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Sandeep Desai and a terrible time


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I have always viewed Sandeep as a toolbox master. he does a little summoning, but not much. He does a little buffing (often through things like placement effects and the upgrades on his summoned models, but also his action lending). 

His attacks are solid but not strong for a master. His Defence is reasonable, largely because he has multiple defences, but not insurmountable. 

He has a lot of choices to make, and one of the biggest problems facing him, is realising how many choices the arcanist player has, and trying to plan for all of them. He has no obvious weaknesses, but also no one area where he is the best master (Ramos summons more, and can buff in similar amounts, Colette can generate more extra AP, and do more pushing, Marcus can do more damage or can be a much better tank for example. ) 

He is certainly a very strong master,  and one which you need a solid understanding of to really plan against. He isn't unbeatable, and I don't think that he is top of the arcanist curve, although he certainly is close. 

But I am confused by any argument that claims Collodi and Pandora are unable to control the board. I always viewed them as two of the better board control masters if you want to play them as board control.

 

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On 29/08/2017 at 9:55 AM, Hot4Perdita said:

I have yet to play against Sandeep, so I might change my opinion when I do, but after looking at his card, he doesn't seem any more powerful than other masters. Matter of fact, he looks like an Arcanist version of Seamus, and doesn't even look as strong as him. Seamus, like Sandeep, has 12 wds and impossible to wound, and can summon (though Sandeep's card on the website does not show a summon. An upgrade perhaps?). Sandeep has a place Action, which has much less range than Seamus' Back Door relocate Action, so it would be in line with other Master's push actions. Also, Sandeep's attacks have a weaker stat of 6, while most Masters have a 7. 

To me, I would see his Beacon ability as a strength, though it will be hard to win a duel with it at Ca 5 unless you are targeting a weak model. His Student of All ability looks nice, but at once a turn, it equates to Fast, which is common in the game. 

He looks like a decent master, but not the most powerful by any means. I've been obliterated by Wong and the Victoria's. I'd be more apt to complain about them than Sandeep.

I'm not sure I follow the Seamus-Sandeep comparison. Until very recently, all Seamus did for his crew was shoot. He'd focus, teleport, then shoot a model. And that shot could be amazing, but it is only one shot. He had no buffs or heals for his crew, no way to reposition his crew, and was ineffectual if your opponent is in Melee with other models of yours, or hiding in cover. He rarely gets to summon anything because he is often forced to use a (0) to just to let his teleport work (and also because he needs all the decent cards to make his attacks stick). Sandeep on the other hand, shoots, hits, summons, buffs, heals and repositions himself and his crew, all relatively well, when you need it, and then lets his crew do it as well. 

I suspect Seamus' new upgrades has changed a lot. Regardless of his build though, I think that Seamus will almost always feel like the wrong master to pick if he's not using his .50 Flintlock every turn, usually with Focus, which to me means that he's still very one dimensional when compared with Sandeep. Seamus shoots, and Sandeep does everything.

It makes perfect sense that you complain about Wong and the Victorias. You've actually played against them, whereas you haven't played against Sandeep. His relative strength will only become genuinely apparent when you're on the other end of the table facing off against him. 

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4 hours ago, hydranixx said:

I'm not sure I follow the Seamus-Sandeep comparison.

After reading his card, both Seamus and Sandeep have 12 wds and Impossible to Wound.  Both can summon. Both have an action to where they can reposition. Those are the similarities I noticed.

4 hours ago, hydranixx said:

Until very recently, all Seamus did for his crew was shoot.

Not true, after the belles lured me into his aura, I'd fail WP duels  due to his upgrade of -2 WP. Then, when you fail a WP duel, he heals 2. So, he does have healing ability as well, not to mention his hat trick to deny your red joker damage flip. He's way more than just a shooter.

4 hours ago, hydranixx said:

It makes perfect sense that you complain about Wong and the Victorias.

No complaining about them, just said IF I were to complain, it would be something like them who are way strong. I do not hope for those models to change, I look forward to devising a crew or way to beat them.

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Seamus actually has a very good tanky build that I would consider stronger than his shooting build.  It relies on people failing their duels to heal him and he can do a decent amount of damage all while tying models up.  I'd honestly play vs the shooter Seamus rather than the melee Seamus.  

Back to Sandeep -  It seems to me that most people are used to playing against masters that play a certain way that can be reliably countered or played against.  Sandeep is able to subvert this type of thinking/playing by giving many options to not only himself, but to his whole crew.  While it is hard to counter this type of playstyle, it is not impossible.  As an avid Sandeep player myself, I've had lots of discussions with friends about how to defeat Sandeep.  The best answer we've come up with is using high damage attacks (Gremlins with their dumb luck trigger hit really hard) or better yet, attacking his resources.  There have been many turns where I wanted to do something for an easy VP but could not because I didn't have a good hand or resources to make it happen.  He is good because he has so many options but does not necessarily excel at anything while making his crew better. He is the ideal generalist master.  

Also, I have found that Sue can be a good counter to Sandeep with his minimum damage 3 and his aura to give negatives to casting targeting those around him.  (This also makes him the perfect counter vs Reva)

If there was one thing I would say that makes him OP is the fact that you basically give 3 AP to a model once a turn by letting them use Sandeep's zero action to interact.  Almost everything else that he does requires a suit.

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1 hour ago, KingCrow said:

If there was one thing I would say that makes him OP is the fact that you basically give 3 AP to a model once a turn by letting them use Sandeep's zero action to interact.  Almost everything else that he does requires a suit.

That's what you think makes him feel broken? Colette lets every minion or showgirl in 8 inches do that with no flip. The 0 interact from Sandeep takes at least a 6 to work.

 

1 hour ago, KingCrow said:

.  The best answer we've come up with is using high damage attacks (Gremlins with their dumb luck trigger hit really hard) or better yet, attacking his resources.  There have been many turns where I wanted to do something for an easy VP but could not because I didn't have a good hand or resources to make it happen.  

 
Sandeep can burn through some cards and stones. Pretty much everything cool he can do is going to require a specific suit to get off and Arcane Storm is the only ability he has with a built-in suit. His extra AP requires a discard and he can only do that if one of his borrowed actions is successful and has a tome in the duel total.
 

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Colette does indeed let them do it yes, but Sandeep gives them a trigger to either push and perform the interact or do it while engaged.  So this makes a huge difference for schemes such as Dig Their Graves and others like it. 

As a side note, in regards to burning through stones and cards, I recently brought Amina along with Sandeep and they make a beautiful pairing.  I had Sandeep taking damage to draw cards while Amina was doing her thing to put people at negatives to hit and also getting soulstones back.  Even though Sandeep was so low on health, he wasn't getting hit.  I can imagine seeing these two a lot at future tournaments.

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29 minutes ago, KingCrow said:

As a side note, in regards to burning through stones and cards, I recently brought Amina along with Sandeep and they make a beautiful pairing.  I had Sandeep taking damage to draw cards while Amina was doing her thing to put people at negatives to hit and also getting soulstones back.  Even though Sandeep was so low on health, he wasn't getting hit.  I can imagine seeing these two a lot at future tournaments.

I've been proxying her since Wave 4 hit because of her various interactions. Now that she's available with official card/model for those of us who jumped on the GenCon sales, she'll show up more often in general. Once her official release date hits there will likely be more discussion of what she does well and how to deal with facing her (as well as what tricks to look out for).

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12 minutes ago, spooky_squirrel said:

I've been proxying her since Wave 4 hit because of her various interactions. Now that she's available with official card/model for those of us who jumped on the GenCon sales, she'll show up more often in general. Once her official release date hits there will likely be more discussion of what she does well and how to deal with facing her (as well as what tricks to look out for).

One of the guys in my area just picked her up at GenCon and I can already tell Amina will be the number one target when I play against him.  She provides an incredible amount of utility.  And if she's still around, it's going to make anything I want to do more difficult.  I have a feeling he's not going to make that easy for me though :mellow:

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46 minutes ago, skoatz said:

One of the guys in my area just picked her up at GenCon and I can already tell Amina will be the number one target when I play against him.  She provides an incredible amount of utility.  And if she's still around, it's going to make anything I want to do more difficult.  I have a feeling he's not going to make that easy for me though :mellow:

That's one of the major things going for her: she's a toolbox Henchman. She might dial the flexibility up a little too much within Sandeep, and that could cost you against a crew that's more focused on completing the schemes/strategy.
Which segues neatly back to the OP: Sandeep is very flexible and good enough across the board to have no obvious weaknesses. Attacking his resources slows him down, but it's possible that one of the problems is rooted in his starting with a cache of 4 (maybe it should be lower due to his extreme flexibility?). If you can strip his cards and soulstones, you can keep him from getting stuff done on his own terms.

Look at his hires and the game scenario (strat/schemes/deployment) and try to work out how Sandeep might try to complete the scenario. This is the part that makes facing him tricky, but playing him is also tricky. He has so many options and tools that it is easy to end up in analysis paralysis, and in competitive games (with time limits) this can lead to mistakes being made by the Sandeep player. As an example: when I was first learning him, I would summon when I needed to do something else or copy via Beacon an ability just because I could, rather than because I should. That Fire Gamin with the Commands Earth upgrade is an interesting turret, but it's not going to move me towards completing the scenario and scoring VP.
Attacking resources: if I'm burning soul stones trying to keep my Henchman or Sandeep alive, I'm not using them to get suits. If I'm using soul stones to get suits or overcome negatives, I don't have them for damage prevention. If I don't have cards in hand for my casts, I have to rely on top-decking it. As others have pointed out, all of his tools require cards (sometimes specific cards) to go off. Extra actions or effects require discarding. Getting one of the (0) actions to go off requires cheating a specific card for both TN and suit, and whether it's Sandeep or a member of his crew using Beacon, you only get one chance to get that (0) off.
If I have no hand, I'm dead in the water. Some Sandeep players might counter this with having Myranda+Imbued Energies; they're counting on card cycling through the first turn and getting a huge leg up early on with activation and positioning advantage. This works well in GG17, but he's not the only one who can bully position on the board.

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