Blacksmiths Primer

Hey Internet world, this is the first installment of the season 4 Guild primers. I'm starting with the smiths because they are they guild I have been jamming in the most games with. The smiths are a scorey team that has the ability to brawl with the best of them, and have great armour scores across the board which further bolsters their scrum game. Lets start with the Captain erm I mean Masters.

The Smiths rosters is a relation of having an equal number of masters and apprentices on the pitch. Because of this they have the potential to have a captain level of ability impact the pitch three times a turn. When choosing the three masters, one of which should have the sentinel ability which gives apprentices within an inch an extra point of armour. This brings most of the apprentices up to a hearty 4/2 defensive statline which is flipping amazing.

ANVIL
Anvil is the anchor of a brawling smith line up. He extends the threat of the entire team with his character play 'While the Iron is Hot', which is a key play in having an aggressive kick off play. When the scrum develops, Anvil is the set up piece with momentous knockdown on one and momentous guild ball on 2. The guild ball can be used for the 2 inch dodge of almost an entire smiths team 2 inch towards a goal post with 'While the Irons is Hot' to shift the scrum in your favour, or for 'Singled out'. Singled out is incredibly powerful for apprentices to utilize, it makes the top end of the playbook accessible which is where smiths start to really turn out the damage (who doesn't love saying momentous 8 with sledge). Anvil is a great choice to be the Captain because his Legendary as the Captain is backbreaking for the other team. Anvil's legendary is a 6'' Aura where all models gain tough hide and Stoic. This makes fighting the blacksmith scrum insanely difficult because apprentices are 4/2 tough hide and stoic, masters have 2 or 3 armour, a metric crapload of health boxes, and now tough hide! Layering this legendary in the scrum with cover and/or crowd outs even the fightiest of teams will struggle to take out any player.

BURNISH
If you like playing with Fire, Burnish is your guy. Although his playbook is not the greatest, Burnish makes up for this with an AoE character play to damage and set the other team on fire. Burnish even can set your own team on fire to clear every condition they were suffering previous. Most importantly Burnish brings an ability to stop any character play that hits a model within 1'' of him. This is great in any guild but smiths love this ability because across the board have garbage defense which makes them weak to character plays. I never play Burnish as my captain because he doesn't make good use out of the 5 influence cap, or have a great legendary play, but he Burnish is a solid tech piece for the hunters, engineers, and alchemist match up. Being able to stop key plays like deadbolt, pinned, and boombox can through a wrench into the opponents plans.

FARRIS
Unlike Mr. Bueller, Farris doesn't take days off. For just a single influence, the horse has a 20' goal threat with her legendary. Her legendary is very efficient granting herself +1/+2 kick and a free kick, but if she is the captain that becomes a 6'' aura. It is rather hard to use the legendary twice in a turn for goal runs but it is a nifty aura if you are going for a pure footballing Smith's team, and free reliable passes aren't really that bad either because those passes lead to an extra 4'' of threat that your players have. Farris is also a nice big and mobile sentinel aura for the team and brings a 2'' stick to crowd things out with.

FERRITE
Ferrite is the go to striker captain of the team. With a base 4/8 kick and a buyable dodge she is a reliable striker. Her legendary play as the captain is easy to use and shores up a weak spot of the smiths which is there speed giving everyone within 6" +2/+2 move. Don't doubt her ability to scrum, disarm is extremely frusterating for the other team to play against. If they have a super solo model that takes all of the buffs, Ferrite can get into melee with them and use get over here iron to move iron to engage that model then apply another -2 tac through disarm. That model is at -3 dice to any of there attacks against either Ferrite or iron, both of which have 2 armor. Against most captains who have Tac 6 or 7 this makes it so only the first or second column of the playbook can reliably chosen which usually isn't enough to do anything meaningful. All in all Ferrite is a solid master to pick as a captain because she has the ability to use all 5 of the influence cap meaningfully and has a good legendary play that the entire team benefits from. If you are just starting out with Blacksmiths, Ferrite is the easiest master to play as the Captain.

FURNACE
In case burnish wasn't fire enough for you, Furnace brings even more. Whenever Furnace deals damage to a model that model suffers the burning condition and loses a point of armour. Furnace, is a more damage focused captain having momentous 1 on 1 which a shorter playbook than his Tac. He also brings 'tooled up' to the team, and with 'one at a time lads' can essentially  make Blacksmith players rowdy which can help turn an unfavourable scrum around. Furnace is one of the masters with the sentinal ability to bump up apprentices armour and brings a 2" melee to provide crowd outs easier. He isn't a slouch at football sporting a 3/8 kick which is good at passing the ball out to a striker on the wing, or even slotting in a crackback goal himself. Furnace brings so much to any six man line up the blacksmiths can make, so much so that I find it hard to not take him. He is a decent Captain because he can use the 5 influence to takeout a moderately healthy model to start a turn, but I find that an apprentice can do the same thing but better in the same situations. His legendary play is decent giving everyone the same ability furnace has to burn models and gain a tac.

HEARTH
This Grandma doesn't have hard candies in her purse, she is packing lots of big weapons. Hearth is great at setting up apprentices, being able to get 2 net hits with 'instruction', or by giving any guild model a 2" melee zone with 'use this'. That is any model, Anvil can get the big hammer he always dreamed of, Cast can bridge huge gaps with swift strikes dodges and a 2'' melee, and generally having a 2'' melee is always better then a one inch melee. Hearth herself has a 2'' melee with a momentous knockdown on 1. She is going to engage and knockdown multiple models for the apprentices to come pick on. Although she isn't the most invincible model so she doesn't want to be the first one into the fight, rather a secondary model to complete the set up. Hearth brings some efficiency with the ball allowing the smiths to double dip on pass and moves with 'Match Experience" trait. I don't recommend using Hearth as the captain unless you want a challenge, or have a specific game plan in mind that utilizes her legendary to make everything on your team 2'' melee. In my experience I am bring 1 or 2 models that do not have a 2'' melee already making the legendary less valuable.

There is plenty of flexibility in choosing between 6 models to be a captain. This adds a lot of options to find the best Captain to compliment your playstyle. The Masters tend to have captain level survivability when looking at there defensive stats and health pools, but have weak counter attacks. Contrasting this are the apprentices who have below average health pools, but make up for it with better counter attacks. Now that the Masters are concluded, and we are starting to get a view of the team as a whole, lets get into the Apprentices.

ALLOY
One of the better strikers in the game, Alloy is a flexible player but geared towards goal scoring. If he is taken with his master Hearth (which he should be), Alloy gets to either have +1/+0 kick or anatomical precision if he begins his activation within 6''. He is also packing back to the shadows to dodge back to hearth after his activation so he can gain one of his buffs. On his goal runs Alloy can damage a model on the way and use run the length to dodge 8" after he scores!! But also being a blacksmith apprentice alloy has ridiculous top end damage so with a little set up alloy can help contribute to the takeout game.

BOLT
Bolt is a striker who has Stamina so he can jog at the beginning of his activation for free. Combined with all of the movement buffs available in the guild bolt can go extremely far. If he starts within 6'' of his master Farris, Bolt gets to use a free character play. This can be 'Im Open' so bolt's threat range can be upped by 8'', by passing to a model then using im open, if you make both the passes to use pass and move, and this could dodge another model as well 8'' when combined with Hearth's match experience. Or Bolt can use 'Shoemerang' this can knockdown a model, potentially freeing the ball for bolt to go score. Unlike Alloy bolt isn't quite as flexible in his game plan, Bolt isn't the greatest at doing damage but he isn't the worst.

CAST
Cast is a fiery devil. If she attacks a model suffering the burning condition, her attacks do +1 damage. This turns Cast's momentous 2 on 2 into momentous 3, and her momentous 3 on 4 into 4 on 4. Cast is also a 7/9 movement with a 4/6 kick so she is decent at football. While it turns out cast is better then we think, She has swift strike so she dodges 2'' every time cast does damage. While having a long goal threat range and a 4 dice kick isn't all the football tech cast is bringing, she has a character play 'shield throw' which knocks the ball off of the ball holder, and does damage so Cast can dodge 2'' afterwards. However, Cast is limited by having tac 5 so she needs to have a decent amount of set up to get into her magical Christmas zone of amazing.

CINDER
Original Cinder is an anomaly compared to the rest of the apprentices. Cinder doesn't do a whole lot when she is fully loaded and set up, rather she shines in taking an influence or two. Cinder just wants to shoot from 6'' with far strike once every turn to tackle the ball or get a momentum and apply the burning condition if She started within 6'' of furnace to get searing strike. Cinder has unpredictable movement and a character play 'Kill Ball' which allows a free ball to be removed from the pitch and resolve a goal kick. This makes cinder good at controlling the ball, keeping the ball on her safe from 1'' melee strikers then dropping the ball to use kill ball to either get the ball as far away from the enemy strikers bearing down on Cinder as possible or to get the ball to your team to try and score a goal.

vCINDER
Veteran Cinder is amazing. She has 2'' melee, searing strike, is fast, and has a solid playbook. The best thing about her is whenever vCinder inflicts the taken out condition, she can dodge 2'', make another attack, or perform a kick for free! Have I gushed enough about how good vCinder is?! Well im not done, Cinder has sweeping charge. So if vCinder does damage on a charge every model in her melee suffers 3 damage. Thanks to searing strikes this also inflicts the burning condition and strips an armour from every model in her melee. While this could be bad if you clip some of your own models in the scrum, you don't trigger searing strikes on friendlies, but the upside of this ability is so great that doing some damage to a master isn't actually that bad. This model should be in every single six man lineup, however oCinder does have an edge in an aggressive football line up as a tool to get the ball back.

IRON
This guy is a beast. Iron has battering ram so he can push models, like his own team on turn 1, 2''. Iron is also has close control so he is a decent option to sit the ball on, and has 'tryhard' so he reduces the TN on a goal attempt within 2'' of the goal by 1, so Iron needs a 2 to score if you can get him there. Iron also has the best counter attack on the team with a double push on 1 with Tac 6, and is no slouch at pumping out damage. Im not done yet with Iron, he is a 3/2 defensive stat apprentice. That becomes 3/3 with sentinel. This makes iron one of the best ways to kill the ball in blacksmiths, and if not killing the ball Iron is the most annoying model to try and deal with.

SLEDGE
Sledge, Sledge, Sledge, the most polarizing blacksmith model. If played smart he can be the momentous 8 damage wrecking ball everyone ever wanted, the most reliable finisher to be found by being able to do momentous 4 twice without having to roll dice. Sledge has tutelage so he can use a free character play if he starts within 6'' of his master, Anvil. This can be a free 'piledriver' for 3 net hits. With 2 on 1, 4 on 3, 6 on 5, and 8 on 7 in his playbook, Sledge's damage output can get ridiculous real quickly. If there isn't anything to hit immediately, 'piledriver' can be used on a counter attack making sledge's counter attack very scary.  Alternatively, Sledge can use 'longbomb' to pass the ball across the pitch. Sledge like to charge as well, when he does a playbook result on the charge Sledge also inflicts the knockdown condition. So with Tac 5, +4 dice for charging, +3 net hits from a free piledriver, a momentous 8 damage isn't that out of the ordinary. With a good roll, or extra set up this could be a wrap for double momentous 10 or 12 and a knockdown, if it is against some poor defensive stats or an incredible spike Sledge might do double momentous 14 or 16 damage! Sledge doesn't really have a downside to him but has a tremendous upside making him a great apprentice who should always be taken if you have anvil on the pitch. At the end of the day Sledge is one of the two natural 2'' melee apprentices and appreciates all the support Blacksmiths have to offer.

The blacksmiths have a lot of synergies. It will take a fair amount of games with them before the team truly starts to click. They are very well rounded and versatile, but also are insanely defensive. Some guilds will struggle to do a whole lot against the armour that blacksmith have which is even more punishing if you get enough of the two inch melee zones starting to dominate a scrum. The traits burnish brings neutralizes the benefits control/character play centric teams have on the smiths. Some guild will struggle  to just keep up with the damage that the Smiths can put out.

Six man lineups that I have been playing with them are Anvil(c), Furnace, Farris, Sledge, vCinder, Iron. This line up is my go to with great scrum control and Farris is an option for an opportunistic goal. My secondary line up swaps Burnish in for Farris if I am against alchemists, hunters, and engineers. Other line ups I have played around with are: Ferrite(c), Hearth, Furnace, Alloy, oCinder, Iron. This line up has well balanced football and scrum allowing for a 2-2 game, and is great against teams were they hinge on a particular models activation being good like brewers, fillet butchers, hammer masons. And the last team that has potential is the Fire Force. This has Furnace, Burnish, vCinder, Cast and your choice of a master and apprentice. This team has a lot of synergy around the burning condition is is quite rounded, and then is tailored to choice depending on the last pair of models chosen.

I hope this little write up was useful. Next up Rhett is going to breaking down the Hunters Guild.

Riley