Post by Hida Okami on Mar 20, 2014 13:26:18 GMT -5
IVORY BUSHI LIONS
In the spirit of the article at Strange Assembly, I'd like to offer my take on a Bushi Lion deck that adheres to our somewhat stricter interpretation of the format. I can understand why they allow whatever comes in the starter, but we believe that any card that's allowed to one player should be allowed to all. So you won't see any rares here, not even that Suana Dojo you get in the Lion Starter. Likewise with the fixed cards - allowing them means permitting everything from Coils, which was a difficult decision. So again, this deck will be limited to just cards that bear a common or uncommon bug in Ivory-legal printings.
DYNASTY CHOICES
The first question is: to include the Sensei, or not? My opinion is that the -1 PS is well worth the ability to bring out a Personality during a battle - and that's even moreso in Bushi, where people don't have as many quick means to run you over. So it's certainly worth including.
Let's continue by evaluating the gold scheme. In standard Ivory constructed, the 3 GP of the Stronghold isn't as much of a limitation, as the right Holdings can overcome it easily. Here, we have more of a concern. So we want to include holdings that typically cost 3 Gold or a little less. Let's start with:
3 Copper Mine, 3 Jade Works, and 3 Fudoist Temple.
That's only about half of the Gold-producing Holdings we'd like to include. So let's look next at Akodo Dojo, which only produces 2, but we'll be keying Followers of that 3 GC reduction later. Next, we will consider 2-for-2's that have an ability that helps this deck. We need to keep production speedy, so we may find that we are discarding Personalities we would like to play later - and late game, we certainly don't want to be flipping Gold when we need warm bodies! So let's throw in 3 Family Library. And for my last slot, I'm going to choose Roaming Caravan. It's hard to resist the ability to harpoon retreating opponents back into the battle so we can have our way with them. Alternately, you could include Wandering Caravan instead, for attaching Followers and Items on the opponent's turn.
Now that we know our Gold scheme, we can consider Personalities. Again, we will want to keep the "rule of three" in mind, so most of our choices will have a GC of 6 or 3. Our choices are:
Matsu Choiko, Matsu Rutaro, Matsu Tayuko , and Matsu Ryohei - the Destined and Reserve traits, along with Cavalry, is too good to pass up, and worth the Chi of 1.
Again, that leaves us a few open slots - so next, let's consider those Personalities with a GC of 5, since they can generally also be bought from 2 holdings. Ikoma Jeiku is a must because of his Invest trait, Ichimoko is good for the Force reduction, and let's also include Akodo Kenaro, who gets good Force for the cost when using Tactician. Out-of-Clan favorite Myuken could easily become "Scout", "Cavalry", or even "Tactician" for a turn, as needed. Komori Taruko or even Karyuudo are decent fits for this deck, too. We have room for one more card in our Dynasty deck, so let's include Akodo Kano XP.
There really aren't any common or uncommon Events that would benefit this deck - Glimpse of the Unicorn is nice, but personally I don't believe in trading a Dynasty card for a one-shot Fate draw. If your playgroup allows fixed cards from your starter and/or Coils, I'd instead include Ikoma Natsu XP (instead of Kano), Akodo Daiken (instead of Kenaro), and possibly Morito Inoue.
So here is our Dynasty side as it stands:
You're not going to hold up against the average Ivory constructed deck with this... but in the strict Bushi format, this is probably the best option for Lion dynasty side.
FATE SIDE CHOICES
First of all, we will consider Followers. Since most of our Holdings produce 3, or a 3 GC reduction from the Akodo Dojo, let's look at those Followers with a GC of 3. We have six to choose from - Frontier Farmer, Kikage Zumi Initiates, Medium Infantry, Sparrow Clan Aide, Spearmen, and The Bestial Ones. The Force Reduction on that last one is nice, but it's not worth losing a point of Honor and a card to bring out. We want cards that will give us proactive battle actions, so let's choose the Initiates, the Aides, and the Spearmen. The ability to bring the Farmers back from the discard pile is good, so you might want to include them, too. If you prefer, you could use Floating Reserve instead, they work great with the Sensei and/or Ryohei.
Itmes are next. There's really only one good fit here - Akodo Kaiken. Half of your Personalities have a Chi of 3 or 4, so this is very effective Force reduction.
We're going to assume that our attacks will be opposed - with no one in the way, a Province would fall quickly. So look at A Warrior's Brutality, The Eternal Rainbows, and Strength of My Father. For Lion, this is better than Banzai, as more than half of your Personalities will gain +3 instead of +2. You won't get the second use from Discipline, but if you take the Province on the first try, you won't need to. Contentious Terrain will add a bit of Force to your entire army, so it's worth inclusion. With the high PH of your Personalities, you might wish to use Marshal Your Strength instead of one of the other cards - it works even if unopposed, at a slightly lower bonus. Inspired Devotion is a good unopposed Force bonus too - and it has the advantage of being used as an Open, to buff a Personality before an attack begins.
With the remaining spots, we have room for Strategies that key off of our Peronalities' keywords, traits and abilities. We have six Scouts, so let's consider Advance Warning and Fearful Volley. Both are still useful even if you're not using them with a Scout. For the same reason, let's throw in Unholy Strike to boost those Ranged and Melee attacks. Because we have Scouts and Cavalry, A Champion's Tactics works nicely too - moreso if we can move in Ichimoko and use her ability.
Other cards to consider are Breaking the Rhythm, Back to the Front, Tactical Setback, Incapacitated and Allied Efforts. Of these, my personal first choice is Back to the Front - you want a way to get your troops back into the fight after they have moved home from an opponent's action (or sometimes yours!).
One spot left, and the most sensible option is the Ring of your choice. Air, Earth or Water seem best for this deck - I'm going to go with Water.
So the Fate deck looks like this:
There's certainly more latitude for Fate-side changes than we had with Dynasty selection, so feel free to modify according to your playstyle and local meta environment.
Thank you for reading - I welcome your feedback, suggestions, and advice.
In the spirit of the article at Strange Assembly, I'd like to offer my take on a Bushi Lion deck that adheres to our somewhat stricter interpretation of the format. I can understand why they allow whatever comes in the starter, but we believe that any card that's allowed to one player should be allowed to all. So you won't see any rares here, not even that Suana Dojo you get in the Lion Starter. Likewise with the fixed cards - allowing them means permitting everything from Coils, which was a difficult decision. So again, this deck will be limited to just cards that bear a common or uncommon bug in Ivory-legal printings.
DYNASTY CHOICES
The first question is: to include the Sensei, or not? My opinion is that the -1 PS is well worth the ability to bring out a Personality during a battle - and that's even moreso in Bushi, where people don't have as many quick means to run you over. So it's certainly worth including.
Let's continue by evaluating the gold scheme. In standard Ivory constructed, the 3 GP of the Stronghold isn't as much of a limitation, as the right Holdings can overcome it easily. Here, we have more of a concern. So we want to include holdings that typically cost 3 Gold or a little less. Let's start with:
3 Copper Mine, 3 Jade Works, and 3 Fudoist Temple.
That's only about half of the Gold-producing Holdings we'd like to include. So let's look next at Akodo Dojo, which only produces 2, but we'll be keying Followers of that 3 GC reduction later. Next, we will consider 2-for-2's that have an ability that helps this deck. We need to keep production speedy, so we may find that we are discarding Personalities we would like to play later - and late game, we certainly don't want to be flipping Gold when we need warm bodies! So let's throw in 3 Family Library. And for my last slot, I'm going to choose Roaming Caravan. It's hard to resist the ability to harpoon retreating opponents back into the battle so we can have our way with them. Alternately, you could include Wandering Caravan instead, for attaching Followers and Items on the opponent's turn.
Now that we know our Gold scheme, we can consider Personalities. Again, we will want to keep the "rule of three" in mind, so most of our choices will have a GC of 6 or 3. Our choices are:
Matsu Choiko, Matsu Rutaro, Matsu Tayuko , and Matsu Ryohei - the Destined and Reserve traits, along with Cavalry, is too good to pass up, and worth the Chi of 1.
Again, that leaves us a few open slots - so next, let's consider those Personalities with a GC of 5, since they can generally also be bought from 2 holdings. Ikoma Jeiku is a must because of his Invest trait, Ichimoko is good for the Force reduction, and let's also include Akodo Kenaro, who gets good Force for the cost when using Tactician. Out-of-Clan favorite Myuken could easily become "Scout", "Cavalry", or even "Tactician" for a turn, as needed. Komori Taruko or even Karyuudo are decent fits for this deck, too. We have room for one more card in our Dynasty deck, so let's include Akodo Kano XP.
There really aren't any common or uncommon Events that would benefit this deck - Glimpse of the Unicorn is nice, but personally I don't believe in trading a Dynasty card for a one-shot Fate draw. If your playgroup allows fixed cards from your starter and/or Coils, I'd instead include Ikoma Natsu XP (instead of Kano), Akodo Daiken (instead of Kenaro), and possibly Morito Inoue.
So here is our Dynasty side as it stands:
- Akodo Kano XP
3 Matsu Choiko
3 Matsu Rutaro
3 Ikoma Ichimoko
3 Ikoma Jeiku
3 Akodo Kenaro
3 Matsu Ryohei
3 Matsu Tayuko
3 Copper Mine
3 Jade Works
3 Fudoist Temple
3 Akodo Dojo
3 Family Library
3 Roaming Caravan
You're not going to hold up against the average Ivory constructed deck with this... but in the strict Bushi format, this is probably the best option for Lion dynasty side.
FATE SIDE CHOICES
First of all, we will consider Followers. Since most of our Holdings produce 3, or a 3 GC reduction from the Akodo Dojo, let's look at those Followers with a GC of 3. We have six to choose from - Frontier Farmer, Kikage Zumi Initiates, Medium Infantry, Sparrow Clan Aide, Spearmen, and The Bestial Ones. The Force Reduction on that last one is nice, but it's not worth losing a point of Honor and a card to bring out. We want cards that will give us proactive battle actions, so let's choose the Initiates, the Aides, and the Spearmen. The ability to bring the Farmers back from the discard pile is good, so you might want to include them, too. If you prefer, you could use Floating Reserve instead, they work great with the Sensei and/or Ryohei.
Itmes are next. There's really only one good fit here - Akodo Kaiken. Half of your Personalities have a Chi of 3 or 4, so this is very effective Force reduction.
We're going to assume that our attacks will be opposed - with no one in the way, a Province would fall quickly. So look at A Warrior's Brutality, The Eternal Rainbows, and Strength of My Father. For Lion, this is better than Banzai, as more than half of your Personalities will gain +3 instead of +2. You won't get the second use from Discipline, but if you take the Province on the first try, you won't need to. Contentious Terrain will add a bit of Force to your entire army, so it's worth inclusion. With the high PH of your Personalities, you might wish to use Marshal Your Strength instead of one of the other cards - it works even if unopposed, at a slightly lower bonus. Inspired Devotion is a good unopposed Force bonus too - and it has the advantage of being used as an Open, to buff a Personality before an attack begins.
With the remaining spots, we have room for Strategies that key off of our Peronalities' keywords, traits and abilities. We have six Scouts, so let's consider Advance Warning and Fearful Volley. Both are still useful even if you're not using them with a Scout. For the same reason, let's throw in Unholy Strike to boost those Ranged and Melee attacks. Because we have Scouts and Cavalry, A Champion's Tactics works nicely too - moreso if we can move in Ichimoko and use her ability.
Other cards to consider are Breaking the Rhythm, Back to the Front, Tactical Setback, Incapacitated and Allied Efforts. Of these, my personal first choice is Back to the Front - you want a way to get your troops back into the fight after they have moved home from an opponent's action (or sometimes yours!).
One spot left, and the most sensible option is the Ring of your choice. Air, Earth or Water seem best for this deck - I'm going to go with Water.
So the Fate deck looks like this:
- Ring of Water
3 Akodo Kaiken
3 Kikage Zumi Initiates
3 Spearmen
3 Sparrow Clan Aide
3 Contentious Terrain
3 The Eternal Rainbows
3 Strength of My Father
3 Marshal Your Strength
3 Back to the Front
3 Advance Warning
3 A Champion's Tactics
3 Fearful Volley
3 Unholy Strike
There's certainly more latitude for Fate-side changes than we had with Dynasty selection, so feel free to modify according to your playstyle and local meta environment.
Thank you for reading - I welcome your feedback, suggestions, and advice.
