Kirai: painting and avatar building

I set a decent amount of time aside at the weekend to paint – something I haven't done in a while. Like most of us I guess, I wanted to concentrate on my new master and get Kirai looking all pretty.

I'd decided some time ago to go with the colour scheme that is in the book – even bought some new paint before Christmas. I had sprayed all my spirits with white instead of the normal black (to get a more vibrant, light colour) but my first attempts to lay down some colour was very patchy. Maybe should have stuck to what I know.

I used various browns to start with, highlighting with Ochre/White until reaching a pure white. The colour wasn't very vibrant so I washed it several times with Golden Yellow and  Gryphonne Sepia to add some depth.
Need to look at the highlights again and bring them back up to white.

Similarly with the green scarf (for want of a better word). I started with a Dark Green base colour, adding more and more Emerald, then adding White. At present it needs a wash to unify the layers and give it some depth.

While all the washes were drying I paid a little attention to Kirai's Avatar which has sat idle in my Mali-bag for a few months now. I had a 50mm Bamboo base completed and cast up in resin over Christmas and had superglued her in the new year. I set about drilling some holes from the underside into the metal to secure the model further.

It still needs a little more greenstuff to blend to model more with the base and then it'll be ready for painting.

We have a painting evening planned for later so with some luck there will be more photos in the next couple of days.

Rallying the Troops…

So with a (contested) draw and two very heavy losses so far with Kirai there is a lot to think about. As you can imagine I have done a lot of researching and reading about the crew, what seems to work for people and what doesn't. Looking at my own experiences so far my conclusions are as follows.

Kirai herself is a great master on paper. Yes she is vulnerable when attacked in melee, but with a few Seishin to pass wounds onto or sacrifice, together with her swirling ability and Pitiful she can survive longer than expected – though I have managed to get her killed once already. Even with her extra (+1) Intinctual she has far too many cool abilities than I can use in a single turn. I was drawn to her (over the other Resurrectionist masters) for a reason. However, going from a pure Guild beginning, Kirai is like a brand new pair of shoes – it takes time to break them in and make them truly comfortable – but I am determined to get her to work for me.

The Lost Love is another great model, and at 2ss an absolute bargain. It's big trick of saving Kirai's life when she dies is amazing, however, I think this has held me back from using the model to it's full potential – using Magical Extension to cast things such as Chill of Death and summoning additional spirits. I can't think of a reason to not take this model, except to make the game more challenging.

Ikiryo – nothing much can be said about this spirit. It may take a second crow to summon it, which can be a pain, but it's a free model and has great utility. I haven't witnessed its awesome melee ability that I read about – it tends to inflict a couple of wounds then gets battered in the return – but it is one of the bigger hitters available to Kirai so it's not as if I'm NOT going to summon it at some point.

Datsu-Ba has some great utility skills and a fair few wounds, but I have found her next to useless in melee. Being able to give a spirit a free move, together with her healing and ability to summon Gaki have all been useful if not amazing. For a 7ss model I'm struggling to include her after her performances to date. I obviously don't quite understand her, but I don't want her to become another Francisco Ortega who even at 5ss never seems to be good enough for the first team.

Onryo are the grunts and they do as well as can be expected. I haven't managed to get off a Blind to Spirits or Denial of Sanzu – or even Haunt for that matter – which would lift their usefulness no end. I'm unlikely to include them in a starting lineup as they can be summoned (and regularly are) and I really need them to inflict a bit more pain, but I'm not ready to dismiss them yet.

Shikome is the one model that has almost lived up to expectations. I know for a fact that Fugs fears this model which is why he has been quite prejudiced in taking it down recently. I didn't use it very well in my last game – forgetting about her spell tricks – but if you can summon her into combat she can have fun with her new target. I have contemplated getting a second Shikome but am reluctant until I can get the rest of the crew working.

I've had a few brief glimpses of the Gaki in action. They haven't inflicted a lot of damage (a running theme with the crew so far) but they have scared the Terror Tots on a few occasions and as a 'free' model they are great simply as extra significant bodies on the table. For this reason I have no real expectations with them, so time will tell how useful they turn out to be.

The Hanged is a model with a lot of potential to me. Unfortunately he got blown off the table on his debut so couldn't contribute much. In the second game he attempted to cast Beyond the Grave several times against both Lilith and Taelor. Without any negative flip mechanic already in place he was never likely to actually get the spell off, but it did cause Fug to cheat and use soulstones to ensure such a devastating spell was prevented. Combined with his Terrifying, this model has become a threat yet to deliver on his potential, but the threat is there – it's only a matter of time and circumstance before he delivers.

Insidious Madness is a model that has not been fielded yet. He is pure utility and could either be a roaring success or a puddle of dead snot on the battlefield and a waste of 4ss. The combination of the negative WP flip aura and Terrifying could become very useful. Combined with the rest of the crew – The Hanged especially – there is the potential for a lot of hurt. He is currently a favourite for the next outing, to test some of the theory.

Other models that I have considered include:

Jack Daw, who combines some of the threat of The Hanged and Insidious Madness but who will also have a steep learning curve. He's expensive and has a few too many random abilities that could blow up in my face, making him unreliable (which is the point of the character, let's be honest).

Convict Gunslinger is an all-round solid model. Fugs knows his abilities having fielded him regularly for months so will fear him. I can turn him into a spirit for extra depth and survivability and he gives me some ranged options. He's not very in keeping with Kirai's spirit theme but may be a useful addition, for a while at least, giving me some breathing space to sort out the rest of the crew.


So, where to go from here?

I've decided to take a week off from gaming next week. One game a week is actually too few when you're trying to learn a new crew – you build up the excitement and theory all week then if you make a mistake or two and it blows up in your face you have to wait a whole other week until you can try again. Despite this, breaking the losing cycle can be as easily achieved by taking a rest as anything. I hope to get some models painted in this time so that I can take some more photos without being totally embarrassed and it will give time for the pre-game giddiness to subside and hopefully be replaced by a confident calmness and clear thinking.

It's a Knockout…

…8 …9 …10 …YOU'RE OUT!

That is the sound of my patience with Kirai and her spirits leaving the building – haha!

Another thumping last night by Lilith, largely thanks to some bad decision making on my part and increasingly poor cards is making me wonder whether my gaming skills really are that two-dimensional and I should go back to the simplicity of the Guild.

Fugs and I both flipped Destroy the Evidence, so Fug suggested making it a Shared Strategy. This effectively added a seventh evidence token in the middle of the board worth an additional VP. We flipped for deployment and got corners, meaning we were both barely 12" from said central token.

I was distracted by the bright lights and decided I could summon Ikiryo on top of the central token and give myself a small headstart. Destroy the Evidence is a strategy that Kirai should breeze through with her movement tricks so getting an early lead would be a bonus. Problem is I forgot that summoned models are slow when they arrive, meaning Ikiryo didn't have enough general AP to interact. It also meant that (being H3) he was an easy target for Lilith's Transposition. That's exactly what happened – the Cherub stepped up and Transposition-ed Ikiryo with Lilith. Lilith then interacted with the token to claim it and moved off to the side. Ikiryo was battered by the new addition to Fug's crew – Taelor.

End of turn 1, I am down 1 VP already not to mention 4 wounds on Kirai and a handful of cards.

My semi-painted master

Things ebbed and flowed the following turn. I moved The Hanged over to a token on my left. He was charged by a Young Nephilim who was in turn charged by an Onryo who did 3 wounds. The Young was then swapped with Taelor thanks to another great Transposition move, supported by Lilith,  and I was forced to swirl The Hanged back to Kirai for healing and sacrifice the wounded Onryo to regain some wounds and cards and prevent Taelor from killing more stuff.

The tempo of the game was such that Fugs could move around the board with little to no fear of any reprisals. I set an alpha strike in motion once Lilith had moved on to another token and left Taelor alone. She was having a field day against my spirits, killing them in a single hit. Her high WP meant I was struggling to do anything back.

Kirai summoned Ikiryo and Shikome into base contact with Taelor, forgoing a heal to cast her (0) action that would produce a Gaki should Taelor die. I had The Hanged waiting to cast Beyond the Grave and halve Taelor wounds before the big hitters went in. Up stepped the Lost Love to cast Chill of Death giving the target neg flips against spirits – the combination of these elements would be devastating. As expected he flipped poorly, I cheated to ensure I had the correct suit and soulstoned for a boost to take it out of Taelor's reach – I flipped a 1. That effectively meant that Taelor could defend everything that I threw at her by cheating (not that she needed it as Fugs has amazing flips with this crew). In return Taelor killed Shikome and Ikiryo (for the second time this game) and I had to give up the two remaining cards I had.

The game staggered on in the same vein for another turn. By this time Fug had 4 VP to my 0. I called the game mid turn 4 as the clock chimed 10pm.

The inevitable (weekly) post mortem got me analysing why this crew struggles so much and why it seems incapable of doing any damage – the number of wounds I have inflicted in 3 games can be counted on one hand.

My multi-coloured Seishin

With the Guild I could spend a couple of turns building up a decent set of cards in my hand. With Kirai, she uses any decent cards she has summoning her troops or entering the Spirit World. She is also so dependent on suits – masks and crows especially – that she has to hold onto these at all costs. If you get a poor hand of cards and has been the norm so far (my hand in turn four had no card higher than a four!) then I'm relying on soulstones to make things happen.

If the games had been a little closer, more contested, then I could be quite content that it was part of the learning curve. At present I'm providing no real challenge to Fugs who can move around the board at will with Transposition (which I don't seem able to stop as I have no decent cards in my hand to cheat, or need them for other things). As fast as I am summoning spirits he's killing them. With the introduction of Taelor (and soon the twins) who negates all of the advantages the spirits have, I'm losing models at a faster rate with even less ability to stop it.

The danger is that these beatings are so demoralising that I'm starting to lose enthusiasm for the game and for painting the models. I could go back to The Guild but that would be defeatist, plus I've invested too much money to put the Spirits all on ebay for half the price I paid for them. I could buy bigger models – Dead Rider, etc. – but that doesn't solve the inherent problem. So I've decided to take a week or two off from gaming, do some painting, and get back to the craft side of things that I enjoy and will feed my interest.

As much as I think playing a single game a week is not helping my development – the excitement builds all week for a game then you lose 8-0 with nothing new learned – I feel (as does my poor wife) that a break will be good. I don't want to field another unpainted crew, and that in turn should provide more eye candy for the blog.

The sting of the defeat is gone now but I'm not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel, or a way to turn things around; with things set to get more difficult when Fugs introduces the twins shortly I need to find a way to break them. Let the research begin…