Tokapondora

Now that's a tough one. I think I'd like another set of Komainu. I've never been too fond of their more mechanical look and whenever I do start spamming them I always run out so I'm due for another box anyways. Something more fitting with the Obsidian Statue or Oni would make for a nice thematic alternative. Or perhaps the Dawn Serpent could get something to make it look a bit less like chinese bootleg Emissary. Get Fuhatsu to regain some more honour and trousers while you're at it. Those are really just about the only normal sculpts I don't care for. That and Asami "float like a butterfly stung by about a thousand bees" Tanaka but I stuffed a mask on her anyways so. Though it would be interesting to see what alternative Wyrd could come up with for a somewhat blander master like Shenlong. Show us the dragon rages.

I generally don't mind 7 but know that at 7 you're gonna have to reduce that gap and fast. And if you're up against someone with like 9 or 10 activations especially the first half of the match will be a steep uphill battle for you, where you choices and your ability to force those choices onto your opponent will make or break your game. For Mei, her best activation tricks come from the fact that Toshiro can summon Komainu off of the scrap the Emissary and Oni (and Porkchop x:) drop, which will easily carry you from your starting 7 to 10~11ish activations. McCabe gets to hire significant hounds at 3 SS a pop, giving him 4-5 activations for 14-17 SS including McCabe's upgrades. Shenlong gets 2 Peasants for 2 SS, starting him off at 3 activations for 4 SS. Asami summons and they occasionally don't disappear, so that still counts. Huggy is free... So TT has a fair amount of little tricks to catch up - though naturally, all factions do. Most slightly better. And that's the point of a model like Yasunori. When you hear about him, it'll be a tale of terror as he swoops down from the heavens to steal the souls of their babies or whatever. You don't hear about him the next 3 games where he's nestled safely in your bag as you decided scheming might be a nice thing to do this game or about the half a dozen also very great models you had to remove or demote an SS or two just so you could bring Yass. He's a model you have to make sacrifices for and hope he'll give you a decent return on that. In your list you can replace the two TTB for Toshiro, who from turn 1 onwards will easily be able to summon a Komainu a turn, maybe more. You have Kang, Graves and the Emissary. That's three huge investments already. Yasunori or Izamu's budget will have to come from there. Maybe you can give up Graves and a TTB for Yasu, and hope he quickly kills something else to catch you up on activations. You can turn the Emissary into Izamu and hit even harder at the cost of support. You can melt 2 TTB down into an Izamu but that will make scheming a tad more difficult. That's the idea of listbuilding - whatever you focus on will come at the cost of other areas of specialisation. There's a reason why these things cost so much SS, and it's not to make planning easier.

"Everything" would've sufficed.

I always like RT for the 's it adds to defenses after you've plunged in, moreso than the still significant boost to his attacks. Generally lets you pull off either one more turn or drains a hand significantly if your opponent feels they have to get through. Smoke Grenades is very good until you've committed him in enemy lines - after that it loses a fair bit of effectiveness. But I do like both, just kinda depends on how in-your-face I want to play him.

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.

@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).

It requires you to discard the upgrade as a 0 action.

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.

Are there any reports or something on this tournament?

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.

Izamu has "Not being 13 SS". You'd be surprised how useful that is.

If you're going with any other models, prioritise Izamu. He's pretty much our best all-round beater. Sturdy, tarpit, high damage output; every beater I put in my list gets compared to Izamu first. No clue why he was put so low Pyr's ranking. Yin is great but niche, and the Effigy is always a great filler piece. But yeah, definitely get 'Zamu.

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.

Well, time to crack on. We're now getting into the territory of "alternative playstyles", and kick it off with Lynch. Cheating Bastard is, by all accounts, great. I'd very much take it if it was 2 SS, maaaybe even 3. I would not however take it if it was Limited. Alas. Cheating last is incredibly powerful, but against that is a 3 Df tadpole that will not survive any amount of attention. You'd have to hold back playing him, your opponents would be far less incentivized to not bother, and ultimately the rest is not going to tip this upgrade over the edge. Getting to tag one enemy within 6" with Brilliance undefended is great, placing scheme markers do not fit the type of game I take Lynch with and I can't ever go into a game expecting three masks. I might swap it out if I'm feeling cheeky, but since it's 1 SS it's gonna cost me another SS to swap it back again. I'd actually be happier with this upgrade being 2 SS. And Burn Out... Burn Out is an interesting one. You get Depleted when you kill stuff. They'll be coming in at 3 Wds but it's the activation that counts. That said though, since it requires opponents you are relying on them to get that count up, you're realistically only gonna be doing in from t2 onwards, and at 2 SS Lynch will end up with a 6 SS upgrade line-up, with Addict on Huggy bringing it to 7 (since you'll need to play fairly Brilliancy if you want to make the most out of this). It's a tough one but above all it looks fun and I'm definitely looking forward to trying it. Lynch is already definitely on the top half of the spectrum, so giving him difficult choices rather than autoincludes is exactly what we want. Mei Feng's biggest issue before we even look at her upgrades is that she is filled to the brim with them already. Vapormancy, Seismic Claws, Misdirection, Recalled Training... It's gonna be tough to make your way in there. Which starts us off at Rail Lines. Friendly Foundry models walk faster when they start near her. Now I don't use a lot of Foundry models with Mei. I don't even use Mei's own Wk. And Railwalker gets to haul models away, but on a trigger. Which is fair, you shouldn't be able to chain activate that in any way shape or form. Though they could've suited that on a . At a 7+ its going to be one expensively niche Railwalk. It's not like TT is really pressed for movement. And then you look at that card and you look at the four upgrades that are already waiting in line to be stuck on her, and... yeah... Shame. Press the Advantage seems, at first glance, an absolutely amazing ability. Any attack you do gets to activate a trigger on any of your attacks. Wombocomboing across the board for days. Though then, it's restricted by a once a turn-clause. Which is fair enough, but also hurls this upgrade down the tier-stairs. To the point where, looking at all the pretty upgrades in line already, the double suited trigger for Railwalks just isn't enough to let it break through. And then there's Shenlong. Poor poor Shenlong. These two are just a resounding meh. He's got upgrade slots to spare, so initially I was like "Why not", but then I realised that for the price of these upgrades I can also put 1 SS in my pool. And that's kind of a worrying sign, if there's two upgrades that you find hard to justify at 1 SS. Yang gives 1 extra charge attack, which is nice enough, but when you're charging in you're not using Shenlong for what he does best; support. Giving up 1 poison to get 1 Df is nice, but then you realise it's only for the Action, not even the Activation. And you have to give it up before the duel starts anyways. There's not enough poison in the world to make playing him more on poison viable. They seem to be designed to make use of his massive hands and turn him into somewhat of a combat master as alternative. This is fine, Shenlong didn't need some huge buff. But it's done in such a bland way, without spicing him up in any way which he'd definitely need if he's stuck relying on his attacks. I've thought of Terracotta Warrioring him into carrying both - since it only says you cannot purchase both - but again, I couldn't get myself to take one let alone two. They're just... boring. Misaki's really interesting - just not good enough. Risk and Reward is a fun little gimmick, but since you have to do it at the start of your turn and you only heal after the turn ends it's a risky one. A risky one that will come at the cost of Stalking Bisento, Misdirection or Recalled Training. And that extra crow just isn't quite worth it without all three of those. If I could take a fourth I'd happily give it a go but alas. The Storm has, well, issues. Blasting 12" away is great, naturally, and you might give the Emissary's focus aura a go for a change, but ultimately they will not only be dropping in at 2 or 3 damage, but they do so at even more of a cost of Misaki's hand - something she even struggles with when she has a to attack and damage. This honestly should've been a simple to her damage. You'd still have to cheat in for the double blast, but it wouldn't leave her attacks completely useless unless you cheated damage in every single attack. Just a small change that would've turned this not necessarily into something that remotely compares with Stalking Bisento but at least would've made it a functional alternative. She's without flips to her attacks, she'll have to cheat in to realistically get above the min 2 damage, to cheat in she needs a suit to start with... There's just far too many issues with this to make it even just a fun little alternative. The Brewmaster I had high hopes for. As one of the worst masters in the game with upgrade slots gallore this was Wyrd's chance to actually do something with him. A nice clean way to give him something without having to resort to erratas and I have to say, I'm genuinely disappointed. We get Wesley for 2 SS and a 0 which by all means is an improvement over having to stick Running Tab on him, but it's definitely not what he needed. The extra poison damage seems huge, but seeing as models within 6" tend to be stuck making numerous healing flips a turn anyway the uncontrolled End of Turn damage bump is too unfocussed to make use of. Just give me a Wesley and be done with it (and I'm not happy to have to give up my 0 for that). A Friendly Ear should've just been a and that's it. The absolute last thing the Brewmaster needed was even more set up. Hell, it would've even been fine if the Brewmaster just got a to all duels with models with the poison condition - might make the You're Drunk trigger an interesting one to go and for your opponents to look out for. As it is now it's just repeating the same design mistakes that've plagued the Brewmaster since day 1. And Explosive Mixture is wyrd's offering at finally being able to deal damage. Except it's a simple duel. And for whatever reason targets Wk instead of Wp. So you get a very unreliable damage source, a situational suit that, if built in, would've given the Brewmaster an actually reliable damage source, and they didn't even bother to give a small bump to the defenses of a Df 5 two-suited defensive trigger. All in all, I feel this was the chance to pull Misaki and the Brewmaster somewhat closer to the competitive scene. Maybe give Mei a little boost as well. Lynch, Asami and Yan Lo I'm happy about though. McCabe worried. Shenlong... Well... Such is life.

Ah, forgot about that one. The problem there is I just like Yu with her so much. Being able to reposition minions in that bubble over and over again, giving them fast to boot and repositioning the scheme markers the Oni drop really just makes him hard to top for me.

Now Yan Lo I think is definitely helped the most by these, if only because of Awakening. Two zeros is very nice, Lightning Dance trigger and doing it for a 0 is nice, and it only costing 1 SS is also quite nice. The one downside is that it now locks my Df and Wp to 5, which is still shamefully low for a master. Even if not for damage, it still leaves you incredibly vulnerable to the various effects that can be thrown around. Follow Their Footsteps is okay, but with the other two upgrades just about stapled to his card being Rebuild Corpus and Misdirection actually allowing him and his crew to go balls deep into enemy lines I can only see this be possibly used to try and get Blood Ascendant, after which I'd need a Terracotta Warrior to swap it out, which I can't because you can't swap upgrades once you're over your limit, so yeah, there's not much place for that. It's gonna be either this or Awakening, and Awakening takes the cake by a mile. Which brings us to Blood Ascendant, which is just too expensive. It's an amazing effect, to be sure, but at 4 Chi you're going to attach this at turn 2 only if you beeline straight towards it, and at that point you will have zero defensive Ancestor upgrades and at best 1 Chi, only allowing your next activation to benefit from Casting Expert and that's only if you leave behind any upgrades to offset that pitiful Df/Wp 5. So you don't get Casting Expert until the turn after you equip it, equipping it will realistically cost you just about all your Chi, at which point you're at Ca 5 for all of your actions, and Yan's quite hungry for cards as it is. And even for a 3/4/5 damage track, you will need Chi to make this attack or Lightning Dance be worth anything and the only time you can realistically get both is around turn 4, which is generally well after the damage's been done. Even moreso than the Bone Ascendant this is just too expensive to allow Yan to function with his leftover Chi, and unlike Bone Ascendant you can't benefit from 90% of this card's worth the turn you equip it. A very close second McCabe, who gets a very nifty new tool that I can see replacing another 1 SS upgrade in Cloak of Invisibility. I can already hear the complaints of a Disguised Yasunori ringing through the poor poor Guild forums though. And Don't Mind Me is perfect for me, seeing as I tend to use McCabe for my schemier schemes already. Top that off with Perfect Camouflage and you've offset one of McCabe's biggest weaknesses of being weak against range. Next is Loot Bag, which if nothing else is a 1 SS upgrade that can turn into any of McCabe's 2 SS upgrades, so it's naturally an autotake though I feel for the wrong reasons. You can fuss around by throwing this onto a friendly model who can then later turn it into a McCabe upgrade but realistically you'll be much better off just getting what you want while everything is in throwing distance. I'm not sure McCabe really needed these buffs; there's plenty of TT masters who could've used such a big boost much better with McCabe just getting something to allow alternative playstyles. Then we get Asami who gets an upgrade that gives her 7 Flicker which in turn can be used to add suits to duels and flicker to other Oni. At 7 you can really only use this once if you don't want her to flicker out turn 5 though, and that's hoping that the rounds don't go beyond that. Especially in tournament games it might be good since you're more likely to run low on rounds, but I hardly feel that's supposed to be a selling point for upgrades.Now you could always use Amanjaku or kill enemies with Asami to get Flicker, but Asami is far too card hungry for that to be a viable/reliable method of getting more on it. Most of the time this will just be turning a Soulstone into a suit, which you no doubt will do at some point, and at that point you best make sure you've done all you need to do with her if you want to spend any more. Bad Hair Day allows you discard a card to reflip a flip, which the again card hungry Asami cannot deal with, especially for a chance to topdeck whatever it is she needs. The attack to block Walk and Charge actions seems nice, but the fact that it needs a suit just kills it. There's, again, both cards and Soulstones involved in getting this off that are much better off on other actions. The Shadow Emissary's conflux turns him into an Oni, which is definitely a big plus, and drops scheme markers near him when models get sacrificed near him. Definitely a neat little diddy, but it does compete with a to minion attacks and just other support models in general. Not entirely sure about this one but it's hardly bad. Kay that was a bit more detail than I was expecting to go in. I'll get to the others in a bit.

"After the value of the Poison or Flicker Condition on this model is lowered, if this model is still in play, this model may be placed within 3", not in terrain, after completing the current Action." So alas.

The problem with Misaki is that she's a Melee master with a min damage of 2. The only other thing that makes her remotely lethal is the Assassinate trigger, which requires two suits unless you have no soulstones left (and thus completely requiring luck to make it go off). Now if she either had a (let's be honest, completely reasonable) min damage of 3 or a more reliable way to get that Assassinate you might be able to run her without Stalking, but without that to damage (which is only against one enemy) and only reliable access to her to skedaddle all she can do is make annoying little prods and scurry away. And she's not even designed to do anything beyond that light prodding and slight movement shenanigans - the moving generally requiring close contact and input from an enemy to get it off so you can't even use her to effectively scheme or even reliably kill. Taking Disguise takes away her one remote chance at endangering one unit a turn, and what you're getting from that is turning her into somewhat of a nuisance at best. I really have high expectations from her upgrades. A +1 to the min damage, a more reliable way to get 's to the Thunder than chucking Soulstones (or RT) at it, or even just something to let her ignore Armor/Inco/etc. Just something to make people go "Playing Misaki might not be scraping the bottom of the barrel". And this coming from a TT player, who gets to fiddle with Recalled Training and Misdirection. Can't imagine what it'd be like without those. That fast five attack Recalled Training turn plus the =Misdirection-defense while I engage as many models as possible is the one reason I still occasionally run her. And I am well aware other masters can disrupt enemy crews about as much every single turn.

I just hope those spacehoppers are designed to be optional pieces. Unless they're somehow given flight I'm really not seeing the point of them. Upper body poses are cool though.

Yeah, a big reason why I like Yu so much over the Emissary is because Yu can give his masters fast.

Oh those are definitely the most contentious cases. Going through them all... With Yan the possibility of ressurection and free fast are nice (though only happen up to once and twice a game respectively), but the rest requires me to take his brutal stick (which I have no space for) and imo needlessly tethers him to Ca 7, even though if I'd just taken it with the Shadow Conflux, Recalled Training or whatever I could let my Soul Porter prod it up to 9. Add to that Yan's need for good positioning to get the most out of that Lightning Dance and a solid healing of up to 4 never being wasted and I can't quite give it to the Emissary. I have tried fiddling about with the Terracotta Warrior, giving the Emissary Smoke Grenades at the start of the match and get him to Ca8-9, only swapping in the Ancestral Conflux when it looks like he's about to go down, but it's just a tad too fiddly and I prefer the Terracotta Warrior's ability to give me access to Yu's other upgrades in a pinch on top of all the ancestral protection. Misaki is far too occupied with her own thing to bother getting in the Emissary's range, and Yu I feel provides a more wholesome "leader" for the rest of the crew while Misaki is gone. Also the extra stalk freeing up her 0. Also fast Misaki. For the Brewmaster I have either a self push and a swill that costs a lot of poison, or someone who can drag himself around the battlefield doling out extra poison, putting up bubbles left and right and making the Brewmaster fast. Even the +1 poison damage doesn't do diddly here. Lynch always likes the extra damage, and that discard being free is lovely, but I feel one on attacks and a push+draw isn't quite enough to sway me away from hypermobile/fast Lynch and double mulligans. Definitely a tough one though and I still occasionally dip into him just to see if I can truly make him work. I've really liked the Shadow Conflux in a more Brilliance-y list (moreso than the Hunger Conflux), especially with the stones for cards giving me two aces back, but I still feel Yu takes the cake with his versatility. Shenlong is the only one where I've on occasion taken both (and gotten something good out of it), and only because the Peasants give him cheap activations to cancel out the price. Both great fits, work very well with Shen, but with Shen being a Yu 2.0 already and 3 card draw being far too nice to pass up the Emissary is definitely stuck in there. Mei doesn't have 0's, and while she tends to have a largely upgradeless crew opposite to that is free scrap for easy Railwalking and summons, the possibility for Burning hacking away at defenses and the odd free attack every now and then. And McCabe is really just perfect with it. You get a free 2 SS upgrade, a decently unit that can both benefit from its upgrades and toss them over, upgrades are spread across the crew from minions to henchmen - all allowing for more fast pushes... He's absolutely brilliant here, no contest, especially since McCabe is plenty pushy already really hitting Yu's with diminishing returns. And for Asami, the to minions is definitely nice, as is the to focus, but he's not nearly as versatile or specialised yet to justify him over the, again, versatility of Yu's positioning, especially considering Asami's charge bubble. Though an upgrade touching on Flicker could definitely make me drop Yu.

It shares its auto-take spot with Yu. Every master has one or the other, though I'd say I veer more towards Yu with a lot of masters (moreso than I tend to see on this forum). McCabe, Mei and Shen I'm not playing without it, though for Lynch, Brewmaster, Misaki and Yan I find Yu a much better pick. Asami I've got to wait out til the upgrade comes out before I can really call that one, though I'm loving the range and flexibility on Yu for now. It's good but I honestly don't find it must-have good, and it largely depends on the master-upgrades it can take, the 0's Yu can take and how much of my crew is carrying an upgrade. Beyond that he's a nice damage track with mediocre defenses. Also Yu allows me a lot more freedom on repositioning and buffing, especially masters, and helps some with scheming to boot.

It seems like an excessively roundabout way to get twoish Ashigaru on the field. Why not replace the Jorogumo for an Izamu so you do more and more consistent damage, get any other style on Shenlong so he can be infinitely more useful and replace Toshiro and Anna for some extra 8-10ish SS beaters so you can make a lot more use out of Shenlong's constant handing out fast and focus?

@KrazyIvan, what McCabby horrors have you encountered that make you focus on him so much? Sure he's one the of the best TT has to offer but he still lags behind a few powerhouse masters, even if you bring Yasu and the Warriors. Just a quick shout-out in defense of Yasu; giving Yasu half your shit will no doubt guarantee something will die, but he's not built to last a crew prodding away at him and at that point you've lost half your shit halfway across the field. And besides that, he's quite weak against armor, incorporeal and defensive triggers so it's not like he can pick just any model. Saying something is an NPE because it can alphastrike is really stretching the definition of NPE to "things I don't like". Also Sabres are nice but they're hardly all you want to do with McCabe - with Promises and Badge of Speed being things you can't exactly throw away you can get a whopping +1 sabre. And that only if you also bring the Emissary.