Kirai help for future podcasts

[Murphy'sLawyer]

Hey there you spiritual Malifools. This is Jon from the "Through The Breach" podcast and longtime Malifaux player.

As some of you might know in our podcasts we focus on individual models and dissect them on our the "Coroner's Slab" portion on the show. Now we realized none of us have much experience with Kirai and what little we do has been underwhelming. I believe this is more to due with our meta not focussing on her enough and not learning how she and her crew really works.

I have taken up the challenge and decided I will be building a Kirai crew and learn her crews effectiveness and tricks so I can be the expert on our show when we start talking about spirits and their strengths and weaknesses.

I have read a lot of posts already about what to take with Kirai's crew and when I should hire or summon models. So I guess I am more interested in Activation orders, Synergies and tricks with Schemes.

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas (and i am sure I will discover some myself.) so please reply weather you are a listener or not. Even if you hate our show (or at least Josh's jokes *smug*, oh yeah I went there) we would like your thoughts on this crew.

And remember, I am not above Name Dropping on the show. :ninja: (It's not like we have any shame or anything.)

M.L. (Jon)

Edited December 4, 2012 by Murphy'sLawyer

[LordZombie]

Kirai is the whole reason I picked the Resurrectionist faction. Only problem was she was really hard to find in my area so she was the last master I have picked up. I hope to get her finished before the year and get some games in with her before malifaux dries up in my area. I will have to chat with a friend who has because quite good with her and have him post up some stuff.

[Murphy'sLawyer]

Thanks for the reply LordZ and i would love to hear his thoughts. Also I hope you community doesn't lose all interest in Malifaux. It really is a unique game that cam still be played and collected even if you play another addiction.

[ravenborne]

Hi there,

I am a new listener, just caught up with all the shows on a very long road trip for work. Thanks for making my journey fantastic, I am hooked!

Kirai, so much to be said. Ressers are my primary faction, and I may not be the best Kirai player but I can certainly offer some input.

I get what you are asking about activation order. She has a card full of abilities that don't necessarily apparently connect. All the best models do. So what to do first? I hope I am not over generalizing, but this is kind of how I think about her activation order.

One of the primary things you will want to do is make her into a spirit on every turn you can. This is done through "In the Spirit World". In order to be healed by herself or Datsu ba, she needs to be a spirit. Besides that, her ability to relocate and bounce around the board depends upon this spell going off. Bouncing around the board is important for a lot of reasons, I will go into that later.

So the first thing I do is see if have a Mask in my hand. If I don't, I need to get one. There a a couple ways to get one if you do not have one.

Absorb Spirit will let you sacrifice a seishin and draw two cards and then Fast basically means the action is free. But then you lose a Seishen.

This will probably give you a Mask. If not, you can do it again if you really need to. Now if you don't have a mask, you probably have a crow. So you can then summon something with either Evolve Spirit or Summon Ikyrio. Now sure she is going to take wounds but you dont really care. No one is going to kill her on the next turn, because you can send attacks to Seishen and you can sacrifice the Lost Love as well. But it's not likely to even come to that unless you are playing the most ruthless of alpha strikers. Next turn you are bound to get her in the spirit word and then heal her up.

In any case, why are you doing all this? What is the point?

Kirai can do anything. So, as with all questions concerning Malifaux crews, I ask the player to first consider what it is you are trying to accomplish. Think of the strategy. As strategies can be broken into a few main categories, I will tackle the question from that angle.

Is this an "interact" based game? If so you are going to want to focus on Kirai's movement tricks. For this both In the Spirit World and Swirl Spirits are fantastic. Having some Night Terrors around isn't bad either. Both abilities will get spirits on to objectives. I could go into far more detail about this but you get the idea.

What if its a killy strategy? What if there are some models you will need to remove? in this case I like to summon the Shikome. Models so good that even Cuddling them just changed their play style. In a Killy strategy I like to start with one of these and then summon the other. This allows them to use Hunting Partner and gain bonuses. In any case, a couple of Shikome will kill just about anything.

One last thing on that. I said In the Spirit World was good for a few reasons. Here is another: you get Kirai up the field, then she summons the Shikome, and you can even use the Don't Blink trigger to add 6 inches to the Summon distance. You can basically drop the Shikome right on top of your target.

I feel like I have only scratched the surface, but I hope that helps.

[naiatoc]

Ravenborne gave an excellent summary. He mentioned the really useful abilities she has: Swirl Spirits, In the Spirit World, Evolve Spirit, and Summon Ikyrio. Then maybe Absorb Spirit, but to be honest, I use this seldom.

My tactic is always wait as long as possible to activate Kirai. The first turn or 2 she is last. Later on I might have to activate her to pull her out of harms way, or for some Swirl Spirit tricks or something, but basically, unless there is a damn good reason to, I activate her near the end of the turn. This doesn't actually have to be last, literally. When I say 'last' I mean after all my opponents models have activated.

My reasoning behind this is 2-fold. First capitalizes on her passive-aggressive play style. I can sit back in my deployment zone nice and safe, then cast In the Spirit World and move up the board, and summon a Shikome (or Swirl Spirits a Shikome into place). With the Shikome's nimble walk and fly I can basically hit any piece on the table. If I win Initiative the following turn, all the better. I can activate the Shikome first and make another round of attacks.

What makes this trick even sweeter is that in most games I have activation control. I have more guys than he does. So when I activate Kirai, I can summon something and immediately activate it because my opponent doesn't have any models left to activate. This is what I mean when I said 'passive-aggressive play style'.

The second reason I wait until the end is that I like to use Swirl Spirits to move my guys into a sweet position for next turn. If all my opponents guys are where they are going to be for top of the next turn, then I get the last word. I get to put stuff in a good place for me.

[underdog6750]

Another usefull tactic for kirai is to activate her first whilst you have a good hand. Cast in the spirit world give her reactivate and then with you final instinctual (0) use uncontrolled crying. This will give her pitifull and should any damage get through and you have no seshin in base to base contact she will only recieve half damage provided it is from a mundane source.

Then take up the next 5 activations using seishin to either spiritually empower other spirits (+2 cb) or moving into a good position to swirl with something a lot better in cc ie shikome with cb8 lol.

By the time you have done this most of your opponents activations are used up. Also if you have the insidious madness keep him to the rear untill its safe to put him forward giving opponents a neg flip to will power (shikome ikyrio and onryo can all attack wp and ignore armour attack with ther cb +2 if you have spiritually empowered them)

For the rest of the turn its a case of activating at your will. With this tactic always think at least a turn a head as your spirits can potentailly be outside the 8" of kirai to be turned into seishin. Also the tactic of reactivating is pretty card dependant but can be pretty usefull for getting in some extra spirit food actions etc.

[PeregrineFalcon]

While I agree with all mentioned above, one thing I have to say about Kirai is that if you don't have the suits of cards you need in your hand you will need to be creative. There is no doubt Kirai is an amazing master, but you need to keep in mind that your hand heavily influences what you may do on a particular turn. Be patient with her, you def. Want into the spirit world to go off. If necessary take a turn to build a hand. Use your minions to put a little pressure and next turn be ready to pull off a big summon round.

Activation wise I go back and forth on how late she goes, while the element of surprise is nice by going towards the end. Going early (of course with the right cards) has the chance of putting some hurt on. Summoning a shikome is always of high priority due to it not getting slow. Personally dropping a shikome and ikyro in the line of any charge lanes is a big defensive advantage.

I do actually like using absorb spirit if something is in a bad position. Just summon it back next turn.

I haven't played her in a while and your post has excited me to get her back on the table.

P.S. Typing this on my phone. So excuse any typos

[Richelieu]

Lord Z.. Malifaux drying up in the Omaha area? Has Aceshigh approved this message?!? What is wrong with you people!!!!

[AcesHigh]

Lord Z.. Malifaux drying up in the Omaha area? Has Aceshigh approved this message?!? What is wrong with you people!!!!

AcesHigh does not approve that message. Things always slow down this time of year. I don't think a few slow weeks in December is the death of a gaming group. We do need some new blood, since many of the younger players are now finding themselves with work commitments on Saturday mornings. I do think we need to do some active recruiting again. We've had several people poke their heads in and ask what we're playing, only to recieve a 1 word answer. I'm as guilty as anyone, but we really need to do something about the cold shoulder nature of some of our group. Maybe we need to find a better way to advertise as well. It seems that we game in a dark scary corner of the store, with little to no indication that the room is open to the public. Perhaps a big sign that says something like "Game room. Come and play" would help. I don't know. But we still have the same core of players we've had for 2 years with an newer player or 2. We've lost some of the newer additions to the group, and I think that is on us. We need to be more outgoing. It probably wouldn't hurt to bring some of them in on our other game nights, Maybe find an open day at the lair and start getting people in for hobby nights where we paint and build terrain. Just some thoughts.

I know you're a rezzer, and you thrive in doom and gloom, but maybe we ought to try to be a bit more positive, eh?

[Richelieu]

Hey there you spiritual Malifools. This is Jon from the "Through The Breach" podcast and longtime Malifaux player.

As some of you might know in our podcasts we focus on individual models and dissect them on our the "Coroner's Slab" portion on the show. Now we realized none of us have much experience with Kirai and what little we do has been underwhelming. I believe this is more to due with our meta not focussing on her enough and not learning how she and her crew really works.

I have taken up the challenge and decided I will be building a Kirai crew and learn her crews effectiveness and tricks so I can be the expert on our show when we start talking about spirits and their strengths and weaknesses.

I have read a lot of posts already about what to take with Kirai's crew and when I should hire or summon models. So I guess I am more interested in Activation orders, Synergies and tricks with Schemes.

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas (and i am sure I will discover some myself.) so please reply weather you are a listener or not. Even if you hate our show (or at least Josh's jokes *smug*, oh yeah I went there) we would like your thoughts on this crew.

And remember, I am not above Name Dropping on the show. :ninja: (It's not like we have any shame or anything.)

M.L. (Jon)

Bravo. This allows me to NOT have to rush to get Kirai on the table for the very same purpose. Although I do hope to have enough experience to allow me to speak intelligently for once.

[Murphy'sLawyer]

Bang on replies everyone. (But I think Mark needs to play nicer. )

I will be testing these ideas out soon and from the looks of Kirai's rules it all sounds just about right. Now I just need to find a good minion to dissect and the Shikome looks lovely.

As for getting more players into the mix AcesHigh it will take some tricky Henchman work. Be talkative and friendly to all spectators and always bring a fun competitive list instead of a serious competitive list when you aren't playing your good buds. Also encourage your long timers to expand out so when new players come to play that aren't being Noob Poached. (Not saying you guys do that but I knew a Henchman that did that and it really didn't help.)

Wait..... Poaching is something you do with eggs not Noobs. Ehh, you get what i mean.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Murphy'sLawyer

[GTDemon777]

The problem with Kirai really shows in smaller point games: Seishin. They're essentially the lifeblood of a Kirai crew and are amazing. Small problem, you're devoting 6-10SS on them alone making it harder to fit in some hard hitters. If you can't utilize Shikome or Ikiryo enough, it'll be harder to fit in hard hitters. That being said, utilizing Shikome/Ikiryo actually isnt that hard to utilize, especially by surprising people with a TWELVE INCH RANGE SUMMON OF UNGODLINESS. Turn 2, waited till my opponent activated everything, summoned Shikome, walked into rasputina with nimble, delivered message, opponent argued about this for about half an hour, glared, shook my hand, and said good game. Speaking of which, mobility is what i think Kirai is all about. With the swapping, teleporting, and summoning she can do. Even her avatar is ridiculously mobile with that (0) push. Anyways, despite how spirits take half damage from non-magic sources, they can still get easily injured w/o magic since they're Def is usually sub-par. In other words, i recommend being careful and utilize your mobility to ambush people. This is very easy with Shikome since you can just walk through a wall, finish off a model, and walk back behind the wall.

[Murphy'sLawyer]

Well I do play Gremlins so I don't go for the extremely in your face approach and tend to use more tricks to bait and switch. I also plag Lilith as a more support piece for the first half of a game using her crews speed and transposition to get an edge. So I think theses tactics are right up my alley.

But thanks for the warning GTDemon

[LordZombie]

The problem with Kirai really shows in smaller point games: Seishin. They're essentially the lifeblood of a Kirai crew and are amazing. Small problem, you're devoting 6-10SS on them alone making it harder to fit in some hard hitters. If you can't utilize Shikome or Ikiryo enough, it'll be harder to fit in hard hitters. That being said, utilizing Shikome/Ikiryo actually isnt that hard to utilize, especially by surprising people with a TWELVE INCH RANGE SUMMON OF UNGODLINESS. Turn 2, waited till my opponent activated everything, summoned Shikome, walked into rasputina with nimble, delivered message, opponent argued about this for about half an hour, glared, shook my hand, and said good game. Speaking of which, mobility is what i think Kirai is all about. With the swapping, teleporting, and summoning she can do. Even her avatar is ridiculously mobile with that (0) push. Anyways, despite how spirits take half damage from non-magic sources, they can still get easily injured w/o magic since they're Def is usually sub-par. In other words, i recommend being careful and utilize your mobility to ambush people. This is very easy with Shikome since you can just walk through a wall, finish off a model, and walk back behind the wall.

While true you do need to take seishin, Kirai is by no mean the master with less models in her crew. One of the comments we always make about our Kirai player (that not being me, just sounds wierd) is that if you are playing 25 soul stones, he is playing 40. Kirai's abilities to summon are top notch. I almost never see our player fail to cast a summon and by end of turn 2, is almost doubled his model count. So low soul stone don't really hurt Kirai much. This is even more true when that 8 soul stone model only cost you 2 soul stones.

[underdog6750]

You can always use the old datsue ba killing a desperate merc aswell. Do this last so you can get kirai to make a healing flip after her summoning shenanningans and you will get a seishin a gaki/onryo and a healing flip for the cost of 2ss and 1 possibly 2 ap (card dependent)

So even in low point games you can still get enough spirits to achieve your aims for half there cost jst watch out for magic/magic heavy crews ie sonnia etc.

[Murphy'sLawyer]

You can always use the old datsue ba killing a desperate merc aswell. Do this last so you can get kirai to make a healing flip after her summoning shenanningans and you will get a seishin a gaki/onryo and a healing flip for the cost of 2ss and 1 possibly 2 ap (card dependent)

So even in low point games you can still get enough spirits to achieve your aims for half there cost jst watch out for magic/magic heavy crews ie sonnia etc.

Oh, now that is just rude. I might have to try it.*grin*

[Zephir]

With Kirai I usually also take a Canine and do the Gaki trick with Datsue two times. turns 4 soulstones into 10 with no real loss of speed becasue Kirai just puts her minions where ever she wants them.

When I play Kirai I actually have a Base Crew, that I always take. Everything else is just gravy on top of it.

Kirai

Lost Love

3 Seishin

Canine

Desperate Merc

Datsue Ba

Insideous Madness

Kirai can out activate pretty much anyone in the game. Its tough to beat 5-6 models just passing their activations turns 1 and 2 while you wait for you opponent to finish up so you can drop Ikiryo and Shikome on them.

[underdog6750]

I usually dont pass i spiritually empower models and send one forward. Then swirls spirits with that and a shikome. If it wasnt summoned then thats a bonus as you can nimble forward and usually walk twice into melee range and you now have fast if you are with in 4" of your prey. Then attack with a positive on attack and damage flips. If the target is fairly close ie turn 2 or 3 then cast spitual combination on her before she heads off and she can reactivate. Thats pretty filthy play though yo be fair lol.

Edited December 5, 2012 by underdog6750

[ravenborne]

Oh' date=' now that is just rude. I might have to try it.*grin*[/quote']

It works well but I have found that it burns the clock, and if I think I am under time pressure I may not do it, so be advised, because your opponent may ask you to slow down and explain what the heck you are doing.

[Murphy'sLawyer]

It works well but I have found that it burns the clock, and if I think I am under time pressure I may not do it, so be advised, because your opponent may ask you to slow down and explain what the heck you are doing.

I hear you, luckly our meta is very fun oriented and not overly competitive so stopping to explain an action is fine. Also I am one of the guys that everyone asks rules questions from so this would be a minor inconvenience for me.

Heck i even have to correct my Henchman and cohost on the rules for LOS becuase Josh forgets to read the first sentence. :-P

Love ya Josh buddy.

Edited December 5, 2012 by Murphy'sLawyer

[naiatoc]

I usually dont pass i spiritually empower models and send one forward. Then swirls spirits with that and a shikome. If it wasnt summoned then thats a bonus as you can nimble forward and usually walk twice into melee range and you now have fast if you are with in 4" of your prey. Then attack with a positive on attack and damage flips. If the target is fairly close ie turn 2 or 3 then cast spitual combination on her before she heads off and she can reactivate. Thats pretty filthy play though yo be fair lol.

Yes. This is exactly how you should do it, now that the Prey rules changed. I use to swear up and down never... I mean NEVER start with a Shikome. It's so much better to summon them where and when you need them. But that was before the errata... now I think taking 1 to start is the way to go. It's the best way to get their Prey bonus, which is really sweet.

The other way, of course, is to spend the AP to declare a new Prey. But this is an (all) action. I don't like doing this. It's better to just start with a Shikome in play.

[CrouchingMoose]

I usually dont pass i spiritually empower models and send one forward. Then swirls spirits with that and a shikome. If it wasnt summoned then thats a bonus as you can nimble forward and usually walk twice into melee range and you now have fast if you are with in 4" of your prey. Then attack with a positive on attack and damage flips. If the target is fairly close ie turn 2 or 3 then cast spitual combination on her before she heads off and she can reactivate. Thats pretty filthy play though yo be fair lol.

Something to remember about shikome is that they can never receive slow or paralyzed. So it really doesn't matter if they weren't summoned or not. You can still get the nimble plus the 2 walks.

[underdog6750]

@naiatoc as much as i love starting with a shikome unfortunately i cant lol. All of the presenters on the soulstone train made a vow for the year. Mine was to not stsrt with her lol.