"Brief" Faction Overview in GUILD BALL - Helping you pick your Guild!

As promised from our podcast... speaking of which, if you want to listen to the audio version, it also has some added commentary that wont be found in this article, along with some other Guild Ball-related discussion, you can download it here.

This article will briefly go over each faction to help new players choose a Guild in their favourite mob soccer game. You'd be surprised how the Internet is not yet flooded with articles related to this, so I may as well contribute to the start of the future deluge. 

Just a disclaimer, these will be some pretty broad statements. The intention is just to give you an idea of what to expect when you play with and against these factions. If the article says something like “this Faction wants to score goals, but they can’t really kill anything,” it doesn’t literally mean that they can’t kill anything. Rather, they are just very focused on scoring goals, and have to go a bit out of their way or work harder to take down a model.

First, we will talk about the two most straight forward teams. This is not to say they are necessarily easier to play or are a vanilla faction. They are just very focused on what they do, and are conceptually easy to grasp for most people.

Fishermen – Excellent at mobility. Moving around, dodging all over the place. They are also the best overall team for consistently scoring goals. One thing to watch out for: while most teams usually want to receive the ball, Fishermen don’t mind kicking it. Don’t be surprised if you see Shark kick the ball up at the beginning of the game, get the ball himself, and then score a goal on turn 1. Many players feel that getting at least 2 goals with the Fishermen is almost certain. It’s how they get the last 4 VP’s to win the game that’s the puzzle they get to play.

Fun fact: The team only has 4 momentous damage results among all the players on the team, and 2 of them belong to the Captain: Corsair. So, don’t be too afraid of getting too many guys taken out when playing against the Fishermen. Instead, watch out for multiple Reach models striking you from out of combat range, and dodging around you to score more goals.

Butchers – These are guys are on the other end of the spectrum as the Fishermen. They hit hard, they easily take down most players in the game, and they generate a ton of momentum doing it. They are the glass cannons of the game, and if you like slicing through your opponents, this is the faction for you. Their starter box captain, Ox, is a Force multiplier. He basically has a damage buff aura that is always on, some damage debuffs, and a Legendary play that buffs damage even more. So, the idea here is, no matter what damage result you roll, let’s just say 1 damage, after all the buffs, it counts as 3-4 momentous damage. You start going higher up on the playbook, and you can get 5+ damage on a single hit! The other captain, Fillet, is kind of the opposite, where she wants everyone to support her and funnel their power into her so she can slice through the opposing team herself and dance away. Either way, you get to cut through your opponents with a sweet cleaver.

Now we’ve covered two teams that are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. The rest of the factions are a bit more nuanced and their strategy varies greatly from team to team.

Brewers – If the Butchers are about slicing through your opponents with a cleaver, the Brewers are more about a beat down with a tree stump. They do a lot of knockdowns, they are resilient, and they can do a lot of damage. The differentiating factor of Brewers damage versus Butchers damage, is that Butchers have consistent damage across their playbook, and it’s almost always momentous. With the Brewers, they generally only have one or two damage columns, with only one usually being momentous. Usually it’s the big damage number. However, since they have short playbooks, combined with their buffs and ability to knock down, they often get to wrap the playbook, so you get the possibility of big spikey damage.

Morticians – At the time of this podcast, people would already have heard that Gencon’s top 3 players were all using Morticians. Fear not, new people. Apparently, this is only really an American trend, and the overwhelming presence of the Morticians at top tables is not pronounced there. What makes this faction good? It’s about controlling the game. You can steal Momentum, increase Influence costs, move your opponents models. If you like to actively screw around with your opponents plans, this is the faction for you. The biggest piece to note though, is the original captain: Obulus. He is the most prominent face of the Morticians. He manipulates models, he steals Influence and gives it to his friends, and he himself requires effort to pin down. And his influence stat is 5/8, so that’s apparently good.

Alchemists – While the Morticians directly manipulate the battle, the Alchemists manipulate the field by putting AOEs all over the pitch, and they create cover for themselves, and put conditions on their opponents. They will also try to directly put all kinds of conditions on your models. So, if you don’t have an efficient way of removing conditions, expect to take poison damage and be lit on fire all the time. Midas himself is also an incredibly versatile Captain that has defined this faction for quite some time. He is another super-star Captain that is resilient because he is hard to hit and pin down, he can lay the smack down if required, and he can steal a Character Play for the rest of the game. This means if you have something really sweet, let’s say Scything Blow, then Midas will also have that sweet ability to use against you all game. The faction is relatively pillow-fisted when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, so condition damage and scoring goals is the name of the game here.

Engineers – Are the ranged faction. They love to use Character Plays to damage, push, and knock down their opponents. I said the Alchemists were kind of pillow-fisted. What’s even fluffier than pillows? In hand-to-hand, the Engineers may be the worst team. So the idea is to keep the enemies at bay through ranged control, and score some goals to win.

Masons – This is one of the most versatile factions, and it’s the synergy faction. Overall, the Masons have high armour for resilience, they have a lot of pushes, and they have the ability to activate multiple times, thanks Honour, every turn. They have arguably the best Striker in the game, Flint, who can score a goal 22 inches away, unassisted. Add in random shenanigans, and you are almost guaranteed 1 goal every game. Then, we have the concept of the Mason’s Missile. Essentially, one model (either Chisel or Mallet, goes almost the whole way across the table, takes someone out, then retreats back to safety. You also have Honour, can either choose to give someone else an extra activation, score a goal with her 4 dice kick stat, or beat down almost anyone herself, with the appropriate buffs, you have a team that does it all. This all sounds awesome and OP, but there are some things to consider. First, the synergy concept. If you start removing key pieces, let’s say Marbles their mascot, they lose a lot of board control and damage potential. Chisel is fragile, and likes to hurt herself to ramp up damage, so she is easy to remove as the game goes on. Removing Honour herself shuts a lot down. The Mason’s generally have to wrestle with the order of their activations every turn. The more you can wrenches you throw in their gears, the more they have to cope with what to do next.

Hunters – The newest faction to be released, the Hunters are the most different of all the other guild’s. Since they are the first new Guild after the initial Guilds were released, Steamforged really tried to shake things up. The Hunters are about de-buffing enemies, then doing take-outs for the majority of the time. They also have the ability to score random goals to contribute to the win. Their biggest trademark is the ability to easily put out a condition called Snared on the opposition. This slows down their enemies, and lowers their defense so the Hunters can run amok with their opponents having a reduced ability to retaliate. Theron, the captain puts snared on any target he damages, and then he puts up a forest every turn that he can use as cover, to hinder opponents movement, or other creative things. They also have the ability to put out trap markers all over the field to put even more snared conditions on the opponents. The short way to describe the faction: they are a ranged faction that slows down and softens up their opponents, and then finishes them off in melee. They are a pretty versatile faction, but they have some drawbacks. They are relatively squishy. They tend to not have armor stats and they have to be careful with their Influence use, as almost every character wants to be loaded up, so the Hunter player has to prioritize and make what feels like big sacrifices every turn. Theron is kind of the lynchpin to a lot of the Hunters plans, so if you are able to take him out early, you can greatly change the game in your favour. Jaecar is also a high priority target that will probably make it into every Hunter’s team forever. He is their main damage dealer, and he puts out trap markers, making him incredibly useful for the Hunters.

I hope this article helped you decide which faction to choose. Personally, I doubt you can go wrong, no matter what faction you choose. And most people tend to end up getting more than one faction anyway. Regardless, have an amazing day! Until next time!

-aY