Komuso are welcome sights in many villages. Their willingness to work for payment other than koban, find them in high demand among poorer villages that need assistance defending themselves from bandits or fickle kami. The clans are also aware of a komuso’s high value and are often more than willing to make any observances a Komuso requires to gain their aid.

From their basic profile a Komuso can initially appear to be somewhat of a lightweight. However, beneath the low Attack and Defense attributes lurks a support powerhouse.

Resolute Melody’s bonus is straightforward and immediately helpful to teams that work together. It is especially powerful if the Komuso is also in a position to provide an assist bonus. Elixir of Courage is dependent on Tough, so lets look at the Komuso’s Keyword Abilities.

Healing: A ninja with Healing may use their action to make an affinity test. If the test is successful then the ninja may remove all status effect tokens from one friendly ninja in their influence zone.

Resilient: When a ninja with Resilient is Injured or Stunned roll a die. If any of the ninja’s affinities are rolled then injured is downgraded to Stunned, or Stunned is downgraded to nothing happening to the Resilient ninja.

Ronin: Ninja with Ronin follow all of the rules for ninja with Hero. Additionally, a team must pay Ronin a fee after each game so that they will stay with the team. This fee is a number of Koban listed after the slash on the model’s cost.

Since Ronin references Hero, here is the text for it.

Hero: Ninja with Hero cannot gain XP, cannot increase their attributes, and cannot get new Keywords during league play. Heroes are unique characters and can only be included in a team once

Tough: At the beginning of their activation a ninja with Tough may make an affinity test. If the test is successful they get a Protect token.

While the Komuso increases the Defense of ninjas nearby, it can use Elixir of Courage and Tough bolster the durability of ninja further away by giving them Protect tokens. Protect tokens can be spent to reduce Injured to Stunned, or Stunned to no result. Healing keeps surrounding ninja status effect free and in peak fighting form.

The Komuso’s dual affinity combined with Resilient makes the Komuso itself very difficult to Injure or Stun, successfully downgrading the harmful effects a third of the time.

The Komuso can take the edge off of a low defense, high attack ninja team, or turn a high defense team into unstoppable juggernauts.

Happy Easter

The Soda Pop and Ninja Division team will be spending the day with our friends and family celebrating the holiday. Private Messages and e-mails will start being answered again tomorrow (Monday). We will be in and out of the comments section a bit, but not as much as normal.

Whether you celebrate the holiday or not we wish you and yours all the best today and hope it is an enjoyable one full of fun and laughter.

…and don’t forget….

Jorogumo approaches!