Misaki is so great

 

Watch out! Intruder! Interloper! A sneaky cuckoo laying eggs in another Beard’s nest and most importantly, considering the name of this blogspot, a beardless cuckoo at that!

Yes, an unfortunate accident of genetics means any attempts to grow facial hair inevitably end in irregular patches of wispy blonde face pubes that no-one with an ounce of good taste would find aesthetically appealing to read about let alone consume with their eye-holes.

Hello, Internet. I’m Lance.

Beard has asked me to add random contributions here and there to this great endeavour and with no other direction than “write something” I decided the best place to begin would be with my own beginnings in the world of Malifaux; Favourite Master, Best Girl, Oyabun of my Heart, Misaki Katanaka.

Misaki was my first master when I picked up the game at the start of M3E. Hell, she was the reason I chose ten thunders as a faction, and it was purely due to her aesthetics. Why? Well during my formative years I found great enjoyment in the “Soul Calibre” video games, and back then my main was Seung Mi-Na.

Yes. This awoke something in me. 

Ever since I’ve had a proverbial hard-on for Asian polearm weapons (Naginata, Basento, etc) and on that front Misaki delivered. So from nothing more than her concept art, my journey through Malifaux began. Once I’d played a bit of last blossom, I sprung off into Honeypot, then Oni and over the course of my first year playing I pretty much collected and tried every crew in Thunders, but every now and then I’d blow the dust off Misaki and it seemed like as my understanding of the game changed, the new things I understood and unlocked with Misaki, and also the more I just came to accept that of all the Masters I’d played her flexibility and unpredictability most suited my preferred play style.

Now none of this tells you what she actually does. I understand that, but if a blog isn’t the place to engage in Grampa Simpson-esque preamble, I don’t know where is. But fine, I’ll get to the point. What Misaki does, what she really excels at, is hitting stuff good.

Which makes her sound like just another beater and this is the weakness of brevity. Soul of wit, it might be but in a world of varying degrees there are times when it doesn’t do the subject matter justice.

For those that haven’t seen her on the table or piloted her themselves, the biggest thing Misaki offers over other beater masters is flexibility thanks to her unique attack vectors. During each start phase, Misaki can bury (note emphasis on “can”; there are times when it is advantageous not to) and drop 2x 30mm shadow markers within 8” of herself (no Line of Sight required). At the start of her activation, Misaki can unbury base to base with a shadow marker and begin her turn. On paper as I write it, that doesn’t seem all that amazing, but then she has a crew that also have ways of generating shadow markers, as well as a totem that can be treated like one or just use it’s channeled healing action to unbury her next to itself, and when that all comes together we start losing track of all the places where she might be and what she might kill.

Speaking of removing enemy models from the game, what’s so good about a 2/4/5 damage track? Well, first of all, there’s no reason to get lippy. Secondly, a lot of the last blossom models including Misaki have “charge through”, which means that except against henchmen, hard to wound or warning growled models, all Misaki or her crew needs to do on the charge to guarantee a straight damage flip is hit.

Did I mention that Misaki herself is stat 7 on her Bisento? No?

Misaki is stat 7 on her Bisento.

Probably should have had this in earlier... oh well

With that stat 7 Bisento, Misaki is usually hitting and on the charge attack she is usually going to be able to cheat that severe in for 5 damage. 5 Damage is nothing to write home about? Well triggers exist don’t they?

Misaki (and her number one punchy-man Ototo) have crit strike on their melee attack. It’s not built in, but that’s why my Misaki lists will always hit the table with at least a 7 stone cache. A ram in hand plus a stone means that Misaki’s charge attack can be a 4/6/7 damage track which is enough to murder just about any minion or enforcer in the game with one if not two hits.

But Lance, anyone can kill enforcers or minions.

Hey do you remember earlier on when I was mansplaining how “charge through” works? Yeah? Do you know how focus works? What do you think happens when you combine charge through on a focused attack? Yeah.

A charging Misaki who uses a focus to attack a stone user will be on a positive flip as long as she beats the defender. This means the stone user can’t stone her to a negative (unless that stone user also has hard to wound/warning growl). Misaki isn’t just a minion/enforcer killer, she can be a henchman/master killer. Even after spending a stone for damage reduction Misaki can reduce a master or henchman to under a third of their health in a single AP.

Alas despite being able to charge whilst engaged, she can still only charge 1/turn like everyone else, but she has an action on her card called “Oyabun’s Command” which can target a friendly to charge. Earlier I briefly mentioned the last blossom resident beater Ototo who like Misaki has crit strike on his club, like Misaki is a stone user who can stone for crit, and who like Misaki has charge through. If the board state is engineered correctly and the cards are in hand, Misaki can charge a master, spend a stone, spend a card and do 7 damage to said master. Then she can Oyabun’s command Ototo to do the same, doing 14 damage over 2AP. Yes, it is stone intensive, and yes it can be ruined by unlucky flips, but more often than not a soul-stone reliant Master who is in range of both Ototo and Misaki is dead in one Misaki activation which is absolutely worth the resources spent; some of which (cards) can be semi-refunded with Misaki’s bonus action.

SURPRISE MOTHERFU... ah you get the point

And this is just talking about the mechanics of playing her, not how she feels to play. Contrary to my measured and cohesive writing style I am a bit of an erratic player. I thrive in games when both I and my opponent have to adapt and change to the board state and flex out in weird ways. I’m bad at hand discipline. I’m bad at model placement. Any time I’m playing off the clock and we both have the opportunity to plan and play the perfect game, I lose because I’m impatient and bad at planning.

I am a chaos gremlin.

When Misaki is buried and it’s my activation I get to make a quick decision about whether or not unburying her will provide me with suitable impact; if not I can move on, if yes it’s time to push the button and kill a thing. My opponent can’t predict where Misaki is going to unbury because I don’t know where she’s going to unbury until the situation is right to do so, and I don’t always know when the situation will be right until it suddenly is. Sometimes what Misaki can accomplish on her turn is just as surprising to me as it is to my opponent and I relish that.

Chaos. Gremlin.

When Misaki goes full murder mode and uses every severe I have in hand to accomplish what she sets out to do, I get to use her bonus action to shuffle all those severes back into my deck. Hand discipline? Phhhht. When it’s turn 3 and I need to switch gears from murder to scoring, suddenly Misaki is in my opponents deployment zone, dropping strats and schemes or Oyabun’s commanding random models over that way to do the same thing whilst contributing to attrition/scoring in other ways.

CHAOS.

GREMLIN.

Hey Kid! You wanna play Misaki?

Anyway. Point is she’s pretty fun and that’s just Misaki herself (with honorable mentions to Ototo)

Now there’s plenty of weaknesses to Misaki not least of which is a lack of resilience, a reliance on focus with no in-crew way of generating it besides spending AP (kunoichi are your friend), and a reliance on cards with little to no reliable card draw. Also, Misaki’s primary strength comes down to the ability to kill models. What happens when faced with an opponent who is better at killing or more importantly better at not-dying?

Here is where we can pivot to Misaki, Fractured (hereafter referred to as Misaki2).

Misaki2 is not a beater. She still retains some of her other version’s attack vectors by being able to bury her own models (not herself) and essentially teleporting them across the board to places where they can alpha strike something, but she has nowhere near the same level of punch. But this is fine. If punching was able to get the job done, you wouldn’t have selected Misaki2. Misaki2 is much more about supporting and buffing her crew. Murdering opponents is fun and all, but points win games and Misaki2 is all about those points.

Those shadow markers that Vanilla Misaki generates passively during the start phase need to be generated by a friendly last blossom or the opponent taking a non-charge generated action (extra actions off triggers, obeys, flurry etc) and then Misaki gets to play in the sprinklers, declaring a suit of her choice against any target within 3” of a shadow marker. She also gets an uncontested push of an enemy model near a shadow marker as a bonus action which also generates a scheme marker. Misaki 2 was made for this gaining grounds (GG4 is where we are at time of writing). Dropping a scheme marker in the opponents deployment zone without needing to extend that deep in order to do so is an enormous strength, as is choosing to get 2 focus on ototo prior to his activation, and burying him to unbury on any friendly shadow marker at the start of his activation (turning him into a mini-Misaki unto himself).

What should have been a fairly brief rant about the wonders of Misaki has turned into an essay of heavy duty proportions and I haven’t spoken about the rest of the keyword. So maybe I’ll explore that another time (If Beard ever wants to let me near the keyboard again) but suffice to say that more so than any other keyword I’ve played in Malifaux, Last Blossom feel like the keyword with the most surprise depth. It’s easy to look at the keyword and think it’s as simple as “Misaki goes brrrr” (and sometimes it is) but for a keyword with a very low skill floor it has a high ceiling for someone who wants to fall in love with it.

Just as I have.

Lance, out.