The Whining

L5R is a tough mistress. Interest waxes and wanes. In the past, I’d put it on the shelf for a couple months after worlds, when there’s no new cards and no real events. Tuesday card night becomes Tuesday Legendary night as my brother rolls in and sabotages everyone’s desire to run back stale matches in an environment we think we all have figured out. This is the time of year I convince myself there’s a playable 40/40 3-of legacy format, or I brew durdle-fest Big Deck decks. It’s the off season.

Then I made a terrible life mistake. I started an L5R website. Suddenly I had to be interested. Worse, I have to make you all interested! Woe unto me.

So then I had an idea. A tournament! My own tournament! Against myself!

The Logic

Kotei season is right around the corner. AEG, to their credit, is trying to make L5R an all-year game, and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s time to focus. Sorry P’an ku, sorry Sorrowful Prayers. It’s time to focus.

One of the most important parts of testing is establishing a gauntlet. L5R is a game about matchups. Barring a crazy broken dark horse deck (paging Paneki’s Mask), you simply cannot beat everything. That means the players who are going to take down an event are going to be the players who most successfully read the field and get ready for it. At the highest levels, people out-and-out specifically meta other top contenders. But for our purposes, having a good idea of what the best decks are going to be and figuring out what will have the best shot against them is enough.

The Bracket

What we see here are 5 extremely powerful and proven arc decks, and 3 newcomers that Paul and I think have potential to attack the format in new and interesting ways. It’s a mix of updated lists from last season, and the best of our brews. We seeded them based on their past performance and our subjective evaluation of how good they are. The 8 seed we decided to throw in a wildcard deck – Dragon Honor – to mix it up a bit. Just assume that Luke Gregory is at this tournament.

The Decks

Most of the decks on this list have an extensive pedigree. Let’s look at them!

Crane Scouts

Crane scouts is a deck that’s been dominate for the entire duration of Ivory Edition, and Crane is a faction that’s been dominate for the entire duration of L5R. In truth, we could have filled at least half the top 8 with totally different variations of Akagi Sensei decks in our top 8 and have resembled a real kotei top 8. Cheap swarm builds, super friends builds with various powerful uniques, and various fate packages: follower heavy with Family Dojo or action heavy with Serenity and various force reduction, or some blend. In the end we decided to just represent two.

Unicorn Shugenja

Unicorn, like crane have a ton of good decks. I think post-TNO, though, shugenja has emerged as the best one. Shugenja have the best action suite with Final Ruin, Guidance in War, and Ward of Air, and unicorn gets the most mileage out of this package with their cavalry units, box action, and economic advantage. By not playing shugenja out of corn, you don’t gain access to significantly better personalities, but your action suite takes a significant hit in power. One deck plays actions like Serenity and Allied Efforts, and one plays Battle: Kill someone. The difference is stark. Playing this deck feels great. You’re always calling the shots and setting the tempo, especially when you go first. You can go super-unit or go wide with lots of smaller units. It generates force quickly and efficiently with Stones of Purity, and takes full advantage of the various conquers it has access to (plus Guidance in War). It plays Okura is Released as a guaranteed ranged 4 (off Wattu + sensei) and occasional unit kill off Tested Blade. Much like Rae Sensei, it’s a deck that preys on other less powerful mid-game military decks, but with more resilience and fewer matchup landmines. 10/10 would play again.

Scorpion Dishonor

Ah, Dishonor. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. This is an excellent deck that didn’t take down that many tournaments, despite being represented in pretty much every top 8. That’s because it mostly preys on unprepared players. Dishonor is a technically tricky matchup that requires the other player to know when to wait and when to attack. A botched attack can accelerate the dishonor deck by an entire turn between Saya, Ramifications and Oppression. The deck has only gotten better with the printing of Soshi Kitaiko and Yogo Chijin to allow access to some shugenja tricks – most important Walking the Way to set up your Mercantile Warfare bombs. This is a deck that will continue to perform well, and you need to be ready for it.

Lion Military

Go first, buy guys, attack has been a recipe for success since Imperial Edition. A variety of builds have been doing well all season, and I don’t see any reason for that to change in the early events. The addition of Serenity to beat Turtle’s Shell and Springing the Ambush as Unholy strikes 4-6 make the deck even better. Scouting Amidst the Snow gives it access to oodles of force via Continuous Terrain, since Lion swarms out better than anyone else, and gives some interesting toolbox choices. I particularly like Crystal Tears, Valiant Defense, and Open Ground as surprise 1-ofs to grab and swing a game in your favor.

Corrupt Mantis

This deck did extremely well early in the last kotei season, and has only gotten better with time. Lane of Immorality + JPI + 2 for 3 on turn 1 makes the deck’s gold even more consistently explosive, and there are all sorts of new, interesting directions to take the deck. The most obvious path is to update the old oni dueling build with Aranai Sensei + Death of the Winds to get Weakness Exponsed or Come One at a Time, but there’s also a build that can run Shika sensei, cheap naval scouts and big attachments like Sohei’s Ono and Demolisher for huge naval actions and big fate-side force. Turns out oceans of gold are good. Who knew.

Rae Sensei

Ah, my baby. This is the first of the bottom brew-bracket, the decks Paul and I think will perform well despite not being proven. This is a straight grip-and-grin predator deck. It preys on mid-game military decks that must attack into you, punishes them early, and locks them into a position where they can never profitably defend or attack. It can also run Priestly Feud off 5 chi personalities, forcing your opponents into terrible attacks or defenses. It generates lots of force off of Burning Spirit, and has access to recursive uses of the most powerful battle action in the format – final ruin. It struggles a bit against Honor and Dishonor, but there are ways of shoring up those matchups, using Alchemy Lab to increase Burning Spirit force generation, and Inspired Devotion for +4/+5 force in early attacks, as well as fast Blitz decks that can go under it before it sets up. In the end, it will either be a slightly worse or slightly better version of the Unicorn deck, depending on what the metagame looks like.

Philippines Crane

For those of you not in the know, “Philippines” is our shorthand for any deck that runs over 30 followers + family dojo/lonely dojo. The decks attack the format in a unique and difficult to handle way: by generating a million force and sitting there. Followers and force together offer a lot of resiliency, Lonely dojo generates a lot of gold, there are plenty of destined cards in the Crane card pool to keep the followers flowing, and crane has access to at least 5 conquerors, plus potentially General’s Steed to make defenses as powerful as attacks. Go first, generate force, attack. It’s a variant of Crane Scouts, but one unique enough to warrant it’s inclusion. It has weaknesses – dueling and Ninube Shiho – but the offering of followers is broad enough to provide some answers to these. There answers are probably good enough to give you 40-45% match ups. That means it’s good enough for the swiss, but if you expect to play these sorts of decks in a best of 3 environment, it might not make the cut.

Dragon Honor

This is our wildcard deck. We wanted some honor in the environment, and didn’t have any Dragon, so we glued them together. That being said, the deck is solid. Spells are extremely powerful, and the bow-everything spell-honor deck has always been tier 1.5ish. Dragon has the advantage of more force than Phoenix, the other good home for the deck, so it can win battles Phoenix would lose after using all the bow effects. The deck can also generate force well with Stones of Purity and attack if need be. This is a deck I’m interested to see if it can make the cut, so to speak.

The Conclusion

Check in all this and next week for best of 3 match videos and analysis of these brackets! We’ll be starting soon with Rae Sensei vs Scorpion Dishonor, then proceeding from there. Let us know what you think of the decks, our builds of them, and what your favorite horses for early koteis are!