Yolototo: Ten Thunders' Underrated Little Brother

[BigHammer]

Poor Ototo. So many Ten Thunder players started out with the beautiful Misaki box set, “The Thunder”, built their models, played their first few games, decided Little Brother was a bit meh, and dropped him to take, instead, Toshiro, Izamu, Fuhatsu, or any one of the other, so-called-reliable, Ten Thunder henchmen and henchwomen. The internet says he’s bad, and you played those five games or so where he really didn’t manage all that much. Maybe he hit something with armour, maybe he never got to flurry, maybe he never got to cheat his damage flips, maybe your opponent killed him before he managed to swing that one turn he was enraged. Maybe, and I know I hated this one myself, he tried to attack something with a terrifying value and you witnessed one of the Three Kingdoms’ greatest warriors kack his pants and say no. That particular rumbling sound was decidedly not the Thunder (yes, that box set is named for him, not his Mistress; that’s how special he is).

 

To all of those players, I say one thing; I forgive you. All evidence you’ve seen points to the singular conclusion that Ototo is, for a ten-soulstone henchman, simply rubbish. Misaki’s box set doesn’t do much to alleviate this theory either; any mention of “synergy” around Misaki gets Laughed Off spectacularly, and any crew member that can’t keep up with the Intercontinental Ballistic Misaki gets left in the dust. And Ototo can’t keep up with her, for sure. She’s so fast, and does so little for her crew (NB: I love Misaki, but she is not built for Ototo), that “Slowtoto” (Kang: Wk4, Izamu: Wk4, Yin: Wk4… Ototo: Wk5) often gets left with nothing to do but get whittled to death or needlessly expose himself to danger trying to keep up and be useful. So your first games with him, and perhaps some of your first experiments using him outside of a Misaki crew, reinforce those stories about him; he’s slow, he doesn’t hit nearly as hard as you think he should, his Wp is too low and he’s not immune to Horror, so just take one of the other big beatsticks instead, or save your stones and take two 10T Brothers. Right?

 

I’m here to tell you that Ototo’s problem isn’t with his cost. It’s not with his willpower stat, or his movement speed, or the number of AP he generates. It’s with his box set. Misaki does nothing for him, or maybe on the first turn she uses Downburst to move him that little bit extra and then you realise that she’s too far behind where she should be and it hasn’t helped him in any way, besides. Ototo is a model that, on paper, looks great. Ml 6 with 3” reach, flurry, critical strike and a (0) self-heal with soulstone use and 12 wounds, great. He can move through Ht 1 and 2 models and can’t be moved about by enemies, great. He’s a melee tank with Df 5 (here’s looking at you, Huggy, Rail Golem, etc), super. On the table, though, actually being able to pull any of that off, never mind getting a full-on Enraged Flurry on your opponent’s most key model, seems extremely difficult at best. There has to be a reason he’s 10 Soulstones, though, right? Not just all those abilities that are good in theory but tricky in practise, yes?

 

So how do you get use out of Ototo? In theory, he wants to be in the enemy’s ranks threatening an Enraged Flurry as quickly as possible, but when you try to do that in a Last Blossom crew you get stuck trying to use a weak Lure (Oiran need crows and to be in front of him), an expensive push (Misaki has far better uses for her AP than shoving Ototo’s bulk up the table), or something similar (On Wing’s of Wind’s push seems great, until you realise you have to not Stalk something in order to use it). Other pushes in Ten Thunders come on expensive models, and you’re already paying through the nose for Ototo himself, so that seems less attractive at first than it actually is. But it’s that last one, the expensive pushing models, that are the key to making Ototo not only work, but become a force for terror in your opponent’s lives. The distant rumble of thunder on a stormy day will bring haunting memories of Flesh Golems and Teddies squished flat in a single activation, of Masters not having enough Soulstones to save them from his fury, of the glint in your eye when you say those magic words; “Ototo will discard a card and flurry…”

 

The first part of making Ototo viable comes in our master selection, as you may have been able to imply from my comments already on Misaki. We need a master that can make Ototo move faster, hit harder and more reliably, and be less feart of other big things. Thankfully, the Thunders have one such master; one Mr Lucas McCabe. The treasure hunter has three things in his arsenal that make Ototo good, and another that goes a long way to making him truly great: First up, the obvious one, is the excellent Badge of Speed. For a four of any suit, you can make whatever model you like Nimble (what was that I was saying about Wk5 earlier?) and push them 4”. This requires, of course, the second of those things, which is his ability “Take This!”, McCabe’s unique mechanic that gives him such powerful synergy with a lot of crews. The third of these things is Promises, an upgrade I see more often on Sidir than I do on McCabe (eh? He’s Wk 4 and primarily ranged, why would you restrict your crew’s movement so harshly?). With his initial Wk of 7 and 3 AP, McCabe can get this bubble of positive flips on Ml and Wp duels pretty much anywhere it’s needed, and the two things Ototo needs positive flips for are, of course, Ml and Wp duels. He wants every attack to threaten to hit, and he wants to be able to hit Terrifying and Manipulative targets whenever he damn well chooses. Ml 6 is pretty good, but a lot of masters can match or better it, giving a single flip attack roughly even odds of hitting and missing. That problem goes away with Promises in the mix.

 

The fourth trick McCabe brings to the Ototo crew (because we all know who’s really calling the shots when Misaki isn’t about) is a bit less obvious, but is central to any crew McCabe leads. On both of his natural attack actions, whether mounted or on foot, McCabe can give enemy models the Slow condition. Already an excellent condition to rob your opponent of their AP, Slow has an added synergy with Ototo, as long as you buy him his unique upgrade, Call the Thunder. Let’s face it, you used it once, failed to make anything slow with its (0) action and put it away, didn’t you? You told yourself the trigger was nice, but you can already get +2 damage out of critical strike, or even +3, so why would you need it? And why would you hobble your first attack with Ototo to try to make something slow on a negative damage flip (read: 2 damage), when you could just hit for a bit extra to begin with, right? Enter McCabe, and his Netgun, Whip and Sabre attacks, and the Slow they can all dish out. Against an already Slow target, Ototo doesn’t need to worry about them failing a simple Wk duel, or exchanging hitting power for Slow on at least on of his attacks. Against an already slow target, Ototo only needs one Ram. Maybe he isn’t Enraged, but you have a high Ram in hand, or a spare soulstone. Both of those things are now worth +2 damage. Maybe he is Enraged, and you don’t want to waste those resources trying to get two Rams in there for his Critical Strike trigger. McCabe’s reliable Slow-enducing attacks allow you to set up a target for Ototo to smash.

 

So now we have an Ototo who’s going to potentially hit harder and move faster, but we can do all that with the Dawn Serpent and give it reactivate as well, or with Izamu who has two armour and Melee Expert and Ruthless and 3 weak damage, right, so why would be bother with Ototo when such models can have the same tricks? We need to make Ototo faster, and we need to push this Slow synergy we’ve found into a full-blown strategy if we want anything worthwhile to come of this. Like I said, this isn’t a McCabe crew, it’s an Ototo crew. We need more things to make Ototo hit harder and move faster, and we need more potential sources of Slow for him to exploit (and to turn Slow into a viable strategy). Before we come to those other models, I want to share a thought or two about Slow in general.

 

In Malifaux, crew size has a lot of effects on the game. Large crews with lots of cheaper models gain activation advantage, and can potentially do a lot more useful things every turn. In turn, their static hand size of six is more limiting, because more models and more actions means less overall cheating/discarding, weakening the effect your hand has over the course of the game. You generally suffer more from attrition, since you lose models (and hence activations and AP, the things you paid for) more easily due to them having less wounds, worse stats, less survivability-enhancing abilities, etc. There are exceptions to this, of course, but this is a general rule. Smaller crews, on the other hand, have less activations and AP, and suffer if they cannot bring the enemy crew down in size, since their opponent has far more control over positioning and timing, but they can more easily utilise a strong control hand and each model is generally more survivable in turn. The degrees that these scales swing and balance varies wildly in Malifaux, of course, since there are 6 SS Flesh Constructs and 8 wound, 10 SS henchmen out there. What a smaller crew, as Ototo’s crew is destined to be, has to be able to do to reduce their activation disadvantage, is to either kill or disable enemy models. Slow (and by extension, Paralyse) is one tool in the arsenal of the smaller crew aside from beating things to death, that can do just this. It helps a smaller crew function by reducing the AP their opponent has to use, as long as it comes in volume, with reliability, and ideally has some range to its application. So as a strategy, it helps alleviate one of a small crew’s weaknesses. It’s just a bonus that it also happens to make Ototo hit harder, honestly.

 

Slow is also a tool to use against elite crews; It can deny a charge, or a flurry, or stop a Deliver the Message in its tracks. It can prevent a powerful ability from being used, or utterly kill the threat range of an enemy model. It can stop a sniper from targeting something on the other side of the board, and prevent a scheme runner from doing their only job. With surgical use (or liberal application!), it can be a very powerful tool. Note that this also means we have to guard against it ourselves. With low Wp, average Df and Wk, and few AP, Ototo is pretty vulnerable to it himself. We make a note to bring some condition removal.

 

Moving on, Ototo still needs that last boost we were talking about earlier. We’re prepared, now, to commit to a smaller, more elite crew, as long as we alleviate the disadvantages that brings by bringing lots of effective Slow and counters to the same condition. So who in the Ten Thunders arsenal can push models around the table and give them extra AP to play with, regardless of their social status? Sensei Yu can. I got a little ahead of myself earlier when I mentioned the Intercontinental Ballistic Misaki. This is a tactic that, having borrowed it from other 10T players, I have used to terrifying effect in the past. Sensei Yu, with his Wandering River upgrade, can push a model 10” forward and give them fast, all for the cost of two 6+ cards. With Misaki, who gets a good amount of AP, and moves fast herself anyway, this can result in turn one assassination points and a very frustrated opponent. With Ototo, however, we can have something similar, but without our master being left out to dry after the fact. With the Wandering River Style upgrade, Sensei Yu can combine his powers with those of McCabe to provide an Ototo who has pushed 14”, is Nimble, and is Fast, before he has even activated. With his 3” reach and 5” move, this gives Ototo an effective Flurry range of 22” in the first turn, with an AP to spare, or 27” without the spare AP. If your opponent has extended any model from their standard deployment zone at all that turn, that model will be taking a Massive Tetsubo to its face, multiple times. With careful positioning of McCabe, and perhaps an accurate Netgun shot, those attacks are going to be on positive flips, with a single Ram providing two extra damage. Willpower 4 is still a bit low, of course, so we shove Servant of Five Dragons on Ototo for the Wp buff and our Ototo bomb is now complete.

 

All that remains at this point is to decide what other models to take with this already-elite crew (there’s 26 stones in there already, without a third upgrade for McCabe - which should be Barbs, by the way, since you want to be Netgunning and Whipping as often as possible, and since in a pinch you can throw it on a minion to have Promises trigger for them too, so that’s 27 now, and also you’ve two Henchmen and a master, so a couple more soulstones in the cache wouldn’t hurt either, and that’s 29 and we’re running out of room already, with only three models chosen…). Our goal is elite models who can put out Slow, and potentially remove harmful conditions as well. At this point, the crew becomes standard Ten Thunders fare, so I needn’t bore you with the whys and wherefores of that. Instead, here is our complete Ototo crew, for when you need an elite crew that can beat face quickly:

 

Lucas McCabe: Barbs, Badge of Speed, Promises, 2 additional Soulstones.

Ototo: Call the Thunder, Servant of Five Dragons.

Sensei Yu: Wandering River Style.

Yin the Penangalan: Smoke Grenades.

Chiaki the Neice: Pull of the Grave.

1 Komainu

 

Enjoy, and remember, you will like Ototo when he’s angry.

 

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Postscript: I'm trying my hand at blog-style writing for the first time in a while, and would like to hear your comments, both on the content and the style of the article. If I like this one and where it goes, I might do some more on an actual blog, if that doesn't sound too much like hard work.

 

[Inquisitor Wall]

You make some great points. I actually never even tried him out. I saw another local player try him a couple times and simply never put him on the table. Maybe I will give him a shot possibly with a master other than misaki.

[Rurouni Benshin]

*Takes notes*

 

Arigoto, gozaimasu.

[thebarbalag]

Awesome article. I've felt Little Brother was unfairly maligned for a while myself, but this is an excellent write-up of an effective way to use him. I think Yan Lo and Shenlong also bring some added movement to him without really sacrificing anything, but I've tended to use him as a second wave anchor in Misaki lists to some effect, holding the backfield, or threatening a control zone (Turf War, Guard the Stash), etc.

[Patzer]

Other models to think about: Katanaka Snipers' (0) gives out Slow; Sidir can dish out heaps of Slow wit Empty the Magazine; The Archers can also dish out Slow from range, but they need a suit; Ten Thunder Brothers have a Slow trigger on their Ml, just like the Archers they don't have the suit built in.

 

Personally, I have tried Ototo a handful of times with various results. His WP is quite bad, but there are quite a lot of WP buffs in Thunders so it can be dealt with. Yet he might be in for a though fight against Ressers and Neverborn. Another thing where he struggles a bit is against beaters who can over power him, but those are a handful and as long as you can survive two hits without reaching the Hard to Kill threshold, Ototo will have a shot. Other than that, he's got plenty of cool tricks, and master-level amount of wounds. In the right situation he hits constantly and like a truck. To me, he is a "potential" Izamu. They share nearly the same relationship as Howard and the Rail Golem. One of them is way more reliable, and will constantly give you great effort. The other will in the right situation utterly destroy large samples of the opposing crew.

 

You make a great pledge for Ototo, BigHammer!

[Dirial]

Very enjoyable writing style. Genuinely laughed. With some editing and expanding, it might be fit for the Chronicles, actually.

 

I concur with the others about the content itself.

[scarlett fever]

Fantastic tone, really enjoyed reading this and it makes me want to get Ototo on the table again. Write more like this!

 

I've tried out the Yu, Ototo, McCabe crew once and Ototo died pretty quick. But now I'm keen to try it again.

 

I went through a period of using Yu and McCabe together every game, it was a lot of fun, but after a while I found I was getting where I wanted quickly, really quickly, but was often caught/out of steam end of turn 2. Then the rest of the game could be clinging to keep my up my VP.

A lot of my Shenlong + Yu builds have felt similar, I end up with one or two speeding missiles that take up my focus and everything else scrapes by. I blame Yu. He's costly and adding a support henchman to a support Master makes the focus of their attention vulnerable. If it dies quickly it can hollow out your list. Makes me think Strangemetal Shirt might be a good idea. Or a few more soulstones.

 

You've fired me to go back to these builds and try them out again. Been a while and with your inspiration I'll approach it with fresh eyes.

Great read, you're so right about Ototo being in the wrong crew box.

[D_acolyte]

I totally agree that Misaki does nothing for any model except maybe Last Blossom minions and that is only based on having an upgrade, which is normally not on her.
I have thought with Ototo and Graves to wake him where I need or want him.

Ototo is better in with some strategies and vs some crews, just not gremlins or guild.

 

McCabe is the low hanging fruit answer to everything in this faction. You have a problem with a model, well run McCabe and he will make it all better.

 

I also feel that Ototo and the Torakage could play off each other well, but as I do not own that crew box I have never used either of them.

[MrDeathTrout]

I don't have my rulebook with me and I don't remember; are pushes considered movement?  If so Ototo's Shove Aside would allow him to be pushed through Ht 1 & 2 models.

[Jewomie]

I'll have to give this a shot some time. I've considered running him with Brewmaster since brewie tends to get himself dug in somewhere and doesn't spend half the game cruising from table edge to table edge, I figure that alone shores up the speed issue. Then he is free to walk around the bubble and flurry anything brewmaster is holding up. The cleanup guy after the drinking party if you will.

It isn't as creative as yours is (and I'm going to try yours out one of these days!) but this seems like a fairly easy thing to try. Ototo, brewmaster, some scheme runners and high river monks **because I can't seem to elave them out of any lists now days**

[Dirial]

I don't have my rulebook with me and I don't remember; are pushes considered movement?  If so Ototo's Shove Aside would allow him to be pushed through Ht 1 & 2 models.

 

No, it's not a move.

[MrDeathTrout]

No, it's not a move.

 

Darn!  I was pretty sure, but hoping.

[tomjoad]

This was a great post. You've got me wavering on Ototo from a "never ever use him" up to "well, maybe after I paint my McCabe."

 

The problem with using Ototo with McCabe, in my mind at least, is that there's such a long list of models that I want to try with him, and that I already am convinced are good. Of course, the way I keep imagining McCabe is as a worse version of Shenlong, so I admit right away that I'll need to rethink things to maximize Lucas.

[BigHammer]

Thank you all for the kind comments. Ototo has always been one of my favourite Ten Thunder models, and I love playing about with underdogs to try and find ways to make them work, so it was fun to write a bit more about him.

 

TheBarbalag: Yan Lo is easily my second choice master to use with Ototo. Bring one or two Onryo, make Ototo a spirit with Trancendence, Lightning Dance an enemy into Ototo and go nuts. You can more confidently deal damage to Ototo with your own attacks in this crew to Enrage him because the Armour +2 he gets from Trancendence makes those last 6 wounds go much farther. It is much more difficult to justify taking Ototo over Izamu in this case, though, since he already has Spirit, Armour +2 and doesn't need to move around as much. The only advantage Ototo offers here really is a few more wounds, Enrage and being able to do three attacks and still heal, while Izamu has the benefit of being able to be re-summoned once with Reliquary.

 

Patzer: I have a list stored away somewhere with every model available to 10T that can inflict slow. Sidir was very close to the top of that list, of course, since Empty the Magazine is so great, and his Sh7 is simply awesome, but I find that in this crew he hinders more than helps. Yin can damage and root from range, debuff Ca/Wp, and apply Slow in melee (that she can push into from 8" away, potentially), and her Ca can be boosted by bringing Chiaki (she only needs one Chi to go to Ca7, equalling Sidir's attack value without suffering from cover or randomisation penalties). She's also far more annoying in general to deal with, especially with those smoke grenades, and synergises with the Komainu (she gives it its slow or burning triggers for free when it's close to her), so she got the ranged-support slot in the crew that Sidir might have taken up. Yu's upgrade attack can also push and slow enemies, so later in the game (he can spend turn 2 moving 14" to get back into the fight) he can push an enemy into Ototo's reach and make it slow as well, giving more ranged-slow support. The archers are fantastic, but extremely fragile for such a small crew. They require a strategy of their own to work (but they do work so well).

 

Scarlett Fever: Ototo dying can often be as a result of overestimating his Wd 12. It sounds like so much, but it can be taken away so quickly with his average-low defences. Soulstones aren't really enough. As counter-intuitive as it may be, pushing him up the flank or a well-covered side-path to begin with can increase his survivability, especially if you occupy the front of the enemy forces with hard-to-affect models like Yin. Once he's covered the distance to the middle of the table, even on the flank, his Badge-of-Speed-Nimble and potentially another push or two from McCabe (who can spare them) will be enough to keep him flurrying things for the rest of the game. The plan is to slow the enemy and potentially push them around anyway, so they shouldn't be getting away too quickly. Lightning strikes quickly, but the Thunder comes in its own time...

 

Jeremy: I think Mr Graves would want a few words with you if you hired Ototo for bouncer duty, but I can see the appeal. There's a lot of healing going on in a Brewie crew, and if you have any Slows that target Wp you can almost certainly get them off. Alternatively, having an enemy model on  from Swill makes them a great target for a Massive Tetsubo. If only 10T could hire something similar to Lenny, Ototo would probably die of happiness at getting free  .

[Silencer]

Actually that inspired to look at him from a different angle... and Yan Lo seems like a good fit for little baseball player....