L5r has never done right by eternal formats. Legacy and War of Honor have degenerate decks that dominate so quickly it is rarely a game was played except by the person who won. Big Deck has the headache of constructing and managing two 100 card decks without running more than a single copy of any card. All of them suffer from l5r’s history of significantly changing the rules of the game.

The fact that Modern as a format exists at all is a testament to the players. There is a real desire for people to play in large expanded card pools. To be able to revisit old characters from the past, to test them with the rules of the present, and interact with strategies from the future.

WTF is Modern?

Modern is a constructed eternal format, or if you prefer, a legacy format. It allows players to play with their older cards in new and interesting ways. The larger the card pool, the more intriguing decks and interactions that are possible.

What are the rules?

The rules of Modern aren’t simple. No eternal format for l5r is going to be have that luxury. L5r rules are complex by default, and to make the older cards work in any meaningful way, the rules have to be warped, twisted, and amended. Some things must be added while others ignored.

Here is a *ahem* brief summary of Modern rules.

It is exactly the same as the Ivory ruleset, except not at all.

Modern retains the Legacy holding rules from Samurai Edition. Will the Legacy holding rules switch to the Ivory Legacy ruleset when it rotates into legality? I have no idea, please don’t ask me.

The Emperor Edition era ability of open seppuku remains. It is a function that probably won’t come up much because turning your opponent’s dishonor effects into kill effects is rarely a good idea. The Blood Money rule (ignore honor requirements by paying two more gold over printed) is also around, but with the absence of built in clan reductions, it is going to be a hard rock to get stuck under if you drop your own honor. Thankfully, the ignore honor requirements if your opponent causes the loss is still here as part of the ruleset, so Blood Money-ing a guy is going to be a real corner case. I suspect there is a busted dishonor deck in Modern. There are probably a lot of busted decks, it is part of the charm of eternal formats.

 

Deck size is 50/50 and with the highlander stipulation, which means that you are only allowed a single copy of any card, regardless of its uniqueness or text (take that Bandit’s Sanctuary). Does this mean decks will feature a whole lot of unique personalities. It does. Uniques are often more potent and aggressively costed, factors that were previously balanced by their uniqueness. Though honestly, decks would be filled with loads of uniques even if the highlander rule wasn’t in place. People like impactful personalities.

 

The highlander stipulation is important for gameplay reasons. Without it, the speed and consistency of degenerate decks is overwhelming. It brings a bit more variance to the games themselves, which will be important for the format to last.

 

The 50/50 also serves as a maximum, though in a delightful display of dissonance, this can be overriden by card text.

 

Modern is an eternal format that isn’t actually all that eternal. It starts with the first Samurai Edition bugged cards (Khan’s Defiance) and carries through to the current set.

 

There are a couple of banned cards, mostly the Border Keeps and draft cards. As a rule, if you want to play a card in Modern, it has to have been legal for a constructed kotei at some point in the past. It is still a monster card pool, and while it lacks the most powerful cards ever, there are still some heavy hitters.

Forgotten Legacy is legal after all.

 

What about costs versus targeting versus reactions versus interrupts?

 

I don’t know, please don’t ask me. There are going to be some cards that don’t work the way you want them to, and a few interactions that do work and are improvements. It is a growing format. If a weird technical interaction creeps up, and it is problematic, it will get knocked down. That doesn’t me there isn’t value to hunting out the exploitable, but do so knowing that you aren’t ever  going to get to pull a Paneki’s Mask. Modern isn’t an officially supported format. One day, perhaps, if there is enough player interest, but for now, AEG is stretched pretty thin on formats. 3 choices for a kotei is enough, even if it is only 2 in reality.

Can we get to the fun part now?

Knowing now how to play the game, it’s time to dive in and start thinking about building a deck. With such a large card pool, though, there is a strong disincentive to just pull up Crane personalities and start skimming. The time commitment to pour over all the available cards is daunting. As an added headache, the various search engines for l5r don’t have a Modern setting, prepare for a slog.

 

There are a few posted decklists that to crib from, but with only a few dozen people actually playing Modern, it is a little early to start thinking about netdecking, and worrying about metagames. Those things come in more solved and combed over formats. Modern is the exact opposite. There is a real freedom here. Permission is given to stick your head in the sand and just build the best Modern deck you can. Spoiler, it will probably turn out to be pretty terrible.

 

A little direction is called for to get started. Think about the faction or strategy you want to play. Is it something that has been around for a while? If it hasn’t. Then you are going to be in some trouble. Something like Crane dueling is going to be a safe pick. Crane have always been dueling, they’ve also always been good in every arc from Samurai onward. Similarly, Crab, Unicorn, and my beloved Spider have frequently fielded decks built around the biggest and baddest personalities.  Those decks may be a little slow, but running mighty personalities is a good place to start.

 

While predicting the best decks is a suckers game, there are some elements the top tier will likely contain. There will be some measure of consistency. Either it will be accomplished  through redundancy, pulling a number of similar cards from across the various legal arcs; or it will happen by utilizing a suite of deck search/draw/manipulation effects. The best decks will incorporate new cards in a way that compliments (or are complimented by) the old. Something like Mantis scouts with Shika Sensei out of Seven’s Seas Port. There are a lot of Mantis scouts, so the sensei gives you a pseudo fifth province, and the recon insures you have above average force efficiency.

 

Why not Kalani’s Landing? That’s stronghold is insane, right? Especially with the possible rules technicality and how it interacts with Legacy holdings? Maybe. Attention must be paid to the environmental context in which a card preformed. In the totality of of the card pool how many Peace and Govern the Land type effects are there? I can think of Peace and Govern the land. If that’s it, if that’s the list, then the deck is going to need something else to make it work. How many Paid Off type gold cost strategies can get crammed into a deck as a single copy? Is Sudden Blockade a good card if you are only ever promised to play it once, and your odds of drawing it are dramatically reduced?

 

Of course, Kalani’s Landing was eventually banned as a stronghold, which is as clear an indication as any that it is a safe place to start for building a good deck. Attention should be paid to any card that was ever banned.

 

Another good option? Unaligned personalities. Look for the Mokkus, Pokkus, Glukkus, and Shukkus of the world to shine in some Modern military decks. Onis and ronin operate in a similar sphere. Design to cost exactly what they cost, these kinds of personalities are paragons of value. Speaking of banned cards, Wrath of Kali-Ma lumbers back to the fold. Celestials, super events with super effects, will be a part of every deck.

 

One of the easiest ways to approach a new format is to use templating. Looking at past successful decks from similar formats and reconstructing it. No personality honor decks have been a part of l5r from Dark Journey Home’s Ninja Stronghold, to Gold’s Kaiu Walls, to Emperor’s Journey’s End Keep Experienced.

 

How did those decks work? All the honor producing holdings and defense that a deck can muster. With 4 arcs of cards to pull from, a reasonable option can probably be assembled. Of course, rocket honor might be an actual construct to be worried about.

Or maybe with stronger options I can finally make that P’an Ku deck happen. What about Enlightenment?

7500+ cards. An unexplored format. An unknown metagame.

Christmas came early.

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.

 

L5r is a complex game. That complexity makes it a delight to build, test, play, and think about. There is so much stuff going on. So many options to consider. Moves, countermoves, trumps, and wild cards.

It can be overwhelming. Today I am going to talk about a mental process I use to help me digest game states, and make the proper plays.

As a player, you may have already developed a process or two of your own. Sadly, many if not most players, haven’t.

Lets start at the beginning. Decks generally have a built in opening sequence. Gold on turn one, more gold on two, personalities on three, attack on four is a very common progression. A different military deck may aim for less or zero gold and attack on turn 2 or 3. Executing a plan based around being a turn faster and blitzing out the opponent.

Regardless of the specific overarching strategy, both decks have codified first and second turn plays. The players piloting these decks, will rarely if ever stop to consider what an opponent is up to in these initial turns. It seems unnecessary. Superfluous. Except it isn’t at all! Strongholds  with senseis, personalities put down to a cycle, the full nature of the holdings purchased, and the events resolved all provide critical information. As a player, you know this. At least a little. Even the newbiest of newbs understands there is a difference between a Crane deck starting Akagi Sensei and a Crane deck showing Tadanobu Sensei. A Unicorn deck that buys Moto Okano on turn one is approaching the game in a contrasting way then the one that gets first turn Poorly Placed Garden.

Review

Taking notice of all available information, stuff in play, discard piles, provinces, starting conditions, etc, is the review step. It is the first rung of the process, and when its missed, bad things happen. How many games have you lost because you missed an opponent’s on board play? A “trick” that was staring you right in your not-paying attention face? Did you lament your absent-mindedness? Did one of your stupid friends scream at you “how did you miss that?!” Of all the mistakes in l5r, this is the toughest one to shake off. You have no one to blame except yourself, and you know it.

There is no shortcut to observing the board state. No cheat. You have to actually take the time and make sure you are seeing the whole board. The good news is that it doesn’t take that long. Ask your opponent to give you a force total (get technical if you must “how much force including Tamoko Sensei”) make sure the gold piled up in the corner isn’t hiding any secret plays. The easiest way I have found to keep track of my opponents stuff is to keep a mental running tally every time he adds a card to the board, but that can be taxing and leads to a lot of losses to Discipline cards. At a base level, you need to develop the habit of reviewing everything at the start of your turns and when your opponent declares an attack against you. Read the keywords, don’t lose to an unexpected Cavalry engage. Make sure to pay attention to the Jutsushi Sensei force bonus. Remember that the stronghold battle ability is tireless. More games are a lost to people missing plays than any other factor, so take the time, and read the cards that are on the board. At the high end, there is no getting around it. Get in the habit of scanning all the zones and committing all the information to mind. If it isn’t relevant, cool beans. If it is, well, human beings have pretty impressive brains with all kind of storage capacity.

Analyze

Return to our early turn example. When an opponent shows us Tadanobu Sensei we know he is going to be tossing around some number of duels. If in his first turn he cycles down Horobei and Oneiyara we can also safely assume he isn’t planning to win the game by honor. Honor decks that cannot gain honor from holdings don’t play multiple unaligned non-unique personalities.  A Crane duel based military deck. What does that mean? Weakness Exposed is a powerful card to be aware of, he is going to be running some number of attachments (probably items as both those personalities are also kensai) for force generation, low focus cards like Overwhelming Offense or Unsettling Gathering are highly unlikely to make an appearance. Interpreting the reviewed information and extrapolating out your opponent’s game plan and options is the heart of the analyze step. The goal here is understanding. Understanding the likely configuration of your opponents hand, and understanding how exactly he is going to use his cards in play.

Story time.

In the later half of Emperor Edition kotei season, Jesse was in the finals with a Phoenix military deck. He was paired against a Crab dishonor deck. I remember thinking as the game started how cool it was that Jesse was about to be a kotei champ. All my testing indicated that Crab was a significant underdog. It takes a while to get to the finals of a kotei. By the time Jesse was there, he wasn’t doing a good job of reading the 18 lines of text on every Crab merchant. He certainly wasn’t taking the time to understand their various interactions. In no time at all he was getting blown out by Yasukis Daiki, Jekku, and Tanimura. It was a failure of preparation. Jesse had never played against Crab dishonor. It was also a serious failure of rigorous play. He didn’t take the time to figure out what his opponent was doing, and as such, couldn’t construct a plan to defeat him.

Prioritize

You are playing against a Lion military deck, it is their turn 4 and they attack you with Akodo Kenaro, Ikoma Shika, and Ikoma Genichi.

If you don’t defend, you will lose a province for sure. It can be safely assumed that the Lion player has a high enough focus value card to tactician away. This is a critical decision point. Most players when facing this situation will ask 1.) can I win the battle on the defense? 2.) if I cannot win, can I defend and save my province? More experienced players, will also consider things like 3.) Is this province worth saving? or 4.) do I want to conserve my resources for a counterattack?

Determining the relative value of a single card, province, or maneuver is about prioritization.

If you defend against those three Lion personalities with an Unholy Strike in hand, there is some debate on who you will shoot. We know, though, that Ikoma Shika isn’t going to be a target. Genichi has a Ranged 3 attack and Kenaro is a tactician. The only thing Shika is bringing to the table is his keywords, and he shares those with Genichi. In this situation Shika is the lowest priority target, and as such will not be targeted with Unholy Strike. If you have a 3 Force personality with a battle ability that you want to use, then we have a sequencing prioritization. You may want to use that ability first. Generally, using cards in play before using cards in hand is correct, but if the entire point of the defense is to sacrifice a personality to save the province, then opening with Unholy Strike on Kenaro is probably where you want to be.

It’s a lot to consider in totality, but you can see also what players refer to as “lines of play”. Once you make a first decision the second tends to flow from that and so on. Of course, priorities shift. An all in win the battle defense may start to go sour. It may turn into an attrition as much as you can and live to fight another day defense. Thus the importance of constant board review and analysis.

Execute.

The last step. Included for completeness. Once you have determined the correct play. Make it. It sounds easy, but it isn’t always. Especially when the correct play is something like a potentially suicidal semi-bluff attack, or a “hope he doesn’t have it but he probably does” defense. The number of times I have seen people make a play they know is wrong, but they still make it because they don’t know what else to do is shocking.

Review, Analyze, Prioritize, Execute.

4 steps.

That’s my method.

What’s yours?

 

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

L5R is a game about resources. Every top player can wax poetically about the importance of a sound holding structure, undercosted personalities, and maximizing the value of your fate hand. Important concepts all.

 

 

 

The single most important resource in l5r, however, has nothing to do with any of those. It has no connection with the fate deck, or the dynasty deck, or anything that starts in play.

The single greatest resource in l5r is people. It is you. It is me. It is the globetrotting grizzled veteran, the nostalgic prodigal, and the wide eyed neophyte. It is the Mr. Suitcase obsessive collector, and the zealously clan obsessed who never needs to buy more than a few packs because he is hustling down his trades.

Today we are going to be talking about this crucial resource and some basic steps to prevent it from drying up.

The Importance of the Opposition

Garfield minus Garfield reveals what l5r would be like if you never had anyone to play against. The excitement of a new set. The joy of a new deck, and then the disappointment when you realize you have no one to play with. Without opponents, you will never really know if your deck is awesome. Nor will you be able to practice the different game states that will present themselves in tournament play. You won’t be able to get the necessary repetitions with the deck, and you’ll never get that ephemeral feeling that is critical to navigating your way to kotei success.

You can goldfish. You can exhaustively theorycraft. You can rely on the kindness of strangers or the largesse of AEG to provide with a pedigreed option. None of these are a good substitute for playing a game of l5r. They are also less fun.

Acknowledge the Humanity, yes even with Scorpion Players

Opponents are people. In games, it can be easy to forget that. There is a joke I make at tournaments. A cliche I have gone to many times. Whenever, the tournament organizer does a song and dance about “Does everyone have an opponent”, I wait for the beat and say, “I have no opponent, only friends”.

It isn’t actually a joke. I love playing l5r, I want more people to play l5r, and if you play l5r, you are my friend. Maybe not my best friend. Maybe not the sort of friend who gets an invite to my birthday party, but on some level, you are my friend. Until you demonstrate that you aren’t worthy of my friendship, you shall have it. No reservations.

Now, I’m not a naive Pollyanna. L5r has had, and still has, some number of cheats, liars, assholes, and other unsavory sorts. Any subset of people is going to feature those. You don’t have to accommodate the truly terrible, but it is important to separate what matters from what doesn’t. Let the political affiliations go. Worry less that he is a fan of Joss Whedon. Focus instead on the one critical factor happening right then. You two gaming. Its not the easiest thing to do, but for the purpose of excelling at l5r, you need an opponent who is focused on the game, so that you can focus on the game, so that you can make the proper play, and collect the valuable data that a real live game offers.

Of course you can be friendly, of course you can chat about other stuff. L5r is no one’s top priority in life. I love visiting with my friends, but not during the game. During the game, I’m focused on the game. Do I still make jokes? Of course I do. Indeed, I make more than most, but the the humor is about and surrounding the game. I want the game experience itself to a be great. I want my opponent to enjoy himself, so that we can play another game. Humor goes a long way to improving it. It also makes me happy. I love an audience. Even if it is only a captive one because he is forced to sit there as my opponent. Sucker. Befriend your opponent, have those great getting to know your conversations. Appreciate them as a person, but remember, the game is the thing. Shakespeare said that. Honest.

Fun doesn’t have to be zero sum

Winning is more fun the losing, but someone’s got to lose. Hopefully, the game of l5r will be close enough, riveting enough, that both parties will resist the urge to put on their mopey pants. In reality though, lopsided victories happen. Bad draws from variance, poorly constructed decks, unfamiliarity with a new deck, factional strength and or player skill imbalances can lead to runaway game states. This a critical juncture for a player. If you are getting destroyed by your opponent, don’t get upset, if he is having fun, ride it out, let him enjoy himself, when it is over, great news! You get to play another game. Which you should. If you get crushed over and over and it is starting to affect your cool, action must be taken. You can switch decks, or ask your opponent too. Don’t be afraid, its ok. Taking your lumps is one of the best ways to learn.

Now in a tournament, there is no second game. You lose and you’re out, so every game is potentially your last. So what. Get over it. Only one person gets to win a tournament. Don’t be a prick; be gracious. Not because it is the right thing to do, but because you selfishly want there to be as many l5r players as there can possibly be.

 

I learned to play l5r from my older brother, Russell. He quit the game many years ago after losing in the top 4 to a player of note. A Dynasty team member. That grand player, who is a person I know to be a fine gentleman, was, on that day, a complete douchebag. That was literally the last time my big brother played any sort of collectible card game. It was over a decade ago, and it totally bums me out when I think of all the fun experiences we could have shared if a) my brother didn’t get so upset and was so damn stubborn and b) his opponent had shown some class.

One time. That can be all it takes for a person to switch from loving l5r to never participating with it again. So be mindful of your behavior. Make sure both you and your opponent are enjoying themselves. The game cannot survive without each you.

The New Order is here, and with new decks and strategies to explore. The joy of seeking out exploitable card interactions. The uncertain journey of a brand new deck types. The quite confidence of slipping a potent new piece of technology into a construction that just needed the missing piece.

I love a new set.

This article is about a few of the challenges and common mistakes that often trip up players when a new set comes along. Avoiding these mistakes will help you maximize your playtesting time. Remember, time is a resource. Every minute you spend in the rabbit hole is a detriment to mastering the horse you should be riding.

Lets start there.

The Rabbit Hole.

Jesse has a predilection for killing all the things and winning 5 turns after his opponent has stopped caring about the game. Others want to be the one guy running enlightenment. Perhaps you just cannot get enough of Mantis shugenja that make spirit animals. Bias exists. Players play favorites. We explore strategies that are often objectively weaker because we want to “test it out” and “see how it goes”.

We’ve all done it. Tried to be a hero and make the seemingly impossible possible. It isn’t a bad instinct. Its fun to hide away in your own laboratory and burst forth into the world with a new and terrifying creation, but it’s the wrong place to start. The rabbit hole is a hole. You get stuck, tunnel vision sets in, end up getting more and more off track as the actual environment passes you by. Strolling down this lane is fun, but you need to be careful. Have patience. Delay the creation of the bizarre fun deck for a few weeks until after you have settled in with the new set.

How do I identify a rabbit hole? Its like pornography: I know it when I see it.

Anytime you find yourself thinking about 5 or 6 card combos. Any time you imagine a sequence that requires you to have a particular series of draws on turn 1, 2, 3, and 4. Any time you are playing a card solely because of its interaction with just one other card. Any time your deck is built around a unique. Any time your deck is built for a late game (turn 6 or later). You’re in the rabbit hole. Stop. Get out. There are other concepts and conceits to explore. Try for instance:

Build the best deck.

Don’t make up excuses not to. Just build the damn thing already.

Not the best deck for your clan. Not the best honor deck. Not the best military deck. Build the flat out best deck. What is it? I don’t I know! I’m asking you.

Every preview season the players of one faction look longingly at the toys of others while complaining about getting stuck with the earwax flavor Bertie Bott Bean. Instead of wishing you didn’t just love your faction oh so very much and could never dream of playing anything else, go and play something else. Its ok. No one will tell. Playtesting doesn’t matter for the Imperial Herald.

Environments are formed at the top. The best decks emerge (quick! Everyone watch what Kiyonaga is playing!) , then players react to beat them (or not, but that’s a different article). A new set means this process refreshes. The best decks may remain, but always there is some new deck that looks damn good. Build it. Fun fact: Jesse and I always start out a new set by building what we think the best deck is. Often, we come up with two different lists. He zeroed on Rae Sensei shenanigans straight away. I took a more conservative adjustment to Unicorn approach. Both decks good. His is better. The onus now falls to me to find a deck just as good or better then his.

There is no calcification when the previews are just starting, its all potential, unexamined. Take this time to uncover what is actually the best deck and then return to your desired clan and strategy with the knowledge that you now know what you need to try and beat. If it turns out you were wrong, the best deck is just sort of ok, that isn’t time wasted. If you thought it was the best deck, others will too, the key is to move on first and fastest to the actual winning strategy. The best deck is the one that wins an unfairly high number of its games, 80%+. The deck that feels unstoppable, like a monster. If your deck isn’t doing that, it isn’t the best deck. Keeping moving onto new things until you find it. If you go through the process a couple of times and cannot find it, then hooray! There isn’t one. Note: this is very rare.

Keep your friends involved, and coordinate.

No man wins alone. No one. The format is too large, you need the help of you playgroup, of online resources, your team, the forums, whatever. Divide and conquer is part of the process, it is the only way to digest the entirety of the set. Just watching Bob play a few games with his Scorpion Ninja deck isn’t going to produce helpful data. Get or give direction as needed. If it is suggested that you are missing something, check it out. If the local Spider has fallen into a rabbit hole (Susumu honor, still trying that!?), pull him out.

Patience isn’t actually all that much of a virtue.

The biggest mistake players make is waiting. Waiting for this site to give them ideas. Waiting for an event to supply them with a decklist. Waiting for the set to release widely. Waiting will kill you. Sets need to be caressed. They need to be combed over and then reexamined with fresh eyes. The excitement of the first reading, followed by the cold objective reality of the fifth. Environments evolve because the players understanding of the card pool evolves. Evolution takes time. Sitting on the sidelines isn’t a path to success. It isn’t a path anywhere. Its just sitting. It also isn’t much fun.

Control in L5R is tricky business. It needs to exist in some amount, or else you end up with voltron decks and super units. Dealing with these sorts of threats in the Limited phase is an elegant solution to a big problem, and keeps players from getting too greedy. On the other hand, if there’s too many control cards, dedicated control decks that can kill all the guys become environmental forces, and everyone wants to quit either L5R or their life.

Usually, powerful control shells have dynasty engines at their core. I’m talking about Yajindin + Jama Suru Xp + Force of Will, Suitieru no Oni + Chimimare no Oni + Jigoku Sensei, or Kunji Experience + Chuda Seki + Sly Deceiver.

We don’t have anything like that in Ivory. Whether that’s a good thing or not isn’t for me to say. What we do have, though, is the best environment for drawing cards in the history of L5R. Design seems to have decided that since fate cards aren’t very good, we get to have a lot of them. And they can’t all be terrible, right?

Here’s a Spider list I’ve been playing a lot in my spare time, and that I would have taken to some Koteis had I been in America for the season.

Sinister Citadel of the Spider
Dynasty	Fate
Events 1 Wisdom Gained Holdings 1 Bamboo Harvesters Experienced 2 Bookkeeper 1 Remote Temple 1 Counting House 3 Shrine to Hachiman 2 Family Library 3 Jade Pearl Inn 3 Merchant Atoll 1 Oracle Of The Void Experienced 3 Shinomen Marsh 2 Yasuki Trader 1 The Emerald Dojo Personalities 3 Daigotsu Teruo 2 Tairao 3 Gyushi Kageto 3 Hiyamako 1 M’rika Experienced 3 Ninube Shiho 1 Hiruma Nikaru, The Flesh Eater Experienced 2	Strategies 3 Flashy Technique 2 Come One At A Time 1 A Game Of Dice 3 Planted Evidence 3 Banish All Shadows 3 A Magistrate Falls 2 Strategic Withdrawal 3 In Stillness, Forge The Soul 3 Sorrowful Prayer 3 Long Term FruitionItems 1 Naginata 1 Heart Of Fudo Experienced 2 1 Divination Bowl 1 Blood Of The Preserver Experienced Spells 3 Walking The Way 2 Touch of Death 3 Strength of the Fifth Ring Rings 1 Ring Of The Void 1 Ring of Air

The Engine

So how does this mess work? The two cards it really showcases are Sorrowful Prayer and In Stillness, Forge the Soul. Basically, your goal is to live long enough to thin your fate deck to less than 20 cards. Once it’s that small, putting 3 control cards (some combination of Planted Evidence and A Magistrate Falls) then playing an In Stillness, Forge the soul gives you around a 70% chance to immediately hit one of the cards you shuffled back in. From there you can play control effects every single turn, until you’ve killed all your opponents guys and you leisurely wander over for their provinces.

The Support

The rest of the deck is card draw effects, gold, and ways to survive. Because the engine is all fate cards, the deck needs very few personalities in play to operate. The number is probably 3 – Nikaru, Hiyamako, and any Shugenja. Hiyamako can In Stillness, Forge the Soul and Banish All Shadows, the Shugenja can Walking the Way or Strength of the Fifth Ring, and Nikaru duels everyone to death. Nikaru is just gravy though, we can also win without him by cycling our Planted Evidence.

Shuffle effects are especially important to the deck, which is why we’re running Yasuki Traders and Divination Bowl. In Stillness, Forge the Soul lets us see 5 cards and re-order them, but if they are all bricks you’re screwed. A shuffle lets you get rid of those 5 and see 5 new cards, pushing you every closer to your kill cards.

The Gold

As I mentioned, the deck doesn’t need a lot of personalities in play to win. As a result, the deck runs a ton of gold. If you survive to the end game, you’ll need it all more than you need a 0F rent-a-shugenja. As long as you pick up at least 2 shugenja by the end of the game you’ll be fine. Flush aggressively to get to Nikaru, since he makes your combo turns a lot cheaper.

The Power of Recursion

Drawing tons of cards and having access to both In Stillness, Forge the Soul and Sorrowful Prayer lets you do some very powerful things. This deck takes advantage of the combo to play kill effects, but it’s not the only thing you can do with it. Check out the list from my Ban Jade Ascendance article for another list that abuses the combination of card draw and Sorrowful Prayer.

The Rae Sensei list doesn’t even bother with In Stillness, Forge the Soul. That’s just because it draws a lot more raw cards than this deck, thanks to Komori Taruko + Strength of the Fifth Ring + Shrine to Hachiman. If Phoenix had access to a cheap Kensei though, you can be sure I’d play it. Horobei is a Samurai Yojimbo, so he could be a potential candidate for the deck if I wanted to take it in that direction.

Killing Guys and Taking Names

As for the Spider deck, it’s definitely a tier 2 deck. It was close to tier 1 pre-TCS, but that ship has long since sailed and the rise of powerful military decks like Crane Scouts and Unicorn have pushed it out of the environment. That doesn’t mean there’s not tweaks that can be done!

One change could be to use Kuroko Sensei to give the deck access to Komori Taruko. That would turn on the draw engine from the Rae Sensei deck, plus give us access to Poison the Cup by playing The Soul of Man to make our guys courtiers. Ninube Shiho might have to be cut a that point, both to make room for Komori Taruko and also to mitigate honor losses since she has a 1 honor requirement.

With those changes, the gold would have to be re-worked, but one thing my experience testing Yung Sensei and Rae Sensei is that 3 gold boxes are fine, as long as you plan for the game to go long enough. There are enough holdings that make more than they cost to slowly grind your way to massive production if you have the time.

Regardless, this deck is an interesting one to break out at your casual nights and make your friends hate you. Give it a try, and see what other shells you can find for Sorrowful Prayer!