Our group has taken to playing Malifaux again. Between the highly competitive nature of Warmachine/Hordes (which makes it a poor choice for unwinding during the week) and the recent kick off of the Wave 3 beta it's been a pretty great time for us to dust off our card decks and get back to tempting Fate.
Malifaux is a game I sort of stumbled into, and I never really "picked" a faction per se. I started off playing Lilith because she seemed neat (turned out: she was a complete monster in M1E) then eventually found my own Mailfaux Harkevich with M1E Marcus. Throughout all of those games, I never really set myself on a Faction, just a set of models that I liked.
Moving in M2E, I wanted to focus more on Factions than individual Masters. I've grown my Arcanist, Neverborn, and Ten Thunders collections up to the point where I have a few Masters for each of those factions, and a decent distribution of models for them to work with (though I'm still working on growing them as the M2E releases trickle out.) Of the three, Ten Thunders is the faction I'm most interested in focusing on, so I've been trying to play them more and more often.
It's been very fun - Ten Thunders is an extremely diverse faction, while still possessing some solid themes - and I wanted to share some of the thoughts and impressions I have from the models I've been using. Musings begin after the break.
Fair warning: a lot of the games I've been playing recently have been Misaki focused (as she's the one I've used the least up to now,) so most of the models I'll be talking about are ones that are at least associated with her.
Misaki
Misaki a very fun Master to use, and very different from most of the ones I've run so far. She's similar to Marcus and Lilith, in that all of their best damage is going to come from melee, but unlike those Masters Misaki offers her army precious little support. All of her abilities on her card are focused on either getting her into combat, messing with the enemy, or moving her around, and even her upgrades only add incidental crew support.
That's a pretty big change from all of the Masters I've played in the past who have all either been hybrids or, more recently, ranged focused. Having a Master that really needs to dig in to pull her weight is very different.
Misaki's mobility is extremely fun. Between Diving Charge, her pushes, pushes from other sources, and potentially Stalk, and whatever else you can come up with, it's pretty easy for her to get wherever the hell she wants. And she has two great Ml attacks to use to either carve up a single model or spread Blasts around.
My biggest issues with Misaki are that a) similar to Butcher3 in WM/H, I'm having issues adjusting to playing someone that relies on being more aggressive, and b) I'm having a helluva time choosing upgrades with her game-by-game. Both of those things will get better with practice, and I've already started to learn which upgrades I should take in sets, which ones she wants consistently, etc. Now I just need to work on using her more aggressively, effectively. Picking more useful upgrades should help there as well.
Shang
Shang is a frustrating model. He feels underpowered relative to other Totems, and he doesn't bring a whole lot for his 3 SS. The two best things he has are that he brings in some card cycling (which is admittedly pretty useful,) and healing on Misaki (also nice, but she's so mobile that he's hard pressed to keep up.)
I also may just be spoiled due to having some great-to-fantastic Totems with some of my other Masters. I really like the Wendigo, Emberling, and of course Hungering Darkness (but that's kind of cheating,) while I can give-or-take Totems like the Jackalope or the Cherub, which are much lower impact models. Shang is at least a cheap activation and I'll use him since I have him painted, but he's an easy cut if I'm looking for more SS.
Ototo
Ototo is another hard model to love. He's a slow, melee focused Henchman, which often end up being some of the hardest models to get a good return on. The upsides are that he's fairly durable (for not having Armor +X), he's pretty good at clubbing things to death, and he's pretty good at holding down an area thanks to his immunity to enemy pushes/forced movement, along with his 3" Ml range.
Ototo is one of those models that I like a lot more alongside some of the new stuff that's come out with the Wave 2 cards. An upgrade like Smoke Bombs can do a lot to offset his biggest weakness - having to endure attacks until he can get into position - and Wave 2 introduced a fair amount of healing and Pushes into Ten Thunders, both things that he can make good use of. I think Ototo is still a bit of a hard sell - Wp 4 is rough in a lot of situations - but at least I feel better about using him now.
Ototo is also one of those models that you absolutely need to bring in the proper context of Strategy and Schemes. He's a slow, reasonably durable model that is meant to post up in an area and keep it safe via threat of clubbing. Some models switch between different roles well, but Ototo is kind of a crummy scenario runner, so make sure to bring him into fights that play to his strengths. He doesn't really switch up roles well.
Torukage
I love these ninjas. They're self sufficient models that have good stats (very good defensive stats), solid damage output, some flexibility (though their ranged attack is very weak), and the ability to be super mobile and provide some cover if you take Smoke & Shadows somewhere in your crew (which you really should if you're taking more than one of these.)
The Torukage occupy what I've found to be the hardest SS slot to get "right" in terms of model feel: the 6 SS cost slot. For whatever reason (maybe it's just me) but it seems much easier for a model to feel like it's worth 5 or 7 SS. 6 seems to be that tipping point where you get to start to be powerful, but not too powerful.
This manifests itself in the Torukage being solid offensively when they're on their own, but kind of weak when they engage in group fights (and weak if they're throwing Shurikens around.) They also have pretty great defensive stats for a Minion, but to balance that they have nothing backing up those stats; if they get hit 2-3 times, they're going into the dirt.
All that combines to make the Torukage somewhat finicky models that are nevertheless very fun to use, and rewarding when they work out. This is one of those models that actually plays the way the fluff suggests it would (something Malifaux does very well sometimes) which makes it a very fun, rewarding Minion model to use.
Yamaziko
Yamaziko is fantastic. She's a dirt cheap Henchman, which gives any Ten Thunders crew (most specifically, Misaki's crew) a very easy to include caddy for certain upgrades. She's more mobile than her stats imply thanks to Nimble, and she's has a very consistent, respectable damage track (with a built-in trigger to add a Blast to the attack.) Yamaziko is also surprisingly stout defensively, between Stubborn, Relentless, SS use, and Brace Yari for controlling space.
Yamaziko's biggest let downs are her low-ish Df (though 4 might be closer to average in Malifaux now,) lack of any other defensive tech (swords and bullets will take her apart relatively quickly unless you burn SS on keeping her alive,) and the flatness of her damage track (though it does make her great against models relying on Hard to Wound to avoid high damage.)
Even with those drawbacks, it's hard not to have Yamaziko pull her weight during the game. She can hang around models you want to protect with Brace Yari, then easily transition into offense or scheme running thanks to Nimble. And all the while she can be carrying around some nice "enabling" Upgrades.
Kang
Although he is most often included with Mei Feng, Kang is also a general Ten Thunders model (not even dual faction Arcanist, which was probably the right call.) He shares a similar space to Ototo - slow, durable melee model - though he brings along some nice side benefits that make him applicable in different match ups.
The biggest and best thing that Kang has going for him is that he gives out a tremendous buff to nearby crew members against Undead or Construct models. That can be a huge deal against crews containing those models, especially since Ten Thunders models usually don't attrition very well; you want to get in there and cause as much damage as possible, as fast as possible. Gaining a positive twist to attack and damage is a great way to do that. And, as an added and often necessary bonus, Kang also makes nearby models immune to Horror Duels. Not only is your crew going to be better at beating up Undead, but now they're also not going to run screaming from them either (give or take some Hanged.)
Comparing Kang to Ototo, I'm surprised by how similar they are. It's not hard to see why many players just opt for Kang. Ototo has a little more durability than Kang - 12 Wds, easier to self-heal (though not as potent) - and more melee reach, but Kang has a better damage track, higher Ml (at least until Ototo is Enraged,) and brings his passive buffs along. All for 1 SS cheaper. I can see situations where I'd be willing to take Ototo over Kang, but seeing as how I've been fighting a lot of Resurrectionists recently, I think Kang will be in a lot of my crews.
Thunder Archer
These models have some serious issues. They have two solid Sh attacks as well as the ability to accumulate plenty of Focus easily (for potent shots,) but that's pretty much all they have going for them. Their defensive stats are kind of pathetic - Df 4 with a painful 5 Wds - and they have no way to extract themselves from combat other than their Df trigger (which relies on success...off Df 4.) All for the low? low? cost of 7 SS.
Even if the Katanaka Snipers didn't exist (which are better in every measurable way, for the same cost) the Thunder Archers don't make a very compelling case for a 7 SS investment. They're highly specialized models that aren't even that good at their job (any sort of Cover throws them out of whack) which makes them inflexible (too squishy and often out of position to try and transition to objective running). The best thing the Thunder Archers have going for them is their Hail of Hachinosu attack, which allows them to make a shot that ignores LoS and can generate Blast templates. But that attack also doesn't ignore Cover, so you're often struggling just to hit with it, let along generate any meaningful damage.
The one saving grace for the Thunder Archers may be the Blot The Sky upgrade that came with the Wave 2 cards. It allows for a free (2) Sh Attack Action at the end of the Turn, which allows you to: a) Focus during the Archer's activation, then use it to drop attacks into the enemy crew with a whole heap of positives to attack and damage flips, b) get a bonus shot every Turn from your models, which can be helpful if your opponent can't always be hugging Cover, and c) reposition your Archers, either out of combat (yay!) or into a position where they can leverage their Rapid Fire ability to decent effect.
I'm not sure that's it's enough to really make the Archers "worth it", but that upgrade did help in the game I used them. Without it, the Archers wouldn't have done anything at all useful, but with it they were at least able to keep the tide of arrows coming. With more practice in positioning them and making use of the discard ability on the Upgrade, I can see it being just enough to make me field them in some crews. Which is a marked improvement over where they were prior to that upgrade.
Rail Worker
Most obviously a Mei Feng model, I've been using these guys with Misaki here and there since there aren't a lot of other 5 SS options available at the moment (I'm trying to avoid proxying as much as I can.) Even just using these guys as tanky little melee beaters, the Rail Workers are solid for their cost. Their (0) action is a great way to convert a crappy hand into some solid buffs, and they're pretty irritating to get rid of if you're lucky with Tomes on Df flips (or if you have a few you're willing to cheat in.)
There's not a lot to be said about them in the context of a crew with zero inherent synergy with them (they were the only Foundry and/or Scrap related model I had in the crew,) but I think that speaks to their general value. And in a crew that can make use of the specific benefits they bring to the table - if nothing else, any Ten Thunders crew can bring Toshiro to get summons off of them - they're that much better.
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Now that our group is playing more Malifaux, I'll probably have a lot more to say about it. I might even cobble together a battle report! I've found Malifaux battle reports kind of draining in the past, but hopefully taking turn-by-turn pictures helps the writing go faster, as it does with Warmachine/Hordes batreps.
I'm also hoping to use more of the models I haven't put on the table yet in the coming weeks. I've been fleshing out my Ten Thunders with new models for awhile now - still have yet to use Fuhatsu, any Samurai, or the Monks of Low River - and there are even entire crews I haven't played yet (Pandora and her woes.)
Since our group seems to want to use our weekly get together for Malifaux more often, I should be able to get some table time in with all of those models, and come back with more thoughts and impressions. Until then, thanks very much for reading!
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