Hi everyone! My name is Jacob, you may know me as one of the hosts of Mediocre Match-ups, a guildball podcast that a few other long island players and myself put out about guildball, or as Skraw on the Guildball Zone discord. I’m starting this blog because a few things have made now a great time to really buckle down and start my attempt at breaking into the competitive guild ball scene, between season four giving everyone a fresh slate when it comes to play testing and experience, the models available to my favorite guild The Morticians becoming significantly more viable, and finally the competitive bug that bit me once again at SCUS seeing so many people playing the game and enjoying it in so many ways gets me so excited to do more! So I’ve decided to document my progress and thoughts on it in this blog! The first two events I’m currently preparing for are the New England team tournament on November 10th and Second Wind on December 15th-16th both of which at this point are sold out, but if you’re signed up for either I hope to see you there!

So to start off actual content I think I’m going to break down my choices for my roster-

For now my morticians roster is these guys:

Obulus- Obulus was already an extremely powerful captain last season, even in his nerfed form after season two, he was more held down by his weaker squaddies than anything else, with the all around buffs to most of them what was holding him back is gone- He’s still the premium way to handle controlling one powerful model at a time in the game.

Scalpel- Scalpel may have been languishing in blocks of foam for two seasons but now it’s her time in the sun, her rework lets her control board positioning to a crazy degree, she makes it really hard to scrum against a morticians team. Everyone of her activations is like a Hag legendary that also scores you some points and makes momentum, and with the combination of a dodge off her playbook voodoo strings and second wind she can still re-position 7″ away from where she was at the end of her activation, just like old second wind.

Dirge- Dirge swapping follow up for tag along makes setting up assist cosset so much better, he also is good at just following around scalpel to be a gang up/crowd out for her in the same way. Getting an extra tac means he you can actually put one influence on him to single someone out and do it somewhat consistently too, and getting two extra boxes makes him so much more annoying to kill in combination with dark doubts.

Vileswarm- Another guy that was languishing in the foam for a long time, giving him furious and a more punchy playbook makes me really like him. I like Vileswarm as a way of making sure you can still do that bit of burst damage when you end up dedicating a-lot of your team to playing a denial role – skulk casket ghast and v-graves as a team may seem like they like they have a hard time actually finishing off a model but that isn’t true when your mascot comes charging in and does 10 damage to the model they were bullying around!

Casket- Casket is one of the tankiest models in the game, and has two incredibly strong control character plays, combine that with the ability to get rid of a player for two turns and get extra VP’s for it and it’s not hard to see why I love this model. He was great in season three and the changes to foul odor in season four make him even better- of course casket time not denying influence anymore is a little sad, but that was miserable for your opponent so I don’t blame them for removing it.

Cosett- There were some really cool things about cosset last season, high burst damage, a powerful control character play, and something morticians tended to lack last season- influence efficiency. However her assist was relatively annoying to set up (killing the bird when given good reason to wasn’t difficult) and her charge usually left her way out of position with her really fragile defensive stats. All the upsides to cosett are still there- and the addition of back to the shadows on cosett, tag along on dirge and the bump in cosett’s tac to replace crazy have mitigated all of the issues I had with her as a model.

Ghast- Last season ghast brought some really strong tools, his playbook was great at starting a scrum by KD’ing a target and shoving them into a spot for the rest of the team to pick on, and once you could engineer a few gang ups he could also be used to devastating effect to end a scrum with unmaskings if you could get the positioning right (and with scalpel existing now this isn’t even that tall of an order). He was also just really hard to interact with between rising anger and fear. He kept all of that and brings another influence this season. I think I’ve played him every game of season four he’s fantastic.

Graves- Graves stayed exactly the same as last season, tooled up is a really powerful character play, tackles on one are strong, crucial artery is a nice thing to have access to if you can engineer graves going last activation of the turn for some nice surprise burst damage out of a model people don’t really except it from, and if you can set it up his scything blow isn’t too much harder to hit than gutter’s is AND it sets up bleed. Graves was great last season and he still is this time around.

Veteran Graves- So this is where it’s kind of weird, last season V graves was an okay model you never took because he meant not taking Graves1 but this time around he really competes for a spot, the result of non momentous KD they ain’t tough or exhaustion on two is amazing in the right match up, and being 2″ reach with two armor, close control, and a tackle on one also makes him amazing at just holding the ball when he needs to. That’s not to even mention his heroic play to just give two free influence to vileswarm. I’m still not sure when I want which graves over the other, so that’s one of the first things I really need to work on figuring out this season.

Veteran Hemlocke- Vhemlocke ate a little bit of a nerf with the blind range changes but also a buff in that she got smelling salts added to her card, she’s incredibly influence efficient, and though she is a little squishy that fact that she prefers to stay back and has dark doubts on her card makes killing her less appealing so that does help out there. I think she’s an auto include in scalpel teams, the combination of being able to use midnight offering and smelling salts turn one if need be makes it extremely hard to interact with scalpels turn one pressure-especially when kicking off and after that she can just sit around in the back and provide gang ups with her 2″ reach and contribute blinds into the fight for no influence, it is also worth noting she has a real goal threat as well with the only downside to it being a 2 die kick.

Silence- Silence does all the stuff he used to, messing with when your opponents models can go and throwing fireblasts in front of them to slow them down, but with the addition of tenacity to the back of his card he can now hit his shut out and tucked much more consistently and can throw out fireblast when he’s not trying to hit any models with it for cheaper! I already thought silence was one of the most fun and powerful models to play in the team and they just made him better at what he was doing. Also worth noting they moved his non momentous tackle down from FIVE to two, meaning he’s no longer one of the worst tackles in the game.

Skulk- Skulk was a model last season that I didn’t think really did much for the morticians, being only about really stopping goal scoring wasn’t something a team that almost always played obulus as their captain needed help with and he really didn’t contribute in many other facets. His non momentous KD going from 6 on his book to 4 makes all the difference, now does he not only bring tools that make it very hard to score but he also is good at tying down almost any 1″ reach model, by engaging them at his max of 2″ their only options are to walk up to him and attack, (and with Skulk having a double dodge on 2 and poised it’s not hard to put them right back where they started) or to try to walk away and eat the 8 die parting blow looking for 4 net hits then get followed up on or if they try to dodge away he can lightning reflexes back into them, of course there are ways around this by abusing the fact that reflexes and follow up say directly towards but it’s still a question skulk asks to a-lot more models than he used too.

Now I want to address the three models I’m not taking

Pelage- Pelage still brings some really cool stuff, singled out, built in damage buffs, no momentum off hitting her, and the ability to impact the game with no influence are all good things but a 10 box 5/0 1″ reach model is more fragile than ever in season four, as they’ve in general up’d the damage fighting teams do, so that keeps her off the table for me.

Brainpan and Memory- This one makes me a little sad because BPnM are some of my favorite models in the game, and they’re pretty good at both damage and scoring but they’re a little inefficient at both influence wise, coupled with the fact that taking out memory when brainpan has influence on him but is far from where the puppet wants to go is a really easy way to invalidate influence it keeps them on the bench for me, there’s just too often its risky to try to get them to impact the game.

Bonesaw- Yes yes I know he’s ready, but hear me out. My game play style is very conservative, I don’t like giving up the ball unless I know I’m in a spot where my opponent can’t afford to go score back or I’m already at 8 points, and both of the team’s captains are really good at getting that last goal once you hit 8 points, couple that with the fact that morts do have some models that are good at breaking away and scoring if the opportunity happens to show up (IE either graves, Hemlocke, or Skulk) and I just kept having a hard time seeing where I wanted to fit bonesaw in my twelve.

So that’s my first entry! I think that a fantastic thing about morticians in season four is that I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone disagreed with my choices and wanted to play any of the models I left out, I think Morticians as a team are in a spot where literally every model is a viable option to be playing so good job to steamforged there! Going forward I’ll be focusing a little more narrowly about specific things I’m finding in my road to getting better, specific match ups I’m struggling with, tournament reports, ect. If you want to listen to some more content I’ve made check out Mediocre Match-ups on podbean or iTunes! With that thanks for reading!

-Jacob