Taking a stroll down Redchapel

[Regelridderen]

Seamus was my fourth master in M2e, although he lived his life in anonymity, while I focused on neverborn and arcanists.

Yet, I just put him on the table, and let me say the Redchapel Romancer is one of the funniest keywords - and quite oppressive as well.

Here’s my take :

Building The Redchapel Crew

Everyone knows, when Seamus enters the room, you bring out all your Ruthless models.

This is why, my first two models are the Mourners. Bringing those two lovely ladies ensures your defense is up and running. I defend them even further with Grave Spirit’s Touch, bringing even more terrifying, and ability to start pulsing out focus Turn one. Later on they just float about stripping Ruthless and Feeding on Fear - which goes great with Scarlet Temptation.

My third pick is the lovely Sybelle, she is such a nice force multiplier, able to throw opponents into Seamus’s aura of death. Having those this sexy duo, means that people are hard pressed vs Seamus.

And that’s it for the stables 25 stones, after this comes either :

The Emissary, dependant on the board. There’s usually plenty blocking terrain around here, and Seamus can usually create corpse marker on his own, so I’m less of an emissary fan, but if the terrain isn’t up to Seamus’s advantage I bring mr. Big bird.

Yin he was popular along with Chiaki in M2e. I still like this guy, more feed on fear, and able to push opponents into a “Hello Love!”.

Bete Noir she’s almost a stable, rise again means she’ll pop out in the most inconvenient places and hit people three times.

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I generally prefer Terrifying to bank on Scarlet Temptation and stripping Ruthlessness and I go for fast and mobile models wanting to rule positioning, I also look for Wp attacks, but there are others :

Dead Doxies banking on “Hello Love!”, the doxies are nice for controlling positioning and shoving opposing models into Seamus’s death trap. And stripping Focus and handing out Distracted is a great way to neuter opponents. 

Rotten Belle they’re cute. Put people on negative Wp, hit them with Unassuming Demeanor, push them to trigger Pounce and hit them twice. No one expects a 5 stone minion to deal 9 damage in one activation, but with a fairly simple setup Rotten Belles can - can - can.

- I often choose doxies over belle’s due to the versatility of Take by the hand. But still Unassuming Demeanor with Unexpected Ferocity are scary in action. And Belle’s do take the ball vs HtW Ressurs ☠️

 

Playing the Crew

My tactic in general is for Seamus to be everywhere and do everything. 

Enemy scheme runner on the flank - Send Seamus and two severes; BOOM!

Some large beater tearing up the center? - Bring Seamus back; BOOM!

I want Seamus to be where the enemy is, but more importantly I want him to be surrounded by his lovely Ladies. Their mere presence makes Seamus impregnable by combining Terrifying and Scarlet…, so I always bring Seamus back to where the action is. Spending his active turn on the flanks, then coming back - Secret Passage, Focus, Shoot, Secret Passage.

Madame Sybelle commands all the action of course. She loves masks (even more so on cards than the one she wears). Her most important use of them is to whip people and have them Pulled Here and There. Not only does it trigger Hello Love, but it also hands out Distracted from Bump in the Night making it even harder to strike Seamus back. 

This effect quickly accelerates, when Yin or the Doxies join the fray. And as mentioned before, when you’ve got Mourners hovering about, taking pot shots with Feed on Fear (with negatives), opponents quickly learn  why Redchapel is such an unwelcoming neighbourhood. 

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Cards

The crew has little card draw, so you need to plan ahead, Seamus likes a couple of 7s for his Hidden Passage, and he’ll want at least one severe for cheating his damage, and Sybelle needs a 6 for Undivided Attention. The crew doesn’t need much, but Wp duels with a is key to making the most of your hand.

The Suits

These goes for Unexpected Ferocity. A nice case for Rotten Belles is that their attack can usually make good use for even low rams. No one likes taking 5 damage, on a weak card, from a 5 Stone minion. High rams are often used for Bete or Sybelle’s Critical Strike’s if you haven’t setup properly Distracted targets. 

 Are of little use to the crew. Their best use is Yin’s Grasp with Viscera if it can trigger Seamus or Sybelle. Or Incidentally showing off the minions Beautiful Clothes. 

 are the bread and butter. Seamus can get his minions Scarlet… in place with Get in there! While Sybelle and Yin uses them for Pulled here and there.  Yin and the Mourners have On your heels, which is always an unpleasant surprise. + Confused Feelings are abundant. 

 Seamus’s Execute is always great, the incidental kill is always sexy, but more for the drain on stones/hand. More interesting is his Daze, handing out Stunned (+ Distracted + a Seamus attack). High crows is definitely reserved for the handsome haberdasher. Yet there is good opportunity to hand out Slow and force discards elsewhere. 

The Unmentionables

I never take the Dandies. I’ve seen them put to good use, providing corpses, but I’m not that reliant on corpses, they mostly just go to mourners pulsing out focus. + I do not own the Dandies, so that makes the choice even easier. My main concern is their lack of synergy in the basic combination of Terrifying/Scarlet… which is the base for the crew. 

Challenges

A good table for Seamus requires plenty of blocking terrain, but also a certain degree of openness to benefit from the auras in the crew.  This usually isn’t a problem, but it can happen - and that is when you bring on the Big Bird. 

Armour is annoying. With little opportunity to bypass it and no big damage spikes, bar Seamus, there’s nothing much to do, but grind away and distract.

Construct and Incorporeal opponents are a nuisance for not leaving corpse markers. This is mostly felt by Bete Noire, so I wouldn’t bring her against those. 

Stones

Damage prevention for keeping Seamus and Sybelle alive is key. Seamus fear spiky damage, so stoning for is a good use, as he can regain the rest.

Sybelle’s Pulled Here and There will often pay itself off.

I aim for six stones and wouldn’t go for less than 4.

Opponent’s view

Playing against Redchapel can be somewhat of an NPE, as it feels like you’re just pounding on rotting flesh. You need to put an end to the negative flips on the Terrifying tests. Meaning melee requires a lot of fancy footwork, but it’s important to remember that Scarlet Temptation does not work for lone models. So isolation or coming in from the right vector is key to making the kill. Bar Seamus the Redchapel is hardly a mobile crew and can’t ignore terrain. Seamus is the breadwinner of course, and like any other pimp, his girls will scatter once he is gone. His biggest fear is guns, once he’s out of his protective bubble he’s only got HtK and Terrifying(12) to protect him. So focused shots will do a number on him - if you can get to him. 

Seamus in turn loves to see Melee heavy crews particular Neverborn with their low/average Df and reliance on Terrifying. 

[Butch]

Thanks a lot. This is VERY helpful!

[Regelridderen]

3 hours ago, Butch said:

Thanks a lot. This is VERY helpful!

Be warned, I’m by no means an expert on Seamus, but I do have a lot of fun with him 😊

But try it out for yourself and report back 🤓

[Fetid Strumpet]

I appreciate someone else writing a guide with different perspectives, so great job!

Been playing Seamus as my main since Book 2 in 1e, and I'd personally disagree with a large portion of the advice here, but I appreciate differing perspectives being put out there.

[Maniacal_cackle]

 

Some stuff I wrote before the errata for sybelle.

Also interesting to hear you love Mourners. Most people don't like them much.

[Fetid Strumpet]

That's one of my areas of disagreement. I think Mourners are beyond awful as anything other than a cool sculpt you should paint and display and never under any circumstances hire into a Red Chapel crew. Though to be fair, I did try them in a great deal of configurations when 3e came out since on paper they looked pretty ok to me. But ultimately I discarded them since their bonus action, at least through the first 3 iterations of GG, doesn't really help actually score points, and they just don't do anything else that actually helps win the game, in my experience.

[Regelridderen]

@Fetid Strumpet that’s why Grave Spirit’s Touch is doubly important on the Mourners. 

As they bring their own corpse markers, two mourners can start pulsing out double focus to the whole crew via Blasphemous Ritual, and as you start killing you can bring them in to replenish the focus.

And through Feed on Grief/Scarlet Temptation they can fairly reliably deal 4-8 damage at 8” - not too shabby for an 8 Stone minion. 

However their greatest feat doesn’t lie in, what they do, that’s fairly incidental. It’s more in ensuring that the rest of the crew can do what they’re there for. 

Can you be more specific in how they failed you?

[Fetid Strumpet]

Because everything you say you bring them for is more efficient, cheaper, or both on other models. I personally never found that what they do actually do or enable at all worth it.

Weeping widow is a pretty worthless ability in a lot of cases. Sure it can some times be useful, but Terror is only a card tax or a minor play pattern changer. It’s short range, so Ruthless models with guns don’t care, and it’s an aura, so they can still negate it by blocking LoS to the mourner. So I basically found that the ability almost always didn’t matter, and when it did it was trivially easy to negate. 
 

Scarlet seduction is on all the nominally female models in the keyword, so if you need that I’d hire Doxies in every situation over Mourners, since they actually do the enabling, and are useful upclose or long range. Even belles, since in my testing I’ve never found Sybelle worth it without at least 2 of them. Though I’d never hire a belle without hiring Sybelle.

And I never found them all that resilient if they were actually helping score points. If they somehow got into a position to help score a point they were basically instantly killed. Doxies are more resilient and scarier to attack if you don’t negate defensive triggers because if you attack them with actions left you have to be aware you might just lose the rest of your actions to their regret trigger. Though Doxies drop pretty fast to be fair, with or without GST.

For focus, you can pulse it once and get a fast, though fragile, scheme runner for 2ss less by hiring a Gravedigger. And that’s only if you need focus on anyone other than Seamus. Focus, I find, in very general terms, mostly a nonissue for the rest of the Redchapel crew as anything other than a defensive mechanic. Sybelle doesn’t care since it’s only a step up of 1 dmg, belles don’t need it since their max is 3, and they are almost certainly getting a positive anyway, doxies can use it, but they hardly ever take cane swings when I use them, and so on. Seamus does want focus, loves it, but I find it’s more efficient to hire a nurse to give it to him than to spend 8ss to get focus once and then have basically a brick of a model for the rest of the game. Buy the nurse and get all the tricks she does with tools for the job, condition removal, a fast assist action if necessary, and forced movement if you need it, as well as another seduction.

Or instead of hiring 2 Mourners with GST hire Bete with GST and a Dandy, and get lots more utility for 2ss less, and still get 1 pulse of focus, and get a good cheap anti schemer and a really fast and good scheme runner who can double as a minor melee model.

I personally wish they were good, in GG0 I had 80+ games with Seamus after the open beta closed and at least half of those were trying various iterations of Mourners, and they never, not once, felt worth it to me, which is when I, personally, consigned them to the display shelf, never to return until a buff or M4E. If they work for you, I’m genuinely happy they work for someone because I do quite like their sculpts, but my general advice for new or beginning Redchapel players is to just ignore they exist.
 

But all metas are different so maybe your meta is one of the few where they are worthwhile. And everything here is my opinion. It’s an opinion based on a long history of playing him, 10+ years across multiple editions, and lots of games in 3, but still just an opinion. Even people who take my advice I recommend trying whatever they like even if I think it’s garbage, since it’s how we innovate. So if they work for you, great! Honestly, great! But I do not think that is, or will be the case for the vast majority of the players if the game.

[Regelridderen]

Thanks @Fetid Strumpet for your input. There aren’t many range dominant crews in my meta, and I’ve got no problem seeing the issues the Mourners would have here. And I’m still just a handful of games in with the redchapel, but so far the mourners have served me surprisingly well. My initial reaction were that they were overcosted (I’d love to see them with Incorporeal to give the crew some mobility and suit their sculpt), but I’m undoubtedly in for a game where they fail me miserably 😊

 

[Fetid Strumpet]

No worries. My suggestions for fixing them, possibly with other changes would be to do one of the following:

1: Make weeping widow just a los ability. They still wouldn’t be great, but the could honestly then serve as a tech pick.

2: invert their bonus action so they could could count schemes as corpses. You couldn’t use it directly to stop an opponent from scoring, but with so many abilities in Redchapel that want corpses, and not a ton of efficient ways to generate them, they could have a pretty decent role in scheme marker heavy scenarios.

3: Before Seamus2 was a thing I’d have suggested giving them a corpse version of walking forge, but not sure giving the summon engine is a great idea, but maybe it would be fine. Thinking of how Mei2 works. She needs multiple scrap, but she doesn’t need a card or suit either, so…

4: Give them an aura or a bonus action that puts up an aura that lets them both drag a corpse around when they move and protects it from destruction.

5: possibly take feed on grief away and give them Terrorize at stat 6. I mean the big issue I have with them is at least in Redchapel they don’t really do anything worth 6ss. Give them something useful to do at range that plays into the other synergies of the crew and we could be talking.

6: just bake the ram into their attack in some way. Again if they did something useful after hiring they’d be fine. Strong melee hits that requires the set up of stacking distracted on something could also be useful.

But honestly, Seamus is pretty ok with the current version of GG, and therefore I’m doubtful they are gonna do anything with mourners. A keyword minion being terrible isn’t exactly uncommon, and they buffed up to use ability his henchmen, so though I think the design on mourners is pretty bad and could be improved, not seeing that is needed or likely at this point.