Unpacking With Dreamer Insomniac

[Nathan Sells]

I was messing about with Dreamer's new title the other day and was curious to see how folks see his turn 1 activation

With a move 4 and a 10" range on his offensive abilities he's likely not getting into the scrum on his own turn 1, or if he is he's doing a lot of walking to do so, which seems a shame with his fabulous teleporting abilities. So how do you plan to run Insomniac's unpack?

Do you hire cheaper minions to super change the Lucid Dreaming engine and burry Dreamer early turn one, popping him out up the board and hiding more fragile models with his Oneirophobia trigger?

Do you hire Daydreams to get him up the board early and to work sculpting decks?

Do you leave him towards the back and spend his first activation using Lead Nightmare to set up an elite crew turn so you can pop him out turn two?

Is it worth slapping your own models with Endless Slumber to sculpt your turn 2 hand? 

Do you take the super secret tech of slowly walking up the board?

Like all things in 'faux the right answers will be situational and depend highly on the pool, but on a model where teleporting makes walking rather redundant (if its not scoring points) and where focus is of less utility do to a lack of damaging attacks it makes for an interesting change of pace out the gate. 

[santaclaws01]

You want to have at least 5 lucid dream models with Dreamer so that you can always get him burried without him activating(until those models start dying)

[Nathan Sells]

Going in with 5 Lucid Dream models is certainly an option, but I'm not convinced it is the option. 

You definitely want to bring a lot of lucid dreaming to a game with Insomniac, but I'm not convinced it solves the turn one puzzle. 

If you activate five models with lucid dreaming and burry Dreamer ASAP, you also need models that take simple duels, attack friendlies, or otherwise prompt a discard (or attack enemy models, but if you're close enough to do that burying Dreamer is less of an issue).

If you aren't given reason/opportunity to cheat or discard cards turn one you'll end up removing 6 cards from play when you swap your hand the cards removed from play. Which means, unless you have Stitched in addition to your five activated models with lucid dreaming and/or Lady Yume you'll need to activate two more models before you can unburry and activate Dreamer. 

At which point a his abilities to pass out Adversary and mess with the opponent's deck are a little less impactful as you likely won't have a ton of models left to benefit from the effects. 

Granted, from that set up you get to throw a big beater at one of thier models with Adversary and be fairly certain you'll kill it. And I don't want to downplay the benefits of passing out Slow and messing with the opponent's hand for turn two. But, in a lot of deployments, this strategy requires a heavy reliance on Daydreams to Lucid Dream, move your models into position, and clear your hand. I find myself wondering if they're a good investment of points beyond turn one in a non-summoning crew. 

[74legion]

The Master was played through a bonus action and summoning (stitched together mostly). This was taken away from him. Then they broke the only doctor of the faction. Now he was given a useless 2/3 title.

[Nathan Sells]

Insomniac is very different from OG Dreamer but he's far from useless. There's definitely a hiring pool to figure out, and I'm curious about his options for turn 1 but he feels fun, flavourful and powerful. 

[SEV]

I only played one game with him. Since it was corner I went for 3x lead nightmare. I sculpt a hand for t2 and buried him only than...

Still I'm not sure it was the best course of action. After t1 his engine run smoothly (and you probably out cards every other master in the game), but t1 is clunky for sure...

Maybe we just accept that? 

Also Insomniac is good at placing scheme marker. I did Detonate charges with him rather easily and it was a challenge with old D.

[hahnberger]

When I played him, I brought 6 lucid dream models bc I also tried it Lady Yume. My thinking was that you want 6 cards removed from the game, Yume using one of those to draw. I was drawing new hands often twice a turn, but didn't have enough non-support models to fully utilize all the great cards I had.

5 lucid dreamers seems optimal to get him to teleport and do things turn 1. If you don't think the enemy will be on your table half turn 1, maybe going 3-4 would be enough, accepting that his turn 1 is probably just pushing stuff around.

[Nathan Sells]

When I tried him I brought four lucid dreaming models and the spider twins, as I was in corner symbols.

I did indeed just have Dreamer pushing things turn one, but he felt very impactful in the later turns. Moving folks up was helpful, and definitely helped get Chompy into a better spot. It feels a little weird using a Master AP in place of a Daydream's but it is a nice trade for having the Daydream's not stapled into the list. 

[SEV]

Do you count Chompy as a LD model? I actually had 7 LD models when I played him... It was a bit overkill but 4 seems low. 

Daydream still seems useful IMO. Lead nightmare is always good and 3ss for LD model is a bargain. That free up some stones for more impactful models.

Also, I don't see how you can go lower than 2 stitch with Imsoniac. They're even better than usual helping you control the bury/unbury timing. 

If you go 2 stitch 2 DD and 2 Ancien Pact it's 22 SS and you have 5 LD models. So you have room for 2-3 other models... My go to would be Lay Y and WW and propably a madness, but you have a lot of room to play around. 

One thing I would like to try is angel eye. She usually just not worth the stone but she can do a lot of damage from save distance with a hand full of severe. Unfortunately she doesn't benefit from adversary.

[Maniacal_cackle]

I've heard a few people raving about Insomniac Dreamer, and with them the consistent theme is "2-3 hands for turns 2 and 3". I think if you play him as a card draw master there is a ton of power there, and there's a delicate balance of getting enough lucid dreams to turn him on, and then enough high-impact models that those extra cards win the game for you.

[extremor]

I still think about a placing effect heavy list to make alp and Lady Yume useful. 
usual suspects are: the new trigger on dreamer LN, Hoody, Mature… oh and Thats about it I think  

If just using lady Y you could easily trigger her ability by flying next to her. But how do we make alp useful?

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 hour ago, extremor said:

I still think about a placing effect heavy list to make alp and Lady Yume useful. 
usual suspects are: the new trigger on dreamer LN, Hoody, Mature… oh and Thats about it I think  

If just using lady Y you could easily trigger her ability by flying next to her. But how do we make alp useful?

One issue is that alps die so easily it is hard to build around them.

Though I'm one of those that think alps are a fantastic summon for Dreamer1, so what do I know.

[Regelridderen]

54 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Though I'm one of those that think alps are a fantastic summoner for Dreamer1, so what do I know.

Alps are a fantastic summon. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

On the other hand... Alps are cheap enough that if you bury/unbury them and get a bit of value out of them, you're probably happy.

I guess a big question would be, can you have enough buried models to always have the positives to their attack?

[SEV]

That sounds like a lot of trouble for not such a big reward (actually having Alps in your starting list is more a liability)... Alps will probably remain awesome summons. But maybe I lack imagination and the place list works.

Also I want to see a meme deck of Insomniac + Mama Z just to know how many times you can cycle through your deck in a single turn.

[j3diii]

18 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

On the other hand... Alps are cheap enough that if you bury/unbury them and get a bit of value out of them, you're probably happy.

I guess a big question would be, can you have enough buried models to always have the positives to their attack?

I'm super new at this still so there is probably a disconnect between my tactics and competitive level game play, but I was using the Bandersnatch in my last game to boost Alps until after they activated. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

4 hours ago, j3diii said:

I'm super new at this still so there is probably a disconnect between my tactics and competitive level game play, but I was using the Bandersnatch in my last game to boost Alps until after they activated. 

I was thinking this might be an option, worth trialling for sure!

[Roadhouse]

Lead Nightmare twice and Focus is probably the play. I also think WW is a must to replace the Stitched you'll lose. Insomniac's power comes from all the extra cards and you need Lucid models to leverage it.

[extremor]

2 hours ago, Roadhouse said:

Lead Nightmare twice and Focus is probably the play. I also think WW is a must to replace the Stitched you'll lose. Insomniac's power comes from all the extra cards and you need Lucid models to leverage it.

And maybe use dreamer and weaver for scheming. Unburied next to any nightmare makes insomniac a decent mobile scheming model. 

[Roadhouse]

He is very much a Support/Control master. He passes out Slow and Adversary while setting up another hand. His bonus is just, drop a scheme and you dont care about the discard becuase you want your hand to be empty for the switch and he can be almost anywhere on the table. 

I took 

2xStitched, 2xIM, WW, Hooded.

Hooded makes *very* good defensive use of all the extra cards.

[74legion]

How good is the new model of nightmares???

[Regelridderen]

1 hour ago, 74legion said:

How good is the new model of nightmares???

That good.