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Yan Lo Toe To Toe


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To help budding and struggling Yan Lo players (i.e. me, total self interest) I thought we could have a bit of an ancestral conflux and pool some experience.

There is a pinned thread on yan lo, a pull my finger page, and schemes & stones podcast which cover general lo-ing. These are all great, though ageing a bit.

The focus of this topic on specific master match ups for Yan - ambitious, but dream big! 

The diversity of crew builds, scheme pools, terrain layout in Malifaux is staggering and a core strength of its wonderfully rich and balanced mechanics. However, there are predictable themes and patterns.

As much as any master can be, Yan Lo is about identifying and messing with his opponents patterns, save a brother/sister some time and unpick the ones you have noticed. Most enemy masters have a couple of specific ways they ideally want to play, and have common in-theme elements to their crews that can be expected in certain schemes pools (simplify this to kill-heavy, interact-heavy, balanced), or there are powerful 'net-list' combos. Pooling ideas on how to disrupt these with Yan Lo is the name of the game here. 

The most useful information are the tasks Yan's crew needs to perform to shut down the enemy's game (e.g. remove the slop hauler to gimp the gremlin engine), and positioning tactics required to do it. Go ahead and list tailor, the benefit of this is in highlighting what tools Yan Lo wants against master X, rather than the models themselves, and understanding what options you do/don't have when you find yourself toe to toe with them.

I will post links to my battle reports here if I think they demonstrate something relevantly

Some ideas to counter these common headaches would be nice:
Vik/Yasanori/Langston/Nekima missile
Spider/Gremlin/Rat/dog spam 
Lilith/Zipp/rotten belle kidnap
Sonnia/Levi/Wong/Rasputina/Reva/Lynch etc. range Ca blitz  

Cheers

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If you're struggling against summoning spam lists, your best chance is to try rip one key part out of it as fast as possible with Belle Lures of your own then Lightning Dancing it, pulling it half way across the board. For that matter, any crew that is bubble-based or relies on positional based synergy is fair game. If you focus his efforts on this he can be extremely good at it, simply because he can get his Lightning Dance to a very high Ca value, and doesn't need a suit for it, unlike Lilith for example. 

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Had my first game against Hamelin, report will go up on the channel in a couple of weeks with the details, but I thought I’d post some general thoughts now. The strat I played was extraction, and table terrain was open centre. Other set ups (I’m thinking interference particularly) may require a different approach:

Hamelin excels at interact and marker drop schemes and their denial. Avoid these, gear for killing.

Hamelin’s thematic models struggle early on against beefy armoured beatsticks – bringing them back (un-blighted) with reliquary can be brutal. Summoning with Toshiro could be good, but there won’t be as many corpse markers as you’d think (rats+ don’t drop ‘em).

Blighted is something to respect, but not fear. Most of Yan’s crew won’t care too much (armour, healing, re-summon), but Yan himself is vulnerable. Chiaki is fab if you can fit her in (let’s face it, unless you are a cheaty-peaker, you didn’t take Johan), otherwise be prepared for a bit of dance-your-arse-out-of-there.

Hamelin’s thematic models don’t appreciate area damage. The emissary’s blasts are perfect for killing rats (and thus blocking rat king summons) and especially stolen, make sure to dance Nix first though. Hunpo assault opportunities with brutal khakkhara are worth keeping an eye open for. With all the cheap models around there is likely to be a bountiful enough chi harvest to afford this.

Yan Lo’s lighting dance hard counters Hamelin’s (and Outcast’s in general) anti-charge tech. I suspect Hamelin doesn’t often have more than 2 heavy beatsticks max, likely just 1, these are his fists, dance them out early (great if you can bait them to commit first) and chop them off. This will take a lot of pressure off until late game when blighted starts to be threatening. Other key dance targets are obedient wretches and scheme runners/significant models that look like they might want to flank you and stay away. Oh, and Hamelin if you can get him, but he tends to hang back.

Hamelin’s key threats to Yan are obey and lure. A belle could provide some counter-lure, but Hamelin will almost always be able to wait her out if he wants to. Fortunately, most of the crew is kind of slow, use terrain and other models bases to hamper forced movement as much as possible, (my opponent did this quite effectively against me, will try to demonstrate in the video). Make sure you have a lot of bodies in areas you need to control to score. Try not to stand your models in engagement range of your own big hitters. This is not easy for Yan to achieve, but is strongest in the mid-game when Hamlin starts to get into range to spam them and when out-activation starts to matter less, try to make him pay for that proximity.  

Hamelin's rat engine will out-activate Yan badly in turns 1-2. This doesn't matter. Once you get stuck in quality of activation gains a lot of ground on quantity if your aim is to kill. The trick is getting there intact.

Advance as a group toward the mid-table, use terrain and emissary’s shards to block or at least control shooting/luring/charging lanes, use chunky big base models to wall off LOS and engagement access to your squishy support models (e.g. Yan-ikins). Turn 1 ratjoy could spoil Yan Lo’s evening (especially if he didn’t get spirit ascendant), but most crew members can soak a round, use that base wall! Soak him, kill him, re-summon.

Most strats and schemes score near the centreline, set up shop here, if you took doable schemes you probably don’t need to go further. Lightning dance the lynchpin models in and kill them, kill rats for chi and prevent 4 from getting together – you won’t stop a rat king but you can force the enemy to sacrifice more models/AP to do it, which drains their other capabilities. In later turns, Yan Lo can contribute to damage output, use fury of yomi to get his dudes to kill more/scheme/move back into position, or go off scheming himself.

I guess my philosophy here is be aggressive, break the rat’s back first and scheme later (or preferably BY breaking rats).

If you play Hamelin or have faced him, I’d be interested in your thoughts.    

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I am new to Yan Lo. I have been wondering about Hayreddin, his + Damage aura would potentially help Yan Lo get severes, but he cant be too close or you risk randomization. Hayreddin's squishy nature can be augmented by Yan Lo's armor buff. Has anyone else used these models together?

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13 minutes ago, Nukemouse said:

I am new to Yan Lo. I have been wondering about Hayreddin, his + Damage aura would potentially help Yan Lo get severes, but he cant be too close or you risk randomization. Hayreddin's squishy nature can be augmented by Yan Lo's armor buff. Has anyone else used these models together?

He may work well, but I'm immediately drawn to a different idea than getting yan lo severes. If you know your Lightning Dance target, and you know where you're going to put it, say perhaps right next to Izamu, you can set up Heyreddin just far enough away from izamu so that he's safe from the aura, but your target hits the landing zone in serious trouble and probably dead on your next activation. 

Heyreddin is a difficult model to use well unless you are very strong on positional play, and that is something you should be anyway, to get anywhere near the most out of Yan Lo. 

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Quote

Has anyone else used these models together?

I used hayreddin to help reduce the resources needed to 'kill' the shield bearer in my 1st turn rogue necro crew (Report #68). He then more-or-less did his own thing guarding a flank for a bit then died.

He provides a bit of speedy damage that my Yan Lo tends to lack, and is a niche not many in faction compete with him for, but I think Yan has safer options for models to put in the thick of things. Reserrs don't have many spiking damage tracks, so + is nice, but not something to build around. McTavish might be worth teaming him up with though.

DF7 6WDs means hayrredin is either not getting hit (no bb) or taking 2 hits and dying (yay bled on 4 models and got 4 vitality... boo died instantly [edit: error, opt]). +2 armour could help, but that set up is tricky enough as it is without banking on something so fragile.

My opinion is he is okay. Love the model, so he will keep making appearances regardless.   

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I have also wondered about including Hayreddin with Yan Lo. They both have a habit of wanting nearby things to get hurt/killed to gather their unique resource.

One thing to consider is that even though Yan does kind of want to hit Severe with Spirit Barrage for his Chi trigger, he can gather Chi much easier by just killing a summoned Seishin (Datsue Ba/Goryo) on a weak flip, or finishing off a weakened enemy. This way he doesn't cost you a Severe card. 

A lot of Yan Lo's core ancestor models have uninspiring damage tracks (lots of 1/2/3, 2/3/4, 3/3/4/, 3/4/5 tracks), so the difference between Weak, Moderate or Severe isn't huge. I think the best part of Hayreddin's :+fate Aura is partially wasted here.

However, a humble Belle, going from Weak to Moderate as result of the :+fate, essentially triples her damage output, while RN's 3/5/6 which becomes even more vicious when it gets an extra flip. With all of these models getting out of activation AP from Smell Fear/Pounce, Hayreddin lurking nearby while Yan Lightning Dances someone between a pack of Belles and RN could be a very interesting way of ripping someone apart. 

I would be interested in hearing more about Hayreddin, with any master for that matter, as I too adore his model and want to hire him more often. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hayreddin has proven too squishy for me to make good use of him.  Aura seems to be a trap, as getting him positioned so something else can take advantage of it means he is often in a position to get stomped by the enemy. However, he may work better as a solo scheme runner/scheme hunter. 

I always want to try and give things Armour, but can never find the extra Chi to do it on the turn that would matter (or remember to activate Yan Lo early). 

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