Sloth - Thoughts?

[bwood42]

Haven't seen much on this guy yet, but figured I'd get the ball rolling...

I used him in a Molly Horror crew the other day to mixed effect.  I wanted to share my observations with him and see if anyone else had similar or hopefully more nuanced thoughts on him...

I mostly used him for Lazy Sunday.  My opponent was playing Lillith and grouped up a bit and at one point Sloth was being annoying to five different models at the same time.  I had him framed for murder, but his annoyance apparently wasn't enough to get my opponent to attempt to kill him.  Thoughts:

Lazy Sunday - Overall this is a sweet ability.  My only "gripe" about it is that if you're taking a crew that spams slow, it doesn't synergize as much.  If the opponent already has slow then Lazy Sunday basically becomes useless as they'll chose slow every time as unless I'm reading the rules wrong, the new slow just "meshes" with the slow they already have for no additional effect.  Nice, but not game breaking.  That being said, I forced a lot of cards out of my opponent's hand and a bit of damage, and a decent amount of slow from him.

Bored to Death - Sloth never made it into combat really, and his attack is a bit on the low side damage wise, but the trigger is the thing I don't get.  It seems like something that should be on a ranged attack.  A target in melee probably isn't going to walk/charge anytime soon since, you know, it's in melee...  I can see situations where this is useful, it just seems very very situational.

Lullaby - Awesome ability, except I'd expect 90% of the time your opponent is going to be choosing to take 2 damage and gain slow, which makes me wonder how often the Paralyze is going to happen, and thus why this is limited to once per turn.  It's nice that it's a CA ability and that it attacks WP, but it doesn't seem amazing.

Resting in the Blues - I thought this was kind of dumb and didn't see myself using it without Chaki around (who I stupidly didn't have), but then I ended up using it basically turn 2 and decided it didn't suck after all. Going to be really nice with Chaki to make the slow go away or against crews that are spamming slow already.

So overall, I like the guy and I guess the only thing I don't really get is the melee trigger, but the rest is pretty sweet.  Anyone with similar, different, or whatever experiences?

[Rob Lo]

Let's see if I can recreate what I said yesterday before the forum rollback..

 

Rulebook: "Conditions presented without a value in their name do not stack, and a model that would get a second instance of a Condition simply ignores it (the second instance is not applied)."

Lazy Sunday: "enemy must.. {do other things or}.. gain the Slow condition."

Resting in the Blues: "..if it gained the Slow condition.. heal"

 

So, for a normal model (not Immune to Slow for some reason) affected by one of those, is it:

1. A target model already with Slow is considered to have gained it again, but then simply ignores it, in which case it wouldn't have to pick one of the other options for Sunday, but it could be healed by Resting
2. A target model already with Slow is not considered to gain anything ("second instance is not applied",  somewhat similar to zero damage is not damaged), so it can't choose to gain slow for Sunday and must pick one of the other options, but couldn't heal from Resting.

Just wondering how TOs would rule on this? Sloth is a very differently useful model in who he plays well with, depending on how people interpret this.

[Kogan Style]

Let's see if I can recreate what I said yesterday before the forum rollback..

 

Rulebook: "Conditions presented without a value in their name do not stack, and a model that would get a second instance of a Condition simply ignores it (the second instance is not applied)."

Lazy Sunday: "enemy must.. {do other things or}.. gain the Slow condition."

Resting in the Blues: "..if it gained the Slow condition.. heal"

 

So, for a normal model (not Immune to Slow for some reason) affected by one of those, is it:

1. A target model already with Slow is considered to have gained it again, but then simply ignores it, in which case it wouldn't have to pick one of the other options for Sunday, but it could be healed by Resting
2. A target model already with Slow is not considered to gain anything ("second instance is not applied",  somewhat similar to zero damage is not damaged), so it can't choose to gain slow for Sunday and must pick one of the other options, but couldn't heal from Resting.

Just wondering how TOs would rule on this? Sloth is a very differently useful model in who he plays well with, depending on how people interpret this.

my memories from the Beta lead me to believe the second option is the intended interpretation as we discussed the instance involving a summoned model getting a free heal with no ill effects, or when used with NIco, getting summoned, healed and still having 2 AP thanks to Nico making models immune to slow.

Where is says "Second instance is not applied" also leads me to believe that a model that already has slow cannot gain slow, which for Lazy Sunday means they would have to choose one of the other two options, and for Resting, means that summoned/slow models could not be healed. 

I think the argument centres on the question of whether a model having a condition is considered to *gain* the condition when an opportunity arises (even if the condition is not applied) 

 

[Rob Lo]

I remember the whole 'if it gains slow' part of Resting being added specifically to make sure the healing wasn't too crazy with summoned models or Nico's aura. The part that I'm curious is if that's how people are playing it; that enemy models with slow cannot pick the Slow option from Lazy Sunday, and must pick one of the other two options. To let them pick the slow option when they already have slow would be inconsistent with the wording put in place for the intent of Resting. 

Edited August 26, 2015 by Rob Lo

[DocSchlock]

I haven't seen his final card - did his Df trigger make it through with the "after this model fails" wording still that makes it crazy powerful (if suit intensive)?

For the Slow thing, it's 2. Justin rewrote Resting in the Blues specifically to prevent a model from healing repeatedly when it already had Slow on it. The intent is clear from the FAQ and wording.

[bwood42]

Glad this thread got back on track after getting nuked...

Option 2 makes the most sense otherwise a lot of times you're going to lose the benefit of the ability often, especially against non Nico summoners that actually have slow.  The tradeoff of not being able to heal something with slow is a good balance and makes sense as well.

 

@DocSchlock - His final card I'm pretty sure says "After resolving" or words to that effect, so succeed or fail the duel and it ends the acting models Activation.  It's pretty nice.  Sadly I didn't get to use it as my opponent only hit Sloth once that was using Lillith's last attack of her activation anyway, but still, it's awesome.  Still needs that crow, but it's a crow you probably won't mind playing.

 

[Kogan Style]

@DocSchlock - His final card I'm pretty sure says "After resolving" or words to that effect, so succeed or fail the duel and it ends the acting models Activation.  It's pretty nice.  Sadly I didn't get to use it as my opponent only hit Sloth once that was using Lillith's last attack of her activation anyway, but still, it's awesome.  Still needs that crow, but it's a crow you probably won't mind playing.

Yeah I think we will see Sloth being the target of single, focussed attacks as a method of side-stepping the ending of the activation (they will have used both AP to attack essentially). Models which gained/have slow will only have 1 AP anyway so they won't lose out much (except if they had a zero action they wanted to use after) 

Still, that would be a drain on the opponents resources (AP) so its not all bad!

 

[D_acolyte]

I am not a fan of Sloth when compared to Greed or Lust but he is useful for making your enemy make choices. Slow can be the death of some models or at least make them un useful for a turn. He is not bad with alps around.