![]() | Ma Su 马谡 Conceited Talent who Failed 怀才自负 Winning Hearts 心战 Once per turn, if has more cards in his hand than maximum health, Ma Su can look at the top three cards of the deck. He can display any hearts, put them in his hand, and rearrange the rest. Bottomless Tears 挥泪 The player that kills Ma Su must discard all of their cards. |
Clarification:
- If Ma Su is a rebel and another character kills him, "Bottomless Tears" goes into effect before the other character gets the bounty. In effect, they lose all cards then draw three.
- If Cao Pi kills Ma Su, his "Unnatural Death" goes into effect before Ma Su's "Bottomless Tears." In effect, Cao Pi would take all of Ma Su's cards, then discard all of his cards (then draw three if Ma Su is a rebel).
Strengths | Weaknesses |
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Notable Combinations:
- Liu Bei/Guo Jia/Xun Yu/Lu Su - These characters can give Ma Su cards and help him with activating "Winning Hearts."
- Gan Ning/Zhang Liao/Zhang He/Xu Huang - These characters specialize card destruction, which will make it difficult for Ma Su to activate "Winning Hearts."
- Yuan Shu - Yuan Shu is not afraid of killing Ma Su and discarding all of his cards because he often has to discard all of this remaining cards at the end of his turn as per "Trite Rule."
- Zhuge Liang - Zhuge Liang would not mind killing Ma Su as it would activate his "Empty City."
- Lu Xun/Sun Shang Xiang - These characters have powers that will activate after losing all of their cards. Lu Xun's "Linked Camps" is easily activated after killing Ma Su and Sun Shang Xiang draws two cards for each piece of equipment that she discards after killing Ma Su.
- Zhang Chun Hua - Zhang Chun Hua's "Unfeeling" allows her to kill Ma Su without activating his "Bottomless Tears," as her damage is always treated as negligence damage.
- Diao Chan/Xun Yu - These characters can make other characters kill Ma Su so "Bottomless Tears" is activated on one of his own teammates.
King | Ma Su is quite possibly the worst king choice. "Bottomless Tears" is meaningless if Ma Su is the king because the game ends when he dies. Also, if there are more than five characters, Ma Su's health limit increases to four, making it even more difficult to activate "Winning Hearts." |
Loyalist | Ma Su is mediocre loyalist. There is not much he can do for the king, but at least his "Bottomless Tears" may keep him alive for a while. However, the rebels can do enough damage to him to prevent the use of "Bottomless Tears" and leave him alive and useless. |
Rebel | Ma Su is a bad rebel choice. The three card bounty almost completely negates the benefit of having "Bottomless Tears." |
Spy | This role seems to be Ma Su's best role, although that is not saying much. If he can somehow keep both sides evenly matched (and this will be quite a trick since "Winning Hearts" is a weak power and the only thing that he can rely upon to help him do this), neither side will be too interested in killing him. If he stays strong long enough to make it to a one-on-one with a weak king, he may be able to snag a victory with "Winning Hearts." However, if the loyalists die too quickly, he will not be able to help the king that much against the rebels. Likewise, if the rebels die too quickly, the loyalists and the king will have no worries about killing him, as the game will end before anyone has to discard cards. |
Final Remarks:
When we write these pages, we do our best to give each character the most credit possible and show them in the best possible light, regardless of how much we like/dislike them. For Ma Su, we tried very hard to do this, but we were unsuccessful. We believe that he is quite possibly one of the weakest characters in the game, along with Gong Sun Zang, Xu Chu, and Cao Ren. Perhaps the creator of this card was trying to pay homage to how incompetent Ma Su was as a general of one of Shu's armies. In fact, Ma Su's character description is less than flattering (Conceited Talent who Failed). In any event, it should be noted that many other players have a more favorable opinion of Ma Su than we do, so feel free to give him a try.