Yan Lo, Two-point-O?

[whodares]

Must admit, that combo brings a lot of added value in comparison to the normal wastrel combo. Sure it's a bit more ss intensive, but on the other hand you get the Disguised condition. Not a tough desicion imo.

What are the cards you need to pull off this combo? I'm not familiar with the Goryo.

I can see:

1. any card for discard
2. Win to kill seishin (High for Yan or low for Seishin)
3. Severe for Charm Warder
4. Kill Charm Warder (same as Seishin)
5. POSSIBLE 9+ for Ashigaru summon

Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

[Amayasu]

15 minutes ago, whodares said:

Must admit, that combo brings a lot of added value in comparison to the normal wastrel combo. Sure it's a bit more ss intensive, but on the other hand you get the Disguised condition. Not a tough desicion imo.

What are the cards you need to pull off this combo? I'm not familiar with the Goryo.

I can see:

1. any card for discard
2. Win to kill seishin (High for Yan or low for Seishin)
3. Severe for Charm Warder
4. Kill Charm Warder (same as Seishin)
5. POSSIBLE 9+ for Ashigaru summon

Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

It's a 6 for the Seishen. If you typically take a Goryo then it's a win. I think they're good and worth considering anyway.

I also like Kamatachi for this. So you can always (0) and use 1 Chi from the Discard to attach Ash and draw a card from him before punching the other stuff. Gives you more of what you need to pull this off; cards.

 

I think it could work. It's 1 stone more expensive, but, it gives you disguised, an extra Chi (starting turn 2 on 5Chi) and has less dependency on face cards. I justify it like this; i'd buy Blood Ascendant for stones if I could, and if I did, I couldn't afford the Warder... so i'll happily drop it turn one and get a little extra in the process.

[Da Git]

You can also relent the duels with the Seishin and the second attack targeting the Charm Warder for the kill. Although it is more likely to pull out the Black... 

[Tokapondora]

And with that the Warder is back in. 5 SS is a lot but if you're getting a Disguised master back for it on top of that it seems like a decent trade. I always assumed it was until it left play. I wonder if they forgot or just ran out of card space and hoped it'd be fine. Since they give themselves a  to Df and Wp they essentially have the Wastrel's free defensive letting you pick the lowest of two, and at that point Yan needs one severe and can auto-win the next duel. So that's a discard, a card to enable cheating, a 13+ 11+, a 9+ and a 7+. Not sure if I'd do both this and the Goryo though. Space is tight and with this you're already back at 8 activations and 4 Chi when you start your next activation. That's plenty, really. Not sure what I'd cut to bring both this and a Goryo. Both the LRM and whatever the 4 SS cutting the Wastrel leaves? I like the LRM though.

Really not seeing the Kamaitachi though. It's 1 SS more, loses freely pushing Toshi/Yan/Emi, can't hand out Chi to non ancestors (or at all, I suppose), isn't Ca6 3 at 2/3/4 near the Statue... Also, and this may just be my meta, but I'm hesitant to give up condition protection.

[Amayasu]

All valid points Tokapondora. It falls down on the list you want to build. The Soul Porter has a place, absolutely. Just given Yan's guaranteed upgrade flipping, you essentially get extra Stuff Yan can do on activation (draw a card, push something, heal a model). That 3" push that he controls essentially gives him an 11" Lightning Dance for free. I quite like that in the context of the list/playstyle i'm pondering.

The Goryo isn't needed. If you want 4 Chi on Turn 2, then killing the Charm Warder and finishing with 3 is fine, get your 4th on the second activation. Personally I take a Goryo anyway, so, I get that 4th Chi on turn 1 for free... ish.

[whodares]

39 minutes ago, Amayasu said:

The Goryo isn't needed. If you want 4 Chi on Turn 2, then killing the Charm Warder and finishing with 3 is fine, get your 4th on the second activation. Personally I take a Goryo anyway, so, I get that 4th Chi on turn 1 for free... ish.

Except you can have CA 6 vs CA 5 attacks on Turn 2. I'd prefer to be able to blast my opponent with an extra Chi if I can get the option.

In my opinion Yan Lo becomes such a more powerful master with extra Chi that I'd rather do 3 attacks with 3 Chi than to get Blood Ascendant on Turn 2 the way you describe and do 4 attacks with 0 Chi. 5 is not a good main stat for a master if his attacks depend on it. 5 means a whole lot of models can tie or go above you when you are attacking them. Having that 6 means you are in a whole other category of attacks and your attacks have a much higher chance of passing or obtaining card advantage.

I'm also in favor or having a Goryo with Yan Lo. He brings some much needed armor ignore in our faction AND he can spawn free activations AND/OR misdirection targets.

People not rushing the 3 Chi was at least a bit logical as you wouldn't buff your attack with that extra Chi. Blood Ascendant completely changes that game and becomes an extremely powerful upgrade as it also benefits from having more Chi AND has a better damage track than his default attack.

Not getting the 4 Chi Turn 1 would only be logical if you're going against an Alpha Striker. Otherwise you're just gimping yourself for the sake of not being "cheesy", trying to be "creative" or just playing a friendly game. In tournaments only the Alpha Strike should stop a Yan Lo from going for the 4 Chi Turn 1 due to the powerboost the 1 Chi extra gives on Turn 2.

Don't forget: your new (0) Lightning Dance uses Chi, your heal uses Chi and your attack uses Chi. Everything Yan Lo does uses Chi!

[Tokapondora]

Just because you get Blood Ascendant doesn't mean you need to use Glowy Mouth. The most important thing is getting Casting Expert, with which you should easily be able to get +1 chi (even if you have to pop your own units in the face), and beyond that you can just aggressively pursue weaker units to get kills in. End of his second activation I've never ended below 2 Chi, which in turn lets me incorporeal the heck out of Yan and will be enough to get that snowball rolling without any effort. You can always say that you don't swap it in when Yan starts and you just activate Yan with 4 Chi or 3+Impossible to Wound, after which you use a 0 to go for Blood when you're done activating, but you'd sacrifice a near guaranteed incorporeal and 1 AP. But yeah, it's really enough that it doesn't need a Goryo and its Seishin, and with Disguised Yan being an option I'd gladly forgo that if it gave me 2 more activations turn 1 (Ashigaru and whatever other model would have to go for Goryo to fit).

[Mutter]

With 2 Goryo, a Clockwork Trap, the Shadow Emissary and Chiaki, you can actually get 6 Chi beginning of T2. That means, you can lay into people with Ca 7, Casting Expert and possibly Fast, if you manage to set that up again.

If really wanted to splurge, you could use the Charm Warder instead of the Trap, get Disguised also, and then, to top it off, get Ancient Protection, too.

We're getting close to those old Kung Fu movies, now ... ^^

[Doomikov]

Sorry to rain on the Charm Warder parade but Yan would lose disguised at end of turn. Pg 61 of the little rule book states that," Unless otherwise specified, all Conditions are removed from a model at the end of the Turn."

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

14 minutes ago, Doomikov said:

" Unless otherwise specified, all Conditions are removed from a model at the end of the Turn."

but it is specified: until this model activates.

[Rugh Z'ull]

Thats all sounds cool, but I don't see any reason to kill wastrel/LRM/Charm Warder (yeah, disguised is awesome, but it looks like a hole in rules and I think it will be fixed in future erratas). All you need is 2 goryos and something with low Df. I prefer the Statue - with Ca 8 (after killing of 2 sheishins and card discarding) against DF 3 it is not hard to get  on the damage flip, so it is easier to get severe. And with Arm +2 we will damge statue only for 2, which is easy to heal.

[Tokapondora]

Wastrels/Charm Warders get a  to defensive, making it easier for you to cheat in the damage flip, and I'd only use these if I also have a Toshiro to turn their corpse into an Ashigaru. If you're not bringing Toshiro you should be using a Clockwork Trap for 2SS. 

[Rugh Z'ull]

18 hours ago, Tokapondora said:

Wastrels/Charm Warders get a  to defensive, making it easier for you to cheat in the damage flip, and I'd only use these if I also have a Toshiro to turn their corpse into an Ashigaru. If you're not bringing Toshiro you should be using a Clockwork Trap for 2SS. 

Hire anything to kill it - is a freaky waste of soulstones. This plan is like "I have to get 4 chi, no matter the cost!" 

All you need is 2 Goryos, Statue and Charm Warder.
And how it works:
Goryos activates and summon sheishins
Statue activates and do whatever you want, just staying in Yan's range and LOS
Charm Warder acivates and goes to the statue to touch it with the Essence Lantern auras range. So the statue will have  for DF and Wp.
Lo activates, discards a card, kills sheishins. He is +3 Chi now and he fires at the statue with 8 Ca against 3 DF (and the statue have  for DF).

So, no soulstone is wasted, no frendly model killing, you dont have to summon. It is much easier to cheat for, or just flip a severe. And, what is also very important - every hired model is useful not just for chi generating.

[Tokapondora]

2 hours ago, Rugh Z'ull said:

Hire anything to kill it - is a freaky waste of soulstones. This plan is like "I have to get 4 chi, no matter the cost!" 

All you need is 2 Goryos, Statue and Charm Warder.
And how it works:
Goryos activates and summon sheishins
Statue activates and do whatever you want, just staying in Yan's range and LOS
Charm Warder acivates and goes to the statue to touch it with the Essence Lantern auras range. So the statue will have  for DF and Wp.
Lo activates, discards a card, kills sheishins. He is +3 Chi now and he fires at the statue with 8 Ca against 3 DF (and the statue have  for DF).

So, no soulstone is wasted, no frendly model killing, you dont have to summon. It is much easier to cheat for, or just flip a severe. And, what is also very important - every hired model is useful not just for chi generating.

"All you need is 28 SS..." 

Yeah, no, I prefer having actual options when building a list. By having Toshiro turn your now dead 4/5 SS unit into another 5 SS unit you're playing even+maybe a nifty condition, only losing 3 AP (2 Yan, 1 Toshi) and some cards which you would've also lost on picking off Seishin+2 AP from the Goryo, Charm Warder's positioning and Statue's positioning. And if I'm not taking Toshiro I'd much rather have the 2 SS cost over the fixed 28 SS cost, even if I'll end up losing that 2 SS, because I can act far more freely with my other units sending them wherever they need to go. The fewer parts you can spend on and make this combo the better.

[Rugh Z'ull]

51 minutes ago, Tokapondora said:

"All you need is 28 SS..."

This was just a build that I used, and as for me this is the simpliest way to get 4 chi on the 1 turn "in vacuum". You can even don't hire any Goryo and just deal severe to the Statue 3 times, but its much harder to achive.

All I want to say - it is better to hit something with low df and armor, than kill any hired model. For me this models are statue or izamu, cause they both works great with Lo.

[Tokapondora]

If you want something to survive you're gonna need to be able to cheat and cheat in a severe for damage twice. That's just not realistic and incredibly wasteful. With killing something you need one severe and relent the other duel. With traps you're at 2 SS for 2 Chi, which is honestly something I don't mind giving up. With a Wastrel/Warder you're getting your 5 SS back, which doesn't really matter if you're spending the AP anyways. 

[Bumpasses]

Just checking in on this.

 

What's the word on the street for new Yan?

 

How is this working for people?

[Paddywhack]

I don't find I have to Chi Farm turn 1 to make him effective in the game. I can see the appeal and might do it occasionally, but as long as I can get him tooled up by turn 3 I find he more than achieves his goals and is often in a better place to affect the game. 

In something that uses Close Deployment or maybe Flank, I'd be more inclined to farm it turn 1. He is a beast if you can get everything though. Plus, now he is really able to bounce the opponent's models around the board with his extra AP.