In the previous post, we looked at the likes of Knuckles and Layne, the new additions to the Fisherman’s and Butcher’s Guilds respectively. Knuckles seems rather strong, and Layne has… potential.
In this post, we’ll take a look at the latest two rookie spoilers – the Hunter’s Guild’s new winger, Edge, and the Mortician’s Guild’s new coach, Gaffer.
EDGE
Looking at the front of Edge’s card, we immediately spot the same fragility as Layne’s – 4+/0 defenses with only 13 hit boxes. At only 1″ melee, she’s quite easy to take down, it seems. What she lacks in survivability, she gains in mobility though. With an epic 7″/9″ movement and access to many dodges on her playbook, it’s easy to see her traversing the pitch at high velocity. With a 3/6″ kick and a nice momentous tackle + dodge result on column 1, she’ll be quite the ball threat, when left unchecked. Lastly, she also has a new character play, Entangle, with which she can cause the snared condition at range, even when attacking from her playbook. Attacking isn’t something she’ll want to do, though – with only TAC 4, she’d rather charge and hope for the wrap for i.e. the amazing double tackle, triple dodge result.
So, we’re looking at a very mobile goal threat with some access to snaring opposing models. What else do we get? Well, seeing as she has such a focus on the ball, why not give her Close Control as well? This means that she’ll not have to worry so much about Parting Blows and Counterattacks (unless they’re KD results). All her other traits are actually focused on mobility. Edge wouldn’t be a real Hunter if she’d had no access to Light Footed, but she can do more with rough ground, or any ground terrain actually. Mirage is an active ability, which lets her teleport through a patch of fast ground, rough ground or a forest – at the most, she’ll be able to dodge around 6″! For FREE! Take that, Horizon and Fathom. And if that’s not enough, Unorthodox shows us that she definitely is Skatha’s sister: After each successful attack against a Snared target, she may add a double dodge result to her attack. Remember that double tackle, triple dodge result we were talking about earlier? Against a Snared target, this is now a double tackle, quintuple dodge. So, taking everything into account, let’s see how far she can go…
9″ sprint
3″+30mm teleport through Mirage over Fast Ground (roughly just over 4″)
2″ extra sprint speed
5″ dodge after a charge on a Snared target through Unorthodox
6″ kick range
This is a (just over) 26″ goal threat. Amazing…
What Edge lacks in survivability, she definitely makes up for in mobility. In some terms, she’s quite like Fathom, or can be seen as a mini-Skatha, when considering her as a goal piece, or someone like Blackheart, who can deal damage and dodge out to avoid the Counterattack, only to dodge back in by attacking another target. And with Close Control and her huge mobility, she’s actually also a nice place to kill the ball on. I can see Edge being placed within Hunter 12’s quite nicely.
GAFFER
Just as any other FCD rookie, Gaffer too has an immediate point of worry on his card – 3+/1 defenses with only 16 HP. Surely he will have something defensive on his the back of his card? Well, for now, we’re looking at the front of his card. And oh boy, it is amazing. Remember Veteran Rage? Remember Red Fury? I actually made a comment on the Discord server ~30 minutes before the reveal that with all the TAC buffs in Morticians nowadays, they’re looking a bit like season 3’s Veteran Rage + Gutter combo. Amazing! So yeah, Red Fury. Ever thought of having Ghast attacks six times? Or Scalpel 9 times? That’s a thing now.
Besides this amazing character play, he gets another one that might be just as strong: Careless Whisper. From 4″ range, Gaffer has the ability to throw a ‘whisper token’ onto a model, which basically works like Singled Out or Eye Spy in that it increases the attack dice of your models. But here’s the kicker: the token only leaves after the model has been taken out. Talk about serious debuffs! Granted, both of Gaffer’s plays only have a 4″ range, so that means that the model has to come close to the frontlines, which he actually doesn’t want to; positioning is key!
So let’s see, does Gaffer have anything defensive on the back of his card? The answer is ‘no’. This means that Gaffer indeed is as fragile as the front of his card says, so it’s all about timing and positioning with this guy.
The back of his card mentions a trait and the first legendary play on the Rookie cards. First off, The Knowledge gives Gaffer the ability to hand over a +0/+2″ kick buff to a friendly model for the remainder of the turn. 8″ kick Scalpel, 10″ kick Bonesaw, just think of the possibilities! And lastly, in true BeardMini’s fashion, his legendary play – Handy Listener, Such As You Are – is an ability with which Gaffer can rearrange his whisper tokens across the opposing team. Very important: THIS ABILITY HAS NO RANGE. This effect is pitch-wide! You can basically pull someone in for a Casket Time, and just before Casket does his thing, you just throw the whisper token onto i.e. the enemy captain from the safety of your own side of the pitch. Just amazing.
So yes, Gaffer sounds like a support piece that has numerous amounts of ways to interact with the field and greatly increase your chances of success. I’d say he’s an automatic inclusion into the Morticians 12, but it’ll be one hell of a job to figure out which 5 models stay home, as the Morticians already have so many strong models…
RANKING
At this moment, 5 rookies have been spoiled. (Yes, we’re also counting Cutlass). If I were to put them into tiers, I’d come up with the following results:
Tier S: Knuckles
Tier A: Cutlass, Gaffer
Tier B: Edge
Tier C: Layne
Do you agree? Let me know in the comment below!