Sandeep experiences so far?

[mythicFOX]

On 6/2/2017 at 2:55 PM, Mrbedlam said:

So seeing as how Sandeep was one of the most popular masters at ITC, and that Larry went 5-0 with him, I think we are gonna see a huge influx of Deep players. It will be itneresting to see what the dominant Sandeep lists turn out to be as we approach 1 year in to having him in the meta. 

Something, something, all the Wind Gamin.  

Sandeep's very strong, especially so at the ITC as you could guarantee getting him onto one of his strongest objective sets.  I know my only loss with him that weekend was in a Sandeep mirror match.

I do think one of the great strengths of Sandeep is his crew flexibility.  A lot of our masters have big core crews needed to make them work, or are fairly constrained by certain keyword synergies (Beast / Frozen Heart).  Sandeep however can more or less hire what he likes.

[Bane]

I'm still in the minority I suppose, but my position isn't that Sandeep's power comes from Wind Gamin; their modification will come, and his strengths will endure. Keep in mind, of the Gamin he Summons, only 1 can truly fight effectively and in exchange, it's locked in position, making the Shackles in Earth best for Banasuva IMO. I hired 1 or 2 Wind Gamin at most in my 5 games.

Sandeep's strength lies in his flexibility and his ability to hire diverse crews for the schemes without giving up effectiveness. Our team strategy was to have me thrown wherever I fit in the end, choosing to accomodate the more inflexible masters like Collodi or Hamelin or Tara, that truly shine in certain pools. Case in point - I played Reckoning 1 and 5, Turf round 2, Recon round 3, and Extraction round 4, and only snagged the supposedly-broken-for-Arcanists LYM in Game 5.

TL;DR - Sandeep is super flexible, like Marcus. Play them both.

[dannydb]

how good is the valedictorian with sandeep- looking to him up and add the oxford mages to form an academic based gang full of loveliness and the valedictorian being a henchman also allows for holding warding runes. essentially at the moment I'm thinking of backing him up with either val or  Kudra with carlos with practiced productions as my other warding runes henchman when I go down that route but just wondering which of the two is the better or do they do vastly different roles for the crew- kudra seems to be a lot more buffed by having gamin around with her upgrade but considering the summoned gamin seem much better for running scheme so don't really want to be relying on that if she's a bit of a wet lettuce without the her upgrade, the gamin, warding runes and 3 mages 

[spooky_squirrel]

38 minutes ago, dannydb said:

how good is the valedictorian with sandeep- looking to him up and add the oxford mages to form an academic based gang full of loveliness and the valedictorian being a henchman also allows for holding warding runes. essentially at the moment I'm thinking of backing him up with either val or  Kudra with carlos with practiced productions as my other warding runes henchman when I go down that route but just wondering which of the two is the better or do they do vastly different roles for the crew- kudra seems to be a lot more buffed by having gamin around with her upgrade but considering the summoned gamin seem much better for running scheme so don't really want to be relying on that if she's a bit of a wet lettuce without the her upgrade, the gamin, warding runes and 3 mages 

That depends on the victory conditions, you, and your meta.

This is a conversation that's actually come up a few times in my meta. Here, The Valedictorian does not see a lot of table time, so her value on the table is largely unexplored and dismissed. If I look at some of the regional tournament scenes on the U.S. East Coast, I can find where The Valedictorian has been wreaking havoc. Meanwhile, here, Terrifying All (12) doesn't seem to have a massive impact. Some of it might be because we're more biased towards things that can do substantial damage with minimal effort, things that are immune to horror (or conditions), and things that can outmaneuver and/or outgun her.

That being said, I dropped her on the table with Commands Sandeep in a recent tournament, and my opponent felt like he was in the path of a steamroller.

[Franchute]

At the ITC Larry played the valedictorian in some round(s?) if I remember correctly.

[retnab]

I enjoy Valedictorian quite a bit.  Since you have to take Unaligned Sage to bring them you should be bringing 3x Oxfordians, so giving the Valedictorian Warding Runes and Imbued Energy turns her into a really efficient monster.  Plus as an Academic she can borrow Path To Salvation and as a Henchmen she can stone in the mask, giving her some sweet mobility tricks.

[spooky_squirrel]

Held off a while on posting this, but last month I participated in a tournament and dropped Commands Sandeep with The Valedictorian into the second round.

My opponent had never seen Sandeep before and felt like he slammed into a brick wall between The Valedictorian, Banasuva, and Sandeep beating things down while Wind Gamin completed the marker scheme. His Nekima butchered my FFM target (Shastar Vidiya Guard) in turn 2, giving me full credit on that, and in return Banasuva killed Nekima (his FFM target).

He didn't seem NPE-put off, but he did seem a little shell-shocked. I'm guessing that he's trying to figure out how (if at all) he'd deal with Sandeep in the future. I did not run Myranda-Rus+card draw, so he didn't see all of the jankiness, nor did I field the Emissary, so he didn't get to see the confusion that is three+ models doing things (including summoning something) during the Emissary's activation. This isn't the first time I've seen an opponent look defeated by Sandeep at the top of turn 2 before anything is even scored.

[Franchute]

 

1 hour ago, spooky_squirrel said:

This isn't the first time I've seen an opponent look defeated by Sandeep at the top of turn 2 before anything is even scored.

@spooky_squirrel dont write this before a possible summer errata! XD

[spooky_squirrel]

29 minutes ago, Franchute said:

 

@spooky_squirrel dont write this before a possible summer errata! XD

I'm pretty sure that it's something already being talked about in the Henchmen forums. It's not so straight forward that I could swap sides with my opponent and have them leave me completely floored without coaching them on how everything works together, so it's not a low bar of entry. But in the hands of someone who already knows what the pieces do and how to play them with each other, it definitely can come across as a "I don't know how to answer that" problem for beginning and middle-tier players to play into.

[Adran]

When they have never seen Sandeep before, that s not really a fair demonstration of the power. 

[spooky_squirrel]

On 7/4/2017 at 2:41 AM, Adran said:

When they have never seen Sandeep before, that s not really a fair demonstration of the power. 

You're absolutely correct. It's similar in a way to someone never seeing the Viks in action getting floored by their destructiveness. Its when I'm playing against more experienced players and even they look defeated at the top of Turn 2 that I know something's not quite right. There's a number of things that can contribute to it, but I think that the complexity of reading what Sandeep might be doing (because he's an all-rounder master) combined with some of the multiplicative tools that we have is what I would pin the tail on.

[KingCrow]

I've been playing Sandeep since his release and here are a few thoughts on him regarding the most recent posts.

I feel like Sandeep, along with most of the new masters are still suffering from their new-ness.  People kind of know what they do but it never really hits home till they see it on the board.  In my case, I finally played vs Reva at the Origins tournament this last month and the only reason I won was because I brought Sue. She destroyed my crew that wasn't in the little bubble of negatives and summoned so much more than I expected.  I was impressed and amazed that I actually won. I still have yet to play against 4 of the new masters even now.  Until people figure out and understand how to play against the new masters, people are going to worry and complain that certain abilities are OP.  

IMO, Sandeep is a relatively balanced master that is extremely resource reliant and, compared to other masters, is actually squishy.  He does well because other models are made better by using his actions but even then they are at an average casting value. The only thing i can see being a little OP is his zero interact. Giving any model the equivalent of Don't Mind Me is strong and any model getting basically 3 AP with that zero can be a game changer. 

For items that could deserve a cuddle, I think that the wind gamin are super strong with their not dying and free push ability. They could handle a cuddle of some sort.  Another item to cuddle might be Practiced Production. As much as I love it, it is undeniably strong with certain schemes. I'd either place a radius, or LoS restriction to stop all the complaining.  I don't believe Sandeep himself requires a cuddle.  It's just that people need to use unconventional ways to shut him down (i.e. Gnawing Fear, high minimum damage models, etc).  

[madaxeman]

On 10/07/2017 at 4:13 AM, KingCrow said:

...  Another item to cuddle might be Practiced Production. As much as I love it, it is undeniably strong with certain schemes. I'd either place a radius, or LoS restriction to stop all the complaining.  

Don't you find that the marker-spacing requirements on many of the schemes in GG17 have gone some way to addressing this anyway? 

It does also - in a non-showgirl crew - require a 6 or 8 point model to carry it, and for that model also not to be killed early-doors.  

[spooky_squirrel]

9 minutes ago, madaxeman said:

Don't you find that the marker-spacing requirements on many of the schemes in GG17 have gone some way to addressing this anyway? 

It does also - in a non-showgirl crew - require a 6 or 8 point model to carry it, and for that model also not to be killed early-doors.  

On first question: not at all. I can still drop that marker anywhere on the board that I need to. It just requires that I think about it a little more carefully. It's also a good idea to generally not take multiple scheme-marker reliant schemes unless you really have no choice or your opponent's crew has no way to mitigate your scheme markers. If anything, some of the marker schemes work out much better for me*.

On the second:
That 6 stone model (Angelica) is coming in in a supporting role and has the ability to push things around while being immune to charges. If she's out of cover or in direct line of sight of your opponent, sure, she might die. To get full credit for LYM she only needs to survive until Turn 4. If you hire the rest of your crew with that in mind (and in the case of Sandeep, summon smartly), keeping her alive is less problematic--the rest of your crew is busy giving your opponent a bad time (Emissary, Sandeep, Banasuva, The Valedictorian, etc.) and keeping your opponent reacting to you. For a total of 7 stones (including upgrade), if she gets 3VP for you, she's more than justified hiring her. She needs something to be forward for PP, but that's not a problem between 3 stone Raptors, summoned Gamin, or the stupendously mobile Sandeep and Kudra.

If you decide to get one of the Showgirl Henchmen, they also provide their own utility and resilience that makes the whole chance of early death less likely. Cassandra can put your opponent on negatives to attack and Carlos is one of the tankiest non-constructs we have. Add in either one's mobility, and you have a model that can get anywhere on the board it wants to, even if the PP node dies. They have a lot of utility even outside of Showgirl-themed crews.

 

The real risk in using Practiced Production on Angelica is not her dying, but nothing being far enough forward and displaced from opposing models enough to get a scoring marker in place. Sandeep's summons are typically being used to keep your opponent busy, so you'll be relying on a hired Wind Gamin, hired Soulstone Miners, hired Molemen, or hired Malifaux Raptors to get into a distant enough location to make scoring something like Covert Breakthrough or Leave Your Mark more likely. If I'm playing into Sandeep with Angelica/PP/Raptor, I know that that Raptor needs to die and that I need to have something with decent threat standing by to dart in on wherever that Scheme Marker gets dropped so that I can be close enough to cancel it out. Unfortunately, that means something more expensive than 3 stones is being committed to trying to interfere with CB/LYM. If their PP node is more expensive, then the tradeoff is not as bad for me--especially since the non-Raptor options are considerably less mobile.
This is because she's a backfield support piece most of the time. The furthest up the board she gets (unless the game is really tilted) is about 6" off of the center if there's Show of Force, Extraction/Turf War, and similar reasons to get there. Otherwise, she doesn't need to be any further up than 10-11" from the board edge (6" deploy, 5" free walk at start of game), because her role in Turn 2+ is to get schemes down and stay alive. This means that she's not in position or otherwise capable of getting to the same areas her PP nodes would be in to pick up the slack if they're dead or tied up.

* For example: Carlos with PP and Stunt Double; scheme is Dig Their Graves; a friendly model is engaged with a model that I know Carlos can kill on the charge. Carlos activates, PP places a marker >3" from target, but <4" using that friendly model as the node. Carlos then (0)s to give himself another point of burning and a push to set up his charge. Charges in and kills the model, revealing Dig Their Graves and opponent discards that PP marker. In the following turn, pick another target within 14" of Carlos to repeat that trick on (4" push, 7" charge, 3" reach). My opponent gets no real opportunity to stop this from happening because it's essentially all within Carlos' activation.

[KingCrow]

@spooky_squirrel explained it perfectly.

For me, I almost always bring Carlos.  He is very tanky and unless my opponent can bypass armor, he will easily keep PP on the field.  Putting PP on Carlos allows my crew to be more efficient and frees up stones for me to bring in a Librarian which then allows for, essentially, more card draw.  But thats besides the point.  

If Dig the Graves was shortened to 3 inches, it would make PP almost completely irrelevant for that scheme as PP has to place the scheme marker more than 3 inches away from an enemy model.