Once More Into The Breach

As I built this deck I focused on core principles of the game. I didn’t know the environment at all really outside Crane (but knew Crab, Spider & Scorpion would be major factors at the event) so my deck had to “do it’s thing” and do it well.

Gold

When choosing gold the first question was “can I buy this with a Border Keep?”. Because Ayrie works while bowed and most magistrates cost 7G it was going to be the workhorse of the gold scheme, so I didn’t want to be using it much to buy gold. As a result only Rugashi Bazar needs the SH, and given it +SH+BK can buy everything in the deck and it metas Dishonor that seemed like a good inclusion.

The second thing was that 7G. It’s very much the deck’s magic number, and so I wanted to optimise ways of making 7G. Marketplace and Rugashi gave 6 holdings, and with at least 1/4 of the dynasty having magistrate printed Magistrate Stipend ment having about 1/4 of the gold producing 3G as well.

The final element of the gold was Border Keep xp. The original BK was about improving your gold t1 and ideally later improving your personality flips. Aside from that it was 2G. BKxp works differently. It is about getting that ideal t1 gold and then tweaking your fate hand for your match up. This means with BKxp there is no reason not to cycle for gold. T1 cycle for 4 holdings hopefully, ideally at least 1 static 3G producer and any other 3 holdings. This strategy ensured I always had 9g turn 2 at minimum, I often had 12G turn 2. With gold pretty much set I could afford to buy what I wanted t2 and beyond.

Honor

With a fast environment your honor gains need to be fast. Just to be clear I had an average of 20 honor when the first attack would come during the tourney and that seems to be fast enough. In trying to maximise honor I chose personalities that had actions that could gain honor, and similarly when looking at Strategy cards I looked for actions that had an honor gain plus synergy with the deck in general.

In terms of holdings I experimented with Governor’s Court, the problem with it was it required running a suite of Courtiers to suppot it and those personalities did not help with the goal of gaining honor as quickly as possible even with the Governor’s Court, and so the GC was replaced with Well-Tended Farm. Aside from its awkward gold cost getting an early Well-Tended made the deck faster and created a larger problem for my military opponents. It also helps a lot when dealing with the Scorpion courtier honor meta; 1-3 gains of 1 each are much harder to stop than 1 gain of 2. The other factor with the GCs was that you couldn’t be sure of gaining fast enough that they would ever choose to bow.

Its also worth noting that the most consistent honor meta is the Chugo stronghold and Alter History, both of which will gain your military opponent a turn. This is a pretty big deal, but not insurmountable, however see problems below.

Attachments

There is a lot of “naked hate” in EE and so some attachments are necessary for the personalities that are going to go to battle. Singh Remnants and Asahina House Guard are obvious choices here; both gain honor, and Singh Remnants are recursive. Other attachments are harder to choose. I went for Sasumata because; +2F/+1C, 3G, 3FV, Battle Action. Bowing might seem like a bad choice, but the truth is this deck likes to bow things – while they are bowed and at the battle you can keep targeting them to gain honor. In essence destruction before resolution isn’t a key goal.

Celestial

I know Ebisu isn’t popular, but there were 2 reasons I choose it. I expected to see multiple Spider decks and Daigotsu’s Guidance destroys Doji’s Guidance so I wanted a celestial that was harder to get rid of from the game (see problems below). The other reason was two-fold; firstly the +2PS is always useful for a defensive honor deck, and secondly the ability to burn a province and get a jump on another honor deck late game is also important. That said if you wanted to you can run any of the relevant celestials with the deck.

Bend Like a Reed

This card is much debated, and it was a card I was rarely sad to see in my hand. Against the decks I faced (Crab, Spider, Scorpion mostly) it wasn’t very useful, but being able to duel Aroru and Kisada after they had burnt their redirect with any personality I had on the table helped win games. When no needed it was an easy choice for end of turn discard, favor cycling and BKxp’s other action (the one I needed to remember more). In essence if you are going to run dueling out of Aerie 3x Bend is a perfectly sound decision.

Problems

Ok the first problem is the honor match up. I only had one of these, and it was practically a mirror match, I went first so I crossed first. Outside of that it would depend what was on board for both players to determine the outcome of the honor match up. This deck can slow an opponent down if it gets to battle, and it can make some large jumps in honor in the open phase as well. It just depends on what is on the board.

Second problem is the dishonor match up, which I again didn’t have to deal with, and again will depend on what is on the table. Its entirely possible with the right draw you will out run dishonor right now or just be able to use your honor gains to stay afloat while you slowly take their provinces.

The other problems are more generic and rooted in design rather than necessarily in specific match ups. These occur in 4 areas, Goju SH, Daigotsu’s Guidance, Ninube Onchi and Strategy Requirements.

The Goju SH

For defensive honor this SH is a very large problem. Any deck that can remove all of your defenders and then potentially move in enough force to take a province is a problem, and 9F can be hard for us to get on the table. Just make sure they don’t send more than 1 opposed person home with it.

Daigotsu’s Guidance

Any card that inhibits other players from playing a class of cards is a problem. Diagotsu’s stops other Kami cards from being in play, and so if you are going to run into this Doji’s guidance stops being worth the slot, as do all the kami celestials. I don’t understand why these broad card type denial things keep seeing print; didn’t L5R learn this lesson long ago?

Ninube Onchi

While her ability isn’t a problem per se, the fact she is an 8G Cavalry presonality with a useful ability means she turned up in multiple decks I saw over the weekend. At 6G she comes out of Spider turn 1 and they can attack with 8F cavalry or more turn 2. As long as she gets loe from Spider and Scorpion Ninja you are going to see her, and she will be a problem for you.

Strategy Requirements

The above problems are ultimately minor issues. For this deck a bigger issue is highlighted by looking over the requirements to use the vast majority of its actions; specifically an unbowed personality. In comparison “bow a scout”, not a scout personality, on cards like Disrupting Communication (which bows your peep and randomly ditches a card), and Seeking the Truth (becsue you know you have no unbowed scouts during engagement) far outclass the Magistrate action suit. So the 2 games I lost vs Hida Scouts went something like this; he attacks and attaches 3 scout followers and can now Seek the Truth and Disrupt Communication with impunity, meaning in the second battle I would usually loose 2 random fate cards and have 2 personalities bowed for the cost of him bowing a 0F follower. The effects of the cards are not the issue, rather it is the requirements. Feel free to go looking for 0 cost magistrate followers that could use a magistrate action or duelist followers that can use duelist actions. This is a big problem with strategy requirements. The effects on the magistrate (and duelist) actions are comparable to the effects of the scout actions, but the requirements are higher, along with the means to pay them. This is something we need to look out for in deck design, and that design and PT need to look out for in going forward.

Now I expected to loose to the Hida Scouts in the final, I was playing against a good player who had been actively playing for all of CE, and actively testing for EE (including PT afaik). He made no play mistakes (consider that in the 2 games I lost 1 mistake from him and I would have won) but to have my ability to play affected so strongly by actions with lower opportunity costs than anything in my deck was frustrating. So my advice in looking forward at ways to tune this deck and improve it is to look for actions that do not care if your personality is bowed, and perhaps even if they can perform actions.

The Environment

Despite my problems above I loved the games I played. The environment, right now, was fun for me to play in. Everyone was taking actions and doing things, and no particular phase of the game seemed to dominate. For competitive play the game is in a great position right now, and despite all the usual claims of honor being terrible I think you can expect to see honor decks competing with the military boys just fine through early EE.

Events (3)
1 Boastful Proclamation
1 Imperial Gift
1 Willing Spirits

Celestials (1)
1 Ebisu’s Honesty

Regions (1)
1 The Second City

Holdings (14)
3 Well-Tended Farm
3 Rugashi Bazaar
1 Falling Rain Dojo
3 Magistrate’s Stipend
3 Marketplace
1 Traveling Peddler

Personalities (22)
3 Doji Genshin
3 Doji Yoshitada
3 Kakita Kazan
1 Doji Hakuseki – exp2
3 Kakita Genshi
1 Kakita Tadanobu
1 Doji Makoto
3 Kakita Maratai
3 Asahina Munefusa
1 Asahina Kitiaru

Fate (40)

Strategies (31)
3 Discovering a Conspiracy
3 Duel of Haiku
3 Fear Me!
3 My Enemy’s Mercy
3 Sanctioned Duel
3 The Light of Justice
3 Wall of Honor
3 Bend like a Reed
3 Steel on Steel
3 Entrenched Position
1 A Game of Dice

Followers (4)
1 Asahina House Guard
3 Singh Remnants

Items (3)
3 Sasumata

Rings (2)
1 Ring of the Void
1 Ring of Fire