F@!#$% Deathwalker Texas Ranger

First Frosthaven character review:  The Deathwalker

All pictures grabbed from this great imgur post on the Deathwalker.  

General Overview

A Deathwalker creates and uses shadows; generally they attack from shadows but they're also used for teleportation or summoning their pets.   Attacks from shadows are generally considered melee, but act as de facto ranged attacks because the attack just needs adjacency to a shadow and not the character figure.

Deathwalkers are low hit point, but have 11 cards so while fragile, they do have endurance.

Broaldly speaking there's two general builds ranged and melee.  Melee consumes more shadows while ranged attacks require more moon.  I went with the melee build.

Melee Build

The melee build relies on shadows, both their summoning and their positioning.  The best attacks are single target 'pop up' attacks (5 attack at L1, 6 attack at L5) that appear within and consume a shadow.  Shadow adjacency is the only thing that matters, this means the Deathwalker figure can be anywhere so long as he has a shadow next to the monster.  Attacking this way also does not provoke retaliation.

Situationally, this build can be the party MVP.   Shadows aren't effected by terrain, the only thing that stops them are walls.  So, a hard to target monster is almost certainly reachable by the Deathwalker.  Also the no retaliation mechanic can also be ridiculously important.

The general hand cycle goes :  Generate a shadow, use the 'pop up' attack, use the supporting cards to generate a new shadow, then manuever for another 'pop up'.

Noteworthy Cards

Every character has several Level 1 or X cards that will stay in the build for the life of the character.  Here's mine.

Call to the Abyss :  This is the only sustainable way to generate new shadow tokens.  The top is my first card played for every mission.  The mechanic is, you 'mark' your target and when destroyed, spawn a shadow adjacent to the destroyed figure.  You may freely move marks when either you or your summons draws an attack card, but only 1 mark may be active at a time.

Fluid Night :  The hard hitting 'pop-up' attack with a situationally useful bottom half as well.  The melee builds best attack until level 5.  Note for the bottom, current card printing says after teleporting to the shadow you discard this card. 

Dark Fog :  Moving Shadows is pretty hard, and this is 100% the best shadow moving card available.  I should have liked the top better, but in practice it was really difficult to get muliple monsters lined up for the AoE

Eclipse :  Mostly used for the 4 move, but the top is really handy when you reach the final room.  The Deathwalker is a little move impaired.  There's a shortage of movement cards, so keep the 4 move ones, they're valuable!

Moving on to the L1 cards that stayed in the deck for a long time, but eventually replaced.

I just replaced Sunless Apparition (aka Skid Marks) at L7 and Skids might find himself back in depending on the scenario.    I have a lot of ... lets call it trauma, with summons based on how useless I thought they were in Gloomhaven.  But the Sunless Apparition isn't a throw away.  So the oppurtunity cost of playing a summons is minimized.  If Skids gets himself killed, well that's half the reason I summoned him:  to take an attack.  With the 96 initiative cost you can do a late-to early action chain easily enough to guarantee an attack.

Still currently in the deck,. but this is the first card out if I sideboard a special scenario dependent card.  Movements decent enough, but my play style of stay in the back rank because I'm squishee makes the poison application rare.   Top throw-away looks good but in practice it's hard to get your money's worth and this is my first card discarded from a damage negation or long rest.

And now for controversy!

This card on paper, looks fantastic.  Potential for a 6 attack, plus an at will bonus to move or attacks on the bottom.  In my experience, it was really difficult to keep more than 1 shadow out at a time, so both the top and bottom were only really useful in the best case scenario.  

Finally, other noteworthy cards for my build.

I really liked restless spirits.   3 attack with a curse, potentially a 6 attack is great.  And so is the Shadow Kamikaze half.  At the very least, it's a 4 shadow move which is very useful, and at its best it's a 'high shield low hit point' monster killer. 

Mostly used for the bottom, but it's a very good throw-away attack too (useful and doesn't consume a shadow!).   Middle campaign, standard start was Call to the Abyss-Fleeting Dusk.

I took both Level 5s.   Medium is a very utility oriented attack, a way to spawn multiple shadows on the same monster kill or a permanently solve your move shadows problem.  

The 2nd pop-up hammer.  Plus a 4 move.  I skipped an L6 card to get both L5s.

Challenges

Managing shadows is really tough.  The permanently in play card that generates shadows, 'Call to the Abyss' works wonderfully in short adventures (2 rooms or less) but really struggles for longer ones.  

It's a combination of factors:

• Lack of simultaneous character move and shadow move - the few cards that move both shadows and the character move neither very far.  This easily leads to either a useless trailing Deathwalker or a useless trailing shadow.
• Lack of an adequate attack that does not consume a shadow - often a Deathwalker finds themselves without a shadow and unable to generate a new one via CotA for several turns.
• Lack of alternate shadow generation besides CotA -  Until level 4, Eclipse is the only other card that summons shadows, and it's a throwaway.  This may ease with card pick ups at L4, L7 and L8.

The upswing is that a Deathwalker regularly feels useless.   They get left behind or have no shadows and it takes several turns to recover.  It's a pretty frustrating experience.

Also, curses and misses are AWFUL.  It doesn't just cost the character an action, it costs 1 + X actions, where X is the level of effort it took to generate the shadow the Deathwalker just consumed.

Ranged attack build

The alternative is a ranged build.  Having not used this build, take nothing as gospel, but more along the lines of semi-educated musings.

I do not like the bottom at all, I feel it's lucky if you get more than 1 wound on a monster.   The top is adequate unless you need the pierce and then it's suddenly great.

I like the range 4 with moon buff quite a lot, the ranged build will mostly use this half but maneuvering shadows is also handy.

This card would stay in a ranged attack build for a long time.  Two targets ranged attack plus a way to mitigate the character trailing the main party problem.

Very good card and also in my melee build.  It's an easy way to re-apply a mark closer to the action and the spend a moon for a curse is a great de-buff.

If I went the Ranged direction, I'd forego two pop-up attacks in the hand. adding an additional ranged attack instead.  Shadows stay longer so the mark and kill target cycle is a lot less important, and now you can use the final perk to greater effect.

Segue to the Masteries

Mastery 1:  Consume 7 shadows in a round

Maximum shadows on the board is 5, so there's the first problem, and you likely need all 5 on the board before even attempting.

You need Strength of the Abyss out; that's your permanently in play consume power.

You need Call of the Abyss out; that's your permanently in play shadow summon power.

You need to play a multi-target attack card and very likely a consume a shadow reaction power (bottom half of Fluid Night).

The order of play, is have SotA and CotA + max shadows out, then with your multi target attack

Mark target 1.

Use as many SotA buffs as necessary to kill target 1 and spawn a new shadow.

Mark target 2

Repeat the SotA buff using all available shadows also killing it for a new shadow.

If your attack gets 3 monsters, you're done, use SotA once again for the 7th shadow consumed.

IF your attack only happens twice, now you need to have Fluid Night out, get attacked, and consume that shadow to avoid damage.

I never attempted this; I didn't want to cripple the mission party arranging the circumstances where this would be viable.  Just having 5 shadows summoned is not a trivial task!  And I don't like SotA as a permanent power shortening my hand cycle.

Mastery 2:  Summon or consume a shadow every turn

This one is easier and I started my attempts at Level 4 with the addition of Fleeting Dusk to my hand.   The good thing with this mastery, is it's just (mostly) playing normally.  You'll likely need to play Eclipse earlier than normal to get 3 shadows out and available for consumption.  Then it's a cycle of alternating using shadows and spawning shadows.  Tricky, but doable and you can't long rest.

I accomplished this at L7 in a 1 room adventure.  I did need help from the party, one turn I was stunned and the Blink Blade killed my marked target, spawning a shadow and saving the mastery.

Final Thoughts

Possibly, a lot of my disenchantment with the Deathwalker comes from my party make up.  The Blink Blade is so effective that his whirlwind of Tasmanian Devil attacks just make any other damage-centric character almost redundant.

In some circumstances, the Deathwalker was a great altenerative:  High retaliation monsters or 4+ room dungeons.   Retaliation because of the way shadows work, and long dungeons because the Blink Blade is a lot less effective if they need to plan for a long trek.

If I were to errata this, I'd add an attack 3 from a shadow that does not consume the shadow that maybe uses moon for a buff; literally a nothing special attack except from a shadow.  Currently all attacks that do not consume a shadow either are ridiculously weak or throw aways.

I'd also re-design some cards to make a Deathwalker more support/control instead of making the paths melee vs. ranged.  There is some movement towards that at later levels but it's a long way to L7.