Wave 25 Concept Art

Prefecture of Ryu - Atsuchi & Hunting Akira

Temple of Ro-Kan - Master Enos

Ito Clan - Taisei

Silvermoon Trade Syndicate - Malosi

Tengu Decension - Scout of the Blue Gale

Tengu Decension - Hokibo

Small Blog Update: Concept Art

Just letting people know I've been hunting down the older concept art, and I've now completed all the entries from Wave 13 onwards.  I'll try to get the earlier concept arts as I find the time.

Wisdom of the Tengu

I'm really impressed with how the Tengu Decension warband played on Tuesday.  Granted Martin managed to rockblock himself with double Tribal Brutes being Stupid at terrible times, but it did help highlight just how manoeuvrable the Tengu Decension really are.  They're not fast in the traditional sense, but they can always go where they really want to go and there's not a lot you can do about it.

Sojobo the Exile is an amazing profile.  I didn't really visualise just how good he was since I've used the Temple of Ro-Kan profile for Sojobo during playtesting.  I also like that he fits into both themes right now, especially given the limited profiles available to the faction.  The first sneaky tactic I've found is flying behind enemy models, turning them around and then pushing them towards my warband.  It's a little clumsier than just slapping a control token on them, but your opponent now has to deal with Sojobo standing in the middle of their warband.  If he's been able to throw up Aegis of Blades, he can shrug that off that really quite easily.

I'm thinking of bringing a Gorinto to the White Mesa warband so that Nuniq will be able to use her Snare at least once a turn rather than every other turn.  It's one of those things that's worth testing, but it's probably over-thinking the situation a bit.  She's a profile I like, though I can see she's probably not for everyone.  Snare is very much a gambler's Ki feat: when it works there's flowers and sunshine; when it doesn't you wonder why you bothered spending the rice on Nuniq.  To bring the Gorinto in I have to ditch Fujin's Breath though, which is a special card I'm still evaluating - it's really hard to know if it's worth it in a particular game and is quite scenario dependent.  I'll try it out both ways and see how it goes.  If neither work all that well, Amaterasu's Riddle is it!

The Tengu Decension Have Landed

My Tengu Decension have arrived!  I have even finished assembling all the miniatures now, and they await sorting out their bases.  The wings are surprisingly sturdy on the whole, I only had to pin the wings on the Zephyr Guard and Zenkibo (since they use the same base body and wings).  All the other tengu have built-in pins so to speak and seem to be just fine with simple gluing.

Tarobo's miniature is amazing, though it does come in a bajillion pieces.

I'm quite pleased with their selection of special cards.  There's no obvious duds (hi there Shomyo to Orochi...) and nothing that screams overpowered.  I quite like the Spirit Trap event card, but you have to bring a shisai to get it; the only shisai available is Ryuhobo so the options are fairly limited right now.  Shepherds of White Mesa is a theme I really like with what's available, I'd probably move into the Wind Watchers theme once more tengu and some birds are released.

This week I think I'll be testing out a Shepherds of White Mesa theme:

Sojobo the Exile
Sanjakubo
Taliriktug (+Vial of Raijin's Breath)
Tarobo
Nuniq
Zephyr Guard
Kami of the Strong West Wind

Deflection
Fujin's Breath

The idea is to stun something with Tarobo or Sanjakubo, then try to beat the crap out of it as quickly as possible.  I'm probably going to run into issues with factions like the Savage Wave, as I don't really see how I'm going to be killing multiple bakemono every turn with this warband without a healthy dose of luck.  I'd also be interested to see how fighting against Temple works out as my warband is no longer filled with Steady models.

Time will tell however, as the faction is still very young and once it has more profiles to choose from, I might find a more natural niche.