A Case for Misaki... No the *other* one

 

Well, well, well. Look who’s been given the keys to the Kingdom! Turns out, I’ve been given carte blanche to keep churning out more nonsense whenever I want (and whenever Beard isn’t looking to spray me with the hose)

You guessed it, it’s time for another contributor to this grand endeavor by me.

Hello, Internet. I’m Lance. And if you haven’t read my previous post (conveniently found here: https://beardfaux.blogspot.com/2024/06/misaki-is-so-great.html ) this is probably going to be a confusing and frustrating read, so maybe scooch on over and check that out before reading on here. Or don’t I’m not the boss of you after all, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

After my last post I was inundated with feedback like “why are you like this?” and “oh god shut up about Misaki”, so I decided I should give the people what they want and talk about Misaki some more.

Bear with me I'll get to a point soon  

This time though it will be different as this time I’m going to dedicate more attention towards discussing her second version; Misaki, Fractured otherwise referred to as Misaki2 or “The Misaki you play when circumstances conspire to make the real Misaki an unviable choice”. Misaki The Lesser, if you will.

Which all sounds like I’m down on her and to an extent I am. It’s the nature of comparison between two things that unless all things are perfectly equal, one is going to be better than the other and the nature of the title versions of masters released in the Madness of Malifaux expansion makes those comparisons inevitable. So, we’ll dispense with the “all Misaki’s are made equal” nonsense and accept that if a player is declaring Misaki as crew leader it because they want to play Misaki 1.

Now I briefly touched on some of the weaknesses of OG Misaki in my previous post, and I will stress that those weaknesses are not inconsequential. For an awful long time I simply refused to declare Misaki into outcasts because they have some keywords that casually counter my entire preferred playstyle with her and I refused to get the reps in to unlock Fractured. After all, if I declare Misaki as leader because I want the opportunity to do what she does best (hit stuff good) why would I want to pivot to a master who doesn’t even have a melee attack?

Seriously. She has no Melee Attack! What is this hippy nonsense?

The answer to that is because by not declaring the master with whom I have the most experience and enjoyment on the off chance that my opponent might declare a hard counter, I’m already ceding control of the game to my opponent. And that sucks.

So after literal years of dismissing Misaki2 as trash, I spent a couple of months playing nothing but her to get a better grasp on what she does and she and I have come to an uneasy understanding. I’m no longer entirely dismissive of her capabilities and can pivot to her if I feel I can’t punch my way out of trouble. Which is honestly, a load off when it comes to master declaration.

(as an aside, seriously. If you main a keyword, I can’t stress how important it is to at least feel comfortable with both versions; especially when they’re as unique from one another as these two)

Now the thing about title masters is that they often have similar playstyles to their original with some interesting tweaks to make them suit more specific situations. Misaki2 is almost entirely alien to Misaki1. They both like having shadow markers on the board and that is just about where the similarities end. There is a very shaky comparison between having “Oyabun’s Command” on OG Misaki and “Obey” on Fractured, but that’s a long bow to draw.

And on that note, I guess it’s time to start talking about the actions that Misaki 2 actually has; Obey, for instance. Yes, with the Malifaux Burns expansion, ten thunders went from having one obey in-faction to having three. We all know and love Obey. It’s fun and interactive.

You Love Misaki Fractured

Look, to be fair Misaki’s Obey is in my opinion, the least impactful thing on her card.  

Before I can explain why, I guess it’s probably more important to explain a couple of her front of card abilities. Quiet. You play Malifaux. You understand that looking at individual aspects of any model without an understanding of how those aspects interlock and synergize with each other is a fool's errand. A FOOL'S ERRAND! 

So let’s zoom out and take a holistic view of Misaki.

I guess we start with shadow markers. I mentioned briefly in yesterdays blog that Misaki2 has a harder time generating shadow markers. What I didn’t mention was that she is probably even more reliant on Shadow Markers to generate value than her predecessor.

Whilst Misaki 1 can create 2x shadow markers in the start phase, Misaki 2 is reliant on friendly last blossom (note emphasis as often you might be tempted to reach out of keyword with Misaki2) models or enemy models to take a non-charge generated AP or gain fast. It happens more than you might think, but not as often as you’d like. When these conditions are met, a shadow marker is dropped base to base with the offending model. There is unfortunately a 1/activation restriction on this shadow marker generation so it’ s rare to see the board swamped with shadow markers unless you take great pains to make it so.

Luckily, our fiery Kitsune friend Shang counts as a shadow marker with Fractured and unlike every other model-that-counts-as-a-marker in the game that I’m aware of if he would be removed, he takes no damage. Which is a nice little idiosyncrasy.

Shang to the rescue!

But why is Fractured so reliant on shadow markers?

Two reasons. The first is that without an appropriately placed shadow marker she doesn’t get a bonus action which, let me be crystal clear on this, sucks. I’m unsure that there’s any other master in the game that comes with such an enormous qualifier just to get their bonus action and worse her bonus action (whilst good) certainly is nowhere near as impactful as other master-level bonus actions that have zero cost to their actions. We’ll get to her bonus action a bit later anyway. The second reason is that when targeting a model within 3” of a friendly shadow marker she can add a suit of her choice to the duel and this, this is the strongest thing on her card.

Now with that understood we can look at her actions again.

Ah, the Obey. Stat 7 Obey is fine if you're looking at it as purely an attack stat, but it still comes with a TN of 14 in a crew with little-to-no native card draw. Against an enemy WP 5 is average so she should be able to win an opposed duel most times, especially as thanks to her front of card she flat out ignore concealment. She can bake in one of her triggers on a friendly to give them a focus and she can bake in the other trigger against enemies to give them an injured. 

Interesting timing effect of actions that generate actions: an action is resolved in it’s entirety (including triggers) before any generated action occurs, so if Misaki for example obeys a friendly model to charge an enemy and bakes in her trigger to give a focus, that focus is put on the model before they take the action meaning it’s there to use on the obeyed action. Also just in case one of the kids in the back missed it, an obeyed action is a generated action for the purposes of generating a shadow marker.

One of my favorite round 1 openings is to obey Ototo to concentrate whilst baking in a tomes for a free focus, so one of Misaki’s AP has put 2x focus on Ototo and dropped a shadow marker base to base with him giving him concealment.

But what do you do with a focused up Ototo turn 1 that’s so good? You target him with Twisting Paths. You know how I was saying Obey was the least impactful thing on Misaki’s card? This is why. Yeah, it can teleport a model to another shadow marker within 8” but most importantly it has a once per turn trigger that can only be declared against friendly last blossom which buries the target. This is how Ototo (or any other big hitting last blossom model) turns into a mini-Misaki1. 

Twisting paths, Obey and her bonus action Hidden Allegiances all combine to give Misaki2, two different avenues of play.

Line of play 1: teleport impactful models to the other side of the board. This is often reliant on enemy models being kind enough to generate shadow markers for you, but you can risk it for the biscuit with Jin (one day we’ll talk about the rest of the keyword I swear)

Line of play 2: kidnap key enemy models forward turn 1 and 2 to have the rest of your keyword gangbang them to death. There’s some cute things you can do here with my girl Minako Rei too to make sure that at least some of the damage is irreducible which is neat if/when you have a henchman in your sights.

Line of play 3: I know I said there were only two but shutup I’m going somewhere with this. Line of play 3 is to balance the two other lines of play in whatever way has the most impact on board state.

Line of play 3 is probably why she doesn't entirely click with me. Now those of you who consumed my previous post may remember me harping on and on about how I am a chaos gremlin who loves playing by the seat of his pants and yolo-ing my way to near losses and sometimes if I’m really on my A-game a draw, but this is probably my number one problem with Misaki Fractured, the Emo Oyabun: She is a finesse master, and not a particularly straight forward one at that.

This fine lady doesn’t even have a melee attack (which you need to remember for some schemes that require models to be engaging enemies to score- don’t be me. Be smart.) which probably leads me to her third and final attack action, the misunderstood Ink-Tipped Dart. 12” range stat 6, 1/3/5 damage and you can build in the suit to stagger and deal an extra point of damage to take that damage track to the lofty heights of 2/4/6. Why am I writing about the damage track? Because it doesn’t matter. When you are taking this action it is not because you want to hurt an opponent (but it helps and if you happen to flip the moderate/severe it’s a bonus) it’s because you want to generate a shadow marker base to base with that opponent, 12” up the board. From there, the opponent has concealment that you handily ignore for the purposes of twisting paths it forward, back, sideways, sex appeal or peppermint (thank-you Sir Terry). It also might be something you’re generating so you actually get to have a bonus action.

Which will lead us to Hidden Allegiances. It’s a good bonus action. Again, I have to reiterate it’s far too restrictive for what it does (especially considering some of the other egregious nonsense that came out at the same time) but anything that moves an opponents model uncontested is a strong ability. 

Placed here... For reasons

After flipping a 5, Misaki can push a non-master enemy model within 3’ of a shadow marker up to 3” and then drop a scheme marker in base contact with it. It doesn’t sound soul-breaking, but again the opponent doesn’t get a choice. If they have a beater about to close with your lines you can push it 3” back and drop a scheme in their back line. If there’s a mid-range support model you’d like to start getting ready to kidnap you can push them front-line. If there’s a front-line model you want to isolate, you can do that too.

Like I’ve tried to explain numerous times to my wife, three inches is a lot. (yes, that was a cheap joke we’ve all made a hundred times but I am a Traditionalist Damnit!)

Whilst we’re discussing bad jokes, let’s look at Misaki2’s big weaknesses. First of all, stats. Somewhere during her fall to madness Misaki has gone from being probably tied for the best Master defensive stats in the game at Def 6, WP 7 to a fairly mediocre Def 5, WP6. She’s lost extended reach and replaced it with the less useful Disguised rule, and she’s lost the ability to disappear into the safety of shadows after diving in to murder a model and replaced it with gaining a shielded whenever a shadow marker is dropped within 8” of her. What I am saying is compared to her predecessor, this lady is infinitely more vulnerable to murder. Also, every single means she has of moving threatening enemy models away (Obey, Twisting Paths, Hidden Allegiances) are restricted to non-master. Misaki1 murders enemy masters. Misaki2 cannot affect them in any way, even to save herself.

So that’s the long and the short of it. I’ve discussed previously how Misaki1 feels to play and it’s good. To me, Misaki2 is… not so good. But she’s playable. Especially in this gaining grounds where an uncontested scheme marker drop is not an inconsequential side-effect of moving a model.

So I can’t help but feel that this post was nowhere near as glip and enthusiastic as my previous one and that’s partly because I only have so much juice in the tank but also because writing about fun models is fun and writing about precise models is less so.

Nevertheless I hope someone somewhere got something meaningful out of my ramblings, and despite my misgivings about her I especially hope that some folk who have previously been dissuaded from giving her a go try her out and get some reps in. Maybe someone will unlock some hitherto undiscovered value engine with her that suddenly turns her into a meta-defining machine.

Prove me wrong, Internet.

Lance, out.