Shizuka

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Background

Shizuka is a master of the shadows, her cautionary personality ensures her ideal mission is played out clean and without contact with the enemy.
As a worm Shizuka waited until the day before her twelfth birthday to launch an attack on an adept. She had been courted for a number of worm squads over the years and as time passed many thought she wouldn’t have the stomach for it. They assumed she was destined, despite her promise, to join the ranks of the Genin. Little did they know Shizuka was merely biding her time. Her waiting game paid off, she spent the time learning the strengths and weaknesses of her peers and assembled a squad she could be sure of.

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Model type(s):

• Long Shadow
• Ninja

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Melee Weapons(s):

Weapon	Melee Strenght	Traits	Special Abilities
Sai	+0	-	Sidestep Defence (0), Counterstrike Defence (0)

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Trait(s):

Armour (1), Assassin, Camouflage (2"), Dodge (1), Evasive, Lightfooted, Parry (1)

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Ki Feat(s):

• Mirage
• Shadow Walk

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Unique Effect(s):

At the start of this model's activation choose one of the following:

• This model gains Agile until the end of the activation.
• This model's Melee Weapon gains Pierce (2) until the end of the activation.

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Other +

Tactics

Shizuka is amazing, and the undisputed speedster of the KKZ. not only is she difficult to pin down in combat but she can actually gain additional distance when people attempt to tie her up or target her.
Not only is she fast but she’s also the hardest Ninja to take down thanks to her amazing defensive traits that can make her counterstrike defence something people only forget about once.
A Great VIM option and actually a surprisingly good can opener for those durable enemies with too much armour.

Main things to note for Shizuka:

• She doesn’t have a special attack, technically, so people aren’t expecting you to roll attack dice and will often just roll defence against you to waste an activation, which is annoying as counterstrike requires an opponent to roll attack dice to trigger. This does however make her really good as VIM because if opponents want her dead they have to go ‘all-in’ on offence or she will likely punish them for it with a counterstrike. This also creates the opportunity to occasionally get cheeky and risk taking some damage (not that much of a risk with Dodge 1 and parry 1) to put a dice in attack that could bring a model down when defending by potentially enabling a counterstrike defence followed by a chance at a dice to nothing for two wound rolls. As a result, Shizuka can actually tank very well. Opposed Ki feats from strong casters is her only real downside so keep her out of visibility if they have sixth sense or keep her in Camouflage if they don’t.
• Lightfooted and Evasive mean she can get pretty much anywhere, including placing a ZoC on an enemy without having to risk combat with them, if you want to stop them using scenario actions. This makes her amazing on both scenario offence and scenario defence.
• Her Ki feats make her absolutely amazing at all scenarios, those clutch occasions where her Mirage enables you to both waste an opponent’s activation and enable you to skip to an uncovered part of the idol to pray/influence on it in your own turn feels incredible. Shadow Walk enables roughly 4 inches of extra movement if completely blocked from view (i.e. in a smoke bomb/field) and this means it is possible to get from your end zone to a central idol or across the board to score as VIM before your opponents can get there or stop you. Getting a first turn idol influence ready for turn two scoring is really great and you can Shadow Move someone else into her place with full activations to start causing havoc on the opponent’s models that foolishly ran themselves to exhaustion to get a strong turn two position.
• Her start of activation abilities mean she can punish heavily armoured opponents with a surprise attack, when the Mirage works, (great against Minimoto’s low Ki high armour models) thanks to her pierce 2. But perhaps more importantly, her Agile option means she can choose any action she needs when she needs it, including sprinting away from a model to potentially put over 5 inches of distance between her and them, usually putting her out of melee range. So for when the Mirage is unavailable or the Sidestep Defence doesn’t work it’s still not a problem for her, as long as you still have activations left, making her a top rated all round VIM who is very difficult to deal with even when your opponent knows it is going to be her, which most people will assume she is if she is on the board.

Best gear to give her:

• Vial of Raijins Breath (VoRB) - any good speedster should have the option to run 9 inches for an action in the same turn as being able to Shadow Walk, that’s an almost guaranteed 12 inches of movement in a straight line turn 1! Be aware of anti-running effects such as darkness and storms prior to using this though because a full size board will leave you just shy of an idol if doing accurate measurements.
• Signalling Flare - but mostly only if using Shadow Moves to guarantee the swapped model gets to do exactly what you want it to once you’ve pushed Shizuka all the way down to the opponent’s idols for that little extra protection or advantage.
• Cat Like Agility - because immunity to prone really will make her pretty impossible to lock down.

Where she is most useful:

• As with Ghost, Shizuka is very versatile and great in any scenario type. She is actually fairly competent in combat and if striking on a de-buffed opponent with surprise, can drop most enemies. She is great at coming in from flank because she can hold up a few cheaper models almost indefinitely and can break away from them when she doesn’t want to get overwhelmed, meaning she can stretch opponent’s swarm forces or tank a strong combatant. All of this means she is great at enabling other characters to do scenario actions if she is not doing them her self.
• As previously stated, her speed with VoRB means she can set up a great idols advantage turn one and can defend it too. Additionally, it usually means she can cross almost the entire board in a single turn (18 inches plus, allowing for runs and base size on placement) so is amazing for 'VIM gets to X zone' scenarios. On that note, want to score or block the opponent scoring on their zone in turn one? Shizuka can do that too if your opponent isn’t aware of her potential speed and at 19 rice she can usually block two cheaper models from scoring, her and Ghost can usually stop 3-4 models from counting and control them out of the zone.
• Shizuka’s defensive traits and ability to tank a few models at a time mean she is pretty good at holding zone control scenarios as well, although usually best as a duo with another solid attacker. Overall she is absolutely great for her rice cost and enables a lot of Ninja shenanigans to gain advantage in scenarios and when using up your many pass tokens.

Shizuka is such a stand out character that she would work in any warband to bring some utility to a murder heavy list, or to support with evasive abilities on a higher model count warband.

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