Building a Love Letter deck.

3:00am

I should be asleep. Why am I still awake? It isn’t that I’m not tired. Quite the contrary. I’m exhausted. I have a full day tomorrow. Tomorrow? Today. I have a full day today. Why am I still up? Browser open. Looking at the Oracle. The Oracle. Wonderfully named. Makes me think of the Matrix. First movie still holds up. Loved Cloud Atlas too. Wonder if Jupiter Ascending is going to be a train wreck.

Stop myself. Losing the thread. Need to refocus on what is important.

Lots of text = good?

3:17am

Important. First and last time someone is going to refer to Seppun Tasuke as important. How did I get here? Memories of the past come unbidden. Room shared with a brother. Dormitory in college. House rented with friends. First apartment. The safehouse. Second apartment, wrong to call it mine, girlfriend’s. Property in Florida (I miss you Dad). My house. How did I get here? I’ve always been here. I’ve never left. The scenery has changed. The feeling remains. I know this place. Familiar yet unknown. Haunting and overwhelming, yet delightful. It’s happened again.

The rabbit hole.

3:42am

It started out so innocently. Soft promotion for the site. A thread on the Spider clan forums. A request. “Build a non-sucky Seppun Taskue deck. Seriously!” asks Kakita Shiro. His typo, not mine. I smiled when I read that. My first request was easy! He didn’t specify arc of strict, nice and open ended.

corrupt seppun

Easy mode.

The path was clear. Golden Plains of the Unicorn so the -1 gold production wasn’t a hindrance. Corrupt gold. Jade Pearl Inn into Lane of Immorality. House of Disgrace. Run 3 of the Crab and the Lion love letter personality. Maybe the Monk. Fill the deck out with B’rnn/Myuken/Keppo Experienced. A Family Dojo build with New Cavalry Tactics and some spicy honor loss fate cards.

Deck wouldn’t be an unstoppable monstrosity, but a low to the ground swarm military deck with above average gold production seasoned with powerful and efficient fate cards certainly qualifies as “non-sucky”. Can then pivot focus of the post. Write article about examining and exploiting the totality of a card. Sometimes the best part isn’t the obvious part. Thanks for the assist Kakita Shiro, that was an easy lay-up.

Except he isn’t pleased. That isn’t what he wanted. He was looking for a “real” love letter deck. At least, that is what the Kakita Shiro in my head is saying. Ungrateful douchebag. Guilt settles in. Not guilt. Something worse. Guilt doesn’t bother me. Never been a motivator of my actions or inactions. This is a more powerful feeling. An urge. Curiosity.

If you aren’t running Token of Affection, are you actually a Love Letter deck? One of the great questions of our time.

4:17am

This is insane. Could just finish it and sleep already. Instead I’ve circled back, completed the corrupt Tasuke decklist. It is a solid deck. Should put it together on paper. Play it at weekly card night. Could go more corrupt. Add an oni or fallen guy. Lane of Immorality off of JPI is something a lot of decks should be looking to leverage. How common is Nexus of Lies? Need to do some recon. Losing the thread. Focus. Why am I still tweaking the corrupt military shell? Close browser. Get soda.

4:25am

Ok. Let’s do this. Start at the beginning. Gold production reduction still suggests Unicorn. The double cycle has great value too. Need to see and purchase multiple personalities. Other options, Spider for the flip, Mantis for the 1st turn gold boost. Dragon for the ring? No, not relevant. This is a defensive deck.

Is it? Why defensive? I was just looking at how effective some of the love letter personalities are  in a military shell. Should I move on to strict? Honor is easier there. Can overwhelm on send home with just a splash of attrition. It doesn’t matter, both formats are lame ducks. Just finish.

Finish? Ha! I’ve barely begun. Need to finish? Whatever. Sleep is for the weak. This deck is going to be awesome. I’m going to have the best (only?) love letter deck in the format. Maybe I shouldn’t post it? Why share my masterpiece. Save it. Hoard it. My precious.

Iweko Miaka, the whore.

5:15am

I am going to hunt down Kakita Shiro and break all his smug little fingers. Lets see how well he can troll me from the internet then. Non-sucky Seppun Tasuke deck. No such thing exists. I have to jam a bunch of mediocre military personalities into a deck with a bunch of mediocre honor personalities, buy them all in unison, and then get my opponent to discard cards? While guessing the right number? I’m a terrible guesser. Will need to research deck lists and get a general vibe on the average focus values of various decks. Could be a whole article. Companion piece. No environment to analyze though. I seek answers from the abyss. I desire to search the nothingness.

I am like the Void Dragon, I stare into nothingness and see everything.

5:37am

The idea of sleep now seems laughable. Why would I want to do anything other than what I am doing right now. Playing here. In my nice comfortable hole. Oblivious to the world. Time and space have no meaning here. I control all. I shall bend the card pool to my will.

6:01am

Alarm sounds. Intrudes on my solitude. Sports updates. Political updates. What the muggles call news. So banal. So boring. Don’t they know there is a new l5r set coming out in just a few days? Why concern yourself with national immigration policy now? Where was I? Right, the deck.

Above average chi on non military personalities. Explore a dueling build. Can construct a respectable defense. Find Inspired Leadership while scanning 4 focus cards. Copy action is great. Another use of Misato. Search Oracle for other copy effects. Disappointment. Search Oracle for other additional use effects. Got a hit. Not Yet Finished. Start to wonder if I actually need the love letter personalities for discard.

Eureka! moment. By rule, dynasty cards have a zero focus value. I’ve done it. Oh man, I’ve broken the sensei perfectly. Use Scorpion ninja, Shosuro Tagiso, multiple times in one battle to get affection tokens. then  I just  need buy some personalities. Works in strict too. Feel great. Accomplished. Proud.

Cracked it!

6:35am

Check rules forum. Deflated. Cards do not interact how I want them to. No. They do not interact how they are suppose to. Errata by rules fiat. Rules team calls itself a junta. Appropriate. There are those fighting valiantly to get a reversal. Fighting the good fight to get cards to work completely opposite from how they are intended to function. Good luck comrades.

corrupt seppun3

Need more in common.

Where am I at now? Non dueling defensive deck that utilizes the military personalities to force multiple discards? That sentence alone sounds sucky. There are other discard options. Men of Cunning? No that won’t work, not random, and no good way to leverage the bow. Uncovering the Culprit? Don’t have any magistrate love letters. Could splash some in. No. Hard to find the space, and don’t want to ever get stuck having to prioritize a non love letter. Diplomacy Breaks Down, solid. Love the discipline. Non random discard.  Will never give me a token. Unwelcome Supervision. Simple. Straight forward. If played multiple times a turn could be potent. Sorrowful Prayer type build? Empty fate deck, play 3 shuffle in, draw 3 play 3. Repeat to empty opponent’s hand. Win? Slow, though faster than people think. How am I staying alive? What happens if my opponent empties his hand by his own volition? Corner case. Cannot worry about. Playing a love letter deck, only so many scenarios can be pondered.

Path to part of a victory?!

6:55am

Control suite permutations are coming at me with lightening rapidity. Ambush with Misato and tripple Not Yet Finished. Touch of Death off 5chi Phoenix Shugenja. Contained at Court and Soul of Man to set them up.

7:10am

Crap. Lost track of time. Need to leave for work, going to be a little late. Close document. Lament that work isn’t done. Disregard lament. No big deal. I’ll finish it later. How long can it take?

13 comments

  • Seems you missed that Myuken can copy the “Love Letter” keyword. Email me. I got some other ideas that breaks this deck wide open.

    • I was aware of the interaction, but the post was written very stream of conscious, spur of the moment style so it didn’t make it into the post. I’m still working on the deck, as I feel compelled to fulfill the obligation, but I also want to build SO MANY MORE decks.

      You can always email us at Enoughtalkl5r@gmail.com or my personal email of Curseword69@gmail.com for feedback etc.

  • Miaka requires you start your turn with Love Letter people, making it impossible to use Myuken.

    Paul, thanks for fulfilling the contract. I am thinking about ignoring my opponent’s FVs and just Favor cycling and Kharmic-ing my own stuff for the Affection tokens.

  • As the person who pretty much started fighting the good fight in the rules forum, I love this post. I personally have no issue with the card working the way they say it works…but I have massive issues with them saying it works that way in contradiction to both a plain-text reading of the card AND the CR entry for “discard.”

    • It is pure fiat without any sound rationale or reasoning behind it, but for whatever reason, they don’t want to be bothered to issue an errata (technical or otherwise). This is a problem that comes out from time to time in l5r. On the one hand, we want to be the game where “come on, man, it works this way because obviously that is how it suppose to work and we say so, don’t be a douchebag.” while also being the game with article 7 subsection 3 bullet A. These two philosophies, just relax and enjoy vs technocratic rules lawyer run counter to each other, and occasionally we get these sorts of problematic rulings.

      It happened with Invest and School of Wizardry/Colonial Dojo too. Part of the game, but one I could happily do without.

  • Building mine out of Spider. Probably horrible. Will report back later.

  • P.S. You failed to mention Voice of Experience.

    • Voice doesn’t really help the sensei hit because you have to interrupt the action before you see the card. Random number and random number + 1 are equally unknown.

      • Yes but Voice of Experience has “may” in it which means it creates a delayed effect with a choice that is decided once the trigger occurs (card is shown or discarded) NOT when the interrupt is announced. I’m pretty sure that part of Alex’s ruling on Fires of Turmoil wasn’t reversed too.

  • Try strike first!
    1) U can guess a number
    2) Show 2 cards in the opponents hand and U can force discard it 🙂
    Only in battles yeah, but in strict the millitary is too common

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