Paradigm

Rules question for the TO: Can an Intel marker be placed on a model deploying with From the Shadows? I saw and agree with the ruling on Lodestone, but a difference here is that Lodestone stipulates "a model in play" while Intel markers don't.

The most powerful part of using Kitty in her current state is hitting Yasunori (or another model with HtW) with the trigger to draw three cards, twice. Both Shenlong and Minako are amazing with a strong hand, so Kitty provides the sort of force multiplier that make them both reliably amazing in just about every game. That trigger really needs to be enemy only at least.

I actually don't really do the whole cycle of having models hit Shenlong with Sensei Yu around, and it worked well enough to win the Swedish Nationals with Shenlong as my only master. Instead I settle for having a Low River Monk Concentrate twice to get 3 chi, and then both Students walk forward and use bonus action to move Chi from Low River Monk to Shenlong. That way you can load him with 3 chi without the time consuming or complicated setup activations. It's also really good to have all of his actions available in case the opponent moves forward to where he can reach something juicy. As soon as he gets into combat, I tend to use Soulstones to add masks to every attack to get up to 6 chi extra once he starts hitting things. This way I don't really need Sensei Yu and can afford to get more big beaters instead.

A question about the timing details of Luck Thief. Gwyneth is standing in cover and is targeted by a Focused projectile attack. Will the attack flip end up being: a) a straight flip due to modifiers first being totaled (thus cancelling each other) before Luck Thief had an effect. b) a double negative due to Luck Thief turning the positive from Focused into a negative before summing it up with the negative from cover.

It was an amazing event! The venue was great, with lots of space, good ventilation and both drinks and snacks easily available. Nice idea to have lunch included in the ticket, delivered to the venue. The terrain was high quality overall, except for a few tables that were too open in my opinion. The judges did a great job in being easily available, and they seemed to make quick and fair rulings. There was enough time in all of my matches except for one, so two hours plus setup time was good. The prices were really cool as well. I loved the whole concept of playing in teams. The scoring method worked well. The matchmaking idea was interesting, but I suppose there could have been more tactical depth to it. It was easy to just pick our best master for each table, and our opponents' picks hardly influenced our decisions at all. Knowing your opponents' masters before building your crew had an impact on list building, and I believe this hurts some masters too much. Unfortunately I don't have any good suggestions on how to actually improve this part of the event. TLDR: I had a great time, would absolutely go again even if nothing changes, and I would gladly recommend it to everyone.

I've been thinking of getting myself a proxy for Sun Quiang, hoping that he will make achieving the GG17 schemes easier. Have any of you already tried him? What are your impressions of him? When would you bring him, and is he worth his cost?

I tried this in my first Asami list. The idea was to create a somewhat safe bubble for Asami and her newly summoned yokai with Braced Yari. I had both Yamaziko and Tannen to make it troublesome to go into my bubble, while Tannen could also make Asami's summoning slightly easier. The idea was to set the bubble up a bit back from the centerline while continually summoning things within 4" of Asami, so that they could then charge out and do their thing. Unfortunately, this didn't work very well. First of all most opponents will have some sort of ranged threat, which the bubble had no protection against. It was also too resource intensive to keep summoning every turn. Asami is, in my opinion, much better as a highly mobile master with the ability summon things once in a while to either tie up key enemies or get surprise scheme markers down via the aura on Heavenly Design.

Might as well get the most obvious answer to Question 2 out there. Sensei Yu is very good with Stalk Misaki. Him being able to borrow Stalk to either tag two models at the same time with it or both tagging one model and using Misaki's 0 AP attack against it in the same round. With 10" push and Fast her threat range becomes enormous, and she will likely reach whatever she wants to attack in turn 1. Definately a good combination, but the more I play her I get the feeling that she doesn't really need him. Misaki usually does better as a board control tool rather than a cruise missile. She tends to die way too quickly if you try the latter.

I would like to try something like this. The basic idea would be to aim for Misaki using turn one to get into position and Stalk a key model on the enemy side that would be good at hurting Misaki back. Misaki would then try to remove said model at the end of turn two, or switch to a new target if the opponent pulls back with the first target. The Jorogumo would then teleport next to Misaki so that it can tank attacks against her via Misdirection, which the opponent can't ignore when the new target is one of my models. Most of Misaki's stones would go to cycling cards, getting masks on defense for Misdirection and the occasional prevention or Crow for Assasinate. If possible, the Jorogumo is aiming to last as long as possible by triggering Eat Your Fill to heal. Hopefully, this lets Misaki survive long enough to remove the most dangerous models. The Terracotta Warrior can switch Stalking Bisento into Disguised if she wants to focus on survivability and the opponent lacks ways to counter it. Smoke and Shadows can be switched into Recalled Training once the Jorogumo has done its thing. Chiaki is there to provide condition removal in case the opponent tries to lock her down via Paralyze or other nasty conditions. The rest of the crew will basically focus on tanking and doing schemes. As for schemes I would likely go for Accusation and Tail 'Em, or Claim Jump in case the opponent didn't pick any good targets for Tail 'Em. Misaki + 7 Pool - Stalking Bisento (2) - Misdirection (2) - Death Contract (1) - Smoke & Shadows (1) Kamaitachi (4) Chiaki The Niece (6) - Pull Of The Grave (1) - False Target (0) Jorogumo (9) Ten Thunders Brother (5) Ten Thunders Brother (5) Terracotta Warrior (5) Shadow Effigy (4)

The tickets seem to be sold out. I want to be on the waiting list for two tickets, one for me and one for Erorior! Would hate to miss this, as we've been excited to go all year! 1. Joakim Abrahamsson, Paradigm. Sweden 2. Erik Lifbom, Erorior. Sweden

@mythicFOX Yeah, Malifaux undoubtedly requires quite a bit of skill. Which some people for some reason seem to aquire remarkably quickly I'm a bit sad to hear that you didn't play in this tournament. Your approach to Asami seems promising, and I've been decently successful after adopting some of your ideas from back when I played you in the Vassal tournament a couple of months ago. It would've been interesting to get more input on how she performs against top level players. Do you have any insight as to what the other Ten Thunders players where using? Which masters did you see, and where there any particual models that were popular?

Interesting to see that this Lynch list still performs so well, at least when you're playing it. I also love how you can be out of the game for half a year, show up without the cards you wanted and still consistently win against strong players XD

@ukrocky I'd love to hear more! You have been playing quite a bit of Lynch, right? I remember you posting in a thread about your Lynch list quite some time ago. I tried your suggestions and it really improved my results with him. I'm excited to see what you've thought up since then, after the release of Wave 4!

I saw a quick post on Facebook on the participants in the UK Masters tournament a couple of years ago, and noticed there were a few players from our faction. I also heard something about one of them making it to the final, but have been unable to find more detailed information. Does anyone have some insight as to the results of the tournament, especially for the Ten Thunders players? What kind of crews did they play? What did they come up against? If any of these players are reading this, could you perhaps give us a some comments on your matches? I'm very curious to hear more about top level play with Ten Thunders!

I've been playing around with the idea of trying to squeeze in one of all of the Last Blossoms. It will be pretty bad and in no way something I would play competetively, but I like to have cool thematic crews to play as a challenge for myself when facing newer players. That way I get to use a bunch of cool models that never see the light of day otherwise, and the handicap makes it more likely the actual game will be close and exciting for both players. The crew would look something like this: Misaki -Disguise -Misdirection -Hidden Agenda Ototo Yamaziko -Smoke and Shadow Jorogumo Wukou Raider Torakage Oiran If I wanted to use Smoke and Shadows in a more competetive way, I'd basically only hire a Jorogumo and Yamaziko to hold the upgrade. I would then do the usual cruise missile Misaki with pushes from Sensei Yu, while hoping to be able to bury the Jorogumo and unbury it by Misaki once she's stuck in. The Jorogumo would basically be functioning as a tank for Misaki to pass of attacks to with Misdirection, as enemies don't get to resist the redirect when you pick a friendly model as the target. The Jorogumo can hopefully do a good job of keeping Misaki alive longer, while hopefully being able to heal itself with Eat Your Fill once or twice.

@solkan Good answer! Seems consistent and logical. What about the 1 AP charge through Promising Whisper? Can Yasunori trigger the extra attacks resulting from the charge? The wording of Ama no Zako's Promising Whisper is "Target non-leader model immediately performs a (1) Action chosen and controlled by this models controller. The target considers this model friendly for the duration of the attack. The action may not declare Triggers."

I was discussing the potential of Yasunori in a crew with access to Obeys (Brewmaster, Ama no Zako) with a friend, and several rules questions came up. Example: Yasunori has already activated and charged into a bunch of enemies is standing within 2" of them. He has already triggered both of his extra attacks, and done a total four attacks. Next Brewmaster activates and uses an Obey on Yasunori to have him attack once more. What happens? 1) The triggers for extra attacks both say that they can be used once per activation. Can they be triggered again when Yasunori is Obeyed to do so outside of his activation? 2) If so, why can he do so? Do you somehow treat the Obey as a second activation, thus allowing them to be used again? Or does actions ocurring outside of activations simply ignore the "Once per activation" part of the Trigger? 3) If the latter is true, would that mean that you can use both triggers an infinite number of times if they occur outside of an activation? A second example: Yasunori is in a crew with Asami and Ama no Zako. Yasunori has already activated and triggered both extra attacks, and he is unengaged and within 4" of Asami. Ama no Zako uses Promising Whispers on Yasunori, ordering him to charge as a 1 AP action due to Asamis aura. Promising Whispers say that the action can not use triggers. What happens? A) The action that Promising Whispers produce is a Charge Action, that does not have triggers. The two attacks that come after are treated as separate actions, and can thus declare their extra attack triggers. B ) The attacks produced by the charge are subject to the same limitations as the Charge Action caused by the Obey, thus no triggers can be declared on either of them.

Unfortunately Promising Whispers doesn't allow the targeted model to use triggers. Same goes with the mask trigger on Wukou Raider. Brewmaster's Obey seems to be the only way to give Yasunori extra attacks out of activation that allows triggers. Sad, but probably for the better balance wise. EDIT: On second thought, did you mean that you can use Promising Whispers to have Yasunori charge as a 1 AP action? Nice idea! Would you be allowed to use triggers on the attacks that are the result of the charge?

Has anybody tried Yasunori with Brewmaster? If I'm understanding the rules correctly it should be possible to Obey Yasunori to let him attack AND trigger both of his extra attacks, even if he has already done so himself during his activation. Yasunori with seven attacks seems pretty good.

@katadder You will still need an 8+ ram for every time you want to trigger Thunder, so it seems very impractical to do it more than once in a while. Add to that the fact that triggering Downburst gives enemy models surrounding the target an opportunity to push away, which is something of an anti-synergy when it comes to the blasting. It's a nice trick that might do something once in a while, but I don't think it will come up all that often.

So this question came up in a game where a model with Focused wanted to attack a henchman. The player being attacked wanted to know if Focused would be used on the attack, and in that case he wanted to use Defensive Soulstone to counteract Focused and keep the damage flip on negatives. Does anybody know the timing of when use of Focused is declared in relation to Soulstone use?

I'm a Ten Thunders player, and I've experimented a bit with using Ohaguro Bettari. There are basically two things that tend to ruin my day with her. First of all there is always an activation gap between Ohaguro being pushed+getting fast from the Emissary, and if my opponent has set up a similar alpha strike first she tends to go down very quickly. A Sabretooth Cerberus seems ideal for this. Collette could make many other models work well against her. I will also be in trouble if I after setting up behind terrain can't reach any of your models. If you can't help being caught, I'd advice for cheating your high cards on defense. It is very unlikely Ohaguro gets four severe cards, and if she's out of severe cards for cheating damage she will be very lackluster. Also, if you can't kill Ohaguro immediately after her having charged, tying her up with trash standing with it's back against terrain. She can sometimes use Plogh Over to get out of melee and attack better targets, but if the push would be interrupted by models/terrain she will suddenly have a hard time. Another thing to consider is that if your opponent wants to use Ohaguro with maximum efficiency, you can be pretty sure that it will eat up all of their high cards, meaning you have a good opportunity to strike afterwards. My experience playing her is that she is a potent model capable of trading up really well in good circumstances, and you are correct in that she is a strong pick against Arcanists. I always pick her when I expect Mech Rider, Collette and Marcus among others. Her downside is her tending to fall really flat in games where my opponents are careful about measuring threat ranges and have some sort of movement tricks of their own.

I like playing a thematic monk crew with Shenlong, Sensei Yu, Emissary, a Peasant and one of each monk. I do this because they are cool rather than good. Wandering River Monks are great in some specific schemes, but too expensive in most games. Low River Monks are fantastic with Shenlong and the Emissary to gain access to the card draw trick (stack Focus 3 on Monk, remove condition with Emissary for three cards), and with Peaceful Waters they also add some healing and potential scheme marker dropping. High River Monks are very mediocre. They can do some nice things, but I would always rather take either a Brother for one stone less or an Illuminated/Sniper for one stone more.

I think you have a pretty good list for the strategy, though I would like to make a few suggestions. Rising Sun is great on Lynch so that you can get Huggy back, but I personally don't like Recalled Training or Dragon Stone on him. Woke Up With a Hand is a good upgrade, though I often leave it out and go with only Rising Sun. That way you won't be tempted to overextend Lynch and get him killed. Lynch can still do good damage with the ram trigger on his gun, which he can simply discard any ram or use a soulstone to get. Lynch's big focus the way I play him is to guarantee a good hand via Mulligan and keeping him just far enough back that he can go up and tag things with Brilliance to get Huggy back when needed. Huggys 3" range will be invaluable to deny Interference for the opponent. Also put Hidden Agenda on him, since it costs 0 SS and makes sure the Emissary can always give Huggy Fast, even after having discarded Recalled Training. Toshiro can be pretty strong in Interference, so that would be a good choice. I personally love the Shadow Emissary with Lynch. Huggy becomes much better with easy access to Fast, and the extra 0 action push is incredible. You can use it to get your models into range, pull them back out of your opponents threat range, move either your own or the opponent's models to score/deny Interference etc. I have tried double Snipers, but found it to be too resource intensive. They pretty much need to hit severe to be worth their cost, and that will require too many high cards that would be better spent on Huggy or the Emissary. A Brother is always great. Worth considering is removing one Sniper to squeeze in an Illuminated. I would also remove Recalled Training and Dragon Stone from Lynch and keeps the stones for extra cache. You pretty much need them to make Toshiro's summoning reliable. As for schemes you should have a look at how good your opponent would be at scoring Show of Force. If he has few upgrades that work for that scheme, I would go with Show of Force. Huggy tends to be near the middle anyway to tie things up, and Toshiro could go within 6" of the center if it would score you points. Search the Ruins is good if you can kill enough enemy models, but it's kinda risy. Exhaust is usually a safe bet, but it could mean giving up points on Interference and Search the Ruins if you keep things alive instead of killing. Set Up is only good if the opponent has a model that they are guaranteed to send your way, like Nekima. If you don't take Set Up you should still bluff it by putting down random scheme markers for your extra VP. I would stay away from Convict Labour with your list, since it lacks the necessary scheme marker shenanigans to pull it off.

The first time I play a new opponent I tend to go all out, but later games when I start to get a feel for how good my opponent is I try to adjust my list building accordingly. When playing opponents who for some reason are weaker I take the chance to play one of all those sub-optimal lists that I still want to play because they are cool. My favorites here are thematic Last Blossom lists or thematic Monks of the Five Rivers lists. This has led to some really fun and memorable games for both players even when my opponent is considerably less experienced than me.