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Tactica: Kirai


pigi314159

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I've played a couple of games with her now and wanted to share my thoughts on what worked, and what didn't.

:kirai

Overview:

She's not your normal Rezzer. She doesn't care about corpse counters, rather only that living or undead things around her are dying. This means you're going to have a tougher time against crews that don't contain living or undead things. Tougher match-ups would be Ramos, Hoffman, Rasputina (in a ice construct list), Dreamer/LCB, and generally anything else with constructs and nightmares as its primary hitting force.

I often describe masters as how best to counter them. So in my eyes, Kirai is best beaten by concentrating all attacks on her and forcing her to burn minions and Wd to stay alive. Her low Df and relatively low Wd invite lots of attacks on her. As such, Kirai is best kept out of melee and surrounded by a swarm of Seishin so she can redirect attacks. However, she needs to be near the edge of combat so that enemy troops can be generating Seishin when they kick the bucket.

Strengths:

This girl and her ghosts are mobile. Holy cow. Between decent Wk, pushing models 4" forward with Ikiryo, Datsue-ba creating extra walks, and Kirai being able to both warp to friendly spirits and have spirits swap places, there is very little this girl can't get to. This is an extremely useful move when you do something like the following:

Holding Kirai at the edge of combat, you have spirits in melee combat. Kirai activates and swaps out the injured spirit with a fresh one, heals it, and then sends it back in. She really can control the tide of battle simply by making injured units unreachable (...reminds eerily of kiting in Starcraft).

Summoning is another one of her strengths. Unlike most Rezzers she does not depend on corpses being around to summon new troops. She can summon troops out of thin air (in the case of Ikiryo), turn your current spirits into better spirits (Evolve Spirit), and just randomly gets new spirits when stuff around her dies. Summoning Ikiryo is probably the easiest summon spell in the game, and throws a big beastie on the board that likes to eat people. She has lots of stuff she is able to summon and it is all pretty easy to do.

Survivability is my favorite strength about Kirai. She can escape sticky situations but warping around the board. She can turn into a spirit to make wounds hurt much less. She can heal herself if she is in spirit form, and can eat her own minions to heal. Attaks can be redirected to friendly Seishin in base contact, who in turn can make her immune to AoE damage. Generally she is pretty hard to kill when she has all of her tricks about her.

Weaknesses:

Having said that Kirai is survivable, she does have limits. She is really only impossible to kill when she is surrounded by a swarm of Seishin. Once pinned, it she is being targetted by anyone with any sort of damage output she folds very quickly. Df 2 Wd 8 says "Yes, I would like to get killed please." Granted, she can redirect attacks to Seishin she is in base contact with, but, you will find you will run out of Seishin faster than your opponent runs out of attacks. You can mitigate it a wee bit withi Seishin Beacon, but you will still be suffering wounds either way. I have never felt more exposed than watching LCB kill all of my Seishin one by one and leaving Kirai completely exposed.

Damage capability is any weakness of Kirai herself. She lacks damaging spells, and I pray she never sees melee. Therefore you are very dependent on your minions for offense. Ikiryo, Datsue-ba, Onryo, etc. will be responsible for killing. Kirai is responsible for getting them in position quickkly and keeping them alive as necessary.

While summoning is a strength of Kirai, most of her summons cost her Wd. Therefore if you summong too much, you are handing your opponent Kirai's head on a platter. Therefore, troop expendability is a weakness of Kirai in a sense. Unlike most rezzers, she simply cannot just make something that just died stand back up. Stuff that dies around her turns into a Seishin, and it costs both AP and Wd to create something better out of it. Given that Seishin can serve other functions on the table, losing one of your own stings a bit more than losing a Belle if you're Seamus. I highly recommend healing your troops if possible as opposed to depending on fresh ones all the time.

Crew Breakdown:

Ikiryo is the manifestation of Kirai's angry spirit. She is a summoned unit, which is summoned on the measly flip of a 4:crows and can be summoned to a distance of 12" if you so choose. I favor playing Ikiryo as kind of an assassin type. She gets summoned deep into enemy lines and attempts to kill something quickly. Next turn, she gets re-absorbed by Kirai only to be summoned again later. Ikiryo is the one minion in Kirai's crew that is completely and utterly expendable largely because she can be resummoned over and over and over. She has decent combat stats and really should be trying to kill something as much as possible.

Lost Love is Kirai's totem. Simply said, there is no reason you should not field this totem. It has utility that is simply too good. It makes Kirai herself expendable (incredible ressurecting master, hooo!). That alone is worth the price of admission. Plus an extra instance of a healing spell is always a good idea.

Datsue-ba is my new girlfriend. Erm...scratch that. But yes she is really worth all 7 stones. She has good melee, plus she can attack everyone with 2". She is also a secondary summoner. Weigh sins is probably her best ability. You can hold her back, wait for something to get low on Wd, then blast it with Weigh Sins to summon a Gaki...or if you hit the trigger an Onryo. Another instance of healing, and she is worth her weight in gold. She can either be used as a melee beatstick, or a surgical striker that summons combat units onto the board.

Gaki are an odd beast. I do not really feel they are worth the 3 stones to hire, but are worth it to summon via Datsue-ba. They are relatively fragile but are also relatively dependable beatsticks. I find their real utility is versus other rezzers and eating corpse counters. I generally do not hire these guys in small scraps and just rely on my summoning to have them hit the table. However, if you do get a swarm of them and hit your triggers....things die...hard. That may be argument to hire a ton of them, but I would rather have 2 Onryo rather than 3 Gaki.

...speaking of Onryo. This is Kirai's standard grunt. Ranged spell attack, decent melee, fun triggers for lots of damage, and able to force opponents to defend either on Wp or Df, your choice. YES PLEASE! You can get more during the game by evolving something and forcing Kirai to take wounds or if you get lucky with a Datsue-ba trigger. Coming from a rezzer, they are a bit pricey at 5 stones (....yes I think everything useful should be 4 stones thanks to Belles) but they will just about always hit the table. Because they are harder to summon I would definitely recommend hiring these guys into your opening crew.

Seishin are Kirai's lifeblood. Without Seishin Kirai might as well just fall over dead. They are pure utility, generally sacrificing themselves to save your more powerful spirits. I found the most important trick up a Seishin's sleeve is to instantly warp to Kirai when any model finishes its activation. So if you have an injured spirit forward in melee, Kirai can swap it with a Seishin who will then return to Kirai at the end of the activation.

Shikome I have the least experience with because we were playing small scraps and 8 stones is pricey in that arena. They can be summoned, albeit expensively, and their combat stats are marginally better than an Onryo. Their real function is to hunt a single opposing model until its dead, and they are very good at it. However, it takes a deft hand to not have the Shikome isolated and then focused down.

Strategies and Schemes:

A line in the sand - Kirai is not especially good at this one, but she is not especially bad. She can get to the center line quickly but spreading her out is a bad idea. It is easier to reduce the number of enemy models on the board and then go for it. Denial of Sanzu certainly helps in this one.

Claim Jump - Kirai is very good at this one. She can basically just make a stand around the feature and hold out for a very long time.

Contain Power - Not especially good, but not especially bad either. Kirai is a decent choice, but I think I would prefer Seamus or McM.

Deliver a Message - Kirai is EXCELLENT at this one. Summoning Ikiryo really far forward is a really easy way to accomplish this one. If you summon her, and then win initiative on the next turn you've basically scored 4 VP on turn 2 or 3.

Destroy the Evidence - Kirai is also EXCELLENT at this one. Using Ikiryo as a surgical striker to just make those things disappear is just hilariously fun.

Distract - Again, not especially bad nor especially good. She has a slight advantage as she is really mobile and can dart around to face new threats.

Escape and Survive - Kirai is pretty good at this one. Given the amount of healing she can do, plus most of her crew being spirits (meaning reduced incoming damage) means she can stick around for quite a bit.

Plant Evidence - Kirai is EXCELLENT again. Ikiryo as a surgical striker is the way to go.

Reconnoiter - I am of two minds about this one. She can summon a lot of stuff to cover all the table quarters, however spreading her out is a bad idea. The fact that seishin are insignificant also complicates things. I prefer McM for this one.

Slaughter - I like Kirai for this one. However it involves pulling the advantage early. You can possible steamroll or get steamrolled. I like the risk though. Kirai has about as much as an advantage as any other Rezzer with this one.

Supply Wagon - Kirai very good at this one. Impenetrable wall of spirits around the wagon makes it nigh invincible. Slightly boring in my opinion as you babysit as opposed to kill, but that's alright.

Treasure Hunt - Kirai is pretty good at this one. She can get forward pretty fast via summoning Ikiryo and provide good cover for the retreat.

Turf War - I like Kirai for this one too. Summoning Ikiryo into the opponent's deployment zone on the last turn is a brutal dagger to the heart. Otherwise, advane as a wall and kill what you can.

As for schemes I favor Bodyguard and Death after Death for Kirai. Summoning Ikiryo gives you +1 already, which gives you a bit of a buffer. But between Datsue-ba and Evolving I think getting the extras is relatively easy. Betrayed by Spirits is also pretty easy to accomplish and should be considered heavily as well.

Basic Tactics:

I have touched on some of these before, but here are some tricks I think every Kirai player needs to have in their toolbelt.

Surgical Strike and Retreat:

Sending a model forward into melee, swapping it with a Seishin in base contact with Kirai, and then snapping the Seishin back.

Setting up Datsue-ba:

As tempted as you may to be kill something with a melee strike, if you can kill it with Datsue-ba's weigh sins, I would do that.

Seishin saccing:

Especially in late game as you approach the limit of Seishin, you should be saccing them to heal, evolve, heal some more, for soulstones, etc. However, keep a decent nuber around to keep Kirai protected.

Isolate Isolate Isolate:

Like every other crew, being able to focus on one enemy is desirable. This can be done through Denial of Sanzu and blind to spirits.

Absorbing Ikiryo:

If Kirai absorbs Ikiryo you get all 4 Wd back from summoning her, plust you pitch your two worst cards for two new ones.

Playing with Healing and Summoning:

Attempting to net 0 Wd loss when summoning means you won't be handing Kirai's head to your opponent. Generous use of Into the Spirit World followed by healing herself and then summoning, or absorbing excess Seishin, or letting Ikiryo go nuts on your opponents gives you extra Wd to summon big nasties.

Crew List:

Here is my favored 25 SS list that is basically the starting box (for those of us who are cheap and lazy)

Kirai

Seishin x2

Onryo x2

Datsue-ba

Lost Love

21 SS spent, cache of 5 stones...and Ikiryo does not even count!

If you go bigger, throwing in a swarm of gaki is a good option. Shikome would also not be a bad addition, but I would go with gaki first simply for having more activations per soul stone cost.

Edited by pigi314159
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Nice write-up Pigi, informative read and a good insight on Kirai.

I often find myself summoning Onryo over Gaki via evolve spirit because I think I may as well go all the way when saccing a seishin and getting an 11 to cast.

I have yet to get the Gaki into melee and trigger Feeding Frenzy though, its such a brutal thing....

Datsue-Ba is such a good deal for 7ss its unbelievable, totally worth it even just for an 8wd Spirit nevermind one that is a beast in combat, can effectively summon, mess with movement, push to a model AND heal

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I've played a few games with Kirai myself, and I must say thanks for your input.

I will agree with the movement shenanigans that she and her crew can pull off. It's not as explicit b/c it's on a few different cards, but it's there.

I tried my first few games without Seishin, figuring I could call them up as other stuff started dying. However, I think she's supposed to be played in the opposite way: having Seishin at the start to fuel evolve spirit and Kirai's other abilities.

In my opinion, Kirai needs some soulstones to work. She will probably be making a few healing/damage prevention flips during the fight, and both Summon Ikiryo and In The Spirit World require an extra suit to cast, and you won't always have the control cards handy.

Lost Love is an amazing totem for Kirai. I haven't used him too much, but even saccing him early b/c Kirai dies isn't a horrible option. Having a spell that can turn any model into a spirit for the encounter is a great ability. For example, the Dead Rider is a great choice... it can heal its own wounds and when you couple its 6/10 with Kirai's movement craziness you can get across the board very quickly.

One important thing to remember with Kirai is the difference between killing and sacrificing. Ikiryo and Lost Love only force you to discard control cards when they are killed, and Ikiryo only gives Wd back to Kirai when she is sacrificed.

Another thought to take with Kirai are The Hanged and Jack Daw. They're spirits, so they don't cost extra with her. Jack gives an extra control card, as well as some unique CC or SS advantages plus some good ranged support. The Hanged have a melee ability or spell (I don't remember which) which causes the defender to get negative twist on all Wp duels for the rest of the game. When coupled with Detsu-ba, Ikiryo or the Onryo, who can force Df instead of Wp, it's pretty powerful, especially with certain schemes.

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With regards to summoning it is important to keep in mind that when kirai evolves spirit she only ever saves 1 ss with regards to hiring things. I have played her ALOT and found you can play her with one seshin or alot of seshin at opening game. She can actually function quite well without her totem too. If you want to get better with her take her without her totem. Without this safty net you will learn just how far you can push her. I find I let her take a backseat in the opening game and then she starts to shine late game when things die. Evolve spirit can be tough to get going and it's tough at the begging of a game when you don't have alot of usefull models. If you just take one seshin kirais opening actions are freed up so you can really position your peices or even reactivate them. Her spells and wound count function in a way that you usually only evolve spirit once a turn if that.

Also don't limit yourself as to what to take. It's ok to take a heavy hitting fleshy like the dead rider and surround him with spirits. Or even a belle to get a little bit of movement from lure.

She is also good against some annying willpower centered masters like pandora because of her wp trigger.

And here is a fun thing to do if you start running out of spirits, sac ikyrio. He is spirit fodder, easily resummoned and heals kirai of 2 wounds. This can be usefull against constructs.

I have had great luck tacking Jack daw and ontyos together as you can heart stop a peacekeeper ( hehehe). And don't forget about night terrors :)

Edited by AntiZombie
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Thought I would add a few thought in for the wonderfull tactica offered up by pigi314159.

You will have little to no companion ability. This army lacks a lot of high power for alpha strikes but can dish out a lot of damage over time. Often I find it best with this army to let the other side make there moves before you in a turn. More often then not you out number most crews. When they have ran out of turns you are able to make very large jumps in to combat and take out a single target. This changes when it all turns in to a big fight in the middle but you can very often pick the start of the fight.

Onryo - Keep in mind these ladys can remove imunity to WP duels. This abity is very usefull VS some crews. With out this ability your range attacks will simply not work vs some targets. This is key as I find a lot of the immune to inf models are not the ones you want in close combat. (I am looking at you teddys with chompy bits crews)

Gaki- Basicly go big or stay home when buying them from the start. They can be brutal in a large group. Nice thing about them is in a large group you can simply swarm your oponent and as they die get Seishin back to summon more beefy models. Another point is they have the ability to take corpse counters for you. This may not seam like a big deal but other res crews will not be getting corpses from your models so this can help to further starve out some crews.

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With regards to summoning it is important to keep in mind that when kirai evolves spirit she only ever saves 1 ss with regards to hiring things.

While you are right in a way keep in mind you can sac a 0 ss model for a 8 ss model and use other actions to heal. Making Kirai in to a spirit for a turn makes her easy to heal up and you have multiple ways to heal. It is not quite as simple as a 1 soul stone conversion. But you do have a good point in that summoning has a cost.

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I like kirai alot as you can tell by my avatar. But ....... she is very conservitive, and is slow game in my opinion. I love her to death, (no pun intended) but like antizombie said her totem is essential and isn't. Deadpool and I found that's if you nurse inject her turn one and hit her with reactivate then turn the nurse into a spirit with the totem that swirling spirits a nurse around the table to do surgery can be helpful at times. Then when the first turn is over BAM Kirai is a spirit for the rest of the game, and the sheshin are more of her best friend.

But that's how I see it.

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Um ow all i can say after my last game is beware lilith's ability to telaport. Switched herself with one one my Seishin, did her aoe thats not an aoe and killed the rest. Ended up one rounding my master and all her protectors. Lilith died same turn but with out Kirai army was very vulnerable.

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Transposition requires a Wp-Resist flip, thus it is considered an attack, thus Lilith can't target herself with it.

So unless of course it was her Totem that cast it what you descriped couldn't be done. It is still something to be aware of as the Totem can just companion her (which actually is even worse as it leaves Lilith with an extra AP even).

Nasty.. Luckily totems aren't that hard to put down in general.

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also dont be afraid to go outa faction for spirits.

Jack daw - extra card, spiritie goodness , realy hard to put down , and he munches your opponents controll hand.

Insideous magic - 4ss, 4:aura of :-fatewp to let the spirits pund away at wp, really fast wk8 , and hysteria's really good considering falling back models are :-fateon everything.

Nix the bull terrier(if you bring non master hamlin)-silly but able to do, giving +2 to min dmg makes things ignoring armor (datsue ba and ikiryo killitize stuff faster, also making sheshin do things other than take a bullet (makes them non insignificant), also gorge on pain is abused since sacing spirits is what kirai can emphesizes on.

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Another thing to watch out for is AoE damage. Cassandra has a spell called Dragon's Breath that has 5[blast][blast] for severe damage. If she targets Kiari (even if you move it to a seishin) it will still do lots of damage, and usually kill any seishin in B2B with Kiari. The Electrical Creation from Ramos has a similar ability. In general beware of models with blast, pulse or aura effects, especially if they are part of spells.

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Another thing to watch out for is AoE damage. Cassandra has a spell called Dragon's Breath that has 5[blast][blast] for severe damage. If she targets Kiari (even if you move it to a seishin) it will still do lots of damage, and usually kill any seishin in B2B with Kiari. The Electrical Creation from Ramos has a similar ability. In general beware of models with blast, pulse or aura effects, especially if they are part of spells.

Indeed, the only way around this is to sac a Seishin with their ability to have nearby Kirai/Seishin ignore blast/pulse/aura but it takes a little premonition...

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This crew is remarkably fast. Not "hrm, they will be in my face next turn" fast. No. More like "Oh hey, its turn one, and you have Ikiryo in my deployment zone, and just complete your scheme. Wait, wasn't this corner deployment?" fast.

As a side note, if you are playing against a Kirai crew, make sure there is some distance between your master and henchmen.

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Which is nice because Kirai now gives pause to guild players that think that Lady J is the 'no-brainer' choice vs Ressurectionists.....

I'd like to second the 'holy crap that was fast' reaction you get playing Kirai. Because they're so cheap SS wise it's pretty easy to out activate your opponent, move up all your spirits, use Datsue-ba to move one spirit just a little farther out, teleport Kirai up to the center of the board then summon Ikiryo into combat with something first turn. And with her stats and Melee Master, it's not unreasonable to down one of the weaker minions with this to give Kirai a healing flip and an extra Seishin right away. Couple this with the extra Seishin able to port to Kirai at the end of Ikiryo's activation and then sacrifice himself, you're then getting 2 heal flips to put you full to almost full (depending on flips) and ready to summon more fun stuff next turn.

Or summon a 1st turn Shikome (that's never slowed, so sweet), use your nimble to move 6" then double attack something that's potentially on your opponents board edge (can you say first turn totem destruction?)

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Now that I finally have book 2 available to me I thought I would add in some tactica for the night terror.

Night terrors have 2 abilities that I have found that make them well worth the points you spend on them.

Flock Together. Basically this lets you pull all the night terrors in range to the one using the ability. This plays very well in to my personal way of playing Kirai hang back burning activations on Seishin until the other side is out of actions. Then use the crazy movement abilities to zoom up in to place and pick off a chosen target.

The basic plan is move one pull rest forward. Activate the next one so on and so forth. With 5 of them you can park your self on the other side of the table and this has 0 chance of failure as none of the actions have any casting failures to mess up the plan. Once on the other side Activate Kirai. Cast in the spirit world and Jump her up 18". Once your 2 foot across the board on turn 1 summon up a pair of shikome who have no slow to show the opposing crew some loving. I would recommend if you try this trick to make sure you have taken the lost love totem to keep Kirai alive as she will be very low on wounds after this.

The second ability is Cold darkness. This nifty ability lowers the Wp of any one in range. When you do the prior mentioned trick to launch Shikome across the board the fairly high terrifying combined with lowering WP more often than not you will take some bite out of the other side’s ability to strike back next turn. This ability also plays in to the option for many of her spirits to go after WP for attacks.

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They're beast too if I recall right? if you want some crazy danger action you could summon the 2 shikome out of LoS get 2 prey then next turn use the (0) to give them the prey as well, and be on top of your prey with a whole crap ton of fast models lol..... I've not really looked much at the night terrors because they didn't seem very themed to the list, but maybe I can find some other models for these that look the part... hrm....

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Now that I finally have book 2 available to me I thought I would add in some tactica for the night terror.

Night terrors have 2 abilities that I have found that make them well worth the points you spend on them.

Flock Together. Basically this lets you pull all the night terrors in range to the one using the ability. This plays very well in to my personal way of playing Kirai hang back burning activations on Seishin until the other side is out of actions. Then use the crazy movement abilities to zoom up in to place and pick off a chosen target.

The basic plan is move one pull rest forward. Activate the next one so on and so forth. With 5 of them you can park your self on the other side of the table and this has 0 chance of failure as none of the actions have any casting failures to mess up the plan. Once on the other side Activate Kirai. Cast in the spirit world and Jump her up 18". Once your 2 foot across the board on turn 1 summon up a pair of shikome who have no slow to show the opposing crew some loving. I would recommend if you try this trick to make sure you have taken the lost love totem to keep Kirai alive as she will be very low on wounds after this.

The second ability is Cold darkness. This nifty ability lowers the Wp of any one in range. When you do the prior mentioned trick to launch Shikome across the board the fairly high terrifying combined with lowering WP more often than not you will take some bite out of the other side’s ability to strike back next turn. This ability also plays in to the option for many of her spirits to go after WP for attacks.

I was debating adding one or two to Seamus to see how well that stacks up. Any Shikome attacking its prey against WP-4 seems pretty brutal. Plus I feel like Seamus can afford to lose to corpse counters without too much of an issue.

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Nice write up. It's helped me a lot.

I just got into this game, and picked up this box set. So I have some questions, the problem is that I only remember one of them at the moment.

For Spirit Anchor, she gets a brand new seishin (so long as it isn't over the rare limit), or does one already in play get placed into base contact with her?

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