Tell me more about Ama No Zako...

[daniello_s]

...as I can't find a role for her in my crews.

My initial tests were with Jack Daw (and Jaakuna) and then with Hamelin but she didn't performed in any spectacular way. What is worse I came into conclusion that it is more worthy to invest either extra 1SS and get Rusty or Taelor or in Hamelin's case sage 1SS and get Nix.

She is very fast, her damage track is nice but somehow I can't figure out how to use her correctly. Any advice please?

[Hateful Darkblack]

She's really fast, but a lot more fragile than she seems to be at first. Both of her (0) actions are powerful but suit-dependent. Her melee attack is a low Ml 5, but huge damage.

When I've had success with her, it's been in two ways:

First, as a Scheme-runner your opponent won't mess with. She can move quickly along flanks and your opponent will hesitate to send cheaper scheme-runners after her. She'll mop up Necropunks and Silurids no problem, occupy space for Recon/Interference, and so on.

Second, as a frontline sacrifice piece. She's got a melee attack, she can make terrain hazardous, and she can devour Paralyzed or short models. In the front, she's not going to survive, but she can require a lot of resources to take down. She's also great for Frame For Murder, because she's really, really hard to ignore.

I've seen other people use her in other ways successfully - in a crowd she's harder to gang up on and can occupy a lot of space - but these are generally the main two ways I've seen her played and the ways that I've found work best for me.

[Khoregard]

Jack, her, and a nurse. Hamelin and her. She works well with nix too! Also, run leve with get nix and Montresor all with tally sheet and a hodgepodge effigy! Bahaha

[lusciousmccabe]

I mostly use for for the speed. Obey/twist and turn her into place to score early points, then bog down/kill some relatively weak shit or hunt down some other hard to reach vps (like hunting party).

Oh, and don't run her with a lot of suit dependent models, as she wants all of them.

[MR TORGUE]

I just realised Von Schill can let her take two (0) actions. How awesome is that!> - She just needs to be stuffed into a freikorp suit now... 

[Drool_bucket]

As Hateful points out, I use her as "the other major threat" when Strategies and Schemes allow for my own models to die with little consequences (or even benefits).   If she takes Oathkeeper and Scout the Field she can put a major amount of pressure on an opponent...  Flight, Wk/Cg 6/7 and have Fast and not needing LoS for a Charge means you can really make an opponent think.

Her biggest weakness (aside from chewing up SS) is the low Ml 5 of her base attack.  But that is good enough against many Minions and Enforcers, and with an awesome 3/5/7 spread she can take chunks out of the enemy. 

I find running her with Misaki is pure gold, because Misaki already stresses the opponent, Misaki doesn't care too much about SS so Ama No can eat them up and then both can pounce on the same turn and cause a real problem.

This all said, I do agree that she is more specialized in her roles than a generalist "take every time" model.

[MagicGis]

I currently play around with this jack list to which she is pretty central:

 

Jack+withering+twist+all curses

Ama

Jaakuna

Lust +Creeping

The Hanged

The Guilty

The Drowned

4ss

I also try two variants of this one with effigy for soft cover aura and 2ss usually one oathkeeper 1 in pool or Lady L with a smiliar SS improvement.

So far really fun to play in general.

[MR TORGUE]

Anyone had any luck taking Ama with another terrifying model?

I have this idea where Ama uses her whispers to make a model take a (1) action at targeting another terrifying model - the affected model counts as friendly to Ama (so can shoot even when engaged for this action) and you control them for the duration of the action. The affected model takes a terror check and you choose to cheat low if passed - causing the model to become paralysed as the action is not part of an activation. 
Ama then proceeds to deep throat the model until dead or they burn all their cards. 

Its not a strategy to exclusively aim for but is a nice one that could be arranged in a pinch if the factors fall into place...

[nunorod]

That terror check only works if it is against another model that causes horror (that is not Ama) because Ama that moment is friendly so no terror check.

[Adran]

23 hours ago, MR TORGUE said:

Its not a strategy to exclusively aim for but is a nice one that could be arranged in a pinch if the factors fall into place...

I would say that this sums it up. It seems to have too many maybes in place to get it to consistently work, potentially requiring 3 high cards, 1 low card and possibly 3 stones to get it to work to cost your opponent 4 cards. 

Sometimes you'll get a better pay off than that, but even if you built the crew for this, you're probably not going to get it to work more than half the games.