In the spirit of things

   

With a new year and a new tournament season plus a new slow grow at Dark Sphere I thought it would be a good time for something new.

Now I wanted to stay with Ressers as I enjoy my undead horde, so I thought that Kirai with her legion of spirits was the ideal choice. I get to stay with the other masters I like but also get to add something new with the sea of spirits over my shambling zombies.



This gave me a slight pause as a lot of spirits work completely differently to zombies and knowing what to use where and when is almost like using a new faction. So I decided to use the blog as a place to work out what I know and what I don't about spirits.

I'm going to work through Kirai's list of summons share what I think of the and how I might use them.

So first off Kirai's favourite little friends the Seishin.

Seishin are 0 cost peons that can't be hired only summoned. They can be summoned on a 0 action by Kirai herself and Datsue ba and brought in when a non seishin dies with in 6" of someone with the spirit becon upgrade.

So I have a few seishin floating around what can I do with them? They are insignificant with low stats across the board so they won't be hanging around too long.

Their abilities that jump out as useful are only either which makes them immue to auras and Enslaved soul which lets them be placed into base contact with friendly leader at the start of the leaders activation. Enslaved soul almost defines the place these models want to be.



The back of their card has one attack and two tactical actions. I can't really see using the attack as anything more than a throw away AP if there is really nothing else for them to do. The tactical actions are both one AP but even if they've survived long enough not to be slow anymore they only get to do one as both of them result in them being sacrificed.
The first one is Spirit protection which gives friendly models within 3" immunity from pulse and blast damage which seems a great defense against the casters that will being trying to take advantage of my incorporeal. The second tactical is cure spirit which on a 7 can heal  a model within 3" 1/2/2 not a huge heal but could make a difference last game when your beaters or master are low on wounds.

Now the main use of seishin is to help Kirai as she can use them in a few different ways. Most of Kirai's action work by manipulating spirits either moving them or using them to feed off.
First Kirai can pass off damage (on a mask trigger) to a spirit with 2" which is where seishin like to be.
Next she can sacrifice a spirit within 2" (I see why there's a way to negate blasts) which gives her +2 casting for that action which will make her Ca 8 on average which is amazing.
Then she has blood and wind (see a Dr about that) this is her summoning action which uses friendly models instead of markers to summon off. Whatever you summon from this with kill the seishin so a lot of the time there may be a better target so you can save the seishin for defense and buffing Ca.
Next is swirling spirits which lets you switch about the place of two spirits which while trading a seishin for Izarmu into combat with you opponent seems great there once again are probably better targets for this.
And still not finished Kirai has two more actions via upgrades that can use the seishin. another zero absorb spirit lets her sacrifice a spirit to draw two cards then discard one. Anything that gives me a chance of having better cards in my hand is a win for me.
Lastly spirit beacon lets a seishin within 2" thats killed heal one damage and not be killed while doing 1 damage to kirai. This means that you can pass damage from kirai to a seishin and then save it for use later.

So to sum up Seishin they are more of a resource for Kirai than a model in their own right. They will keep Kirai alive and help her get things done while also taking up activations to help give you activation control. I can imagine a situation with Kirai that I wouldn't want as many seishin floating as possible.

Next I'll go over the first of her summons Night Terrors and Gaki. Thanks for reading and let me know if I'm missing any tricks with the little ghost dragons.