Malicte

While this statement is true, there's a problem with it in that, when you select crews, the only information you're going to *definitely* have is opponent's faction. Sometimes your opponent will say, "Hey I'm gonna play Kirai" or "I'm gonna try Yan Lo and spirits, that sounds neat!" and then hey, great, bring NB. But if my opponent declares "Ressers" I can pretty much assure you I'm not guessing on the maybe 2.5/7 chance they'll run a ton of spiritis.

One thing I don't see a lot of discussion here on, or at least not as much as there should be, is 10T units outside of Master box sets. Toshiro, Kang, Torakage, etc. come up in every conversation. But I don't see as much talk about Katanaka Snipers, or Tengu, or other minions. Might be interesting to get more information on them into the discussion.

I think I saw Lone Swordsman art recently, so he's probably not super far off. He's very, very good.

If you're not looking to buy another master box set, Lone Swordsman looks like a good buy. Fuhatsu is probably a good fit as well. Oiran if you're not already using them.

One thing to keep in mind when choosing 10T vs Arcanists as well is that Mei can be remarkably effective as an Arcanist with a relatively small number of units. Metal Gamin, Mech Rider, Howard, Coryphee, and you're 9/10ths of the way to just about anything you want her to do. As 10T, to be really, truly, effective, you need to have access to a lot more of the model range. 10T have a lot of options and their strength as a faction lies in being able to tailor themselves to the strategy using those options. Obviously having those options means *buying* them, and that adds up. Fast.

There are a couple of 40ish stone lists run by henchmen that are remarkably effective. Dashel plus a guild gunline, or a neph grow list led by Barbaros, for example. I've also seen good success with a Toshiro-led summoner list. But generally no, you're going to be at a disadvantage against the same list led by a master.

I will very probably just set the 30mm bases of my current proxies into a 40mm base, tack it down, and play on. I had been wondering how they were going to get the one on the table into a 30mm base.

Good catch on the front page art, I hadn't seen it. That does seem to be the new A&D and it looks pretty.

Karina is very definitely inadequate in my mind, and a lot of other people have pointed out reasons as to why. Now, I like Tara as a master alone. I think she has a lot of neat tricks, though I'd definitely shuffle around some abilities between her card and various upgrades to be in a better place and make her a little less upgrade-mandatory. Wretches are very solid units for 4 stones, and I use them in many of my outcast crews. The sticking point for me is the Nothing beast. 10 stones for a 3 AP model is a good start. He's an enforcer, which in faction draws a pretty quick comparison to Bishop. Ok, fine. 3 AP is admittedly very good and he has the possibility to dump out a lot of damage, particularly if you drop him out at the end of a turn and then win initiative. That said, what the NB brings to a crew is killy. This is a fine thing to bring and many very excellent models do so. However, when you look at a minimum damage of 2 combined with Tara's own pretty heavy need for mid-high cards to fuel her abilities, it can actually be difficult to put out a worthy amount of damage for cost. If you hit weak damage 3 times, you may or may not kill 5-6 stone models. You won't kill anything of much value with only 6 wounds. I understand that dropping 21 is also possible, but it's fairly unlikely without holding a very good hand and being willing to spend it. His fragility is one thing. Incorporeal can help, but realistically because Tara really does need to hold a few cards his Df is probably going to be middling, and he is deceptively easy to kill. As a viks player who runs a lot of Bishop, I'm used to this and I accept it. You need to protect those models somehow, and for the NB that's by burying it. Fine. But the fact that it has a weak damage of 2 on a model meant for killing things? That means the NB just isn't going to see the tabletop in a competitive game for me. Not with better, similarly costed options available in faction, both Outcast and Resser.

I could see situations when you'd want 3 of them, but almost all of those situations seem to involve "Reconnoiter" and "Protect Territory". If they don't have to go super far, can sit on some ground and just occupy it with a low SS cost but high cost to remove, they're very effective. If you're scheming otherwise though, i think 10T has some better options to do it. Tengu at a similar pricepoint are less durable but much faster, and at a higher pricepoint Torakage just do everything.

Misaki and Assassinate is almost automatic for me, unless I see a *really* survivable master on the other side of the board, like maybe Leve or Daw. 4 Attacks in a turn is easy to do with Stalk, 5 if you play her Outcasts and use Oath Keeper. With her Ml 7 and recalled training, she should be putting out minimum 8 damage to whatever target she's going in on, and you'll of course save your cards to use with her. As long as you have a crow in hand you can stone for a crow to threaten assassinate, forcing the opponent to play more conservatively with their resources. As mentioned above, when you start to drain resources like this for a crew that *really* needs high cards or specific suits to work, like summoners, this is almost enough damage already even if you don't put them down. Misaki's also actually on the more durable side of the master spectrum. Decent Df and Wp, 12 wounds, bulletproof, misdirection, her movement tricks all add up to her taking a lot of resources to put down. Add in Shang's healing, since he often is overlooked by enemies, and even if she doesn't quite finish the job off one of your other units can, and Misaki's burned enough of the opponent's resources in cards, stones, and ap, that you may have won the game elsewhere. Obviously anecdotes only go so far but my last Misaki game I had her personally put down Ramos, Howard, and the Rail Golem and still end the game on 9/12 wounds. This is a solid game for her but not especially outside the norm.

I think your go to models for mobility are Terror Tots for Neverborn and Torakage for 10T, as mentioned above. You really aren't gonna do a lot better at stone cost on either side, and neither model will let you down.

Sounds like a neat idea, but I'm always somewhat wary of Wastrels due to a couple of sticking points on their stats. They're not durable enough to actually survive a swing from true "hitty" models like Howard, Nekima, etc. Their Ml and Sh are not especially impressive, and so they may have a hard time actually dropping anything with a reasonable defense. I'd be interested in seeing it, though.

I usually see two different types of Misaki: Killy Misaki (aka stalking bisento), if you think you can score based on killing one or two models, almost regardless of what they are, this is often the way to go. Assassinate, Murder Protege, Reckoning, Make Them Suffer all work very well here. The second type is as mentioned above, misdirection and disguise. With the ability to freely move out of melee, inability to be charged, and misdirect, plus bulletproof, Misaki is nearly impossible to remove for any reasonable amount of effort. This can be used when she needs to hold some ground and anchor a point (such as Squatter's Rights or Turf War) to great effect. Also, and I can't recommend them enough, Torakage are the best thing since sliced bread. Use them, teleport them, love them.

That said you will probably have several 6 stone models, so it shouldn't be a huge hassle to keep anchors around with a little effort.