Mistress+Misaki

include page="inc_1.5rules" **Misaki, Mistress of the Ten Thunders, Ten Thunders Master** toc

=Overview= Misaki is a ninja assassin type master. She has decent combat stats with some triggers that make her downright nasty. Her defense is one of the highest in the game, with a decent amount of wounds, and a well above average Willpower to back that all up against spells. She also has the ability to have a lot of actions, which she can use to kill whatever she focuses on. That being said, be prepared to use a good number of resources to keep Misaki alive. In short, Misaki is a cruise missile that likes a crew that can support her mission to eliminate anything and everything in her path, by keeping the heat off of her.

=Mobility= Misaki has decent mobility with a Wk/Cg of 5/8 and Diving Attack. One movement trick to be aware of is her trigger on Downburst which gives her a push, in addition to enemy models which she can use to move herself out of combat, since it is a push effect, she won't take any disengaging strikes.

=Offense=

Melee
Misaki is definitely a melee master. While she has some support abilities, her Melee Expert plus Reckless and the "Your'e Mine" action definitely make her a formidable opponent. Keep in mind though, that she doesn't necessarily have the same ability to destroy things that masters such as Lillith and Lady Justice have. Her Decapitate trigger requires a Ram, but is immensely useful, especially if they are out of soulstones or cards. And she can help get rid of those soulstones with another trigger, Cutpurse which requires a mask, or simply a pilfer action. She is suited to killing one thing at a time, using You're Mine to get positives to her attack and damage flips.

She also has her familiar Ten Thunders Strike (10T Strike) trigger, also on rams, from her minion days which gives her a positive twist to damage. Players generally tend to focus on one of her two ram triggers, with Decapitate generally trumping 10T strike since it makes your opponent discard resources or instantly lose a model, but 10T strike definitely has its place and shouldn't be forgotten.

Ranged/Spells
There is absolutely nothing to be said about her ranged offense. Except that it doesn't exist. She's a ninja, did you really want her to shoot stuff?

=Resilience=

Vs. Ranged
The one place where she actually has something besides her high defense, Misaki has bulletproof which makes her pretty hard to kill at range.

Vs. Melee
Besides having a good defense, and decent Wounds, Misaki doesn't have much special here, although it is worth noting You're Mine can be used defensively. By putting You're Mine on a weaker model after making a strike against them at the end of Misaki's activation, you can give everything else negative twists to their melee attack flips when they try and attack her. However that means you have to really think about when you use You're Mine, if the target dies she looses any benefits from it.

=Soulstones= Misaki likes having soulstones, but they aren't necessarily the most important thing for her. Most often she uses them to up her defensive flips against big attacks, or to get hard to beat attack totals on Decapitate attacks. Usually you will want to run her with one or two extras on top of her cache if you can.

=Tricks and Tips=

The Toraswap
This combo is a great way to get MIsaki in and out of trouble, but requires quite the alpha strike. It requires taking a Ten Thunders Brother, and two Torakage. Misaki activates and companions the Ten Thunders Brother, who companions both Torakage. One Torakage moves up and uses Mistaken Identity to swap with Misaki, then Misaki makes her four attacks, then the second Torakage pulls her out with Mistaken Identity leaving her safe and sound.

=Strategies and Schemes for Misaki= Misaki likes Strategies and Schemes that are suited towards a mobile crew. She has access to a large number of mobile minions, and has a fair number of ways to keep them alive and out of trouble.

New Ten Thunders Schemes
Misaki has a Master specific scheme that requires she steal more soulstones from the crew using Pilfer than the crew has left at the end of the game. This requires it be announced. The problem with this scheme is that they can simply refuse to spend soulstones, requiring you to steal a good number, or they can spend them before Misaki can steal any. This scheme is a lot of fun to use against some crews, I find it being most useful against crews like Rasputina, or crews with multiple Use Soulstones models. This scheme can sometimes be useful with Assasination. Steal their soulstones, then kill them.

=Misaki in Brawls= Being the Mistress of the Ten Thunders, Misaki synergizes relatively well with any of the Ten Thunders masters in a brawl.

=Building a Crew= At least one Ten Thunders Brother is almost a must, since almost everything in Misaki's crew will be in the Ten Thunders faction.

=Starting Misaki= Misaki's box set comes with 29ss worth of models - 3 Torakage, shang, and Ototo. This is a nice basis for a crew, and easy to expand upon.

3 Torakage might be a bit much for most games, so there are various packs of models you could get to sub in. Ten thunder brothers, Ten thunder archers, Oiran, and ronin would all make worthy purchases. These all come in packs of three, so you can try various things out and see what combinations suit you.

There are some support models you could also get. Yamaziko is a 6ss model, which would take your initial crew up to 35 with a single purchase. She has use soulstones, heals the crew, and buffs misaki, along with a decent combat attack. After that, you could try out the various 8pt melee model options instead of ototo. You have access to all the dual faction models, so kang, toshiro, taelor, and graves. After this, there are also a lot of dual faction cheap minions you could try, such as wastrels.

=Playing Against Misaki= Misaki is an assassin and likes to be in your face, additionally she doesn't have any way of ignoring armor or other defensive abilities so swarming her with a lot of armored minions can work - though be aware of her movement tricks. Since she's bulletproof shooting her to death is much more difficult, but not impossible. Her main weakness, in my opinion, is other heavy hitters such as Izamu, Kang, or other melee-centric masters such as Lady J who can damage her during her own activation and then bring the hurt when they activate.

Unless otherwise stated, all names and images on this site are property of Wyrd Miniatures, LLC. ([|Link])
 * __Ownership__ **