Some Misaki Guidance please

[Raresterror]

Hi everyone. I very much want to play Misaki but I'm not sure if I'm building her right. The best list i could think of is as follows:

Misaki-4ss

-Stalking Bisento

-Recalled Training

-Smoke and Shadows

Shang

Sensei Yu

-Wandering River Style

Lone Swordsman/Katanaka Crime Boss (when i get them from the Gencon Sale)

-Recalled Training

2xWokou Raiders

Ten thunder brother

So thats only 7 models. Is that too few? Also how is the list overrall? I feel like it can scheme, kill, and take a hit moderately well. Any advice is appreciated, thank you.

 

[Tokapondora]

I wouldn't fill up Misaki's upgrade slots with Smoke and Shadows. Replace it with Misdirection, it's essentially made for her. And yeah, if you could squeeze out one more activation that'd really help your crew a lot. Out of your three 8SS models, you're gonna want one of them to become fairly sturdy/tarpitty (think Yin, Izamu, etc), and one to be melted down into two 4ish SS units (Shadow Effigy, LRM, Terracotta Warrior, another TTB, etc) or just lower all their SS a bit. And of course, tailor your list bit by bit depending on the schemes you're encountering. Overal you're on the right track though. You essentially need a self sufficient crew, but that's ideally gonna have 7 activations.

[Raresterror]

Thank you so much. Thats exactly the advice i was looking for.

[fanteegi]

This is my usual list. It changes a little depending on the scheme pool but it works mostly.

Note worthy, if the stars align correctly you can give misaki 6ap in her first turn

Misaki + 3 Pool
 - Stalking Bisento (2)
 - Misdirection (2)
 - Recalled Training (1)
Shang (3)
Sensei Yu (9)
 - Wandering River Style (2)
 - The Peaceful Waters (0)
Shadow Emissary (10)
 - Conflux of Thunder (0)
Torakage (6)
Ten Thunders Brother (5)
Ten Thunders Brother (5)
Monk Of Low River (4)

[Dante83]

I might be the rare soul that would recommend going with Disguise over Stalking Bisento in the Limited upgrade slot. I know that Stalking Bisento is considered the go to and it is an upgrade that has obvious perks. Disguise however, i would argue has equal upside and offers a completely different play experience.

Whilst i don't have any kind of fixed regular list for use with Misaki, I often (though not always) use a core of:

Misaki

-Disguise (2)

-On Wings of Wind (2)

-Smoke Grenades (1) 

Sensei Yu - (9)

-Wandering River Style (2)

-Promising Disciple (2) - I will only usually add this depending on stones left at the end of filling out the crew

10T Brother (5)

10T Brother (5)

Terracotta Warrior (5)

+1 Beaty Enforcer of your choice.

 

The reason for the choices are as follows:

The 10T Brothers can reliably score claim jump in pretty much any game and their ability to stop enemies removing my scheme markers is pretty good in GG2017.

The Terracotta warrior is there to provide the beater with a bit of protection as well as to swap in Stalking Bisento in those turns where I absolutely, positively need something to die.

Sensei Yu is for the pushes and scheme marker shenanigans, his ability to make Misaki fast is what puts him above the Emissary here, however i usually take one or the other in every 10T crew. I also like to use him to push opposing beaters and make them slow, this combines with the AP drain that attacking Disguise Misaki becomes for your opponent (I'll talk about this in a bit)

The beater provides another source of killing in the crew, meaning that it's not all left to Misaki to provide threat.

Finally, (and the point of the thread!!!) the reason for the Misaki loadout is that I personally find that it makes Misaki a much bigger threat. This is down to my personal opinion that Misaki is an incredibly easy master to kill in her Bisento incarnation. This often results in positioning her way out of harms way at the end of her activation to prevent any reprisal from your opponent. This has the effect of making her less able to impact the whole board in her next activation and limits her options in the following turn. In short, Bisento Misaki is often a master who has one giant activation per game but doesn't have much impact in the following turns.

In her Disguise loadout however, positioning Misaki at the end of her turn for future turns is relatively simple as with her (0) to push if an enemy ends a walk within 2", the fact she cannot be charged and the fact that her next target trigger and the push she gets from wings of wind pretty much guarantees that you can end up 7" away from any ranged threats meaning that the negative flip from Smoke Grenades is active. All of these things drastically reduce the AP your opponent can spend attacking Misaki, which can often lead to your opponent not bothering to attack her. The fact that her damage output is obviously reduced from not taking Bisento can also lead to opponents leaving well alone, in a game about choices Disguised Misaki can be made into about as unappealing choice for your opponent to spend AP that she IMO has more of an impact on the overall game.

Now i understand that her killing power is reduced in this build and i am loathe to often send her against some of the most resilient models in the game (unless the terracotta warrior is able to switch out upgrades), however i think it is important to realise that she can still put out some damage. She has melee 7, still has the assassinate trigger and if Sensei Yu has made her fast, she can potentially have 4AP!!!

This post has gone on much longer than i initially anticipated and so I'll finish up with a few thoughts before it gets so long that no one bothers reading it!!! By no means do i think Disguise is a better upgrade for everyone who plays Misaki, nor do i think that Bisento is a bad choice for her to take. It just comes down to playstyle. Do you want Misaki to be able to kill anything on the board across from her or do you, like me, want MIsaki to be a disruption piece, able to bully/threaten things like scheme runners/glass hammers and to drain your opponents AP whilst he tries to find a way to deal with her.

Anyway, that's my two cents, i just wanted to talk about an option i don't often see bandied about on the internet, if for no other reason than to generate conversation around the much unloved (unless by me!!) upgrade that is Disguise.

      

 

[Nikodemus]

Smoke Grenades is non-leader, so can't put it on Misaki.

[Dante83]

That is a very good point!!!  Ironically I had never tried the smoke grenades trick but it occurred to me mid post and I thought I was some kind of genius!!!

So if you remove smoke grenades and replace it with smoke and shadows it doesn't change up the playstyle much, you just get LOS blocking stuff as opposed to negative flips vs ranged. Admittedly it costs you AP but as I said above disguised  Misaki is not about silly amounts of damage as much as she is disruption.

I'm also quite keen to try out the new upgrade which allows you to discard stones for a heal condition with the disguise build.

 

[Nikodemus]

No one in your example list that can make use of Smoke & Shadows. It only benefits Last Blossom minions.

My first instinct would be to put Recalled Training in there. Gives you that oomph to remove a model or two in a key turn.

[Dante83]

The list is not a full 50SS though, it's just a rough Crew core. I'll admit I was just trying to think of an upgrade off the top of my head to replace my mistake with smoke grenades, but you are right it would require a last blossom minion.

Recalled training would work, I just find that whenever is use it I almost always seem to see a black joker!!! Maybe that's just my luck though!!!

Another option might be broken promises. Putting your opponent on Negatives would just add to the lack of incentive to target Misaki, albeit only for a turn.

 

[480]

I can vouch for how annoying a disguised Misaki can be to play against  

She goes from being a guided missile that will erase a valuable model to being constant pressure threat that needs to be dealt with but requires a concerted effort and often a complete deviation from your original plans. 

Dante83 makes a good case for Misaki as a disruption piece, as in a game that plays like a constantly evolving puzzle the ability to change, delay or outright prevent your opponent from achieving their  plans should never be underestimated. 

[Tokapondora]

Why on earth would you take Promising Disciple on Yu? And with this list you're either gonna have no SS cache or sit at 6 activations, at which point it becomes very easy for them to dictate the flow of the game. With Yu and stalking Bisento you can easily give her 5 AP, but instead of poking in at a min 2 you get a  to the attack and damage flips on those attacks. And while Broken Promises might keep you safe for a turn, it'll only do so at the cost of your enemy crew ignoring you and going after the rest of your crew. And it makes Misaki cost 6 SS, which for a master who needs to get lucky to prod above 2 damage and doesn't have any interestingly threatening triggers besides Assasination - which requires both a soulstone and a high crows - is far too much.

Yeah you'll disrupt your enemy's crew by being a bit of a nuisance, but you'd do that and actually erase 2-3 models if you'd use her other upgrades, with Misdirection, Recalled Training and at some point a built in  to defenses to engage a handful of units as well. If your oponent has the weird notion of seperating their scheme runners from the bulk of their crew she'll be running around the battlefield at Wk 5 trying to get from one juicy target to the next, wasting a lot of AP, so you'll still be forced to be stuck near the action. And at that point you're stuck with the same old difficult targets to remove only without 's coming out of your ass or targets to direct other attacks to, since Disguised and Misdirection essentially contradict each other in playstyle.

[Dante83]

Ok, so firstly, the reason for promising disciple (and as stated above I only take it if I have the stones left at the end of Crew selection) is that being able to carry focus over from turn to turn gives Yu extra flexibility as opposed to having him do the same thing over and over (I.e- air burst followed by mighty gust) and being in position on an important turn to make 2 models fast or 1 fast and 1 slow is well worth what would be leftover stones.

Second, if you remove smoke grenades from the core list above and  then assume 10SS for whatever you take in the beater slot it gives you 40SS (again, not adding promising disciple at this stage as the crew is not finished), you have 6 activations and 10 stones left over. That is easily enough for 2 more activations and so activation control shouldn't be a problem.

Regarding stones, I barely ever play with a SS cache above what the master comes with (unless playing a summoner or something), especially with a master like Misaki when there is an actual advantage in having no soulstones. With the disguise build the only real reason to use them is damage prevention and in my experience it's not a huge factor as with careful positioning you shouldn't have many attacks coming your way.

Finally, whilst 5AP sounds all well and good, I have personally found that the Bisento build generally results in one all or nothing turn from Misaki before her untimely death. Therefore, for me, the choice is between 1 mega turn or 5 good turns and that is why I find the disguise build so much more effective.

Edit - Besides if I ever really need the 5AP mega turn I can just swap upgrades with the Terracotta Warrior and have at it.

[Tokapondora]

That's giving up a lot of stones for suspending control. With Yu you generally have one turn where you dont Push+gainfocus > Push+usefocus. I'm not sure where you keep getting all this leftover focus from. And with Wings of Wind you're giving him a very "meh" 0 to boot, making him a very expensive pushbot for what you're getting from it. 

As for stones - sure, and I by all means advocate dropping Promising Disciple, but cache is one of those things that will help Misaki a lot more than getting that and  because it's just so much more versatile. I'm hardly saying you need to get 6, but 2 is far too little. And at that point you don't have a Recalled Training to lift you above those min 2's, you don't have the defensive nature of Misdirection, you don't have the stones to  in defenses, you don't have the stones to add a to your attack/damage, you don't have the cache to offset your bad hands... You're leaving so much behind that allows her to be any sort of threat that yeah, people will largely ignore you because it's just too much hassle to get away from the 2 damage hits with the rare assasinate. 

But with that you're not giving her 5 good turns, you're giving her 5 incredibly subpar turns for what you should be expecting from a master (though admittedly, Misaki is subpar). Misaki has limited abilities and the few things her card do let her do she does rather poorly unless there's an upgrade stuck to her buffing it (though even then only against one or two units at a time/Recalled Training-ing once a turn). If you don't get at least three turns out of her you're playing her far too recklessly, and I'm hardly advocating to divebomb straight into the center and start hacking away at armor/soulstones. While you may say "Well with my way she's definitely sticking around five turns", you're not removing nearly as much AP with her as you would going in there instantly killing weaker units somewhere on the edges, tying up leftover models so as to make disengaging costly and deflecting every attack onto them draining your opponent of various resources. 

Disguise doesn't let you reliably remove 2 4~6ish SS units the first turn you dive in there fast because there isn't a consistent way to get her damage up high enough, and at that point that's 4 AP per turn. Assuming you did this around the end of your turn you'll have the next turn to possibly have to live through one activation after which you can rock your way straight into the center, popping that RT and killing another 1 or 2 units (preferably a large one this time). At that point, after your final pushes, you're engaging a fair amount of units at Ml7, you're at 's to disengaging and defending, and you're misdirecting into everything you're engaging - now you've turned yourself into a massive AP sink. Even if they dedicate a few models to killing you and succeed, they've just wasted away half their models t2/3. If you keep prodding and slinking into the background unchargable you're not removing nearly as much AP killing units, you're not removing nearly as much AP engaging units, and you're not threatening them nearly enough to waste any leftover AP on you.

And at this point the rest of your crew should be in their faces as well, so your opponent will struggle devoting all their attacks and attention to Misaki, especially if you tie up some of the models that could reliably remove her, forcing your opponent to divide their attention between two threats they can't ignore. If you give her Disguise this choice is very easily made, and with a far smaller downside to devoting all their attention to one side. 

[MrDeathTrout]

17 hours ago, Dante83 said:

Recalled training would work, I just find that whenever is use it I almost always seem to see a black joker!!! Maybe that's just my luck though!!!

Whenever I activate Misaki I assume she will black joker one of her attacks if I haven't already see it that round.  With a potential for 5 attacks on a +/+ you're flipping at least 3 cards per attack.  3x5 = 15 (~ 25% of the deck).  On your recalled training round I'm often flipping 5 cards per attack.  5x5 = 25 (~50%) of your deck.   So if you haven't seen it you have a pretty good chance of it coming up.  

 

[Scytalle]

Max cards you can flip is four I believe

[fanteegi]

He means for attack and damage I believe.

1 for attack and 2 for damage or 2 for attack and 1 for damage etc. 

[Raresterror]

Wow. I did not expect this many replies. Thank you everyone for all of the input.

Tokopondora-you said misaki is subpar. Thats disappointing to hear. I really like Misaki, but i dont want to get frustrated playing a weak master. Would you recommend another master with a similar play style for ten thunders then?

Thanks again everybody.

[MrDeathTrout]

4 hours ago, fanteegi said:

He means for attack and damage I believe.

1 for attack and 2 for damage or 2 for attack and 1 for damage etc. 

Correct.  For the 5 cards I'm including 3 for the attack flip and 2 on the damage flip, as you will usually be on single + after all the modifiers.

[Tokapondora]

@Raresterror She's definitely fun and simple enough to be a perfect entryway for beginners, and ultimately it will still mostly be up to a players' skill, but yeah, she's slightly left behind by some of the bigger masters TT has to offer. That said though, the only model that does something remotely close to Misaki in TT is Yasunori (who is a 12 SS enforcer, not a master). Misaki's general guided missile -esque style is pretty unique to her.

If you want a master that simply outputs a ton of damage Lynch would be your best bet by far. He's incredibly fun, dynamic, outputs absolutely disgusting amounts of damage and has a fairly sturdy thematic crew, but unlike Misaki he's rather slow. He's very beginner friendly, allows you to keep grabbing more and more cards, and comes in a box packed with models you'll be able to use in just about every list. 

A master that sort of generates her own pseudo cruise missiles is Asami, who as she summons units can let them charge the turn they are summoned after which they disappear from the board. She's would require a lot of extra purchases though, which especially as a newer player might be a bit much. She's also not nearly as forgiving as Lynch.

And if you want a master that bounces between models tying them up and just harassing them Mei Feng would be a decent pick. She's more of a brawler than a murder machine, and will generally only kill smaller units and just spread a lot of damage across the enemy crew while your own crew will finish them off or harass them some more. She's gonna require a fair amount of big purchases though, and I feel she's kinda mediocre - though then again, someone just won the Gencon tournament finals with her against Asami so - unless you're up against the right crew or play on the right board. But she's also fairly beginner friendly and has a great box of models that you'll gladly use in other crews.

That said though, it's not like Misaki will just lose you games. I don't play her a lot but I haven't lost a single game with her in the twenty-or-so games I've used her. If you like Misaki and are dedicated to making her work you should very much be able to, it's just going to require a bit more finesse and hard work. My first masters were Yan Lo and then Misaki, both masters that are on the lower end of the spectrum (Yan Lo even moreso), but ultimately it forced me to quickly learn how to get the most out of every single AP and resource you're given. If you're getting Sensei Yu you will be getting Shenlong who is just about our strongest master, so if you do want to ramp it up competitively you should be good to go, while still allowing you to enjoy Misaki (who, again, is loads of fun and much better suited for beginners).

[Erik1978]

Noone thinks Ototo is worth his soulstones? I would have thought he was mandatory.

[Tokapondora]

I like Otto but he's got this problem of "Not being Izamu". Izamu hits higher damage numbers more reliably, doesn't need setup to get 3 attacks off and is more survivable to boot. I want to use him, and have gotten some use out of him with Thunderstrike back in the Distraction days, but as it is he'll always be not-Izamu. 

[Kogan Style]

I like Otto, but I prefer him in McCabe or Brewmaster Crews. Misaki models need to be self sufficient and Otto needs extra thought with regards to his wound count.

I'm not a fan of Izamu, back in my Ressur playing days I found him to be a grreat tarpit and not a damage dealer and I think he has a similar role in TT.

[Nikodemus]

I occasionally use him. Occasionally he does well. Rarely with Misaki though as he wants more support than she can give.

His problem is he's 10+ stones with a 2/4/5 damage track. No "ignores this or that" or anything. Just plain 2/4/5. Sure there's ways for him to hit harder but baseline as is he's swinging a Cuddlebat. Also seems like half the time I'd like to put him on the table there's Tail'Em or Frame in the pool... Expensive, occasional unfavourable pool, difficult to pin role (df5, wp4 tank? 2/4/5 beater? I don't know). Does decently enough when I do field him though and unlike some models (*cough archers*) he still finds a way into my tournament case.

He once killed a Mechanical Rider T1 and then some. That was fun.

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

15 hours ago, Raresterror said:

Thats disappointing to hear. I really like Misaki, but i dont want to get frustrated playing a weak master.

words "weak" and "subpar" have different meaning in malifaux than in other games in malifaux it means "if you are better player than your opponent and schemes are fitting you will probably still win, although you could win more with a different master". if you're a beginner there is no reason to giving misaki up too hastily, she's really fun to play.

[MrDeathTrout]

6 hours ago, thatlatinspeakingguy said:

words "weak" and "subpar" have different meaning in malifaux than in other games in malifaux it means "if you are better player than your opponent and schemes are fitting you will probably still win, although you could win more with a different master". if you're a beginner there is no reason to giving misaki up too hastily, she's really fun to play.

I completely agree.  The power curve is Malifaux is pretty flat compared to most other tabletop games.  A good player with the worst master in the game will probably beat a mediocre player with the best master in the game.