M2E+Fuhatsu


 * Fuhatsu, Ten Thunders Henchman**



=__Overview__=

toc Fuhatsu was a great warrior before the accident... Now he is a rage filled madman with a huge Gatling Gun that can't even keep his pants up. Basically, Fuhatsu is a very hard to take down firebase and has potential for insane firepower, though he has no melee presence whatsoever.

=__Mobility__=

Fuhatsu's mobility is one of the lowest in the game. He has a **Wk** of 4 and no **Cg** stat, so that's pretty much all you get. To stack on top of that, he has the **Braced** ability which means that nobody can push him or move him outside of Fuhatsu taking a **Walk** action. **Braced** happens to be a good thing and a bad thing, good in that it protects you from movement shenanigans from the opponent, so no Rotten Belle's will be luring you out of position and so on, but the bad part is that you can't use your own push tricks to help Fuhatsu move his fat ass on the table. Also, keep in mind that **Braced** doesn't stop enemy models from using **Obey** to make him **Walk**, though on the flipside, neither does it stop friendly models.

Fuhatsu has another movement trick on his arsenal which is the 1 **AP** tactical action, **Madman with a Gatling Gun**. This is an easy **Ml** action that works on any 4+ and causes a 3" pulse which forces a **TN** 17 **Wp** or the enemy model that fails is pushed 3" away from Fuhatsu. This ability is mostly to get models off Fuhatsu once they engage them so he can keep doing his job of shooting people in the face, and with a **TN** of 17, there are very good odds whatever he is flailing that huge gun at will want to get some distance. Even though it's a high **TN**, be prepared to have your opponent blow a high card to keep Fuhatsu engaged and honest.

The **Madman with a Gatling Gun** action also has the **Fools!** trigger, activated with a ram, which lets him take a shot at one of the models that were pushed by the action as long as he isn't engaged. This is pretty nice since it lets Fuhatsu keep momentum by still being able to shoot even if engaged in a given turn.

=__Offense__=

Fuhatsu is a ranged piece. He has two similar attacks, though each one has it's time and place and both have very extreme damage tracks.

Steam Gatling Burst
This is Fuhatsu's 1 **AP** attack action. It is a **Sh** 6 ranged attack that targets **Df**, reaches 12" and has the incredibly uneven damage track of 2/5/6. It also has a + on the attack flip, which is nice to keep stop cover from being too much of an issue, at least initially. The action has no triggers, but the big thing to take right of the bat is that huge moderate damage. You will really really really want to use **Focused** with Fuhatsu to get the most out of his gun simply because of how high his moderate and severe damage is, specially compared to his weak, since 2 shots hitting at weak damage are still doing less damage than a single moderate shot.

Steam Gatling Sweep
This is Fuhatsu's 2 **AP** ranged attack action. It is very similar to the Burst with a **Sh** 6, targets **Df** and reaches 12", but the damage is now 2/5B/6B. Also, it has +++ to attack flips instead of just +, but the attack flip can't be cheated. The action also has the **Sweeping Fire** trigger which requires a ram, and if it works, it lets Fuhatsu, if he damages, take this action against a different target that hasn't already been targeted this turn by a **Steam Gatling Sweep**.

This is what makes Fuhatsu be scary and potentially become a world ender, but for it to be as horribly crippling as it can hope to be, it requires some setup, and frankly, a gamblers heart. Right of the bat, on severe, it is causing 5 damage on the blast which is the highest in the game. Then there is also the +++ which greatly increases the odds to get a good card to hit (though beware the black joker, you will cycle your deck at an insane rate with this), but not being able to cheat means you really have no control of what will happen and you will have to consider heavily if you want to blow stones to get the ram he needs to activate **Sweeping Fire** while hoping you flip high enough for it not to be a waste.

=__Resilience__=

Fuhatsu's defensive stats are pretty bad, **Df** 4, **Wp** 5 and **Wd** 8 is nothing to be proud of when you are a 10 SS model. He more than makes up for it with it though with **Armor +2**, which lets him reduce all damage he takes by 2 (minimum of 1), **Hard to Wound +1**, which means all damage flips against Fuhatsu have an additional - flip and finally, the **Juggernaut** 0 action, which heals him 1/2/4 at the cost of discarding a card.

Adding all these tricks you can see that it is pretty hard to get a straight flip on Fuhatsu, and since weak damage 4 and upward is very very rare, pretty much all attacks will just be causing 1 **Wd** on him. Add to that how his 0 action has the potential to recover half his life and he has no other 0 actions to compete with it. Finally, if that wasn't enough, as a stone user, he can still use Soulstones to prevent damage, adding another layer to how bloody hard he is to hurt. To sum it up, he is a very tough cookie to take down, though anything that ignores armor will take him down a lot quicker and he is still susceptible to debuffs that may disable him.

=__Upgrades__=

Now lets look at the upgrade Fuhatsu has access to, though Recalled Training is pretty much the big one with him.

Broken Promises
This lets Fuhatsu discard at the start of his activation the upgrade to gain the **Betrayal** condition. This gives a - flip to all attack actions that target Fuhatsu for the rest of the turn. This puts Fuhatsu's durability to the level of ludicrous for a turn, though it tends to be overkill though an engaged Fuhatsu can't really do his ranged support job and this upgrade doesn't do anything to stop that. Take if you have Bodyguard and want to make really sure Fuhatsu won't die on you.

Recalled Training
This allows Fuhatsu to discard the upgrade at the start of his activation to get + flips on all duels and flips for the rest of the turn. This is the big one for Fuhatsu and pretty much a required use if you want to get the most out of that **Gatling Gun**. The additional + flip on damage greatly increases the odds of actually getting a straight damage flip which can mean a lot of pain with a **Gatling Gun Burst** and pain with explosion with a **Gatling Gun Sweep**.

Servant of 5 Dragons
Utility upgrade that gives +1 **Wp** and you can discard at the start of Fuhatsu's activation to discard all scheme markers in a 3" pulse from him. It's important to keep in mind that it's at the start of the activation, so you have to get him into position to where you want to use the scheme pulse the previous turn. The +1 **Wp** gives Fuhatsu a nice **Wp** of 6, so against **Wp** heavy crews it can certainly be worth considering. The discard aspect on the other hand is horrible on Fuhatsu since he pretty much moves 2-3 times into a place where he has a good control of the table and starts shooting at anything that so much as looks at him funny, so he really just lacks the mobility to get good use out of it outside of a fluke or your opponent forgetting. It may still be worth it just for the **Wp** buff though you would need to have a very good idea of what your opponent will be fielding to make that judgment call.

=__Tactics and Tips__=

Fuhatsu is pretty much the textbook definition of an anchor. He moves to a place that needs to be held and stays there while pelting whatever he can get a bead on with his gun actions. Depending on what you expect to achieve, you use one or the other. Right of the bat, don't bother using Fuhatsu if the table you are playing in doesn't have an area with a few good shooting lanes. Fuhatsu lives and dies on being able to stay still and dedicate all his **AP** to shooting or focusing and shooting, so he has no business being in tables full of closed areas.

As for when to use the **Gatling Gun Burst** and when the **Gatling Gun Sweep**, there are a few guidelines you should keep in mind. If everybody is spread out, you are better of using **Focused** and shooting unless it's a model with **Hard to Wound**, situation where you are better of just shooting twice. If the enemy crew is bunched up, that is when you start considering the **Gatling Gun Sweep**, but even then, you have to consider if you have drawn any high rams into your hand (if they are in your hand, then you can't flip them when shooting a sweep), if the black joker is in play, if you can still count on **Recalled Training** or not and have a decent idea of how many high cards have already been flipped during the turn.

Because of how random Fuhatsu is, you really need to go into card counting territory to have a good idea of your odds of going for a sweep or not, specially if you want to trigger **Sweeping Fire** and consider using a Soulstone for it. The perfect storm is to use **Recalled Training** and go for the sweep while having a decent idea of most of the high cards still being in the deck and having the audacity to use stones for the rams, this can quickly become an insane turn of huge numbers though a black joker in any step of the whole process will stop it immediately and shooting with weak damage a Soulstone user can end with them preventing and stopping any additional **Sweeping Fire** uses.

You also have to account for how many cards your opponent has. With no cards you actually have good odds to get a straight flip without Recalled Training for example because of how many cards you are flipping. The other very important part is to try and go for low **Df** models, anything that has **Df** 6 or more has very good odds of stopping you flat or to be able to at least get you into - damage even with **Focus/Recalled Training**, go for lowish **Df** models, your moderate and severe damage is high enough to make you one-shot most minions without **Hard to Kill/Hard to Wound** with ease and any big bad model with low **Df** will also take heavy damage when focused on.

Basically, if I still haven't made it clear yet, Fuhatsu is a high risk high reward model. There will be games where he will achieve a grand total of nothing, and others where he will single handedly destroy half the enemy crew, so keep in mind his swingy nature when going for him. You can try and minimize this by having him sweep into friendly models (specially ones with **Hard to Kill**) to try and put the blasts where you want them, but you will be causing huge holes on your own crew to achieve this, though if that means you can kill of Perdita with 2 clean shots, than it was probably worth it.

Outside of his **Gatling Bursts**, he is a very hard model to take down, so can be a huge pain if your opponent needs to remove him from an area of the table. Between how hard he is to damage, how easily he heals and how he can barely be moved thanks to **Brace**, he can very quickly become a huge thorn on your opponent's side even if he doesn't get a shot all game (stepping on a squatter marker he really wants to take, being one of the two models you need for Turf War, taking a Reconnoiter corner almost by himself and so on or simply being the Bodyguard).

Even though Fuhatsu is hard to damage, he is susceptible to debuffs like anybody else, so be careful with them. You can live with them to a degree if you are only interested in holding a position, though, which brings back another of the really important aspects of Fuhatsu, choose where you want him to be wisely, because he will have a hard time re-positioning to any other part of the table.

Finally, never discount using **Madman With a Gatling Gun** to push enemy models out of objective areas and to pretty much just screw with their positioning (get models out of buffing auras and so on). This will be hard to do since Fuhatsu tends to be a slow second wave firebase, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be on the lookout for chances.

Other Model Synergies
Braced limits to a degree the help he can get from other models to compensate for his mobility issues, meaning he can't count on the usual suspects (Sensei Yu, Mr Graves, Oiran). That doesn't stop him from having 4 very good friends though.

McCabe gives 2 very big things to Fuhatsu, one is the **Nimble** from **Black Badge** which greatly speeds him up and his ability to redeploy and engage. The other one is the **Glowing Saber** which Gives Fuhatsu something to do if he is engaged and you don't feel **Madman With a Gatling Gun** will do the job.

Brewmaster can also increase Fuhatsu's mobility between **Obey** and **Choose Your Poison** with the mask trigger or helping him gather **Focus** or shooting more. Aside from the extra actions given to Fuhatsu, the other big one is the ability of the Brewmaster to plant - flips with ease on enemy models with the **Swill** condition, this greatly increases the odds of Fuhatsu getting a straight damage flip and a couple of swirled models can setup a devastating **Gatling Gun Sweep**.

Jakob Lynch makes use of **Gatling Gun Sweep** by using all those +++ flips to find aces and then discard one of those aces for **Juggernaut** and still get it back with **Ace in the Hole**. This makes Fuhatsu even more resilient while providing a strong set up for **52 Card Pick Up** and **Final Debt**.

Shenlong mostly offers the 0 action **Focused**. This lets Fuhatsu be a bit more mobile while still being able to deliver strong shots at enemy models. He also appreciates getting **Fast** from the **Wandering River Style** upgrade even though he can't benefit from the push.

Kang is the last one, he is more conditional than the rest, but still pretty big. He gives Fuhatsu + flips to attack and damage against undead and constructs, this is huge since on one side it compensates for the **Hard to Wound** most undead models have, and on the other, it makes getting straight flips trivial on those that don't have **Hard to Wound**. Constructs become very easy to punch huge holes on with Kang since even though they all tend to have **Armor**, Fuhatsu's moderate and severe damage is so high that they will still feel it.

=__Playing Against Fuhatsu__=

Hug hard cover as much as possible unless you can avoid getting in LoS and engage as quickly as possible. The hard cover is mostly to make it harder for him to get straight flips on damage and once engaged Fuhatsu is silenced unless he pushes you out with **Madman With a Gatling Gun** or the rest of his crew frees him up. Consider how much of a threat Fuhatsu is to justify blowing a high card to pass **Madman With a Gatling Gun**, he can be very damaging, but he needs the lanes to make his destructive power have any real effect. Any time he is forced to shot at something where he has bad odds at getting a straight damage flip, you can consider you are doing a good job suppressing him. Also, debuff him and plant conditions on him, **Slow** and **Paralyze** really steal his thunder. Finally, anything that can ignore **Armor** and hit hard will end him quickly.

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