The Swift Sword

I’m just coming back to the game after an extended absence. Let me congratulate AEG on a fantastic product and Mr. Reese on a wonderful play environment thus far. Forgive me if I spell any name wrong, or incorrectly remember anything. My notes were spotty and my brains were exhausted by the end of the day.

I’m running what I’ll term tactician enabled paragons out of Eternal Victory Dojo. When I first looked at the legal cards, I thought that Lion tacticians were impossible. Nearly every one of the tacticians is blank, and they lack proactive battle abilities. I like military decks that run tons of actions and punch a lot of face, and all this Consideration type garbage wasn’t doing it for me. I had played around a bit with Ancestor+Paragon honor out of Shamate, and while I liked it, it wasn’t what I really wanted to play. It did, however, impress upon me the strength of Paragons and the strength of their face punchs. Card draw is one of my absolute favorite mechanics, and EVD with 4xs and card draw is fantastic in its power and consistency. I can’t tell you how many games I played 2 or 3 or 4 Cast Asides, and it turns out that card is good. I lose to some Lion and definitely to Asako honor, but the deck is an absolute devil against military decks. My goal, considering I’ve just gotten back, is to have a winning record.

R1 - Justin “Shaggy” McBarren lulz.
Shaggy is an old friend who I’ve played against many times. I chuckle that he’s my first opponent. I swear it feels like we were -just- playing and he was playing enlightenment then too. He’s doing the METH enlightenment thing, which I’ve never seen before. I assume I need to kill his mans in their faces before they can RoF me. He ambushes a dude and I wind up killing his guy. He ambushes another dude and I wind up Ryoshun’s-ing that to an unbowed guy, who I attach a Grateful Reward baby to, and then A Paragon’s Strength to his dude’s face. I’ve hit critical mass by this point, and that’s game, but not before Mr. Montbarren gets like three rings out and draws 75% of his deck.
1-0

R2 - Clairissa McCluskey - Ronin
Clairissa wins the prize for most cheerful opponent. She’s traveled all the way from Arizona for this here kotei, and is a loyal ronin player. Definitely props for that! I get an early Kakihara + Kamina, which is never a bad thing. I swing and Kakihara + Kamina’s open + Kakihara’s reaction + like seven million negations = army crushed and province. I call a judge over because I’m not 100% on the rules and I want to know how much Kakihara + Iron Will horse-shit I can get away with (I do not want to fudge the rules) and Clairissa is very nice about it. This is the first of roughly a hundred games where the presence of one more action would’ve changed the outcome of the game. Clairissa’s deck had a number of mean tricks and I’m certain she’ll take top of clan for ronin, which she does. Congrats!
2-0

I think at this point pizza happens and I play the bartender after watching about six nerds try and unscrew a 2-liter with one hand, and then pour it into a Solo cup, while the other hand clutches a plate of heaping pizza. Also, the scene as described prior takes about 3 minutes a person, so I start pouring. I won’t say things went quickly, but they definitely sped up.

R3 - Torian Chisholm - Crab. Berserker Box.
After some early exchanges and me A Perfect Momenting, we both have two provinces. We’re fairly even in dudes, so I sit back and honor out, forcing him to attack both of my provinces at once. Come at me, bro! Especially with me having Perfect Moments, it’s the right play. He surprises me by attacking one of my provinces when I’m at 38 honor. I defend at the other province and drop 2x Grateful Reward, to cross. Even without the misplay, I think it’d have been brutal to try and take 2x of my provinces in one turn as I had no shortage of dudes/actions. In the long game, the military deck that can switch is usually the deck that’s going to win.
3-0

R4 - Robbi Robison - Dragon Kensai
I get the drop with Kamina and a Paragon snaking an early province. He takes one of mine on his turn, and I A Perfect Moment with two Paragons. He tries to stop me, but I Cast Aside the Weak multiple times and kill his dude. My turn he’s down to two provinces, and I have Kamina and Two Paragons. I Kamina (discarding a card) for a 4f bonus for the one Paragon, and the other paragon is an Arata (or has some other force pump). I take his last two provinces to conclude a brutally short game.
4-0

R5 - Corey Monson - Kitsu honor shugenjas out of the Ancestor box.
He goes first. I’m juuuust under being able to take his provinces on two or so attacks, and don’t buy one of my Akodo’s Graves as a rather nice misplay. I see only one bit of negation, and no Kaminas (which I reallllly like against honor). I am thoroughly smashed, but Corey’s a cool dude, so all is good. I wish him luck in getting top lion (spoiler: he does) and go on to the next round.
4-1

Jeff Halladay - Phx Asako witch hunt box
Weiners. I do not want to see honor and I’ve seen it twice near the top of the heap. Jeff is a very good player and plays his deck aggressively. At one point he calls my dude a kolat and then attaches a Winds of Dismissal. DO NOT WANT. So I break it with an Broken Alliance. He then attaches -another- damn Winds of Dismissal, so I break that one with my second (and last) Broken Alliance. I have momentum this entire game (taking an early prov at around 22ish honor for him), but he rockets on his last turn to 40 and I can’t take both of his provinces. The make or break decision this game involved whether or not to redirect his Asako box action from my ‘kolat’ guy to another (which would deprive him of 2 honor, which he needed to cross). I know he has 4 actions in hand and assume at least one of those will help him cross, so I don’t. Turns out none of them would’ve gained him honor. Oh well!
4-2

Mac Caldwell, Unicron Paragron Maidrons
Mac’s an Atlanta local as well, and we both kind of groan that we’re going to be eliminating one or the other of us from the elimination rounds. I attack first and he defends with 2x 3f 4ph paragons. His dudes wind up nakeder than mine, and I cast aside a couple of times. He can’t Iron Will it either, because we’re at 4ph a piece. He wound up drawing 3x of Iron Will, which normally isn’t a bad thing, but against Lion they’re more or less dead cards. After I kill that army (and I think province) he winds up scooping from there when he sees almost all holdings.
5-2 and 11th after Swiss.

So the TOs (who are lovely people, also Chris) hand out top of clan awards and the prizes for fiction. Yours truly gets second place in the fiction contest, which I’m happy with. I look at the top 16 and assume I’ll be playing Evan Paul. Booo. So while the X-2 pairings happen, I go with Trevor Valentine to fetch some non-pizza food. Trevor’s a cool dude, and I’ve watched him go from “dude who plays Crane and is new” to “holy balls, this guy is good”. Really, while I’ve been out of the game, the entire Atlanta playgroup has really stepped it up a notch, and I have to give these guys credit; they’re great to play against and talk shop.

So Trevor and I get back and they announce the pairings. I assumed wrong, I’m not playing Evan, I’m playing Trevor.

TREVOR VALENTINE - T16 round - Rich Coffers xp - Gets paid, son - Mantis
So it’s best of three here. Trevor and I laugh heartily that we’re facing each other. Trevor correctly mentions that if one of us has to lose, at least it’ll be to the other. Agreed. Trevor has helped me out with my deck, and I know that his deck is “terrible” in his own words, with a “terrible fateside” and “terrible personalities”. His words, folks. His words.

Trevor is playing Kalani’s Ridiculous Landing. I think he only sees decent fate side gold the first game, and we stretch it to three. Now, I apologize here, I wish I’d taken actual notes, or wasn’t completely exhausted, because these games were ridiculously close. We both use Hotakos, he steals my Hotako, I kill his Hotako, I kill his dudes, he kills my dudes, etc etc. I manage to eek out a win in game three, and I’m off to the t 8. A fantastic player and opponent. Maybe someone watching can comment intelligently.

MAAAARK ZOHN - T8 - Shiro Chugo - Paragons of Face Smashing
So Mark and I both laugh our asses off at the start of the match. Mark is old school Atlanta l5r as well, and we both have just gotten back into the game again. Mark’s playing Shiro Chugo (which btw, thanks AEG for making Paragons easy to play as a new player!) and just the night before we’d both put out emails to the Atlanta YahooGroup saying how we were both scrubs and needed certain commons/uncommons/rares in order to be able to play our decks in the tourney. Mark’s a great guy and I’m psyched to see one of us scrubs is going to make top 4. My deck usually has a pretty good matchup vs Chugo (defined as winning at least 51% of the time).

Our first game is what you’d expect from paragons on paragons. We run our mans into each other no fewer than three times (at a minimum) and I think there’s maybe one guy alive at each of those times. An observer notes that “It’s okay guys, you -can- lose provinces” and we laugh. I feel like I have momentum, but he always flops enough mans to be mean. Eventually, a well timed Creating Order lowers his 20 something force unit back to normal levels while restoring my dude’s force. I win, basically on the back of Creating Order.

Our next game is similar. He winds up with a mega unit dude, and I Creating Order his guy to barely eek out a win. Again, Creating Order wins me the game.

MANTIS DUDE - T4 - Lee Steele - More Kalanis, with extra Magistrates
By this point I’m exhausted. My brains is mush. Lee won the honor competition though, so it’s on. Our first game is pretty close, and it’s gawd-awful late, so I might have been a bit testy when my opponent played a deliberate, considerate game even when I had pretty strongly established superiority in battle (obviously my opinion). My apologies if I was testy, sir. I generally don’t like die rolls and didn’t want this to go to time.

Our second game is a blur to me (it was probably less than half as long as the first game), I was barely coherent here, babbling things about attaching followers with Kamina (pro-tip, he doesn’t attach followers) and whatnot. I didn’t want the game to go to time, and so I get frustrated and defend when he attacks (ill advised defense on my part). My army dies and I scoop.

We have 8 minutes before time. I offer a die roll, and he says that sounds fine. He goes first and rolls a 1. I roll a 6. Wooo.

FINALS - James Donnithorne-tait- Phx Asako honorssss.

I forfeit immediately to Donnie, who wins his first kotei! I’m pleased as punch that I did as well as I did.

Here is my deck, with notes. I’ve removed the quantities of the cards for funsies, and because it’d be boring to post a full deck list.


Eternal Victory Dojo - “Come at me, bro”
BK reg - I see a lot of people running BK xp. XP is good in certain decks (Kalani’s for one) but sacrificing the ability late game to flip your provinces again is just painful. I built a model of the first turn’s gold flop in Excel (watch for a writeup of my conclusions to appear on the Strange Assembly website in the near future), to see what the percentages were with just one BK use vs two. I didn’t get gold screwed the entire tourney.

BH reg

# Dynasty (40)

Ryoshun's Guidance - I definitely feel this is the best Guidance for the deck. Redirection is just amazing. Seriously, redirection effects are like having negation AND sneak attack in one. This deck wants the tempo advantage and will get it.

The Second City - Scouting your opponent’s provinces is win for a military deck. Every personality you deny them is one less mouth that needs punched.

Copper Mine
Ageless Shrine
Remote Village
Chugo Seido - I <3 redirects.
Akodo's Grave
Traveling Peddler
Family Library

Fukuzo - exp - Uncle Skinny is awesome. He was a late addition, and I’m really glad I added him. SEKRIT TECH: Wear a Makotai on their turn, then use the Makotai on your turn and then discard him for a more fetching outfit. Crane should be angry the best ‘clothing’ based personality is a Spider (unless he’s wearing Shunya, I guess).
Akodo Dairuko
Akodo Kobi - exp
Daigotsu Hotako - exp3
Matsu Kasei - exp - He’s okay, I guess. The best thing he did for me was send one of my own bowed defending dudes home once, which was my fourth battle action, so I drop Ring o Water. I then move my dude back in, straightening him. Not terrible, but not great. I should probably remove him but Lions with real battle actions are kind of sparse.

Akodo Kamina - King of the ballers. He’s flexible force, protection for your mans, and the best source of card draw for the deck. Using him on my opponent’s turn, and then reacting with the Stronghold is fantastic. Hell, you can easily pitch meta to him if it turns out to be bad for the matchup.
Akodo Makotai - Don’t get me wrong, he’s bad, but the deck needs him. He usually gets pitched. Bad. Fun to wear if you’re Fukuzo.

Akodo Tezuka - The true brother in battle. That’s all I ever use him for, and I’m fine with that. Bros in Battle is amazing, and it’s amazing being able to use it in the discard.
Matsu Arata
Matsu Koyama
Akodo Kakihara - A warm body.


# Fate (40)

Brothers in Battle
Sundering Strike
Broken Alliance
Creating Order
A Paragon's Strength - Kill and send home are both good. I’m not a big fan of bow actions right now; my assumption was that there’d be an ungodly amount of unbow meta around.
Cast Aside the Weak
Gold and Steel - This was a last minute meta addition (turns out Crabs are good). I don’t think I used it all day to any effect (didn’t see KH XP).

Grateful Reward - Ridiculous card is ridiculous.
Iron Will
Effortless Counterattack
Know No Fear
The Perfect Moment - This was a late addition as well, I hate playing cards that don’t punch face. I should’ve had it in previously; it -really- changes how the game is played.


Satoshi's Dual Warfans

Ring of Fire
Ring of the Void - You’ll note I am not playing A Game of Dice. In testing, it kept being a dead card in my hand, and honestly, the deck is fine for card draw. I should probably pitch ROTV, despite it being easy enough to play. I hate entering battle with cards that are dead in my hand.
Ring of Water

Hi! Congrats on your placing!

I'd like to ask your reasons for putting in the Warfans, and if they really performed well.

Thanks in advance!

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Great you see are back Randy! You should come up to DC this year.

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Barto
Dynasty * Team Real Jobs * Shat Pack

Howdy Barto! It's good to be back. I'll look into DC, although for real school/work own me.

Warfans are, in my mind, a no brainer. Nekkid dudes get savaged. 4f dudes are vulnerable to a whole host of ranged attacks and nonsense. The warfans get you protection at no loss of fate hand resources, and they help cycle through your fate deck quickly. I love consistency in the fate side and the Warfans definitely provide it. Other attachments I've considered are Singh Remnants (you can discard them to Kamina and then attach them later, also they are rather persistent) and Sasumata (I heard bowing dudes is good). For a while the slot that is now Fukuzo was an Imperial Gift, to help my card cycle. The earlier versions of the deck had a lot of card cycle (Banish All Doubt, Imp Gift, A Game of Dice) but I really don't think it's necessary. Proof is in the pudding, I wasn't ever really out of cards (apart from a huge epic battle when my opponent was too).

I just googled the DC Kotei. Mid-April is brutal for me. I'll try and come up if possible, but my profs assuredly will hand out ridiculous group projects at that point. I'm glad to see you're still rocking the lawn.

Bummer. Yeah, it falls during crunch time for most students unfortunately. I'm pretty happy with the options Reese and company gave Lion this arc. You can attack well out of two strongholds or sit back and honor out out of two other decks.

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Barto
Dynasty * Team Real Jobs * Shat Pack

Hey Randy, nice to see your tourney report! Grats on getting to second and representing Lion in the top 8.

I was really confident in my chances of making it to the finals based on the decks in the top 16, but of course I had to be paired vs KL which just destroys honor decks. Still though, I had a blast and you were one of my favorite opponents all day. You're a stand up dude and I look forward to playing against you again! Cheers mate!

~Corey

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~~Sleep~~
Lion Clan * Phoenix Clan * Samurai * Shugenja * Sodan Senzo * Sensei of the Forgotten Bay

Used to blog L5R, now I run the community board for the Southeast US, The Forgotten Bay.
Top Lion Atlanta Kotei 2012, Top 16, 10th Overall.

It was good to meet you as well, Corey! Ignoring the beating I would've received in the finals, our game was the only game of the day that I wasn't competitive at all. Your deck just came out punching and mine kind of didn't.

My meta game assumption was that Lion/Phx honor was good, but that Shiro Chugo and Mantis were both strong, and had a good chance of knocking out the honor players in the elims based on prevalence in other Kotei. Right or wrong, Shiro Chugo was my great satan in terms of the environment. As a result there is a lack of honor meta in my deck. In testing, I reliably beat Crane/Dragon, did pretty well against Lion and just got hosed by Phx.

In the end, I came soooo close to being able to influence the story for Lion; I was 2nd in both honor and the regular event. Oh well, the story team probably would've rejected the "Phoenix are stupid jerks Plains" or "the Cave of Weiners". I should probably put a bounty on that last one.

Congrats on your great finish! Being that honor seems pretty decent right now,what would you replace if you added a playset of rumors travel? Did you consider nakanu technique for protection at all, or did the warfans do pretty well for you?

Rumors Travel doesn't significantly slow down Lion Honor, and if that's what you are most afraid of, it alone wont work. It buys you maybe half a turn. On top of that, the card is pretty lackluster in the military matchup (especially since you are most likely going to have to drop Broken Alliance or something similar for it). Dropping a great, consistent card to somewhat counter a deck you will see maybe 1 out of 5 games is going to cause you to get a loss or two in those other 4 games.

Now, Rumors Travel is MUCH better vs the phoenix honor decks, but those are much fewer and far between (there was like 6 lion honor runners at atlanta yesterday, 5 paragon versions and one shugenja version. Only the shugenja version made top 16) and there were only 3 phoenix ToP decks (The eventual winner, another that made top 16 but not top 8, and another that went 3-4 IIRC).

I promise I'm not saying this because I play Lion Honor, I'm saying it because I like giving players good advice. Build a solid, consistent deck vs the matchups you are most likely to see. Then hope that you can out-play or avoid your bad matchups.

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~~Sleep~~
Lion Clan * Phoenix Clan * Samurai * Shugenja * Sodan Senzo * Sensei of the Forgotten Bay

Used to blog L5R, now I run the community board for the Southeast US, The Forgotten Bay.
Top Lion Atlanta Kotei 2012, Top 16, 10th Overall.

I like the Warfans a lot more than Nakanu, simply because of the prevalence of Crab. Their sneaky gold cost (3) also makes it where your opponent has to have a gold ready to pop them with Broken Alliance. There are a lot of Kyuden Hida-ers which means people should be running Gold and Steel, which lowers the value of free followers a bit. I haven’t tested Rumors Travel at all. To me, I really need Broken Alliance to be able to deal with certain attachments. Truth be told, I’m not sure what I’d run if I were trying to deal with honor. Maybe the Scorpion that bows for 2 honor loss a turn and Alter History? I dunno. I wasn’t sure I could really meta honor successfully without ripping the heart out of the deck.

Thanks for your answers guys...2 more quick ones...and feelings about taking out a tezuka and kasei for a couple of ashikos? Also, no love for at any cost?'

Thanks again!

I'm happy to answer any questions! At Any Cost is good, yar, but I’m a huge tempo guy and I don’t like how it throws your naked guy out there to be savaged. If I were running Singh Remnants, I’d probably value this more. Lion ain't got lots of extra golds, also.

I’ve heard Ashiko suggested as honor meta, and I’d have to test it out, truth be told. I’d probably be more willing to cut a Kakihara and Kasei for 2x of her, to see how that went. It’s still rough to be paying 6g for a body that effectively does nothing other than have force.

Great work! I'm definitely taking lessons from these results with me to my next Kotei.

- Marty Lund

Thanks! I’m not going to lie, the deck is probably sub-optimal due to my personal preferences for playing. I could’ve probably spent more time dealing with honor and figuring out how to do it, but I’d be weakening the deck to do so. Chugo and Kalani both have built in honor meta (I heard naval is good), and don’t have to make that compromise. I like playing decks that have absolute dominance in the battle action segment, and this deck more or less does. I really, really enjoy rolling up to a battle and knowing that I am going to kick some serious ass.