Dash's viability as a 2nd Master to Nellie or Lucius?

[Mikes]

So, listening to the recent 3rd Floor Wars podcast on Guild (which is apparently all we're talking about right now), Dashe; was brought up as an option for a hire intoa  Lucius crew.

This lead me to wonder about his viability as a hire into Lucius and Nellie crew, given their card draw abilities, but I'm not smart enough to theory craft or crunch the numbers on this. So, have any of you fine people done this? How did it go, and did Dash make up for his 15 SS cost? 

[Nikshe]

16 SS, cause you need to pay a no-keyword-match price. And it seems that the Dispatcher is needed too, so it will be 19 SS. Didn't try it yet, but it seems to be pretty equal to the Whispered Kirai.

[Gaston]

Given the hoops to jump through for summoning, perhaps it is easier to think of Nellie or Lucius joining Dashel instead?

[Irritated Walrus]

Nellie and Daschel theoretically work really well together. I've tried it once, and it went alright.

[Dark Reaper]

5 hours ago, Gaston said:

Given the hoops to jump through for summoning, perhaps it is easier to think of Nellie or Lucius joining Dashel instead?

You don't need to summon many models, but the ones you do summon should be of high quality. Lucius will help you fish for good cards and he can command the summoned minions (executioners). The pass tokens generated will be of limited use as Lucius draws cards when someone uses a pass token. Lucius is just a very good leader overall and can work with pretty much everyone. Card draw, arcane reservoir, entourage, issue command and hidden sniper makes for an extremely flexible (tm) master who can perform a plethora of different functions.

[Mikes]

16 hours ago, Irritated Walrus said:

Nellie and Daschel theoretically work really well together. I've tried it once, and it went alright.

Interesting. Can you give us a bit more of a breakdown?

[Gaston]

Just my POV:

Summoners are great for multi-master because you are adding points to your crew, which offsets the cost of the supporting master. In Dashel's case, summoning is considerably easier if you have enemy scheme markers to work with. He can get these a few ways: Dispatcher, Drop It trigger, or your opponent scoring. The Dispatcher, for all his pain, is the easiest, as it requires the least amount of interaction with your opponent. Drop It shots can miss (god that was so painful), and at least the more I play Dashel, the more my opponents are taking counter scheme marker tech, such as Twelve Cups of Coffee. 

So if you take Dashel into Lucius, you are either pony'ing up for the Dispatcher, relying on circumstance for summoning, or agreeing to yourself to summon cheaper models. If you take Lucius into Dashel, you still gain Arcane Reservoir, Issue Command, Escort, but lose some flexibility of the various card draw abilities and Hidden Sniper. One additional thing to consider with Lucius is that he can be offset with the cost of the Steward, as the Purification Trigger on Issue Command can remove the Slow from summoning. So for me, I'm looking at the question of Lucius handing out 3 AP to different models and if it is worth the price of 4-ish AP worth of stones (i.e. two 8 cost models versus one 16 cost). 

Nellie is in a slightly different boat. Her keyword uses Secrets Exposed extensively, which would in theory make it easier to slot Dashel into a Journalist crew to bring some beef. The problem I foresee with that is currently, your opponent can choose to remove a marker rather than drop a marker, regardless of whether or not there is a marker to remove. So they have a lot of agency in your gameplan. I hate to wade into errata discussion, but if there was one thing I would change, this would be it. I think that it makes Nellie slightly mechanically broken. 

I realize this was a bit negative, so to be clear I do really LIKE the combinations of Nellie and Lucius with Dashel. These are just the reasons why I look to add them to a Guard crew rather than adding Dashel to Elite/Journalist. I would rather have a stronger summon engine that I can rely on rather than risk it with Dashel. 

[Irritated Walrus]

8 hours ago, Mikes said:

Interesting. Can you give us a bit more of a breakdown?

I had Nellie fart out markers while Daschel summoned off of them. I brought Nellie as my second master, and hired most of my big beaters instead of summoning them. I summoned in lower cost models like Rifleman, Sargents, and even a Mounted Guard. It became a game where I overwhelmed my opponent with numbers. I removed slow from key summoned pieces with the Steward's Dispel Magic. I didn't crush my opponent by any means. I won by a point or two? It was a few months back. I scored on Plant Explosives, Detonate Charges and Claim Jump.