The finer points of Dashel

[Cronex13]

So I've been doing a thread about every master after I've played a few games with em. Today, I'd like to talk about Dashel.

Stereotypically he is known as the summoner of the Guild, able to summon any Guard minion.

However, I feel that the reality of the situation is a bit less encouraging. He needs excessively high cards to do only a decent summon, and significant investments. In addition, this all is assuming that he can find a scheme marker, hopefully an enemy one because if it's a friendly than it becomes even harder to summon. He can only do it once per turn as well.

Now, he has means of making this happen, with a few sources of Drop It and his totem counting as a friendly scheme marker AND being able to turn friendly scheme markers into enemy.

However, make no mistake, it takes A LOT to make happen and I feel there's more to Dashel than that, and that's what I want to talk about. 

He's got a couple buffs he is handing out to guardsman near him. Stopping them from being moved, allowing them to concentrate as a bonus (at the cost of a card.) So he doesn't buff guardsman to be better so much as buff them to be less bad. His shooting and melee are decent enough, not anything to write home about but definitely usable. Foul mouthed motivation is nice for keeping his dudes sharp.

Armor 1, decent wounds makes for sub par survivability but any Guard Patrol near him fixes that issue nicely.

So how is everyone else using him? Do you just bring him in a mob of guard patrols? Keep him in a corner somewhere with some rifleman maybe? 

Additionally, listbuilding is a bit of an oddity. I try to take stuff he can't summon to get the most out of his crews, so having an Excorcist and a False Witness is great when you can't buy more. Lemme know what you all think!

[4thstringer]

Love this thread, thanks for writing it.   I ran him for three games over the weekend, and the summons were kind of frustrating.  It is really hard to get a summon each turn (even ignoring the potential for the BJ).  My better games were ones where I was using (and sometimes stoning for) the drop it trigger on his gun.  I sometimes kept the dispatcher trick going, but even that was not my favorite in the long run.  I've come to the conclusion that I would like to get the drop it to summon to be his average first turn, but I don't know if that will work out.  I was bringing a ton of stones with him, which I believe I will continue doing.  

Foul mouthed motivation and his hunger for cards meant that him and the judge are best buddies (even if the judge can't get him the tomes he loves for drop it).

His totem struck me as both one of the most worthless and one of the most easy to kill totems (especially since the no move aura doesn't effect the much more meta-common obeys).   He is also the backup for making the summon machine work, but you need a suit for that too so you better hope you get it.

When I played this weekend my crew was completely out of theme for the first two games.  The whole thing except the Pale rider was designed to get me cards (investigator, judge, lawyer, steward kinda).  I think it was a bit of overkill, but it did let me pick up the red to double summon wardens, which was cool.  I don't know if that is a good crew with him, so for my last I took out the investigator and lawyer and added a mounted guard and a rifleman.  I found that in all my games the Mounted Guard died really really fast, so be careful with them.

 

 

[Cronex13]

I've had similar thoughts in my meditations on him.

I've got somewhat of a limited summoning pool atm, as my complete guard collection is 4 patrols, 4 hounds, 2 riflemen and a Warden.

I'm feeling that building a Dashel Crew is gonna be largely about counterbuilding. For instance, I played against Misaki who has several ways to combine Stealth and Agile (meaning you can't shoot them from afar and you can't lock them down in melee.) So a gunline wouldn't have been good there and instead I should have hired in guild patrols and gone and held an important table half (corrupted idles was strat)

However, you could just as easily put him somewhere with a riflemen (or two and the generic guild enforcer, forgot his name.)

Hand out focused to a rifleman, they take a shot, discard a low card and take another focused shot. So against footsloggers with armor, this can be a brutally effective firebase. 

So either having him boost riflemen or having him mob out with patrols somewhere important are good ideas 

While we're on the topic, Queeg.

I hate him. He's not a very good beater, (which is fine) so he needs to be good at something else. Trading focused for fast COULD be useful in certain situations but considering that's taking two health off of minions that traditionally only have 4 wounds, that's rough. The push at the beginning of other minions activations is good. But the rest of his kit doesn't seem great besides being able to turn enemy scheme markers into friendlys, and even then, you're usually using the enemy scheme markers to summon!

-le frustrate-

[4thstringer]

13 minutes ago, Cronex13 said:

I've had similar thoughts in my meditations on him.

I've got somewhat of a limited summoning pool atm, as my complete guard collection is 4 patrols, 4 hounds, 2 riflemen and a Warden.

I'm feeling that building a Dashel Crew is gonna be largely about counterbuilding. For instance, I played against Misaki who has several ways to combine Stealth and Agile (meaning you can't shoot them from afar and you can't lock them down in melee.) So a gunline wouldn't have been good there and instead I should have hired in guild patrols and gone and held an important table half (corrupted idles was strat)

However, you could just as easily put him somewhere with a riflemen (or two and the generic guild enforcer, forgot his name.)

Hand out focused to a rifleman, they take a shot, discard a low card and take another focused shot. So against footsloggers with armor, this can be a brutally effective firebase. 

So either having him boost riflemen or having him mob out with patrols somewhere important are good ideas 

While we're on the topic, Queeg.

I hate him. He's not a very good beater, (which is fine) so he needs to be good at something else. Trading focused for fast COULD be useful in certain situations but considering that's taking two health off of minions that traditionally only have 4 wounds, that's rough. The push at the beginning of other minions activations is good. But the rest of his kit doesn't seem great besides being able to turn enemy scheme markers into friendlys, and even then, you're usually using the enemy scheme markers to summon!

-le frustrate-

You've given me some really good ideas that I wanna try now.  No time to write it up before my game (and this is going to be stat dependent), but I'll explain later or tomorrow

[Cronex13]

19 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

You've given me some really good ideas that I wanna try now.  No time to write it up before my game (and this is going to be stat dependent), but I'll explain later or tomorrow

I look forward to it

[4thstringer]

So I decided to run mostly in faction, with 3 dogs, queeg, Sarge, mounted guard and judge and 7 stones.  The idea was that the mounted guard would move Daschel forward to shoot and cause a summon in their face, and go from there.  Good thing, because even after three cards from judge, my only high card was also my only mask high enough. But I did manage to shoot Karina, summon an Executioner in her face, then kill her off with the executioner.  

Lessons learned-no bringing dogs against Tara.  The judge will sometimes betray you card wise, but can still otherwise earn his points.  Bring emissary and jury instead, because he will use that cheating Scion for vendetta.

Queegs extra movement felt good, but it will be less good.   7 point models with stat 5 on everything and no defensive tech are bad, but fine summons with an 11.  

I didn't bring riflemen and I regretted it, but Tara is so fast I'm ok with it i think.

I hate Tara as a crew, and really don't enjoy playing against her.  Her second activation feels so good, and nothing beast has ruined me in 2 games so far.  Maybe I'll try to build with counters next time, but i really would prefer to not go that route too much.  

[Cursed25]

8 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

my only high card was also my only mask high enough.

you mean Ram right? because Dashel needs a ram to summon!

[4thstringer]

3 minutes ago, Cursed25 said:

you mean Ram right? because Dashel needs a ram to summon!

No, I mean the mask for dispatcher.  I didn't draw a high ram all game, so it was always Stone for tome for the gun, Stone for ram for the shot.

[Cursed25]

32 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

No, I mean the mask for dispatcher.  I didn't draw a high ram all game, so it was always Stone for tome for the gun, Stone for ram for the shot.

ouch! we all have game like these and they are painful!  What was the in the Tara's crew?

[4thstringer]

17 minutes ago, Cursed25 said:

ouch! we all have game like these and they are painful!  What was the in the Tara's crew?

Pretty much in theme.  Scion, talos void Hunter, Karina, wretch, aonius.  

Things that bother me: the scions low cost, terrifying and damage reduction on most models, a summon that has the same cost to card ratio as Daschel but starts them buried, they can pop out anywhere with fast or be popped out by two different models in the crew (and no slow, no markers needed, etc).  And a master with 5 actions (including a teleport to get out of engagement), 2 activations to guarantee activation control, a built in suit on her attack, and a better totem.

I spent most of the game tilted and trying to summon my way back in.  

[Cursed25]

1 minute ago, 4thstringer said:

Pretty much in theme.  Scion, talos void Hunter, Karina, wretch, aonius.  

Things that bother me: the scions low cost, terrifying and damage reduction on most models, a summon that has the same cost to card ratio as Daschel but starts them buried, they can pop out anywhere with fast or be popped out by two different models in the crew (and no slow, no markers needed, etc).  And a master with 5 actions (including a teleport to get out of engagement), 2 activations to guarantee activation control, a built in suit on her attack, and a better totem.

I spent most of the game tilted and trying to summon my way back in.  

yeah! I understand! Sadly Dashel's summon is the worst of the bunch because it needs so much to work well compare to a lot of other summoner! Maybe Wyrd made it this hard because they feared the double Executionner summon?

[4thstringer]

I'll note I did summon 33 points of models over the game.  But man did they do very little but tie up my opponent.

[trikk]

1 hour ago, Cursed25 said:

yeah! I understand! Sadly Dashel's summon is the worst of the bunch because it needs so much to work well compare to a lot of other summoner! Maybe Wyrd made it this hard because they feared the double Executionner summon?

Dashel also probably has the best non-summoning actions out of the whole bunch.

[Cursed25]

27 minutes ago, trikk said:

Dashel also probably has the best non-summoning actions out of the whole bunch.

I would rate Asami's actions as better than Dashel!

Reaching tendrils and a very good melee attack can help a lot in other situation than just summon stuff every turn!

[midwifecrisis]

1 hour ago, 4thstringer said:

I'll note I did summon 33 points of models over the game.  But man did they do very little but tie up my opponent.

This is how I often feel when I'm playing his crew, though all my games I didn't have access to Mounted Guard which feel pretty vital to me. Otherwise it's a bit of a slow roll for Dashel's crew to get going, and more of a grind to get through to objectives later as well. 

 

Queeg's initial push is really great, especially when combined with sergeants. Unfortunately he does tend to be pretty flimsy so keeping him safe is important. He makes for a good, easy Vendetta target otherwise. 

 

Most of the games I've played with Dashel I haven't really thought to stone for Drop It, trying to force the dispatcher to work instead. I should probably just do this instead, since the dispatcher feels a bit inefficient and doesn't have the ability to stone that mask. 

[Cronex13]

@4thstringer

Tara can be tricky to deal with. Malifaux isn't meant for building generic come one come all lists in my opinion, as they specifically defined counterbuilding (declaring faction and master before picking schemes) so I feel like counterbuilding is a must. Know yourself and your enemy, you need not... Etc.

Anti Tara picks: DM recruiter, Jury. Great at hurting buried and summoned models. Watch them come in with shit all wounds. Also, Witchling stalkers and other similar models for condition removal. Keep taking away their fast and watch the enemy's hand disappear real quick. 

All these models are out of keyword for Dashel so there is a tax but I feel like this is the core issue I was bringing up: you were so focused on getting off the summon that nothing really happened for you. I feel like summoning with Dashel should just be one trick in his book.

 

[4thstringer]

25 minutes ago, Cronex13 said:

@4thstringer

Tara can be tricky to deal with. Malifaux isn't meant for building generic come one come all lists in my opinion, as they specifically defined counterbuilding (declaring faction and master before picking schemes) so I feel like counterbuilding is a must. Know yourself and your enemy, you need not... Etc.

Anti Tara picks: DM recruiter, Jury. Great at hurting buried and summoned models. Watch them come in with shit all wounds. Also, Witchling stalkers and other similar models for condition removal. Keep taking away their fast and watch the enemy's hand disappear real quick. 

All these models are out of keyword for Dashel so there is a tax but I feel like this is the core issue I was bringing up: you were so focused on getting off the summon that nothing really happened for you. I feel like summoning with Dashel should just be one trick in his book.

 

You are probably right.  What I was talking with my opponent (and many of my regular opponents about) is that beyond Hoffman, none of the guild masters require my opponents to build to the master declared, yet it seems like everyone I face (Dreamer, Tara, Shen Long, Misaki, Mei, Levi) require considerable counterbuilds.

 

[4thstringer]

29 minutes ago, midwifecrisis said:

This is how I often feel when I'm playing his crew, though all my games I didn't have access to Mounted Guard which feel pretty vital to me. Otherwise it's a bit of a slow roll for Dashel's crew to get going, and more of a grind to get through to objectives later as well. 

 

Queeg's initial push is really great, especially when combined with sergeants. Unfortunately he does tend to be pretty flimsy so keeping him safe is important. He makes for a good, easy Vendetta target otherwise. 

 

Most of the games I've played with Dashel I haven't really thought to stone for Drop It, trying to force the dispatcher to work instead. I should probably just do this instead, since the dispatcher feels a bit inefficient and doesn't have the ability to stone that mask. 

Lol- Getting Mounted Guard in the Miniature Market sale is one of the things that got me messing with Daschel.

Queeg is interesting to me.  He would be so much better if his push also effected daschel (I'd love it to effect him too, but maybe I'm asking too much).  The Sarge was such an easy vendetta target in my last game I don't know what to do about it.  

I don't know if stoning for drop it always was a great strat, because my opponent kept engaging him, which takes that option away.  the turn I didn't summon was because I failed the disengage and my opponent kept him in.   I think you want to balance the two.

I think Daschel works better if you run him more gunliney than I did to be honest.  Maybe I should take him more into schemes that allow that, less into Cursed Objects.   I tend to charge in with the Mounted guard, but their gun is at least comparable to their  punch, and it would let me use the focus better too.  In that Queeg would be great.  But hitting Moderate for 2 or a RJ for 4 is painful.

 

 

 

[4thstringer]

2 hours ago, trikk said:

Dashel also probably has the best non-summoning actions out of the whole bunch.

You think?  They seem like pretty generic non-master level actions to me.   I'd much rather have the Dreamer's attack (not to mention the totem comparison) than Daschels.   The rapid action heal and focus, which is also on 6 pt models, is my favorite thing on the back of his card (though I do like pursue)

[4thstringer]

I would note that all my responses on this are coming with a fine layer of highly processed, very fancy salt.

[trikk]

16 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

I would note that all my responses on this are coming with a fine layer of highly processed, very fancy salt.

Loot Corpse is sooo good. Shouting Orders on Executioniers and Riflemen is also very nice. He's also stat 7 half the time with a moderate 4 attack and crit strike.

[Cronex13]

Don't worry friend, we're all coming from some form of salt or another. Best way to learn lessons lol.

As far as your point to guild counterbuilding, I'm not sure I agree. If I'm facing guild, this is how I would counterbuild.

Hoffman- armor pen and my own constructs. Nothing dicks with people who use scrap tokens than other models using the scrap tokens first.

Sonnia- condition removal out the ass. This crew thrives on burning and taking it away can hurt them. 

Perdita- armor. Bring lots of armor and or stealth. Also, card shenanigans is great. The Family love to push each other around and give each other super synergy but it costs them cards. If you're getting rid of cards in their hands (tons of willpower checks from terrifying, Lucius bonus action, etc) then you nerf both their duels and their ability to squeeze out extra AP.

Lady J - this one is a bit tougher. Don't bring things that need Corpse and scrap markers. Do bring big models with decent size stat to fight buried a bit. Not sure how to counter her just yet.

Dashel - Stealth and Agile. While Dashel can potentially summon a lot of stuff, there's not a ton of mobility in their crew, so they make up with it with guns... Can't shoot you from over 6" tho. Can't lock you into combat. He's spending his precious AP just trying to catch up to you!

Lucius - tricky to play, tricky to play against. Take out his minions. Bring snipers and or beaters preferably. Lucius and the Scribe are almost unkillable but can't be very effective without their minions around. Their playstyle is VERY bureacratic, and the best way to overthrow a bureacrocy is to take away the proletariat.

Nellie - loves turning her enemy against each other, forcing them to do the work while her minions give off tick damage. However, they themselves lack any real form of damage. Having not actually played her yet (to my lament) I'm not entirely sure how to fight her but I feel like heals and tough targets are gonna be the way to go. Any time she makes you hit each other, heal it right back up and carry on beating the Field Reports up.

Basse - I'm gonna be real here, there's absolutely nothing about him that interests me. Their entire aesthetic is just boring to me. Got absolutely nothing for dealing with or playing him.

[Cronex13]

I'd like to add that against Dashel, you're probably outnumbered, and it's important to use your pass tokens. With his entire crew getting plus stat after you activate, using pass tokens is a great way of forcing him to waste his important activations.

[4thstringer]

39 minutes ago, Cronex13 said:

Don't worry friend, we're all coming from some form of salt or another. Best way to learn lessons lol.

As far as your point to guild counterbuilding, I'm not sure I agree. If I'm facing guild, this is how I would counterbuild.

Hoffman- armor pen and my own constructs. Nothing dicks with people who use scrap tokens than other models using the scrap tokens first.

Sonnia- condition removal out the ass. This crew thrives on burning and taking it away can hurt them. 

Perdita- armor. Bring lots of armor and or stealth. Also, card shenanigans is great. The Family love to push each other around and give each other super synergy but it costs them cards. If you're getting rid of cards in their hands (tons of willpower checks from terrifying, Lucius bonus action, etc) then you nerf both their duels and their ability to squeeze out extra AP.

Lady J - this one is a bit tougher. Don't bring things that need Corpse and scrap markers. Do bring big models with decent size stat to fight buried a bit. Not sure how to counter her just yet.

Dashel - Stealth and Agile. While Dashel can potentially summon a lot of stuff, there's not a ton of mobility in their crew, so they make up with it with guns... Can't shoot you from over 6" tho. Can't lock you into combat. He's spending his precious AP just trying to catch up to you!

Lucius - tricky to play, tricky to play against. Take out his minions. Bring snipers and or beaters preferably. Lucius and the Scribe are almost unkillable but can't be very effective without their minions around. Their playstyle is VERY bureacratic, and the best way to overthrow a bureacrocy is to take away the proletariat.

Nellie - loves turning her enemy against each other, forcing them to do the work while her minions give off tick damage. However, they themselves lack any real form of damage. Having not actually played her yet (to my lament) I'm not entirely sure how to fight her but I feel like heals and tough targets are gonna be the way to go. Any time she makes you hit each other, heal it right back up and carry on beating the Field Reports up.

Basse - I'm gonna be real here, there's absolutely nothing about him that interests me. Their entire aesthetic is just boring to me. Got absolutely nothing for dealing with or playing him.

Nellie and Lucius, bring things that get plus flips to attacks or easy focus, and they melt like an ice cream in a car on a hot day.

Basse bring Stealth or models that can close the distance quickly.

LJ doesn't like to see gravity well.  Having a model that can take advantage of the judge hurting himself helps.  No self-buring models.

 

[GameSoHard]

In my games with Dashel I’ve got a lot of use out of mounted guard. Their ability to pick an executioner up and get it where it needs to be is pretty strong. Mounted Guard are the best models in the crew imo. Riflemen are good but surprisingly I haven’t had much success with them. I get excited every time I put them in a list but they never seem to have the impact I want.

I tend to build a crew that starts with the big models then brings them back when they die (which happens a lot). Everything in the list seems pretty easy to kill but can also put out a lot of damage. 

I’m going to try adding in a few guild patrol or hounds next game for the cheap activations and to use them as ‘speedbumps’ against beaters.

Outside of summoning Dashel isn’t that exciting...

Queeg I really want to work but I just don’t find him that’s useful and I’ll be dropping’s him from my next list. His focus-fast conversion is too resource intensive for normal use, requires focus (either from another models fast action or their own+card) and then costs health. He does provide a good alpha strike option with pushing mounted guard/executioners (the only time I use the fast-conversion as well)