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Kirai's Minion Choices


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I dont really get this Jack Daw love affair with Kirai. Personally I find Daw to be a large point sink that never truly covers his cost. I guess its to each his own, but I have found a strong formula for my 35 stone Kirai lists looks like this:

Kirai - 5 Stones

Lost Love - 2

5 Seishin - 10

Shikome - 8

Datsue-Ba - 7

2 Gaki - 6

I like the Gaki becasue they are fast and run up the field for a swirling spirits to get the Shikome up close with its prey quick. Also a Don't Blink Summoned Ikiryo along with her can be very devastating.

I do also like the Dead Rider or Rogue Necro idea, making them spirits with the Lost Love can be pretty deadly for your foes. Or swap out her lost love for a primordial magic. Kirai loves having cards in hand and a 7th one isn't bad. I would not reccomend this unless you are VERY confident in your ability to keep her alive though.

I do think its best for Kirai to just play with what your comfortable with. She is really good at supporting her crew. So long as you have your 5 Seishin, the rest is really personal choice.

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I find Jack Daw always pays his cost plus extra. I can almost always get a kill with him which nets 1Vp. Jack Daw works best if positioned exactly right, if you can position him exactly within 6" of a target and then jump the target from the other side with a melee model eg Ikiryo you can almost guarantee a death, which is why he's so good with Kirai she can position him for you so well. I've taken out both Tina and Criid this way with no problems.

If an opponents model takes some damage you can also easily jump him in, wack up your no cheat aura then Hangman knot them to death. Also with float, a 5" move and the fact he is amazingly hard to kill he is perfect for objective denial. Last game I ran him in he killed a Trapper giving me 1VP and jumped the Claim Jump on the last turn denying the opponents 2VP, single handedly he gave a 3VP swing.

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In general I don't bring anything with me that costs more than 3 soulstones with her. My list usually looks like

5 seishin

Datsue- ba

Lost love

Desperate merc

3 gaki

I activate Kirai, and summon to Shikome right away and heal by doing absorb spirit, I typically eat atleast one of my gaki in doing this because I want to keep my seishen for protection. After this I use datsue-ba to kill the desperate merc with weigh sins which gives me another gaki, another seishin, and Kirai gets a healing flip. A variation off of this list was to drop the gaki and bring in the dead rider, I used the lost love to turn him into a spirit which made him very potent.

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I find the same with Jack Daw - he's a big points sink. As much as you can argue that his nocheat aura, survivability, etc etc is awesome if you can position him right, there's still the matter of your opponent making it difficult to position him right.

Honestly I find that rather than trying to fudge around getting a specific model into a specific place, taking a second Shikome and simply orbitally nuking something with it has a similar game effect. Shikome deals 10 damage on its charge turn with 2 attacks, with reasonable consistency. That's insane and no amount of cheat suppressing or otherwise is going to match that.

Of course there's situations in which JD is going to be better, but the whole of Kirai and your crew's focus is going to be around pulling that off. When I can make Kirai's focus as broad as 'dump Ikiryo and get Shikome into place' she just becomes so much more of a threat; I'm very rarely failing to table, or close to table, most opponents with my current Kirai crew and that's pretty insane (I even managed a 4vp contain power against Sonnia in a tourney this weekend). Not to mention the fact that, if you approach this from a tournament angle, JD's black joker flip is a potential tournament loser alone (especially if you also run Hanged).

That said, I am going to give Jack Daw more table time. I'm going to dump the (still questionable) Datsue-Ba and probably a Seishin for him, although I'm also going to try spending that 9 points on an Insidious Madness and a Belle (+1ss). Kirai's strength is her maneuverability and though that obviously applies a lot to JD, it feels like it applies even more to having super winged Assassins demolishing people turn after turn.

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Not to mention the fact that, if you approach this from a tournament angle, JD's black joker flip is a potential tournament loser alone (especially if you also run Hanged).

Hanged won't be affected as you can normally hire them. It's only if your hiring them using Jack Daws special rule.

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I just bought a Dead Rider proxy model, so I'm going to be giving him a try this week. Will be running:

Kirai

Lost Love

5x Seishin

Dead Rider

Jack Daw

Night Terror/Insidious Madness/Belle/other filler

Anyone tried running a Dead Rider at all yet? His 3" melee range makes me a bit happier trying out Jack Daw's anticheat aura.

Hanged won't be affected as you can normally hire them. It's only if your hiring them using Jack Daws special rule.

Ah, good to know.

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We don't know, we keep looking at the dead rider... we love the model but we will need to see how much it really stacks up against a Shikome. We just started using Shikome and they are quickly becoming our MVP. It rarely fails to kill whatever it gets sent against in one activation.

Something we keep looking at for some reason is running Molly with Kirai in place of the Datsue-ba. Datsue-ba often ends up being a support model for our games and we think Molly might be better support. Being a Graverobber she will make certain that any living models that die will keep their Corpse Counters in play for later summoning fun, or for any hungry Gaki to pick up later. She also has great defensive abilities so if the lost love can make her a spirit she could also be an effective terror bomb against living crews. Kirai swirls her into the middle of a group of living models and then Molly reveals Philip. Also Molly's ability to copy spells and give a double negative twist on defense duels is very appealing.

We don't know how effective it would be, but it looks promising on paper.

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I have to chime in about Jack Daw, if you know what you are doing he is a game winner, more so with Kirai than Seamus (and hes fantastic with Seamus) as she gives him speed and helps him get to where he is needed easily. H ei s more than just a no cheat aura as well (although that is good) I know he has a wall of text for his card but have a read and you will see an awful lot of good stuff there, he is worth his ss cost without a doubt. I have won more games with him than without and he hasnt cost me any yet.

AS far as not taking him against the Dreamer, I think he works great especially if you can get him and/or a Hanged near the Dreamer as he can make the Hanged walk towards the Dreamer and hit him with one of his abilities (move towards nearest master and attack) as it specifies taht the master is to be the target of the attack it does bypass the Dreamers defenses and prove to be a nasty little surprise.

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I use them to begin scouting out, providing jump points for Kirai, and making my opponent have to keep an eye on them. I hardly ever summon anything with Kirai using her Evolve Spirit other than Shikome. I'll get the occasional Gaki from Spirit Food and the Datsue-Ba. I also want the extra models so I can out activate my opponent so that my important models go after he is totally done activating.

I still go through Seishin pretty fast though as I often will absorb one a turn fairly regularly.

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I'm actually trying out a 30ss list this weekend:

Kirai

Lost Love

Misaki

2x Onryo

5x seishin

personally, the onryo gives me decent ranged support while sitting back and holding objectives. I don't usually have much luck with datsueba. she tends to under preform for me ALL THE TIME! I like misaki and I believe with her good melee support, I will have better luck with getting across to the enemy and staking something important :) I always wanted to try turning misaki into a spirit w/ lost love, companion activate kirai and heal misaki up then target something to turn into a gaki, swirl spirits with misaki and get her into the fight !

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