Help for a new player

[AndyP.]

Hi to everybody,

I’m new of this game but I like it very much and i have to decide what is the best master to start.

I like those masters:

Colette du Bois

Lady Justice

Hamelin the Plague

I like Colette for the model that are very nice and showgirls are nice to be painted like Kankan dancers of the Moulin Rouge of Paris.

I like Lady Justice because the alternative model is wonderful and I like the Western style of her crew.

They seems very dynamic and fast that are 2 aspects that I like very much in game.

I like Hamelin the Plague because I totally love the story of magical flute and this is its horror version.

I heard he’s a master too much strong and that a lot of people don’t play him because is an autowin match.

I don’t like him for that but I’d like to know

Said that I’d like to have opinions about those models and respective crew. Principally I’d like to know what models are better to be used with those masters and what are a bad choice for the crew.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Andy

[Lucidicide]

I'd go with Lady Justice. She is the most fun of those 3 choices. She also has the biggest viable crew selection, being able to select almost anything in Guild and make it work.

[Iamwyrd]

Well colette loves her showgirls. The starter box a pack of doves and 1-2 packs of corphyee (depending is your good at magnetizing or not) and colette is pretty good to go.

Justice box is good, I would recommend maybe a witching stalker or two. The executioner or the guardian for sure. Her totem is a must imo, helps with card cycling.

Hamlin I don't really know too much about except alot of rats, rat catchers, stolen, and obedient wretch. But I never got into him so im sure someone else can help with him.

[Pagan Wolfe]

Welcome to the game, hope you enjoy the ride!

The biggest advice I would give is pick the one that appeals the most to you and your style right now. If you are in a brightly coloured show girl mood then start there (face it, you will never get just one crew). Hamlin can be a pain but only if you really play hard on his strengths, take a more balanced / fun list and both you and your opponent will have fun. I got stuck in the same boat with the Dreamer...people everywhere said he was an alpha strike auto win...I just never played him that way so my local gaming group never had any issues.

Flavor aside if you are looking for a good place to learn then Lady J is probably it. She is far from one dimensional but requires less synergy with other models to work well. She can't win the fight on her own but she is much more forgiving.

End result? What do you like and which faction has other models in it you like the look of and play style? Any of these masters can be tweeked with a few clam shells...but each faction is very different.

Head over to Pull My Finger for advice on crew building and welcome once again!

[Adran]

The most important part of your crew is that you like it.

Liking both its looks and its mechanics will help you make the effort to play them and learn to use them.

Lady Justice is a graet model, and is ideal for learning the game. She certainly has her own tricks to play but they generally involve ways of getting her crew to beat up your opponents. She also works well with pretty much every single model in the guild range.

Colette is much less effective in a straight fight, but then the whole point of this game is that it isn't a straight fight. She is good at moving her crew to unexpected places, and other tricks like that. This does mean that she is more challenging to learn to play with, but as long as you are aware thenits less of an issue. Her crew typically contains a small range of models, making her one of the cheapest masters to have competative lists, but it also means that if you expand into a second master they will have very little overlap with the models you already own.

Hamelin plays a very different game to any other master. This is what makes him seem overpowered. I don't think that he is any more powerful, but when you play against him it is unlike any other master. Most players have plans and approachs to achieve what they want, and the way Hamelin works generally means that these don't work.

The down side to this is that you learn to play a very different game with him, so learning to play another master will almost be learning the rules all over again.

Phil

[Neverectionist]

hamelin and Colette are two of the best crews in the game, i would agree that they are autowins if you play them right, so i would go with lady J out of those three, she would be the most fun, i started with Zoraida, simple master, simple crew, good for objectives, but no match for the collettes and hamelins, another down side to collette and hamelin is that they have set crews, showgirls for collette, and ht 1 harmless models for hamelin, so you cant really vary it up, at least with Lady J or Zoraida you have allot more freedom with your crew, or if you just want to win every game, collette with a coryphee duet.

[rancor709]

Play what appeals to you most visually and game play wise.

Colette-much like a dancer/magician she and her crew move swiftly around the field jumping in and out of battle and switching around. Colette can make models disappear and if your lucky she can turn them into manniquins think the good old assistant switch trick but more deadly.

Lady Justice- A hard hitting melee machine who can help beef up her crew and is a strong counter to crews that rely on counters and against the undead hordes of the resser threat. She buffs her crew and make them quite fierce. Not a brute of a model but not pure finesse either. I tend to recommend her as a starting point over the other two because her mechanics are more in line with the game in general.

Hamlin-Awesome fluff great looking models, but a very specific play style that is not for everyone both those playing it and playing against it. Its essentially a slow inevitable tourant game. either you will reach critical mass and overwhelm your opponent with a thousand rat papercuts or they will break your catchers and run your rats off the board leaving you in a spot of trouble. Hamlin games tend to go the extreme one of two ways either you win or your opponent wins and there is very little middle ground. Not saying its bad but it feels like a similar game over and over again with him, with little variation.

Hope that helps you decide all three crews are visually great and play the game well. If I was to suggest it would be lady J but I'm a might partial to redheads.

[Ozz]

Ill agree with Rancor709's post.

lady J is the best starter master of the three, because her rules are all more common through out the game, and she is very mean im mele but certainly not Over powered, just tough when played right And her minion selection with the guild has a lot of good models, but that are again relatively simple and fun to use

Colette and Hamelin are not auto win as others have said, but they are more powerful, and you do need to know how to beat them against a good player to have any chance of coming out on top really, but they are also more complex and harder to learn how to play.

So, rules wise i would say it is best to go with Lady J for a Starter master (also guild expansion is relativly easy as perdita, Lady J and Sonnia all use the same minions) After that, look at just the fluff and models you like the best and if one of the others stands out more, go with them, as picking the best crew for you is the right rout, i started on Colette and the Dreamer together. But currently loving my Lady J games most because she just kills stuff so very dead And that is sort of my play style, if your dead, you are not doing much else