Musings...

I've been thinking a bit about my line-up and game plan with Scalpel, where she actually fits in, and what I should be doing with her game to game.

I still don't have much game time with Scalpel but I generally don't use tormented Agony or Wake the Dead. When I played her in the past I used Tormented Agony a lot more, and I feel like that was specifically due to matchup where my opponents had players who did a lot less with influence than certain captains or other players, messing with my opponents game plan.

Wake the dead is a weird one. Two influence to potentially protect a player from death seems like a large expense. Especially with its effects relying on your opponents play. Reanimate proper is an extremely strong rule since it clears conditions and can trigger every turn, it also has the benefit of being able to trigger off of death from conditions in the maintenance phase, which abilities like Wake the Dead, go away at the end of the turn.

If Scalpel could move around influence for 0 influence herself or trigger Wake the Dead with momentum, I feel I'd use it a lot more. It just feels like it's too much effort to focus on any of those things in particular at the cost of influence. Fortunately Tormented Agony also has the benefit of dealing damage from the playbook. Similarly Scalpels ability to reposition her opponents also deals a few damage, her >< also gives momentum and a singular damage. If she had easy access to tooled up or another form of damage buff she'd murder things extremely dead. I'm not a huge fan of Rage using tooled up because then I generally won't get to charge with him. It really the big difference between an ability like commanding aura and tooled up. Also the singular influence on Rage is most likely more relevant for momentum and damage than simply adding damage to Scalpel, especially since she can >< a player into Rage's charge range, as well as free him up from others holding him down in melee.

For me it's always been a bit more obvious with Obulus. 4-5 for puppet master, let others do the work. 8 when its time to push for the win.

With Scalpel I feel like I want 6 every time so I can squeeze as much work out of her as possible, but it might be a matter of keeping less on her. If I have 3, I can attack a few times and use second wind, or pass and attack, or use wake the dead, if I have momentum I can always use second wind for free on another model or herself to gain a large repositioning ability.

I was worried about just trying to play Scalpel like a worse Obulus. For these reports I reverted back to Ghast and Silence, but I might play without both of them for a chance since otherwise I run out of roster space.

I think I'll take from Darren and try Cosset, Minx, Rage/Silence, and Graves1. Get some furious players in there and use Scalpel to pull enemy players off of them. Use my players extreme speed 7/9 for Cosset/Minx/Scalpel. Graves being 5/7 with 2", and both Minx/Graves having damaged target, and Minx having marked target.

We shall see!