Drawn of Justice?

[Yore Huckleberry]

Lady Justice is a pretty great wrecking ball, but the only hand manipulation her crew seems to have is on the Judge's free action to gamble against tomes (sort of fine; tomes aren't the best suit for this crew, and the Guild Stewards can heal/focus the Judge if she does take any damage).

It seems to me that Lady J runs high on soulstones in the first place, so your two hand manipulation mechanics are 1) stoning for cards every turn and 2) using the Judge turn one (after that, the stagger attack may be better, especially if you're up against undead!). It's nice to get the +flips to damage on Lady J's greatsword, and the Steward can give you a few focus to work with to help against a rough flip.

Do people have other tricks they use to mitigate a cold opening hand? Or just general card draw in Guild, outside of the Lucius crew?

[Sweet Tooth]

Off the top of my head-

Don't discredit the Scales. He has Equality of Fate to draw a card and is Expendable to draw a card when he dies (which he probably will around turn 3/4). A trick i just discovered (since i usually have more cards than my opponent later in the turn & can never get equality to work) is to cheat a low card in for initiative (assuming you don't need to win it) and immediately activate scales to draw a card. Is a nice incidental card cycle.

The Judge's card draw is great. I always, repeat always, Black Joker the Stagger attack, so the card draw is worthwhile to me. I usually bring a Domador just to heal him back up.

I've found Perdita is a nice way to draw cards with Marshals. Since you can spend your high cards early with J or Judge and then cycle with Hero's Gambit + draw a few extra since your opponent likely has more models than you. Alternatively, using Hero's Gamble early on can be strong as well. I did this once for my first activation with a totally crap hand and drew 10 cards. 

I've been liking Alan Reid more and find he is a different threat vector to add to Marshals. He synergizes well if I do manage to Stagger anyone and draws a card at the end of his activation.

Other than that I bring a minimum of 6 stones with Lady J since I'll need to stone for the leap and stone for cards most turns. Hope there are other things I've not thought of yet.

[Yore Huckleberry]

2 hours ago, Sweet Tooth said:

The Judge's card draw is great. I always, repeat always, Black Joker the Stagger attack, so the card draw is worthwhile to me. I usually bring a Domador just to heal him back up.

If you're JUST bringing it for the heal, grab the Guild Steward instead! Slightly less reliable, but gives away 1-2 focuses a turn.

That said, the Domador giving free-actions on relented-obey-corpse to the Pale Rider can be pretty potent stuff (plus you can ram trigger a heal on the PR on that action), so that might be better synergy anyway.

[Sweet Tooth]

15 minutes ago, Yore Huckleberry said:

If you're JUST bringing it for the heal, grab the Guild Steward instead! Slightly less reliable, but gives away 1-2 focuses a turn.

That said, the Domador giving free-actions on relented-obey-corpse to the Pale Rider can be pretty potent stuff (plus you can ram trigger a heal on the PR on that action), so that might be better synergy anyway.

Oh I definitely agree that Stewie is great. I just seem to get more work out of the Domador in the Marshal crew since i'm usually bringing DM/Pale Rider/Emissary to Obey. 

[Yore Huckleberry]

23 hours ago, Sweet Tooth said:

I've been liking Alan Reid more and find he is a different threat vector to add to Marshals. He synergizes well if I do manage to Stagger anyone and draws a card at the end of his activation.

Other than that I bring a minimum of 6 stones with Lady J since I'll need to stone for the leap and stone for cards most turns. Hope there are other things I've not thought of yet.

Going back to this: Alan Reid's stagger synergy is fine (especially if you manage to fit both him AND Judge in), but I think the more powerful synergy is throwing the Mask onto "One More Question" to have a friendly model add a melee attack. With Lady J's 2" reach and heal-when-killing, this seems like a great way to add attacks from her, PLUS Lady J will get the + flip to her Greatsword swing because she hasn't taken a charge in the activation.