Book 1 Vs. Book 2

[gregdorf]

I have had a number of games now that book two is out and so far the outcome has not been good for the old masters, at least Nico. What I am interested in is how other games are matching up when a book 2 master or henchman is used and they are played against a book 1 master.

My main opponent is a Nico player and has been for a while, well he has lost a few nail bitters against Ophillia and Kirai has given him nightmares. Is this common or just a bad matchup. We are going to test if it is just an issue of bad matchup today and play a Kirai v Ramos game, so maybe it will be much more even.

[karn987]

I've not had many issues with the old masters compared to the book 2 stuff. Many of them got more viable and nastier I found.

As far as I have seen, Nico is still really powerful and great against any direct damage style of play like Ophillia. Kirai is a bit of an issue I've found because her spirits are for the most part, very strong. But I've managed to take her down by just being careful and thinking a bit more. But yeah, I think Kirai is a nightmare for Nico and many other masters, sorta how Pandora is a nightmare for most people to deal with.

I imagine Ramos and Kirai should be a much better game, I've had and seen good success for Ramos in that match up. It's hard to fight Kirai if you can't deal with spirits and Nico, sadly, doesn't really have the tools for that kind of fight.

But give it time, I think it's just been bad match ups so far. Things will even out for you guys.

[nerdelemental]

Ophelia is strong. One of the strongest of Book 2, I'm convinced. However, what we've learned from Book 1 and from our experiences with other games we've played, is that the more straightforward and beatstick models quickly shine. Last year, for example, at this very same time, our forums buzzed about how broken Perdita and Lilith crews were while Ramos, Pandora (I kid you not - ask Eric and the other Dev crew), and all of the Resurrectionists were so underpowered they'd never see play.

It takes some time to adjust. My guess is that the players playing the Book I crews are still learning what the Book 2 opposition can do. Once they have a better predictability I hope we all settle in to the balance.

As a personal anecdote backing my own position, I've been playing against Kirai with as many different masters and factions as I've got (for quite a while longer than they've been out in the open) and I've yet to lose against her. She's tricky, but since I have a longer play experience against her, I have some predictability of what those tricks might be and I can defend better against them with any of my crews. If anything, I think Book 2 reflects Eric's (by far) and the Dev Team's growing experience in the design process. Kirai list builds are just more open-ended than what we could have created in the first book. So it'll take even longer to get your head around what she is bringing. Collette's showgirls, too: You could go bashy with Cassandra and two Coryphee as well as other heavy hitters or you could go more brick wall with Mannequin's and base Showgirls. Justice can bring a flexible list, too, but you have to dabble "out of flavor" within the faction more than Collette does.

Kirai, in your example, has way more flexibility yet because she can hire any spirit out of faction. Knowing what shenanigans she's bringing is just harder. In six months I bet we'll be back to complaining about Lilith, Pandora, and Perdita just like always.

[Poko]

I only played once against both Kirai and Colette and Hoff (well, twice, but the first time we got his rules wrong) and Lilith's all-cc style has some problems with them, but she'd have similiar against shooting lists. Kirai's spirits are a damn nightmare to deal with, they tarpit you and since your unit halve damage to spirits, instead of one-shoting them, you must use two or three atacks to just kill one. And they also hit you, not strongly but not very weak either. That one game I had was literally me chewing my damn way through a host of spectral asians to get Kirai. We never finished it, but it was 50:50 at that point, I still had my hardest models left and killed her once, but she just finished spawning more gakis.

Colette is even worse, as her list just doesn't stay in place when you catch them. But I reckon she'll be the easiest to deal with after some practice, as I priorized targets wrong that time. Kill her minions, and her survivability plummets.

Hoff is very strong master, with lot of synergy with his units, but his abilities demand that all the units move very closely to each other. So you can try and just do objectives instead and evade him. I won in that game, but barely so, after lucky initiative draw when I finally stripped him of his ablative mechs.

[bigstupidfighter]

I think most of the Book 2 stuff is balanced with the better Book 1 models. This makes Book 2 seem pretty powerful, but honestly, if you balanced them any other way, people wouldn't need to buy the new stuff, and the company would die.:bawling:

Book 1 masters should still be relevent, but some may have trouble keeping pace without access to some new models of their own. Since Nico can't summon spirits, maybe consider starting with a few. Also there are some Mercenary models from book 1 with magical hammers that do full damage to spirits. All in all though I have to agree with Karn, Kirai is always going to be diffuicult for Nico since she can eat corpse counters and he has very little to use against spirits.

To address the larger question, generally I think Book 2 Minions are above the book 1 curve, particularly the Neverborn models. As for masters, Collette worries me, she has top-notch defense, upper-tier maneuverability, and mid-to-high stopping power from what I see. Aside from Collette though, I honestly think I see some Book 2 Masters having trouble keeping up with the Book 1 masters, assuming the Book 1 guys have access to their new toys. Henchmen strike me as generally lackluster masters, LCB has very weak defenses, Hoffman has lower-end defenses for a melee master. Kirai is the exeption, I think she's just right, with strong but not overwhelming tricks capable of giving any Book 1 Master a run for their money.

All the above is of course IMHO, I'm by no means the last authority on this game or any other minis game.

[Poko]

Hasslehoff is not melee master, he's a pure buffer/debuffer with some cc thrown in as self-defense.

[GrandLeon]

I tend to face just about everything, though my main opponent masters are Leveticus and Viktorias. I mainly run Victor, but sometimes Colette.

Colette makes short work of the Viktorias without the Coryphee and with the Mobile Toolkit Ramos just runs the board against them. Though Levi still gives me (and what seems like just about everyone) a problem but I can beat him now.

As far as judgement goes between the books, I really think things have been quite balanced between the factions.

[gregdorf]

Well The Ramos game was interesting today. Kirai was getting owned badly, I was having trouble making spells go off because of poor pulls for trump cards. I am fairly sure that tricky Ramos changed all my card trumps to rams. Anyway the game pulled up a little towards the end, there was a bad use of an exploding spider swarm which had little effect on the Kirai which changed the dynamics a little. We called it when it was a mostly fine Ramos Vs. Ikiryo, a badly hurt Onryo, a Gaki, and a badly hurt Datsu-ba.

[Wombats]

We've been Kirai and Colette against Lilith and Raspy.

Book One crews are winning hands down.

Only game Rising Powers crews have won were against other Rising Powers crews.

We are about 8 games in.

[AvatarForm]

Book One masters work well with book 2 minions/totems. However, I think Book 2 Masters will require the same amount of tweaking and errata as Book one required to become an (almost) even playing field.

Overall, from theoryfaux only, Book one Masters seem to be better written, with clear intentions.

[Zethal]

Well specifically with Nico he got an amazing new summon with the Rogue Necromancy. Granted it costs 4 and only drops 3 counters but attacks with Poison or Paired a great Cb and the ability to attack 3 times on the turn it is summoned is phenomenal. On a turn with lots of counters and only one chance to summon this in a wonderful addition to his options.