Probably the most unique in terms of the title reviews I will be covering, the new version of Lynch doesn't necessarily change up the playstyle of the keyword as a whole but it does change up Hungering Darkness in a very major way.
Lynch himself is a bit weird because he becomes a directly offensive model and can act as a pretty good beater now, but keeping Brilliance flowing is more important than ever for this title. Lynch has pretty low stats on his front of card, being very slow and having an abysmal Willpower, but otherwise he is fairly standard in terms of Honeypot although a little different to before. Instead of not being able to have Brilliance ever, he now starts with 5 tokens (which is quite a lot really) and the less obvious downside of being able to gain Stunned now, which with some great triggers is important to note. He no longer brings a few of his old tricks, namely any of his front of card abilities to punish cheating and give out Brilliance (meaning the early game spread is a lot less passive) and enemies are no longer at negatives to attack him if they have Brilliance meaning he is somewhat easier to take out. He keeps Rig the Deck +2 though as could be expected, and gains Luck Thief and Delirium which both are really useful to both keep him alive and hurt the opponent (with Delirium also playing very heavily into the Brilliance focus of this Lynch). Lynch only has 1 attack action that is fairly self-explanatory, being 2/3/5 damage and stat 6 with a built in Crow, and a 1" melee range. Nothing super amazing, but the triggers will always be useful and make it a complete package, with built in Sharpened Brilliance for easily changing your damage to 3/4/6 which is pretty great and The Light Inside to spread Brilliance more for you to use. With regards to tactical actions he has 3, one of which is his bonus action and one which is once per turn so he will usually be doing a variety of actions each turn simply because the applications of them are more limited. His bonus Feed the Darkness needs a 5 to go off, but is a 6" aura (it's Honeypot, of course it is) that forces all models ending their activations within range to make a TN12 Wp duel or gain a Brilliance. With friendly models able to choose to fail this (and outside the mirror match, you always will) it should really just be something you always do especially if you can hit the Ram trigger for Inner Glow to give out another Brilliance and heal 1 to all friendly models in range. It's also important to note that Lynch is also in range of it himself with it being an aura, so he can easily gain 2 Brilliance a turn off this as well as pumping it out on a lot of other models. Looming Eclipse is only once per turn, but being able to shed Brilliance off Lynch to pass it out to other friendly models and heal them 2 in the process is really great because it keeps the crew ticking when they need to. This all works together to make sure Lynch really wants a lot of Brilliance generation to keep running at max efficiency in this version which is quite doable, but requires an effort and keyword models to make sure it happens. Pulse 6 is a pretty good range (and within 6" of Lynch is the fun zone usually anyway) and a 6 isn't too difficult to get off, especially if you can Rig the Deck to make it happen. Dragged into the Dark is his last action to note, and boy is it fun. The only options in terms of who you can target are either Hungering Darkness or any model with 3 or more Brilliance on them, and all it does is place them in base contact with Lynch. 6" range, no resist on it and it just needs a 5. In terms of countering positioning and pulling things where they don't want to be, this is amazing. Sure it requires a lot of setup, but being able to pull things out of position and then close to you (where you are now a min 3 beater just by tearing off their Brilliance) is a very bad situation for the opponent to be in. Especially when stacked onto Lures and Obeys that also hand out Brilliance when you do them, this is definitely a very viable option.
I feel that given the special nature of it, the changes to Hungering Darkness deserve their own section and discussion. Becoming a Master and the leader of the crew is a big change, but something that makes Huggy incredibly strong and a good option to consider when looking at the Honeypot keyword. Huggy was already really good, and becoming 3AP just makes him stronger, while the "downside" of lower wounds and thus weaker to Assassinate isn't actually an issue for a few reasons. Like I've mentioned before, Huggy has tons of healing potential already, and with Terrifying and Incorporeal he isn't the easiest to land damage on. He also gains a Demise ability to place into base contact with Lynch and then heal based on how many Brilliance Tokens Lynch has (which Lynch then takes in Irreducible damage) so he becomes really tough to kill as long as Lynch has Brilliance. It is once per turn, so there is a lot of counterplay just like Demise:Eternal, but very strong nonetheless. I think in general Huggy is mostly going to be Obeying things around the table be it enemy or friendly, especially because his trigger to hand out Brilliance is very important in terms of resource generation.
The Soul Battery is a shared model with Leveticus, and all in all it is decent but I think it is best in specific cases and not a great generalist. It mostly exists as a support piece for the rest of the crew, and my favourite things about it are the ease at which it gives out Brilliance tokens (very important in this version of Lynch) and passive healing. 1 damage to give out 2 Brilliance is a fair trade IMO because it gives a far greater benefit in a lot of ways, especially doing it to enemies where it can become so much more (extra damage from Sharpened Brilliance, positive flips for Huggy, healing for Huggy and Slow for them without even mentioning the synergy with Delirium). It's also a 4SS significant model so you can potentially pivot to using it for schemes if you absolutely need to, but I wouldn't hope to rely on it unless you absolutely have to. Giving extra bonuses for using Soulstones is great, as is Entropy for more detrimental auras and Hard to Kill to keep it alive a bit more. Final Sacrifice can be useful if you really need it, but the really nice bonus action is the possibility to cheat from your fate deck instead of your hand (kinda a nonbo with Rig the Deck unless you only see weak cards, cause you'll know what's coming anyway). In general I think it is a really great addition to the 4 Horseman Leveticus list, but in Lynch it comes some of the time with Dark Bet when you want to make sure you have Brilliance spread around the table.
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