Dead Justice

[DarkCrisis]

I'm surprised there has been no discussion on using Dead Justice as a Ress crew.

I don't know much about the Ress masters but I figure if I ever get one it would be Seamus and Molly. I would lean toward just Molly but being a hench her selection is limited.

So how best to use Dead Justice?

[karavak]

Dead Justice isn't a master. She can be either Justice for guild or Dead Doxy, which is a type of belle, for Resser.

[DarkCrisis]

The whole box set. How best to use it?

[thescale]

The box set can't really be used effectively by Ressers (at least as packaged). It's basically a grab bag of minions.

[Murphy'sLawyer]

I still think that Seamus gets the most out of it.

Dead Doxy

Punk Samurai

Crooked Man

The Drowned

Autopsy

The first three Seamus can use decently, none like the Autopsy and I know nothing about the Drowned.

[nilus]

Its not bad for Nico either.

You can use them as is, or just use them as Mindless Zombie proxies.

[Navar]

Its not bad for Nico either.

You can use them as is, or just use them as Mindless Zombie proxies.

I like this idea, but the tournament rules are very clear about proxies, and in general those are the level we try to maintain when we play as well. (okay without the painting restriction.)

[Necromorph]

The Drowned are proving tough for me to wrap my head around. Sure they pump out a lot of Df->TN duels, but none of them seem to have great effects. A push, a 1wd/slow, and a pulse-like 2wd. Combine that with their cb4 attack that does 1/1/3 and they don't really seem to do a whole lot other than make your opponent burn through their deck. That being said, they are a 4ss, 6wd spirit that cannot be pushed by other models, and they explode when they die. I guess they could be decent point fillers for Kirai, but since there isn't much with direct synergy to Df duels, I don't really know what to make of them.

I guess you could combine them with canines to lower df and then start spamming thier duels, but like I said, that's a whole lotta setup for lackluster results.

Edited August 19, 2011 by Necromorph

[kanhead]

I'm liking the drowned for the 6wd spirit at 4ss as Necro says. They also seem fairly mobile with their various actions and quite hard for an opponent to control. Potential objective grabbers but they are competiting with Crooligans for this and more broadly against the other very effective 4ss minions - belles and crooked men.

I'm not sure you'd bother trying to field all of the nightmare justice crew as ressers...maybe in a Nico list...

[nilus]

I like this idea, but the tournament rules are very clear about proxies, and in general those are the level we try to maintain when we play as well. (okay without the painting restriction.)

I think you are reading more into the intent of the Proxy rule. The rules are there to prevent people from buy Wyrd models and using other companies stuff. I think you can easily let these fall into the "conversion" section of the rules in which they fit fine.

Thats my opinion and in official Wyrd tourneys its always up to the TO. In my events I would allow it though.

[Fetid Strumpet]

I am finding there are two minions out of the third book that I've tested I really like, one is Jaakuna Ubeme, which I won't discuss here, the other is the Drowned. The Drowned are far better than I originally thought. They are very very useful for destroying, or at least severely weakening clusters of enemies. With their ability to take damage to push themselves for extra dmg on themselves, they have the potential to get in range to use two casts of riptide which can play havoc with opponents minions who like to cluster. Add to the fact that once you kill it it will burst for additional dmg, and then cast riptide again and you have one effective anti minion missal.

[Q'iq'el]

Oo... Ubume. That's a nasty one. I'm not sure I'd even want to own one. That's a really bad luck.

[Hatchethead]

Oo... Ubume. That's a nasty one. I'm not sure I'd even want to own one. That's a really bad luck.

?

Bad rules? Or is there something about the real-world mythology that rubs you the wrong way?

[Hatchethead]

I am finding there are two minions out of the third book that I've tested I really like, one is Jaakuna Ubeme, which I won't discuss here, the other is the Drowned. The Drowned are far better than I originally thought. They are very very useful for destroying, or at least severely weakening clusters of enemies. With their ability to take damage to push themselves for extra dmg on themselves, they have the potential to get in range to use two casts of riptide which can play havoc with opponents minions who like to cluster. Add to the fact that once you kill it it will burst for additional dmg, and then cast riptide again and you have one effective anti minion missal.

How do they roll against ... oh, I dunno ... Alps, for instance?

[Q'iq'el]

?

Bad rules? Or is there something about the real-world mythology that rubs you the wrong way?

It's not "real-world" mythology. It's a real religion people really believe in, so you go one step further with possible reactions and such.

Ubume image is extremely powerful. It's a spirit of a woman cheated by the cruel world of her motherhood - she comes after you, your children and your unborn and you don't want anything like than even thinking, that you may be noticing her existence.

Datsue-ba, for example, is a being of the other world. You don't worry about her, unless you die as a child and even then there's Jizo to protect you. A scary image, but fine to play with, just like devils, demons etc.

Spirits like Ubume, there's no protection from. You just have to avoid their attention at any cost. In the past if a woman died before giving birth, in pregnancy, Japanese would open her up and take, if possible, the child out, make the mother hug the baby and bury them like that, to cheat the spirit into thinking she died in childbirth, but got her child for a moment. If it was impossible, they'd burry her with a doll at her breast. It's not something you do, if you're not scared like hell.

There's nothing scarier than women, when it comes to spirits, because emotions are stronger and carry them further. You don't have to be a believer to see there's very bad luck associated with some images.

Edited August 19, 2011 by Q'iq'el

[Fetid Strumpet]

I haven't tried them against Alps. I'll give you an example I have tried them, however, in a mirror match game between dueling Kirai. My thinking from the get go was that I needed to rip the opposing Kirai apart, and the way to do that was to cripple her Seishin. Kirai vs. Kirai very quickly turns into a chess style match as you often can't out activate each other and the only way to seize tempo is the make a definitive, and successful, first strike or through carefully planned attrition.

So in the game I played I took 1 Drowned intending to use it to try to wipe out a cluster of four Gaki he had brought. Doing so would give me activation control and place the game more firmly in hand. To my surprise he scattered the Gaki and jumped Kirai into the last of the Gaki. At the end of her activation she pulled three Seishin to her.

My activation saw me Swirl the Drowned into attack position, ran it forward with its dmg for push ability, and then cast riptide twice, the result of which killed it, triggering it's slow to die for another riptide and a pulse blast of dmg. If I'm remembering correctly it killed the Gaki, itself, and all three seishin. Of course that gave Kirai back 2 Seishin (for the Gaki and the Drowned's Death) but the wounds on Kirai, the Gaki's Death, and a net loss of one Seishin....I feel that was a worth while trade for a 4SS cost model.

[Hatchethead]

Spirits like Ubume, there's no protection from. You just have to avoid their attention at any cost. In the past if a woman died before giving birth, in pregnancy, Japanese would open her up and take, if possible, the child out, make the mother hug the baby and bury them like that, to cheat the spirit into thinking she died in childbirth, but got her child for a moment. If it was impossible, they'd burry her with a doll at her breast. It's not something you do, if you're not scared like hell.

There's nothing scarier than women, when it comes to spirits, because emotions are stronger and carry them further. You don't have to be a believer to see there's very bad luck associated with some images.

Pardon the term "mythology". No offense. It wasn't the word I wanted, to be honest.

That is some legitimately scary stuff. As a "fan" of scary, I have a deep appreciation for the darker side of Japanese spirituality, though I must admit, I view it with an certain North American detachment. It sounds as if the belief is still quite prevalent in modern Japanese culture?

Edited August 19, 2011 by Hatchethead

[Q'iq'el]

That is some legitimately scary stuff. As a "fan" of scary, I have a deep appreciation for the darker side of Japanese spirituality, though I must admit, I view it with an obvious North American detachment. It sounds as if the belief is still quite prevalent in modern Japanese culture?

I'm not a Japanese, so the detachement is there, but I'm also not a Christian, so I don't hold the very strong bias towards "believing" as the basic function of being religious.

Primal religions (not only in Asia, but in Rome or Ancient Greece or pre-Christian Slavs etc.) didn't put much stake in being a "believer" because it was obvious for everyone the spirits and demons and gods are all around. You don't have to *believe* in the things you know and see every day (after all if the mountain IS your God, and you see the mountain, you see the God, right?).

And because it is a scary world out there, with creatures far more powerful than us playing around, only the qualified (shamans) can go and deal with it. The rest simply hides and ignores the threat in hope of not getting noticed. Obviously there are ways to contact with spirits you want to contact with, but you do it in secret from other spirits - at your home altar, on the holy ground, within the protective walls of a shrine (no matter how small, can be just a tree with a rope-fence around), or simply by wearing white or black (depending on the culture, spirits don't see these colors). Getting drunk is up there as a protective measure too.

So to measure religiousness of a modern-day Shintoist or any other member of such an ancient religion, you'd have to measure how much he tries to keep low profile and not care about the stuff, while still conducting all the protective rituals, asking shaman and priests for cleansing and so on. Not an easy task, when you come with Christian notion that the religiousness should be measured by how strong you care about your beliefs.

Even Japanese fall into that trap, being influenced by the Western thought so much in the last two centuries, and often consider themselves not very religious in contrast to other countries. But then they go around through the year meticulously completing all the rites both at home and in the community, so go figure.

I know Japanese who consider themselves complete atheists, but they still wouldn't go to Yotsuya frivolously (considered to be the place where particularly strong onryo of a woman wronged - lady O-Iwa - exists). Does that mean they are still religious, or are they atheists as they think of themselves?

And then you put the Buddhism on the top of all that and the older schools in particular make it clear you are to doubt all your beliefs and see the reality for yourself.

Bottomline is this - if you had a painting of Ubume you inherited from someone, you'd call the priest, make sure the box is cleansed, secured and put in the altar or some other safe place. Or you'd give it to the Shinto shrine for safekeeping. At the very least you wouldn't hang it in your room but keep it back to the storage and bring out only scarcely, to look or show someone something scary.

That's what most Japanese would do, even if they don't mutilate the bodies or consider themselves very religious anymore. Pretty much like a western atheist would still cringe a little at a very blasphemous pronouncement, even if he didn't believe the thing at all.

Edited August 19, 2011 by Q'iq'el

[Edwinn]

Very impressive post.I love playing these games as they bring the best in one.Do post more on the game rules.

[Hatchethead]

I'm no Christian, nor am I an atheist. If I were forced to label myself, I suppose I would qualify as an agnostic moreso than anything. I appreciate and respect spirituality in all forms, though I do not presume to know nor understand which is correct or true or otherwise. It is, however, hard for me to argue against the fact that I've been raised in a society where belief is the yardstick by which one measures faith. I do not believe in any one god, dogma or collection of tenets; by North Americn standards this makes me "not religious". I wouldn't say I'm completely devoid of spirituality, however, so I can appreciate your point of view.

Interweb discussions involving religion rarely stay civil for long, so I'll just leave it at that!

[Q'iq'el]

Oh, not trying to argue anything. More like trying to paint an easy to understand picture of how complex is the mesh of spirituality and modernity in places like Japan. Even people who easily dismiss it, find themselves part of it.

And Ubume is really as bad as it gets, when it comes to spirits it's wise to be scared of, which was my original point. Not saying people won't buy it here, but at least some won't. It's like playing Germans in FoW or playing FoW in general - not everyone cares, but some people just can't ignore the fact it was a real war with real atrocities. The image of Ubume is not easy to ignore either.

Edited August 19, 2011 by Q'iq'el

[Hatchethead]

Oh, not trying to argue anything. More like trying to paint an easy to understand picture of how complex is the mesh of spirituality and modernity in places like Japan. Even people who easily dismiss it, find themselves part of it.

And Ubume is really as bad as it gets, when it comes to spirits its wise to be scared of, which was my original point. Not saying people won't buy it here, but at least some won't. It's like playing Germans in FoW or playing FoW in general - not everyone cares, but some people just can't ignore the fact it was a real war with real atrocities. The image of Ubume is not easy to ignore either.

Ah! I wasn't suggesting you were being argumentative. I'm more concerned that a well meaning third party will submit their opinion in defense of faith, belief and religion in general, someone (equally well meaning) will then respond, soon something is being said that offends and then it's off to the races.

... and good point regarding the potential cultural impact of games which endeavor to include historical and/or religious subject matter. It's easy to lose sight of that.

[Hatchethead]

If I'm remembering correctly it killed the Gaki, itself, and all three seishin. Of course that gave Kirai back 2 Seishin (for the Gaki and the Drowned's Death) but the wounds on Kirai, the Gaki's Death, and a net loss of one Seishin....I feel that was a worth while trade for a 4SS cost model.

Thanks for the detail, Fetid. It eases the pain.

*Twiddles thumbs, waits for Book 3.*

[Bigkid]

You don't have to be a believer to see there's very bad luck associated with some images.

I think you do...

As you say, religion/spirituality is a very personal thing and has no place in a tabletop skirmish game.

Some see an evil spirit, I see a little metal figure with a cool name. One that will go nicely along side my zombies, demons and undead prostitutes...

[Q'iq'el]

I think you do...

I'm not and I see it. It's more of thinking about general reception of things, not just my own. I said, compare it to the reservations people have against FoW and especially some armies in FoW and you'll more or less see what I'm talking about, even if you personally may not care.