tomjoad Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 I'm going to post a Hot Take here, and I don't want to ruffle any feathers or anything, but I think this Take is pretty much dead on. Ladies and gentleman: Whatever model within the 10 Thunders faction you think is best, get that ol' fella out of your head. Katanaka Snipers? No chance. Illuminated? Not close, pal. One of the Ancestors? That's four great options, and four wrong guesses. The best model in this entire lovely faction is... Ten Thunders Brothers!!! So, as background before I really start defending this wild claim, I will explain my thinking on generally useful things vs specifically useful things in games. Often, we must choose between paying a cut rate price for something that does only one thing, or paying more for something that can be valuable in more situations. If you play Magic, you can compare Terror to Mortify to see what I mean; you can pay 1B to kill a creature, or you can pay 1BW (over 50% more) to kill a creature or also kill an enchantment. My feeling is that, in most common circumstances, Mortify is hot garbage, because you're paying this 50% mark-up for no reason if your intention is to kill that creature. How often does flexibility matter, versus just doing the right job and doing it cheaply? To me, a single model or card's ability to be flexible is almost always at too great a cost, and this holds just as true for Malifaux as it does for Magic, or 40k, or anything. So, with that out of the way, I will have to admit that the 10T Bro is, mostly, a generalist and I must explain why I love him anyway. Firstly, I should explain what he is good at generally, then explain and excuse his weaknesses. Broadly speaking, the Brother is good at scoring. Every ability he has is geared towards getting you points, and that is ultimately all that matters. Protect Our Holdings makes him unbeatable in marker based schemes. Consider how much AP it will take for an opponent to get rid of a marker that our Brother is protecting: at a minimum, it will take 2 ap to kill him (a charge+two good hits or two strong shooting hits) though usually it will take more. Then it will take an AP to move into contact with the marker, and then one to eat it up. If you are facing a rat king or tengu or other model that can get rid of markers from range, you're still looking at at least 3 actions being spent. Even that is underselling him, though, because the 10T Bro is probably most well known for being so difficult to kill. Trying to hit him with multiple attacks targeting his Df is going to frustrate your enemies more than you may know. Even if you don't take the Defensive Stance action (and I almost never do, to be honest), you can cheat in a low and even if you get hit once, you are now Df7 with a , and every after that gives you another . Depending on when you activate, you can also use all of the Dance of the Heaven triggers to increase his survivability. On a or the defensive benefits are obvious. Healing or gaining armor keeps you alive longer. A or make you harder to engage/charge though. Get placed out of line of sight or behind some terrain piece; have such a large engagement range that an enemy model can only attack once, needing to walk first to get to you. Unless your Wp is being targeted a lot, it takes a long time to whittle down these 6 wounds. Even then, the armor and healing options can keep them alive longer than the average 5ss model. That 5ss is another important point with regards to the Brother. Earlier, I said that I dislike generalists because they so frequently must pay a premium for their wide swath of uses. Here, though, we are being asked to pay a bargain basement price for a model that can score everything and score it so well. 6 wounds for 5ss is already a great rate, and the rest of his stats are all average to above average. Df6 is good, Wp5 is average, Wk5 is solid, and only his Cg5 is questionable (which, again, a on Dance of the Heavens mitigates even this). Compared to other scheme runners in 10T (I'm thinking wastrels, tengu, torakage, low rivers, and wandering rivers), only two are cheaper than the brothers and they are both quite easy to kill when faced with opponents who actually want to kill them. I have hopefully convinced you now that, if nothing else, the 10 Thunders Brother is a strong choice. This post won't go into more detailed applications of them, because it is already quite long and is about to get longer. I do still, unfortunately, have to cover their primary weakness. That is to say, they kind of suck at actually damaging things. They do not have a ranged attack, unlike the wastrel and torakage. They have a dmaage track of 1/3/4 and with Ml5, they're usually going to be hitting that 1. Good news, though: doing damage is silly anyway. What you want to do isn't damage or kill opposing models (sometimes you do, I reckon, but usually, who cares?). What you really want to do is take away their actions. The brother's attack, though still not great, can accomplish this is a pretty fun way. On a they can trigger Trip (when damaging), giving the target Slow and also placing them into base to base with the brother. Combined with the Monkey Style trigger from Dance of the Heavens, this could let you move an enemy model up to 5", freeing up a more vulnerable model that may otherwise have been in danger, or pulling an enemy closer to your heavy hitters, or messing with your opponent's ability to score on many schemes and strategies. Of course, as anybody who has faced Silent Ones knows, giving out Slow on an attack is also great (you're essentially trading an AP from this 5ss model for an AP of one of their models which, very likely, was much more expensive). You need a , but the Trip trigger is very good and can save you when you need it. This now seems hyper-long for a forum post, but I want to get into some master and strat/scheme synergies at some point. I'll probably add a post about this at some point, and I signed up for wikispaces explicitly to add to the pullmyfinger entry on these, so I'll be doing that soon as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrillbossD Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 Slow em down, yank em back, then Cull the Weak. Great post, and I look forward to trying mine after I pick them up this weekend! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArcticPangolin Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 Hadn't seen the application of Monkey Style with Trip... good pickup! Need to paint one of mine up like Scorpion I reckon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carcosa Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 GET OVER HERE!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zFiend Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 GET OVER HERE!!! Kung Lao. Wins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rurouni Benshin Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 Kung Lao. Wins. I believe you meant Scorpion. (Even though they look more like Kung Lao) I've always liked TT Brothers. Their styles make them a bit gimmicky, but it works for them, and you can reliably get something to happen when you need it to. Thanks for sharing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phinn Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 I believe you meant Scorpion. I believe you meant Scorpius. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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