Jakob Lynch - what do I need to know?

[Kotep]

Hi there, I'm looking to expand my Neverborn collection and I'm thinking Mr Jakob Lynch might fit the bill (I love the look of the models). However, I don't really know what kind of a master he is and how the other models in the Dark Debts box play.

Sooooo... What do I need to know? Any help is appreciated!

p.s. I have Mr Graves and Beckoners models already

[bertmac]

Lynch draws tons of cards and uses them to deal big damage illuminated may be the best 7ss model in the game hungering darkness can keep coming back if you take one particular upgrade.

[jonahmaul]

Depleted are good Tarpits and also explode to hand out Brilliance when they die.  Tots also become particularly invaluable with Lynch as as soon as you have the ace of in hand they are constantly sprinting so you can get them wherever they need to be.  A Doppelganger is also very useful as she is a Swiss-Army Knife of utility.  I've only played against him though so that's as much insight as I can offer in terms of what to get.

[zFiend]

Apply Brilliance with either Lynch himself, Beckoner or Huggy and just kill it dead.

[Kotep]

Dumb question - is "huggy" Teddy?

[zFiend]

Sorry, Hungering Darkness.

[jotun]

"Huggy" is Hungering Darkness. He got nicknamed to match his cuddly, non-threatening looking mini.

 

Also, agree on Doppelganger (always ), Depleted and Tots, depending on the job.

[Patzer]

Remember that Lynch can apply any suit to a duel by discarding a card of that particular suit. Can be very handy if you have a lot of low rams on hand.

 

You don't need to apply brilliance to targets. Just gun them down with the ram trigger on Lynch's Pistol. Min damage 4 is cruel.

 

Tots with Lynch can move 20" in a turn if you get and keep the ace of masks. That is close to broken.

 

Lynch can relibly get you good hands. So you don't always need to stone for additional cards.

 

Lynch's defensive trigger is really good. It can chip away damage fast on enemy attackers, and makes them guess twice about attacking him.

 

Huggy's upgrades are neat and useful, but neither is a must take if you need to save some stones. Rising Huggy can be played uber agressive, but demands that you play Lynch more agressive too as well as having ways of applying Brilliance to targets relibly (Lynch's Play For Blood or Beckoners). Endless Huggy lets the pair sit back more and attack from mid range. A 3 ap Huggy with Fears Given Form is really evil.

 

Don't overlook the Depleted. Solid tarpits.

 

Black Blood Shaman is really good together with Depleted, Tots, Illuminated, and Graves.

[EntrepeNinja]

I love the idea of Black Blood Transfusion on the illuminated- "Yeah, hit me! Take damage. Now I'll regen.".

 

I hear that that combo is super good in a Collodi crew.

 

Back at the task at hand, I think I'm gonna jump into Lynch next. Seems really good, and save for the Hungering Darkness I like the models. I know stitched togethers are also really good with Lynch- they can increase his hand size with Gamble, and if you've got the ace that lets "tails you lose" or whatever you can get two guaranteed draws anyways. 

 

ENinja

[thegoatgod_pan]

Between Beckoners and the Depleted, Lynch gets interesting movement shenanigans.

Beckoners are amazing in all Neverborn crews, and here they are thematic! Lure enemies into terrible brilliance orgies. Lure friends into the same!

You can move a beckoner first, lure lynch, then use the beckoner as a beacon for the depleted, gaining 5' pushes from their (0) action. With beckoners you can get everyone into position and everyone of out of position, as you choose.

Depleted have the amazing (0) push towards brilliance at no cost. Since this is a push, you can pinball the depleted around the battleline, disengaging by pushing towards the beckoners and then charging whoever it is you want to tie up.

The doppelganger I always run as Huggy's friend: tendrils and heed my voice are ridiculously nice things to steal when no enemy model is around

Although you don't -need- brilliance on an enemy, it is psychologically great, since simply by keeping a beckoner activation until the end of the turn (obviously, Lynch gets the very end) you can make the opponent intensely paranoid.

Anytime something of importance does get brilliance on it, focus fire and it will likely die fast: or, simply ignore it and let Lynch himself finish the poor bastard at the very end of the turn: with two more cards and some aces, Lynch can reliably drop 5-8 damage on a brillianced model by himself. Just watch out for condition removal, if this is your plan.

[oreaper]

J.Lynch was my first, and favorite master and i find that he has a very versitile scheme pool. He is def one of those masters you can excelusivly play at an event and still have success. His thematic crew works fantastic (you thought illuminated and beckoners were good......now add a brilliance generating crew!)

 

 Lynch has mid to high damage output, but his best use is that of a swiss army knife for his crew. Unlike soem masters he can find good use activating at any point during the turn. He can stack your hand and pass out brilliance/slow right first activation (nothing says Oh Shit! like having a key model gain brilliance at teh start of the turn facing a lynch crew), or he can wait, stack his hand and bring the hammer down last activation.

 

There are tons of models that work well with lynch, as he himself is not really reliant on his creww for much. Top that with one of if not the best totem in the game and you have yourself a fun and diverse option set. I collected most of my neverborn just wondering what can work with Lynch. Right now im on a mimic spree with the honeypot+ often hitting the table.

 

Good luck and welcome to the darkened side!

[Kotep]

Thanks so much for all the great advice everyone!

 

I'm sold. I'll be picking up the Dark Debts box and the Depleted asap. 

[zFiend]

Sorry to derail this a bit, but

 

Beckoners are amazing in all Neverborn crews

 

How? I can't even find space for them with Lynch.

[oreaper]

I find that with beckoners i push hard for turn 1 movement shenannagins and then my opponent waaaaay overestimates thier use. They are a decent lure (better than frikken baby kade  ), and a brilliance tagger, and they have a huge interact denial zone.

 

I almost always find use for one sometimes 2 (why is redundancy so effective) if only for a doppleganger template.

[asrian]

Kotep, I've run Lynch in a crew of Silurids, Waldgeist, and McTavish before even (all swamp fiends who don't benefit from brilliance). As Reaper said, Lynch really is an independent master from his crew. He can/does compliment brilliant heavy crew members (beckoners, illuminated, depleted) but he doesn't need them to be highly effective. I mainly look at him as a mid-ranged damage dealer. When he wants something dead, then it's most likely going to die in one activation if he's 6" to 8" away from them with his abilities, outside of Masters and some resilient Henchmen usually. 

[thegoatgod_pan]

@Asrian : I can see that Lynch can work in other crews, I just don't see why or how to do it effectively (except with Tots). Neither of his main damage upgrades can hurt something that isn't brillianced: woke up with a hand and aces both require it. His gun is nice, but it has shorter range than most other guns, also playing Lynch like he is Perdita will only get him killed.

I also don't see how beckoners are redundant: they do most of the legwork in my Lynch crew, spreading brilliance and making movement, while the other models hang back waiting to strike, I bring them with Collodi for the movement too. If they caused Wk actions I'd bring them with Zoraida too. They bring ambushes to the Neverborn, so we can use our high Wk and good melee to jump key models. Since damn near everything in this game brings synergy to the other models in its crew, Beckoners eliminate lynch-pin models.

My crew is:

Lynch (Woke up with a hand, rising sun, one other upgrade: usually the aces)

Huggy (addict)

two depleted

two illuminated

two beckoners

doppelganger or graves or tuco or silurid

[asrian]

I believe OReaper's comment about redundancy was sarcasm.

For your current models, that is a damn good collection and should work well with Lynch (I would add tots for fast scheme runners, but they aren't necessary, just fun as hell to use with him).

As for Lynch and Brilliance, he has a 1 AP action that does damage and can hand it out. Typically if I'm dead set on killing something (and have a decent amount of cards in hand) I'll do this: Activate Lynch last, draw two cards from upgrade. 0 action Mulligan to cycle up to 3 cards. Walk if need be for 1AP to ensure I'm within 6" of the target, Use the Brilliance attack to do damage and add Brilliance, do Final Debt, then finish with Wanna See a Trick using Aces for damage if I have any. If I don't have aces (the reason to move within 6") then I'll either shoot his hold out pistol or go for another straight 2 damage with the Brilliance ability.

As an example of when I used what I did in my above post (not saying use these, but just showing an example for the game):

Deployment: Standard

Strategy: Stake a Claim

Schemes: A Line in the Sand, Bodyguard, Breakthrough, Deliver A Message, Make Them Suffer

My Crew:

Neverborn Crew - 50 - Scrap

Jakob Lynch -- 3 Pool

+The Rising Sun [2]

+Wanna See a Trick [1]

+Woke Up With A Hand [2]

(These are my usual upgrades for Lynch. I'm a fan of the returning Huggy, but I know others who are fans with Casting expert Huggy. It comes down to preference)

Hungering Darkness [0]

+Fears Given Form [1]

Gupps [4]

McTavish [11]

+Hexed Among You[1] (this gives me the option to From the Shadows up to 3 minion swamp fiends as I see fit)

Silurid [7]

Silurid [7]

Waldgeist [6]

Waldgeist [6]

The main reasoning behind my choices:

For the overall Strategy, I had a Gupp, 2 Silurids, and whichever models (between all my minion swamp fiends) that did From the Shadows who could start dropping/scoring Stake a Claim markers turn 2.

I needed minions for Make Them Suffer, so took Waldgeist for resilience, Silurids for easy scheme/strat achievement, and a Gupp as a cheap form of Silirud, but I knew he'd die easy enough if pressured. Also, if I took Make Them Suffer I had 2 Henchman and a Master who could all kill minions/peons easily, so that gave me three potential points of pain to hand to my opponent

Bodyguard was in the pool, so this gave me 2 Henchmen who could take it, one who could come back and the other who would stand back away from the fight and shoot. Let the opponent figure out which one, if either, where going to be BodyGuard targets

Deliver a Message was an option, and with Silurids and Gupps, it's an easy 3 VP usually.

Line in the Sand, with Silurids and a Gupp, again, easy to achieve, and with 3 From the Shadow Swampfiends, starting turn 2 all my minions could lay down those scheme markers

Breakthrough was an option, and like above, Silurids, Gupps, and anything From the Shadows could achieve this relatively easy

This overall meant I could easily accomplish the Strat and any scheme I chose. I ended up taking Make Them Suffer and Deliver a Message for my Schemes

The Make Them Suffer scheme wasn't revealed at the start, so the opponent had no idea what I'd chosen for my second scheme until Turn 2

I played aggressively with Lynch and Huggy, throwing Huggy (with Fears) in his face, but not suiciding him if possible. I used From the Shadows Waldgeist to tie up his guys and McTavish to fire into combat (he doesn't randomize shots) to take out enemy minions. Also, McTavish has a nice 3" threat range, so he and a Waldgeist (melee 4" if near terrain, which he can make) could hold/deter enemy scheme runners. Silurids and Gupp dropped Claims and Delivered the Message. End result was 10-3 my way. The opponent was basically was flooded with either fast moving, resilient, or hard hitting models.

Anyway, I hope that helps as an example of how he can be used with non-brilliance models. It's not a true write up, but just a quick summary. Best of luck to you...and you now have me wanting to play Lynch again. God I love that Master.

[cdhay]

Great thread

[thegoatgod_pan]

ooops I was reading so late at night I did take the redundancy of two beckoners joke at face value rather than sarcasm, my bad.

Thanks for the great write up!

I play Zoraida and recently got McTavish so I know and love the swamp fiend crew! I neglected that Lynch is a double team with Huggy, and I can see how the two of them are plenty for getting brilliance onto something good, through a wary opponent, especially one chasing silurids.

I do have to say: it must be a bit harder to reliably bring back Huggy, without a brilliance heavy crew. I probably would just go all out +1 Ca, and play it safe, since some opponents would just shut out Lynch's brilliance as a priority after killing Huggy, to keep him from ever returning.

[asrian]

I've never found it a problem as of yet bringing Huggy back with Lynch. His attack to put brilliance on something has a good cast value, and he does good enough damage to take something out to get Huggy back in. You just might have to go for an available weak target, or hit an enemy with someone else prior to Lynch to set up unburying Huggy.

[NeilH]

If you have the ace masks the doppleganger can mimic the tots sprint and either move 36" or move 24", engage someone standing on a squat marker and turn said marker.

[NeilH]

With a tome trigger ofc.

[Kotep]

Again I must thank everyone for the tips and strategies.

I can't wait to give this master a try, and I've got more than enough NVB models to complement him in his different play styles.

My dark debts and depleted have shipped!