State of Ten Thunders 3rd: prerelease discussion

[DeleteAccount]

Hello fellow Thunders, so I was very active in the closed beta, then passive yet on top of things during the open one and since it ended I've been just focusing on The Other Side. So being a few weeks from the official release (changes can happen from final document to release, but should be minor at most) I was wondering how the faction as a whole feels for those that have been using the last version documents for a while now. What is good (or too good), what sucks, what themes/masters seem the best/worst and most/least fun. Any takers to write something up?

My off the ball impression is:

• Yan Lo is good and his theme choices are fantastic and plentiful, though Chiaki seems like a must to get most use out of it and I'm still iffy on the Bone Ascendant in a Ten Thunders crew.
• Asami is very good but her Oni by themselves don't really impress me much, Bettari not having a bonus action is something I noticed recentle that baffles me.
• McCabe is good and his options solid, but also has the perk of playing nice with out of theme minions
• Shenlong looks like a beast, the monks themselves on the other hand seem absurdly frail
• Misaki looks potent/gimmicky and her theme choices all seem very good, happy that Ototo is finally scary.
• Versatile models are all over the place, Samurai are pure win, Tanuki are pretty much an autoinclude in any crew due to bringing some of the most desirable support abilities any crew would want in a cheap package, Terracota are crap, 10T bros are very specific on what they bring to the table and so on.

Don't really care that much about the rest of the faction masters, but discussion on Mei, Youko and Jakob is of course more than welcome.

Also, spicy Hot Takes are also welcome.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Hot Take opinion I mostly kept to myself due to not having a lot of experience against him, and now have a small basis for thinking is Justified because of results at Muse on Con. Jakob is busted. Tanuki are worse for the game in this edition than belles were in 2e. 

[katadder]

6 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Hot Take opinion I mostly kept to myself due to not having a lot of experience against him, and now have a small basis for thinking is Justified because of results at Muse on Con. Jakob is busted. Tanuki are worse for the game in this edition than belles were in 2e. 

Jacob is not justified by muse on con results, top players and some rules played wrong by what I heard anyway. hes ok but there are ways and means.

Asamis Oni are lethal with easy access to plus flips for attack and damage. 

mccabe puts out far too many simple duels per turn (didnt need built in rear up trigger).

yan lo, I havent figured how to beat yet.

in general I feel TT are going to be hit biggest by the nerf bat when we get to an errata as they were not tested enough and it shows

[Fetid Strumpet]

I’m sorry, part of what makes a top player is identifying what master is strong and playing such. 

I agree TT are going to be one of the factions hit hard by the nerf bat come possible errata time.

[whodares]

I'm amazed with Jakob being considered busted. Is it the "Succumb to Darkness" that's causing it? Haven't played him since Closed Beta and only up to the Kitty Dumont nerf.

 

Asami I can understand, but I still feel like Kirai is superior to her due to: 1) not having the downsides of managing Flicker and 2) Vengeance allowing you to passively damage models, no matter the range. I've always felt Kirai had more board control due to Vengeance and only with Asami did I stand a chance.

 

Yan Lo on Turn 3+ ... hmm, I like where this guy is going. I like his power-up mechanic and I want to thank Wyrd for allowing him to be a master from Turn 2 and not Turn 3. Most tournament games I play only last until Turn 3, which is why he was so bad in M2E.

 

I gave up on Shenlong as he kept going OP= > UP => somewhat balanced => repeat cycle for nearly the entire time. What's his status right now?

 

The rest I will refrain from as I haven't played them enough, but I mainly heard from people in my group Mei Feng was possibly the strongest Thunders Master. This was in Februari though.

[retnab]

Mei Feng is a radiant diamond and you all better freaking appreciate her!  Sparks is a huge gamble and the pig sucks though, IMO.  I've already got a write-up on her mostly done, but I'm waiting until release to confirm nothing's changed.  It is from an Arcanist's perspective but that only really affects the Versatile and OOK hires section so w/e.

3 hours ago, whodares said:

Asami I can understand, but I still feel like Kirai is superior to her due to: 1) not having the downsides of managing Flicker and 2) Vengeance allowing you to passively damage models, no matter the range. I've always felt Kirai had more board control due to Vengeance and only with Asami did I stand a chance.

Yeah... I was pushing early on for toning down Vengeance (making it a 0/1/2, making it an aura just on the big names that gives the effect to nearby friendlies, etc) and I'm surprised it went the whole way through with no changes.  Kirai's big gimmick of "the more I summon, the more hurt I am" is kind of undone by the sheer amount of healing in the crew.  RE: Asami, she seems like she has a solid kit and crew but I never got to play against her so *shrug*

[DeleteAccount]

3 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Hot Take opinion I mostly kept to myself due to not having a lot of experience against him, and now have a small basis for thinking is Justified because of results at Muse on Con. Jakob is busted. Tanuki are worse for the game in this edition than belles were in 2e. 

Gonna disagree on the Tanuki, it's probably too good, but doesn't have the effect stat 8 18" lures had, simply because he's a purely defensive tool for set up.

A couple of Lures could leave a model completely screwed and stranded for commiting the sin of moving forward and not being out if LOS or in terrain to reduce the range. That it tended to be on a cheap package and was at +2-+3 against most models added to the mysery factor on the opponent which is the real reason the Tanuki will never be as hated.

Worse Tanuki is doing is healing a model, removing a bad condition and setting up a model with focused +2 which is amazing value, don't get me wrong, but it's still gonna cost you a couple of 7s so not garuanteed either.

Now hope this doesn't become a thread on Tanuki being op.

As for Jakob, haven't paid attention to him, what's the deal with him that makes him so scary? In my local meta it's Dreamer who is getting all the hate.

[DeleteAccount]

4 hours ago, katadder said:

Jacob is not justified by muse on con results, top players and some rules played wrong by what I heard anyway. hes ok but there are ways and means.

Asamis Oni are lethal with easy access to plus flips for attack and damage. 

mccabe puts out far too many simple duels per turn (didnt need built in rear up trigger).

yan lo, I havent figured how to beat yet.

in general I feel TT are going to be hit biggest by the nerf bat when we get to an errata as they were not tested enough and it shows

You are right about the +flips on aoni, though the Jorogumo is the only one bringing the heat with it it feels. Obsidian seem pretty crummy now that their ranged attack has a pistol, Yokai seem very busy but don't really think they do that much, Tengu are decent self damaging objetive grabbers and Bettari just seems bad without a bonus action. I have heard mean takes about Katashiro though and haven't paid attention to Akanane or Ama No Zako enough, so for all I know, that's where the power is.

As for McCabe, surprised he kept all of his simple duels, seemee like too much last time I read him

[Fetid Strumpet]

Gonna have to disagree about Tanuki, and that’s because it has to do with the fundamental architecture of the game. Focus, now that it last across turns (one of the bigger mistakes of 3e I feel) is one of the most important elements of 3e. There is a great deal more pressure on your hand, due to new takes on mechanics like Terror, and how many abilities now across the board require you to discard cards to make them work. You now have less ability to spend a high card and cheat dmg, and with dmg, in general, going down across the board, spike dmg becomes more important. So as positioning was super important last edition, and the mechanics of lure were very powerful, so the mechanics of this edition make condition removal, as well as the ability to give out Focus to your important models so they don’t have to spend their actual Actions doing it is going to be as or move powerful than lures ever were. Combined with Ranged attacks being orders of magnitude better than they ever were. Now you can build actually effective gun lines, and being able to give focus to such models without spending those particular Actions I think with a high degree of certainty is going to be one of the most complained about aspects of M3E. You asked for Hot takes, and that is mine. Focus is the Belles lure of this edition.

Jakob is busted for a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that in this edition, deck manipulation is one of the more powerful things in the game. Hand sizes and draw have been reduced, and the aforementioned pressure on the hand has been increased.  Being able to Manipulate the deck and know what is coming up not only helps you stack the deck for actions you want to go off, but just knowing when bad cards are coming up can allow you to mitigate them by taking actions you don’t care about to burn them away, or just rethink your plans and mitigate committing something only to see it fail. This can be evidenced by how powerful the Whisper is in Ressers, which is a different take on the same concept. Coupled with models that seem silly good and synergistic in cost comparison to similar roles. Compare a Beckoner to a Rotten Belle, or Mr. Graves to Sybelle, and the costing structure is wildly out of joint somewhere.

100% would be against any changes at this point to tone power down, as we need more data, but I’ve felt this way about Jakob, pretty much since his rules were unveiled, but had no data to back up opinions. There is a small set now which partially validates my opinion which is why I’m sharing that take, and am keeping silent on, say Asami.

[yames]

So i was at muse con and played lynch and did fairly well with him. i will say he is strong but i think part of it is people not knowing the tricks against him yet and what tricks he can do. My two main opponents have found how to hurt his crew pretty consistently. so ill put some thoughts on how to face him in case anyone is having issues against him.

Anything that makes him discards is very strong. if you can lower the lynch players hand rig the deck looses value. in my experience i use rig the deck to filter the deck which is super powerful i will not disagree. early on i use it to move good cards from my hand onto the top and trade lower cards into my hand which then you use various zero actions you don't care about to ditch them later while moving high cards back into your hand. 

the other thing against lynch i find is hit what every you really want to hit early in the round. don't let them build a hand up to deny it later on. this does 2 things either lynch has to burn cards from his hand to prevent it early on which reduces the effectiveness of rig the deck later in the turn or they just don't have the cards to stop you either way it seems to work out against him more times then not.

Never leave huggy half dead. if you cant kill huggy outright don't bother he will heal it back and its wasted AP. that said anything that prevents healing is great against him and lynchs crew in general.

kill tannen. i can not stress this enuf he needs to die ASAP if left alone he will be a massive drain on your resources. Also ruthless is your friend not only does it bypass Tannen defensive tech it is good against huggy which is also guaranteed to be in the crew. illuminated also have terrifying and while 10 doesn't seem like much its still a resource drain and if your in the crew auras it becomes an even bigger drain. something about flipping a low card being forced to cheat which cost 2 cards, gives you a brilliance and pings you for some damage seems rough.

the crew has quite a few auras that are ranged 6.  ranged models bypass these (if your an outcast bring Hans he checks like every box.)

 

Now that aside i love lynch he is a great master that once you get use to can do great things. rig the deck is super powerful if your left alone to utilize it. It also takes knowledge of what you want to do and what you think your opponent is going to do. Kitty and gwen are great for a lot of scheme pools and graves is a solid beater. illuminated while able to hit hard are surprisingly fragile i find. Since focus is used a lot 7 wounds gets chewed threw pretty quickly and if they hit you after you activate your unable to heal it back up which is what your opponent should be aiming to do every time.

one of the most valuable cards to keep in your hand is low tomes cards. you can use these to shoot your own models in melee since your at a negative flip to get the trigger like lynches: the looming dark and gwens: draw out the secrets. ever better if you can make the other card flipped just slightly higher to get it out of the way as well. relenting gives you double negative on damage and both are min damage 2 so huggy and kitty will only take 1 and depleted have hard to kill.

 

I haven't played enough games with the other masters to really say where they stand. but overall the faction looks solid. one advantage i think we have is a lot of the crews play vastly different so its not o its ten thunders i need to bring x tech. 

[SerZaka]

15 hours ago, whodares said:

The rest I will refrain from as I haven't played them enough, but I mainly heard from people in my group Mei Feng was possibly the strongest Thunders Master. This was in Februari though.

Probably during the Hazardous Terrain Change . She could do a lot of ping damage while keeping moving with the Vent Steam On . Not anymore.

Asami and Lynch have some obvious weaknesses . If you manage to Kill Asami then the whole crew crumble. You can't use the Flicker recklessly anymore, no more summons and the ones in play will die in the same turn usually . It is a pure Glass Cannon crew, you can open like a can everything but you can't take a punch. She is very funny to play with. About Lynch I only played against him but without Huggy and Tannen on the board the crew is really going to struggle , if they die turn 2 for some bad mistakes the game is over.

Misaki is simply the funniest crew of the TT to play with . Awesome mechanic and it is pretty well rounded . Very fast and mobile but they don't hit like a truck and with the exception of Ototo every hit on your crew will hurt a lot. 

Mei Feng is funny to play too. Kang can really load up a lot of focus on the other models but they really need that. I never used Sparks but the upgrade now seems really good , every time your model is hit you can blast down your enemies (like a sort of Vengeance) punishing them for their Severe Damage Flips and he is they only in-keyword models who brings healings. The auto-disengage Walk action through the Scraps is useful as hell . A weak point of the crew in my opinion is that they need Walking Forge Models who are honestly not that good (Gamin, Golem and the Pork ) but without them the crew tag-ability simply doesn't work . I never tried without them but if the crew works better with some Versatiles and without using the Rail Walk then there is something wrong.

Yan Lo is strange . I used to like him a lot before the trigger on Chiaki came out. Now it is a brainless master. You simply Sunder the Soul of Izamu turn one on a Gokudo and you rush him for a turn one charge (with the 10k pushes ). The enemy can't ignore him and if he dies you simply replace it and you summoned a new Gokudo for schemes where you need him. And then there is the glitch on the master ability. On turn one you can simply draw 6 cards with YanLo for refreshing your whole hand (he can't really do anything on turn one anyway).  I won the last games against him simply ignoring his whole crew and scheming . If you don't have a good way to burst down the Gokudos is like punching a rubber wall , but if you lose to much time looking for them you are going to lose anyway . Bursting down YanLo is the best option but it is far from easy . 

 

ShenLong's crew hits like a truck and it is fast/mobile enough to leave the fight when they want for scoring some points. The Chi is the key of everything, without it the crew sucks. This crew is almost immune to focused attacks , spend 2 AP for a single attack in later turns is a waste against them . They will use the Chi and Dodge . The trick is spamming duels and make them waste all their resources . Every duel lost will hurt the monks so much (no defenses ) . The master should be treated like the Viks or Misaki in the 2E. He will kill something every turn , accept it xD but he is no god, if he charges alone he will die very quickly .

These are my thoughts. I never tried Youko at McCabe nor Out of Keyword lists and I limit the number of Versatiles a lot (I never used the Tanuki, I don't need it and I still win a lot, far from Auto include). I think that a Last Blossom/Qi and Gong can work ( burning down the hand and then spamming some Executes with Misaki)

 

 

 

[DeleteAccount]

9 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Gonna have to disagree about Tanuki, and that’s because it has to do with the fundamental architecture of the game. Focus, now that it last across turns (one of the bigger mistakes of 3e I feel) is one of the most important elements of 3e. There is a great deal more pressure on your hand, due to new takes on mechanics like Terror, and how many abilities now across the board require you to discard cards to make them work. You now have less ability to spend a high card and cheat dmg, and with dmg, in general, going down across the board, spike dmg becomes more important. So as positioning was super important last edition, and the mechanics of lure were very powerful, so the mechanics of this edition make condition removal, as well as the ability to give out Focus to your important models so they don’t have to spend their actual Actions doing it is going to be as or move powerful than lures ever were. Combined with Ranged attacks being orders of magnitude better than they ever were. Now you can build actually effective gun lines, and being able to give focus to such models without spending those particular Actions I think with a high degree of certainty is going to be one of the most complained about aspects of M3E. You asked for Hot takes, and that is mine. Focus is the Belles lure of this edition.

Jakob is busted for a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that in this edition, deck manipulation is one of the more powerful things in the game. Hand sizes and draw have been reduced, and the aforementioned pressure on the hand has been increased.  Being able to Manipulate the deck and know what is coming up not only helps you stack the deck for actions you want to go off, but just knowing when bad cards are coming up can allow you to mitigate them by taking actions you don’t care about to burn them away, or just rethink your plans and mitigate committing something only to see it fail. This can be evidenced by how powerful the Whisper is in Ressers, which is a different take on the same concept. Coupled with models that seem silly good and synergistic in cost comparison to similar roles. Compare a Beckoner to a Rotten Belle, or Mr. Graves to Sybelle, and the costing structure is wildly out of joint somewhere.

100% would be against any changes at this point to tone power down, as we need more data, but I’ve felt this way about Jakob, pretty much since his rules were unveiled, but had no data to back up opinions. There is a small set now which partially validates my opinion which is why I’m sharing that take, and am keeping silent on, say Asami.

Will have to agree on Focus probably being the elephant in the room once the dust settles, not so much because of it lasting between turns, but because it's pretty much the only buff a model can give another due to how conditions were built into the game. Focus I don't think is a problem when it comes from the Concentrate action, hell, it's pretty much a necessity since it's the only way to sort of go over certain defensive rules if you lack the obligatory counter, but when everything and it's mother gives out Focus and not just 1 action for a focus, but a Focus and some other perk, or damage and Focused and so on, it gets dicey.

I proposed that Focused got divided into 2 separate conditions, one that gave + to duel and another + to damage, so that most of the buffs in the game changed to giving the Condition that gave + to duel and leave a few potent buffs to give out the + to damage or even both and keep Concentrate as giving one of each to keep current behaviour (or at least let you choose which you gained), but it was met with quite a bit of distaste. I'm still convinced this was a very bad decision to take since there are 3 beneficial conditions (Fast, Focused, Shielded), a pseudo buff in Adversary and everything else is a penalty. So you can calibrate what you give out when you debuff with an attack and use one of the multiple conditions to sort of reach a sweet spot. But if you want to give an offensive buff, it's Focus or bust (or fast, but that is much more potent anyway). But well, not worth crying about spilled milk.

Going back to the Tanuki, though it's table power will be huge, it simply won't have the same psychological effect that a Belle in second had, simply because it doesn't interact with the enemy and it doesn't get directly associated as the "agent that caused my demise" like a lure is. You don't think "damn that Tanuki giving X focus made it kick my ass into oblivion!" as much as "that bloody lure left mi model stranded to get it's face kicked in!". Same reason why pretty much any form of control generates a ton of grief even though in objective terms, it's not as powerful as more straightforward effects. I played against Pandora in one of her iterations where pretty much everything was a push, in the grand scheme of things, the only reason it hurt so much was because there was Hazardous terrain on the table, but being honest, it was incredibly annoying, but not that effective from a practical standpoint, but I still have a distaste at the prospect of playaing against Pandora again from that match.

But yes, I will safely say that I will very likely have a Tanuki in every single one of my crews, though not only because of the focused (which is great) as much as it covers a ton of support roles in a single package.

[DeleteAccount]

11 minutes ago, SerZaka said:

Yan Lo is strange . I used to like him a lot before the trigger on Chiaki came out. Now it is a brainless master. You simply Sunder the Soul of Izamu turn one on a Gokudo and you rush him for a turn one charge (with the 10k pushes ). The enemy can't ignore him and if he dies you simply replace it and you summoned a new Gokudo for schemes where you need him. And then there is the glitch on the master ability. On turn one you can simply draw 6 cards with YanLo for refreshing your whole hand (he can't really do anything on turn one anyway).  I won the last games against him simply ignoring his whole crew and scheming . If you don't have a good way to burst down the Gokudos is like punching a rubber wall , but if you lose to much time looking for them you are going to lose anyway . Bursting down YanLo is the best option but it is far from easy . 

What do you mean with the Master Ability? How are you drawing 6 cards with Yan Lo? Are you targetting a Gokudo with a Split the Soul upgrade attached when the ancestor is still alive and that technically lets you draw 2 cards all the time? If so, that's a gigantic screw up which I hope got caught before print, and if not, hope it gets Errated day 1.

[whodares]

16 minutes ago, SerZaka said:

Yan Lo is strange . I used to like him a lot before the trigger on Chiaki came out. Now it is a brainless master. You simply Sunder the Soul of Izamu turn one on a Gokudo and you rush him for a turn one charge (with the 10k pushes ). The enemy can't ignore him and if he dies you simply replace it and you summoned a new Gokudo for schemes where you need him. And then there is the glitch on the master ability. On turn one you can simply draw 6 cards with YanLo for refreshing your whole hand (he can't really do anything on turn one anyway).  I won the last games against him simply ignoring his whole crew and scheming . If you don't have a good way to burst down the Gokudos is like punching a rubber wall , but if you lose to much time looking for them you are going to lose anyway . Bursting down YanLo is the best option but it is far from easy . 

Mind explaining the card trick with Yan Lo drawing 6 cards for the hand refresh? A quick glance at both him and his upgrades don't seem to suggest how he could redraw that many cards in a single Turn. I can understand 3 if you hit the Trigger on his attack 3 times, but doing that on Turn 1 might be a bit challenging.

[bedjy]

I have enjoyed the Upgrade of Manos on a Gokudo, it becomes an almost unkillable model (getting 3 hard to kill each turn, thx to demise Eternal !). Also Manos will run everywhere safely.
As for "abusing" Yan Lo's Action, I have (and will) always play it as it should be and not how it's written. Even in a tournament, I would have some difficulties explaining to my opponent I'm clearly abusing the rules !

[bedjy]

13 minutes ago, whodares said:

Mind explaining the card trick with Yan Lo drawing 6 cards for the hand refresh? A quick glance at both him and his upgrades don't seem to suggest how he could redraw that many cards in a single Turn. I can understand 3 if you hit the Trigger on his attack 3 times, but doing that on Turn 1 might be a bit challenging.

Rebuild Corpus 10" - - -
Target friendly non-Ancestor model and choose one of its Attached Reliquary Upgrades. Replace the target with the model named in the title of the the chosen Upgrade, then the new model Heals 5. Draw two cards.

In fact, to resolve the action, after checking the costs, you just read it. First replace, then heal. Then draw 2. You can't replace (because the model is already on the table), so you can't heal. Then draw 2 (nothing prevents you from resolving that last part).

But it's clearly not the intent of the Action.

[whodares]

7 minutes ago, bedjy said:

Rebuild Corpus 10" - - -
Target friendly non-Ancestor model and choose one of its Attached Reliquary Upgrades. Replace the target with the model named in the title of the the chosen Upgrade, then the new model Heals 5. Draw two cards.

In fact, to resolve the action, you just read it. First replace, then heal. Then draw 2. You can't replace (because the model is already on the table), so you can't heal. Then draw 2 (nothing prevents you from resolving that last part).

But it's clearly not the intent of the Action.

Thanks for the nice explanation. You are absolutely correct that nothing currently prevents you from drawing those 2 cards. Just like you, I would also not abuse it as it is very obviously not meant to work that way.

Then again, I'm sure most casual players would already overlook the fact that this is possible and our tournaments are, for the most part, rather casual. I'm also fairly certain our Henchman would rule against it when people would use it, as it's obviously an oversight from before the Chiaki change.

Here's to hoping they fixed it in the final release

[DeleteAccount]

I do hope it's clarified in Errata/FAQ, my environment is more of the no mercy type so I would expect it to be used as such, and hell, I would do so myself against specific opponents.

Leaving that aside, how has the Yan Lo experience been? Is his early game ignoring the OP Rebuild Corpus thing much of an issue or have you guys gotten solid use of his turn 1 and 2? My personal thought is that it isn't that big of a deal though I do miss when Bone gave you a strong turn 2 with the Ashigaru summon, but spreading oout Shielded and pushing with Transcendence seems solid enough for turn 1 for me, with turn 2 already doing some agresive positioning with Treacherous Paths and either some scheeming or a Darkest Magics potshot.

[Nikodemus]

I like to Concentrate t1 & t2 for some proper pew pew dark magic on t3. Early game I primarily do Treacherous Paths for pushing both friendlies and enemies. Hasn't felt weak at all (comparing to Misaki and Shenlong).

[zavros]

I've played all the 10T master's several times over the beta (except mei feng). 

Shenlong is fairly absurd for many reasons:

1. useful totems, they can push around enemy scheme markers and friendly models for basically free with 4 winds punch. getting shenlongs style attacks let them randomly pressure models.
2. fermented style is crazy and he gets an additional 6" for charges because of falling rave kick
3. Its easy to get a lot of chi on your models and should use it mostly defensively. Your opponent can focus down your 1st monk easily but usually don't have the resources to take care of the others because of the amount of chi/focus you can stack up. 
4. Sensei yu is a great support tank. All of his abilities are useful.
5. It feels like the only scheme runners better than wandering river monks are silurids out of zoraida
6. can steal focus with no resist, just annoying really.

Jakob is really good, I don't think he's broken. Rig the deck is really strong but takes time to get your hand built up. Gwyneth is a fairly insane tarpit model who draws you cards, I've considered taking her out of theme. I'm glad they added a test for consume brilliance on darkness, it was just broken before as you could slow their entire crew consistently. Illuminated are surprisingly squishy and will die to any big model, depleted are somehow more tanky than them. 

Misaki is cool, her shadow mechanic is just sweet. Her crew is fairly simple but is fun. Minako and ototo are just good. I feel like your going to take her as a second master more often than as a primary, her crew is just expensive and their mechanics are ok. I wish they added at least 1 more way to generate shadow markers. I've taken masked agent on her a few times to carry people around and turn off defensive abilities on certain masters like somer. I really wish 'No Witnesses' was a better trigger, it's fairly difficult to get it to happen.

Asami is fairly good. The oni flicker mechanic is really good, 2 free focus is really efficient considering how important it is. Akaname drop schemes without interacting, so you can still pop 2 out and scheme in the same turn for easy points. You can summon an obsidian oni into a group of people and have him suicide explode on them.  None of her crew really stand out to me, this is one faction where I would just take multiple samurai. You could also go really heavy on scheming with yokai since they get to teleport everywhere, they also have a pseudo butterfly jump if you flicker on your opponent's attacks.

I like Youko, she just doesn't do much outside of mess with their hand. A smart opponent will just assist distracted off their models since you don't put out as much as collette's crew. You really need hinamatsu to get stuff done as most of the minions are just meant to get in your opponent's face and keep their stuff locked down. Once leverage is active, you should try and use pass tokens defensively to keep models alive. I've found that Asami is a good secondary master, making riddles in the dark active right away with 7 cards vs 5.  I really wish youko's melee attack had an auto tome trigger instead of crow.

Yan Luo is great, he's fairly powerful and his crew has some strong mechanics. Splitting souls onto gokudo seems to be the main thing you want to do. On turn 3 Yan turns into darth sidious and starts doing some wild shit. I'm still not sure on what exact upgrades you want early, I tend to attach spirit then blood as I want to throw him at someone with ash on 3. 

Mccabe is great, he is incredibly mobile and does a surprising amount of damage, focused netgun shots are disgusting on grouped models. You can regularly get fast on everyone the first turn with luna but it gets a bit more complicated as the game goes on. Hucksters are fantastic scheme runners. Looted supplies is just kind of a bad ability, if you kill an opponent's model they drop their corpse on the other side of their base which is just out of 1" so it just doesn't trigger that often. 

 

Tanuki are a little above the curve, the ability to spend 3ish actions to put 3 focus on a model like fuhatsu is strong. It isn't free as you need a 7+ but its always something you have to consider vs other models who are close in cost.

I'm still of the opinion you almost always take at least 1 samurai. They tend to kill smaller models at range every turn and can tank your opponent's big models. Samurai tend to be better than a lot of models near their cost. They even get massive benefits from the trained ninja upgrade, letting them immediately start shooting the opponent and they can't interact with it because of stealth.

[Cursed25]

17 hours ago, zavros said:

Tanuki are a little above the curve, the ability to spend 3ish actions to put 3 focus on a model like fuhatsu is strong. It isn't free as you need a 7+ but its always something you have to consider vs other models who are close in cost.

Tanuki can't give focus +3 to a model except if this model has other conditions. Because with sober up you have to remove a condition if he has one.

Action 1 sober up on a model with no condition = no condition to remove than he gains focus +1

Action 2 sober on the same model = he have to remove focus +1 (there's no ''may'' on the action text) and than gain focus +1

Bonus action on the same model = now he gains some healing and focus +2

 

So you do your first sober up on the model you really need focus. If it works you do his bonus action and use your last action to move or sober up another model!

[whodares]

18 hours ago, zavros said:

Asami is fairly good. The oni flicker mechanic is really good, 2 free focus is really efficient considering how important it is. Akaname drop schemes without interacting, so you can still pop 2 out and scheme in the same turn for easy points. You can summon an obsidian oni into a group of people and have him suicide explode on them.  None of her crew really stand out to me, this is one faction where I would just take multiple samurai. You could also go really heavy on scheming with yokai since they get to teleport everywhere, they also have a pseudo butterfly jump if you flicker on your opponent's attacks.

Regarding Asami I was actually suprised you said none of her crew really stand out. I really like Ama no Zako because she is mobile and harder to take down than one might expect. The Flicker mechanic also allows her to take at least 2 duels with a "free" focus without poofing out. The main downside of Ama is that she doesn't have any ranged attacks, but a model should not have all the options available; I think Ama is very well balanced with clear strengths and weaknesses, which already makes me like her even more.

I'm also a fan of Bettari as she's the thematic counter to Resistance Trigger masters. Imagine how easy certain would be killed if they can't call a Defense Trigger. Mobility tricks via Summoning (via Asami) allow her to get into the thick of things or out of problematic situations and Diving Charge allows for some rather interesting options as well. While her damage track is not great, Flicker and the rams Triggers can allow you to cheat in that severe if needed.

 

I really like both these models in their current form. From a design standpoint both have clear strengths and weaknesses, which allow for counterplay. This made me rather amazed when you said none of her crew is standing out and you would prefer to bring in Samurai.

[katadder]

Asami would be the top of Thunders if the rest were not so good. Her crew basically getting constant + flips to attack and damage is really powerful and even the obsidian oni demise ability is pretty good. 

in theory yes using + all thew time would get them to disappear but in the games I have used her and the games I have played her a model only disappears when I want it to either for demise or to go full out and none of my big beaters have ever gone full out enough to do this as yet when combined with Asamis ability to take flicker from them and if they kill something it goes down too

[whodares]

Regarding Asami vs the rest of Ten Thunders: would you still stand by that evaluation in a tournament setting where you generally reach the end of Turn 3 max?

I also enjoy bringing a single LRM that constantly stays with Asami and drops a scheme marker close to every Turn for her to heal up on. I've gotten a lot of extra mileage out of my "From Beyond" thanks to the extra healing he brings.

[katadder]

who generally only reaches the end of turn 3 max? need to up your playing speed. always reach turn 5 even in the recent m3e tourney I played.  but if you are only reaching turn 3 then she's even better.

as for your LRM, I prefer a Tanuki for same cost as can put out multiple focus as well if needed, plus condition removal