Construct breakdown

[Ludvig]

I'm having trouble picking out damage dealers for my Hoffman crew. I haven't put anything on the table because of life happening.

The contenders and my (ill-informed) take on them are as follows:

Peacekeeper - Good in melee but slow as hell since you can't toss it and it has the lowest wk. Pseudo 3-4 ap once you have committed because of flurry and trail of gore but especially the latter might not come easy.

Langston - A huge fire magnet that is kind of squishy compared to the others. Access to trail of gore and doesn't need a marker if he is close to death. Can help by putting up concealment turn one if you're not in a rush to be anywhere.

Joss - Needs power tokens to do most of his stuff without getting the benefit others do. Short range but some interesting options for multi target damage if you get close. The free action will probably cost a soulstone per pop but extra ap is nice. Can be tossed with a guardian to get in there and crack some skulls. Ignoring reductions seems like it could be really handy against a lot of themes even if Hoffman can help a bit with armour. You might need to stone a lot to keep getting power tokens for your actions so he might end up costing a lot more stones.

Melissa - Cheaper than the others. Pretty much a 3-4ap model since she can charge and shoot as well as throw her shockwave, seems like she can work independently since she bring her own power generation. The ranged attack is fairly adaptable to multitarget or single target oomph if you burn the free power on a trigger but she'll need focus to make the most of it. Can be tossed up the board for a great turn one threat range.

Hunter - Cheap and pretty versatile but not a great damage dealer. Looks like the bread and butter option of the crew so I see myself taking these most of the time.

Guardian - Tossing people around the board helps with threat projection turn one. Very decent damage output if you are in the thick of it. I worry he will have trouble keeping up with the others though and he has no access to extra ap whatsoever.

[longfanz]

Just to point that SS prevention is also a reduction so Joss can ignore that. He can take down a master with a bit of setup.

[trikk]

1 hour ago, Ludvig said:

I'm having trouble picking out damage dealers for my Hoffman crew. I haven't put anything on the table because of life happening.

The contenders and my (ill-informed) take on them are as follows:

Peacekeeper - meh

Langston - meh

Joss - meh

Melissa - ok but Ryle is better

Hunter - good mid-cost model

Guardian - good high-cost model

 

[Ludvig]

I'm a bit wary of relying on Ryle. I suspect he will be a major argument for disallowing DMH. 

[Da Git]

2 hours ago, Ludvig said:

I'm a bit wary of relying on Ryle. I suspect he will be a major argument for disallowing DMH. 

I can't see why anyone would say Ryle and Melissa is broken when Fuhatsu and up to 3 samurai is a potential thing... 

Melissa's a great solo piece, as are Hunters. I'd be including 2-3 of the above in every list. A guardian is quality too. 

Something interesting to try could be Dashel in there to summon Wardens. 

[Ludvig]

@Da Git Haven't checked the TT out too closely. I heard a Lucius list where mimic was used to take Ryles shooting a bunch of times at higher stats and with no defensive cheating allowed just cleared the damn board in several games in one group. Maybe it's just people not adapting to ranged crews in the new edition. Edit: I had a look. Can confirm that samurai and Fuhatsu look extremely oppressive. I expect a lot of grief surrounding them in the future. 

The cards/stones Dashel would need for those summons and placing the markers to summon off might be less efficient than just taking the wardens in the first place. I'm not sure what the cheapest option is for dropping an enemy marker is but feeding your own models enemy markers for trail of gore would be super fun on principle as long as the model also offers something worthwhile apart from that. Might be one of those things that catches someone off guard once or twice early in the edition. 

[4thstringer]

I got really good results with Ryle, to the point that I don't think I will use him in casual game anymore.  The one time I used Joss I cheated (using the tokens for Plus flips) but he was hugely impactful for me.   If you can put him into your opponents master, your opponent will see that irreducible damage and really swarm on him.  That is when the fun starts, pulsing out duels left and right.  and if he dies with some tokens on him, all the better.   

The guardian is in a weird place for me.  Because of his toss, he has been one of my favorite models in M3e, and his protect is really valuable for keeping models upright.  But despite his huge damage potential, you have to be really careful of not leaving him behind due to toss and slow walk.  

Peacekeeper and Langston are both scary but not scary enough anymore.  I haven't used vent steam yet though, which might be a game changer into certain matchups.

I agree completely with you about melissa, but DMH is a thing.  We have serious disagreement in our meta about what DMH means (is it unbalanced, or just narratively out), but Ryle has convinced my primary opponent that they are OP.

[Gnomezilla]

I had to face Yan Lo with three samurai before I ever fielded Ryle. Yan Lo could pulse focus, at the time. Once I calmed back down, we agreed to focus (ha ha) on Yan Lo and revisit the Gatling gun quantity question later, if at all.

 

Hunters are mini-peacekeepers with much better survivability. GuildHoff will run into trouble later in the edition, but for now their retention of crit strike keeps them in the game.

Riotbreakers shoot, so they need to retain a power token to enable shooting, so if you want a Min3 threat gunline you need to give them an additional token to start. But they don’t need support after that (the shotgun damage track isn’t worth focus, in my eyes) so they are fire-and-forget once two tokens have been dispensed.

 

I am very fond of Vent Steam and making onslaught models cry/hurting nephilim without provoking black blood/doing things with Scatter which ought not to be done but nooo, some things had to not have resists, so I rate Howard Langston well for passive damage output & defense of the crew via concealment...but he is much safer in Arcanists.