So, some time has passed - Emissaries?

[Mutter]

Because this was briefly touched upon in another topic, I'd thought with some of the Emissaries being immanent and some time passing since the first discussion about the Emissaries, it'd might be worthwhile to talk about the various Emissaries.

Somebody else mentioned the Carrion Emissary being the strongest, and while I agree it's strong, I think it at least shares a place with Shadow. Not sure if I even made a list without the Shadow Emissary in the past months (mainly Lynch & McCabe).

Then somebody mentioned Arcane Emissary as the strongest, which surprised me. Haven't played it yet, but from I gathered, most Arcanist players found it pretty lackluster?

[Omenbringer]

I dont know if I would call the Arcane Emissary the strongest though I would offer that he is probably most likely to see regular play. That build is really accommodating to most of the faction compared to some of the other Emissaries. I tend to agree that the Carrion Emissary might be the strongest of them, particularly because of the Shards of Nythera Action. There is an awful lot of utility in that single 0 action.

[admiralvorkraft]

I think the Emissaries are all above the curve. If nothing else the design pressure behind them made them really open to abuse - see Hoffman throwing out four/five extra Austringer shots every activation.

[necroon]

I've used the Mysterious Emissary somewhere between 10 and 15 times and I really enjoy it. It gives me some control, some okay damage, condition removal, scheme marker removal, and can summon one of my new favorite models in the game. I've only played against the Reser one myself but was impressed with it. 

[Mutter]

7 hours ago, necroon said:

I've used the Mysterious Emissary somewhere between 10 and 15 times and I really enjoy it.

Which Masters did you play it with? The Mysterious one is the one I have the hardest time gauging, the others seem more straight forward, somehow.

[Patzer]

I love the Shadow Emissary with Lynch and Misaki.

The two pushes, card draw-trigger, giving out Fast to Huggy with Hidden Agenda (double 00-Huggy), not having to discard a card for Rolling Thunder as long as you have an ace... The list goes on. Its fantastic with Lynch. Only time I will not take it is when scheme marker shenanigans are at a premium and Yu will be a better fit.

With Misaki it becomes quite speedy with its personal 4" push (0). Its attack is great to snipe out weakened targets and scheme runners. The aura to give Misaki an extra AP is situational, but can be amazing. Something to at least always have in the back of your mind that it is there.

It also looks great with Yan Lo. Ancestral Conflux turns Yan into a pretty decent combat master if he has the Brutal Stick upgrade.

[necroon]

7 hours ago, Mutter said:

Which Masters did you play it with? The Mysterious one is the one I have the hardest time gauging, the others seem more straight forward, somehow.

I've used it with Collodi (Both Fated and Bag of props with both the generic and Master-Specific upgrade), Dreamer (Master specific Upgrade), and Lillith. I wasn't a fan of it on paper but in practice is very useful. 

[admiralvorkraft]

Mysterious offers really self-sufficient summoning, pulse marker removal, and area denial. Plus condition removal that can work offensively. Doesn't seem half bad to me.

[trikk]

On 10.07.2016 at 3:12 AM, admiralvorkraft said:

I think the Emissaries are all above the curve. If nothing else the design pressure behind them made them really open to abuse - see Hoffman throwing out four/five extra Austringer shots every activation.

You mean 4-5 austringer shots every turn. They are all 12" tho and have a 1/3/4 damage track and half of them can`t declare triggers and the combo is very costly.

[Gnomezilla]

On 7/9/2016 at 6:12 PM, admiralvorkraft said:

I think the Emissaries are all above the curve. If nothing else the design pressure behind them made them really open to abuse - see Hoffman throwing out four/five extra Austringer shots every activation.

When you recommended only taking one austringer per Guild list I assumed you meant only one austringer's worth of shots per turn. This is silly and not in a good way. And you know my taste for silly things.

*A death marshal sneaks up behind Hoffman and whacks him upside the head with the box*

See? No Hoffman, no problem!

[admiralvorkraft]

Sure, and when I take Sonnia my opponents assume she'll only be shooting 2-3 times, throw her in a box with a death marshal and the Emissary can use her cast twice more. Abuela can order a (potentially) sixth shot with it. Admittedly the Emissary won't benefit from Pyromancy, but still.

As for the Hoffman combo you end up with 4 shots (or two focused shots) on Hoffman's activation, plus potentially 6" worth of pushes and Fast on the Emissary. Those shots can't declare triggers. Then the Emissary gets 3 shots, or one focused shot, one unfocused shot, declaring triggers. At the end of the activation the Austringer unburies and takes its activation. Yes it means hiring Abuela, an Austringer, and the Emissary but they're all perfectly good hires in their own right and up to 9 (or 11 with two Austringers) range 12" sh 7 attacks ignoring cover, LOS, combat, etc. is nothing to scoff at even if you are flipping 1/3/4.

[trikk]

13 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Sure, and when I take Sonnia my opponents assume she'll only be shooting 2-3 times, throw her in a box with a death marshal and the Emissary can use her cast twice more. Abuela can order a (potentially) sixth shot with it. Admittedly the Emissary won't benefit from Pyromancy, but still.

As for the Hoffman combo you end up with 4 shots (or two focused shots) on Hoffman's activation, plus potentially 6" worth of pushes and Fast on the Emissary. Those shots can't declare triggers. Then the Emissary gets 3 shots, or one focused shot, one unfocused shot, declaring triggers. At the end of the activation the Austringer unburies and takes its activation. Yes it means hiring Abuela, an Austringer, and the Emissary but they're all perfectly good hires in their own right and up to 9 (or 11 with two Austringers) range 12" sh 7 attacks ignoring cover, LOS, combat, etc. is nothing to scoff at even if you are flipping 1/3/4.

The Sonnia combo kind of messes with your Activation order for the extra two shots- a DM has to bury her so he`ll have to activate first next turn. I also don`t know if the two extra shots are more powerful than papa in a box. Third flame wall from burying Mx Child (I don`t know if its legal, but can`t find why it would`nt) seems stronger.

The potential 9-11 austringer shots require an enemy to be within 12". You also need the Emissary, Hoffman, Abuela and Two Austringers and get a suitable hand to get it all working. Thats around 35SS. It might be worth it sometimes but I wouldn`t make it very over the curve. Especially that apart from Abuela you have 4 models that don`t walk and if they do the number of shots drastically drops.

[Myyrä]

17 minutes ago, trikk said:

Third flame wall from burying Mx Child (I don`t know if its legal, but can`t find why it would`nt) seems stronger.

You can indeed have three flame walls on the table, but not all the time, because the wall disappears when the model that cast it leaves play.

[trikk]

So Abuela makes Emissary bury Mx Child, Emissary casts flame wall. Mx child is unburied, casts flame wall. 

[Myyrä]

54 minutes ago, trikk said:

So Abuela makes Emissary bury Mx Child, Emissary casts flame wall. Mx child is unburied, casts flame wall. 

Or DM can bury Sonnia or Child.

[admiralvorkraft]

If the DM buries them than I think you only get two, because they won't pop out in a timely fashion... I could be wrong on that.

The Austringer thing makes for a nasty turn two. Hoffman is contributing the necessary movement on the Emissary/Austringer with the "Take New Position" trigger. You're right that buying into the build too heavily is probably a gameplay mistake, but just Hoffman, the Emissary, and an Austringer can put out four focused shots without paying much of anything.

If you don't like the Sonnia combo, then the Judge has the Emissary bury Justice and pulls it forward, the Emissary charges something using Justice's sword (realistically the best Ml attack in the game), and she unburies into combat. It's cheap, you aren't taking anything special, and you get incredible return on investment. Basically the issue with the Brutal is that you get to say, "What is the single most efficient use of AP in my crew? I do that two more times." And that's discounting the incredible utility already on the base card, an incredible stat block, and just about every defensive tech in the game.

But, as I said, I think all the Emissaries are above the curve simply because they each occupy huge swathes of design space. I have no head for building combos and I can come up with problematic stuff with each of them, I'm not particularly looking forward to seeing what @Icemyn comes up with.

[trikk]

I`m not saying there aren`t  useful combos.. I want to try Samael +Emissary in Sonnia. You get the (0) Burning thing that samael can then destroy and Flaming Bullets can really drain an opponents hand.

The Judge combo is 21SS to bring Justice into combat. Its pretty situational.

The issue with the Emissary is that he kind of forces you to build your crew around him (and it usually is around 30SS) as without Tyranny of Order I think there are better options, and the Destiny action is not that great compared to others. (Mass focus, mass fast, drawing cards, summoning a 6SS model, free pushes and markers) vs a better accomplice version.

[decker_cky]

On 7/9/2016 at 5:58 PM, Omenbringer said:

I dont know if I would call the Arcane Emissary the strongest though I would offer that he is probably most likely to see regular play. That build is really accommodating to most of the faction compared to some of the other Emissaries. I tend to agree that the Carrion Emissary might be the strongest of them, particularly because of the Shards of Nythera Action. There is an awful lot of utility in that single 0 action.

Arcane emissary is really easy to fit into most arcanist crews because it's a very direct model - it's a charge 10 model that hands out a free (1) action, has a brutal one-use charge attack, has an (0) to throw out that last bit of damage and kill a model, with some pushes and scheme/corpse removal thrown in for good measure. The fact that several of it's unique upgrades are very useful is just a bonus (the fact that these don't fit with how direct of a model it wants to be probably hurts it). The fact that it's one of the more resilient emissaries helps with its use too.

edit: To contrast with what Trikk said about the brutal emissary - you don't need to plan around the arcane emissary - it's a big, simple, effective model that *can* provide some bonuses to augment your master's playstyle if necessary.

[Omenbringer]

Your last point about not having to build around it is a major strength of the Arcane Emissary. In a lot of ways it completely replaces other models where as the Brutal Emissary augments them.

[Fog]

I personally think the arcane emissary is not worth the slot, though I believe I'm in the minority here.  It doesn't beat as well as the other models we have in the same price range. It's more of what we already do well, and it only carries its weight with a couple of master specific upgrades.  I think it's awesome with Tina, though.  I was incredibly excited to run it with Ironsides until I actually put it on the table.

I am just a sour old man, though.  I wanted our little wizard buddy to grow up into a big wizard buddy, not a giant robo bull.

[BFOmega]

I'm still wanting to hear some good reports on the Arcane Emissary with Kaeris. Even ignoring what he does for her with the upgrade, giving flying to a model with a 10in Charge and 2 seems preeety good. Especially when you can get the mask trigger to push up to 3in to push them towards/beside you, and Relentless charge to send them 6in towards your crew (or just using this general idea to get them wherever you want.). Granted, that's assuming they aren't dead by that point...

[decker_cky]

8 minutes ago, BFOmega said:

I'm still wanting to hear some good reports on the Arcane Emissary with Kaeris. Even ignoring what he does for her with the upgrade, giving flying to a model with a 10in Charge and 2 seems preeety good. Especially when you can get the mask trigger to push up to 3in to push them towards/beside you, and Relentless charge to send them 6in towards your crew (or just using this general idea to get them wherever you want.). Granted, that's assuming they aren't dead by that point...

There's some discussion about it in the MSE Kaeris thread. Summary seems to be that:

1.) It's great for setting up early game card draws;

2.) It's great for 10" flying charge; and

3.) It's best not to think of the instinctual ability as an every turn ability, since it leads to activation order issues (not to mention competing with the negation). 

 

Overall though, very good value. 

[Fog]

I may finally run the Arcane Emissary with Sandeep. He likes it good.

[MuMantai]

 

I may finally run the Arcane Emissary with Sandeep. He likes it good.

Yep, ran that too, Sandeep with Emissary is awesome. Having your Emissary put out essentially 4 AP plus one of his great (0) Actions (2 AP of his own, 1 for another model, one of those being Sandeeps Action, and then 1 AP for Sandeep), all without Sandeep losing his Arcane Shield, is a sight to behold. Even better when Sandeeps Action is summoning Banasuve tying up some of the opponents models in the process.

[Four_N_Six]

In a faction of tricks and jerks, the Mysterious Emissary just escalates things.  Especially considering that the conflux were supposed to be adjustments to masters.  I think the conflux for Pandora is one of the better ones around, and then add his terrain for more board control on top of that.  Love that thing, but too broke after Gencon to worry about it for a while.

I really like the Lucky Emissary.  I think it does very well with any master, as it just adds a lot to the gremlins, but I don't think any of its conflux are very good.  The only one I'd consider their specific conflux for is Som'er.  However, I think the model is good enough on its own that the conflux isn't the important part of what it brings to the table.

Those points being said, I don't see myself hiring either one of them very often.  Though I'd like to try Mysterious with Titania and see how the terrain adds to her being a huge pain.