WS: A habit that might cost you the game

I’ve been playing Weiss Schwarz for a while now and I noticed that while the deck design is a key component to win a game, it is not the deciding factor. The game heavily relies on the player mentality that’s running the deck as well as habits. It’s kinda like poker, where you play the player, not the deck, but not quite.

One of these habits is how you stack your Climaxes when they hit the Waiting Room.

We often want to keep track how many Climax cards are in the Waiting Room, whether it’d be for ourselves or for our opponents. The number dictates whether we’re ready to launch that heavy soul attack or not. But one thing I noticed is that by stacking Climaxes, the next Refresh is going to be problematic. Most players reinsert the Climax as evenly as possible before shuffling them back, but there is one courtesy that will screw this up: opponent cutting the deck.

When an opponent cuts a deck of somewhat evenly spaced Climaxes, what normally happens is two things:

a) Clumping of two Climaxes

or worse:

b) A huge gap between two Climax cards.

For the first scenario, it’s only bad if you’re going to draw them after Clocking. That’ll eventually lead to scenario (b). The second one is worse because that gap will be your damage if our opponent is smart and not dealing huge amounts of soul damage in one go.

Not to say that leaving your Climax cards as they are will eradicate this problem, but with proper shuffling tech, these potential mistakes could be minimized.

Is this 100% accurate? Is there a more scientific explanation to this post? Nope. But it happens often enough in my observations that it gets me wondering about it.

Tao of Targeting

I’ve been dreading to post something of this nature since the blog first started. It’s not an easy subject to discuss yet it is integral in L5R. This is going to be a short take on targeting and threat assessment, which may or may not fit your play style. So take it with a grain of salt or two.

Target assessment and your hand

You have a strategy card that you want to play from your hand, or you have an action on the board that you wish to play. More often than not you have to target something and then go ahead to resolve the action. Firstly, is targeting that important at all? Why can’t you just randomly do a Melee 5 on that 5F dude? Or plunk a weapon on any of your peeps?

The issue here is, doing a bad call on who to do your action will give you a compounded penalty as the game progresses. For example: You have Wyrmborne Katana. You plunk it on your Clan Champion so he/she can be the most badass person around. Awesome right? Your other peeps can take a backseat because, hey, your Champion is the most awesome piece on the board now. Now go to battle. Do you think your opponent will get rid of your other dudes or try his damnest to get your Champion off the battle as soon as possible? You have one badass but he’s one big target. Losing it will pretty much devastate your entire game. If you attach the katana to say, a random vanilla 4/4. Go to battle and your opponent might have to choose between two juicy targets instead.

So you see, there’s no right or wrong way to target stuff, but it’s always a good idea to ask a few questions to assess your targets before you choose them. There are two types of general actions: positive and negative. Positive actions are buffs, protections, redirection, anything that is beneficial for the target. Negative actions are those that remove the target from the game/battle, reduce force or temporarily incapacitate them for one turn.

Positive actions:

1. Will it create another target for your opponent? If you have several highly threatening targets, this is good. This means that you have more opportunities to respond as well as forcing your opponent to evaluate his choices more carefully. Which equals time. And that time can be spent to plan your next move (be it in the current turn or in the next).

2. Will it’s survival win you the game? A shiny Unique (your Champion included), is often a cog in your game engine. It’ll have nifty abilities, but is it crucial enough to win you the game or fit into your core strategy? I protect my core game plan and often use my shiny pieces as bait so it won’t get disrupted too early, but that’s just me.

3. Is it a waste to put it there? This is often the question that you don’t ask. It’s a very important question because doing this wrong will mean that you stand a chance to lose a more important piece while leaving your less optimal options behind. Also do you often have the opportunity to use every possible ability every time? Slapping an attachment with an active ability on a peep with his own printed action will create a dilemma on what action to use first. Because the normal response is the removal of the peep with the attachment, which you will waste an unused action in the end.

Negative actions:

1. Force or ability?:  In battle, this is often a hard choice to make. But my rule of thumb is: It depends on how far into the battle that you are in. Early battle: Get rid of those with an active ability on the table that can remove your own peeps. Late battle: Get rid of those big dudes. Generally, anything that can hurt you in the long run is the one that has to go first.

2. Short term vs long term: I’d prefer to target and disarm long term effects than short term ones. But it really depends. An imminent threat that would disrupt your game plan must always be dealt with first. How to make sure it’s an imminent threat? Simple: It prevents you from doing something that can win you the game. For example, if I’m playing a Crane honour dueling deck and Kakita Maratai is somehow pulled inside the battle, I’d get him out or kill the one that has the ability on it’s card to kill Maratai off.

Tip of the iceberg

In the end, choosing a good target is often based on your experience. Play a lot, get used to your deck, learn what makes it tick and learn to identify what can threaten your deck as well as learn the pieces that your opponents need in order for them to win. Of course, the thing that goes hand in hand with targeting is the timing to play them, but that sounds like another post for another day.

Tao of the Elemental Rings – Emperor’s New Groove

While I was always in favour of enlightenment decks, I played heavily in zen decks during mid to end of CE. Changing Path was a key MVP then.

In Emperor edition however, the rules have changed. Enlightenment victory is achieved at the start of your turn, similar to honor, meaning opponent have one turn to smack you down before you decide to win.

This hurts a lot for enlightenment since now you have to actually play stuff to drop a ring, you have to wait one turn. That hurts. However, some of the rings have changed making that condition somewhat less painful to pull off.

Lets examine the rings now.

Ring of Air

Similar to previous rings, you need to pull 3 different kihos/spell in combination during one turn, simple enough if you have a monk / shugenja and the cards to play it. In current military, its a bit hard if you dont have any shugenja / monk, but to pull it off, you can play with open action kiho/spells to ensure that you can drop ring of air.

Still staple in some military decks even if they can’t put it into play mainly due to the straighten unit ability in battle/open.

Ring of the Void

Still the same, pull off 4 strategy card, then can be the same, but must in one phase. Easy to pull off. But this time around, they included one card that makes playing ring interesting. Introspection. It is a reaction, when you play a ring, you can trigger introspection to look for a card.

Best way to pull this off is to drop ring of water, (easiest) and play three introspection, trigger the first intro to look for a second and 2nd to look for 3rd, and third to look for ring of void. When you have void, you can immediately put into play. (I presume playing four battle action to drop ring of water should include one strategy card at least. If not, just play one more action to drop void).

Of course, if you are a military deck, chances are you can pull it off hardcast, by playing combination of battle action and reaction. (such as Know no Fear, Sundering Strike and the like)

Ring of Water

By far among the easiest, but can be a tad bit difficult only in the early turns since pulling 4 battle action while you have 1-2 unit usually doesn’t’ happen, since the opponent will try to remove your battle presence within the next 3 action.

It’s easiest since it counts battle actions from cards, meaning Stronghold, personality, holding, item, follower, spell and strategy cards. Just play battle actions with combinations within these as long as different card title. Easy.

Ring of Fire

What used to be the hardest mofo ring to play in CE and before that, this ring can only trigger from dueling.

Now, just win the battle and destroy province or opponents cards. Yes, it was CE Ring of Earth. So just go in, smack a province or take down enemy cards in resolution and voila! Ring of Fire. As long as you have the punch power, you can take province or army and ring of Fire is yours.

Ring of Earth

Modified. What used to be Ring of Earth is now Ring of Fire. So the new condition for Ring of Earth is to win a battle, none of your personality died, has been opposed in the current battle at any point during the battle.

Sounds hard? Not quite. For one, you just have to win, so you can assign a few dude, send home the opponent and if he see that you can’t take province, he will pass. You win battle, drop ring of earth.

Combo with naval is not bad either, ambush his dude, send it back. You win battle, opposed at one point, didn’t die and win battle. Drop ring of earth.

There you go. The elemental rings are now easier to play in straight forward military deck. Although you have to mix it up a bit to bring into play. Most rings are also playable for their ability if you can’t put them into play anyway.

Have fun trying to enlightenment.

Tao of Emperor Dueling

So, dueling in EE has a huge flaw: It’ll suck your Fate deck dry FAST. Forget the fact that you regularly need to tap your Fate cards for actions, the resulting maximum focusing will put a stress in your hand as well as your deck. So, how do we go around this? As a self-professed dueling buff, I refuse to give up on it. Thus I found some tricks which might help, but it’s not a guarantee.

1) Bully duel: Gone are the days when your 3C duelist is THE man. Now, he/she’s just a schmuck. Targeting someone with equal chi is more risky than ever now. So target a guy with a lower chi. The bigger the margin, the better. It’s safe to call strike when your 6 chi dude calls strike against a 2 chi dude, even if he focuses more than you.

2) Be economical: You can’t really go overboard and throw away cards and drawing them with impunity. Unlike before, your Fate deck is a more important commodity than ever now. Get more useful and reusable abilities from your Dynasty deck. Protect your useful peeps with redirection with Chugo Seido or Ryoshun’s Guidance, or your Yojimbos (if applicable). Just keep in mind that sometimes, the non-unique grunt is more important than your flashy uniques.

Don't trust this

3) Don’t duel: Well, not often. Or more accurately, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Duels are expensive and losing or even drawing one can be catastrophic. Use it when you REALLY have to and choose your targets wisely. Your duels are precision lasers aimed at creating the biggest impact with one action. Flaunt them needlessly, and you’ll find yourself without any Fate deck to focus with at all. Pack your deck with useful cards that can remove threats other than duels. Which brings us to:

4) Packing every single duel action ever printed in full play sets is a disaster waiting to happen: Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’d pack 1 set of Limited, Open and Battle duels. And even then, not all of them at 3 copies per duel.

5) Use Spiked Tetsubo: I’m only half joking about this. 🙂 You’ll thank me later when your Doji Makoto is trying to duel Shiba Tsukimi.

Take Back the earth

No, this is not an article on Mass Effect 3. I got mine yesterday as well, but I put it aside for now mainly since i have FFXIII-2 to finish up for the secret ending. Need to get 7 more fragment for the 160 full secret ending tech.

But I’m not talking bout that either. What I’m talking about is an L5R Deck for today. With the local metagame is unusually focused on military compared to others, honor has become a game of finesse. I was still testing my variant of Phoenix Honor when i decided to check out the neighboring honor deck, Dragon Clan. The build is quite good. I wouldn’t call it top tier, but it can hold out to majority of the decks.

Honor is the objective of the game, the quicker the better.

1 Dragon’s Breath Castle (Bow tech upon assignment)
1 Border Keep (better for consistent flow)
1 Bamboo Harvesters xp (Card draw needed if you start second)

# Dynasty (42)

# Region (1)
1 The Second CIty (Courtier Magistrate)

# Events (2)
1 Imperial Gift (Free 2 honor)
1 Naoharu’s Gift (Either draw or honor)

# Holdings (17)
2 Governor’s Court
3 Temple of Hotei
3 Well-Tended Farm
3 Merchant Atoll
3 Recruitment Officer (Chump blockers)
1 Traveling Peddler

# Personalities (22)
3 Kitsuki Horume
3 Kitsuki Kinaro (Boxable 3PH)
3 Mirumoto Ezuno (Dragon version of danjuro/daizan)
3 Tamori Tomaru (Boxable 3PH)
3 Tamori Shosei (Temple honor)
1 Tamori Ruya (Bow 2 for the price of 1)
3 Tamori Kazuhige (Ping for honor or kill)
3 Otomo Demiyah (Courtier and honor gain)

# Fate (40)

# Strategies (24)
3 Dismissing the Cur (slap in the face)
3 Favors (More honor)
2 Sundering Strike (just in case send home)
2 Broken Alliance (destroy attachment in open)
3 Wall of Honor (Province pump and honor)
1 Fruitless Search (Sacrficial chump blocker)
3 Flooded Pass (No presence nonsense)
1 Creating Order
3 Rhetoric
1 A Game of Dice
2 Unimpeachable Name

# Spells (13)
3 Consecration (Assign and i gain)
3 Drawing on the Mountain
3 Obscured Pathways
3 The Mountain’s Power
1 Warded Paths (To choose the battlefield resolvement)

# Rings (3)
1 Ring of Earth
1 Ring of the Void
1 Ring of Water

By far not the best, it’s just a version i would like to share. Seeing that ME3 tagline of take back the earth reminds me a lot of the Tamori and their earth shugenja brethren. Have fun.

6g for 5

Came across a very interesting gold scheme the other day:

3x Colonial Harbor
3x Magistrate’s Stipend
2x Prosperous Village

That’s it. No doubt it’ll start trending soon, but I can’t help but wonder how 3 Colonial Harbor and 3 Prosperous Village would look like. Let’s think for a minute:

1 holding = 1 peep

That’s a huge advantage if you look at it closely. A couple of those would ensure a turnout of 2 peeps per turn while having enough gold for a mid cost attachment or two. Not only that, but other utility holdings like Well-Tended Farm and Second City Dojo would be free to utilize their usage without being pulled into double duty to provide gold. Which begs to differ on one norm:

Will 3x clan holdings be crucial from now on? Or will 1, 2 or no copies would be enough?