Yan Lo Crew - Need advice

[Plaag]

1 hour ago, Whut said:

So, after viewing that video, I can confirm that the loss was NOT because the "engine failed to start turn one."
It's true the engine didn't work perfectly, NotSoEmpty was unlucky enough to hit that 3% chance of "no 10+ in hand" on turn 1, meaning he was only able to summon 1 ashigaru.

However the loss of the game primarily came from Turns 2 & 3 where NotSoEmpty made several key mistakes:
1) Positioning improperly and then blowing up Toshiro, unable to bring him back (this effectively made NSE play 10-15 stones down if you include the future value of Ashigaru)

2) A slight activation order mistake, preventing him from touching the strategy marker at the end of Turn 2, putting him behind.

3) Not "Take the Hit"ing when Izamu got shot, getting him pulled into range of Rami and subsequently killed.

4) Playing too defensively, focusing too much on the engine and hiding from gunfire for 2 whole turns instead of pressuring the gunline+support crew which he could easily out-combat if he closed the gap. In the middle of Turn 2, there was maybe 1 model outside of his deployment zone and he spent Izamu's entire Turn 2 just to kill Chiaki a second time.

It's unfortunate, because NotSoEmpty made quite a few great moves during that game as well. Towards the mid-late game YanLo got up and running and he finally entered into close combat and started to win back some ground, but the few mistakes he made early on just made that gap too large to close. I felt really bad because you could hear in his voice that he realized this and started to beat himself up
 

he was very tired after trip to a big 2 days malifaux competition in other town and had tonns of work, so if he was not so tired-he would win easily, because mah roster is bad

[Whut]

6 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I think this is one of my concerns about the game plan overall. Turn one ends up being quite defensive, so you're not necessarily well set up for turns 2/3. Of course, Yan Lo is meant to be a late game powerhouse, so maybe this is the plan.

What you said about Yan Lo is true. Normally on Turn 1 he has very little to do outside of Concentrate and maybe push a few models 2" - all he needs is to make sure he's in position to go crazy on turn 3, prior to that he's just helping push models around, getting into position himself, and concentrating.

Like I mentioned before, I don't think this crew is doomed to stay in it's deployment zone turn 1. NSE unfortunately played it like this, most of turns 1 & 2 summoning behind his front line rather than pressing forward, including practically pushing Toshiro into the back corner when bombing him.

Consider the following efficiency adjustments:

• Make sure Anna is out of the way - she doesn't get moved by Spirit Flute, so you don't want her blocking other models' free moves.
• Instead of focusing with Chiaki, walk her forward and then charge her with Izamu. This gets you 4" of movement on Izamu and drops Chiaki's corpse 5" further up the board. Izamu still gets 3 attacks vs relent, and if you Black Joker a damage flip, charge Chiaki with Toshiro to finish her off instead of D's Gifting for his 2nd AP.
• Toshiro with his spare AP should either walk forward to push his own corpse further up, or D's Gift the Ashigaru, moving it 3" forward
• Push Toshiro mostly 3" forward with Anna when you blow him up, this puts his corpse further up the board
• When Chiaki comes back, she can charge Toshiro (or someone else) and use the built-in attack trigger to get 3" of extra movement. Then Flute to push everyone 3" forward.
• Walk the slow Ashigaru forward - don't concentrate unless you're specifically keeping them near a friendly to Take the Hit. This lets you Beckoning Call your own models with Chiaki next turn. They'll probably have a focus from Toshiro anyway.
• The final Gokudo can bonus action to push 3", then charge Chiaki and hit her twice. This deals 2x2 damage minimum, plus 1 poison from Toshiro leaves Chiaki with 2 Health - perfect for Yan Lo or Anna to kill her with one action Turn 2. This lets you Flute, kill her, summon her back, and Flute again plus draw 2 cards from Nefarious Pact, 2 cards from Reanimate Corpus, and Beckoning Call up to 4 times. Plus when you replace-summon her back, she keeps the Gokudo's focus.
• Don't plan to do the whole combo again on Turn 2. If the opportunity presents itself, go ahead, but gauge whether it's time to start going aggressive. Killing Chiaki and summoning her back for a third corpse is usually enough, as you can't have more than 3 Ashigaru anyway and you should be moving far from table edges by now.
• If an Ashigaru dies or you think one might die Turn 2, activate Toshiro as late as possible in the turn, and kill Chiaki with Anna to summon a mindless zombie. If the Ashigaru does die, you can resummon him while the mindless zombie can move 8" on your next turn for summoning or bombing or both.

Turn 1 with JUST 2 Flutes, your entire crew (sans Anna) is 6" up the board minimum. That's pretty comparable to your typical Walk-Concentrate Turn 1 when both players are afraid of overextending. That's not mentioning the 2 Flutes on turn 2, or the Beckoning Calls, or the D's Gifts, or any Walk actions. I'd hardly call the crew slow or overly defensive.

[Whut]

28 minutes ago, Plaag said:

he was very tired after trip to a big 2 days malifaux competition in other town and had tonns of work, so if he was not so tired-he would win easily, because mah roster is bad

I agree

[Plaag]

1 hour ago, Whut said:

What you said about Yan Lo is true. Normally on Turn 1 he has very little to do outside of Concentrate and maybe push a few models 2" - all he needs is to make sure he's in position to go crazy on turn 3, prior to that he's just helping push models around, getting into position himself, and concentrating.

Like I mentioned before, I don't think this crew is doomed to stay in it's deployment zone turn 1. NSE unfortunately played it like this, most of turns 1 & 2 summoning behind his front line rather than pressing forward, including practically pushing Toshiro into the back corner when bombing him.

Consider the following efficiency adjustments:

• Make sure Anna is out of the way - she doesn't get moved by Spirit Flute, so you don't want her blocking other models' free moves.
• Instead of focusing with Chiaki, walk her forward and then charge her with Izamu. This gets you 4" of movement on Izamu and drops Chiaki's corpse 5" further up the board. Izamu still gets 3 attacks vs relent, and if you Black Joker a damage flip, charge Chiaki with Toshiro to finish her off instead of D's Gifting for his 2nd AP.
• Toshiro with his spare AP should either walk forward to push his own corpse further up, or D's Gift the Ashigaru, moving it 3" forward
• Push Toshiro mostly 3" forward with Anna when you blow him up, this puts his corpse further up the board
• When Chiaki comes back, she can charge Toshiro (or someone else) and use the built-in attack trigger to get 3" of extra movement. Then Flute to push everyone 3" forward.
• Walk the slow Ashigaru forward - don't concentrate unless you're specifically keeping them near a friendly to Take the Hit. This lets you Beckoning Call your own models with Chiaki next turn. They'll probably have a focus from Toshiro anyway.
• The final Gokudo can bonus action to push 3", then charge Chiaki and hit her twice. This deals 2x2 damage minimum, plus 1 poison from Toshiro leaves Chiaki with 2 Health - perfect for Yan Lo or Anna to kill her with one action Turn 2. This lets you Flute, kill her, summon her back, and Flute again plus draw 2 cards from Nefarious Pact, 2 cards from Reanimate Corpus, and Beckoning Call up to 4 times. Plus when you replace-summon her back, she keeps the Gokudo's focus.
• Don't plan to do the whole combo again on Turn 2. If the opportunity presents itself, go ahead, but gauge whether it's time to start going aggressive. Killing Chiaki and summoning her back for a third corpse is usually enough, as you can't have more than 3 Ashigaru anyway and you should be moving far from table edges by now.
• If an Ashigaru dies or you think one might die Turn 2, activate Toshiro as late as possible in the turn, and kill Chiaki with Anna to summon a mindless zombie. If the Ashigaru does die, you can resummon him while the mindless zombie can move 8" on your next turn for summoning or bombing or both.

Turn 1 with JUST 2 Flutes, your entire crew (sans Anna) is 6" up the board minimum. That's pretty comparable to your typical Walk-Concentrate Turn 1 when both players are afraid of overextending. That's not mentioning the 2 Flutes on turn 2, or the Beckoning Calls, or the D's Gifts, or any Walk actions. I'd hardly call the crew slow or overly defensive.

i think he had bad cards, so didnt try to play aggressive

[Whut]

So, after sleeping on this, I've come to the conclusion that this Yan Lo tactic isn't as overpowered as I first thought. If we make the assumption that this tactic was NOT intended, we then have to analyze if the combo is too powerful to be left in the game.

It does have some key weaknesses in mechanics:

• The crew is rigid, and thus can't take tech choices against certain matchups easily
• The crew has no blast attacks - one of the most powerful features in Malifaux
• The crew - while not entirely slow due to pushes - doesn't have movement tricks to get around severe terrain outside of Yan Lo's own Incorporeal. You can see this in NotSoEmpty's game as Anna & Chiaki struggle to get through a forest. (Honestly though, I think this is more of an issue with Severe terrain in M3E in general. I think it should reduce movement by 33% rather than 50%, but that's a discussion for another time)
• The crew suffers against blast attacks, since Ashigaru are particularly susceptible at Df/Wp 4, not H2W, and wanting to stay within 2" of other models for Take the Hit. You can also see this in NotSoEmpty's game at the end as Mah blasts onto Anna and Chiaki.
• You need to use an AP from someone (probably Anna or YanLo) on Turn 2 to kill Chiaki, sacrificing movement or being able to concentrate. This is bad for Anna, as she probably wants to walk-shoot or walk-charge (to make use of her auras), and bad for Yan Lo, as he probably wants to Corpus, Transcendence/Paths, Paths. The last option is Toshiro charge, but this requires Chiaki to walk forward instead of using Beckoning Call, since you want Toshiro advancing for his Aura and possibly schemes. There's no best answer.
• There's a lot of management to be done with Reliquaries in mid-late game, and you have to think ahead. Having Izamu or Toshiro die while their Reliquaries are on the other (or Anna) forces you to then go out of your way to remedy the situation at the cost of AP before you bring them back. Having a Reliquary on a model who dies then forces you to have a mask in hand and acceptable positioning to get it back with Chiaki.
• As soon as you declare YanLo, your opponent will know to bring anti-armor in anticipation of Izamu, which also helps in the removal of Ashigaru and Anna
• The crew suffers typical summoner variability:
  • 3% chance to fail having a 10 in hand on turn 1 (small, but it happened to NotSoEmpty), 
  • Small chance to black joker one of 2 summoning flips for Toshiro.
  • Anna can Black Joker her bonus action unless you take The Whisper on her
  • Chiaki is not guaranteed to get 2 split souls on T1 (and even if she does, you only have 2 Reliquaries anyway, so not much of a bonus),
  • Yan Lo can fail his bonus action trigger, meaning he needs to use his last AP to pass the Reliquary and doesn't get to concentrate or GrowingPower trigger
  • Izamu can black joker an attack against Chiaki, forcing Toshiro to kill her rather than D's Gift an Ashigaru.
• The crew saves 2-3 severes or high moderates in hand at the end of Turn 1, sure. but the crew has a LOT of low-moderate TNs, likely 2-3 discards, and a card reserved for Toshiro to summon T2. TNs on T2 include Beckoning Call (6), Flute (4), Paths (4), Transcendence (6), Instill Youth (5), Empower Ancestor (4), and Foul-MM (6). Discards are Flurry, Flute, Take the Hit, and Juggernaut if Izamu gets dunked on.
• The crew feels like it has not enough SS with the two upgrades (Personally, Whisper on both Yan and Anna). With needing 2x (10+ Crow) on T1, and then another 10+ Crow each additional turn, you'll likely be spending 2-3 stones for suits and 1-2 for cards over the course of the game, in a crew with 2 Henchmen. You can forgo one Whisper for 2 Stones, but that's a very strong upgrade to give up, not to mention Whisper helps Anna and YanLo draw the right cards for Toshiro T1. If you want to play or bluff Hidden Martyrs with an Effigy, you have to get rid of both upgrades and still only have 4 stones.

and in Schemes:

• The crew can't play Public Enemies unless it can ensure no LoS to enemy models for Chiaki and Toshiro T1 (which you probably can't ensure on most boards before you pick deployment side). You also can't kill Chiaki T2 for a third corpse, defeating the purpose of the combo since you aren't getting an extra Ashigaru by the end of T2 compared to your typical Toshiro game.
• The crew is average at schemes such as Breakthrough and Sabotage unless you use YanLo himself, sacrificing his most powerful Turns for scheming, or run over the opposing crew in turn 3. Gokudo can attempt it, but isn't as good as something like a SS miner since he needs to summon T2 and then scheme T3, rather than being able to pop up and immediately get the VP at the end of a turn. Heavily enemy-crew dependent, it just comes down to whether or not they can reach him.
• The crew cannot score more than 1 VP for Hidden Martyrs (Chiaki + Gokudo-Turned-Toshiro) unless you give up the two Upgrades for a Carrion Effigy, which does almost nothing for the crew (ugh, I hate that 2" range on the heal, so bad)
• The crew is poor at Research Mission, as they create no marker types for themselves other than corpses.
• The crew broadcasts Catch and Release - you only have to worry about 1 model
• Vendetta, while it can be "cheated" with the Gokudo-Turned-Toshiro, isn't an insane amount better. You get to choose a model between 5-9 stones that you couldn't have with a normal Toshiro, and Toshiro is predictable in his movements at Wk 5 with no movement abilities. He is also VERY stressed to be able to summon every turn AND be in position to score Vendetta at some point. The majority of the plus side comes from Toshiro just being super tanky and able to be healed, making the second point easy to score. A typical Yan Lo list can as-intended replace a minion with an Ancestor anyway. Ulix can do a similar thing with a Piglet and no one complains about that.

Conclusion
Is the combo strong? Yes. You get an extra Ashigaru summon, and your hand gets pretty stacked for Turn 2. But does it require a nerf? Or is this the "only way" to play Yan Lo? I would say no.

Consider that taking Kirai, which any resser list can do, can add even more (and more flexible) summoning power, aid in dealing with Terrain issues thanks to Incorporeal, can't fail using The Whisper, and can affect the combat more than Toshiro can with her 12" ignoring friendly fire gun. Even in the future when Kirai's Soul gets reworked to be Leader-only, as we expect it might, I believe this still holds true (you just try to summon Gaki rather than get free Ikiryos).

Another consideration should be Ulix. Ulix and the Sow have more summoning power and replace models just like this crew does, and as a result can be a suspect test for some of the shenanigans one can pull off with schemes, with Piglets becoming War Pigs - an even bigger swing in Cost than Gokudo-Toshiro and with MUCH more mobility and ability to deal damage (although, not as much ability to tank damage, granted).

My one contention with this list, and the one nerf I would suggest, is an errata on Recover Evidence. The ability for this crew to damage and kill their own models and leave 3 strategy markers in their deployment zone (probably all protected by an Ashigaru's 2" engagement) with no possible counterplay from the opponent is too much, and likely not intended by the designers. I would reword the second paragraph to add: "Drop an equal number of enemy Strategy Markers into base contact with the model, not within 1" of the enemy deployment zone. If this is not possible, instead drop a strategy marker on the Centerline, at least 6" away from another enemy Strategy Marker." This ensures that the Yan Lo crew must exit their deployment zone before performing the kill-replace shenanigans, and likely makes them spread out more so the markers aren't all within a 5" bubble for a single Ashigaru to babysit. Playtesting may reveal that increasing the range of this restriction to 2-3" makes for better balance.

In conclusion of the Conclusion,

@Wyrd, you hiring?

Peace, I'm out 😎

[Maniacal_cackle]

Great points, @Whut!

A few quick thoughts: 

1. Ashigaru aren't that vulnerable to blasts - you can stand 50.8 mm away and be within 2" and outside of blast range. So they have to work to hit you with blast damage (use another attack to bait take the hit).

2. Severe terrain shouldn't be minus 1/3. The math becomes really gross (1/3 of 8 inches? Doable, but try that at the end of 7 hours of playing).

Also the game is balanced around terrain being a big factor in games. Crews like this are allowed such a high power level precisely because terrain can ruin their day. Whereas someone like Reva is powerful because she ignores it. Reva would feel pretty irrelevant if severe isn't high impact.

[Whut]

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Great points, @Whut!

A few quick thoughts: 

1. Ashigaru aren't that vulnerable to blasts - you can stand 50.8 mm away and be within 2" and outside of blast range. So they have to work to hit you with blast damage (use another attack to bait take the hit).

2. Severe terrain shouldn't be monus 1/3. The math becomes really gross (1/3 of 8 inches? Doable, but try that at the end of 7 hours of playing).

Also the game is balanced around terrain being a big factor in games. Crews like this are allowed such a high power level precisely because terrain can ruin their day. Whereas someone like Reva is powerful because she ignores it. Reva would feel pretty irrelevant if severe isn't high impact.

Thanks!

1) In theory, this should work, and I never thought of that so I'll keep it in mind. But in practice are you going to give up 1-3" of forward momentum to ensure you're 50.01" away from your intended target? Are you able to position properly so that you're 50.01" away from EVERY friendly model? What is more important, staying 50.01" away to avoid blasts, or getting as close as possible to protect against charges with Extended Reach? As games go on, things start to get really messy, with engagement, standing B2B with strategy markers, abilities which move models (like Beckoning Call, which always moves your Wk), moving such that a Walk+Interact the following turn gets you a scheme marker where you need it, moving such that the following turn you can move such that a Walk+Interact the following-following turn gets you a scheme marker where you need it (as much recursion as required here, up to 5 turns lol), chokepoints on the map where staying 50.01" away requires climbing on top of terrain, or moving into severe terrain, etc. Especially with a nearly all-melee crew, you don't have the luxury of spacing out your models like that.

2) This isn't the right place to have this discussion drag on, but I really want to have this discussion at some point. If you want, start a thread and shout me out. My position is roughly this:

• M3E sped up the game by allowing every model to walk-charge (a vast improvement IMO), so shooting had to get easier to make up for the ability of combat models to engage shooting models.
  • Now nearly every rifleman-type model ignores cover or concealment or both (and usually friendly fire too), and even those that don't often benefit from something similar like "Blow it to Hell." Plus now that focus carries over turns, they can just use focus anyway.
  • Cover ->  no longer gives minuses to attack, just +1 Df, so many shooters are happy to fire twice for min damage + triggers, but a model can't push over the cover it just benefited from as part of a charge, so the close combat model is effectively at -1 AP.
  • Concealment -> as we all know the danger of shooting is often in focused shots for 4-5 damage + triggers. If they want to focus in the first place, concealment does almost nothing against it. I like how concealment now applies to non-gun attack actions, but I think this should be enemy-only.
• However, most if not all cover blocks pushes, and most concealing terrain is also severe, and severe halves your movement as long as even 1% of your base touches it. So when trying to leave terrain, your entire base size of 1-2" drags behind you, slowing down your walk which is only 5" to begin with in the average case. In M2E this wasn't a problem because pushes ignored severe terrain, but now that charging is a 1AP push, this doesn't work anymore.
• The result of these changes is that taking cover from shooting is more of a detriment than a benefit, unless you have flight, unimpeded, or incorporeal. I'd say probably 75% of the time I'd rather not take cover at all and tank the hits if it means I can properly charge or move-charge next turn. Instead of cleverly having to consider pushes when dealing with severe terrain, they just act as black-hole tarpits scattered across the battlefield that I dare not move into if I ever want to get out. At least normal Impassable terrain often blocks LoS entirely, but forests and the like slow you down and provide (almost) no benefit against most of the ranged models from which you're hiding in the first place. It's totally unintuitive, just feels bad and stupid during play, and leads to dumb interactions like over 50% of models with the Ambush action not having unimpeded and so only getting a 1.5" push and not really wanting to be in terrain at all despite "benefiting" from being in severe/concealing.
• While this usually doesn't affect the game balance poorly at top-level play, what it does do is create a massive chasm between certain crew matchups, often making it not only an uphill battle but one which is simply not fun at all. For example, if my opponent declares Neverborn, I literally cannot risk picking any keyword which is poor at handling severe terrain (example: Bandit, Augmented, Honeypot, Experimental), because if my opponent declares Titania I might practically be unable to leave my deployment zone outside of 1-2 models. Similar black-and-white power swings come from things like Pit Traps, where you can almost completely block off a section of the board like the Mah player in NSE's game simply because half the crews in the game can't easily traverse severe terrain. This kind of interaction hurts below-average keywords more than the top-tier ones. It also pushes crews towards taking Riders, and those are good enough to be considered without the no brainer of "I need to take this so my crew can traverse severe terrain with any level of efficiency at all."
• I see several possible solutions:
  • Make severe terrain cost only 33% of movement (the simplest and least thought out solution)
  • Make pushes ignore severe terrain, but change Charge to "move in a straight line" rather than push, (and allow charges to include climbing over obstacles?)
  • Create a classification for "Unimpeded Push" and "Unimpeded Move" (Ex: Ambush -> "...it may unimpeded move up to 3") and rework a bunch of abilities in the game

TL;DR: Terrain no longer affects shooting enough, but affects movement too much. Make it affect movement less.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Interesting points about severe, happy to make another topic after work.

On topic, the recover evidence thing is interesting to me.

On the one hand, it seems like a terrible idea to voluntarily drop your markers on the table. It is so easy to get anywhere on the board. On the other hand, Ashigaru with extended reach really have an impact here. It is close to just transferring the token to the summons which is very strong.

Definitely some tricks to play around it though. Off the top of my head for the two crews I main:

Reva can mask trigger the ashigaru away from the marker, so something like start 14" away, charge (attack ashigaru through corpse to push it while outside extended reach), walk into contact with strategy marker. Then pick up a second marker the next turn (then die).

In Forgotten, Archie can leap, charge with no attack, then attack with a high mask to push the Ashigaru off the marker. Then a crooligan teleports in and claims it. With Molly's card draw and activation control, should be a pretty consistent maneuver.

So seems high risk if all you leave to defend the markers are Ashigaru. Of course, all this assumes you can sneak past the wave of Yan Lo models advancing across the table.

[Whut]

3 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Of course, all this assumes you can sneak past the wave of Yan Lo models advancing across the table.

This, right here ^

Also, it's pretty easy to get anywhere you want on the table during the game, but is it easy to get anywhere you want on the table AND kill/push an Ashigaru (push twice, if it just moves back) on turns 2 and 3? Because if not, you're either killing an Izamu, killing an Anna, or already losing maximum points....