Kirai Vs Lady J, 30ss

[Da Git]

alrighty, I am fairly new to malifaux after playing 40k for a while... i have had one intro game (me lileath vs Lady J, loss) and this was my second game (against same opponent) with kirai against hoffman (massacre to me), so after a fair bit of soul searching on his part tonights game was a bit of a rematch. Note we did forget a few samll things thoughout the game (not sure if it would have majorly effected it, might have slowed me down a little)

My Crew...

Kirai

Lost Love

Datsue-ba

Shikome

Gaki

5*Seishin

3SS cache

His Crew

Lady J

Judge

Peacekeeper

3*Death Marshels

6SS Cache

Strategies & Schemes

Me: slaughter, Bodyguard & sieze ground

Him:reconnoiter (ouch!), kill protege (shikome) & (something which i never found out)

note: we revealed all the above schemes bar the one i never knew.

Setup, standard over a bit of a villige with 2 swamps, a few kill lanes but plenty of cover and severe terrain (not that that affects spirits!) i had kirai with seishin hidden behind one of my central buildings & shikome, Gaki & Datsue-ba behind building on my left. facing them were the Judge, J & peacekeeper with the deathmarshels facing kira's lot.

Turn 1

I go first, I activate & pass with all my seishin while he moves up (he also does defensive stance with peacekeeper which we subsequently forget). I move my gaki into an attacking position for some shenagans... next comes Kirai, spirits next to gaki, spirit foods judge, swirls it for shikome, & summons Ikiryo right next to peacekeeper. Ikiryo does five damage on peacekeeper, Shikome kills judge and the datsue-ba moves up heals kirai a wound. Meanwhile the gaki from judge attacks lady taking off 2 wounds (wow!)

Brutal first turn, I've killed one of his major models severely wounded another & tied up Lady.

Turn 2.

He goes first, flurries Peacekeeper against shikome killing her while her back was turned (i thought this was rather unsporting tbh!!) however ikiryo takes revenge healing kirai some more & then attacking one of the death marshels (nada though). He then tries to pine box it with another marshal but fails. I move a seishin into a better position for in preparation for a coup de grace. the lady then proceeds to butcher the gaki in one swing, then moves up to try & repeat on the ikiryo, finding it is made of sterner stuff but taking 4 wds. I then go for some Kirai shenagans again, spiriting next to a seishin, saccing another seishin & mortally wounded ikiryo for another shikome (thanks to a ss) & swirling Datsue-ba with the first Seishin (although he was lucky as even with another ss, i failed to get a second shikome...). He moves up a deathmarshel up and failes to shoot Shikome. In return she ignores him & goes for the throat, attaking the lady. A flurry of high cards later sees her in the dust.

He concedes, he cant archieve any more of his objectives & all i needed to do was summon a gaki or such onto my sieze ground for full points.

wow, another brutal game.

It highlights the power of kirai & especially shikome (as did the first game) I am also learning few more tricks to use her even better. I could bring my powerful models into position so that they could hit where & when i chose & there was very little he could do to stop me.

so a little bit of a question, was there anything he could have done better? how does one defeat Kirai (as neither of us can think of a way to stop her...)?

Cheers & thanks for reading.

[Iamwyrd]

Nce write up.

Against kirai considering it seems you play her aggressively, they need to play defensively. With lady j its already a tough battle for her because, she has no magical weapons or spells. And you killing the judge that early didn't help. So I would say play defensively, let them come to you while slowly moving up and taking some pot shots at them. Other than that I would say sonnia or rasputina, or the Vic's, anything magical or that does magic damage.

[dakrulz55]

witchling stalkers also give kirai alot of trouble as they are cb6 w/crit strike built in and magical. also having df5 and higher wp makes it tough to actually hit. also the executioner is a tough one to put down as shikomes are the only model to put him down in a turn, and having him protected buy the guardian meens kirais in alota trouble.

[osoi]

Witchling Stalkers are a great addition to a Lady J crew. You want to try and put Kirai on the back foot so you can complete your strategies and schemes and not let her dictate the flow of the game, even if a Witchling doesnt kill anything they will be targeted as they are a threat or avoided. The judge is a worthwhile minion to bring along as well.

Lucius can also give you a lot of mobility with his Reinforcements spell making it easier to go on the offensive as well and combat her her insane maneuverability.

[bucket_boy101]

Hi all, I was the poor fellow on the receiving end of all the pain. I was a bit disheartened when I lost the three most expensive models in my crew and only achieved 2 VP. That said, flipping Recconoitre against Kirai was going to be hard anyway.

As I said to you O&F Git, I will have to get Sonnia's box, and then her avatar, and then Sue and then.....

[FearLord]

That said, flipping Recconoitre against Kirai was going to be hard anyway.

Based on games I've seen / played I would say that Reconoitre is one of the harder strategies in general (until you get to higher point games). It doesn't take many losses to completely negate your ability to complete it (unless you spam cheap minions specifically for it...) - I would have considered burning a stone for a reflip in your situation, as that was always going to be hard to win...