Some thoughts/tips on Dreamer...

[Maniacal_cackle]

UPDATE: I've written a followup post which you can see here.

Having a few games under my belt, I thought I'd share some of the my thoughts on the Dreamer. Would love to hear others' thoughts as well!

Crew building

Lucid dreams spam is what initially drew me to the crew and is what everyone talks about, but honestly it seems overrated in many games. In another thread, @solkan gives a great breakdown of the math as to why it can be a bit of a boost but nothing crazy. But I think it also worth drawing attention to the 'opportunity cost' of lucid dream spam: if you're filling your crew with minions that can lucid dream, you're not leaving much room for everything else! Almost every henchman/enforcer is solid in a nightmare crew (haven't tried Carver), and you can't fit that many of them if you're spamming lucid dreams. Most of these have very powerful abilities (sometimes not even needing to flip a card to do them), and losing out on those abilities is not worth boosting your deck a bit.

Similarly, I find two daydreams to be a good number if I'm tight on stones. I like a cache of about 8, and often find I'm down to about 5 stones, dropping the third daydream is a good way to get that up. You can always summon it later. Stitched together are also neat, but you can just summon them later and you don't really need the full three. With all the minions, I am starting to feel that they're more of a summoned tool during the game than necessarily for crew building.

My current "core" list is to take 3-4 henchmen/enforcers that seem appropriate for the scenario, and then fill in with a small number of minions and leave about 8 stones for cache. Maybe I'll try lucid dream spam in reckoning, but I think the core of the more powerful models just seems like the way to go.

Which brings us to...

Summoning

You can do up to two summons a turn if you have Widow Weaver, and can summon multiple models. Summoning is a fantastic tool, but like all tools, you use the right one for the job. Sometimes you want to summon a stitched together, but sometimes an alp + a day dream is the best use of the cards in your hand. In my experience, I generally summon the highest value model(s) I can, but I will use the lower card if I'm holding a 9 of masks and some high cards for instance. I might summon a stitched over an insidious madness if lucid dreaming has gone wrong and I have high cards I need to filter back in ASAP.

Summoning is fairly intuitive except for one issue, I find. Using the right tool for the job sometimes means NOT summoning at all. Sometimes you want to move the Dreamer ten inches and use his ranged attack for the trigger (more on that later).

Also don't use summoning as a crutch (as I did in my first few games). You need a strong, winning strategy right from the start of the game. Summoning can then augment and support this. I try to be in a position where I'm doing pretty well if they deny my summon, and doing fantastically if I manage to summon the minion where I want.

Positioning notes.

The crew has powerful positioning abilities, but require pretty precise setup. A typical deployment and first turn for me looks like:

• Set up as many models within 4" of the Dreamer as possible for his 2" push (but note it is only 2", so it is not worth going out of your way to set it up).
• Make sure you're not blocking LOS to your own models for the Dreamer's pulse! Cheat the pulse if necessary to win it on the first turn. It can easily give you 10"+ of movement over your crew.
• Next, use Coppelius' frightening reminder to get someone moving along, then start Coppelius on his way.
• Daydreams have to balance between using lead nightmare to get stuff in position this turn, and using the walk action to lead nightmare in future turns.
• Bandersnatch and Widow Weaver web shenanigans: absolutely insane.

Honestly, if you're using Bandersnatch and Widow Weaver, every turn of the game you should be carefully considering what your web marker options are, how you can grow those options, and how your opponent can disrupt them. Drop your markers as far away from enemies as possible so they have to work to destroy them. If left undisrupted, their movement shenanigans will win games.

Also note the models with a two inch engagement range. Abuse this constantly. Even if you're not landing your attacks, the 2" engagement range puts models with 1" range in a terrible position. They either have to disengage, which is awkward, or move forward and attack you. Either way, you're costing them actions to do what they want. Abuse the crap out of 2" engagement range.

Also worth noting that this crew is EXTREMELY resource-intensive, especially when summoning and in the first few turns. Your key way of surviving is your positioning advantages. Don't let the opponent land a single attack that you could have avoided with better positioning. You don't have the cards to spare to cheat to stop them from hitting you. Make your opponent work for every drop of nightmare... Blood? Goo? What do figments of the imagination leak when wounded?

Anyway, on to...

Noteworthy abilities and triggers

Honestly there's so much to say here, but wanted to give a shout out to a few MVPs/note some key suits.

Terrorize is absolutely nuts. Somehow I didn't realise how good it is when reading the cards. An enemy has to use an entire action walking back to where they were, and it helps secure territory (like claim jump or turf war markers). And since it is a willpower duel, it drops a summon into base contact after the push, just bogging down your opponent. And if you have a tomes trigger on Widow Weaver doing it, you get to drop a web marker, hitting them with severe terrain and giving yourself more teleport options!

Speaking of tomes, Serena Bowman can also reposition enemies with Tomes. These two triggers seem like the most important tomes triggers for the crew, as they just give you a huge positioning advantage against others.

For masks, summoning is obviously king. You've got both your summons requiring a mask. But also don't forget the Nightstalker trigger for the Dreamer. Sometimes repositioning Lord Chompy Bits by teleporting him across the battlefield is more important than a summon (thus, sometimes you will be moving the Dreamer ten inches and trying to land your LCB teleport instead of summoning). Coppelius also has a powerful scheming ability on masks, shifting sands, allowing you to convert all enemy scheme markers to friendly ones. Occasionally you may also want to use spare masks for Teddy's bowled over, particularly for Take Prisoner (this last tip courtesy of Third Floor Wars podcast on the Dreamer I recently listened to)! But the nice thing about Teddy is he is strong without triggers.

On rams, you have a few useful abilities, and especially worth noting the 'tear off a chunk' to heal 2 on some key models like Teddy and Lord Chompy. Even if your damage ends up being at a few minuses to flip, if you're on a rams trigger you don't care as you got your heal.

Crows, I'm not certain about, but the Bandersnatch being able to use false suspicion to get enemies to attack each other seems promising... But the setup required is pretty huge, so I am not sure I'd save cards for it. Both Teddy and Coppelius have nice crows triggers, but they have it on the stat already. I think crows is the most expendable suit, unless someone else has suggestions?

Overall, these powerful effects are worth setting up for, and you can see why the crew is so soulstone/card heavy. I use heaps of stones on the Widow Weaver and Dreamer, and I'm still struggling to get all the suits I want for key abilities.

And I suppose we really can't miss mentioning Lord Chompy Bits' bonus action, Trail of Gore. This is the crew's most efficient way of removing scheme markers, and is absolutely critical. Really plan your positioning of Lord Chompy Bits around possible scheme denial (even if that is just having Dreamer in position to teleport him if your opponent suddenly goes for a scheme you weren't expecting). The crew struggles with the interact action, and if you're not abusing Trail of Gore on scheme-marker-heavy matchups, you're going to feel it.

That's all for now!

Well, those are my thoughts for now! Have read tons of helpful advice here on the forum, so thought I'd share this in the hopes it is helpful for other Dreamer players. Would love to hear if people have further thoughts, I'm sure I still have lots to improve on!

[Wyamphri]

I've tried candy in a dreamer list,  and having teddy/chompy being fast is pretty fun. Plus her main attack at a 10 range is pretty good, especially as a wp duel.

[Maniacal_cackle]

47 minutes ago, Wyamphri said:

I've tried candy in a dreamer list,  and having teddy/chompy being fast is pretty fun. Plus her main attack at a 10 range is pretty good, especially as a wp duel.

Nice tip! I was thinking of grabbing Pandora next anyway!

[Wyamphri]

It's where I started in neverborn 😛 dreamer and pandora are very fun crews in 3e

[J4bberw0ck]

As someone who is jumping into Neverborn for 3e with Dreamer, this is super helpful. Thank you!

[Ogid]

Thank you so much for taking the time to elaborate. After choosing The Dreamer as my first master this will come in handy 😁

I've 0 games under my belt (lol), so what follows is theorycrafting; but I have seen some potential combos that would be worth consider in the right games:

• Wicked Dolls + Teddy Consume = 1 scrap marker in the first turn, you can use that to summon an styched with Vasilisa/WW; 2 or 3 Wicked Dolls + Teddy could be nice to give the Bear an extra way to refill his HP bar while giving you resources to summon more nightmares.
  • Puppet Heavy: add a Vasilisa to that 3 Wicked Dolls + Teddy and focus in summoning Sticheds for a really obnoxious team.
• Placed Effects: Teddy, Dreamer and Hooded Rider have effect that let you "place" models; those can be used to get extra Alphs attacks.
• OOK: There could be some niche but potentialy useful strats to surprise your opponents waiting for an standard Nightmare creed, 2 of my favourite:
  • Double Nephilim: Add 2 Black Blood Shaman with the Ancient Path upgrade, 1 action to attack each other (cheat to get Masks if needed as you will get a card), free to consume, second action to advance. This would give most of your creed Focused 2 and you'll get 2 Mature Nephs in turn 2; being Minions mean you'd also get 2 extra cards per turn. Useful when you need to play passive (playing versus creeds very powerful early) and need to outscale an oponnent (combine this with mass summoning with The Dreamer + WW)
  • Pandora + Poltergeist: To counter a lot of Ruthless coming your way (Weeping Widow), plus Pandora have Terrifying 13 (!), and can generate a lot of Wp duels to help The Dreamer to manifest the summons.

[Hawkoon]

1 hour ago, Ogid said:

Thank you so much for taking the time to elaborate. After choosing The Dreamer as my first master this will come in handy 😁

I've 0 games under my belt (lol), so what follows is theorycrafting; but I have seen some potential combos that would be worth consider in the right games:

• Wicked Dolls + Teddy Consume = 1 scrap marker in the first turn, you can use that to summon an styched with Vasilisa/WW; 2 or 3 Wicked Dolls + Teddy could be nice to give the Bear an extra way to refill his HP bar while giving you resources to summon more nightmares.
  • Puppet Heavy: add a Vasilisa to that 3 Wicked Dolls + Teddy and focus in summoning Sticheds for a really obnoxious team.
• Placed Effects: Teddy, Dreamer and Hooded Rider have effect that let you "place" models; those can be used to get extra Alphs attacks.
• OOK: There could be some niche but potentialy useful strats to surprise your opponents waiting for an standard Nightmare creed, 2 of my favourite:
  • Double Nephilim: Add 2 Black Blood Shaman with the Ancient Path upgrade, 1 action to attack each other (cheat to get Masks if needed as you will get a card), free to consume, second action to advance. This would give most of your creed Focused 2 and you'll get 2 Mature Nephs in turn 2; being Minions mean you'd also get 2 extra cards per turn. Useful when you need to play passive (playing versus creeds very powerful early) and need to outscale an oponnent (combine this with mass summoning with The Dreamer + WW)
  • Pandora + Poltergeist: To counter a lot of Ruthless coming your way (Weeping Widow), plus Pandora have Terrifying 13 (!), and can generate a lot of Wp duels to help The Dreamer to manifest the summons.

Only thing about giving the shamans upgrades is that they don't carry over when replaced by a mature.

[Maniacal_cackle]

2 hours ago, Ogid said:

Thank you so much for taking the time to elaborate. After choosing The Dreamer as my first master this will come in handy 😁

I've 0 games under my belt (lol), so what follows is theorycrafting; but I have seen some potential combos that would be worth consider in the right games:

• Wicked Dolls + Teddy Consume = 1 scrap marker in the first turn, you can use that to summon an styched with Vasilisa/WW; 2 or 3 Wicked Dolls + Teddy could be nice to give the Bear an extra way to refill his HP bar while giving you resources to summon more nightmares.
  • Puppet Heavy: add a Vasilisa to that 3 Wicked Dolls + Teddy and focus in summoning Sticheds for a really obnoxious team.
• Placed Effects: Teddy, Dreamer and Hooded Rider have effect that let you "place" models; those can be used to get extra Alphs attacks.
• OOK: There could be some niche but potentialy useful strats to surprise your opponents waiting for an standard Nightmare creed, 2 of my favourite:
  • Double Nephilim: Add 2 Black Blood Shaman with the Ancient Path upgrade, 1 action to attack each other (cheat to get Masks if needed as you will get a card), free to consume, second action to advance. This would give most of your creed Focused 2 and you'll get 2 Mature Nephs in turn 2; being Minions mean you'd also get 2 extra cards per turn. Useful when you need to play passive (playing versus creeds very powerful early) and need to outscale an oponnent (combine this with mass summoning with The Dreamer + WW)
  • Pandora + Poltergeist: To counter a lot of Ruthless coming your way (Weeping Widow), plus Pandora have Terrifying 13 (!), and can generate a lot of Wp duels to help The Dreamer to manifest the summons.

Neat ideas!

Wicked dolls:

I think this sounds brilliant. With other crews, it doesn't seem like it is worth it to buy models just to sacrifice them for summons. The reason being it can end up being quite action inefficient. In this case, you're just taking Teddy's bonus action + one action from Widow Weaver/Vas. And since Widow Weaver can teleport quite far forward on the first turn, you actually end up with a stitched together that is placed further along. I'll definitely be trying out this combo if I can get some dolls. Maybe I'll make some. Just make sure you activate the doll before you kill it, so that you're not giving your opponent an extra activation. Any more than one might be clunky, but worth trying it!

EDIT: One thing to be careful of is that you have to have Teddy, Widow Weaver and the doll all together for when you do the kill and summon. This is actually quite a large cost, and you may feel it in some games. Of course, if you plan to have them together anyway (or you have a deployment setup where they are close like in corner deployment), it might be okay. Also don't use this strategy past turn one on reckoning - you'll hand your opponent points.

That said, the crew is already extremely mask heavy. You might find that you struggle to get the 9 for Widow Weaver, a card for the Dreamer, and everyone else in the crew. For similar reasons, I suspect you'll find that you don't often have cards to spare to cheat the Black Blood Shaman's abilities, but I'm not too familiar with the model.

Placing alps is great for getting extra attacks! Do it wherever you can. Note that their attacks are pretty weak without the + from buried models, and even then they are only medium. I think you'll find it is worth doing, but only when you don't have to work hard for the setup. Test it out! If you can get a tomes trigger with the alps, the slow is super good, and it won't even end the alp's activation since it's not activated!

Pandora is on my list of crews to try with the Dreamer (either taking Pandora with the Dreamer or the Dreamer with Pandora). Self-loathing is pretty strong. But Zoraida may be better. In either case, master's are very card-heavy, so have a plan for how you're drawing cards.

Overall, test out all your ideas that you can! I've only played a handful of games, so I definitely can't be taken for gospel. Especially on OOK stuff, as I've not tested out of keyword much yet!

[Wyamphri]

Mama Z would be much better  Dreamer doesn't play well with others as he is very resource intensive, sadly. Short of her, idk if I'd run a multiple master list with dreamer, just not worth it imo. The wicked dolls idea is cool, it just might be a bit much for dreamer, although I have seen lists that use Vas/WW together to do stuff like that with teddy. Who knows, could be really great and im just being a big dumdum

[Ogid]

3 hours ago, Hawkoon said:

Only thing about giving the shamans upgrades is that they don't carry over when replaced by a mature.

Oh good catch! Only the summoner specific one remains... then those upgrades could go in other minions (the drawing would be important for that strat), or including just 1 shaman intead of 2 to avoid taxing the hand so hard. 

2 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

EDIT: One thing to be careful of is that you have to have Teddy, Widow Weaver and the doll all together for when you do the kill and summon. This is actually quite a large cost, and you may feel it in some games. Of course, if you plan to have them together anyway (or you have a deployment setup where they are close like in corner deployment), it might be okay. Also don't use this strategy past turn one on reckoning - you'll hand your opponent points.

Yep, these aren't for every game. Killing the doll wouldn't be optimal if that hadled points to the other creed or moving fast is important for the objetives.

Even without doing that trick it could be a decent combo. WW have a good mobility with his webs, just killing the doll near of a web would be enough to set that up in later turns (if you are also using the bandersnatch it's even easier to set up), the dolls are little emergency "potions" for the bear and can be used to block lures; if you include vasilisa each doll that isn't killed would mean extra damage and a source of staggered. The dolls doesn't seem bad as cheap runners thanks to stealth and both of his attacks are pretty good utility wise... I'll have to test them, but on paper they seem pretty good with the dreamer.

2 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

That said, the crew is already extremely mask heavy. You might find that you struggle to get the 9 for Widow Weaver, a card for the Dreamer, and everyone else in the crew. For similar reasons, I suspect you'll find that you don't often have cards to spare to cheat the Black Blood Shaman's abilities, but I'm not too familiar with the model.

Yep, the Dreamer seem pretty resource and mask intensive, but burning the hand the first turn to set up a strong turn 2 may be worth it; in an emergency both the dreamer and WW can use stones to force masks.

I included extra draw for the Shaman to compensate that, but @Hawkoon noted those shouldn't be in the shaman, so either include the Ancient Path in other 2 minions or include just 1 shaman. The shaman strat could be good, they grow from a 6 SS model (7 for dreamer) to a 10 SS model pretty solid model and will give Focus in aoe while doing so; even with the +1 SS tax of the dreamer it may be worth it.

 

2 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Pandora is on my list of crews to try with the Dreamer (either taking Pandora with the Dreamer or the Dreamer with Pandora). Self-loathing is pretty strong. But Zoraida may be better. In either case, master's are very card-heavy, so have a plan for how you're drawing cards.

 

2 hours ago, Wyamphri said:

Mama Z would be much better  Dreamer doesn't play well with others as he is very resource intensive, sadly. Short of her, idk if I'd run a multiple master list with dreamer, just not worth it imo. The wicked dolls idea is cool, it just might be a bit much for dreamer, although I have seen lists that use Vas/WW together to do stuff like that with teddy. Who knows, could be really great and im just being a big dumdum

Yeah, Zoraida also seem solid with him for the extra draw plus Obey; but I wouldn't overlook Pandora:

Oportunistic (any) is a huge counter to any creed around states (McMourning shows up with an stack of 20 poison or someone stacks shields, not today mate!), she can force a lot of aoe Wp rolls (which may be great to summon), Self-Loathing isn't as good as Obey but it's close and when the other team is close Pandora seem better with all her aoe stuns. However what tips the balance for me is Poltergeist's Weeping Widow, that's a counter to one of the big weaknesses of the creed (and Poltergeist for 5 SS isn't a bad deal)

2 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Overall, test out all your ideas that you can! I've only played a handful of games, so I definitely can't be taken for gospel. Especially on OOK stuff, as I've not tested out of keyword much yet!

Hehe, all this is just theorycrafting; I'm not sure how well all this would work. But I'll definitely try weird OOK stuff with him. I have some ideas to other double master lists with Lucius or Titania. And other minor OOK stuff too: like BabyKade with his lures, CC stat of 7 (lol!) and extra healing for Teddy; or Candy as a Healer/giving fast to the heavy hitters

 

[Dzsovi]

Does Teddys armor negate the damage from black blood?

[Maniacal_cackle]

3 minutes ago, Dzsovi said:

Does Teddys armor negate the damage from black blood?

From memory, armor can't reduce damage below one.

So it applies against everything, but being pinged for 1 can't be reduced by armour.

[Ogid]

44 minutes ago, Dzsovi said:

Does Teddys armor negate the damage from black blood?

No, Teddy would suffer the damage (armor cannot reduce below 1), but black blood aoe is very small so keeping the rest of the models at least 1 inch away from the Nephillim(s) wouldn't be that hard.

Blasphemous Ritual area is 3 inches on the other hand, so even doing the 2 Shamans knifing each other trick you shouldn't suffer any damage to give Focus to the rest of the creed (and getting Focused +4 in most of the creed is no joke); however that would require bubbling the first 2 turns and cheating fate using masks, it's not something for every game.

[Maniacal_cackle]

17 minutes ago, Ogid said:

No, Teddy would suffer the damage (armor cannot reduce below 1), but black blood aoe is very small so keeping the rest of the models at least 1 inch away from the Nephillim(s) wouldn't be that hard.

Blasphemous Ritual area is 3 inches on the other hand, so even doing the 2 Shamans knifing each other trick you shouldn't suffer any damage to give Focus to the rest of the creed (and getting Focused +4 in most of the creed is no joke); however that would require bubbling the first 2 turns and cheating fate using masks, it's not something for every game.

To clarify, what's the plan with the Black Blood shamans? Is it to spend two actions knifing each other and two bonus actions each to transform? And four masks cards? I think you'll find in practice that it's extremely hard to pull off quickly, and even then, you'll be transforming them turn 2/3, and have lost a lot of movement. The game is pretty fast-paced, so I think if you're going to go for growing shamans, you need more efficient corpse marker generation.

[Gaston]

I occasionally use 1 BBS to pulse out the focus turn 1, then fly up, repeat turn 2, and transform into a late game beater for Turn 3-5. I'm not sure that is something worth investing in with Dreamer specifically though, his keyword is fairly strong.

[Maniacal_cackle]

26 minutes ago, Gaston said:

I occasionally use 1 BBS to pulse out the focus turn 1, then fly up, repeat turn 2, and transform into a late game beater for Turn 3-5. I'm not sure that is something worth investing in with Dreamer specifically though, his keyword is fairly strong.

The focus would be really nice, but is a bit tricky in Nightmare/Dreamer crews because only Serena and the Bandersnatch are valid targets for the corpse-drop. They're the only living/beast/undead targets in the keyword, I believe!

[darksoul281]

i win with nekima, i move one mature nephilim with the obey of zoraida and give fast, and enter in the first turn with mature and nekima killing 2 o 3 models, i dont kill the dreamer for the deliver a message, but all the other models die, the dreamer crew its to bad in the 2 first turns

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

18 hours ago, Ogid said:

I included extra draw for the Shaman to compensate that, but @Hawkoon noted those shouldn't be in the shaman, so either include the Ancient Path in other 2 minions or include just 1 shaman.

Daydreams are reasonable choice as Ancient Pact holders.

[Ogid]

9 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

To clarify, what's the plan with the Black Blood shamans? Is it to spend two actions knifing each other and two bonus actions each to transform? And four masks cards? I think you'll find in practice that it's extremely hard to pull off quickly, and even then, you'll be transforming them turn 2/3, and have lost a lot of movement. The game is pretty fast-paced, so I think if you're going to go for growing shamans, you need more efficient corpse marker generation.

Yep, that's the idea; the first turn you get 1 normal action to move and the second turn after growing you'll have another action left to charge/move; you gain 4 Focused +1 for every model around (including them, which is kind of order efficient; you can still spinball 2 models the first turn after giving them Focused+2 if you need stuff done anyway), and 2 strongh minions for turn 2-5. Another plus is the Fly with me ability in a Sz3 minion, that ability "place" so it can be used to set up extra Alph attacks or to reposition important models. The idea would be buy some time turn 1 and 2 and strike hard the third turn with the advantage of the extra 2 mature Nephs, the Focus and the summoned minions (plus you'll force the other player to try to be agressive the first 2 turns)

The bad things: an even weaker turn 1 and 2 (but The Dreamer isn't that interested in engage in those turns anyway); the mature Neph would have 6 life and only 1 order in turn 2 after growing (they have Regen+2 tho, but that won't apply until turn 3; so some healing may be interesting to pair with them); and the need of a lot of masks the first 2 turns, which may be problematic; however you can always flip before cheating, over the 4 knife flips it's not hard to get at least 1 mask. Buying 1 Ancient Path upgrade for a resiliant minion (an Insidious Madness would be my pick) would give 1 extra card per turn to offset this a bit.

However as I said before this is 100% theorycrafting and this won't be my default strategy; but something to keep in mind for the right game to surprise my oponent with some non-standard stuff.

15 minutes ago, thatlatinspeakingguy said:

Daydreams are reasonable choice as Ancient Pact holders.

Interesting, I dismissed them as holders for being so squishy... I guess if the other team doesn't have much firepower it could work.

1 hour ago, darksoul281 said:

i win with nekima, i move one mature nephilim with the obey of zoraida and give fast, and enter in the first turn with mature and nekima killing 2 o 3 models, i dont kill the dreamer for the deliver a message, but all the other models die, the dreamer crew its to bad in the 2 first turns

Lol, this sounds so one sided, did the Dreamer overextend hard?

[Ogid]

Just checking options, let me know what do you think about of this really weird team OOK with the Dreamer as Leader:

• Dreamer (5SS cache)
• LCB 
• Zoraida
• Angel Eyes
• Doppleganger
• Candy
• Daydream

This kind of team around obey/mimic would be better with Lucius, so this is basicaly a cheese to take advantage of the surprise factor and the other team getting 0 tools to protect themselves versus long range agression.

Idea: High ranged firepower in a list that usually lacks it. In the best case scenario: 3 14 inches shoots from Angel Eyes (fast), 3 from Doppleganger with a 7 atribute (fast), 3 from Zoraida (ensorcer)), Candy to patch them up and handle fast... When the other team start to get close then Candy's Self Loathing would be the copied ability. Thanks to doppleganger and Zoraida the drawing of this creed would be better than the average Dreamer lists (so it'd be easier to fish for high value cards for summoning and cheating). If any model close the gap LCB has a good close combat attack to Obey/mimic. The dreamer is here mainly for summoning and don't have any long range attack, so he can spend the first turns concentrating, dropping schemes or beating Zoraida's doll.

Maybe Serena instead of Candy would be another good fit; she can heal nearly as well as candy with the trigger, has a second life, better synergy with dreamer and the twist's reality tome's trigger would be very annoying in this team with so many mimic and order around... but fast, self-loathing (which isn't a ranged attack) and good auras for when the other team close the gap are hard to give up.

Does this sound legit (even if cheesy)?

[Nikodemus]

4 hours ago, Ogid said:

Interesting, I dismissed them as holders for being so squishy... I guess if the other team doesn't have much firepower it could work.

Their relative durability here comes from the fact that they're very, very useful even if you play them very cagey. On top of that they're insignificant so opponent doesn't get any direct VP from killing them.

[Gaston]

@Ogid I wasn't sure if you caught this or not, but for clarity, a model is not affected by it's own pulse--the the Shaman does not give itself Focus from Ritual.

[Ogid]

4 minutes ago, Gaston said:

@Ogid I wasn't sure if you caught this or not, but for clarity, a model is not affected by it's own pulse--the the Shaman does not give itself Focus from Ritual.

I missed that, ty for the info! I have to give a second reading to the rules...

[darksoul281]

11 hours ago, Ogid said:

Yep, that's the idea; the first turn you get 1 normal action to move and the second turn after growing you'll have another action left to charge/move; you gain 4 Focused +1 for every model around (including them, which is kind of order efficient; you can still spinball 2 models the first turn after giving them Focused+2 if you need stuff done anyway), and 2 strongh minions for turn 2-5. Another plus is the Fly with me ability in a Sz3 minion, that ability "place" so it can be used to set up extra Alph attacks or to reposition important models. The idea would be buy some time turn 1 and 2 and strike hard the third turn with the advantage of the extra 2 mature Nephs, the Focus and the summoned minions (plus you'll force the other player to try to be agressive the first 2 turns)

The bad things: an even weaker turn 1 and 2 (but The Dreamer isn't that interested in engage in those turns anyway); the mature Neph would have 6 life and only 1 order in turn 2 after growing (they have Regen+2 tho, but that won't apply until turn 3; so some healing may be interesting to pair with them); and the need of a lot of masks the first 2 turns, which may be problematic; however you can always flip before cheating, over the 4 knife flips it's not hard to get at least 1 mask. Buying 1 Ancient Path upgrade for a resiliant minion (an Insidious Madness would be my pick) would give 1 extra card per turn to offset this a bit.

However as I said before this is 100% theorycrafting and this won't be my default strategy; but something to keep in mind for the right game to surprise my oponent with some non-standard stuff.

Interesting, I dismissed them as holders for being so squishy... I guess if the other team doesn't have much firepower it could work.

Lol, this sounds so one sided, did the Dreamer overextend hard?

The black blood shamans give Focus and the obeys if Zoraida helps to reposition the mature and hice fast, and the trigger if shove aside and execute with Focus help to kill a lot of models 

[Ogid]

1 hour ago, darksoul281 said:

The black blood shamans give Focus and the obeys if Zoraida helps to reposition the mature and hice fast, and the trigger if shove aside and execute with Focus help to kill a lot of models 

Ah ok, so it'd be 10 free movement (zoraida + fly), plus a charge+engagement range; 18 inches of "threat range" without expending actions for the Mature (+2 focus and fast). That sounds nasty!. However Nekima would need to expend her AP to advance (so 8 inches of "threat range" or 14 expending 1 AP just moving)... The other creed needed to deploy and move very agressively for you to be able to hit them that hard in the first turn with both of them. I guess you put Inhuman Reflexes in both, right?

Why the dreamer didn't discard a card or a SS to save their models from Execute??

I take note of that Alpha strike tho