10 stone enforcers and you: The Twin Thunders

 For those who came in late, enforcers have long been the red-headed step children of Malifaux third edition. Why would I say something so controversial and yet so brave?

Mainly because it’s true. Or at least it was.

Why, though? Because they lack the redundancy granted by minions (the ability to hire more than one or sometimes get summoned) and they can’t use Soul Stones like a Master or Henchman can. As a result it is widely accepted that for an enforcer to be useful they need to have stronger rules on their cards than a henchman to put them in a competitive spot.

The last expansion (Ashes of Malifaux) changed all that by releasing (amongst other models) 1 viable 10 stone enforcer per faction. Well… that’s kinda true, but it’s also kinda not.

You see those of us in the superior faction received a gift from Wyrd in September last year: We got a long awaited Yasunori un-fuckening errata.

Back in the long long ago, at the start of M3e Yasunori’s card was absolutely broken and in response Wyrd (rightly) nerfed it. Unfortunately, Wyrd have a habit of not knowing when a model is dead, and so they didn’t just nerf him, they made him (and to be clear, I try to steer clear of binary statements when it comes to model viability as synergies and play styles will vary from player to player) unplayable.

And so, Yas queen languished on shelves gathering dust, year after year until some saint at Wyrd decided he’d been punished long enough and it was time to return him to a position of relevance within the faction.

And after waffling on with my typical preamble we can now get to the crux of the matter: Ten Thunders have 2 (kinda) new 10 stone enforcers and I love them both. I’ve gone from being an Enforcer nay-sayer to having to think very hard in list building as to whether or not adding one (or both) to a list would be valuable which is rare for me as I strongly prefer playing in keyword. More importantly, I’ve found that these two enforcers on their own have opened up avenues of play in keywords and masters that I’ve never vibed with in my 4.5 years of playing and the play experiences they’ve enabled have scored me wins with keywords that I never would have even looked at twice before the release of these key models.

With that in mind I thought I’d take the time to breakdown where I have found the most value with these Twin Thunders and then I might cheekily discuss some speculative builds that I have not yet put to the test.

However first let’s look at them.

Zheng: he’s fast at Spd 7 unimpeded, but importantly feline reflexes taxes the opponents hand if they don’t want to be attacking against move 7. Combined with warning growl applying to friendlies and to himself, Zheng is a tough nut to crack; most min 3 opponents will need to discard 4x cards and spend 4x attacks to kill. This is pretty damn good by itself as resiliency feels hard to come by in Thunders, but his offensive output is also impressive. He’s got a min 3 attack with 3 great triggers, and can get an extra attack from his bonus action (after getting a free 7” move) for the low cost of a 5+ or rams. So that’s 3x min 3 attacks, right? WRONG. Remember me talking about “great triggers” well, this bitch has pouncing-god-damned-strike which means in Magical Christmas Land (to shamelessly steal a phrase from my friends across the puddle) this big ol’ concrete kitty can generate 5 attacks per activation. In all my time playing the model I’ve only had the board state/flips land in such a manner to accomplish this once but it sure was fun, and it’s a hell of a threat to have hanging over your opponents head.

Okay okay, he’s resilient, punchy and makes your crew more resilient. Sounds good, yeah? Surely that’s it? NO. No, we’re not done. He has intimidating roar with another great trigger to do 1 damage and push a further 3”. Often I’ll use him to unpack at least one model from my crew 9” up the board and then walk and bonus forward so the model he pushed forward is protected by warning growl aura and isn’t just swinging in the wind. Lastly, exploit vulnerability on the front of his card wins games for a free interact after damaging an enemy model (at the cost of a card). To sum up his AP efficiency: he can generate 3 free attacks off triggers and a free interact after damaging a model.

Yasunori: Like Zheng, he’s speed 7. He has flight instead of unimpeded (which is almost universally better) and instead of opponents having a choice not to flip against Def7 by discarding a card, Yasunori is just always Def7. He sure doesn’t look like he has many rules on his cards though in comparison to Zheng, and that’s because he doesn’t. Most of his rules are actually on his special boy upgrades, one of which he attaches when he first activates turn 1, and then he can swap them around with every activation after if desired. We’ll get to his upgrades in one moment though, lets look at that attack. We were so impressed with Zheng having three good triggers on his melee attack, well Yas has one for every suit so you never need to cheat for a trigger. His damage track isn’t amazing though with min 2. Good thing he has the Carnage upgrade!

The Carnage upgrade gives Yas to the Drass a flat +1 to damage which takes his track to 3/5/6 (flipping the ~30% moderate on a [-] flip is such an intoxicating experience) but more importantly it gives him an extra option for a bonus action. This bonus action is a 6” attack vs df that if successful teleports Yas base to base with the target and generates a free attack. This attack is not generated by a trigger and as such it can declare any of his amazing triggers and there is not stipulation that the generated attack has to target the original teleport target. Because of Yas’ base size this can generate some pretty deep threat and gets past annoying tech like extended reach or disguised. So when we were talking about Zheng’s damage output, we were all pretty impressed by his potential 5x min 3 attacks/activation, right? Once again if we step foot within the magical world of theoryfaux, Yasunori can generate six min 3 attacks, because he has the swift reflexes trigger and he can declare it on the bonus action attack. MAGIC!

But do we care? What good is  big dick DPS if the model is dead? “But Lance,” you say. “didn’t you say he was defence 7?” Yes. And no-one in the history of forever has ever killed a defence 7 model. C’mon. We all know we’ve got to layer defences. This is where the composure upgrade comes in. Much like Carnage grants a flat +1 to damage, Composure grants a flat +1 to damage reduction. Importantly, it’s not armour, so armour piercing triggers don’t bypass it. The bonus action this upgrade grants requires a touch more finesse and has some interesting tech. For one, it generates a 4” concealing gravity well around Yas which on certain boards can lock down access, or prevent nearby summoning. It’s pretty neat plus with def 7, concealment and pseudo armour 1, a composed Yasunori can consider his defences very neatly layered indeed. Either trigger on this bonus is money. A 4” teleport is enough to get Yas out of engagement and we all know the strength of that and a 4” heal 1 in a faction with hard to kill on a stick is certainly not irrelevant.

I suppose at this point you’d like me to finally talk about application and synergies, and I can’t say I blame you. I sure do love the look of my own voice. So here is how, when and why I’ve used them so far.

Jacob Lynch: I haven’t bothered with the OG lynch for the same reasons most folk don’t. That said I’ve had an awful lot of success running Yasunori with Lynch2 (dark bet). Why? Well the entire crew serves to generate a god hand. The big problem with Honeypot has always been deciding which out of keyword model to hire to funnel that god-hand into. Also one of Lynch2’s biggest weaknesses is if he does get hit, then it’s hard to get his health back up and that incidental 1 healing from Yasunori’s bonus action is not nothing. Also the volume of Yasunori’s attacks and his high defences means you might not need to actually use the cards you’ve curated on him and can save them for something else. Also worth noting that Obey is a great action and giving Yas extra actions when his actions are already so valuable is just a good deal.

Misaki: I’ve run Misaki1 with both Zheng and Yasunori at the same time. Zheng provides the keyword with some much-needed resilience but the biggest reason is simply because Misaki can unpack them efficiently with Oyabun’s command. With these two beasts in a last blossom crew, Misaki is no longer the star of the show. I like to run this variant on flank/corner if I want to play wide. Both Yas and Zheng are resilient enough to anchor a flank by themselves with Misaki herself hunting down and harrying any threats to her two big boys.

Youko: Zheng has turned youko1 from a master I never got to click into a beautiful janky puzzle. Pre-Zheng I felt Youko didn’t get value from her 6” abilities because getting that close to the enemy was too slow and once she was there it only took a few focussed swings to eat through her soulstones and remove her (Serene countenance defence 5 is not really defensive tech). Zheng solves both of those issues. Intimidating roar gets Youko into the opponents face to force discards/mess with activation order and warning growl ensures that even if an opponent does focus to get through serene, they’ll still be at a negative flip to damage. I cannot overstate how important warning growl is to his kit. That rule generally saves me 2-3 stones per game. Oh, and if they decide to attack Zheng and want to hit at less than movement 7 they have to discard a card, which means Youko draws a card. SYNERGY.

Linh Ly: I love love love my concrete kitty with Linh Ly Storyteller. Yes, it’s hard to find the stones and it usually means I’m dropping something else, but this crew struggles to get to the centre board where they want to be and they struggle to actually do damage once there. There is after all only 1x min 3 beater in the entire keyword and that’s Linh herself who often has more important things to do than just damage but if she does want to swing, doubling up on mutilate triggers really ups the overall damage output. Most often here, I’ll put silent protector on Zheng because losing him hurts but also there is so much incidental healing in this crew that most opponents will struggle to kill him.

Well there ends my successes so far. I may as well talk about the crews I’d never take them with.

Shenlong: Even if this keyword interested me (it doesn’t), the models don’t need help and work as intended without reaching out of keyword. I’d posit it would be actively harmful to the keyword to spend that many stones on models who aren’t affected by many of the keyword synergies.

Asami: I have a soul. Next question

McCabe: There might be an argument to be made for McCabe 2 having upgraded models nearby to increase the difficulty to hit, but ultimately I just don’t think either McCabe really gets anything special out of big ook models he can’t put upgrades on or support in any way.

Yan Lo: I tried Zheng in Yan Lo for the meme of throwing Izamu’s reliquary on him turn 1. It felt like exactly that, a meme. Zheng did work, but without any big brain synergistic plays and ultimately felt as underwhelming as a model of this calibre could possibly feel. That said, I’ve tried this once and once only. There could be something there, I just haven’t found it engaging enough to dive into.

Now the Dojo; Crews that I haven’t yet tested but think might have some cool synergies to explore

Misaki(again): Misaki2, that saucy wench whose mastery has eluded me so long theoretically gets more out of the Zheng and Yasunori crew than Misaki 1. Misaki 1 takes them to play wide and generate an action with Oyabuns comman. Misaki 2 generates two actions on her obey seeing as she’s got a trigger to give focus when obeying. This is ENORMOUS. Yasunori’s carnage moderate 5 is begging for focus but his own AP are far too valuable to be spent powering up.

Mei Feng: The foundry crew has a lot of armour1 hard to kill models. They don’t have hard to wound though. We all know that in a world without armour piercing the best way to deal with armoured models is either endless ping damage (fuck you Asami may you rot in hell) or focus and cheat in big dick spike damage. Warning growl makes the second play very difficult. Also Zheng is a construct so Sparks can heal him, give him shielded and generate extra actions on him, all of which are adding value to an already valuable model.

There ends another lengthy rant about the superiority of thunders models. Bow down peasants and weep.

Lance, out.