Guild funds- do you like it? Dislike it?

[4thstringer]

@thewrathchilde said in another thread: "I really struggle with taking Guild Funds on Nellie and generally think that just another stone in the cache or a different upgrade might have been a better choice. In theory being able to Evidence farm one turn with 2-3 Scathing Reviews plus her pitch  card and the Evidence from the PP could give you the quick +2 soulstones which would potentially provide a lot of benefit throughout the game with either damage prevention, stoning for cards, re-flipping initiative, etc. Using Scathing Review would also possible force them to take Interacts the following turn giving you more Evidence then too but......this didn't see to work out for me though with only 1 x game maybe I should reserve judgement and try it a few more times. Instead my limited experience leads me to believe that you just don't have time or a free turn to do this as even on turn 1 I felt she needed to Incite and spam out Fast w/Assignments People. Maybe if I had played a much more passive and defensive game it would have worked out for me but I just didn't get a chance to use it and there wasn't a single turn where I had more than two Evidence and never had more than 1 left (If that) at the end of the turn- maybe different schemes forcing the opponent to Interact would have changed this. "

I've been sold on guild funds since the errata bumped up three of my standard takes for Nellie.   I have been messing with a card draw engine with guild funds and alternative facts, but I'm not sold on that configuration, it's really costly to lose misleading headlines or delegation.  

Outside of that, guild funds has been a way to usually net a soul stone first turn, and make people a little more hesitant to attack Nellie.  They already don't that often tbh, so I don't think I'm going that much.  I do get the heal occasionally mid game, which is nice.  It doesn't lead to me using scathing review more, because propaganda is so good.  

 

[lusciousmccabe]

I haven't used her a huge amount or with the latest wave of models/cards but I had a similar feeling about guild funds.

Spending evidence with Nellie is a really good way to get AP advantage over your opponent with pushes, slow, extra attacks etc. It nearly equates to 1 evidence equalling 1 AP if you have the triggers/effects you want available. Stockpiling evidence plays against this, so I've found it's not necessarily bad, but you're losing out on the benefits of spending evidence that come built in on her card.

You can build a crew to make it work better, but again there's an opportunity cost there. So I think it is a fun upgrade that is totally usable, but more for variety than efficiency. Nellie is just really good as is.

[thewrathchilde]

14 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

 

I've been sold on guild funds since the errata bumped up three of my standard takes for Nellie.   I have been messing with a card draw engine with guild funds and alternative facts, but I'm not sold on that configuration, it's really costly to lose misleading headlines or delegation.  

Outside of that, guild funds has been a way to usually net a soul stone first turn, and make people a little more hesitant to attack Nellie.  They already don't that often tbh, so I don't think I'm going that much.  I do get the heal occasionally mid game, which is nice.  It doesn't lead to me using scathing review more, because propaganda is so good.  

 

So how have you been running it to get the additional Evidence first turn to get the Stones? 

 

When I look at Nellie and evaluate my choices overall for her upgrade slots Delegation and Misleading Headlines seem like mandatory takes to me- without belaboring the point being able to hand out Fast to my other models and being able to pass activations seem essential to the common ways of using her competitively. Incite can be a really good option and a little bit of a bonus as well giving you another tool for controlling activations. The third slot is where there are some choices or flexibility. One option is not to take a third upgrade though there seems to be a number of good choices that vary based on your approach and crew composition. Guild Funds seems so set a that spot where you can't afford Editor-In Chief or Badge of Office and aren't taking any mercenaries where Embedded might be the choice over just paying the Mercenary tax. 

When I look at Guild Funds I see Pros and Cons to it:

Pros- these are obvious right off the card but also have some other secondary benefits as well(1) the Df/WP trigger as a way to get more Evidence, (2) getting credit for Condition kills for Strat/Schemes, (3) The end of turn bonuses for having Evidence remaining- healing on a model, HtK on a model until after its next activation, and +2 SS. The DF/WP trigger also just discourages your opponent from attacking her making her a little more survivable but of course then you aren't getting any additional Evidence from it either. I am even less enamored with the credit for condition kills; while it sounds cool in theory there just aren't that many things I think I will play in a Nellie crew that are putting damaging conditions on enemy models. Sure there is "Hot Off the Presses" but generally I think I am probably more apt to use Propaganda or Assignments, People with her much more frequently and if I am trying to get kills to score a strategy or scheme I think most of the time I am better off just beating on something with Phiona, Frank, the Peacekeeper, or Executioner rather than applying burning which can be put out.......

The third thing I listed, the end of turn bonus, is the main thing that I like about Guild Funds: the potential for getting extra stones which can be useful for so many things or being able to heal a model back above HtK (or heal in general), and of course just the idea of a Peacekeeper or Executioner with Hard to Kill sounds so awesome. In practice though unless the strategy and schemes are forcing your opponent to take a bunch of interacts close enough to Nellie to give her lots of free Evidence, then unless you are casting Scathing Review then you often only have a couple or a few Evidence each turn. Then if you have it at the end of the turn it means that you weren't able to use it to ether pass activations, get additional triggers for Propaganda (because Slow + a 5" push is pretty good), or getting the Sabbatical trigger on Assignments, People to heal your Fast beater and make sure it is ready to go live the dream. Granted, there is the chance that you used your Evidence to pass activations if needed, get the triggers you needed at the right time and then your opponent just took a lot of Interacts close enough to stack your Evidence back up for the end of turn bonus but the odds are likely against this happening.

Of course if it works and if you have Evidence then it could be useful- getting the +2 SS once more than pays for the upgrade and later in the game getting the heals or HtKs might make the difference in a key area but it isn't dependable or reliable unless you are willing to settle for the 2 Evidence Heal and not use your Evidence for other purposes. I don't think that is a good trade-off. It might be worth it situationally but generally I think you are going to get more mileage out of its other uses. In my game yesterday I even looked for that key turn where I didn't need Propaganda or Assignments and was willing to look at Scathing Review as a source of additional Evidence to let me get a couple of stones but there was never a turn I could forgo casting Propaganda or Assignments to cast Scathing Review. Obviously if you have some other means of Evidence farming- attacking her with a bunch of low damage attacks that she can fail and gain Evidence, etc- then maybe its worth it but in a normal game and setup I just don't see how you can reliably gain enough Evidence to use it for the things you need to and still have enough left to get stones or other benefits at the end of the turn. 

Cons- I already covered a number of the cons above in the discussion of the pros..... but here are how I see the cons: (1) primarily if i want half the benefits of Guild Funds there are other things that may do it better, (2) I am forgoing other upgrades that may provide more for me, and (3) even though I already covered it, getting effectiveness out of Guild Funds requires me to forgo some of the best benefits of having Evidence. 

So when I look at these a little closer the primary benefits of Guild Funds for me are the heal/stones and DF/WP trigger to gain more Evidence. I already discussed above the double edge sword of the DF/WP trigger and that it wasn't likely to generate much Evidence (IMO) anyway. Then when I look at how it possibly makes her more survivable by discouraging attacks I think I could just get the same or better benefit out of taking Badge of Office (yes I know it costs more). When I look at the heal/stones, in most cases I am pretty sure I could more reliably get an extra stone by just not taking Guild Funds and saving +1 stone at the start than I am likely to get the Evidence to get extra stones throughout the game. Taking this approach also lets me spend my Evidence when needed rather than holding it to try to get a bonus at the end of turn. With the heal ability it takes 2 x Evidence to heal 2 WD on a single model at the end of turn. With the same 2 x Evidence I could instead just trigger Sabbatical twice and heal 2 WD on two different models that I am making Fast anyway. If I don't need to heal two models then I could heal one and save the other Evidence to push a model away with Run From the Truth or get triggers on Propaganda. Alternately if I want heals then as long as I take schemes that can let me get the early jump in VP I can get more heals out of Editor-In Chief's Headlines ability and also get + flips to WP duels. 

This also ties into my second con of forgoing other schemes- there are a lot of occasions where I can see getting mileage out of Editor-In Chief, Alternate Facts, or Embedded. As I said initially I think that (IMO) Delegation and Misleading Headlines are mandatory choices so anytime I am taking even 1 x mercenary Embedded becomes a viable choice. If you have 1 x mercenary then you break even on cost plus get the extra triggers to Hot Off the Presses which cam then let you do some tricks with your own models to get to key positions or give Nellie more movement while moving an enemy model out of position. Granted these triggers aren't game breaking and I am not arguing that Embedded is an awesome choice for these triggers but rather pointing out that they do give you some additional benefits and you get them for "free" considering you would have paid the stone for the upgrade on the mercenary anyway if you didn't take Embedded. If you aren't taking mercenaries then in the right strategy/scheme pool Alternate Facts can potentially let you stack double the amount of Evidence from enemy actions and gives you another great (0) that even using for 1-2 cards a turn is significantly increasing your hand size giving you more cards, more opportunities to get good cards, or more cards you can pitch for things like passing activations. 

Lastly, as I mentioned in my 3rd point and echoed throughout the discussion, generally I just think the Evidence is much more valuable being used for other things than just giving me 1 x heal at the end of the turn.......

 

This was longer than I expected and once again it was a post typed in sections while prepping for and having dinner so probably makes absolutely so sense whatsoever.....but whatever I am going to hit "Submit Reply" anyway and then just try to undo the damage tomorrow when everyone has pointed out the errors 🙂 

[thewrathchilde]

Thoughts? Any other options or discussion? Any counterpoints where I am off base?

[4thstringer]

7 hours ago, thewrathchilde said:

Thoughts? Any other options or discussion? Any counterpoints where I am off base?

I think in large part you nailed it.  A couple points I would make:

1. I use a watcher, a domador, or sometimes both to build evidence first turn.  Depending on my crew I'll also hit her with the printing press (bonus points to put out schemes markers with transparency) and then remove it with jury.

2. I haven't really used editor in Chief that much.    I don't find the heal helps that much, and the additional stone cost for frantic editing is just hard to justify.

3.  I've gotten some good card draw out of the alternative facts upgrade with, but I think you are right that misleading headlines and delegation are hard to replace.  I haven't experimented with the threesome of delegation, alternative facts and misleading headlines.  I think if I ran that I would have to try it with a bunch of use of scathing review focus.  I'm thinking if turn 1 I gave out a bunch of fast.  And draw some free cards with evidence to have a good hand turn 2.  Turn 2 dropping scathing review and then drawing a bunch more cards, before charging in the 8ss henchman brigade to cause some harm.  Might be worth doing.  Hard to imagine it hitting better than propaganda though.

 4. Am I the only one that thinks the heal is 100x better than the htk until that model activates?  

 

[Baratta]

I play Nellie a lot and I like it. I take 3 HTK models so its very useful to keep 2 evidence to heal one of them when they are at 1 wound.

[thewrathchilde]

18 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

1. I use a watcher, a domador, or sometimes both to build evidence first turn.  Depending on my crew I'll also hit her with the printing press (bonus points to put out schemes markers with transparency) and then remove it with jury.

I can see how that could potentially give you more evidence first turn. Are you cheating down with her or going Defensive to make sure they hit? The Watcher is kind of an interesting option as you probably aren't usually doing any/much damage. I could see getting the benefit out of the Domador as well as long us you have the Jury to get rid of the Paralyze or if you have the the Jury to get rid of the Paralyze. The down side is that to make it (evidence farming work) you have to tailor your crew to support this approach you can't just take Guild Funds and then smack Nellie around with Phiona and the Peacekeeper and expect it to work.

No offense intended but it seems kind of gimmicky and forces you to take suboptimal choices in other areas of your list. 

18 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

2. I haven't really used editor in Chief that much.    I don't find the heal helps that much, and the additional stone cost for frantic editing is just hard to justify.

I haven't tried it at all but in theory it seems like it could be pretty useful. If you take the right schemes so you can get the lead early then getting healing on every model turn after turn  could be really good. With multiple models with hard to kill and armor healing each turn I would think this would significantly add to the resiliency of the crew......granted I haven't actually tried it. 2 SS is a pretty tough sell compared to some of the other choices. I could see getting mileage out of the other benefit of it too for when the schemes go terribly wrong but generally it probably isn't worth the 2SS. I might try it sometime just to see how much benefit i could get out of the heal. 

18 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

 4. Am I the only one that thinks the heal is 100x better than the htk until that model activates?  

only if you already have wounded models....if everyone is either full health or dead then you can't get any benefit out of the heal whereas the HtK might just be a deterrent to prevent them from attacking a key model or might be the difference in a model surviving or not. Later in a game (turn 3-4) the heal might be even more valuable but generally that is when getting the multiple triggers on Propaganda might be even more critical than the heal though I guess you could evaluate what is more important at the time and then either use or save your evidence accordingly. 

1 hour ago, Baratta said:

I play Nellie a lot and I like it. I take 3 HTK models so its very useful to keep 2 evidence to heal one of them when they are at 1 wound.

yeah, I can see it but with Editor you are potentially healing all of your models and getting the same benefit without having to hold onto your evidence. 

[4thstringer]

43 minutes ago, thewrathchilde said:

I can see how that could potentially give you more evidence first turn. Are you cheating down with her or going Defensive to make sure they hit? The Watcher is kind of an interesting option as you probably aren't usually doing any/much damage. I could see getting the benefit out of the Domador as well as long us you have the Jury to get rid of the Paralyze or if you have the the Jury to get rid of the Paralyze. The down side is that to make it (evidence farming work) you have to tailor your crew to support this approach you can't just take Guild Funds and then smack Nellie around with Phiona and the Peacekeeper and expect it to work.

No, use the Domadors ranged attack.   That way you can heal her.  And I will cheat down if I have the low cards.

43 minutes ago, thewrathchilde said:

No offense intended but it seems kind of gimmicky and forces you to take suboptimal choices in other areas of your list. 

Absolutely true, but that is also largely my style of play.  If you just want the evidence to get some stones, a watcher can do its scheme running work on later turns pretty easily still.

43 minutes ago, thewrathchilde said:

I haven't tried it at all but in theory it seems like it could be pretty useful. If you take the right schemes so you can get the lead early then getting healing on every model turn after turn  could be really good. With multiple models with hard to kill and armor healing each turn I would think this would significantly add to the resiliency of the crew......granted I haven't actually tried it. 2 SS is a pretty tough sell compared to some of the other choices. I could see getting mileage out of the other benefit of it too for when the schemes go terribly wrong but generally it probably isn't worth the 2SS. I might try it sometime just to see how much benefit i could get out of the heal. 

only if you already have wounded models....if everyone is either full health or dead then you can't get any benefit out of the heal whereas the HtK might just be a deterrent to prevent them from attacking a key model or might be the difference in a model surviving or not. Later in a game (turn 3-4) the heal might be even more valuable but generally that is when getting the multiple triggers on Propaganda might be even more critical than the heal though I guess you could evaluate what is more important at the time and then either use or save your evidence accordingly. 

I almost never save evidence for later guild funds buffs.  After first turn if I get any of those it is a bonus.  Even if I wasn't using them for propaganda, the run from the truth push is still better than most of those buffs in my experience.

 

[admiralvorkraft]

My partner plays Nellie religiously and the df trigger to build evidence is a staple. 

Sidenote, I find it a weird criticism to say, "well sure that works, but only if you build for it," because like, yes, (0) Welcome to Malifaux. It's a game of gimmics much of the time. Sure it's a valid critique if I say, "this Gremlin crew draws the entire deck into hand," because yes, that's all it does. But hiring a watcher and spending its first activation generating evidence isn't much of an opportunity cost.

Admittedly, being able to claim condition kills was significantly more useful in gg2017.

[thewrathchilde]

5 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Sidenote, I find it a weird criticism to say, "well sure that works, but only if you build for it," because like, yes, (0) Welcome to Malifaux. It's a game of gimmics much of the time. Sure it's a valid critique if I say, "this Gremlin crew draws the entire deck into hand," because yes, that's all it does. But hiring a watcher and spending its first activation generating evidence isn't much of an opportunity cost.

it ties into the later comment I made that (IMO) to capitalize off of it you are forced to make suboptimal choices in your list design and play. In the example above @4thstringer is playing with a Watcher, Domador, and the Jury and all of these are basically spending first turn to get you a net gain of 1 x SS. Sure the rest of the game they can do other things.....but you still have a Watcher, Domador, and the Jury in your list instead of Frank and a Peacekeeper or some other combination of models for the equivalent points that are going to (IMO) have a much greater affect on the game. 

List design is a matter of personal preference but typically I see Watchers taken more frequently in something like Sonnia and don't see them providing that much value in a Nellie list (at least in my Nellie list). Typically if I need scheme runners I can get the job done with Guild Guard for cheaper and they come with a better attack and more wounds..... and if you run them in pairs they have better defense too. 

Sure, everything in Malifaux is about how you build and the synergy between pieces in your crew but when I have to build a crew with 2-3 models I wouldn't other wise take and then spend 20% of their maximum potential game time to do something that is simply "cute" and doesn't provide a significant advantage then the tradeoff isn't worth the reward. I just have trouble with 30% of my crew spending 20% of their total time doing nothing that is helping me either score the strategy & schemes or helping me eliminate my opponents models and prevent them from scoring in return. 

 

As far as your partner goes....how is the trigger benefiting him/her so greatly? Is Nellie being extended where she is being directly attacked by the opponent and he is getting evidence while Nellie is being beat on? Is Nellie farming evidence with something similar to what 4thstringer outlined above where a bunch of his own models with low/do damage attacks are attacking her? 

[admiralvorkraft]

The benefit is partially just getting soulstones turn 1 (when it's easy) but later in the game those stacks of evidence fuel a lot - Propaganda obviously, but also Nellie's aura, passing activations, etc. They tend to play Nellie quite far forward to maximize her offensive control and so the additional evidence does help keep her in the fight.

As for evidence generation; you get one for activating, one from the Printing Press, and two from the Watcher's attacks. That's generally more than enough. You're right, I don't know that it's worth messing around with the Domador or Jury to generate more than that.

Granted, I also don't think it's worth taking the three-beater build that seems to be so popular but maybe I'm just a contrarian.

[AK1979]

 

Took Guild funds  in my last game and I only got 2 soulstones on turn 1 but the watchers gave me enough evidence to make sure I got all the fun triggers , push model , make slow and let someone hit .

So it's not always about the soulstones , but also about the easy way to get evidence in the next turns.