Sell me the thunder - what you find rewarding about playing Yan Lo and Misaki

[Regelridderen]

I’ve got a bad collector bug with 9 crews of Ressurs, Neverborn and Guild. And I feel, its time for something new :

Modelwise - and I always go by models first, its become a toss-up between arcanists (Ironsides and Colette) and Thunders (Yan Lo and Misaki).

So it’s become a matter of playstyle, so my question to you is; what do you find rewarding about playing Misaki and Yan Lo?

[Cursed25]

Misaki is really fun to play! she and her crew really feel like ninjas! very quick on the board! Misaki can unbury anywhere on the board if you drop more markers with the rest of your crew giving you insane mobility! They hit very hard but are on the frail side! so choose your engagement, always attack where they will feel it and strike hard!!! They have excellent schemers (torakage) and Minako can create even more schemers! Ototo is a big beater and there's a lot of synergies between him and Misaki! Snipers and Archers can hit hard from a distance and you can even play Last Blossom as a gunline if you want! With Last Blossom you have to play smart and your mobility will help dictate the board and apply pressure at the right place. Also the threat of Misaky unburying in so many places will change how your opponent plays and thus he will maybe makes more errors! capitalize on this!

 

Yan Lo was one of my favorite master for TT before the errata! He was the perfect definition of elite crew impossible to kill! Now he lost a lot of tankiness with Manos reliquary's change! My core list was always Chiaki, Izamu and Manos. These 3 gave me 2 super strong upgrade to pass around with Chiaki. But sadly now Manos' one is very much situational depending if you face lots of demise. Apart from that his reliquary is just the shadow of what it was!

Izamu's and Yin are in my opinion the only 2 reliquaries worth building around and you will be way less tanky than Ancestor's crew used to be! I will have to change a lot how I play them and I'm not sure GG-1 as many strat/pool where they outshine other TT crews. There's a lot of testing to do and I'm sure Ancestor is still playable but it isn't top tier as it used to be.

[Rygnan]

1 hour ago, Cursed25 said:

Misaki is really fun to play! she and her crew really feel like ninjas! very quick on the board! Misaki can unbury anywhere on the board if you drop more markers with the rest of your crew giving you insane mobility! They hit very hard but are on the frail side! so choose your engagement, always attack where they will feel it and strike hard!!! They have excellent schemers (torakage) and Minako can create even more schemers! Ototo is a big beater and there's a lot of synergies between him and Misaki! Snipers and Archers can hit hard from a distance and you can even play Last Blossom as a gunline if you want! With Last Blossom you have to play smart and your mobility will help dictate the board and apply pressure at the right place. Also the threat of Misaky unburying in so many places will change how your opponent plays and thus he will maybe makes more errors! capitalize on this!

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Misaki is one of my favourite masters to play because of how fun her playstyle is and how mobile they can be, they really can adapt to almost any situation

[Ogid]

2 hours ago, Cursed25 said:

Misaki is really fun to play! she and her crew really feel like ninjas! very quick on the board! Misaki can unbury anywhere on the board if you drop more markers with the rest of your crew giving you insane mobility! They hit very hard but are on the frail side! so choose your engagement, always attack where they will feel it and strike hard!!! They have excellent schemers (torakage) and Minako can create even more schemers! Ototo is a big beater and there's a lot of synergies between him and Misaki! Snipers and Archers can hit hard from a distance and you can even play Last Blossom as a gunline if you want! With Last Blossom you have to play smart and your mobility will help dictate the board and apply pressure at the right place. Also the threat of Misaky unburying in so many places will change how your opponent plays and thus he will maybe makes more errors! capitalize on this!

Agree, the best part of Misaki is she can pop up almost anywhere from turn 3 if you spread well your shadow creators (Torakage and Ototo) + Shang; she has great henchmans (one of them a summoner that give you 2 top notch schemers) and is pretty versatile having both guns and close combat powerhouses and also fast models and good schemers (plus the great TT versatile pool). Coming from NVB Misaki's crew being a bit frail shouldn't be a problem, in fact she is quite hard to kill with her high defensive stats, defensive tech and burying at the start of the turn unless she is misspositioned hard (she is definitely way easier to keep alive than Nekima and you can give her stealth or H2K with upgrades) and Ototo needs a lot of firepower to actually die; also Misaki between her bury shenanigans and Mobile warrior is really hard to pin down (in general a lot of her models have abilities that let them disengage easily). The acess to Tanukis is also a godsend in TT; Misaki and Ototo with Focused will charge with a double positive to damage flips, add rams and/or SS and their damage tracks start to be really scary; before GG1 TT had better card draw but they have still some good tricks. She is one of those masters that can fit in almost every pool and it's quite competitive.

[Regelridderen]

So what models beyond the core boxes, do you use with these crews?

[Cursed25]

7 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

So what models beyond the core boxes, do you use with these crews?

beyond the core with Misaki I use Minako, Samurai, Snipers, Yamaziko, Tanuki, Low River Monk, shadow effigy/emissary, Lone Swordsman and sometimes Crime Boss

 

for Yan Lo like I said I don't know what my lists with him could look like now! 😕

[Ogid]

The above, a good well rounded core is Ototo, Minako, 1 Tanuki and 1 Torakage.

[Regelridderen]

So I got a nice offer on the old M2E Thunder crew - and like the old sculpts way more than m3e - so that settled it, 10 Thunders is my 4th faction.

So what would you suggest adding to the collection?

[Cursed25]

6 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

So I got a nice offer on the old M2E Thunder crew - and like the old sculpts way more than m3e - so that settled it, 10 Thunders is my 4th faction.

So what would you suggest adding to the collection?

samurai, tanuki and low river monks are stable versatile/support units in TT! they will be useful in almost any crews!

[Regelridderen]

The work has begun.

To anyone interested, you can check out my hobby thread -