Schill out, Dick Wad

Ok, alright, yes etc...

So attended a tournament called Faux Roads on the weekend run by the lovely James Munro.

Before I get into bleating about Von Schill, I would just like to throw a shout out to all the fellas that where there. Not in a long time have I been in a room with as many men (well aside from my friday nights ;) ) with just such a bloody good vibe happening. There was bull shit and banter shooting every which way, which was honestly, so good! Also props to our very own Corey Leslie for taking away the win!

I will also note I won 2 games with Von Schill (against another Schill crew and Yan Lo) and lost to Corey by a point (against an Asami/Yas shenaningry crew). So fear not if you think I'm butt hurt in some way :P...

Anyway, onto the bleating....


So due to losing the challenge Corey set for me on Ep 2 of the Faux Brauxs, (to take Von Schill for 5 games at Twatafaux) I thought I'd give him a crack and see if he was at all feasible or enjoyable to take for 3 games let alone 5.

Now if you don't know Von Schill, I'd advise you go look him up. In wave 1 I'm sure he could maybe have kept up with the Joneses, but with the advent of wave 4 he is really falling behind in ability to affect the board.

His main schtick of keeping his Friekorpsmen all alive and well is great, but when you look at the options available to you with the keyword you start to run into trouble, I'll go through them in a moment though.

So Schill has a cache of 1 (like...the dull, dead look on my face can't possibly be described every time I say that), for those playing at home, that is the same as the Viks, 'Nerfed' Levi, and Hamelin,(!!).
 It is one less than Jack Daw (not so much of a good point with Misaki) and a staggering 3 less than Parker Burrows (Tara isn't a great point either).

So normally when we see caches, they are generally there to 'balance' a master, lower cache, usually means stronger/more damage-y. I honestly can't see why Schill is at cache 1.

His damage on his knife of 2/3/6, while can shock people when he somehow hits a high, and the ability to ignore armour is great, but with only a Melee of 6 and a range of 1"  it is pretty depressing on a 'punchy/supporty' master. He also has the Augmented Jump ability, which allows him to charge while engaged and ignore things in the way of his charge, but the problem there is, he has taken his H2K and +1Wp bubble away from your guys.

His shoot is good, but again still just a 6, with a 3/4/5 damage and ignoring hard to wound (yawn), if his melee track was also that, it would be much more acceptable.

His tactical (3) action is a joke in all but the most perfect scenarios.

His (0) finish the cur is quite useful in the right situations, but still does require (a low) card to get it off though.

His front of card, DF 6 and WP7 are about standard fare for most masters, Wounds 12 and Armour +1 isn't much to write home about. When you factor in he has no defensive triggers, and again a cache of 1, he is quite unsurvivable.

Now I think my biggest gripe with Schill is he has all of these cool sort of synergies, but you have to pay for all of them.

So for starters, the steam trunks (0)s are great, don't get me wrong, but a lot of the Friekorps also have quite usable (0)s. Which is ok because Von Schill has an upgrade you can take to take advantage of that (allows two differnet 0's). But now we are already at -4 stones (Engage at will and Steam Trunk).

His ability to rip his shirt off and heal is amazing, but again, you pay for that (-5 stones). Also given he will generally be in the thick of things you'll almost always take Survivalist (-6 stones). So just for Schill to work in a very basic sense with his thematic crew, you are already down 6 stones.

You factor in maybe a cache of 4 all up to keep him and Hannah alive, we are now down 9 stones from a lot of other crews, 9 stones...... almost bloody 20% of our allowance, just so Schill can do what he is actually supposed to do.

Now models with the Friekorps keyword beside schill are:
Hannah
Anna Lovelace
Lazarus
Strongarm Suit
Specialist
Librarian
Trapper
Friekorpsman

As a rule, most of the Friekorps models are pretty awesome for there price, but they are generally pricey.

Hannah: at 10SS is pretty bloody solid, Arcane Reservoir, a host of anti-casting abilities, a decent punch and a good (0) are all good, but she is 10ss, which when we are 9ss down, is getting tight.

Anna Lovelace: I in all honesty haven't used her, so will opt to not comment much further, but she certainly does have a lot of utility, but is sitting again at 10ss when you factor in the Merc Tax.

Lazarus: God do I love lazarus, he is legit, just such a pimp!! Armour +2, ability to heal (then heal again if near Von Schill and the Steam Trunk), rapid firing grenade launcher, all amazing, but guess what 10ss again...


Strongarm Suit: I feel as if he is Schill, but better in all honesty. Armour 2, the ability to hit for min 3 damage (with a trigger to ignore armour/incorpereal), Augmented Jump etc...but again 10SS

Specialist: Ok, sure, he has some good utility clearing markers and what not, but his horrific walk and DF of 4 are not really acceptable on an 8ss model.

Librarian: Now the librarian is one of those 'good' models you see in a lot of crews, being able to flurry and heal are both excellent abilities. At 7ss she is certainly solid, but still pretty pricey.

Trappers: Oh trappers, solid bloody minion at 6 stones, he does what he says on the tin, he snipes well, he can drop some middle ground schemes if you need it, so all pretty good. But generally most Trappers will be deployed away from Von Schill, so they immediately don't get his benefits.

Friekorpsman: Honestly at 5ss, with the trapper sitting at 6, I feel I would very rarely run these guys if ever. They don't quite do anything overly well for their cost.

Quick Mention to the Hodgepodge Emissary (with the Schill upgrade): The ability to put Schill's shirt back on is very good, as are his abilities to throw out upgrades. But in all honesty I think the emissary is one of the weaker ones within the game, and really the only thing he brings to Schill's crew is a free shirt, which is kind of expensive (10ss) for a few goes at a 1ss upgrade.

Now after those quick run downs of his 'thematic' crew, you no doubt start to see where he is going to run into problems.

We are already 9 stones down so Von Schill can actually use his support abilities to the fullest. so 41 stones, if you go just 2-3 of his solid bigguns, you are looking at around 11ss left to actually purchase some scheme runners. Maybe a trapper and a Friekorpsman... which is what, 7 activations including the Steam Trunk. It is quite tight and not allowing for any upgrades on the Henchmen/Enforcers.

I think after the above ranting, the point I'm getting at his Schill seems to get quite heavily taxed to do what he is meant to do and even after that, he doesn't do anything particularly well. He suffers from a low cache, and at least a 3-6SS buy in for him to actually function how he was designed to. Also factor in, if you don't use the relatively expensive models with the Friekorps trait, you start seeing diminishing returns in his abilities.

I honestly think he needs a bit of a looking at, with the advent of the Lucius Buffs and the Tara Neatenings, hopefully the rules peeps will have a look at poor old Von Schill as in his current iteration I think, while not being a shit master, is certainly falling quickly to the bottom of the pool.

 In short, he is a jack of all trades, master of none, which doesn't work in a game where you can take exactly what you need when you need it....