BigHammer

No, Hans on Ht 6 is Ht 2. His height never changes. The height of things he may ignore changes, but it doesn't depend at all on what he's standing on, only what the height of his target is. If Hans is on a piece of terrain higher than what his target is on, he may ignore all blocking terrain in the way as long as it is equal to or less than the height of his target. It makes no difference if Hans himself is at Ht 3 or Ht 10, as long as his target is lower than him. Thus, a target that was Ht 2 and behind a Ht 2 wall (fairly common scenario) can be seen when Hans is on a vantage point, and not when he is not.

Ht 3 buildings would only not block LoS for Hans if he was shooting at something Ht 3 or taller in this case. Ht 6 buildings would, similarly, only not block LoS to Ht 6 models or larger. (Hans is not considered Ht8 at any point in working things out. The height of the vantage point is also irrelevant, as long as it is above the target. Hans' height is only relevant in that he has to be within that many inches of the edge of the Vantage point terrain in order to ignore it for LoS purposes as well.) Edit: I think I misunderstood your last point, apologies.

Nothing yet uses the Oni characteristic (to my knowledge). I have noticed that most Oni tend to not be Living, Undead or Constructs, though (so they don't drop markers when they die and don't interact with certain rules that require the models to be those things, like Kang's auras, certain versions of Terrifying, etc. It is interesting that the characteristic would exist at all, except as something that could be used by a yet-to-be-released model. I have no idea if any more masters will ever be released, but one that is, or interacts with, Oni would be a really cool addition to the faction, and would be a nice way of adding another single-faction master to our ranks that would come with a stable of models to use ready for them. It's worth noting that the Last Blossom characteristic on the Jorogumo was also added last-minute; they didn't have it during the beta, so I don't think they were originally intended to be specifically for Misaki and her henchmen to use. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if there was something in wave 4 that interacted with them, considering we got two new ones in wave 3. I'm not holding my breath, but it would be pretty cool.

I have a bit of feedback on a couple of the schemes now that I've played a few games with them, if it helps at all: The schemes that require things to be placed X inches away from the centreline tend to be weaker in corner or flank deployment, by large degrees. The area in which models/markers can be placed, and the length of the line that they have to pass to get there, are both considerably smaller when the mid-line is diagonal. This was already the case in the old schemes for Breakthrough, which became a poor choice in a corner deployment due to the smaller area that was valid for planting markers, but there are schemes now that require models to be at least 10" away from the centreline. In Standard and Close deployment, this leaves them with a sizable area of 288 square inches, with a 36" face that doesn't diminish as it goes further into enemy territory. In Flank or Corner, the valid area of the table goes down significantly to about 239 square inches, and the face of this area starts at just under 31" and gets narrower as it approaches the "back" of the table. In effect, schemes like this change their value greatly based on whether the mid-line is diagonal or not, to the point where some of them are extremely difficult to achieve in diagonal deployment with a crew that might manage them fine in standard or close. Of course, there will always be other schemes to do, and Convict Labour is easier in a diagonal deployment due to the wider mid-line, which does compensate a little, but it feels like the difference in size of valid scheming areas for this style of scheme in diagonal vs straight deployments does change their value by a substantial amount. This isn't a "these schemes are too hard" post, btw, simply feedback that I hope is constructive. Loving having new ways to play with my toys so far!

Hi all, I wondered something about the timing on the Shadow Emissary's Aspect of the Dragon ability, specifically the ability that affects Poison damage (Dragon's Blood, I think it's called). My question is, is it possible that this ability does nothing, even if enemy models with poison are within the aura and in LoS at the end of the turn? Reasoning; Poison damage happens in the Upkeep step of the endphase. Aspect of the Dragon lasts until the Upkeep step of the endphase. Poison is a condition applied to enemy models, and as such falls under their timing for resolution. Aspect of the Dragon grants an ability to the Emissary, and as such falls under its timing for resolution. If the enemy models resolve their Upkeep step stuff first, the ability will work and the affected models will suffer the additional damage, but if the Emissary's crew resolves first, Aspect of the Dragon falls off before it can do anything. I'm not sure if this can happen (hence why I'm asking), but it seems rather a pointless ability if it only ever works half of the time, despite it being cast successfully and enemy models being within its aura and affected by poison. I think it can happen, depending on who is First Player during that turn, but I thought I would ask to be sure, since I'm good at missing minutae like this. Thanks!

fwiw, Oiran's Lure is already Ca 8. It only lacks the Crow.

I tried that trick tonight. 45 SS game, Headhunter in corner deployment, Show of Force, Marked for Death, Frame for Murder, Mark Territory. I took Shenlong with recalled training and wandering river style, Yu with promising disciple, Kang with recalled training, the Shadow Emissary with the Conflux of Dawn, one Low River monk and a peasant, 7SS cache. Opponent took summoning dreamer with emissary and Tannen, etc. The hand and board control I was able to exert was completely overpowering. Most of my opponents' models were dead or dying by the end of turn 2, and my models were barely touched. Yu would pull something in, tag it for marked for death for free, then a fast Kang would whomp them to death. Shenlong only ever had to play support to the killing power of the emissary and Kang, who had their pick of targets the whole time. Definitely going to try this more.

This might be the first decent use for them I've seen in a while. Good idea! Edit: Okay, so the more I think about this, the more I love it. Spend 4SS, get a 9-card hand for as long as you keep these models going and near each other. The Emissary is already a fantastic choice for a Shenlong crew, so including it doesn't hurt the crew any, and having such easy access to a guaranteed, cheap 3-card draw is pretty ridiculous. My Arcanist friends will be jealous.

The italicized are Station Characteristics, which are generic terms (Master, Henchman, Enforcer, Minion, Peon, Totem, Living, Construct, Undead, Rare X), which have actual rules associated with them, such as dictating their place in a crew, how many can be hired/summoned, setting how many upgrades they can have, and which markers they might drop when they die. The Bold are general Characteristics, which are much more specific, and have a far wider range of things they can be. A model having the Beast characteristic means nothing to the game unless there is another model in the game that uses that characteristic, like Marcus, for example. Similarly, Darkened does nothing without Jakob Lynch in charge, Last Blossom is meaningless save for Misaki and the Smoke and Shadows upgrade, etc.

The reason I prefer Chiaki for the job is because she's more mobile (thanks to Incorporeal), tougher (thanks to Wd7 and Incorporeal), has a trigger on her condition removal to also heal, and because her (0) action is so, so good. She can harass an enemy scheme runner from a massive distance, and if you have a high tome in hand, she gets better at everything she does by accumulating Chi from its trigger. She can also potentially clear out an area by pushing enemies away from her, and her upgrade, though it makes her cost nearly as much as two monks, can turn her into a strong control piece if she camps out a central location, handing out Slow to up to four models a turn, with the right cards and maybe a point or two of Chi. The monks, on the other hand, tend to die very easily (Df5 Wd5 does not go far at all), and can only remove a single condition from a model they start within 6" of, unless you devote other support pieces to moving them about (which immediately makes them more expensive). Chiaki does her job from further away without support, and, yes, maybe you need to keep a 7 in hand if you want to guarantee that condition removal works, but that's not a terribly high price IMO.

His gun is Sh6 with a middling damage track and critical strike (not built in), so he can contribute damage often. Also, by tossing him the badge of speed instead, you can get an additional (0) action from another minion potentially, since he will then have another walk he can take. 10T McCabe has a nice advantage over Guild McCabe; Sensei Yu. If you take the Shadow Emissary as well, with the Conflux of Exploration, you can have a ridiculous number of pushes and uses of the BoS each turn, since you have three models with access to Take This! (McCabe has it, the Emissary gets it from the conflux, and Yu can copy it with Disciple), and you get another McCabe upgrade for free with the Emissary. Yu can take Wandering River Style for more pushes and access to fast/slow, and the Emissary can push things with upgrades on them and make them fast with the Rite of Strength, and has the ability to put an upgrade on them in the first place. Add Queeg to the party and you have a lot of free actions happening for next to no cost.

I don't use many Guild specific models with McCabe, but one in particular that might be of interest to you (when the model actually comes out, but until then as a proxy) is Master Queeg. He's both a Guardsman and a Black Sheep, so McCabe can infiltrate him either way, and he has some fantastic synergies with McCabe crews - that Dawn Serpent you chucked the Strangemetal Shirt to to set up some armour can use the (0) to do so up to three times in a turn with Queeg's help (once in each of its activations after you Black Flash it with the Badge of Speed, and once when Queeg takes a walk action nearby it and it passes its Horror duel, which Promises gives it a + flip to since it has an upgrade attached). He's a cheap, effective Henchman that can give McCabe's minions an extra edge while also being a decent combat piece himself, with high attack values and decent damage and triggers. You can find him in Shifting Loyalties.

Did my payment not come through? Or am I under the "three other confirmed entrants"? Just checking in case I need to sort it

I own three Low River Monks, and use none of them these days. If I feel my crew is going to *need* condition removal, I will either bring Chiaki or Sensei Yu with Low River Style attached, depending on how heavily I want to invest in it. Chiaki alone does nearly everything a Low River Monk does far, far better, and brings a lot more versatility to any crew, for only 2SS more than a monk. The times they would be most beneficial are against very specific masters, and unless you're playing a fixed-master event or your opponent only has one master to play with, guaranteeing that they would have a place is pretty much impossible. Eg: They are decent against McMourning, Brewmaster, Tara and Hamelin, who throw out a lot of debuffing conditions on enemy models, but other masters in these masters' factions might not use conditions at all. The monks don't do a heck of a lot more than remove conditions, and they fold like a wet paper bag, so most of the time they can work out to just be a waste of stones. This might not be the case forever, though...

I'll definitely be coming, just checking with the rest of the 2G1P guys who else is before we buy our tickets.

Ticket bought. A crowd of women in questionable attire and missing some digits told me they'd do nice things for me if I crossed the border for this... (Dave Laing)

Paid (Dave Laing). Looking forward to visiting again!

That's gorgeous, nice work. I picked her up myself, for use as a Shadow Emissary proxy for Misaki, but haven't gotten round to painting her yet.

In the first scenario, that model does 6 damage (3+3) to the Rogue and 4 (6-2) to Izamu. Izamu still wins, unless the attacker also ignores armour. I won't deny that Acid Breath is awesome. It's the reason why I ever take the Rogue instead of Izamu (though often I take both together), since it's a reliable damage output at good range that can also put poison on a model; that last part is the key to it; I bring one when I have a need to put poison on something (so that Shikome can charge for 1 AP, eg). However, the way I build my crews, either of the two models can be charging an enemy model in the first turn if I want it to be. There's more to Izamu in a Yan Lo crew than collecting models (and, indeed, I think he's actually pretty terrible at it, since they can still move around freely in a very large area within his reach to attack other things, and too many at once will overwhelm Izamu and kill him anyway); the Soul Porter can push him around to increase his movement, and lightning dance can make it easier for Izamu to not just engage, but also charge a model that needs to be killed. In addition, if you build your crew with more movement in mind (Datsue Ba to give Izamu another walk action, a Doxy to push him further forward still), you can happily throw Izamu into an important enemy model, kill it, take a lot of AP to go down in return, hit the thing that kills you, then be brought back later by Yan Lo to be a secondary, if slightly lesser, threat again. In Kirai he can be silly due to Adversary and Swirl Spirits, as well as the secondary heals that a Kirai crew can contain. While you can certainly throw the Rogue into the enemy in a similar fashion, it will only get two attacks at the most, and, on average, will do less damage than Izamu (on rare occasions more, of course, especially if the red joker or lots of severes are in hand), then is easier to kill, and doesn't come back afterwards outside of Spare Parts. For me at least, Izamu has exactly what I require of a beatstick - high, reliable damage output, takes a disproportionate amount of AP to kill in return, decent threat range (his average charge is offset somewhat by his 3" reach), and useful secondary abilities (Ruthless being the main one, since it gets around a lot of things besides Terrifying and Manipulative). FWIW, it took me a long time to come around to that line of thinking. I started as a 10T player and very rarely took Izamu, thinking him too expensive for what you got from him, not realising that what you got was reliability, something that, with Decaying Aura, he has even more of in Ressers. I do love the Rogue Necromancy, though. It brings some things to the table that Izamu doesn't. When I put it on the table, it's usually with Pack and alongside Izamu, because then I don't have to choose and Izamu gets even more free movement. Disclaimer; I'm not a UK champion and most likely am a worse player by a good amount than the OP, I mostly just enjoy this sort of discussion for what I can learn from it.

I'm not sure that comparing the Rider to either the Rogue or Izamu is completely fair. The difference in cost is significant enough that, yes, you should be getting a better model than one that costs 2SS less. So I won't comment on the Rider here. The Izamu/Rogue comparison is a much closer one, though, so I'll address a couple of your points, at least; Defensive abilities: You've only really talked about how armour can be ignored, but impossible to wound cannot. You haven't taken into account that armour reduces damage, wheras I2W only potentially does so. If your opponents' killy models all do 3 weak damage, Izamu can be hit up to nine times before he dies, while the Rogue goes down to four of those. Its Terrifying 13 is a great defensive ability, but it can be bypassed by generic game mechanics (flipping or cheating the appropriate card), and many models (Izamu included) are immune to it. Offensive Output: If you assume that your models are going to always to weak damage, Izamu puts out more than the Rogue. The Rogue does better overall damage per attack, but Izamu's Melee Expert, which you seem to have dismissed, is probably one of his most important abilities; it increases his raw damage output by 50%. The Rogue is more accurate, but shorter reach, and both have + flips on damage, but Izamu doesn't lose his when he drops below half wounds. Speed: The rogue is faster than Izamu, just. Stalk makes the biggest difference, of course, but isn't always useful. Synergy: You haven't mentioned either model's synergies with various crews. One is a Horror, the other is a Spirit, and both of those things are very important to several masters; Molly loves both, depending on her upgrade choices, while Yan Lo and Kirai have obvious synergies with Izamu (and in both cases those synergies deal with what you perceive to be his weak point - mobility). I'd say both have their place in different crews, but having used both, unless I have a specific use in mind for the Rogue, and I only have stones for the one, I always reach for Izamu. No other non-master model at that cost is as reliable as he is at taking a model out in a single activation, and with the proper support (and Decaying Aura), he becomes an absolute terror, IMO.

Mission accepted. I'll be attending a fair amount of events this year, so I'll try to keep track of pulling this one off.

Doesn't the aura's requirement for an enemy model to "resolve" the Ca action mean that if they leap to further than 6" away, they won't be affected? Edit: Ah, I see this was the previous crux of the argument. I always took "resolve" to be the culmination of the action in question, ie "once it's finished". If the aura was to affect the model regardless of where it ended, would it not stipulate "declare" instead of "resolve"?

Can an extremely aggressive list cause issues for Joe's at all, do you think? A turn 1 fast Vik/Misaki charge cutting the heart out of it by killing one or two key models? It feels to me like losing Phillip, Izamu or, to a lesser extent, Sebastien or Datsue Ba in turn 1 or 2 can put the brakes on the engine pretty hard, at which point it becomes slightly easier for the opponent to play against? This is, of course, theoryfaux of the worst kind, though. I'm sharing my thoughts so that wiser minds can shoot them down more than anything.

Thanks for correcting me, all. Turns out I need to update my own mnemonics, haha.

To add to this, they also have a greater height than Cassandra herself. If the model that was trying to get line of sight was Height 3 or greater, it could see that Night Terror from the same position as Cassandra, as the vantage point rules allow them to ignore terrain of a height equal to or lower than their own. The way I remember this quickly myself is: Without Vantage point: If either of the target or attacker is taller than the terrain in the way, both can see each other. With Vantage point: The attacker can now ignore terrain its own height, in addition to the above, and now ignores all models as well.