Is Jack Daw Overpowered?

[TheMechE]

This guy and his crew are like the embodiment of undying even more than ressurectionists.

From my experience, Jack Daw can take like 5 models dumping all their AP on him just to kill him (and that's if they're good enough to pass terrifying duels).

And his guilty just come back with their demise ability (and have defense 6 just to make things even harder because why not?). And since him and his crew are so good at drawing cards and staying alive, it's not hard for them to go wherever they want for whatever objective they want.

 

I feel like I must be missing something easy to get on other crews or some simple to execute strategy or else why would he be given all these strong bonuses? What is his weakness?

[Maniacal_cackle]

Short answer: probably not.

Long answer: What do you play? that'll help us give suggestions

[Scoffer]

There is a plenty of ways to deal with Jack Daw:

1. Ruthless. He is is much less terrifying if your beaters ignore Terrifying.

2. Plink damage. He has only 6 health - hit him six times with your cheap models.

3. Hand drain. With no cards in hand he can't reduce damage and becomes vulnerable to your beaters.

4. Ban healing. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

To build upon the above, my number one tip when facing a super-tough-kills-everything crew is to remember an important point: in the end, all that matters is the score.

I've ended plenty of games with one model left on the table to an opponent's 4-5, and still won those games because I scored higher. Some tips about Jack scoring wise:

• The crew can be slow and cumbersome (particularly when trying to get somewhere other than where your models are).
• It does take them time to grind through your crew. If you make use of that time effectively, you can snowball a pretty solid lead.
• I'm not positive, but I think Jack Daw is pretty inefficient at scheme markers and the interact action. Look for opportunities to gain an advantage there (especially if you can kill off or disable some of the weaker models, then the expensive models have to spend their actions trying to score).

The biggest issue with killing Jack Daw (or Dreamer, Yan Lo, etc) is that then you have to go near their leader, and likely into the middle of their hyper-kill-y crew. It may be better to just run circles around them and score (accepting you'll have to take some model losses on the way).

[LeperColony]

Daw, and his other high cost quality models like The Hanged don't want to be hunting 5-6 stone minions.  Especially those with stealth or concealment auras.  Give him too many targets and he can struggle to clear them.

Ping damage is annoying to his crew.  It gets around his defenses, and it works against Incorporeal.  Kaeris is effective against him, because he can't ignore her Pyre markers.  Sonnia can get burning onto him via various means, then the range of his crew's non- actions are reduced.  Stunned hurts quite a bit too, as his crew relies on triggers and bonus actions to apply the upgrades.

If your goal is to kill him, models with multiple attacks are gold.  Hinamatsu, for instance.  Or Fuhatsu (who also has Ruthless).   

In games where you don't have any countermeasures, Daw can be oppressive.  But if you've brought the right tools, it's a much more reasonable experience.

[Adran]

my Short answer to this sort of question is "have you tried using the model?" Its often easy to miss problems with the crew if you are just facing them rather than having tro try and make them work yourself. When you try and use them yourself you often realise that there hidden problems trying to control them that is where you want to hit them to beat them.

If you're using 5 models to try and kill him, and struggling, then they probably aren't the right 5 models, and they would eb better off doing something else.  Hit him 6 times, and he is dead with an empty hand. Granted, hitting him 6 times might not be that easy, but if you hit him with a model with minimum 2 damage, he has a tough choice. Does he take 1/3rd of his health, or discard 1/6th of his hand to reduce the damage by 1? Yes, his crew can draw several cards, but his healing denies those cards, and his damage alteration requires those cards.

Look for ways to deal extra damage, things like Onslaught and Flurry are good, but blade rush, black blood and conditions are good ways to get extra damage onto him., as can be areas damage like shockwaves., which typically are a good way to drain hands, which is like damage.

So for example, Nekima with Inhuman reflexes spells almost automatic death for Jack Daw. You can charge through him 3 times, dealing 3 damage, and blood for blood once, so that s already 4 damage before you look at the  attacks!.

Jack has strong defences, but they aren't unbreakable, you just need to look at how to get through them (Or come up with a plan to ignore him and therefore not have to worry about his defences)

 

 

 

[Saduhem]

Jack Daw doesn't like:

 

Shockwaves

Burning

Poison

Ruthless

Any ping damage (Like Misery, Life Leech, Vengeance,  Black Blood, Blade Rush, Stampede, multiple tiny attacks)

Staggered (That puts Hanged at Mv 2)

Stunned (The crew's mobility and damage depends on suits)

Spread out Schemes and Strategies

Discarding cards

Execute, Onslaught, Rip and tear

 

 

[Drunken Monkey]

I played a lot against Jack in M3E and I read a lot about tactics to play against him and I disagree with many points.

You can attack the Jack players hand, you can go for pin damage and you can take a load of soul stones. There are abilities (Stunned for sure) that are very useful against Jack, but this ain't the problem. Each crew and each tech has its counter, thats part of non-symmetric games. The problem I see with Jack is, that it is a crew you have to build a counter crew against to even stand a chance. If you for example would be bound to Fixed Leader or similar restrictions or if you are simply limited by the few models you own, Jack is not beatable.

The Tormented have possibly the best card draw engine in M3E. So make them discard takes more resources then it will bring in the end. You could decide to not playing Upgrades, so he would at least have to add his to draw cards. But then already you give him an advantage. A possible fix I would see here is, that they can draw only when there is one of their own Upgrades and not for Upgrades in general.

Slow em, especially the Hanged doesn't do the Job either. As Attuned Minions with an Up your Heels trigger and even the possibility to target his own Guilty they do not depend on Movement to be scary. Well placed the 2 possible Hanged can even make it almost impossible to outrun the crew for Schemes. Toss the Noose with Stat 6, a range of 10" they can easily catch any runner and again... they are Attuned!

Ping damage doesn't do the job either. As Resser Jack has even the option to get the Grave Spirit's Touch and does not depend on skipping his draws to heal. Again it takes a lot and brings little.

Having Staggered as essential part of their mechanic, and having almost only attacks that make a duel against Mv is another huge advantage. Not only makes this combo attacks even more dangerous than the Monk's with their Chi tokens as it is so to say +2 on every single attack without a cost. In addition to that, they evade all kind of defensive triggers as most are only on Df, only a few work on Wp too, and non on Mv if I'm not missing anything. And that Jack let you discard as part of the effect on his attack, that can then be even followed by a Execute Trigger feels wrong. If he is able to charge a staggered model this makes up to -6 cards in the opponents hand in one activation if you want to keep your model.

I think the problem with Jack is, that you have to play too focused against him. For a tournament with crew limitations this might be a problem. Playing an allrounder crew against Jack won't work.

A friend of mine is about to write a detailed "how to play Jack" guide, so we talked a lot about him lately. We both agree that there should be a little work on the crew.

[Angelshard]

@Drunken Monkey There's a lot of crews that you have to build a counter to. You need ignore armour against Hoffman, you need condition removal against several masters. You need ruthless against some. You need focus or another way to gain +flips against some. Arguing that you need to build a counter crew isn't an argument far a master being too strong.

Anyone with a limited model pool is worse off than someone who has all the options. 

As for upgrades, unless you play a summoner, there's a good chance you don't take upgrades. Unlike in m2e they're far from a must now. Although I will give that the ruthless upgrades are some you want to use against him and that can hurt. 

As for the fixed master part, Daw isn't the master I'd pick in a fixed tournament. There's too many schemes he isn't good at. He isn't that good at leylines either. Corner deployment is also something that can make him cry. 

Yes Daw is good and the mv targeting is really strong, but he's far from unbeatable. 

[Adran]

On 9/19/2020 at 1:47 PM, Drunken Monkey said:

I played a lot against Jack in M3E and I read a lot about tactics to play against him and I disagree with many points.

You can attack the Jack players hand, you can go for pin damage and you can take a load of soul stones. There are abilities (Stunned for sure) that are very useful against Jack, but this ain't the problem. Each crew and each tech has its counter, thats part of non-symmetric games. The problem I see with Jack is, that it is a crew you have to build a counter crew against to even stand a chance. If you for example would be bound to Fixed Leader or similar restrictions or if you are simply limited by the few models you own, Jack is not beatable.

I'm not saying this is wrong, but this is adding extra handicaps to a player that aren't part of the expected rules.

M3 specifically has masters declared before you build your crew to allow the creation of counter crews. So a master has a commonly available counter needs to be made stronger, because it is expected that the opponent will be able to "attack" them at this weak point. Yes, this does mean if you go into a game against a certain master and don't know what they do and so don't build to try and deny it, you might be in for a big shock. but, I assume, overall it means that there is less of a "game over" feeling at list revealing that could happen in previous editions. 

[Joooohan]

Jack Daw is definitely a strong master and tormented is a solid keyword.  A couple of things that I have picked up on ways to no struggle too bad against them are: Kill the guilty with your most durable models.  It kinda sucks to put the resources in to kill them but if you do it with weak models it will come back to bite you.  The second thing I do is I try to spread out slightly more than normal to force them to as well and to help from your guys from getting double teamed.  Mobility is your best friend as most of Daw's crew is short ranged attacks but they do have lots of ways to push or pull your models out of position.  And lastly I think you kinda have to bite the bullet and don't really attack Daw as it takes a lot of resources and his damage output isn't crazy so I just try to eliminate the other models to restrict their options.  Also if breakthrough or sabotage are a available, I will take those as it is hard for Daw to deny those and score for himself.

[Zeus]

No way is JD OP especially in OC, he’s a bit like Hamelin has so many hard counters/bad match ups. A lot of these have already been mentioned. I find he’s so swingy if ur opponent hasn’t played against him or tech in they can be in trouble but against an experienced player you can be in trouble as too easy to tech counters in. Again JD is generally a bubble crew which imho are at a disadvantage against more mobile crews which are better suited to M3e strats & schemes. I rarely will take him into a competitive/tournament game for this reason but thematically his crew is fun to play. 

[Morgan Vening]

On 9/22/2020 at 2:44 AM, Joooohan said:

Jack Daw is definitely a strong master and tormented is a solid keyword.  A couple of things that I have picked up on ways to no struggle too bad against them are: Kill the guilty with your most durable models.  It kinda sucks to put the resources in to kill them but if you do it with weak models it will come back to bite you.  The second thing I do is I try to spread out slightly more than normal to force them to as well and to help from your guys from getting double teamed.  Mobility is your best friend as most of Daw's crew is short ranged attacks but they do have lots of ways to push or pull your models out of position.  And lastly I think you kinda have to bite the bullet and don't really attack Daw as it takes a lot of resources and his damage output isn't crazy so I just try to eliminate the other models to restrict their options.  Also if breakthrough or sabotage are a available, I will take those as it is hard for Daw to deny those and score for himself.

I'd go a step further, and recommend killing them with Conditions if possible. When I face Jack, I try to make sure to reduce them to 1, with either Burning or Poison, even if it means cheating in a lower damage on the attack to stop from killing them outright. If they die to Conditions, no Demise. Having said that, I've tried a couple times, and invariably screw it up, but that's not because the tactic is bad, just my ability.  

Also, obviously, anti-Demise. Really only an option for Ressers and Ten Thunders, but not bad options. Also, Cooper for Explorer's when he's released. 

I don't play Obey Masters regularly, but finishing them off with an Obey (either running them into Hazardous/off a cliff, or with just slapping them down) could work too.