3E shenlong advice

[Cursed25]

7 hours ago, Outplayed said:

Nope, check the wording.  It does not apply to a flip, it applies to ‘its duel total’.

 

The duel total is calculated after both players have cheated.  Page 10, step D of Core Rulebook.

you are right!  sorry! It is good to know, because I've been handicapping myself for all this time! ahah! xD

[Adran]

7 hours ago, Outplayed said:

Nope, check the wording.  It does not apply to a flip, it applies to ‘its duel total’.

 

The duel total is calculated after both players have cheated.  Page 10, step D of Core Rulebook.

Its slightly better than this. You also calculate the duel total to decide who cheats first. so the Chi +2 will also be used to determine who is losing the duel and has to cheat first.

[Clockwork_Fish]

Had my first game with Shenlong today; Turf War against Ulix.  My opponent conceded middle of turn 4 when Shenlong burned through Penelope an Ulix in a single activation using High River Stance.  My crew was Shenlong, Sensei Yu, two Students, High River Monk, two Wandering River Monks, a Low River Monk, a Tanuki, and a Samurai.  The Samurai did a great job holding up one flank, while Shenlong and Yu kind of held up the middle.  The Tanuki mostly sat between the Samurai and Shenlong and Sensei Yu, handing out focus (mostly successfully).  It's certainly a big change from 2e.  I had a ten model crew, where previously I would rarely have more than six. 

Wandering River Monks were slippery little eels and got to my opponent's deployment zone easy peasy.  The game board had some buildings that worked to the Monks' advantage, allowing them to leap around and drop scheme markers for breakthrough without interruption.  The spent all their Chi on defense and making sure Leap succeeded.  Only thing either killed was one or two piglets.

High River Monk was ... present (?) for the battle.  I can definitely maybe say that.  I found him a bit sluggish, and the terrain was not favourable to him, so he didn't get to do much.  Will have to try him some more.  Definite improvement over the OLD High River Monk though.

Their damage output is rather flat, with the exception of Shenlong himself.  Everyone's 2/3/4 or 1/3/4.  They hit very consistently though, thanks to Chi.  Hence why I took a Samurai, to add a little oomph.

Overall really enjoyed it.  😃

 

[Wyamphri]

Yeah I was not overly impressed with high river monks performance. They just die too easy as well. I'd use something like yasunori or lone swordsman

[Nikodemus]

In my limited experience, High River Monks are ok when they're souped up with Focus, Chi and Fast and you're discarding to Flurry. That's a lot of setup for an 8ss model with 2/3/4 damage track. I'm going to test them more when I get back to Shenlong, but initial thoughts is they're probably in the suboptimal club.

[Clockwork_Fish]

I was just going through some Ten Thunders cards and noticed that the High River Monk's Risky Maneuvers ability is a regular action, while the Bunraku can use it as a .  Is this maybe a typo on the HRM's card?  Seems he'd be more effective if it is.

[santaclaws01]

7 minutes ago, Clockwork_Fish said:

I was just going through some Ten Thunders cards and noticed that the High River Monk's Risky Maneuvers ability is a regular action, while the Bunraku can use it as a .  Is this maybe a typo on the HRM's card?  Seems he'd be more effective if it is.

Yes, it's a typo. The correct cards are online.

[Nikodemus]

9 minutes ago, Clockwork_Fish said:

I was just going through some Ten Thunders cards and noticed that the High River Monk's Risky Maneuvers ability is a regular action, while the Bunraku can use it as a .  Is this maybe a typo on the HRM's card?  Seems he'd be more effective if it is.

And before you ask, their missing damage track is 2/3/4 +1 burning.

[CD1248]

Something to remember for the HRM is that Risky Maneuvers triggers Brutal Sensei and gets them a Chi if they're near Sensei Yu, so they can build up a nice little pile before they run off.

I think where they really shine is when they can get a lot of work out of Aggressive Chi. Irreducible damage is rare generally speaking, and functionally it turns a mediocre damage track into an amazing one against models that were banking on reducing a point or two per hit.

[Nikodemus]

Shenlong is one of those crews where I recommend people play turn1 solitaire at least once to get a feel for building up Chi, Focus, Distracted, Fast, heals and general positioning going into t2.

[zavros]

8 minutes ago, Clockwork_Fish said:

I was just going through some Ten Thunders cards and noticed that the High River Monk's Risky Maneuvers ability is a regular action, while the Bunraku can use it as a .  Is this maybe a typo on the HRM's card?  Seems he'd be more effective if it is.

It's a typo. The cards on the dropbox have it as a bonus.

 

 

[SerZaka]

3 hours ago, Nikodemus said:

Shenlong is one of those crews where I recommend people play turn1 solitaire at least once to get a feel for building up Chi, Focus, Distracted, Fast, heals and general positioning going into t2.

Yep, you can easily wrote down the activation chart on a piece of paper xD usually you can prepare without any trouble in corner and standard deployment. For the wedge and corner depends on the opponent and where you deploy your crew

[whodares]

I was thinking of going Shenlong for my next game, regardless of schemes and opponent crew. I want to get to know him in all matchups as that can help you get out of tough spots. I was thinking of bringing a Shenlong, Sensei Yu (duh) and a High River Monk. I think I found some great setup, but I'm not sure if I'm looking at this correctly.

 

It goes like this:

1. Yu activates and uses Wind Blast on HRM + Walks up => HRM gets +1 Chi from the damage taken due to Yu's Aura
2. HRM activates and does a walk, Concentrate and Risky Maneuver => HRM gets +1 Chi from activating, +1 Chi from Risky (Yu) and Focus +1 => HRM 3 Chi 1 Focus
3. Shenlong activates and attaches High River Style and let's HRM take Risky again (with trigger pref) => HRS attach = 1 Concentrate and Risky is another Focus +1 and Chi +1

 

This gives your HRM Chi +3, Focus +2, a Concentrate action you can still decide on and a possible +1 Focus if you hit Shenlong's Trigger. Best case is +4 on either Chi or Focus and +3 on the other. You can then Spiritual Alignment to give any model (including Shenlong) up to +3 of those. Either way the HRM is also set up pretty well as he retains the +3 on the other thing as well.

 

The cards needed to pull this off aren't that special either:

• Yu needs 1 low card to minimize damage to the HRM. HRM loses the duel anyway.
• HRM doesn't need any cards as all his stuff is free.
• Shenlong needs as 6+ (tome if Trigger) for The Dragon Commands It and another 6+ for the Spiritual Alignment.

So basicly for 1 low card and 2 6+ cards you can set up 2 models for the next couple of Turns. Not bad.

 

I was then thinking of adding in a Low River Monk because he is an awesome Healing model for his cost and can top up the HRM rather easily.

 

Looks good? I'm just being dumb figuring this out now and somebody already did this ages ago?  I've glanced a bit at Shenlong before, but never really in-depth.

[SerZaka]

I usually prefer to boost up Chi on Shen rather than the Monks.

This is what I usually do:

Core: Shen , totems , Yu and a Low River

Shen , Students and Yu start 1" from one another (a square). Yu activates and use the Bonus as Concentrate discarding a card (Shouting Orders), then he hits Shen (and with the trigger you get the card used back) and lastly he concentrate (he can't move because he must stay near the Students ) . Students activate and hit once Shen and Concentrate , Bonus action for transfer a Chi from Yu to Shen . Both of them the same activation. Low river heals Shen (he should have 4-5 damage) and if you manage to get some Focus with the trigger even better. Lastly Shen activates , heals 1 from the Aura of the Low River and you are free to decide what to do . With a triple Concentrate (or even four time Concentrate with the Shouting Orders) you arrive to 9/10 Chi on Shen . I don't think is worth it to spend others models activation to hit Shen again and using another Low to heal him back . Just Concentrate normally with the others . An High River with the Bonus and double Concentrate move 3" turn and gets 4 Chi . It depends a little on the Deployment but usually spending turn 1 boosting up the Chi is a good idea , you can't score points anyway and sending the monks recklessly forward without it is a suicide.

 

[Nikodemus]

1 hour ago, whodares said:

Looks good? I'm just being dumb figuring this out now and somebody already did this ages ago?  I've glanced a bit at Shenlong before, but never really in-depth.

Looks alright, I did similar Chi+Focus buffing on my HRMs. But why not Fast? Between Shen and Yu you can have two Fast Monk minions. All it costs is 1 chi per said minion.

And yeah Shenlong is miles away the best beater in the crew so I'd rather pump him up. Although he can generate a lot more Chi so I can see why you'd set up other models and let Shen take care of buffing himself, which he can to an extent.

[whodares]

1 hour ago, SerZaka said:

I usually prefer to boost up Chi on Shen rather than the Monks.

This is what I usually do:

Core: Shen , totems , Yu and a Low River

Shen , Students and Yu start 1" from one another (a square). Yu activates and use the Bonus as Concentrate discarding a card (Shouting Orders), then he hits Shen (and with the trigger you get the card used back) and lastly he concentrate (he can't move because he must stay near the Students ) . Students activate and hit once Shen and Concentrate , Bonus action for transfer a Chi from Yu to Shen . Both of them the same activation. Low river heals Shen (he should have 4-5 damage) and if you manage to get some Focus with the trigger even better. Lastly Shen activates , heals 1 from the Aura of the Low River and you are free to decide what to do . With a triple Concentrate (or even four time Concentrate with the Shouting Orders) you arrive to 9/10 Chi on Shen . I don't think is worth it to spend others models activation to hit Shen again and using another Low to heal him back . Just Concentrate normally with the others . An High River with the Bonus and double Concentrate move 3" turn and gets 4 Chi . It depends a little on the Deployment but usually spending turn 1 boosting up the Chi is a good idea , you can't score points anyway and sending the monks recklessly forward without it is a suicide.

 

This can actually still be combined in a lesser degree with what I suggested. If you don't need the mobility, Yu can do to the HRM what you do to Shenlong here; this doesn't change anything for the HRM though, just that Yu gets an extra Concentrate Action instead of a Walk.

You basicly combo the 2 totems with Yu's Aura on Shenlong to give Shenlong 4 Chi. you can still do this and all that happens is Shenlong only took 2 damage. I've also only used 1 AP from Shenlong and his Free Action, so nothing is stopping you from Concentrating twice as well.

In my opinion, going to something like 8-9 Chi on the first turn on a single model is overkill, unless you're planning on sending him in the middle of the enemy crew.

 

If I combine both our methods here, I could get the following:

• Shenlong: 4 Chi from Students + 3 Chi stolen from HRM = 7 Chi + 2 distracted for an explosive Fermented Style Turn 2
• Sensei Yu: 1 Chi, unless you didn't move him. If not moved, he has 1 Concentrate which you can spend on whatever
• HRM: 1 Chi and 3 Focus or 0 Chi and 4 Focus

Doesn't seem like such a bad deal, considering you barely used cards for this.

 

1 hour ago, Nikodemus said:

Looks alright, I did similar Chi+Focus buffing on my HRMs. But why not Fast? Between Shen and Yu you can have two Fast Monk minions. All it costs is 1 chi per said minion.

And yeah Shenlong is miles away the best beater in the crew so I'd rather pump him up. Although he can generate a lot more Chi so I can see why you'd set up other models and let Shen take care of buffing himself, which he can to an extent.

How can I get both Shenlong and the HRM Fast at thesame time? Yu's Action is a Free Action, so you can only use it on one of them. The only way I can see this being possible would be to use 2 Peasants Wandering Students on Shenlong first and use Sensei Yu's Free on Shenlong to give him Fast. Then on Shenlong's last AP, you transfer that Fast to the HRM to max out your Fast spread.

 

If you look at the above, you can actually buff both of them up at thesame time pretty easily, which is great. Having a HRM start a Turn with 1 Chi and 3 Focus is a good Turn for him as he'll be guaranteed to get his 2 attacks off rather nicely.

 

 

The question becomes: is it worth doing this on Turn 1? If I go my Shenlong + HRM buffing strat, I'll be using Shenlong, Yu, HRM, 2 totems and a LRM. This is already a very big investment. On the other hand, I still have some pieces left as I've only used 9 (Yu) + 8 (HRM) + 4 (LRM) = 21 stones worth of hires. I know certain crews won't allow such an elaborate setup, but against the ones that do?

[Cursed25]

21 minutes ago, whodares said:

How can I get both Shenlong and the HRM Fast at thesame time? Yu's Action is a Free Action, so you can only use it on one of them. The only way I can see this being possible would be to use 2 Peasants Wandering Students on Shenlong first and use Sensei Yu's Free on Shenlong to give him Fast. Then on Shenlong's last AP, you transfer that Fast to the HRM to max out your Fast spread.

fast does nothing on masters! you can never have more than 3 actions! so don't put fast on your masters

 

edit: except if they have slow to counter it!

[Nikodemus]

28 minutes ago, whodares said:

How can I get both Shenlong and the HRM Fast at thesame time?

You can't. Yu's bonus action gives Fast to a cheaper monk model (8ss or less). So Yu Fast's one monk minion. Shenlong does his bonus on Yu to let Yu do his bonus again on another monk minion.

I think the whole buff-mania is worth doing as well as you're allowed to. I always tell my opponents after master declaration that Shenlong really likes playing t1 solitaire, so if they can disrupt that they probably should. I do try to go up the board a fair bit if I can. HRMs walk+bonus push. Shen will charge something if he can, I like Yu pushing Shen up the the board for some extra Chi and movement.

But I've played very little Shenlong and will probably keep him on hiatus for a while now. But this way seemed to do alright when I played monks.

[whodares]

14 minutes ago, Nikodemus said:

You can't. Yu's bonus action gives Fast to a cheaper monk model (8ss or less). So Yu Fast's one monk minion. Shenlong does his bonus on Yu to let Yu do his bonus again on another monk minion.

I think the whole buff-mania is worth doing as well as you're allowed to. I always tell my opponents after master declaration that Shenlong really likes playing t1 solitaire, so if they can disrupt that they probably should. I do try to go up the board a fair bit if I can. HRMs walk+bonus push. Shen will charge something if he can, I like Yu pushing Shen up the the board for some extra Chi and movement.

But I've played very little Shenlong and will probably keep him on hiatus for a while now. But this way seemed to do alright when I played monks.

Ah like that.

I don't like doing that as I'm already doing a setup round. Fast comes at the cost of 1 Chi per Action Yu takes. Instead, Yu could have gotten Chi instead, so the cost i 2 Chi per Fast you give. Turn 1 you're probably not going to do a lot with it, so it's better to give it in later Turns, granted your Monks still have Chi for that. Putting it on a WRM could be worth it early on, but even then ...

 

If you can't get Yu in range and you NEED to get something done, I can see it being worth it. Besides that, I generally rather drop a card for an extra Concentrate. Then again, I don't have much experience with Shenlong in M3E, so I'm not completely sure how Fast would buff up his crew. I feel like th Chi cost is a bit steep, considering the effort it takes to build up the Chi to begin with.

[Nikodemus]

I like to activate HRMs first and then give them fast. They got plenty of Chi & Focus to do their thing and 3ap to unleash on the enemy top of  t2 when they're 8 or so inches up the table. I find Chi is "easy enough" to accumulate that paying 1 for Fast is an easy trade to make.

I'm not very comfortable discarding for Concentrate. Maybe it's just my luck with low/medium TNs but this edition in general feels lot more draining on my hand.

Three of the four deployments allow me to fairly reliably charge or threaten a charge with Shenlong. Sensei Yu push and significant threat range boost allowed by Fermented River Style means I usually can punch something t1 with Shenlong, if I want to. Or I could use Wandering Style instead and use totems to push models, but I haven't tried that yet.

[santaclaws01]

5 hours ago, whodares said:

I was thinking of going Shenlong for my next game, regardless of schemes and opponent crew. I want to get to know him in all matchups as that can help you get out of tough spots. I was thinking of bringing a Shenlong, Sensei Yu (duh) and a High River Monk. I think I found some great setup, but I'm not sure if I'm looking at this correctly.

 

It goes like this:

1. Yu activates and uses Wind Blast on HRM + Walks up => HRM gets +1 Chi from the damage taken due to Yu's Aura
2. HRM activates and does a walk, Concentrate and Risky Maneuver => HRM gets +1 Chi from activating, +1 Chi from Risky (Yu) and Focus +1 => HRM 3 Chi 1 Focus
3. Shenlong activates and attaches High River Style and let's HRM take Risky again (with trigger pref) => HRS attach = 1 Concentrate and Risky is another Focus +1 and Chi +1

 

This gives your HRM Chi +3, Focus +2, a Concentrate action you can still decide on and a possible +1 Focus if you hit Shenlong's Trigger. Best case is +4 on either Chi or Focus and +3 on the other. You can then Spiritual Alignment to give any model (including Shenlong) up to +3 of those. Either way the HRM is also set up pretty well as he retains the +3 on the other thing as well.

 

The cards needed to pull this off aren't that special either:

• Yu needs 1 low card to minimize damage to the HRM. HRM loses the duel anyway.
• HRM doesn't need any cards as all his stuff is free.
• Shenlong needs as 6+ (tome if Trigger) for The Dragon Commands It and another 6+ for the Spiritual Alignment.

So basicly for 1 low card and 2 6+ cards you can set up 2 models for the next couple of Turns. Not bad.

 

I was then thinking of adding in a Low River Monk because he is an awesome Healing model for his cost and can top up the HRM rather easily.

 

Looks good? I'm just being dumb figuring this out now and somebody already did this ages ago?  I've glanced a bit at Shenlong before, but never really in-depth.

Start with Low River Style to heal the HRM then spend a chi to get the tome to trigger the style switching.

[Mycellanious]

6 hours ago, whodares said:

I was thinking of going Shenlong for my next game, regardless of schemes and opponent crew. I want to get to know him in all matchups as that can help you get out of tough spots. I was thinking of bringing a Shenlong, Sensei Yu (duh) and a High River Monk. I think I found some great setup, but I'm not sure if I'm looking at this correctly.

 

It goes like this:

1. Yu activates and uses Wind Blast on HRM + Walks up => HRM gets +1 Chi from the damage taken due to Yu's Aura
2. HRM activates and does a walk, Concentrate and Risky Maneuver => HRM gets +1 Chi from activating, +1 Chi from Risky (Yu) and Focus +1 => HRM 3 Chi 1 Focus
3. Shenlong activates and attaches High River Style and let's HRM take Risky again (with trigger pref) => HRS attach = 1 Concentrate and Risky is another Focus +1 and Chi +1

 

This gives your HRM Chi +3, Focus +2, a Concentrate action you can still decide on and a possible +1 Focus if you hit Shenlong's Trigger. Best case is +4 on either Chi or Focus and +3 on the other. You can then Spiritual Alignment to give any model (including Shenlong) up to +3 of those. Either way the HRM is also set up pretty well as he retains the +3 on the other thing as well.

 

The cards needed to pull this off aren't that special either:

• Yu needs 1 low card to minimize damage to the HRM. HRM loses the duel anyway.
• HRM doesn't need any cards as all his stuff is free.
• Shenlong needs as 6+ (tome if Trigger) for The Dragon Commands It and another 6+ for the Spiritual Alignment.

So basicly for 1 low card and 2 6+ cards you can set up 2 models for the next couple of Turns. Not bad.

 

I was then thinking of adding in a Low River Monk because he is an awesome Healing model for his cost and can top up the HRM rather easily.

 

Looks good? I'm just being dumb figuring this out now and somebody already did this ages ago?  I've glanced a bit at Shenlong before, but never really in-depth.

When monks concentrate they dont get chi AND focused, they get either chi OR focused (unless that changed after the beta, cuz I only have their beta cards)

[Mycellanious]

5 hours ago, SerZaka said:

I usually prefer to boost up Chi on Shen rather than the Monks.

This is what I usually do:

Core: Shen , totems , Yu and a Low River

Shen , Students and Yu start 1" from one another (a square). Yu activates and use the Bonus as Concentrate discarding a card (Shouting Orders), then he hits Shen (and with the trigger you get the card used back) and lastly he concentrate (he can't move because he must stay near the Students ) . Students activate and hit once Shen and Concentrate , Bonus action for transfer a Chi from Yu to Shen . Both of them the same activation. Low river heals Shen (he should have 4-5 damage) and if you manage to get some Focus with the trigger even better. Lastly Shen activates , heals 1 from the Aura of the Low River and you are free to decide what to do . With a triple Concentrate (or even four time Concentrate with the Shouting Orders) you arrive to 9/10 Chi on Shen . I don't think is worth it to spend others models activation to hit Shen again and using another Low to heal him back . Just Concentrate normally with the others . An High River with the Bonus and double Concentrate move 3" turn and gets 4 Chi . It depends a little on the Deployment but usually spending turn 1 boosting up the Chi is a good idea , you can't score points anyway and sending the monks recklessly forward without it is a suicide.

 

Even with Shouting Orders, or anythkng that lets you take Concentrate as a bonus action, you still cannot Concentrate more than once in an Activation. So Sensei Yu cannot both discard to Concentrate as a bonus and Concentrate as a regular action, one or the other. 

[santaclaws01]

4 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

When monks concentrate they dont get chi AND focused, they get either chi OR focused (unless that changed after the beta, cuz I only have their beta cards)

He's not gaining both.

Also, if Shenlong is the leader monks get to ignore the once per turn restriction.

[SerZaka]

4 hours ago, whodares said:

In my opinion, going to something like 8-9 Chi on the first turn on a single model is overkill, unless you're planning on sending him in the middle of the enemy crew.

That's what I use Shen for