Sandeep Desai, Font of Magic

[HomelessOne]

I am amused that both Sandeep/Shenlong and "Wind Golem" were correctly called.

Credit to A Wyrd Place.

[Jordon]

I will say right off the bat that it seems odd that the wind golem looses armor. At 10ss and only 9 wounds and Df 5 seems like this thing is going to get shredded up. Yes it can butterfly jump but I feel like that will just entice models to focus melee it. Middle of the storm is nice support piece but it's probably the weakest form of armor on any of the golem models. 

I don't know, it just sort of reads as the weakest of the golems unless I'm missing something.

[dancater]

OK.

So Sandeep lost summoning, gained marker creation, debuffing, some shielding and healing. Better support for Elementals than for Academics I think. Warp Elements trigger can cycle Gamin (minions only so not Golems) and is not a summon, so you can start with Metal or Fire Gamin, rotate to Wind Gamin to scheme, that sort of thing, not hugely useful but I do think it could have utility.

How does his Demise (Upheaval) operate??? It reads very awkwardly.

After this model is killed, enemy models with 1 of any marker within 6 gain Staggered. 

OK so you kill Sandeep, any marker with 6" then creates a 1" pulse which gives unresisted Staggered to every model inside that (those) pulses (friendly Academics and Elementals ignore this demise). Makes sense once you write it out.

Overall, different, seems OK. Academics fail to get much love, and many of them need it.

Called it that Sandeep was teamed with Shenlong.

Wind Golem, is a big, mobile, fairly fragile scheme runner and anti-schemer. Clearly protects nearby models effectively from attacks, but that is useful not huge. Very, very mobile and has movement shenanigans, Mv 6 Flight, suited Leap - wow. moves models with Pounce on one melee trigger, the Wind Blast also pushes on a non-pistol ranged 8". 

Conclusion, not a beater or tank. This Golem is a hit and run scheme runner and enemy scheme killer, in the right pool, against the right opponent it will be a game winning nightmare, swooping in, throwing things around, tearing up vulnerable models and then scoring schemes. But, in a pool which is more about the brawl or against opponents that can lock it into melee it is going to burst into a cloud of mist.

I can see taking it, but honestly not that often. Is it better than two Wind Gamin??? Not sure. 

So when do we get the Poison Golem and what does that look like? 

Overall, I feel this is the most underwhelming of the titles honestly. Sandeep Font of Magic doesn't grab my imagination. The Wind Golem is super niche for the crew I think, especially I feel in the Sandeep FoM crew, could see the Wind Golem more in Summons-Sandeep. The Academics continue to be on detention. 

[Jordon]

So looking at his One With Everything ability. Does this allow models to ignore say the "blocking" trait of an ice pillar? Right now it really seems to only affect pyre markers in any significant way. 

I assume the demise is really only there for Banasuva to trigger. It's not terrible but the need of having a marker within an inch of an enemy and for that to be within 6" of the model with the demise sounds a bit annoying. Still, unresisted stagger can be pretty nice. 

Students of All is pretty nice. It replaces Shouting Orders but is almost better in some regards as it allows an elemental to concentrate and use all the various Mantra's through  that academic. I think this makes using the Mantras quite a bit easier. Worst case, its an extra attack from a bit golem model, which certainly isn't bad. 

Spark of the Elements doesn't really seem worth a masters action and a damage on whoever's using it. Maybe if you have the tome for surge, you can at least turn that back into another action via Students of All

From Heaven and Earth seems a bit situational but those triggers make it pretty interesting.

Aetheric Control is neat and I can see how this could really benefit the golems (well maybe not wind so much). It also makes him an interesting choice as a second master for Raspy/Kaeris/Mei.

Moment of Reflection seems like a real boss free action.  Handing out up to 4 damage in healing or 4 shielded seems pretty awesome. The move is a bit more situational but could be clutch for objectives or unlocking some key models. The trigger to replace with a different gamin is interesting but I'm not sure how useful it'll be. I guess it means you don't need to hire wind game because it'll likely be better to change into one from a 4ss gamin instead. Still pretty neat.

 

Overall I like what he's offering but it does still seem a little bit more geared towards elemental models which is a bit of a shame as OG Sandeep also seemed mostly elemental focused as well. I'm still not really seeing any incentive to hire Kudra or the mages unfortunately.  

[Maniacal_cackle]

2 hours ago, Jordon said:

I will say right off the bat that it seems odd that the wind golem looses armor. At 10ss and only 9 wounds and Df 5 seems like this thing is going to get shredded up. Yes it can butterfly jump but I feel like that will just entice models to focus melee it. Middle of the storm is nice support piece but it's probably the weakest form of armor on any of the golem models. 

I don't know, it just sort of reads as the weakest of the golems unless I'm missing something.

As a Marcus player, 9 wounds + butterfly jump + move 6 flight + leap is basically enough to make any scheme runner virtually immortal against melee attacks (and ranged attacks on most boards where you can hide behind terrain).

Mobility is one of the best forms of defensive tech IMO.

[fire5tone]

So I'm surprised I havnt seen this yet

 

'Deeps an elemental, meaning academics can take *his* actions, among the many elemental only benifets

[Rufess]

2 hours ago, Jordon said:

I will say right off the bat that it seems odd that the wind golem looses armor. At 10ss and only 9 wounds and Df 5 seems like this thing is going to get shredded up. Yes it can butterfly jump but I feel like that will just entice models to focus melee it. Middle of the storm is nice support piece but it's probably the weakest form of armor on any of the golem models. 

I don't know, it just sort of reads as the weakest of the golems unless I'm missing something.

As a player who run scheme with First Mate a lot, I see the Golem as a decent high-end scheme runner. Give it 2 Chi Token first turn and it can go alone. Even the opponent sends the big beater into it, it has high chance to survive and escape.

Not to mention both of its attacks can repositioning enemies, which is huge in GG2.

[dancater]

1 hour ago, fire5tone said:

Deeps an elemental, meaning academics can take *his* actions, among the many elemental only benifets

OK.

This is interesting. 

Sandeep FoM is an Elemental and Academic.

His Students of All front card ability reads: 

After a friendly Academic activates, it may discard a card to have another friendly Elemental within 6 of it take a non- Action, drawing LoS and range from the Academic. Models cannot take actions this way more than once per turn.     

As observed Sandeep is an Elemental, as of course are all the Gamin, all the Golems, Banasuva, Essence of Power and Kandara. So that is a ton of potential actions.

It reads to me as a pseudo command - it allows an Elemental to take an a non-bonus action, so uses the Elementals stats and card, but the actions 'origin' becomes the Academic. Simply wow, the potential application is huge, although it is very card intensive.

So this has me rethinking, this is a great synergy boost for Academics within a Sandeep FoM crew, but because Sandeep FoM is not a summoner it means that the SS crunch on his crews is really, really tight. I'm not certain how many Academics I can justify squeezing in, but it certainly gives me lots of thoughts. This is a theory crafting topic all unto itself, for example Banasuva's Toss or Sandeep FoM's Aetheric Control are intriguing and an Academic throwing out a Ice/Metal Golem's Huge Fist would certainly sting.

This seems cool.  

 

[fire5tone]

18 minutes ago, dancater said:

OK.

This is interesting. 

Sandeep FoM is an Elemental and Academic.

His Students of All front card ability reads: 

After a friendly Academic activates, it may discard a card to have another friendly Elemental within 6 of it take a non- Action, drawing LoS and range from the Academic. Models cannot take actions this way more than once per turn.     

As observed Sandeep is an Elemental, as of course are all the Gamin, all the Golems, Banasuva, Essence of Power and Kandara. So that is a ton of potential actions.

It reads to me as a pseudo command - it allows an Elemental to take an a non-bonus action, so uses the Elementals stats and card, but the actions 'origin' becomes the Academic. Simply wow, the potential application is huge, although it is very card intensive.

So this has me rethinking, this is a great synergy boost for Academics within a Sandeep FoM crew, but because Sandeep FoM is not a summoner it means that the SS crunch on his crews is really, really tight. I'm not certain how many Academics I can justify squeezing in, but it certainly gives me lots of thoughts. This is a theory crafting topic all unto itself, for example Banasuva's Toss or Sandeep FoM's Aetheric Control are intriguing and an Academic throwing out a Ice/Metal Golem's Huge Fist would certainly sting.

This seems cool.  

 

The origin still appears to be the elemental taken from, just drawn through the academic, so (and this is no-where near the extent of it) 'deep activates, takes kandaras throw knives for divine strike, hits a severe teleporting kandara up and staggering a bunch of enemy's...

 

You now have multiple engaged enemy models with stagger *ripe* for movement shockwaves... You know where that goes

You can do it to have deep concentrate

Or have metal golem off the rails

Or you can up we go someone 8" away from the golem, and pouncing strike someone else within 5 of it!

There's a lot of potential and I think it makes for a pretty cool title imo

[Adran]

48 minutes ago, dancater said:

OK.

This is interesting. 

Sandeep FoM is an Elemental and Academic.

His Students of All front card ability reads: 

After a friendly Academic activates, it may discard a card to have another friendly Elemental within 6 of it take a non- Action, drawing LoS and range from the Academic. Models cannot take actions this way more than once per turn.     

As observed Sandeep is an Elemental, as of course are all the Gamin, all the Golems, Banasuva, Essence of Power and Kandara. So that is a ton of potential actions.

It reads to me as a pseudo command - it allows an Elemental to take an a non-bonus action, so uses the Elementals stats and card, but the actions 'origin' becomes the Academic. Simply wow, the potential application is huge, although it is very card intensive.

So this has me rethinking, this is a great synergy boost for Academics within a Sandeep FoM crew, but because Sandeep FoM is not a summoner it means that the SS crunch on his crews is really, really tight. I'm not certain how many Academics I can justify squeezing in, but it certainly gives me lots of thoughts. This is a theory crafting topic all unto itself, for example Banasuva's Toss or Sandeep FoM's Aetheric Control are intriguing and an Academic throwing out a Ice/Metal Golem's Huge Fist would certainly sting.

This seems cool.  

 

I'm not sure how many spare cards you are likely to want to discard. My guess is you probably will only want to do this 2 or 3 times a turn at most, so you need 3 academics and 3 elementals in the crew. Sandeep is both (Although he can't make himself take an action he can make someone else take an action and another academic can make him take the action) as is Banasuva, so you get the possibility of 2 uses of this before you even spend any stones. Of course you might not always want those 2 that close together, so you may well want more, but a free out oc avtivation Sandeep action and a free out of activation Banasuva action is pretty good. 

[dancater]

It will also massively impact the choice of crew. The potential for a heavy "your choice of condition" available with Elementals crew here is massive. 

Lot's of Ice Gamin and a Golem, suddenly your Academic can hurl out a 5/6/8 smash face to a slowed target, with several slow vectors to set it up.

With Banasuva, some Fire Elementals and a few Academics you could throw out some nasty Burning.

The Metal Elementals are a mix of some cool movement options, functional damage and defence with Shielded and Vent Steam options.

The Wind Elementals can wreck a bubble crew or positional scheme game with enemy pushes.

As noted, both the Wind and Metal Elementals also synergise really well with Kandara handing out Staggered.

The biggest issue is that the Academics are not cheap, the Mages (healing helps everyone) are 6SS, the Guard (with the movement-push mantra the Wind Elementals become insane) 8SS and Kudra (she synergises especially well with the Metal Militia) is 9SS.

Be curious to see if/when we see a Poison Golem what the poison schtick could be. But the little Poison Gamin is the least likely to be seen in this crew. We really need a Poison Golem.   

Also remembering you can rotate all the Gamin with the Warp Elements trigger of Deep's bonus action Moment of Reflection, so you can in emergencies switch in the Gamin which brings an Academic that critical action option (which is probably another reason it's limited to the Elemental Minions).

[theamazingmrg]

6 hours ago, fire5tone said:

So I'm surprised I havnt seen this yet

 

'Deeps an elemental, meaning academics can take *his* actions, among the many elemental only benifets

Yep.  Sandeep can now benefit from every Mantra, before you even touch on the nonsense on his card.  I'll miss the summoning though.

[Jinn]

Don't forget that Banasuva and Kandara are both Academics. All you need is to hire one Academic minion as a caddy for Magical Training and you're set with four Academics.

Also you can get them to Charge with Students of All to get movement for the Elemental, followed by a wherever the Academic activated.

[Raising]

also islike havig a 4 actions master

also banasuva can obey sandeep. and its toss can be brutal 

 

 

 

 

 

[MuMantai]

Up to 5 actions (plus Bonus), as Banasuva can now command Sandeep

[Raising]

take notice flurry isnt as atractive as usual.

 

 

blizzard from the ice golem casted from an academic ... does it create the area arround the academic?

 

using concentration by. an ice gaming in range of banasuva. will the range for the demise be calculated from the academic?

[Thatguy]

15 hours ago, Jordon said:

I don't know, it just sort of reads as the weakest of the golems unless I'm missing something

Leap + Built in suits for Pouncing Strike sounds pretty good to me.

[Jordon]

1 hour ago, Thatguy said:

Leap + Built in suits for Pouncing Strike sounds pretty good to me.

Where are the built in suits for Pouncing Strike coming from? Sandeep?

[Jinn]

Anyone got any thoughts on the Wind Golem in Sandeep 1? There is no world where I combine three Wind Gamin into this thing, I probably wouldn't even combine two into one if I could.

[dancater]

1 hour ago, Jinn said:

There is no world where I combine three Wind Gamin into this thing, I probably wouldn't even combine two into one if I could.

I can't see doing it often, but I can see doing it. The Wind Golem is more durable, depending on the opponent if I need something to get into a hot spot, move some things and drop a scheme then where multiple Wind Gamin might be chopped to pieces the Wind Golem may just be your huckleberry. Also if the enemy has a really savage scheme runner that you need to neutralise the Wind Golem might be the way to go. 

But agreed, the Fire, Ice and Metal Gamin are all small versions of their Golem's and the Golem is basically a killer, turning 3 small killers into a single much bigger killer usually makes sense in Faux, three Gamin are less efficient at killing than a Golem in 90% of circumstances.

But the Wind Elementals are mobile primary schemers and, particularly for the Golem, anti-schemers. In most circumstances three separate mobile scheme runners are much more flexible and efficient then a single scheming monster. Plain and simple, it's a nice option to have, but you'll very rarely use it. 

[Thatguy]

6 hours ago, Jordon said:

Where are the built in suits for Pouncing Strike coming from? Sandeep?

New Sandeep or either version of Shen Long.

[Vatic]

How do we think some of the border cases of "students of all" works?

If an academic makes a Metal Golem walk, how does ride the rails work? Is everything measured in respect of the academic? If the academic is next to a scrap and the golem is 6" behind him, can you chuck the golem up 12" in front of thr academic (so an 18" place)?

What about the ice golems blizzard- is the aura around the academic model?

If you make a golem focus near banasuva (do you measure the mantras relative to the academic or the golem?), does their demise marker drop next to the golem or the academic?

[Adran]

7 hours ago, Vatic said:

How do we think some of the border cases of "students of all" works?

If an academic makes a Metal Golem walk, how does ride the rails work? Is everything measured in respect of the academic? If the academic is next to a scrap and the golem is 6" behind him, can you chuck the golem up 12" in front of thr academic (so an 18" place)?

What about the ice golems blizzard- is the aura around the academic model?

If you make a golem focus near banasuva (do you measure the mantras relative to the academic or the golem?), does their demise marker drop next to the golem or the academic?

Best guess at the moment

Ride the rails - the inital scrap marker needs to be within 1" of the Elemetal, its not a "range". Likewise, the second scrap marker doesn't talk about range, so it has to be 12" of the elemental. 

The Blizzard would be around the Academic (The range is drawn from the Academic, so thats where the aura is). 

Mantra draw their range from the model with the mantra, rather than the other way, so its the location of the Elemental that matters for the Mantra. (Because the mantra asks if there is an elemental within range, not the elemental asking if there is a mantra within range)

Base contact with itself is not a range. So if you are putting something in base contact with itself, its base contact with the elemental, because it its the elemental that is taking the action. This one is answered in the FAQ already. (section 2 question 8 )

Hope that helps

[Jinn]

6 minutes ago, Adran said:

Best guess at the moment

Ride the rails - the inital scrap marker needs to be within 1" of the Elemetal, its not a "range". Likewise, the second scrap marker doesn't talk about range, so it has to be 12" of the elemental. 

The Blizzard would be around the Academic (The range is drawn from the Academic, so thats where the aura is). 

Mantra draw their range from the model with the mantra, rather than the other way, so its the location of the Elemental that matters for the Mantra. (Because the mantra asks if there is an elemental within range, not the elemental asking if there is a mantra within range)

Base contact with itself is not a range. So if you are putting something in base contact with itself, its base contact with the elemental, because it its the elemental that is taking the action. This one is answered in the FAQ already. (section 2 question 😎

Hope that helps

Only problem with this interpretation is that according to the FAQ (Section 5, No. 12) the wording on the Stealth ability is kind of treated as a "Range" for the purposes of actions taken drawing LoS and Range from other objects. It has very similar wording to abilities like Ride the Rails with regard to distance. 

[Adran]

3 minutes ago, Jinn said:

Only problem with this interpretation is that according to the FAQ (Section 5, No. 12) the wording on the Stealth ability is kind of treated as a "Range" for the purposes of actions taken drawing LoS and Range from other objects. It has very similar wording to abilities like Ride the Rails with regard to distance. 

That's true.

I don't like that FAQ and argued it was the other way before the FAQ. So I don't fully know how to reconcile it with the written rules.

It is possible that you check the position of both the scrap markers based on the academic, but that sounds too good to me. The others I think aren't affected by that.