Quote:
Originally Posted by Astroking112
This miniature was brought to my intention by Pumpkin_King over on the Discord server, and though I tried, I couldn't resist the urge to design another Samurai.
My first draft involved him as a Unique Hero that would replace the Unique Samurai upon their destruction, constantly returning to the battlefield to try and avenge his comrades. After evaluating it for a little bit, though, I decided that this implementation was far too finicky. Whilst cleaning it up, I toyed around with lowering the price down to 50 (since the Samurai lack a cheap army-building option) and making him an Uncommon Hero, but I felt like this would just lead to far too many Order Marker headaches in practice.
Still, the idea of taking multiple skeletal Samurai seemed far more fitting to me than making another Unique Hero here. It also explores a space that the faction hasn't already, and lets them be cheaper individually to provide more army-building flexibility. I ended up deciding that making the design Common would be a really interesting direction to take it, especially given the imagery of an undead Samurai legion eventually forming.
The other key part of the design besides revival that I wanted to test out was making them survive to the end of the round, no matter how much damage they take. This ability is terrifying on paper, but with a single attack of 3 (even the Izumi provide a better offense), the Shinda Samurai would be best served as defenders and blockers for when you lose a key Samurai figure, which was always one of the worst feelings in the army. They make it easier to secure board control for an army that is crippled by a single whiff, either guaranteeing that you'll stay on a glyph for a round if you can reach it or tying down an attacker and watching them squirm for the round.
Overall, I don't see these guys as transforming the entire army on their own, but they provide a really nice and thematic expansion, along with some more technical options for the Samurai. They're probably best when only taking one or two of them, and their benefits are really tough to get working against ranged units, but I really like the direction that they're headed.
Anyway, that's my long ramble on the idea. As always, all feedback is welcome! |
This custom is awesome. The samurai really need something to tie their build together (Tomoe Gozen is okay but not enough imo), and this dude helps a lot. Unstoppable probably needs some tweaking for balance, I could see it landing in the broken realm. Or, maybe just reduce his movement down to 3?
As is I would see myself just taking turn after turn with Shinda Samurai because of Unstoppable and not really focus on my samurai strategically...basically you get 15 move and 9 dice a round to throw into your opponent (plus counter strike kills too) and they can't do anything about it. I think there's a good chance you'll kill more than 35pt. each go. It's slow, but it seems too good. Like, if you just sit in your start zone or near your start zone with Raelin and some samurai and continuously send Shinda out. Then respawn them all and do it again further down the road. I don't know, maybe it's not as strong as I'm thinking it is, but I fear it's too much.
With Raelin+Kozuke+Izumi+Shindax7 you essentially get 13 Shindas and that's a lot of free dice to throw at your opponent, on top of your strategies and damage with Raelin/Kozuke/Izumi. Maybe the inefficiency of single turn single attack heroes makes the balance right, but I'm very wary of it.
Regardless of how you balance it or tweak it (if you do), Honor by Death and Unstoppable coupled together makes a really really cool unit.