Kirai 2 vs charm warders (in and out of keyword)

[50 SS Enforcer]

I spent the last week happily painting Kirai envoy of the court and the new models in the box. Kirai has been my favorite master for a while, so I was excited to put her on the table for the first time. I called my most regular opponent up and we got a game in yesterday night. He hire youko unseen with 2 charm warders, and a kabuki warrior and some other models(everything else is irrelevant). I had 10 activations to his 8, plus he gained 2 pass tokens at the start due to cunning patience. He passed the first 4 turns while I swirled into the middle of the board to start kicking the cans for the strategy break the line. I launched inkiro into his deployment to hopefully tie him up and mess with his unpack. Didn’t really stop much, 2 activations and she died. End of the turn the charm warder goes, walk charges, ignores my incorporeal and does 4 damage to my gwisen. Then does it’s bonus action, which is a 5 inch pulse…my crew is designed to run in an 8 inch aura around Kirai, this pulse hits 5 models to devistating effect. Turn 1 over. Turn 2, I lose Initiative after I cheetah 12 and he cheats a 13. Activate a charm warder again pulses out and hits some more models with incorporeal ignoring attacks. My claim jump model is now at 1 wound, my entire forward part of my crew is either dead or under 3 health (except Kirai).I tried activating Kirai to salvage the game and resuming inkiro off the charm warder, but it was able to use a pass token for a positive, and chi for +2 to the duel to ignore my adversary bonus action, so a turn without inkiro was before me. I called the game here as I no longer wanted to continue. 2 activations into turn 2. 
 

We both play 2 factions, so I know I’ll still be able to play Kirai, but my fear is, she has no game into Ten Thunders whatsoever because of charm warders. This is already a faction ressers suffers hard into with the amount of ruthless and laugh off it has, along with an abundance of min 3. 
 

My current solution is to just not take her into thunders(which sucks but I also like mcm2). I’m sure they are fine vs non-ressers/bubble crews, but completely oppressive to Kirai especially. Every single thing on their card works into Kirai including the lantern of souls. And now that Kirai is a bubble crew in this title it’s even better vs her. Does anyone have a work around on charm warders? It feels like facing 2 Candy models, but with twice the damage. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

To some degree, every faction has answers to every gameplan, so to some degree you just have to play around the tools that people learn to tech against you (and indeed, these tools are one of the things that may mean Kirai 2 isn't actually broken).

I don't think a charm warder is insurmountable for Kirai 2, but they do offer a lot of tools. You can always just declare Kirai 1 into Ten Thunders, or just skip declaring Kirai into TT in the first place. There's a reason you find out faction before declaring masters, and at a competitive level that's critical to success for the game for most people (and I would argue is probably an absolute necessity now that titles exist).

It does suck for casual play, of course, but Kirai 2 is likely balanced around the fact that people have tools against her. You could try playing her without bubbling and see how that works, or a smaller bubble, or only bubble up after killing the charm warders (which are easy to kill).

[50 SS Enforcer]

Cool, gunna have to relearn what’s dead into what faction. Like McMourning into bayou, I can firmly put Kirai 2 into dead against Ten Thunders. 😕😔😭

Charm warders can definitely be tanky if they want to be. Stat 7df/8wp with a chi, plus flip from a pass token. 

[Khormy]

Lantern of souls can feel like an annoyance when dealing with charm warders. As for chaos theory I guess it is just pretty much up to luck. I play regularly against TT and I found that chaos theory is one of the most luck dependent abilities ever. I have seen it hitting 5-6 models at a time and doing over 20 damage overall because the right cards were flipped or about 4 damage in total on the same amount of models because the suit my opponent guessed just haven't came up. 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

39 minutes ago, 50 SS Enforcer said:

Cool, gunna have to relearn what’s dead into what faction. Like McMourning into bayou, I can firmly put Kirai 2 into dead against Ten Thunders. 😕😔😭

Charm warders can definitely be tanky if they want to be. Stat 7df/8wp with a chi, plus flip from a pass token. 

Out of curiousity, why do you say McMourning into bayou is dead?

[Adran]

45 minutes ago, 50 SS Enforcer said:

Cool, gunna have to relearn what’s dead into what faction. Like McMourning into bayou, I can firmly put Kirai 2 into dead against Ten Thunders. 😕😔😭

Yes, things change, but unless you already view kirai as dead into TT, then she isn't dead. Adding titles should reduce the number of factions you are dead into because if either title can be valid the master is valid. 

[Morgan Vening]

20 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Out of curiousity, why do you say McMourning into bayou is dead?

Figuring Tri-Chi and High Tolerance? There's some things that McMourning can still do, but passive damage (Formaldahyde/Infect) and Blood Poisoning are out.

[Maniacal_cackle]

4 minutes ago, Morgan Vening said:

Figuring Tri-Chi and High Tolerance? There's some things that McMourning can still do, but passive damage (Formaldahyde/Infect) and Blood Poisoning are out.

Oh possibly, but on the flip side...

McMourning has more tools for removing poison than most crews in the game, has precise to ignore whiskey golem and gamin armor, and gets actively buffed from Brewmaster dishing out poison.