile, especially if paired with Widow Weaver. In some scenarios you're going to hop ~14 inches at start of activation, leap into shadow for another 6", and then take two melee attacks against a model that started 20" away. Alternatively, hop ~14 inches + run another 12 inches + create a web to prepare another jump for itself or widow weaver. I'm playing Turf War on Thursday, so this level of mobility will really help me hold multiple markers, and have enough fighting power that I can contest them if need be. I imagine Bandersnatch is good on turf war and plant explosives due to hyper mobility with some room left to interact leftover. Don't think it has quite enough health for corrupted idols, but guess we'll find out.

I'm new to the game, but here's my impression. I think Dead Man's Hand is always going to be unsatisfactory, so be prepared for that. But it seems to be a compromise - a lot of players are in your position, so instead of knocking those models out of the game entirely when they experienced story death (or similar), they have provided a way to keep playing them. Jakob Lynch you can definitely still play as he is a Ten Thunders master. So there's no problem there (unless your concern is you might have to declare 'Neverborn' for a tournament and then not have him?) It's not an ideal situation, but there's two things that others are doing that might help you. Talk to your local tournament organiser. I'm split over two factions, and we might allow me to use a master from each in tournaments (still have to talk to him about it more) rather than single faction. The same can be done for DMH. If you don't want to hang onto Jakob Lynch, loads of people are buying/selling these types of crews at the moment. Since lots of people are in similar positions, there's lots of trading of old 2E crews at the moment to get people sorted for their factions. Sorry you're stuck in such an awkward position. Hopefully it resolves well!

My thinking of going 2x daydreams is it makes it a bit easier to snag an extra model via summoning. Currently you cap out at a 17 (11 card) with insidious madness, but with a daydream, you have a play for 18 and 19 as well, so you can use your 12s and 13s. Of course for a 20 (red joker) you always have the double alp plan as well. I'd normally try to go three, but it's hard to fit more than Widow Weaver + Bandersnatch + Teddy + Coppelius/Serena + 2 daydreams + upgrades/stones for cache when going heavy enforcer.