An observable phenomenon of human behavior is the way people continue to make the same mistake over and over and over again.

 

In the words of modern day prophet Gob Bluth, I’ve made a huge mistake.

I underestimated the sneakiness.

Ninja are the coolest. Everyone knows that. It is an objective truth. No one dressed up as a courtier for Halloween. Like everyone alive on the planet, I love ninja, as such, I love to build ninja decks. One of the disappointments I expressed reviewing The New Order is the dearth of ninja.

One ninja personality, who is neither Scorpion nor Spider, who is Masked but not wearing a mask, and who has no cool ability. I can’t say Hiruma Toshi is a bad card. He is, however, a deeply unexciting card. The list of personalities who are Samurai, Scout, and Ninja starts with Bayushi Shiaga and ends with Hiruma Toshi. 2 people. That’s it. That’s the list. But Scout has always been Ninja lite and being a Samurai when you are also a Ninja is comparable to being the best 3 on 3 intramural basketball player in a rec legaue when you are also an NBA superstar. It is nice to be a Samurai, but it is unbelievably marvelous to be a Ninja.

How can something so beloved, so flavorful, be so unsupported? Sometimes design swings and misses, but they didn’t even swing at the ball (more mixing of sports metaphors to come!) when it came to Ninja this set. One personality. There are something like 29 magistrates in TNO, and only one Ninja card? Come on, man!

Then I remembered all the text of Shika Sensei.

It works with Ninjas as well as their little brother Scouts. Sneaky, very sneaky.

Shika Sensei is the Spider stronghold stapled onto a different faction. Against honor and dishonor, it is better. Why go through the hassle of losing a province to get an extra flip? The drawbacks though, can be significant. Look at Crab Scouts and you’ll see a non trivial number of 3 honor requirement personalities. Mantis with a 6 province strength is always going to be a risky proposition, and Crane running Shika sensei means they don’t get to run a Crane specific card (which are the best cards in the game by default).

Scorpion don’t care about any of that! They get to play Ninjas! There stronghold is bonkers good! Why am I using exclamation points!

Having a powerful a stronghold and another powerful stronghold stapled onto the first is a good starting point for any l5r deck. All we need to do now is fill out the other 80 cards of the deck. Thankfully, there is at least one arrow to follow. Everyone loves chi death. Of course, by everyone, I mean “me, specifically”. Chi death has been an odd duck for design over the course of the game. Wasting Disease remains a boogeyman of eternal formats. So overpowered that that innocuous items like Koan’s Robe have been banned to prevent it from ruining games. Bayushi Saya to trigger Shosuro Adeiko was the backbone of an unstoppable juggernaut for a good 15 minutes in Samurai Edition. Frozen in Place doesn’t seem like an above the curve power card, especially in format as muscular as Emperor, and yet, banned it was, because Theological Indecision + Frozen was just too good™. When chi death is working, it is killing personalities and their attachments at a rate that is simply superior to what everyone else is paying.

Now, in Ivory we don’t have chi death attached to limited actions. Chuda Tairo as an open counts, sort of, I guess, but not really. What the set does have is battle based chi death, and hey hey! It gets further supported when we play Ninjas.

 

The Shadowed Estate of the Scorpion Shika Sensei
Dynasty (40)	Fate (40)
2 Bayushi Amorie 3 Bayushi Jin-e 3 Shosuro Sadao 3 Shosuro Kiyofumi 3 Shosuro Tagiso 3 Ninube Shiho 2 Bayushi Akagi 1 Soshi Kodanshi 3 Jade Pearl Inn 2 Lane Of Immorality 1 Temple Of Tengen 3 Geisha House 3 Famous Bazaar 2 Shrine To Hachiman 2 The Ivory Courtroom 2 Imperial Dojo 1 Bamboo Harvesters Experienced 1 Counting House	Actions 3 Red Hunger’s Fang 3 Strike As The Earth 3 Wounded In Battle 3 Unholy Strike 3 Inspired Leadership 3 Unsanctioned Strike 2 Planted Evidence 2 Unsettling Gathering 3 Victory Through Deference 3 Strategic Withdrawal 3 Planned Departure 3 Shinobi Vassal 1 Ring Of The Void 1 Ring Of Water 1 Ring Of Earth 1 Ring Of Air 1 Creating Order 1 A Game Of Dice

 

The dynasty deck comes together rather cleanly. Ninjas with marginal abilities and ninjas with respectable stats. The cost stat is the most important. It is tempting to run some big beefy personalities like Bayushi Nitoshi Experienced and the Dark Naga Experienced. They have great abilities to target with Inspired Leadership and they have the potential to take over the game all by themselves. The problem with such large bruisers is how terribly they line up with the totality of the deck. If you are spending 12 – 14 gold on one personality, you aren’t going to be effectively leveraging your sensei. Likewise, the fate deck is lacking in good reactive staples that such a deck needs to fend off the opposition’s battle actions. No Back to the Front, no Dirty Tricks, no Turtle’s Shell. There is a certainly a Scorpion military deck that runs these cards, but such a configuration is going to be more in the market for the raw power of a  Bayushi Maemi over the cheap swarm action saturation of a Shosuro Sadao. With Inspired Leadership already being a part of the deck, I can see a world where I cut the non-ninja Akagi for some big uniques, but I’m not there yet.

 

The fate deck looks simplistic, what with its chi death theme and the subtheme of “this is a good card”. It has gone through a number of revisions and is still not locked. The chi death package is the core of the deck and compliments the dynasty side well. Use your sea of people to provide presence, take a number of actions per battle, attrition a few units, possibly run away, and eventually overwhelm your opponent.

It is a slow death by a thousand paper cuts (I dare say, a slow acting poison), and as such, the move your guy home force reduction effects are crucial to help blunt early game pressure. Your sensei gives you some staying power, but your low residual force makes it hard if you fall behind too far to fast. Trading for you doesn’t start until you hit critical mass. Chump defenses are often called for. Bayushi Amorie is in the deck primarily for this purpose. Cavalry chump defender.

Supplementing the battle strategy are Planted Evidence and Unsettling Gathering. The two most powerful limited fate cards in the format. Clearing out problematic defenders and helping to generate sweet sweet force they are the knockdown uppercut that supplement your in battle jabs (the sports metaphor payoff!).

Ninja decks haven’t had their day in the sun in Ivory. Partly because they have been outclassed by potent dishonor strategies, and partly because they are just so sneaky and refuse to leave the shadows. The solution? Dive into the darkness and draw your power from within.