Hello ladies. Welcome to Redchapel.

[benjoewoo]

If you go Nicodem you'll want to buy all teh resser things, since he can summon almost anything in the resser faction. 

 

For Seamus, bete isn't terrible, just not necessarily ideal within your playstyle, playgroup, and/or the strategy and schemes you've chosen. I've found in my play testing, albeit under unusual conditions, bete has shown she pretty much pops up to present immediate issues to the opponent to give you time to do other stuff. Yin can't do that as well, provided you can effectively kill stuff, which Seamus is excellent at doing. But, yin will be more consistent, as bete explodes to blast damage and non-DF duels with damage. Yin isn't necessarily that much more durable, but she has double the health and she does more than flurry and two melee attacks. I am waiting for my yin to come in, and until then I just use bete as an engagement tool to prevent people easily getting to him past her disengaging strike.

 

McMourning's box is probably the most efficient for Seamus as a first buy--the nurses are pretty good when you combine them with belles and sybelle. Great for engaging enemy units with non-master/totem units, which will happen since you're unlikely to keep seamus super close to your crew.

 

With that being said, crooligans are some of the best scheme runners, as pointed out in my own seamus thread and on pullmyfinger. It's "cheaper" to buy boxed sets so you get box exclusive models, i.e. masters and henchman, at essentially a $10 ish price when you factor what the other models cost on their own.

 

Seamus is one of the cheaper to build resser masters. He can only summon two types of units at the moment, since there are only rotten belles and dead doxies that have the belle trait--can't summon Molly.

 

That, combined with the fact you'll almost always run sybelle to combo with belles, means you're looking at a fairly static crew--you'll have your core of seamus, sybelle, and at least one belle, and from there you'll fill in models to suit the strategy/scheme or your play style: nurse, crooligans, CCK, etc. Most of the models you'd want to put in your expanded crews come in box sets, so you'll just have to pick up the enforcer of your choice like yin/bete and/or a heavy hitter like the hanged.

 

This means you get the benefit of playing the starter crew, which is pretty good on its own without any models form other boxes, figuring out how you like to play, then expanding appropriately so you can spend on your own budget and time.

 

Seamus isn't a master who essentially requires models from other boxes--fine tune your screw based on what you want to have more of/see happen in your games. Your local play group will probably dictate this as you'll have a local environment to draw play style and game strategy from. If no one runs a crew that's good against wp duels, slot in yin and hanged and you're going to be trolololing people when they get seamus to 1 and you heal him to almost full between sybelle and a belle.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Yin IS substantially more durable than bête, in my opinion.

[benjoewoo]

She has a built in horror duel which is good, and she gives - flip to any attack and damage flip, which goes beyond bete's - flip to just attack flips. The trade off is that yin definitely dies at 0 wounds in a seamus crew, while bete does not always die and the opponent cannot guarantee that she does die.

 

However, Yin will more likely survive a round of attacks, which can be critical because then you don't have to unbury bete after an attack connects, allowing you to then activate (if possible) and put some nasty debuffs on the enemy. Yin's triggers are also arguably better and easier to hit in a vacuum, given the range and cast range/being a cast ability. She also lets you disable a greater variety of models, as she can hit casters out of melee range unlike bete who has to be in melee range--not always possible given you're likely popping her up from a corpse.

[Dirial]

If Yin can get her debuffs out first, she is a horrid model to remove. Horrid!

[zFiend]

If Yin can get her debuffs out first, she is a horrid model to remove. Horrid!

Indeed she is!