Trigger warning: this article talks about Magic cards.

We spend a lot of time on this site talking about cards. Which ones are best, which ones are terrible, how they interact, and so on. From reading all this, you’d think the most important thing on the card is the text box. Well, you’d be dead wrong.

The most important thing on the card is the art. And L5R has an art direction problem. The quality of the art has almost never been better, but the art and the mechanics are starting to drift apart, and that’s a very bad place to be.

The Problem with Whippoorwill

Maybe some of you play Magic. Maybe some of you are already familiar with the card Whippoorwill. It’s an unplayable card from an unplayable era. What it does doesn’t even matter. What it doesn’t do matters.

Here’s the thing about this card – it doesn’t have flying. In Magic, flying is a mechanic. It doesn’t matter what it does. But you look at this card. It’s a bird in flight. IN FLIGHT. And it doesn’t have flying. Players just assumed it did. By M:tG’s design team’s own admission, it was a huge mistake. If art comes back and it doesn’t depict a mechanic (or depicts the wrong one), they change the card. It really is that important.

The art is the most important thing on the card. People know there is a flying mechanic. They see a bird in flight. They assume the bird has flying.

The card art and the mechanics of the card need to align, or else it creates an actual negative play experience. Yes, I just dropped the NPE bomb.

Negative Play Experiences

Here’s what a negative play experience is for me – not knowing what the heck my cards do. I’ve been playing L5R for a very long time, and I know as well as anyone it’s hard to miss traits. They added bold typeface to try to correct the problem, but the bold isn’t very bold, and it doesn’t matter. Why not? Because the words aren’t the most important thing on the card. THE ART IS!

In the past, this wasn’t so much of a problem because mechanics were (for the most part) tightly contained within their home faction. You saw a purple border, it was cavalry. If design printed a purple border without cav, people would put it into their decks just assuming it had cav, and when their friends pointed it out, they had a negative play experience.

When you saw a guy with a green border, you assumed he had naval. When he didn’t and you played him in your raid deck, you got really upset and had a negative play experience.

And so on.

Aligning the Art to the Mechanics

Times have changed. Part of the impetus of the cavalry change (I assume) was to allow design to splash the trait to different clans. You don’t need every guy in your deck to be cav to get full benefit. Same goes for naval. So those get splashed around, which is great! The problem is the art hasn’t changed to match.

Look at these 4 cards. Does anything about their art say “I am cavalry”? Quite the opposite. Shungo is crouching on a mountain, in terrain that seems impassable to horses. Gensai is IN A TREE. Nozomi looks like a shugenja. And Shigemitsu is KILLING PEOPLE ON HORSES.

As L5R players, we have to take in a lot of information. Abilities are complicated, and there are a lot of traits. We want flavor on the cards, which adds more visual information. Design understands this. Why else would they have removed the clan traits? We can communicate that information via the mons and the colors of the cards. We should be able help the players out with the art, too.

How can we help? It’s simple. Give cav guys horses, or a magic carpet, or a wave or cloud or something they can ride. They don’t have to be riding it, just put it in the art, and make it clear it’s the personality’s horse (no, those horses in the tornado don’t count).

Put naval guys by the water.

Give guys with a ranged attack a bow. Guys with melee attacks should have big wicked looking weapons.

Duelists should have a sakura tree.

It’s all so simple!

But Jesse, that’s stupid

No, you’re stupid

Alright, seriously, I know people think it’s kind of silly. I always looked at Doji Mitsuru’s art and said, “gee, that’s literal”. But you know what? I never forgot she had naval, because she was on a boat. It doesn’t matter if it’s stupid. It matters that it clearly communicates what the card is and does. If she didn’t have naval, now THAT would have been stupid.

I also realize that L5R is a game put together on a shoestring budget, held together mostly by love and loyalty in equal proportions. Sometimes design really wants to print a Crane guy with cavalry who can turn naval, but the slot was originally for a Crane shugenja, and they already ordered the art. What should they do then, smarty pants?

Easy, print a Shugenja. If the art comes back and there’s no horse, just take the cav trait off the guy. If the art comes back and there is a horse, raise his gold by 10 or whatever the “cav tax” is and give him the trait. It’s what Magic does. It’s a concession to the fact that the art is the most important thing on the card.

Basically, I’m suggesting that the world would keep spinning if all the guys pictured didn’t have cav. If it’s so urgently important that they have the trait, the art director needs to crack some skulls and get the art the cards are supposed to have.

The Most Important Thing on the Card

I’ve been saying that line over and over again. It should be self evidently true. If it weren’t, we’d all just be playing with slips of paper. But anyone who has playtested that way can tell you it’s a miserable experience. All the cards blend together. It’s impossible to make the snap judgements you need to, because everything blends together.

Guess what happens when the card art doesn’t reflect what the card does?

Be honest, we’ve all made these mistakes. L5R is a ridiculously complicated game. I’m amazed it’s survived as long as it has. The team that produces it should be doing everything in their power to let us parse the cards at a glance. Ignoring art’s role in doing that is just foolish.

 

Sometimes you just wanna go big.

I’m not talking about playing crab and buying a 6 force guy for 9 gold. No, that’s just going Crab. I’m talking about going BIG.

Alright, so it’s not Lotus edition anymore. Heck, it’s not even Celestial edition anymore. What’s a Timmy to do?

Kotei season, for the most part, didn’t produce a ton of interesting decks. Good decks, sure, but for the most part everything was within parameters. Nothing was super surprising, out of left field.

Well, almost nothing. Enter Lloyd Videz, my hero, on a shining white steed!

The Exquisite Palace of the Crane Akagi Sensei
Dynasty (40)	Fate (40)
Holdings 3 Productive Mine 3 Nexus of Lies 3 House of Prophecy 3 Marketplace 3 Family Dojo 3 The Breeding Grounds 1 Counting House Bamboo Harvesters – Experienced Oracle of the Void – Experienced The Emerald Dojo Personalities 3 Daidoji Tametaka 3 Daidoji Ujirou 3 Daidoji Gensai 3 Daidoji Tobei 3 Daidoji Kinta Daidoji Tametaka – Experienced 2 Daidoji Tametaka – Experienced Asukai the Tireless	Strategies 3 Back to the Front A Game of Dice Creating Order Followers 3 Shield Wall 3 Elephant Cavalry 3 Chagatai’s Legion 3 Incendiary Archers 3 Spearmen 3 Expert Archers 3 Spearmen Cavalry 3 Watch Commander Items 3 Ominous Armor 3 Exquisite Nagimaki of the Fox Clan 3 Kshatriya Artifact 1 Heart of Fudo – Experienced 2 Rings Ring of the Void

Be still my heart. This deck goes big, by playing a mere 36 attachments. Super units anyone?

So, this deck was pre-errata Crane, which meant it was able to have shaky gold. 3 Breeding grounds, Emerald Dojo, Bamboo, Oracle and House of Prophecy pretty much screams “look how wasteful I can be”. It’s basically rubbing it’s wealth in our faces, all while stomping across the board with 30F conqueror units. Ugh. Crane.

So the errata came along, and this deck was hit hardest. You couldn’t just completely ignore gold anymore. We all forgot about it. But then this card was printed!

To understand just how awesome this card is, you have to understand what the trait really says. It says the holding gets +1 gold each time you attach a follower. Sure sure, whatever. What it really means is 2 things.

The Crane Errata Never Happened

Yep. This should be called “Money Laundering Dojo”. It’s simple. Suppose you have a follower you’re definitely, 100% going to attach, no matter what. You use your box to increase your gold production from 3 to 4, then attach your 4 gold follower. Lonely Dojo’s gold is increased by 1. The production increase moved from the holding that bought the follower to the dojo. More importantly, the dojo’s gold boost lasts through the dynasty phase, whereas the box’s doesn’t. Congratulations, you just laundered gold. Welcome to the Kolat.

All Your Followers Cost 1 Less Gold

This one is pretty simple. You attach a follower, you get one gold back. If the card was a 2 for 2 that reduced the cost of all followers by 1, we’d think that’s a pretty good card, right? Play a deck of free stuff and just go nuts. But the truth is that it’s even better than that, because there’s no limit to how low you can go with multiple dojos. If you have 3 in play and you attach a 1 gold follower, you just made 2 gold.

Poor Lloyd Videz, attaching followers for full price, not able to have ridiculous dynasty phases in addition to flopping down 10 gold of attachments. What a sad existence 37 attachment decks lead, pre-Lonely Dojo! Let’s update that deck with some TNO mojo!

The Exquisite Palace of the Crane Akagi Sensei
Dynasty (40)	Fate (40)
Events (3) 3 Glimpse of the Unicorn Holdings (18) 3 Jade Pearl Inn 1 Bookkeeper 3 Lonely Dojo 3 House of Prophecy 1 Bamboo Harvesters – exp 1 Remote Temple 3 Marketplace 3 Family Dojo Personalities (19) 1 Asukai, the Tireless 3 Daidoji Tomomi 3 Kakita Mitohime 3 Daidoji Tobei 3 Daidoji Nozomi 3 Zenathaar 1 Zansho – exp 2 Daidoji Tanshi	Strategies (2) 1 A Game of Dice 1 Creating Order Followers (36) 3 Ashigaru Spearmen 3 Colonial Conscripts 3 Family Sensei 3 Merchant Guard 3 Spearmen 3 Unliving Legion 3 Watch Commander 3 Dark Naga Ambusher 3 Enslaved Djinn 3 Expert Archers 3 Incendiary Archers 3 Shield Wall Rings (2) 1 Ring of Earth 1 Ring of the Void

Crane, because they are Crane, of course came out like bandits in TNO.

A naval personality with a battle action, and a non-unique 4F conqueror? Is this even real life? Crane players are so spoiled it’s stupid.

The Plan

Alright, the deck is simple. We buy gold for 2 turns, or sometimes just 1. We load up our guy, and we attack. Our Family Dojos let us generate unlimited force, we have a ton of pew pew action from our followers, so we can shoot down whatever gets in our way. We also get to run a bunch of assorted answers in our deck.

Once the Death Star is fully operational, we just keep attacking. If you totally yhatzee on your flips you get a conqueror, so you just can’t stop won’t stop load up one guy and go ballistic (Ecks vs Sever) on your opponent.

 

Sometimes we don’t get totally lucky (unless you’re Paul). In that case, though, the deck can really shine through. The truth is that you don’t need to throw every single follower on a single guy. It turns out that merely having 5-8 followers is enough, and then you can start loading up a second guy. He can defend!

The deck draws more cards than you think. We’re running 9 destined cards, 3 glimpse of the Unicorn, Ashigaru Spearmen, Enslaved Jinn and Ring of the Void. You’ll always have more gas to throw down, and more stomping over to your opponent to do. It’s a really fun deck.

Problems, Speculation, and Alternative Directions

First, a speculative pick:This card seems sweet, but it might be terrible. More testing is required. I know it’s a total nonbo with all the honor reqs in the deck, but it has the potential to be really powerful in multiples, especially now that we have access to a naval personality. First action kill you guy, gain 3 followers seems excellent. You’ll almost get value out of it, since it doesn’t care whose stuff dies, and it works great with Family Dojo. I’m trying it out and hoping for the best.

Now, there are plenty of blow outs for this deck. We can try to mitigate them, but for the most part you just have to realize there are landmines and try to steer around them.

Planted Evidence and Come One at a Time sort of go together in that the original Philippines deck played answers to these that I’ve cut. We can go back to running 3x Omnious Armor, 3x Kshatriya Artifact to beat these cards dead. Kshatriya Artifact also helps against the chi-kill package that sees a little bit of play – Wounded in Battle and Strike as the Earth.

I’ve kept in Watch Commander in my build,  that’s my hopeful answer against Come One at a Time. They get to duel the commander, then you shoot their duelist and hope they don’t have another Come One next battle. Pretty weak, I know. If you’re worried about that card, I’d cut:

-3x Unliving Legion

-3x Colonial Conscripts

+3x Kshatriya Artifact

+3x Omnious Armor

Lastly, Ninube Shiho is a hard scoop in multiples. We have our naval cavalry guy now to dance around him and naval shoot, but if they have 3 on board we just lose. Our strategy there is to realize Spider is terrible and nobody plays them.

Strict?

The deck loses a lot of mojo in strict, but not all of it. We lose Family Dojo, which is a blow, but more importantly we lose 6 destined guys. The easiest answer is to move the deck to Mantis, play a ton of cheap scouts and take advantage of the box trait to keep getting more gas.

Check out our Shika Sensei Mantis video for a look at how the personality base of that deck would look, just with a ton of followers and Lonely Dojo.

Final Thoughts

This is a deck with some serious mojo, and a good amount of resilience. I love playing it because i feel in control of the game from start to finish – I make a massive unit that the opponent can’t answer, all while drawing tons of cards and mounting credible defenses.

In strict, with some of the predatory cards like Planted Evidence rotating out and everyone gunning for Come One at a Time, mass follower strategies are poised to attack your opponents from an unexpected angle. We’re completely immune to many of the popular battle suite actions, we’re resilient to bow effects because of how distributed our force is, and we have solid answers to pew pew actions in Shield Wall.

If you’re looking for a top-tier deck that doesn’t look like all the rest, give this one a try!