Youko Hamasaki, Unseen

[Da Git]

1 hour ago, Maladroit said:

True. Her old artwork was more in theme, but was a little strange too - she's pulling a sword from an umbrella but has no attack remotely resembling that.

To be fair, she originally had Exotic weapons, which an umbrella sword deffo is!

[Mycellanious]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

All other cases of additional damage I have found do have the (+x) in there somewhere, although often in the reminder text, or the limit of the extra damage possible.

I naturally read additional damage to add to the actions natural damage rather than be a separate source. And so I would expect it to still be armor ignoring, (and not trigger a second reduction by shielded)

 

Ok, because it says "additional damage" I think I agree

[Higgybeans]

6 hours ago, Maladroit said:

Not as nasty as new Sonnia's deck manipulation at least. And if you really  wanted to you could do that at least 5 times a turn if you pair her with Lucius as the primary master and bring changelings.

 

Technically. But I would argue Yukou's is worse. Sure Sonnia can discard all 13's not just one suit for example. But Yukou can remove that 13 from the game. This would leave me waaaaay more tilted. And as a bonus action it isn't impacting what else she is doing. For Sonnia you are manipulating your opponent's deck instead of burning the enemy and dropping pyres.

So yeah, they are different effects, but I would rather come up against Sonnia instead of Yukou....

[touchdown]

New Youko is going to really love her henchmen, kabuki warriors and charm warders I think. I think it's a shame that Kunoichi which should be like her most thematic minions are still going to be 2nd class.

[PiersonsMuppeteer]

Really liking the look of Hidden Ledger w/ Mind Games to stack the top with Weak/whatever/Weak. Then Gather Intel a Kabuki Warrior into range making the Distracted practically guaranteed, and then getting in an almost guaranteed attack with Cut Them Down and the newly applied Distracted.

[Thatguy]

11 hours ago, Maogrim said:

it's weird that a model wearing a Katana, dual-wielded daggers and a belt full of throwing knives has just one attack action while her prior version has three. 

Seems like, apart from pass tokens and Distracted, Youko's true gimmick is wearing weapons for show only.

I think few things are as distracting as someone throwing a knife at you. Even if they keep missing. My head cannon is that Incriminating Evidence is the name of the katana.

 

I like the new Youko. Being able to fish out two 13s from the discard seems amazing. I don't know how valuable the triggers in keyword are to know how valuable Whispered will be.

 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

13 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Two pass tokens and grab two cards from discard pile is quite a strong baseline.

But... A lot of her abilities rely on distracted, which is quite tricky. There are a lot of models in the game that essentially ignore distracted (anything that can easily get positives), and there's also several ways around it (condition removal, assist action, or just flipping through it).

Reminds me of when I saw a Transmortis player play against Youko's minus flips, and he just spammed so many attacks that he was killing faster than the Youko player anyway xD

So I'd worry that this master will suffer from the issue that distracted isn't quite as up there as say stunned or slow, but maybe the crew comes together.

She does have a ton of other excellent tools as well, so fingers crossed. Certainly the playstyle appeals to me enormously, so may give her a spin at some point!

I've come around on this Youko. I think the crew has so many tricks other than distracted that it seems really powerful.

And of course, when distracted is good it can be game breaking.

[Maladroit]

4 hours ago, Higgybeans said:

Technically. But I would argue Yukou's is worse. Sure Sonnia can discard all 13's not just one suit for example. But Yukou can remove that 13 from the game. This would leave me waaaaay more tilted. And as a bonus action it isn't impacting what else she is doing. For Sonnia you are manipulating your opponent's deck instead of burning the enemy and dropping pyres.

So yeah, they are different effects, but I would rather come up against Sonnia instead of Yukou....

True, but for Youko if you declare the trigger you have to remove a card from the game, so you are possibly strengthening you opponents deck if you only have low cards of that suit to choose from. Have I read that right?

The big one from me with Sonnia is the ability to manipulate the next card flipped in a duel and know exactly what it is. That makes Sonnia's actual attacks really shine - especially if you've already put.pressure on their control hand.

[touchdown]

2 minutes ago, Maladroit said:

True, but for Youko if you declare the trigger you have to remove a card from the game, so you are possibly strengthening you opponents deck if you only have low cards of that suit to choose from. Have I read that right?

The big one from me with Sonnia is the ability to manipulate the next card flipped in a duel and know exactly what it is. That makes Sonnia's actual attacks really shine - especially if you've already put.pressure on their control hand.

You declare the trigger before you pick the suit, so while it's possible to strengthen your opponent's deck (it's also possible to draw 7 weaks in a row for that matter), it would be a deliberate choice.

[Maladroit]

13 minutes ago, touchdown said:

You declare the trigger before you pick the suit, so while it's possible to strengthen your opponent's deck (it's also possible to draw 7 weaks in a row for that matter), it would be a deliberate choice.

Ah, yep misread that slightly - so reveal then pick the suit to discard.

Edit: so that's better than I thought. Does the owner of the RJ have to declare its suit before Youko picks?

[Da Git]

11 hours ago, Adran said:

All other cases of additional damage I have found do have the (+x) in there somewhere, although often in the reminder text, or the limit of the extra damage possible.

I naturally read additional damage to add to the actions natural damage rather than be a separate source. And so I would expect it to still be armor ignoring, (and not trigger a second reduction by shielded)

I read it this way too. It's part of the attack's effects, so IMO, it just adds damage to to the damage track.

[PiersonsMuppeteer]

5 hours ago, Thatguy said:

I think few things are as distracting as someone throwing a knife at you. Even if they keep missing. My head cannon is that Incriminating Evidence is the name of the katana.

 

I like the new Youko. Being able to fish out two 13s from the discard seems amazing. I don't know how valuable the triggers in keyword are to know how valuable Whispered will be.

 

 

Hinamatsu & Bill’s triggers are nice, so can save a few ss. Charm Warder’s Shady Dealings, Aggressive Chi, Exorcism, and Bunraku’s Daze are the probably the only other ones worth putting effort into. The rest are probably just nice incidentals.

[Eclipse]

22 hours ago, FrostHunter said:

Oookey... two kabuki warriors with ninja training overlapping their distraction aura onto activated boring conversation from Shojo, and if she will activate her second aura... It might be quite nice control piece that can beat stuff to death, lure others, mess with scheme markers. And that for 26ss with one question how to protect Shojo from shooting. Hmmmm...

If Lynch will get access to generating pass token somehow then the amount of auras will be even more terrifying.

Youko - ... I have temporal amnesia - can she target herself by Gather intel?

One and the same model cannot be influenced by two or more instances of the same aura (so the kabuki overlap wouldn't work). Had to go and double-check, because I had the silly idea of trying to overlap Boring Conversation from Shoujo and Tannen

Still, I'd like to try and see if Lynch can indeed use Shoujo as a second Boring Conversation chokepoint. I'll proxy her if I have the chance and write the results here afterwards.

Youko can not target herself with Gather Intel as it is a tactical action. Otherwise the action *is* amazing and a primetime ability for the model. I'd love to try her out as a secondary Master, so far I've tried Shenlong and was not disappointed, but I'd like to have another option if possible.

[Jinn]

10 minutes ago, Eclipse said:

One and the same model cannot be influenced by two or more instances of the same aura (so the kabuki overlap wouldn't work). Had to go and double-check, because I had the silly idea of trying to overlap Boring Conversation from Shoujo and Tannen

Still, I'd like to try and see if Lynch can indeed use Shoujo as a second Boring Conversation chokepoint. I'll proxy her if I have the chance and write the results here afterwards.

Youko can not target herself with Gather Intel as it is a tactical action. Otherwise the action *is* amazing and a primetime ability for the model. I'd love to try her out as a secondary Master, so far I've tried Shenlong and was not disappointed, but I'd like to have another option if possible.

Attacks can't target yourself, tacticals can.

[Maniacal_cackle]

10 minutes ago, Eclipse said:

I'd love to try her out as a secondary Master, so far I've tried Shenlong and was not disappointed, but I'd like to have another option if possible.

Her leader ability is so powerful, is there a particular master you think would be better to hire her with than just taking her as the leader?

[Jinn]

1 minute ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Her leader ability is so powerful, is there a particular master you think would be better to hire her with than just taking her as the leader?

Maybe Asami? Asami is also an insane hire into the crew though.

Main benefit is you can grab whatever card you use for summoning back (if you have it), or you can go through a chunk of your deck and grab the 13 straight from the Discard pile. Probably better off just hiring Asami into Qi & Gong though, you aren't missing much synergy, and if you stick to summoning Jorogumo (pretty easy with that insane card swapping) then you won't really be that restricted with the whole 3 summon limit thing after you suicide them in a few turns in a row.

I think double masters is gonna be banned competitively by everyone when this book drops, we'll see.

[FrostHunter]

10 hours ago, Thatguy said:

don't know how valuable the triggers in keyword are to know how valuable Whispered will be.

Bill - rams for critical strike so with fished high rams you get Ruthless model with 2" reach with damage track of 5/6/6 after doing heroic intervention to push Youko or someone else outside of engagment.

Hinamatsu - Masks for Onslaught are always nice, but for me the biggest star are rams for lure for free attack.

Kabuki Warrior - as above, biggest star are rams for the lure. They have to come to you, so you don't have to move and getting 2 attacks with positive flip for damage to both and with single pass token also to both with attack action. In that case you mess with opponent positioning playing the ping pong between Kabuki to keep them in 2" away from model.

A new horizon with tome in it's TN might be also funny to mess with schemes.

Charm Warder - well at first glance they were the first model to replace in crew with new Youko, but...

Crows for Jynx or Chi Attack are always very nice for us. With fished high crows we force opponent to discard two cards, ping some damage and giving injured +2. And against summoner exorcism is wonderful.

But i'm wondering why nobody mentioned with option for placing cards on top of opponent deck messing with chaos theory. We have quite nice option to outactivate the opponent, so on theory we have option to know what suits would be on top with deckared trigger for targetting that pesky scheme runner or other irritaiting model on los.

Kunoichi - rams for unexpected ferocity, but with her tools for the job we have also guaranteed trigger for second action.

Bunraku - rams for critical strike and rip and tear, but daze from crows looks also nice.

Chiyo - well, imho she shouldn't get into combat, but... If we outactivate opponent then giving slow and stealing up to two stones...

Geisha - nope, there is no ss for her.

Shojo - healing in this crew is so needed.

As always question is how to outactivate the opponent with our glass cannon models, hehehe.

[FrostHunter]

32 minutes ago, Eclipse said:

One and the same model cannot be influenced by two or more instances of the same aura (so the kabuki overlap wouldn't work).

I know, but Kabuki should be placed on opposide sides of Shojo' aura to cover bigger part of map. By overlapping auras i meant her auras with Kabuki whose will play ping pong with enemy between them while murdering them and be protected by boring conversation with minus flips for WP tests to help Kabuki to survive.

[Eclipse]

On 9/7/2021 at 9:43 AM, Jinn said:

Attacks can't target yourself, tacticals can.

Oops, my bad 🙊

On 9/7/2021 at 9:43 AM, Maniacal_cackle said:

Her leader ability is so powerful, is there a particular master you think would be better to hire her with than just taking her as the leader?

As far as playstyles and gaps go, I'm looking forward trying her out with Lynch1 and Asami1 so far. Both would benefit from the package Ninjoko brings to the table imo. The way I play then is positioning control and card manipulation to set up things in my favor. However, I've been missing another incorporeal model with WP shenanigans as well as a model to use as a surprise scalpel. This reveal pretty much cements the idea; still squishy if bum-rushed, but deceptively flexible nonetheless.
Anyhow, @Jinn makes a good point in saying that you might prefer bringing Asami1 to the Ninjoko crew instead:

On 9/7/2021 at 9:51 AM, Jinn said:

Probably better off just hiring Asami into Qi & Gong though, you aren't missing much synergy, and if you stick to summoning Jorogumo (pretty easy with that insane card swapping) then you won't really be that restricted with the whole 3 summon limit thing after you suicide them in a few turns in a row.

I think double masters is gonna be banned competitively by everyone when this book drops, we'll see.

I sure hope not, having the craziest options available is part of what makes the game great. In a game like this if some options are drastically worse than others it's usually by design - they were simply not meant to be as 'broken'.