Masha Shingai by Astroking112
Long ago in a distant land, I, Soundwarp, the shape sculpting master of mods, started to review an unspeakable evil! But will this foolish samurai demon wielding a magic... fire thing... step forth into the SoV?
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Balance
Attack subtraction, especially as a global effect that's not limited to attacks made against the unit doing the subtraction, is a bit of a dangerous space to play in, but Masha has enough limits here that it's fine. The Order Marker requirement in particular really helps limit him from stacking with other powers too much. Outside of attack subtraction, his stats and whatnot all seem fine for his price.
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Theme
Not hard to sell the theme to me here with this awesome looking demon samurai mini. I like that both of his powers crossover between his themes as well. Bonus points here for not making him follow Utgar or Valkrill just because he's a demon.
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Creativity
His powers blend together his demon-ness and samurai-ness just as well mechanically as they do thematically, really cool stuff going on here.
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Playability
Masha was an interesting unit to test. He has a bunch of powerful stuff going for him, but there's always a catch to everything he does.
He can subtract from other characters' attack, which is a super useful power that can sometimes cripple the other team. However, he has to have a revealed Order Marker to do it. So you're basically telegraphing your Order Marker placement to the enemy here and paying a fairly hefty fee efficiency wise. Then if you don't win initiative, that first turn for the opponent might make his aura basically useless. Not to mention if you have commons of your own, they're going to be just as woke to Masha's terror as your enemies are. You can mitigate all that a bit with Rygarn, but Masha also really wants Raelin (who doesn't?) and some Samurai, so your points budget gets tight pretty quick here.
He has a pretty beefy attack for a support figure, but his mobility isn't great and that earlier efficiency drain still hurts him here since one melee attack of five isn't so hot compared to three or more attacks from the Samurai squads or Awa's special attack.
His retribution power helps with one of the Samurai's big weaknesses, but keeping a bunch of mostly melee guys adjacent to each other isn't the easiest thing in the world. It only triggers if a Samurai takes a wound, too, and Samurai are fairly expensive on average. Even if you hit your rolls you're usually not getting ahead on points.
So there is a lot of give and take here. If anything there's a bit more take than give at the moment, but I'm fine with that in this case. He's a unit with two powers that can get dangerous pretty quick with the right add-ons, and he's in two different factions that still have a lot of room to expand. I'd rather him not be an A+ unit now, as it allows for more room for his teams to grow without worrying about truly awakening his terror too early.
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Summary
Overall, I think Masha has a great theme and is a blast to play. He's probably not going to set the competitive scene on fire right now, but as I said, in this case I think that's a good thing.
I vote
to induct Masha to the SoV.