Kirai vs Nicodem

[Kadeton]

Following on from a discussion in another thread, I wanted to gauge people's opinions and perhaps get some insights into how people play these Masters, and particularly what causes people to perceive one as more powerful than the other. In a lot of discussions, there seems to be a prevailing opinion that Kirai is a horrible scary (some say unfair or OP) Master, and that stigma doesn't seem to be attached to Nicodem.

Cards on the table, here: in all but one significant way, I feel like Kirai is a pale imitation of Nicodem. He's always been far more effective for me than she has. The only time I've particularly struggled against Kirai was back in testing when I played a purely-Wave-1 Freikorps list against her (a matchup that I think is as close to literally unwinnable as anything in this game). In contrast, every game I've played against Nicodem has felt like a really hard slog, and every game I've played with him has been a cakewalk.

Let's break the differences down a bit so that everyone can tell me how I'm wrong.

Survival

They have similar stats, though Nicodem has +1 Wp over Kirai. They both have the option to pass off attacks onto nearby models with a Df/Wp trigger, though Kirai's is better (it's on her card rather than an upgrade, passes off effects other than damage, and it doesn't require the all-important Crow). Kirai has Manipulative, while Nico has Impossible to Wound and an extra 4 Wds.

The thing that really pulls Nico into the lead for me is Chime of Sorrow. In all honesty, most opponents tend not to go for these Masters directly as it means fighting through a swarm of enemies to reach them, but I've had occasions where they have - in dire straits, I've healed Nico for 8-10 Wds and turned the game around. In similar high-pressure situations, Kirai just dies.

Summoning

If we leave aside the matter of Ikiryo for the moment, I feel like there's no contest here. All the best things Kirai can summon (Shikome, Hanged, Drowned), Nico can summon as well... and many more besides. There's room for a discussion on the relative merits of using friendly models' Wds vs Corpse markers, but overall I've found it to be kind of a wash. Kirai has a slightly easier time summoning while moving her crew upfield, and Nico has an easier time replenishing his forces once battle is joined and things start dying. Kirai suffers if the opponent is able to kill key models quickly; Nico suffers if the opponent has ways of removing Corpse markers. In my experience, killing power is a lot more common, and Maniacal Laugh is a solid counter to Corpse removal anyway.

Both Masters have ways of increasing their Ca to more easily bring out the valuable summons - Nico's uses more valuable resources (assuming Seishin are essentially free), but is unlimited.

So let's talk about Kirai's ace in the hole: Ikiryo. Does Ikiryo's power (summoning at any range at the cost of a card or stone, giving Adversary to everyone in base contact) make up for Kirai's other summoning being weaker and less flexible than Nico's? In a nutshell, I feel like the threat of Ikiryo is far more powerful than the actual presence of Ikiryo on the table - she can be dangerous, sure, but there are a number of pretty straightforward approaches the opponent can take to mitigate her impact. A lack of "Ikiryo management" can quickly lead an unwary opponent into a dark hole where hope dies, but once your opponents work out how to deal with her, the fact that Ikiryo could be summoned just gives you some control over their target selection rather than being a serious danger. I'd like to hear others' thoughts.

Support

Again, I feel like there's no contest here. Death's Whip and Corpse Conductor are such powerful abilities, even compared to widespread sources of Adversary and the option of Mark the Soul... when you add in Undead Crowning and Rigor Mortis it's just crazy. Anything that wanders into your killing zone (and hey, you can summon more Belles...) is in for sad and painful times.

I'd put Nico's healing above Kirai's. Decay can heal multiple models at once (with the option to heal all damage on one target) while damaging nearby enemy models. Kirai has to bring a whole crew's worth of Comfort/Cure/Soothe Spirit to achieve similar, though she can absolutely do that. However, Kirai needs the healing a lot more than Nico does, since those Wds are her summoning resource - Nico's usually happy to just let the opponent spend their effort killing his minions, then summon them back from the Corpses.

One area where Kirai is definitely better is in crew mobility. Between Swirling Spirits and Into the Spirit World, you can really move some stuff around. How powerful this is really depends on the scenario. The TNs on these actions create a considerable drain on resources, though.

Damage?

Since I've been pretty unsatisfied with Kirai's relative performance in other areas, I've recently tried turning her into more of a ranged killer, using Sunder the Spirit to boost her Sundering damage to a respectable 3/4/5 that doesn't randomise. It's not too bad! She can still summon stuff when needed, but I haven't focused on it as an end in itself. She outclasses Nicodem here, but I can't help but feel that if you want your Resser Master to do damage you'd just take Reva instead.

Resource Management

I've always felt Kirai is starved for resources. She's got a lot of suit requirements, needs high cards for summoning, and hurts her own crew in the course of her normal activities. In contrast, Nico barely needs suits for anything (other than Crows, natch), and draws cards out the wazoo. A lot of people seem to take other models (especially Philip) just to support Kirai's card habit, which seems a bit costly.

What Am I Missing?

I think it's perhaps important to state that I don't think Kirai is in any way a weak Master. In my experience, though, she really doesn't live up to the hype that's built up around her as the scariest Resser. She's a good summoner, a good support, and a surprisingly decent killer... but Nico is a great summoner and an absolutely amazing support. Given that they share an awful lot of similarities in the way they do things, it's very surprising to me that Kirai gets this reputation and Nico doesn't.

... is it just that most people are terrified of Ikiryo?

[Stadon]

I love both Nico and Kirai.  I think they're top tier.  I do think that for a long time Nico suffered from the paucity of Corpse Marker generation tech, especially when playing against crews that didn't drop corpses.  In the beginning Mortimer was the most reliable corpse generator and he is just super expensive.  Aside from getting the summoning engine going, Mortimer is just not worth 11-13 stones.  Now that we have things like Carrion Emissary, Philip, the Dismember trigger, ect. corpses are much easier to come by and easier to position.  On the other hand, Kirai just needs a model to summon off of, and Ressers have the most efficient cost-to-Wd model in the game.  The ease of summoning for Kirai vs the annoyance of taking Mortimer definitely colored my opinions right from the start.

Now that corpse generation is more of a solved problem, what sets them apart to me is the Bubble of Death vs Force Projection distinction.  You touched on this in your breakdown, but it's a bigger deal than you make it out to be.  Nico is the best support master in the game, hands down, but you have to be close to the enemy to get utility out of that.  No one hold the center of the board like Nico, but he doesn't really have much in the way of repositioning his crew on the fly other than handing out fast and letting the model walk on its own.  Kirai is the queen of force projection.  Between Ikiryo, summoning, Swirl Spirits and Into the Spirit World she can deliver a model to the other side of the board at a moment's notice, be it a beater, a scheme runner, or a walking zone of damage.  Attaching the attack buff to the target enemy rather than to the master means she can debuff and run away.  Also Nico doesn't have any ability that changes how your opponent has to play as much as Malevolence does.  The flipside is that spirits are squishy and Kirai doesn't really buff defense at all.  

Like I said, I think they're both top tier.  Nico is great at crushing models up close, Kirai is great at board presence.  I will gladly have people load up on anti-spirit tech out of fear of Kirai, only to eat them with zombies.

[huntroll]

I have only played one match against Kirai (I played Nico there) and haven't played with her yet, but from my limited experiences of her playstyle and reading her abilities a few time I came to the same conclusion. She is good, and Ikiryo is definitely scary, but I don't think she is better than Nicodem. Nicodem's summon pool is better mostly due to Necropunks and Punk Zombies (and the occassional Student of Steel if you need to deal with Armor/Triggers) and that summon pool enables him to do any strat/scheme quite well. 

Also while Kirai is better at enhancing the mobility of a few models, Nico's Death Whip is a HUGE bonus for all the models he summons and Rigor Mortis is usually enough if you want to get a model somewhere.

And resource management is really one of Nico's strenght. Undertaker is one of the best upgrades in that regard, but he gets hilarious if you also take a big nasty Horror with Take back the Night, as almost all of your killers (except the Emissary if you take it) are going to be Horrors and/or Spirits. People also tend to overreact his reliance on corpse markers, Mortimer, Corpse Bloat and Manical Laugh is more than enough on the first turns, and then you can start recycling your own models. And while 11 SS is a bit too expensive for Mortimer, if he spends the game producing 1-2 markers/turn it's already worth it and usually he also helps your crew mobility with Fresh Meat and he can even deal decent damage with a great Ml stat if it's necessary.

Edit: And you are not alone with your opinion:

 

[DeleteAccount]

God knows I haven't played in a while... But I'd say the reason Kirai gets so much flak is purely because of malevolence, a badly thought attck can have the ikiryo in your den wrecking shit and wasting precious time, that sprt of experience stays with people making them feel more hatred towards her than nico who feels more "passive". And even if you are clever about the ikiryo it conditions how you play to such a huge degree that again it generates a sensation of hatred.

Aside from that, just echoing Stadon about the projection thing, moving stuff around so easilly is huge and wins games,nico is not as adaptive. In matches where i have been unable to set up camp with nico (suicide vulture carrying corpse is my fave) I've had a hard time setting the tempo to my terms.

Finally, wanted to defend Mortimer's honor a bit, passive chatty wins games and that ml7 has saved my ass a few times.

[Kadeton]

 

Kirai is the queen of force projection.  Between Ikiryo, summoning, Swirl Spirits and Into the Spirit World she can deliver a model to the other side of the board at a moment's notice, be it a beater, a scheme runner, or a walking zone of damage.

That's an interesting way to look at it. The mechanics of Swirling Spirits and Into the Spirit World require a model to already be in place where you want your stuff to be, and with Swirling being a swap it's never really felt like a force-projection ability to me. It's more like... rapid redeployment, I guess? Perhaps that's splitting hairs, but I think there's a distinction: that little Night Terror could be replaced by Izamu at a moment's notice, but if there are no Spirits in your immediate area you know it's reasonably safe. The ease with which Spirits can be killed makes spreading across the board seem risky.

I've generally used Swirling Spirits mainly for AP-efficiency, swapping speedy runners out of the fight and slow beaters in, so everyone uses their AP on what they're best at. This tends to make the decision on when to activate Kirai critically important, which I don't much like.

 

I'd say the reason Kirai gets so much flak is purely because of malevolence, a badly thought attck can have the ikiryo in your den wrecking shit and wasting precious time, that sprt of experience stays with people making them feel more hatred towards her than nico who feels more "passive". And even if you are clever about the ikiryo it conditions how you play to such a huge degree that again it generates a sensation of hatred.

"Passive" in the same way that a concrete wall is "passive" during a car crash. I guess it's hard to blame the wall.

I tend to enjoy the challenge of "solving" the Ikiryo puzzle ("How do I do what I want without getting my face ripped off?"), but I can see that being immensely frustrating if you can't see a way to work around it.

 

In matches where i have been unable to set up camp with nico (suicide vulture carrying corpse is my fave) I've had a hard time setting the tempo to my terms.

That's why there are Belles! Set up camp wherever you like, they'll come to you whether they want to or not. Vultures carrying Mindless Zombies is hilarious, though.

 

Finally, wanted to defend Mortimer's honor a bit, passive chatty wins games and that ml7 has saved my ass a few times.

Oh man, Chatty is so good. Mortimer overall is a really good package, I don't understand why people don't like him.

[DeleteAccount]

 

That's why there are Belles! Set up camp wherever you like, they'll come to you whether they want to or not. Vultures carrying Mindless Zombies is hilarious, though.

The same match I remembered losing momentum also had the unfortunate quality of being an all rider Leveticus list, so my corpses were getting cleansed by the neverborn rider and my belle, Chiaki and nurse could do diddlysquat to the riders because of their stubborn... I know it's not saying much since it was such a specific scenario, but it did stick with me.

[Kadeton]

Haha, cool. I've never seen the Rider list on the table but it's one of my favourite silly gimmick list ideas - nice to know that it works in at least some matchups.

[Stadon]

Rapid and sustained deployment is what is classically meant by "force projection".  As for an area with no spirits being reasonably safe, you can go from no spirits to oh god I'm being eaten by shikome in a single Kirai activation by dropping a seishin as a 0 and summoning/swirling off of that.

As for all of the Mortimer bashing, it's not that he's bad, it's that he's not 11-13ss good.  Chatty is great, but the need for corpses is independent of whether or not chatty is relevant to the scheme pool, so sometimes it just doesn't matter but you pay for it anyway to get the corpse generation.  

[Kadeton]

 

Rapid and sustained deployment is what is classically meant by "force projection".  As for an area with no spirits being reasonably safe, you can go from no spirits to oh god I'm being eaten by shikome in a single Kirai activation by dropping a seishin as a 0 and summoning/swirling off of that.

Sure, I understand the use of the term, I just don't think Kirai is particularly good at force projection by that usage. She has no particular advantage when pushing forward into neutral territory, or in maintaining her hold on that territory after such a push. What she's incredible at is moving things around within the territory she already controls, which is quite a different thing.

A Shikome can attack you from nowhere at what, ~13" away from Kirai? Meh.

Wait, do people just take Mortimer for Corpse generation? Yeah, obviously he's way overcosted for that. I mostly use him for Fresh Meat (there's some actual force projection...) and the ability to pull out his spleen and shut down all Interact schemes is a sweet bonus on top of that. I think he's a steal at 11ss.

[Wifstrand]

Out of curiosity, @Kadeton, do you run him with just Corpse Bloat or Corpse Bloat and My Favorite Shovel? I'm still a little bit of a newb, but it seems to me that with the tricks you mentioned (Fresh Meat, Spleen, Chatty) it would be fun to have My Favorite Shovel granting him that extra AP for Ca. But is it worth it?

[Kadeton]

I tend not to take the Shovel. I like him at 11ss, but he's definitely pushing it at 13. I have him Fresh Meat all the Undead upfield (on a Crooligan deployed for the purpose if necessary), then one of the Belles will drag him up to join the party.