The Way of the
Dragon
by Ben Moss
For a long time dragon pulled
average results at best in most large tournaments and were seen as an easy
victory by many opponents but that is finally starting to change. At the beginning of Diamond many people
feared the blitz potential of Dragon more than anything else as horror
stories of second turn military victories started to circulate. Somehow though those initial worries
seemed to fade away as the inconsistency of some of those early builds
became apparent. With the coming of Hidden City the Dragon clan have finally
come to the fore.
Traditionally the
Dragon have been seen as the jack-of-all-trades clan, able to do everything
to some degree but never as well as another clan and this really hurt when
it came to large tournaments. As a
clearer focus has started to emerge for the clan with an emphasis on monks
and kiho as well as the more traditional duelling personalities several
different deckstyles have started to emerge. Where most clans have one or two competitive
deck styles Dragon have somewhere in the region of five, although even then
there are many variations of each of these.
In this article I'm going to take a look at each of the five most
dominant Dragon archetypes as things stand in the Hidden City environment. The thing to
bear in mind here is that the real test of any deck is at a major
tournament and put bluntly, there haven't been enough tournaments for me to
play all of these decks in that level of competition. So when writing this article I went
looking for players with experience of the decks in question at the top
levels of play. So without more
rambling from me lets get onto some deck
discussion.
Shiro Mirumoto
Honour
Many people wrote this
stronghold off going into the kotei season and were
completely unprepared for how to play against it. In this case all credit must go to Faber
van Kraanen who took this archetype to victory in
the German kotei.
With results like that it seems that Faber’s deck is an obvious
starting point for looking at what this archetype brings to the table. In his own words he describes it as a Dragon Control deck rather than an honour deck. Because
that’s what it does, it controls the board and accidentally gains honour in
the meanwhile.
Shiro
Mirumoto, Underhand o/t Emperor
Dynasty (40)
3x Kitsuki Iweko
3x Kitsuki Tadashi
1x Koto
3x Mirumoto
Gonkuro
3x Otomo
Taneji
3x Shosuro
Maru
1x A Favor Returned
1x Gifts
and Favors
3x Gold
Mine
3x Kakita
Dojo
2x
Sanctified Temple
3x Shrine
of the Sun
1x Shrine
to Daikoku
1x Shrine
to Fukurokujin
1x Birth of
the Sword
1x
Chrysanthemum Festival
1x
Commanding Favor
1x Naga Storm Mirumoto Mountain
1x
Promotion to the Court
1x Rain of
Blood
1x Strange
Assembly
2x Refuge
of the Three Sisters
Fate (41)
1x A New
Guardian
1x Bonds of
Fate
2x The Time
Is Not Right
1x Imperial
Edicts
3x For the
Empire
3x Iaijutsu
Challenge
3x Now Face
Me
3x Words
Cut Like Steel
3x Storm
Heart
3x Keen Eye
3x Smoke
and Mirrors
2x Loyalty
Renewed
3x Show of
Good Faith
1x The Egg
of P'an Ku
1x Make a
Wish
1x
Ancestral Kabuto
3x Blade of
Penance
2x
Corrupted Jade Sliver
1x The
Imperial Standard
1x Yoshi's Fan
This deck was built from scratch and tested locally,
where it won every single match-up against military decks except Lion ones.
It also easily won against every honour deck except Crane, because those
guys are just plain better at duelling and in the meanwhile run cards like dismissed
and the time is not right to disturb my control attempts.
Lion is too fast in the first few turns so they will get a province early,
likely even two, and their PH is just too high for the underhand (unless
you draw a Yoshi's Fan). Many Lion decks at this
time were also playing at least 25 fast personalities, which is kind of bad
for control. It is worth noting though that at that time Crane were
perceived by many as being too weak and Lion had fallen from their
dominance of the earlier sets. This
meant that neither deck was particularly well represented at many
tournaments making this variation of Dragon control a strong meta-game
choice.
The deck basically creates time. Time to survive
against military so you can get two blades of penance out and
win the game with the solid card draw this deck has, from its stronghold
and its wind. The basic theory is just to kill or bow every personality
that hits the table in the first few turns. When they are finally ready to
start crunching provinces you should be ready to shoot to 48 honour and win the game by strange assembly
or just reach the usual 40 and survive the next turn. Against honour you
need to work around courtiers so they can't dismiss (although
keen eye can help at preventing this) or the time is
not right you. This is wear Shosuro Maru comes into
play as she can bow out the first few courtiers and this can be followed by
the less powerful limited actions in an attempt to draw out any defences an
opponent may have.
Phoenix is likely
the easiest match-up for this deck, because as soon as you get two blades
of penance you can easily out run them on honour. Scorpion control is a hard match-up,
because both decks have lots of the same sort of actions, and the scorpion have almost entirely courtiers (which makes
both words cut like steel and stormheart
substantially weaker). These games will take a long while and will include
many moments that will have you sweat and think you will lose. Remember that you have a large amount of
personality kill in the deck to kill problem personalities such as Bayushi Kaukatsu and with
the sanctified temples out you are forcing your opponent to find a means to stop you from
winning. Shadowlands
personality kill is maybe an even easier match-up than Phoenix honour.
They are just too slow to keep up with the personality kill, so they
usually have no personalities in play in their own limited phase, making
their own personality kill useless.
Enlightenment
should be an easy match-up due to the now face mes and
the storm hearts, Kitsuki
Iwekos
and iaijutsu challenges.
If the enlightenment player is playing out of the House of Tao
and starts with the ring of fire in play though the deck can
have real problems if it doesn’t get just the cards it needs. The only military clans you could have
trouble with are once again Dragon with House of Tao and ring
of fire, Lion, and Crab out of Razor’s Edge Dojo.
A couple of tips when playing this deck: Never let any
cards sit in your provinces. The events and regions in the deck need to
show up and you will need them more than Gonkuro
or Iweko. Also, buy as many cards out of dynasty
as possible each turn, buying peeps with honour is
not important if it lets you buy another card. You need stuff on the table, you don't need honour, honour you will get out of
the fate. And lastly you should draw as many cards as possible with both
the wind and the stronghold effect. Don't be afraid of discarding because
you have above 8, its all about getting those 2 blades of penance
and thinning the deck is really important. You will quite often draw 1 and
need to search for the other with a refuge of the three sisters. And finally don’t be afraid to attack
when the option arises. Kitsuki Iweko
may look weak at 1 force but do not forget that she is also a tactician!
Come Wrath of the Emperor this deck may not be as
strong an option as it was previously.
Scorpion control will likely be an auto loss instead of a tight
game. Plus Ratling will be quite strong against decktypes
like this. This would mean the deck has 4 bad match-ups clan wise, plus 2
bad match-ups in Razor’s Edge Dojo and House of Tao
- ring of fire. That said, there may be a variant possible
running Hoshi Yoson and fall
before the master but that will probably be too inconsistent with
the courtier component shown here.
Enlightenment
Enlightenment
found a new home in Diamond. House of Tao in its nice new
yellow border opened the way for competitive Dragon Enlightenment decks. Of
course a deck is only as competitive as its player and if you want to win
with House of Tao Enlightenment you’d better be paying
attention 100% of the time. The main challenge in playing with, or against,
what is often referred to as “Blitz Enlightenment” is that the game can
hinge on a single mistake from either player. But whatever the result you
will probably scare a lot of people!
There are two main archetypes for blitz enlightenment,
and these depend on whether you choose to start with the ring of fire
or the ring of earth. This is because these two rings are
generally the most difficult to put into play, requiring the most
interaction with your opponent. People often comment that enlightenment
these days is about non-interaction. Well, when you are building your
enlightenment deck the first thing you have to consider is “How am I going
to interact with my opponent to get that last ring into play?”. Are you going to try to win an opposed battle? Or
would you rather go for winning two duels in a single turn? Both decks
share many cards in common but the answer to that last question will
determine the final make-up of your deck.
Ultimately though your deck has to be geared almost entirely around
playing 4 of the rings so the most important part of the deck is working
out exactly which cards are needed for each ring.
Ring of the Void: Requires three personalities in your
home, or two plus the egg of P’an Ku in
your hand. Relatively easy unless you are playing against Scorpion or
Shadowlands Chi death decks in which case this should be the first Ring you
put into play!
Ring of Air: prayers and blessings is
your friend and coupled with shrine of the eternal it can be
quite easy to play this off a single shugenja or Monk. There should be
plenty of kihos or spells in your deck to make
this ring fairly simple. In many
cases it is the first ring that is put into play due to the consistency
with which it can be played and the assistance it can give with both your
defence and putting out more rings.
Ring of Water: strategic crossroads was
superb pre-errata. Post-errata it can still help but makes it much less
likely that you will be able to play two rings off the one card. However
there are plenty of other battle actions that can help out here including summon
earth kami (doubling up with ring
of air), tireless assault (can also help with ring
of earth), and on the dynasty side military advisor.
Ring of Earth: summon earth kami
is the traditional approach to playing this ring, the problem being that it
gives your opponent presence. The accepted remedy for this problem is the
addition of honour’s lesson dojo, although you can’t rely on
it turning up in any given game and your opponent may yet stop your action
with fall on your knees.
Ring of Fire: Any two duels in one turn usually means iaijutsu challenge with kenshinzen to prevent refusal with plenty
of Chi-boosting kihos (prayers and
blessings, blessings of the dragon,) cast prior to
the duel or use of temple of the ages late in the game. There are also more heavily political
versions of the deck that run words cut like steel and now face me (to combo with show
of good faith and the egg of P’an
Ku) instead of the kenshinzen. In either case shosuro technique and
kharmic strike can
ruin your day but some decks get around this by playing an exchange
student: Doji Domotai.
Shadowlands duelling running private dojos or any
Crane deck out of Kyuden Doji can also be tricky to deal with
but generally just require more setup than
against other decks.
The moral of enlightenment is that you must know every
card in your deck and be able to visualise when that card will be needed.
One of the keys to this deck style is knowing when
to ditch one card for another and when to force a ring into play with the Voice
of the Emperor (and which ring to force). Oh, and deck search is
your friend!
The only other card that really
requires definite mention as vital to these decks is lessons from
earth. Remember that you can
force rings into play temporarily with your stronghold and any courtiers (e.g, Otomo Taneji) before you play the lessons
from earth. Build your wall early and remember that your provinces are
only important in the first few turns. If you can hold up military for a
few turns you should easily get those four rings out. This card
makes up the entirety of the deck’s defence in some versions of this deck
while others supplement the permanent province strength increase with a
temporary one from importune kami or
outer walls.
So a typical blitz enlightenment
deck may look something like this.
House of
Tao/Ring of Fire, Voice of the Emperor
Dynasty (40)
3x Tamori Chieko
3x Otomo
Taneji
3x Ratling
Conjuror
3x Tamori Minoru
2x Tamori Shaitung
2x Togashi Shozo
1x Koto
1x Kyuden Tonbo
1x Honour's
Lesson Dojo
2x Personal
Librarian (helps you survive doom of the dark lord)
1x Gifts
and Favours
1x A Favour
Returned
1x Legacy
of My Ancestors (saves summon earth kami)
2x Temple of the
Ages
3x Gold
Mine
1x Shrine
to Daikoku
3x Shrine
of the Eternal
1x
Chrysanthemum Festival
1x Doom of
the Dark Lord
1x Imperial
Ambassadorship
1x Shogun's
Fealty
1x Wisdom
Gained
1x Togashi's Shrine
1x Refuge
of the 3 Sisters
Fate (40)
5x
Elemental Rings
3x Summon
Earth Kami
1x Fist of
Osano-Wo (destroy an opponent’s honour’s lesson dojo)
3x Walking
the Way
1x
Importune Kami
1x Egg of P'an Ku
3x Lessons
From Earth
3x
Introspection
3x
Blessings of the Dragon
3x Prayers
and Blessings
1x The
Future is Unwritten
2x Path of
Wisdom
3x Scroll
Cache
3x Outer
Walls
3x Tireless
Assault
2x
Strategic Crossroad
Temple of Hoshi
Of the three strongholds available to the clan
right now, the House of Tao
utterly dominated the kotei season, scoring seven
of our eight wins with many different archetypes. Even though it hasn’t won
a single kotei, Temple of Hoshi military was consistently seen in the top 4 and
the top 8 of many of these tournaments. Hoshi military is very different
from House of Tao – ring
of water and House of Tao
– ring of fire military: while it lacks the sheer power and
the blitz capability of the ring of water variants or the
attrition provided by duels in ring of fire military, it has
several other advantages.
While the House of Tao really shines
because of its versatility, actually being five different strongholds
rolled into one, the main strength of Hoshi military is its stability.
First of all, its starting stats are overall much better than those of the House
of Tao: a province strength of 7 means you’ll have a better early
defence, and a starting honour of 5 lets you always go first against
Unicorn (and House of Tao of course), which is often really important in
matchups against the purple ponies.
But the main strength of Hoshi lies in its trait:
by letting all your Dragon clan personalities cast kihos
as if they were monks, it allows you to play with the best personalities
available while efficiently using powerful kihos
like palm strike or turn of fortune. One of the main
mistakes made while building a Temple of Hoshi deck is to think that, because all your
personalities can cast kihos as if they were
monks, you have to play a full-samurai line-up. The best thing to do is to
forget about it, and just run the best personalities, be they samurais or
monks: a personality like Hoshi Chuichi is just too good to pass up.
One of the main strengths of Hoshi military lies
in the very focus of the Dragon clan. No, not rings, the other focus. Card
drawing. With personalities like Mirumoto Satoe,
Mirumoto
Takeo
and Hoshi Oki, you can easily draw two or more cards a turn.
Adding cards like grove of the
five masters, shrine of
the eternal and hoshi house
guard to the mix means you’ll often be able to build up a perfect
hand before going into battle.
Having such a drawing machine available means you
can toy with your Fate deck as much as you want. While certain cards are
just too good and as such are auto-includes (palm strike, chasing
Osano-Wo and flee the darkness/turn
of fortune come to mind), you should have room for at least twenty
cards of your choice. The best option is often to divide these cards into
two categories: on one hand battle actions, be it game-swinging terrains (battlefield of shallow graves or
even the unexpected suspended
terrain) or simple attrition (mainly steel on steel and/or
to do what we must), on
the other hand meta cards.
Your first targets for meta cards nowadays are
control decks that are dominating the environment, mainly Shadowlands
personality kill and Scorpion dishonour or control decks. You already have
an extraordinary weapon against those decks, a wonderful kiho named turn
of fortune. Changing the target of a key action will often mean
disrupting your opponent’s whole strategy for a turn, and having multiple turn
of fortunes in hand (or just using the hoshi house guard or shrine of the eternal to recycle
them) will give your opponent a headache. One of the most difficult things
to learn when playing Hoshi military is exactly when to play your turn
of fortunes, especially against a control deck, because a
well-timed one can win you the game while a bad-timed one will have no
effect whatsoever.
But let’s get back to meta cards. Outside of turn
of fortune (you should run at least two of those), one of the best
cards against control decks is balance
in nothingness, especially when used in conjunction with your turn
of fortunes, letting you cancel entire actions. And it’s always fun
to cancel an action targeting your bowed Hoshi Chuichi during battle.
Other than that, outmaneuvered by force is still a good card, even though it’s probably inferior to balance in nothingness and even
to the underplayed enough
talk.
If versatility is Hohsi’s
main strength, reactivity is its main weakness. It’s no wonder if one of
Hoshi’s key card, turn of fortune, is a
reactive kiho. Most of the time when playing Hoshi military you will wait
for your opponent to make the first move and then react to what he’s doing.
So even though you have a high starting honour stronghold, you will often
wait for your opponent to attack you first. It may be particularly
dangerous against some military decks like Crab or Scorpion, because they
tend to become much stronger if you give them time to install their cards.
In those situations, the so-called Hoshi military
will often turn into somewhat more of a Hoshi switch. Because you go first,
you can afford to buy gold for one more turn than usual, which gives you
enough resources to buy most of your personalities for full, gaining honour
while setting up your defence. This strategy has two advantages. Because
you are in a defensive stance, you don’t need to attack and expand cards
and personalities to maybe take a province, which means you can build a
perfect hand waiting for your opponent to come for you. Additionally, by
gaining honour, you’re setting up a clock for your opponent: if he can’t
take you down before you reach 40, you win. This kind of situation will
often lead an opponent to attack too early, and given the formidable control
you have over battle, he will probably lose most of his army, giving you
both time AND honour in the process.
Crab is another problem. While this technique will
often lead you to victory, it will always be more painful because of Crab’s
extraordinary resilience: cards like Hida
Daizu,
feign death, Kisada’s
shrine and pick your battles are a pain
when you’re trying to kill an army. You can recover from a pick your battles followed by
Yu, but it means that the end of the game will be particularly tense, especially
if you don’t have any mean to rebuild your hand.
But your real bad matchups
are neither Crab nor Scorpion military, not even Shadowlands personality
kill or Scorpion control (though they will always put you under hard
pressure if you don’t use your turns
of fortune wisely). Your
biggest weakness comes from your biggest strength: while you have an
extraordinary control over battle, some clans just do it better, namely
Mantis, Rats and Horiuchi decks.
Mantis is an extraordinary threat because of three
things, ranged attacks, Yoritomo
Utemaro and defensive
screen. Ranged attacks mean that they will always have more battle
actions than you do, a situation you’re not really accustomed to (and trust
me, when it happens, you really don’t like it). Yoritomo Utemaro might be the biggest threat because it
allows the Mantis player to play direct
assault so easily, but
you should be packing at least a mean to disrupt the formation, be it Strike at the Tail or Champion’s Strike (or just plain
battle personality kill). Lastly, defensive
screen just acts like pick
your battles: it forces you to use your hand to try and win a
battle, and then denies you of all the reward.
Horiuchi decks may be even worse for you than
Mantis. They have a lot of force, they use weapons (which means no palm
strike), and can play direct
assault using items – ie. you can’t disrupt it by
simply killing the followers, you need to kill entire units for it to work.
Your third worst matchup is Rats. They are
basically Mantis with furs: they play a lot of battle personality kill
(including direct assault,
even though it’s easy to stop it) and can run away if things go wrong.
Though if you play enough battle personality kill on your own (to do what we must and/or steel on steel will do the trick), you should be able to
delay them long enough to reach 40 or take three provinces.
This would mean that a typical Temple of Hoshi military deck might look something like the
following:
Temple of Hoshi, Black
Heart of the Empire
Dynasty (41)
1x Hoshi Chuichi
1x Kaneka
3x Mirumoto
Arai
3x Mirumoto
Gonkuro
1x Mirumoto
Mareshi
3x Mirumoto
Satoe
3x Mirumoto
Takeo
3x Togashi Kansuke
1x Togashi Satsu Experienced
1x Togashi Tsuri
1x A Favor Returned
1x Gifts
and Favors
1x Corrupt
Officials
3x Gold Mine
3x The
Hiruma Dojo
3x Shrine
of the Eternal
1x Shrine
to Bishamon
1x Shrine
to Daikoku
2x Shrine
of Duty
1x Grove of
the Five Masters
1x A New
Wall
1x Blood
Money
1x
Commanding Favor
1x Refuge
of the Three Sisters
Fate (41)
1x Ruby of
Iuchiban
1x
Bloodspeaker Students
2x Traveling Ronin
1x The Egg
of P'an Ku
3x Chasing
Osano-Wo
2x Feeding
on Flesh
3x Palm
Strike
3x Flee the
Darkness
3x Turn of
Fortune
2x
Battlefield of Shallow Graves
2x Wedge
3x Outer
Walls
1x Strike
at the Tail
3x Tireless
Assault
2x To Do
What we Must
2x Refugees
3x
Retribution
2x Outmaneuvered by Force
1x Tribute
to your House
1x
Desperate Wager
Finally comes the most important question: what
will Hoshi military look like comes Wrath of the Emperor
? Honestly ? It’s very hard to tell. At first glance, Wrath seems to give a
bigger advantage to House of Tao decks with cards like Someisa Sensei, or even to Shiro Mirumoto decks with Mirumoto Kaiji. While it’s
definitely true, there are a couple of gems that can be used in Hoshi
military. Someisa Sensei is one of them: even if
it only makes Togashi Tsuri
boxable and allows you to buy Togashi Satsu on your third turn, it’s a good
deal. Add Hoshi Oki, Hoshi
Chuichi and maybe another non-unique Monk to the mix, and it’s really
great. Not as great as when your entire personality base is Monks, sure,
but still.
You can also go the switch way by using our brand
new Mirumoto Narumi (even
more card draw, yay!) instead of Togashi Kansuke. It might be a good
idea if the environment becomes really dominated by control decks, even
though you’re losing some speed in the process (unless you’re willing to
pack three of our brand new – maho – kiho, shifting fortunes, and turn your Mirumoto Narumi into a 4/2 berserker). Finally, Hoshi military
also benefits from several new kihos, like the
amazing martial instruction (especially good with Mirumoto
Satoe) or shifting fortunes and for the Lady.
Ring of Water military
At the core
there are two different approaches for a House of Tao deck
starting with ring of water, or Water Monk as some like to
call it (this name is actually slightly misleading as it refers to the Monk
faction having the House of Tao as their stronghold in older
versions of the game rather than any use of monks in the deck itself). The first of these two approaches is
based on the premise that the ring of water gives you an edge
in the race to a military victory by providing a means of taking multiple
provinces with a single personality.
The second approach is instead based on a longer term strategy of
utilising the mobility given by the ring of water to take
undefended provinces and leading to an overwhelming production advantage
come the mid-game. So how do you go
about taking this strategy and turning it into a playable deck?
Lets start by
taking a look at the first of these approaches, the blitz option. The key here is that you are looking to
make the most of the ring of water’s ability to
move into a battle and take a second province in a single turn. This involves two key components, getting
the force onto the table to take the province and finding a way to either
straighten in the second battle or still contribute your force. At this point the approaches taken with
this deck start to vary a great deal.
Many of the
earlier builds used the force based kiho such as chasing osano-wo to provide the necessary force but
these builds were often too unreliable as they relied on not only drawing
one of a very limited number of force boosting kiho but also a second way
of straightening after casting. This
unreliability was also hidden from some players who focussed too much on a
small selection of the Dragon personality base that could ignore the costs
of casting the kiho (Hitomi Daisetsu and Hoshi Chuichi). In effect though this just made the decks
even less stable than they previously were.
The more
successful versions instead ran some of the higher force Dragon samurai
over the monks available and a variety of cheap 3 force followers such as fortified
infantry and chitatchikkan. The problem with this setup
was that the follower needed to straighten as well or taking multiple
provinces was not an option. With
this in mind the straightening options were limited to spearhead. So rather than the reliability failing at
the stage of taking a province it failed at the taking of multiple
provinces. While not an ideal
solution it was a big step forward from the kiho based variants. The samurai based variants of the deck do
have a big weakness to losing that early personality and dishonour could
lock the deck down entirely due to the honour requirements. In the current environment both of those
are serious problems.
Once again
the deck has evolved as ways have been sought to remove the lack of
reliability or certain metagame weakness from
honour requirements and the like. In
some cases this has come from running weapons as opposed to followers so
that not only do they still contribute force while bowed but also offer
additional straightening options in the form of cards like superior
swordplay and armed and ready. On the downside the force to gold ratio
is not as good as that offered by the followers that have already been
mentioned, although there are variants of this deck running a large number
of crab personalities and dai
tsuchi.
It is another option but probably not a strong enough one yet.
The final
common straightening mechanic available is that provided by the use of
terrains and well prepared.
To make this work with any consistency though it becomes necessary
to run probably in the region of 10 terrains, many of which are not
actually helping you take a province and this is not conducive to the
reliability necessary in this style of deck. It does however give you a strong option
in the second style of ring of water military, the slow build
variant.
It should
also be borne in mind that it is possible to reduce the lack of reliability
through the use of whatever free card draw mechanisms are available to
you. Many people will say that
Dragon are the kings of card draw but in a tight blitz build you almost
certainly won’t have room for those personalities that provide it as they
are simply not efficient enough from a military standpoint. Instead you should probably be looking at
birth of the anvil, doom of the dark lord and imperial
ambassadorship, as well as the manipulation available from cards
like face of Ninube.
Whenever
you’re playing this style of deck though you should always keep in mind the
strengths of the deck. It will very
efficiently take undefended provinces but will start to suffer once an
opponent gets defence onto the table.
There are ways of taking advantage of this, such as Shosuro
Maru and the ruby of Iuchiban, both of which will
help take out any early defenders that come out allowing for the taking of
undefended provinces. Don’t allow an
opponent any defenders when you attack and they can have all the battle
defence they like, it will do them no good.
That is a huge advantage if you can find a way to consistently
capitalise on it. As things stand
though there are probably not enough high force
personalities available without an honour requirement to make this a stable
enough build but it would not take much to make this deck viable again and
it could prove a strong metagame choice as people
move away from blitz defence once more.
Now lets
take a look at the longer term build option. This is more like those variants of the
deck used by Robin Pailer at the Test of the Ruby
Championship and Lucas Twyman at Origins. As was already explained the principle
with this style of deck is to provide a production advantage going into the
midgame.
With this in mind the deck needs to be capable of producing the
force necessary to take a province but at the same time it needs to be able
to win opposed battles, something lacking from the blitz variants.
Rather than rely on preventing
an opponent from assigning any defence and crippling them before they get
into the game you are playing a much more attrition based strategy
here. Ranged attacks such as feeding
on flesh or other powerful battle actions in the form of palm
strike and even Tsuruchi technique. These cards will all help win battles and
failing that will at least remove an opponent’s personalities allowing you
to build upon the advantage gained by taking any undefended early
provinces. In this style of deck the
terrain model also becomes by far the most preferable option with regards
to straightening as cards such as battlefield of shallow graves
come into their own as they are not only helping the combo with well
prepared but also improving the chances of winning an opposed
battle.
The attrition is an important
aspect of this deck and this should also be considered when it comes to the
personality base as there are many personalities out there with built in
battle actions that should be considered.
Tsuruchi Nobumoto and Yotsu
Dagurasu are
both worthy of mention here. Tsuruchi
Nobumoto is probably the
more common choice for his ability to assign and force an opponent to
either be shot (allowing Tsuruchi Nobumoto to move home again) but defend the
province or allow a high force unit to move in and take the province. If Crab and Shadowlands (or potentially
other dragon) are the expected opponents though
there is a strong argument for choosing Yotsu
Dagurasu instead. While he does not provide the naval
option of shooting first the increased strength of the ranged attack can
prove decisive.
The final thing that should be
mentioned with respect to this deck type is Stonebreaker. This personality is an exceptionally
powerful unit that will cause many opponents to weep as it ignores a large
number of the control elements of many common decks. This card can single handedly
win games though you do need to consider how it can impact the rest of a
deck due to the requirement for followers.
Ring of Fire military
Whenever you’re building a deck
it is often a good idea to consider what your edge is. What is it that this deck can do that
other decks can’t that will enable me to win. In the House of Tao Dragon
have been given an ideal way to create just such an edge. With an advantage of just a single point
of chi (or other appropriate stat) a duel becomes almost an automatic win
for the Dragon player. That victory
occurs on more than one level as not only does the improved focus value
increase the likelihood of winning the duel against anyone that doesn’t
possess double chi but also restores your hand in any protracted focus
battle. This means that the age old
tactic of military decks with high static force to deplete your hand is now
redundant, filling one of the greatest weaknesses of duelling. Combine this with the potent selection of
kiho available and you have a very strong basis for a military deck.
The premise of the deck is
essentially that you will win any battle that you go into by simply
overwhelming your opponent with battle actions. In many respects the deck plays out in a
very similar fashion to the Temple of Hoshi military already
covered elsewhere in this article so rather than go over the same material
again the focus will be on the differences between these two decks and the
options provided by each. At it’s
heart though the Temple of Hoshi focuses on a versatile
personality base providing some redundancy in the use of kiho where as the ring
of fire military relies on a greater range of possible actions
instead to give it that edge.
Most duelling decks require that
some deck space is used up to provide some sort of edge to their duellists,
typically in the form of weapons and items.
There are certain implications of this format though. Firstly, it
takes time to equip these items and that time is something that many
military decks will capitalise on as you cannot defend effectively without
those items. Secondly it creates a tendancy towards having a limited number of
personalities that are capable of duelling efficiently and their loss
really hurts the deck. By using the ring
of fire these issues are all avoided as every personality has the
edge they need to win a duel. This
means that all those slots used on items can then be used on something
else.
Many of the limited phase duels
available unfortunately require a courtier or a shadowlands
personality, both rare or dangerous commodities in
a House of Tao deck.
With this in mind it is probably better to focus on just the battle
options that are available. Steel
on steel, test of might and rage are generally the
first cards to be considered when it comes to the battle actions available
but there are a couple of others that should not be discounted either, most
notably drunken mantis (if only for it’s recursive qualities
with shrine of the eternal and Hoshi house guard)
and brutal confrontation.
This last suggestion comes about from the fact that many of the
Dragon personalities are 4 force and thus out of
range of any ranged attacks and it takes full advantage of every
personality at the battle. This
single card can win games and there is very little an opponent can do to
stop it. In combination with turn
of fortune and flee the darkness to stop any possible
backlash it is an exceptionally strong card that few people will
expect. Of course duels aren’t
limited to your fate hand and shrine of courage can also
provide you with an extra duel for that final battle when you really need
it.
While I have pointed out that
the ring of fire allows every personality to duel the nature
of these actions should also be considered.
Duels do not generally bow the person issuing them and thus a single
personality can defeat a much larger number of opposing personalities if
protected from a small number of key actions that an opponent may use (such
as overwhelmed). This
can bring you to a secondary theme that can be added to these decks. This has partially been covered already
when both turn of fortune and flee the darkness
were mentioned but it is possible to go a step further and run faith
in my clan as well to stop any endgame battle turning actions such
as direct assault or archer squad. This may require the addition of assuming
the championship to add some extra reliability but with the card
search available from aid of the grand master it should prove
fairly easy to get the necessary components to make this work. With these additions single personalities
can take out entire armies as they repeatedly duel every personality
opposing them.
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