I started out as a Neverborn player when I first started
playing the game, and used them almost entirely for a long while. A local player was selling off some of his
Ressers and I figured it could be a fun new crew to expand into. I picked up Nicodem and McMourning, then
expanded into Kirai and Seamus. Avatar
Seamus was actually the model that made me want to pick up my Resser experiment
last year and since then I have bought and painted almost the entire line.
Then people started complaining that Ressers were the
worst faction in the game. That kinda
surprised me – Resser tend to do very well in our local meta, though that may
be because the player who uses them most, Second Generation Awesome Dan, is a
very good player. I had always just
assumed that the Ressers were the second or third best faction because they
always seemed to be winning.
So I went through the different masters, trying out each
of them, and doing fairly well with all of them. Some more than others, of course, but some
fit my playstyle better than others.
My first master that I got all painted up was
McMourning. I had always had trouble
against him when Dan was playing him, and I loved his model. So I got him out on the table, took some
lessons from Dan, bought the Rouge Necromancy when it was released, and started
playing him. I hit a few difficulties
early as I was trying to learn a whole new faction, but I found overall he was
not that far a walk from how I used Lilith.
He was fast and did a lot of melee attacking. On the surface he’d seem to diverge because
he’s not teleporting his models around, but he’s summoning new ones into place,
so that’s pretty similar.
McMourning quickly became my favorite of the Resser
masters, which is no surprise because Lilith is one of my favorite Neverborn
masters. They can put on a lot of
pressure and force your opponent to play your game. Now that Adam was released, I’m having even
more fun manifesting McMourning and dropping a massive beast of a monster in
play too.
I tried Nicodem next.
It was at this point that the forums were starting to leak with people
hating Ressers, but I still paid them no mind.
I mean, the forums often have crazies that spout their hate for this
model or that crew, and I figured since it was relatively isolated at the time,
it was probably just more of that. I put
Nicodem on the table expecting to do very well with him straight out the
gates. I had seen Dan use him a lot and
he used him VERY well. Until Ressers
became the hot topic, I had always assumed it was known that Nicodem was the
second best Resser master.
But I didn’t get him.
I struggled with trying to figure out how he works. I tried using his Vultures. I figured from my Warmachine days, I would
understand using Arc Nodes well, but something felt off using them here. I would put up my buffs only to have Perdita
Spellbreaker everything away. I couldn’t
bring up zombies and buff people at the same time. I could never figure out what model I needed
to summon when I was summoning. In
short, I failed at Nicodem. I still won
more than I lost, but he just wasn’t clicking.
I remember talking to Dan long before I started playing
Ressers. Back when we only had the first
book, we were talking about the different masters for our chosen factions. Dan hated Nicodem early on. He just ran into difficulty after
difficulty. But then, after long months
of work, something finally clicked with him and Nicodem became an unstoppable
powerhouse. Nicodem launched to become
Dan’s favorite of the Resser masters, and I always fear when he comes on the
table.
During this whole time, I had my wife painting up my
Kirai group. Finally, she was ready to
go, and I put her on the table. The
first game I played against Dan, the only player at the time who knew Kirai
inside and out, with him playing Colette.
We tied, 8-8. I played again with
her, and again, and again, and never lost.
She is, without a doubt, one of the top two masters in the game. There’s pretty much nothing she can’t do.
Kirai, for me, was like a fast burn. She hit the tables, won the games, and
quickly got shelved in favor of other crews.
It was too easy with her – I didn’t like not having a challenge or
having to think my way out of problems.
I liked her overall style – summoning spirits, moving Ikiryo, and
swapping pieces around. But she was far
too good at all of it and it was not fun to play her.
Finally, I reached the model I wanted to play since the
beginning: Avatar Seamus. I say “Avatar”
because I never wanted to bother playing Seamus without his Avatar. He was my most frequent opposing master at
the time, and he never impressed me. But
the Avatar – now that looked fun.
He felt more like my Nicodem experience, except that he
actually did start clicking with me. I
was able to put a hurting on my opponent’s crew with Seamus’ gun and his
minions, then manifest and beat the tar out of everyone who was left. It felt great!
But by now there was full-fledged Resser hatred going on
the forums.
“The only way to win is to use Von Schill!” I have my Resser and Outcast cards separated
and completely forgot that Von Schill was an option until that was pointed out on
the forums. I still haven’t pulled him
in.
“Night Terrors are really a Dreamer option!” I have played the Dreamer more than any of my
Resser masters, and have used Night Terrors far more with Ressers. Yes, the Dreamer can take them, but so can
all the Resser masters, and just because the Dreamer can use them doesn’t mean
we can’t. And they’re so good for
Ressers!
“Corpse Counters are too unreliable with all the non-living
crews out there!” That’s absolutely
true, but to rely on summoning models with the Ressers as your only… heck, even
your main trick… has never worked for me.
Rather than trying to force it to work, I’ve learned that all the
masters have plenty more to offer, and if I get a single summon off in a game
(except Kirai, but her resources for summoning are far easier to replenish), I’m
usually doing just fine.
The minion choices in Ressers, especially at the 4 stone
level, are simply great. I find myself
switching to Neverborn and, with the exception of models like the twins and
Stitched (and Tuco might be joining them), I find myself missing the choices
that Ressers bring to the table.
The outrage against the Ressers disappoints me a bit
because I look around and see that they’re clearly not a bad faction. They can and have won quite often. Our local players love and respect Ressers
when they hit the table. They’re a
challenge with a ton of playstyles that can really mess with an opponent. They are not without their faults, though
every faction can find them. I think
they have some of the worst Faction-specific schemes available. I think their Special Forces choice is
subpar. I think that Seamus especially
gets unnecessarily hosed with his starting Soulstone cache. As a primarily NB player, I sympathize with
the fact that one of the themes of the crew – terrifying – doesn’t work on
majority of the board anymore. But they
have plenty of good too. Would be
wonderful if the more vocal people on the forums would stop spouting the hate
for Ressers. All it’s doing it making it
become “common knowledge” that Ressers suck when in fact that’s not the case.
