The Swift Sword

Was wondering if anyone attended the DC (VA) Kotei and got to check out Danny Swartz's deck. He did pretty well and was listed as playing "lion blitz". Color me interested! If anyone has any info or if Danny pops up on the board, post me here or PM me! Thanks!

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Matsu Ryroma * Lion Clan * Samurai * Kolat * Taisa

"The fear you feel in your heart - it is only an illusion. When you feel hunger, you feed your belly, eh? When you feel fear, feed your heart with courage."

EVD, no holdings except Venerable Master + Small Farm, every 3g personality and 5g lion and Kagako, 3*All that will be lost, Wisdom Gained and Rings. Fate included SoP, Spirit of Knowledge+Consideration, Satoshi's Fans, Incapacitated, Burn the Towers, Heart of Darkness, Seeking the Truth. Akodo's Guidance and Jurojin's.

"system" pretty much summed it up. I'll leave it up to you all to figure out what goes in the gaps. The deck is brutal, efficient, and incredibly consistent (generates enough force to take 2 provinces turn 2 75% of the time). However, it should be mentioned that any dedicated blitz deck is incredibly unforgiving and requires a great deal of skill to pilot well. Don't be surprised if some of you don't have similar results in your testing. The deck also changes quite substantially (and becomes far better) after the Kotei pack/new expansion set becomes legal. Again, I'll leave the (fairly obvious) details of those changes to everyone's imagination.

I should also mention that the deck isn't truly a "Danny Swartz deck". One of my Dynasty teammates, Faber von Krannen, came up with the original design, which I expanded upon and modified to suit my playstyle.

Oh, and there's one slight inaccuracy in system's post. I wasn't running Seeking the Truth, although this card has been on the bubble for a while. It could be exchanged for Satoshi's Fans (which was meh throughout the tournament). Either one should be run as a 2x.

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-Dan Swartz

The Dynasty
The Idols
Team Rofl Force
Team He'bro
Team The Josh Griffis

Go to http://www.ezomz.com to download my music, which is so good that it makes The Beatles sound like Fall Out Boy.

nice! thanks for the info guys! i've been toying around with a deck which is personality-wise probably quite similar, i've been playing it as a swarm and not a blitz though. i'm definately going to put something together and play around with it for a while as a possible alternate to the defensive paragon deck i'm planning on playing with at the toledo kotei. anyways, congrats on placing so well danny and if you're feeling charitable and wan to PM me your decklist to look at, i won't be too upset
thanks again!

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Matsu Ryroma * Lion Clan * Samurai * Kolat * Taisa

"The fear you feel in your heart - it is only an illusion. When you feel hunger, you feed your belly, eh? When you feel fear, feed your heart with courage."

I had a blitz deck mocked up for a while but as soon as I saw the kotei pack and realised how much better it becomes I put it aside for a while. The EoW previews are making it seem even stronger.

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An atheist terrorist group has recently begun to employ suicide bombers to go around blowing themselves up for no reason.

Particularly Low Market, I think.

Alex

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L5R Rules Team

I'm not sure what SoP is an acronym for right now. Mind clearing up my confusion?

Strength of Purity.

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Swift Sword Forum Rules

All 5 rings?

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Lion Clan * Tic Tac * Loyal
Raiding Rule # 47.2(b), Its still not ok to stand in the fire!

Defenders of Ningen-Do Tucson Champion...
2012 Tucson Kotei Top of Lion

Also, there isn't many targets for SoP, What, 9 that i can see? and only if u see 6 of your personalities?

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Lion Clan * Tic Tac * Loyal
Raiding Rule # 47.2(b), Its still not ok to stand in the fire!

Defenders of Ningen-Do Tucson Champion...
2012 Tucson Kotei Top of Lion

I've been trying out my version of the deck, which has effective 15 people with PH3: Hachiro, Sorano, Kagako and Venerable Master.

Mind you, I've not been desperately successful so far - I can't get the right balance between pumps and kills.

Alex

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L5R Rules Team

Just 3. Air and Water are too battle control oriented for a deck like this. You either win battles fast or not at all. Trying to add resistance cards will only delude the deck.

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-Dan Swartz

The Dynasty
The Idols
Team Rofl Force
Team He'bro
Team The Josh Griffis

Go to http://www.ezomz.com to download my music, which is so good that it makes The Beatles sound like Fall Out Boy.

It seems like a lot of fun. I tinkered with a conversion of my Lion Box Party designs from a few months ago to find something that fits. The real points of concern for me in the pre-Embers format are as follows:

Can you get Tactician consistently enough to land Consideration? I've got 3x Suoh and 3x Spirit of Knowledge right now. Do you just have to run Gaining Experience and deal with the sub-optimal number of targets (3x Ikoma, 3x Hachiro, 3x Kagako's Lion Ancestor)?

I guess Honor of the Lion is mandatory, otherwise you've got only 1 target for Strength of Purity.

Am I right in assuming you just skip running Caught in the Act since no one runs Caught Unawares or Hidden Defenses?

On the battle action side, should ever pro-active Battle Action send someone home? I can fit Sundering, Incapacitated, Effortless Counterattack, Solid Defense, and Soul's Sacrifice in here if necessary.

What do you think about One Koku? I'm not a huge fan unless it can get me a free Large Farm, and actually getting extra gold in this deck can make bad, bad things happen, but 9-holding scheme is a pretty severe deviation from the original plan.

I'm on the bubble about A Brave New World. It's expensive, but it allows you to completely dodge an early blocker. It also has 4FV so it is a perfect force-pump cycle off of EVD (probably wouldn't run it if I do GSP post-Embers).

Moving onto Embers Uehara, Shika XP, Gozu, and Gozu's Guide all seem like no-brainers. It seems like you could migrate away from EVD at that point for Golden Sun Plain for 4F Prides and use Gozu as a tutor for Heart of Darkness and Thick Marsh. Still, it only really shines if you shy away from the send-home focus and rock stuff like Reckless Rush, Strategic Strike, Disrupting Communications, and Well Prepared (maybe even The Trap is Sprung!). It seems like shooting through attachments and bowing through attachments might be better in certain matches with a handful of Send Home for the turn 2 attack to pick of lone defenders.

Low Market seems viable if you're running Gozu's Guide, Veteran Skirmishers, and either Akodo Regulars or Satoshi's Dual Warfans, but it's kind of awkward fitting those free non-personality flips in there. As it is with 4 Events and a Celestial I'm running Second City and kind of worried about Shinden Shorai. Running Low Market as a 2x would probably encourage me to pull either or both of the other regions out of the deck.

Sorry for the barrage of questions and speculation, but this rekindled a fire for Box Party that had been smoldering since I moved to Tactigons for Kotei season.

- Marty Lund

Venerable Master

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Ratling • Nonhuman • One Tribe • Tactician • Nametaker



Moar...

Gohei, Kagako, Sorano, and the ancestors.

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