Dragons! Which master?

[Mithrandir]

Hello all!

After a long break from Malifaux I'd like to pick a new faction. I come from Sandeep and Mah Tucket -two different styles-, and I'm looking towards the TT. 

 

In fact, the dragons are calling to me.

 

Which TT masters would you recommend to run with the Emissary, Dawn Serpent and/or Yasunori, and why? Any masters that are a big NO to work with them? I'm a casual player, and I'd like someone a bit different from the ones I already own (Sandeep & Mah Tucket).

 

Thank you!

[Mycellanious]

I dont play TT, but I play against them a bit. The Emissary is good with every master because of his insane card drawn, but he's absurd with Asami because this card draw allows her to summon a Jorigumu every turn (you need one 13 and a stone, and the Emissary lets you redraw your 7 card hand.)

[Nikodemus]

Arguably Emissary and Yasunori are simply good.,high-ish level performers regardless of the crew. Dawn Serpent I mainly like in Plant Explosives, but there again it's fairly master agnostic.

So no big NO masters at all if you ask me.

Yasunori does like it if there's easy access to healing to better make use of its card draw action, but TT can easily hire that in so it's not a major consideration.

[Mithrandir]

So I go for the second part of my question: which master would you recommend that a) has a different gameplay from the ones of Sandeep & Mah, b) can comfortably play with the dragons (so no "yes, you could, theoretically, but using these pieces rather than the recommended ones from its keyword will hinder you a lot")? 🙂 Sell me your masters!

[SerZaka]

I'm always for Misaki (first Master when I started and my favourite since then) . Between her, Dawn, Emissary, Ototo and Torakage you have a crazy fast crew . And she have the most unique gameplay mechanic in the entire 3E . Not sure if her gameplay can result to be similar of Mah's (because you have a beater master with high mobility, fast ways to get where you need to, ...) 

 

Check the new box in the upcoming Releases , it is awesome . 

 

Lastly , about Yasunori I'm not sure he can actually fit thematically he is an Oni (he was ... He is still actually but no... ) . Probably in a Misaki crew he would be an Overkill. Shang (totem) can heal him theorically but in practice the fox should stay hidden in a corner behind a box for the entire game .

[Nikodemus]

Mechanically he fits in quite well though.

Yas is decent at depleting opponent's hand (hellooo Execute trigger) and can flip a ton of cards early (great setup for 2nd or 3rd activation Abandon Honor).

[Wakefield]

I'd suggest Lucas McCabe. Upgrade attachment caster with a fast, aggressive playstyle who likes to scheme and disrupt all at once. 

I play Shadow Emissary into Lucas a lot. He helps with Lucas' abysmal hand management, provides defensive buffs through Storm of Shadows, and adds onto the Simple Duel spam that makes Lucas so good at clustered opponent's with his shockwave and after placing effect. 

Dawn Serpent is usually my go to for Lucas as well. I run him alongside Desper LaRaux to have a mobile scheme heavy attack base.  Dawn is super survivable and can add more incidental damage and a min 3 punch to a list that lacks teeth. 

Yasunori fits good into Lucas for the same reasons as Shadow Emissary. He can keep up with McCabe, throws tons of attacks and can help position the boss man and keep moving slower, more vulnerable allies around. Like Sidir Alchibal. 

[frumpypigskin]

I'll put in votes for Asami, lynch and Shen long and say that MEI Feng doesn't seem to often have room for more than say the Serpent in my lists and that Yan Lo likes his own keyword too much to squeeze in 3 dragons.

 

Asami likes the versatility of extra mobile beaters that don't require her to babysit the flicker off of. She is another summoner master however.

 

Shen long cops a bit of flack for being the tall poppy in an otherwise tall field. He offers lots of different play styles but his wandering river style with irriducuble damage may get some attention next errata to make his other styles more appealing. He is mobile himself so will appreciate the company of some flying go anywhere assassins and has wandering river monks in keyword to get the job done. 

 

Lastly Lynch can function well with 1 or 2 dragons which huggy can obey to get more out of. An extra shadow Emmisary or Yasunori charge can be brutal. Lynch will also appreciate their mobility in front of his auras and can supply the cards to get the most out of them. Putting all 3 in you may find your auras, brilliance delivery or hand shaping suffers a little. Lynch more transforms your opponent's models into your own than he does straight summon like Sandeep and while lots of his in keyword models have ranged attacks, they're only 8" and mostly for putting out brilliance while doing in chip damage and take them out of position so Lynch can convert them.

 

My 2c on first blush. Honestly 10T and the dragons are so fun you can make lots of combos work.

 

[Mithrandir]

Thank you guys for these replies! Very informative.

 

Ok. I'm now deciding between Misaki, McCabe & Lynch.

 

Any further gameplay input/analysis about these three will be very welcome 🙂 As I'm buying the three dragons, that's for sure, a crew that doesn'n need many extra purchases would be interesting.

[Ogid]

If you are between those 3, I'd say go for Misaki hands down. Shenlong and Youko would be the other 2 good masters for that kind of list heavy in versatiles imo.

With only the core box and the 3 dragons you may play her without problems as the core box brings Ototo and Torakages to enable her mobility; the dragons are expensive and an elite list may go well with her (more pass tokens, less Mv lost when she unburies). After that you may bury the Minako Rei box that goes very well with the crew and is also a top notch versatile for other masters or Tanukis for extra support.

McCabe cannot attach artifacts to non-minions outside of his keyword, bringing the 3 dragons may be akward with him; I'm not into Lynch, but I think he needs models handling brillance tokens to shine so that many points of versatiles may be bad, but I could be wrong about him tho.

[Mithrandir]

1 hour ago, Ogid said:

If you are between those 3, I'd say go for Misaki hands down. Shenlong and Youko would be the other 2 good masters for that kind of list heavy in versatiles imo.

With only the core box and the 3 dragons you may play her without problems as the core box brings Ototo and Torakages to enable her mobility; the dragons are expensive and an elite list may go well with her (more pass tokens, less Mv lost when she unburies). After that you may bury the Minako Rei box that goes very well with the crew and is also a top notch versatile for other masters or Tanukis for extra support.

McCabe cannot attach artifacts to non-minions outside of his keyword, bringing the 3 dragons may be akward with him; I'm not into Lynch, but I think he needs models handling brillance tokens to shine so that many points of versatiles may be bad, but I could be wrong about him tho.

Thanks!

 

I read Youko, but couldn't see her main startegy: what does she do? Why do you think she would go nicely along the drakes?

 

Shen Long is a pass, I think. I dislike the monastic monotone style.

 

I was thinking of McCabe and his shenanigans, but I yeah, I realize he can't pass artifacts. Also he can't give a free charge to a dragon, I believe, contrary to Misaki or Lynch. A pity, because I was growing fond of him.

[Cursed25]

7 hours ago, Mithrandir said:

Thank you guys for these replies! Very informative.

 

Ok. I'm now deciding between Misaki, McCabe & Lynch.

Lynch really loves his keyword for the brilliance spam! he can do without it but you are losing a lot of hand shenanigans! When I play Lynch I take a lot keyword models and some of the are must have (Mr Tannen, Kitty Dumont and Beckoner for me) so this will limit a lot your list with the dragons whos cost a lot!

 

As others have said Misaki would be a good choice because she likes fast models that can do guerilla warfare! (fast models that can punch through a flank, scheme and reposition to threaten another part of the board!)

[SerZaka]

The only downside of Misaki is that you should wait until May (probably late May if you are from Europe) . Ok, you can buy the old box but the new one is so much cooler 

[Wakefield]

1 hour ago, Mithrandir said:

 

I read Youko, but couldn't see her main startegy: what does she do? Why do you think she would go nicely along the drakes?

 

I was thinking of McCabe and his shenanigans, but I yeah, I realize he can't pass artifacts. Also he can't give a free charge to a dragon, I believe, contrary to Misaki or Lynch. A pity, because I was growing fond of him.

While McCabe can't toss relics to his dragons, having the two of them in the list isn't clogging. If you're running all three in every list, that's where it gets a little awkward. But the Dragons don't need 3 actions to be good. I think if you want to put all three on the table at once, you'll probably enjoy Misaki more than McCabe, but I've run (to great effect) the so called Double Dragon build with McCabe that starts with those two and Desper/Huckster and adds on based off strat and scheme.

If anything, a few models that can't get relics makes the bubbling that McCabe tends to do a lot easier to manage. If it's only 3-4 models that need the Fast you can avoid having to stay exactly 6 inches from one another to do the relic tossing. (Because everyone likes to shoot Luna)

Youko is a...uh...she's a thing. She out-activates your opponent by leveraging pass-tokens to make opportune strikes.. I use Shadow with her a lot, but  she likes to stay in keyword. She's also a real hassle to play well. I'm still only at one with her after like 10 games.

[Ogid]

3 hours ago, Mithrandir said:

I read Youko, but couldn't see her main startegy: what does she do? Why do you think she would go nicely along the drakes?

Haha, sorry! I was thinking in Asami and wrote Youko . You are right, Youko doesn't look like a good pick for this list.

[SerZaka]

2 hours ago, Wakefield said:

Youko is a...uh...she's a thing.

Lol

So I'm not the only one xD 

She could use some Mv 7 models , her crew is so slow . She prefers to lure the enemy to her.

[Wakefield]

That's unfair. She's GOOD. I like playing her. She's a very different sort of Master. She can play well with the Emissary and Dawn Serpent, but she likes having more of her own keyword models to use. I had a real close game vs Neverborn Marcus in idols where the only reason I lost is because I misplayed Hinamatsu. If I had a Dawn Serpent in that list I could have handled things a little better by dropping fire on a whooooole boatload of beasties.

She would also benefit from double dragon, I'd think, but you'd lose access to one of her Henchmen in that loadout. She really likes having Bill or Hinamatsu I think and removing both would be a bit of a pain, but who knows?

[Mithrandir]

I'm still undecided. McCabe looks cool with the trampling + artifacts attachments. Misaki does too (fast and deadly, and friendly obey).

I'm thinking of Asami, also. I like the Oni miniatures a lot (Ama No Zako is awesome), and although she's a summoner, like Sandeep, I'm thinking she works differently from him.

 

Can someone sell me Asami with dragons? How does she work? What does she need?

(Again, I thank you all for this thread. As someone who is returning to Malifaux, it's been very informative -I can't stop thinking of the TT :D)

[SerZaka]

Actually Asami doesn't rely to much on her keyword. It is more the other way around. She can easily work with a full Versatile Crew focusing on keeping alive one or two Summoned Oni . Her main Actions other than the Summoning is the push that can be used on everything and the one that removes flickers (but you can obviously use it on only one-two models at the time) . Also the main abilities (teleport for charging Oni within 3" and the Flicker-death ward ) are mainly used for the summoned models .

 

She is one of those masters that are taken as second master for these reasons too.

 

[Cursed25]

4 hours ago, Mithrandir said:

I'm still undecided. McCabe looks cool with the trampling + artifacts attachments. Misaki does too (fast and deadly, and friendly obey).

I'm thinking of Asami, also. I like the Oni miniatures a lot (Ama No Zako is awesome), and although she's a summoner, like Sandeep, I'm thinking she works differently from him.

 

Can someone sell me Asami with dragons? How does she work? What does she need?

(Again, I thank you all for this thread. As someone who is returning to Malifaux, it's been very informative -I can't stop thinking of the TT :D)

the Emissary is very good with Asami to help her find those high card for summoning! Asami is a really good master that perform well in many strat/schemes! you can tailor your starting crew a lot and summon what you need in any given time (schemers, attackers, tank)

[Wakefield]

4 hours ago, Mithrandir said:

I'm still undecided. McCabe looks cool with the trampling + artifacts attachments. 

Look, Lucas 'Orphan Trampler' McCabe is the best counter to Hamelin in the game, IMO. So if you ever go up against Hamelin, you're going to regret not being able to run over orphans.

God, I'm a horrible person.

[Jesy Blue]

1 hour ago, Wakefield said:

Look, Lucas 'Orphan Trampler' McCabe is the best counter to Hamelin in the game, IMO. So if you ever go up against Hamelin, you're going to regret not being able to run over orphans.

Lucky Emissary is the best anti Hamelin tech in the game; Lucas is the best anti Hamelin tech in the Ten Thunders.

[Wakefield]

3 hours ago, Jesy Blue said:

Lucky Emissary is the best anti Hamelin tech in the game; Lucas is the best anti Hamelin tech in the Ten Thunders.

I stand humbly corrected. I guess Charm Warders are also dope against Hamelin, but in a much more 'I'm discarding HOW many cards off the top of my deck?' way.

[frumpypigskin]

On 2/13/2020 at 7:48 AM, Wakefield said:

I stand humbly corrected. I guess Charm Warders are also dope against Hamelin, but in a much more 'I'm discarding HOW many cards off the top of my deck?' way.

I did like someone's suggestion to hire a kamaitachi... Lots of summons... Lots of card draw.