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[martini]

If I could improve him I would give him an AoE attack so even when swarmed he would be dangerous.

[Hiro]

If I could improve him I would give him an AoE attack so even when swarmed he would be dangerous.

If I could improve XII, I'd give him an AoE attack as well. lol

Most characters are not going to get AoE attacks though nor do they need them to justify their use.

[Lizbeth]

Sure, Faust can throw out a higher accuracy attack, but it plainly does less damage on average.

But also it hits more often. I found them to be roughly equal in terms of aproximate damage.

I have also found that Ophiel's ranged attack is actually quite effective if your using Supernatural Mastery (range increase), as it may have a low effect check, but its still a 6/6 ranged attack for 2 AP.

But that's a Org Adv slot.

He certainly does have a lot of early design flaws, but he is still a VERY good beatstick. Never forget that Dark Cheshire's Summun is one of the best straight up attacks in the game. Ophiel just had the additional advantage of being beefier, and being innately mystic.

I don't see any point comparing to worst like Griever. honestly, I can start another thread pointing that Griever is another early design flaw (especially after Lynn was released). But have anyone used Griever?

Err, hes by far the best beat stick Samael has. And how can you say hes not that good compared to others? Compared to who? Certainly no one in Samael? How many Leaders do you know can smash XII rather consistently in melee?

Oh pleas, stop this "comparing within itself" arguement, I'm full of it since WH40k, the same way we can compare him with two sophias and state that he is awesome as he beats them to a bloody pulp. The fact is, that he have points to compete in the list AND combat effectiveness on board. Comparing him within Samael makes sense if we are going to play only Samael VS Samael matches.

If players are ignoring Ophiel's ranged attack, its a mistake. Its 2 AP. Its not costing you much AP at all so theres no need to save AP. Not to mention, while blind has a low effect, its crippling to a lot of characters that rely on high accuracy in order to deal damage.

The most of the times this effect works it will be an Empire character, who have 30% chance to hit in melee regardless of almost anything (because 95% of players are using Combat Mastery).

If I could improve him I would give him an AoE attack so even when swarmed he would be dangerous.

I believe that he needs no new abilities. He needs a competence in the areas he already have. Raising his Effects to 15 (or even 16 considering lots of reactive protection and stuff like Gnosis these days) and removing a Difficulty from the devouring shadows will make him good as leader, not as one purpose beatstick who have only one move.

Lord of Shadows: Ophiel gets Summoner Level 1 with an Affinity to Dark.  All his Effect values increase to 15 and Devouring Darkness no longer has a Difficulty Check.

It is useless as it is going to take a supdevourer slot. And still makes him subject to shock (which is painful in case of Dark summons).
I believe if we ever going to see this card used then it have to be the slot-less card, the same way as making Optional Leader a leader won't take their card slot despite being a separate card.

[Hiro]

By this logic, XII is a bad leader because all he can do is be a beatstick.......

[Lizbeth]

Nope. He is versatile as he have the Process, and every his attack have decent usability. Unlike Ophiel, who have only one reliable option on his card.

The problem with Ophiel, I repeat, is that he is a one-purpose beatstick — and not the best one *cough* Romeo *cough*.

Honestly, I don't see how making Devouring Darkness less miserable would break tthe game — if he used it then he is not using his 9/9 attack after all.

[ogid]

XII is not so versatile, if he choses another state rather than armour he becomes very vulnerable and he can do an 11/4 which is a more accurate but less powerful attack than the Ophiel´s 9/9 and a combo: 6/4 + 8/4 (charge) + 6/4. His ranged is an 6/4 without any effect and without being able to recover AP. They have 2 different styles, XII is quicker and with better defense (if he picks the armour) Ophiel is tougher and his attacks are more powerful.

Ophiel takes a lot of advantage of both forbidden lore and supernatural maestry, with the first his effects becomes more dangerous, blind level 2 effect 15 isn´t any joke (and it´s only a collateral effect of a ranged attack). If you ignored the ranged attack the high rolls will do a lot of damage, the effect isn´t the only threat. And this attack is great against DR creatures.

Devouring Darkness is a very situational ability but i´ve used it with very good results, if you can catch more than 2 mele oriented characters it worths. It´s true that if the effect would be raised, this ability gained more usefulness.

The 9/9 for 3 actions and with a supernatural devourer is the bread and butter ability of this character, you have a decent chance to hit 9 and 8 defense characters even when they dodge and if it hits, you recover 1 AP. The 11/11 attack is difficult to use because you´ll have to do it at the beginning of turn (or the enemy drain his AP) and it leaves him with only 1 AP to dodge which is dangerous, to use this attack safely you need support, like an agent with TR or sophia for reactive AP recovery but this attack is one of the best attacks in the game better even than the "best" charges and prowler´s hidden attacks (the only thing that may overcome this is sigma´s terminus, and only if it uses one of his energy tokens.

I see him as a solid leader choice, he needs less support than Dinah to be effective and it free levels to reinforce other aspects of the party. People, don´t exclude Ophi, give him a chance  

[Lizbeth]

XII is not so versatile, if he choses another state rather than armour he becomes very vulnerable and he can do an 11/4 which is a more accurate but less powerful attack than the Ophiel´s 9/9 and a combo: 6/4 + 8/4 (charge) + 6/4. His ranged is an 6/4 without any effect and without being able to recover AP. They have 2 different styles, XII is quicker and with better defense (if he picks the armour) Ophiel is tougher and his attacks are more powerful.

Well, he have more options (and a viable team) while being 10 points cheaper while ophiel have about two attacks (like some kind of upgraded Cesire) and his unique card sucks. He have nothing unique in him.

Ophiel takes a lot of advantage of both forbidden lore and supernatural maestry, with the first his effects becomes more dangerous, blind level 2 effect 15 isn´t any joke (and it´s only a collateral effect of a ranged attack). If you ignored the ranged attack the high rolls will do a lot of damage, the effect isn´t the only threat. And this attack is great against DR creatures.

That's an Org Adv. Any leader can benefit from their org adv. Like Romeo with +4 Damage against Dark, which means Damage 14 against Ophiel, Morrigan and such. Or XII with two process buffs.

Devouring Darkness is a very situational ability but i´ve used it with very good results, if you can catch more than 2 mele oriented characters it worths. It´s true that if the effect would be raised, this ability gained more usefulness.

Well, I can only praise your luck. Mathwise this ability is worthless unless you manage to catch 3 low-res characters at once.

The 9/9 for 3 actions and with a supernatural devourer is the bread and butter ability of this character, you have a decent chance to hit 9 and 8 defense characters even when they dodge and if it hits, you recover 1 AP. The 11/11 attack is difficult to use because you´ll have to do it at the beginning of turn (or the enemy drain his AP) and it leaves him with only 1 AP to dodge which is dangerous, to use this attack safely you need support, like an agent with TR or sophia for reactive AP recovery but this attack is one of the best attacks in the game better even than the "best" charges and prowler´s hidden attacks (the only thing that may overcome this is sigma´s terminus, and only if it uses one of his energy tokens.

As I said before, his +9/9 attack is fine. Except for it is too plain. The problem is with his other attacks.

I see him as a solid leader choice, he needs less support than Dinah to be effective and it free levels to reinforce other aspects of the party. People, don´t exclude Ophi, give him a chance  

Honestly we can give a chance to everyone. Hell, Duncan Reid can defeat Ophiel or Romeo prooviding he had some good rolls.
But still I prefer some updates of released stuff instead of "buy a new mini and take this new org Adv" way of resolving problems.

[Zeru]

Its fairly obvious to me you will refuse to look at Ophiel's advantages for rather silly reasons.

An Organization slot is used up, so what?

Its not like you wouldn't get those Advantages anyway, and he benefits a great deal from both Supernatural Mastery and Innate Mystics.

People act like being a beefier Dark Cheshire is a bad thing, when it is the exact opposite. Sure, he isn't exactly the most original with his 9/9 attack, but it still means he has one of the best unsupported 3 AP attacks in the game.

A 11/5 may hit more often, but the 9/9 style attacks are by no means inaccurate, and have a higher average damage against DR/AP-less models is never a bad thing.

He is still all around Samael's beefiest front-line fighter without any outside support, and he only gets better when supported properly.

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I do agree with Ape2020's buffs though, that alone would bring him up to date in my eyes, though giving him a nice AoE attack (maybe replacing Godless World) would be desirable as well.

[vytzka]

Like Romeo with +4 Damage against Dark, which means Damage 14 against Ophiel, Morrigan and such.

+2 damage, surely, unless there's some errata I am missing (also Ophiel is probably on small base so just 7 damage against him?).

Personally, I see Ophiel as kinda like Alastor. Both get a ton of ^&#% for being beatsticks compared to more versatile options, but at least Alastor has arbiter orders.

[ogid]

Yes, I´m not saying he is the most OP character, but he isn´t so unuseful as people usually say.

As vytzka said it is like Alastor, with less tactical options but more powerful in a direct confrontation. It´s true that his unique card is rubbish, i´ve never used it for 2 reasons, reason one is the supernatural devourer, reason two is you cannot boost the summon with familiar or seal of bones.

Devouring Darkness is very situational, if you manage to catch 4 models in the area you´ll inmovilice from 1 to 3 or force your enemy to use a lot of gnosis, but if you have bad luck (or your adversary very good) you´ll waste your leader activation, and against high resistance organizations like Church or Samael is very risky.

Advantage slots should be considered when comparing models, you can use another process buff in XII but then the rest of your party only get 1 while the entire samael party still benefices from FL or SM. And if you aren´t using the slot then you´ll have access to support characters like Adler...

Romeo vs Ophiel isn´t the fairest match, Romeo is one of the best leaders and his specialist bonus works against him so Ophiel would be very careful when engage with this leader (but even Legacy, Legion, Alastor or Aizen suffer a lot against him), Romeo hard counter all of them. But Ophiel against others more used leaders like Arkeid or Lilith works wonders.

I use Ophiel in parties in which I want to include a lot of suporters, effects play or summons because as he is a very solid front line character I can mess more levels in this kind of stuff without lose raw power.

In fact, I have found out that the new advantage works great with him for this, Ophiel have a ranged with an effect and I can afford easily models like shadow, Aoi, yuki, bella + aqua or summoners to include Elahim, Ahriman, Djinn or Hamadrias to play an agresive party with a lot of effects.

Of course, any upgrade is wellcome  .

[martini]

Ophiel is on a medium base, and because of that Romeo loves to fight him. Do not forget that, because of medium size base he can be swarmed by 2-3 models in a very easy way. Nahimana and Samiel both attack all enemy units in base contact while being on medium base size. DR units have AoE(except Morrigan, and her 2arm makes her also easy to kill).

[Lizbeth]

Its fairly obvious to me you will refuse to look at Ophiel's advantages for rather silly reasons.

An Organization slot is used up, so what?

Its not like you wouldn't get those Advantages anyway, and he benefits a great deal from both Supernatural Mastery and Innate Mystics.

I refuse to take the Org Adv in consideration just because I compare him to other org leaders without any Org Advs.

A 11/5 may hit more often, but the 9/9 style attacks are by no means inaccurate, and have a higher average damage against DR/AP-less models is never a bad thing.

I have to repeat again. His ooo +3/+3 attack is fine. The problem is that his ooooo attacks rarely sees any action, his effects are miserable and devouring darkness can fail on it's own — by the way there iz 0 (Zero, Null, Void) models with difficulty in saga 3.

I do agree with Ape2020's buffs though, that alone would bring him up to date in my eyes, though giving him a nice AoE attack (maybe replacing Godless World) would be desirable as well.

Honestly, who would refuse to take the Suppernatural Devourer?

(except Morrigan, and her 2arm makes her also easy to kill).

Morrigan is quite durable with her LP 40 and base Def 9. Especially against DR_killers with ability to ignore armour.

[vytzka]

Honestly, I wish they just errata'd difficulty out of existence. It looks good on paper but it's assigned without rhyme or reason, all effects I can think of that have it are fairly priced as they are and it's just too much of a bummer to blow a difficulty check and have the model do nothing for the turn instead. 

[ogid]

Yes the 3+ difficulty is a flaw, I always use gnosis, a 20% is too high (with gnosis is a 4%). If they removed it, it´d become a bit better.

(except Morrigan, and her 2arm makes her also easy to kill).

Morrigan is quite durable with her LP 40 and base Def 9. Especially against DR_killers with ability to ignore armour.

Morrigan isn´t so easy to kill but this 40 LP is an illusion. If we compare de def + armor of Morrigan and most of 50-70 DR creatures it is 11 against 13. If we assume that you´ll need from 3 to 5 hits to kill one of this DR (including Morrigan), every hit will do 2 extra damage, it´s from 6 to 10 extra damage so his "standardized life" comparing to for example Macbeth is 30-34 which is from 6 to 2 extra life (and Macbeth costs 15 less levels and may recover 3 LP every turn)

With Legion we have a similar problem, if we compare it with Legacy is 12 against 15, legion get 3 extra damage per hit so if we assume from 4 to 6 hits his "standardized life" comparing to legacy is from 32 to 38 so both can stand aproximately the same amount of damage. Legacy recive less damage so it benefices more from LP recovery (curation state and Fate) and Legion is more offensive for having better stats and pasives.