Occultist

14 minutes ago, matt said:

Either. You can use a pre-built crew (for fixed crew events or pre-determined games) or you can build a crew after encounters are revealed, or do a mix of both and set up a core crew of like 30SS and once the encounter starts add to it for encounter specific flex picks.

That is freaking sweet. Thanks to DZ Liergaard and the Wyrd Team!

14 minutes ago, Hot4Perdita said:

Of course I’ve heard of Gencon, but have never attended, nor researched it much. I have only been a gamer for about 3 years, and I live nowhere near Indianapolis. I knew it was a big gaming show, but other than that, not too educated on it. I know a little bit more about Las Vegas Open, but only cause it’s closer to home and several people I know go there every year for the 40k and Star Wars Legion tournament.

That being said, I didn’t know that Wyrd actually sold product direct there. In most industry trade shows (NAMM, SHOT, etc.) manufacturers are just there to showcase their product and secure orders from distributors and retailers, not to bring stock to sell to the general public. In fact, you have to have credentials in the appropriate industry to gain access to the trade shows (I would love to go to a NAMM, but I don’t have the credentials). After your explanation, I assume that Gencon is public, so that’s a little out of the norm for a trade show.

But thanks for explaining. Maybe I’ll have to try it out one day.

Sounds like you're closer to the west coast. I can confirm it's a pain to get hotels and flights to Indi in August.

GenCon is absolutely a public sales and gaming show (granted you definitely need to get tickets in advance, they sell out pretty consistently around May/June). Every booth there is dedicated either to promoting something (usually pre-Kickstarter buzz and "coming soon" reveals for larger companies) or to sales of current/new games. There's a ton of stock that the convention center has to account for in physical sales for every company that shows up. I would agree with Yew Arcane's comment that, as a smaller company, Wyrd tends to bring most of it's employees there to help with the booth/events, and even then always puts out a call for volunteers, and the requirements are pretty lax to get a booth when compared to things like NAMM and E3.

You should definitely check it out! despite it's cost it's a fantastic convention. Hopefully this time next year I'll have a painted up collection to run tournaments with.

46 minutes ago, Hot4Perdita said:

Can someone enlighten me on something? I have seen numerous posts on here referring to Gencon, mostly about Gencon being an excuse for the delayed product. I have never been to it or anything like it, but I assume it is basically a trade show for the manufacturers to showcase their products? I also understand they run tournaments. How would this event have any correlation or relevance to the manufacturing/ distribution delay?

This explanation assumes you are truthful about not knowing what GenCon is:

GenCon is a 50 year old gaming convention that is currently held in Indianapolis. It functions as a trade show, a gaming meetup, a tournament center, and basically anything else related to (mostly) tabletop gaming. its relevance to the game as a whole is that most game companies dedicate a lot of resources to their presence at GenCon, as it acts as a massive PR event and a huge boost to sales for the year, and Wyrd is no exception. Its relevance to distribution delays is that in order to sell at the convention, you need to ship the product there. This can cause a host of logistical issues as well as require normal ordering times to be drastically changed. Coupled with the already noted external shipping issues plaguing the gaming industry at large (thank you trade wars ) and you can start to piece together it's relation.

Tends to happen when you come in looking for a fight. Noteworthy that the OP was involved as well.
 

5 hours ago, Yew Arcane said:

Sorry mate, I'm going to have to see this, as this sounds unlikely. I tried looking at Nathan's posts and didn't see anything to reflect such a position.

He's referring to this thread: 

Basically he got called out in the nicest way possible for referring to Wyrd as a D-List company for issues that were not their fault and out of their control, and then proceeded to demand Wyrd find another distributor, despite not knowing how distribution of games works, or how much the field is a monopoly of companies who aren't liable for their own mistakes.

OT: The delays are obnoxious, and waiting for releases and updates can get old fast. That said, the majority of the issues are outside of Wyrd's control, and I'm not about to bust their chops for doing their best to be as forthright and communicative as possible about them.

Tanuki are just for redundancy in Poison. I'll probably try a pair of FRM when I get the chance.

On 7/1/2019 at 3:17 AM, bedjy said:

I'm just a bit sad they didn't give a TN to Wandering river Style punch action. It feels very wrong that the student can do it without any chance to fail.
Shenlong is quite a monster, i'll have to play it a bit more.

In its defense, the push is on a rotating upgrade that requires you to sacrifice more offensive options, model actions, and chi to perform. That said if it does end up being too strong I can see a TN being the best place to start with balancing it.

I don't have the models for it, but any opinions on a crew with 3x Tanuki and Fermented River Monks for poison and tarpitting shenanigans, or are we missing too much Brewmaster tech at this point?

15 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

My store finally got their orders, but they were delayed because they told me Alliance was being odd about taking the orders. They said Alliance kept insisting it hadn’t been released yet so they couldn’t order it.

That lines up pretty well with their 2 weeks of restructuring the warehouse system. This is Alliance dropping the ball hard and tossing the blame at Wyrd.

8 hours ago, Nikodemus said:

I don't know if you were doing it (it's rather unintuitive I think), but you can trigger Sensei Yu's Brutal Sensei aura even when damaged by friendly models.

Students and Low monks have a 1/1/2 +1 Distract weapons. You can whack Shenlong with Students for 1 chi and 1-2 distract (and damage) per Student. Low monk can then heal Shenlong. This nets Shenlong extra chi and he can use Distract as +flips. And against Perdita specifically I guess it's nice to be just below your max health.

Stat8For Shenlong's first few attacks is pretty nice

I'm gonna level with you, I completely forgot until after the game that Brutal Sensei even existed. 🥵 I was missing that ability every time. Even without it I was heavy on Chi the entire game.

I have definitely pulled off the Distracted tech with students before. Watching the bewilderment on my opponent's face is great when they realize a tied win becomes a 3xis perfection.

EDIT: In response to what to do with Sensei Yu: keeping him at the center of the bubble is important, but I had no issues throwing him into firing lanes to draw some shots (read, waste enemy activations) from Perdita's crew. He's sticky as hell with HtK and a built in heal, and my low river did the rest. It kept a lot of hate off of my Wandering River monk for scheme running.

I definitely get the sense that the Monk crew lives and dies by keeping it's smaller mooks alive to scheme while the Fab 4 (Shenlong, Sensei Yu, and the two Students) play crowd control and damage soak.

Gonna piggy back on this thread.

I'm new to the game (not to miniature games) and have been doing 35 stone games to get used to the game play.  Last game I was running the usual 4 of Shen/Yu/2 Students, along with 2 High River, 1 Low, and 1 Wandering. I ran against an Ortega crew with Perdita + totem, Frank/Nino/Santiago, and a hunter. Here were my take aways from it.

1) Chi is extremely strong and plentiful. Consistently spending turns 1-2 with monks nearby Sensei Yu builds chi quickly, and helps turn bad cards in hand into gas. Even when saving it for defense flips, forcing your opponent to burn cards in hand to win makes even the students extremely resource intensive to kill.
2) Shenlong is absurd on his own. He's more than capable of dropping a Henchmen tier model a turn while being tough as nails. Stances are amazingly versatile and he fills any role in your crew when your guys start dropping.
3) The Low River monk blew me away. With bringing Sensei Yu back from the brink twice and the auto healing aura he made up his 4 points cost easily.
4) The Aspiring Students are a kill on sight for your opponents. "Following in his Footsteps" gives you early game mobility to move your monks into position and keeps these guys dangerous into the middle turns. Case in point for this game, a well timed charge with High River Style on Shen equalled out to a total of 6 damage and burning 2 on Perdita. Not bad for a totem.

I'm very excited to keep at it and filling out the monk models, Thunder Archers especially.

Thanks for the work Nathan. Can confirm from others in the industry that this wouldn't be the first time Alliance dropped the ball on something like this.

No new cards or books at my usual store, but I still got an awesome game in with my fixed beta cards, my second game overall. I'm having a blast with the rules and haven't felt this good about a new game in a long time. The transparency is a welcome change to what I expect from most game companies and I can still rock some Shenlong shenanigans with print outs until the cards hit. Keep up the good work!