Age of Sigmar Tourney

Age of Sigmar was sure a piece of work. It seemed as if GW turned the entire wargaming world upside down and sparked a lot of buzz from all over the gaming world. This does make tournaments a fair bit tricky to run however, since there are no points system to regulate balance between players. Since then, comped rules have been popping out, with the Azyr Comp being the most talked about so far. But simpler guidelines such as limiting army size by number of wounds have emerged but, let’s face it, it wasn’t really all that fair with named characters sharing the same wounds as generic Lords and with obviously more special rules to make them stand out.

So the obvious answer is of course, the scenarios. Which detail out what troop type each side will bring. Which is neat. In fact if a tourney were to be run, they MUST be run from scenarios (of which 40 is supplied in the big book) which could be an interesting way to run things.

I’m about to go on my first AoS game AND tourney and I can’t wait. The loose rule is that it’ll be capped at 50 wounds, so that’s not really a lot to play with. With a really tight limit, the best you can do is go for a common theme that you know you can do well. Here’s my take:

Lord on Griffon

10x Dragon Princes of Caledor

10x Ellyrian Reavers

…

That’s it. Griffon Lord allows rerolling charge and the others are cavalry. The Reavers are stupid awesome with their bows that almost ensures they’ll be firing 3 attacks each in the Shooting Phase.

But that’s not really what I did. Nope. I have a dragon and I’m not afraid to use it:

Prince on Dragon, armed with Lance and War Horn.
9x Dragon Princes
9x Ellyrian Reavers

Packs a bit less punch troop wise and may be a bit slower. But the “Feat” will hopefully bring a full big unit to a pulp. Hopefully. Plus the Prince is no slouch in combat either.

Back to Immoren in full metal

Left Warmachine a good while back, the bug seem to have bit again. Haven’t really bought any new models during my absence from the game, but I did rediscover the box with all my models kind of recently and did the one thing that I could do to keep my army fresh without spending any big amounts of cash:

I repainted my Khador army…

And slightly modded them…

Into Cygnar.

Brought it to my LGS during the Reckoning release event and it certainly invited verbal reactions from other players 😛

I’ll post a pic of my new army when I can get a decent picture out.

What I did was mod both e and p Sorscha into a more battle wearied version of Allison Jakes. Also sculpted cowboy hats on a couple of widowmakers and changed every jack head into Cygnar jack heads, courtesy of Grind. It was certainly an uplifting experience and got me in the groove again.

More importantly, I played with a jack heavy list out of eSorscha (or Capt. Allison Jakes) and was surprised that it could work. The key thing is not to allocate focus to all your jacks if you can, but to allocate them if you need to use them during that turn. Also, another way to field lots of jacks under a caster that’s not known to be able to do so is to field focus efficient jacks. Jacks like the Devastator, Marauder, Destroyer, Beast-09, and the Berserker. These jacks need little focus to run them to their optimum and they work just fine on their own.

1 focus hog jack (like the Juggernaut, Demolisher, Spriggan, Behemoth) is usually enough to fit whatever focus diet you’re on. Even better if you’re running your group with casters that have widespread spells or feats like pVlad with Signs and Portents and Karchev’s Unearthly Rage.

This is the 35 points that I’m playing with nowadays:

eSorscha
Beast-09
Demolisher
Destroyer
Koldun Lord
Dirty Meg
Mule

There are other variations that I’m dying to try out, especially after I fount out that Juggernaut, Marauder and Berserker make a really good 15 point base to build upon. More on those later as I play more games and repaint more of my jacks.

The Sons of Caledor’s Final Recruit

I decided not to buy any more Warhammer Fantasy models. My High Elf army has reached 2500 points, and that, I feel… is that. Sure, it’s not the best group of models out there and I can’t even use everything in a 2500 list (which was my initial goal but I overshot by buying 1 extra unit box). So with a surplus of 2 Heroes/Lords on Griffons, 2 Mages and the Loremaster of Hoeth, this is the final list I came up with to at least look cool on the table:

(psst… it has dragons!)

Prince General, riding a Star Dragon, wearing Dragon Armour and Enchanted Shield, wielding a Biting Blade: 565 points.

Noble Battle Standard Bearer, wearing Dragon Armour and Shield of the Merwyrm, wielding a longbow and Luckstone: 130 points.

Dragon Mage of Caledor, riding a Sun Dragon and carrying a Dispel Scroll: 375 points.

35 Lothern Sea Guards with added shields, full command complement: 450

10 Ellyrian Reavers, with added bows, full command complement: 220

20 Swordmasters of Hoeth, with full command complement: 290

10 Dragon Princes of Caledor, with full command complement: 320

10 Sisters of Avelorn with High Sister: 150

Total: 2500 on the dot.

I have to be honest with you, the General is not the best equipped as he should’ve been. In fact, why his total equipment only comes up to 35 points is because he’s just the delivery system to get the Star Dragon down right and nasty with an infantry block. Same deal with the Dragon Mage. The magic is just bonus, really.

I’m putting the Reavers as a single block instead of traditionally splitting them up into 2 smaller harassment units for 3 reasons:

1. In Blood and Glory, I know there’s a mobile unit with a standard still running around and denying points to the enemy.

2. A 10 man spear charge can be delightful.

3. They don’t panic when 2 of them die for whatever reason.

Same deal with the Dragon Princes. Thanks to the addition of the standard bearer and musician, they can dish out a lot more hurt on the charge then they would have in smaller units of 5.

The BSB is also better protected for fewer points compared to my previous versions of the list. Granted, it doesn’t protect against everything well, but it’s enough.

I played this list once and it has the trouble of covering ground due to the shrinking number of units. I spread it out a bit too much last time but I couldn’t help but wonder if a more compact and dedicated formation would be better for the army.

The only parts that can switch around between lists is the Lords and Heroes category. It’s impossible to add in more to the core army numbers because that would involve buying more models. As it is, it looks pretty decent and neat. Enough to hold my ground at least till 9th Ed shows up.

Here’s what I think about Crane’s 20 Festivals Starter

I haven’t written anything on L5R for a while, but 20 Festivals seems like a good time to kickstart things to write something about. As you well know, AEG has just released all the starter decks in pdf the same day as I’m writing this post. Since I’ve always played Crane, here are the links to the Crane starter, which will be the subject of discussion today:

Crane Dynasty

Crane Fate

Note that the Dynasty only has the first player side on it.

Let’s kick things off with the Dynasty side, then Fate, then a summary on how well these two sides gel with each other.

 

Dynasty

Holdings: 18 (2 Fortifications)

Personalities: 22

Events: 0

The stronghold ability is a very simple one: If you have a peep, bow the box to gain 2 honour. The deck has approximately 10% of its number to help with the defense of your provinces by their own text, but everything else is for honour running.

For a starter deck, I was honestly surprised about the singular focus that the Dynasty provides. The gold curve is not too bad, with most peeps hovering at 5G each. But a number of them rely heavily on the use of the Imperial Favour. It seems a bit of a glass cannon to me at first glance, but thankfully it’s also chockfull of affordable Duelists. Here are the peep rundown (if they have multiple traits, I’ll choose the one that they’ll be heavily relied upon):

Courtier: 9

Duelist: 10

Just plain Samurai: 3

Perhaps the card that caught my eye the most is Kakita Jikeru. She’s cheap, and more likely than not is definitely netting you honour on your opponent’s turn. Of course you need a Fortification or she’s just a plain ol’ cheap courtier, which is why there’s only 1 copy of her in the deck. But I wouldn’t run so many Fortifications myself, at most would be 3 copies. Sticking a holding onto a province can make the province a very tempting target.

Speaking of gold, I have the impression that the Crane are paying for their abundance of it in Ivory 1. The gold scheme, like the peeps, are meant for running. It would take some adjustment to play normally again, what with the oodles of gold in Ivory 1, but the holding selection is by no means bad. But it does require you to make a choice between honour and gold. It becomes a dilemma when you reach 30 honour. Do you use everything for a home stretch and defend with everything else you have on the table or do you weather another turn by buying more warm bodies for a better defense?

Speaking of defending, everyone is squishy. Expect someone to die with every other action. The reliance of duel also means that there is a possibility that you might never get to use your focus effects. Which brings us to the next deck:

Fate

For a dueling deck, this is going to make a lot of people squirm. While the deck does have 30% of FV 4 in it, here’s where it might make you shake in your boots a bit: It also has 25% FV 1 cards.

Wow. Talk about choosing your fights. Not to mention that the number of lethal duels in the deck is exactly 2, in the form of Come One at a Time. But they can kill more than 1 peep each time if given the chance (which, most likely they won’t be since they’re going to die at the next actions anyway). Everything else just bows or occasionally, sends someone home.

So like the Dynasty deck, the duels in the Fate deck are basically honour gainers as well, first and foremost. Shinai is going to be one of the most important card in this deck, since just by winning you advance your winning condition. Thankfully, there are also cards that can unbow your peeps so that will be very useful. Imperial Summons is also there for some measure of Open control.

Summary

I like it. The deck escapes the pitfall of a “perfect” duelling deck and has solid cards that does the things that you want consistently. The wonky FV might throw some people off, but if you can control your hand and pick the right moments to initiate duels, you won’t be in any sort of trouble. Perhaps the majority amount of non-lethal duels can be a good thing, since the low FV will not kill your peeps for your opponent that easily at least.

But how does the Fate synergize with the Dynasty?

Like bread and butter.

It’s a no-brainer on what this deck wants to achieve. It wants to honour run and it wants to do it fast. With some tweaks of maximizing what you want and getting rid of the rest, the deck can really rev up to be a decent speed machine. You’ll be losing people and provinces left right and center, but you really don’t care about any of that because all you want to do with this deck is to keep one province intact by at least being equal to the opposing army when you cross 40 at the end of the 4th/5th turn or so.

It’s a good base if you want to go to the full courtier honour or dueling honour route, but it’s a really poor springboard if  you want to go military. I would hazard to say that there’s nothing for the military player in the starter at all, so a purchase is not necessary if you want to go full Iron Crane on someone. But a mixed focus would screw up the deck, so I can understand that if the designers wanted to showcase the core of a clan, nothing beats honour running when it comes to the Crane.

First Relic Knight Session: Cerci vs Corsairs 35 pts

Had my first Relic Knights game last Sunday. We played 35 points because that was the amount of painted models that we have for both sides. In a nutshell, the game can overwhelm you with options. Since the game play area is only 3′ x 3′, which is roughly half of a typical table, the other half is where you’ll line up your cards and dashboard, so you will take the entire long table if you play this game.

The game is played in alternate unit complete turns. Each turn you’ll move 1 unit to the active state, make an initial move, perform 1 action and make a final follow up move. And that’s it. The unit queue system makes sure that you won’t activate the same model consecutively every single turn.

Here’s the list that we played:

Corsairs:

Calico Kate & Skully

Squall

Blowhards

Primary Objective: Heist (Steal 3 tokens from enemy Primary Objective and deposit on any board edge)

Secondary Objective: Realign (Place 1 infuse token on 3 different enemy objective)

Cerci:

Princess Malya & Mr. Tomn

Pacer

Rin Farrah

Primary Objective: Tear it Down (Destroy either enemy Primary Objective or both enemy Secondary Objective)

Secondary Objective: Anarchy (Deposit 5 Sabotage tokens on 5 different objectives)

It’s really hard to give a battle report on a turn by turn basis, since it’s done unit by unit. But here are the highlights that I manage to remember:

• Cerci blazed first by going after the Corsair’s Primary Objective and managed to bring it to 1/3 of its total health using Malya. But by then Kate stepped in and pummelled the Princess down halfway through. Malya kept taking damage to keep her hand to complete Lap Time but didn’t make it.
• Kate was a melee monster. With a big 14 inch threat range and the fact that her ultimate melee move does not allow the target to do a guard action, Even though Malya managed to heal a bit she was forcefully brought down to 5 hp left. She got hit by that ultimate melee. Ouch.
• Mr. Tomn was happily stealing Kate’s held esper for almost the entire game, which helped bring the damage counter down a bit. But he didn’t have the chance to transfer the delicious espers to another model.
• Rin Farrah was useless. All she did was put down the auto shot AoE and practically dodged and ran the entire game.
• The Blowhards tried to complete their faction objective, but failed after the primary objective blew up (Cerci scored 5 at this point). But they were in a unique position to threaten both Rin and Malya with enough damage to kill either model, thus draining Cerci’s card options and held espers.
• Squall is very economical in dealing decent damage with few cards expended. Most of her activations were spent putting Malya on the spot.
• The Pacer and Malya made a final dash in the last few turns, scoring the secondary objective and winning the game by scoring the remaining 3 points.

Result: Cerci: 8, Corsairs: 0

Final thoughts: Not really what we were expecting before we started the game. The concept of cover was not given emphasis simply because of the card mechanics used. So models were used to block movement lanes in broad daylight instead of applying shooting from cover pressures like other games. We also discovered that each faction has their own special thing and fully relying on those strengths is the key to win games, as well as keeping a straight focus on completing objectives.

But it’s a fresh take on miniature gaming. There are no set long term strategies that you can follow before the game starts, unlike some other miniature games. One could say that the entire game felt reactive and a lot of what you need to do had to be strategized and conceived right there and then. The feel of the game felt very anime-ish to me, which was what they wanted I guess. It’s a good thing, but it might leave experienced miniature gamers feeling a bit disjointed for needing to do what is normally a bad thing in other games.

I think we’re preparing for a 50 point skirmish next, which for me will use most of the models I own, plus a boost or two, which is fine.

Happy Speedy New Year!

I have not been writing in for a long time. Lots of real life events got in the way and not much happened on the cool factor on my end.

Anyway, to start off the year, I got a box of Cerci models from Relic Knights. The ones in the box are not in the starter (not even one model). what I got is Malya, Suicide Queen, Rin, 2 Pacers and 4 Hell’s Belles. In a way it’s cool that the models I have do not coincide with the starter box, so it means that it’s still a worthwhile purchase for me.

The models are a pain to clean. I really hate the plastic that they chose for it. I’m also painting some Corsair models so I can make a direct comparison. Within the faction, the scale seems pretty okay. But it goes out of whack when you compare them cross faction. The sculpt quality also varies. The sculpts from Cerci is consistent and looks good, no complaints there. But the Corsairs are a mixed bunch. Some are awesome, others are like poor Captain Harker (sigh).

I haven’t had a game yet but reading the rules and trying out the deck the game seems pretty nifty.

If only the models didn’t take so much work to get it to a presentable painting ready state, I would’ve bought more of it. As it is, I’m pretty happy with what I got from Cerci. Sure, it’s limited compared to what other players have, but I think I’ll enjoy the quirky play I’ll get out of it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AGAIN!

Cool mini combos

I’m bored. I’m thinking of building my new deck along these lines:

Justice of the Crane + Bounty Hunter

Come One at a Time + Fortune’s Charm focus effect

Already right off the bat I need a good base of magistrates to work with, which Crane has a good spread to choose from. Let’s list them all:

Doji Razan – cheap even when invested. 6g for a 4c duelist is seriously not bad.
Doji Etsuki – a star when he’s wearing Justice on his obi. Solid choice.
Doji Hakuseki – cool peep, but weak enough that a pig with the Nagamaki of the Fox Clan can still eat her up with Justice.
Kakita Ujirou – totally no brainer, just be smart about spending and try not to keep more than one of him in the provinces.

Notice how many of them are courtiers as well? Interesting….

I think we’re going somewhere with this. A janky deck with 10 attachments is fun to think about, but I need 30 solid cards including Rings and the customary dueling cards. Question is, which dueling cards?

Sanctioned Duel – yup!
Demonstrating Technique – if you have a good hand, this is equivalent of a cantrip that forces your opponent to help you get a focus effect going off.
Stand or Run – not too shabby, but not too exciting either.
Come One at a Time – good, but keeping one guy alive and straightened can be daunting. I guess I need some movement cards as well to cover my base.
Don’t Delay! – 50/50.

Okay, we’re off to a good start. I’ll post again when I have something more concrete (like the physical cards for example)

Macross 2nd TD Translation: Version Alpha Pt. 2

This is for the Green cards. The Blue ones have a few weird Google translations that doesn’t make sense when I was trying to put it in understandable English. The Green half is no better, unfortunately.

U-019 VF-25 Messiah (Super Pack/Alto unit) (B)
Ace 2, High Speed Battle, Battle Ready, [2.4]Switch (VF-25)
Defense Step: <1> Move this card into a detachment in any order in Reroll position.

U-082 VF-25 Messiah (Ranka Marking) (F)
Quick, High Speed Battle
Auto B: When this unit comes into play, search your deck for a Character card with “Ranka” in its name, set it on this card, paying all costs. Shuffle your deck afterwards.

U-083 VF-25 Messiah (Sheryl Marking) (F)
Quick, High Speed Battle
Auto B: When this unit comes into play, search your deck for a Character card with “Sheryl” in its name, set it on this card, paying all costs. Shuffle your deck afterwards.

U-102 VF-25 Messiah (Alto unit) (F)
Quick, Battle Ready, High Mobility, Switch (VF-25)

U-103 VF-25 Messiah (Alto unit) (G)
High Speed Battle, Switch (VF-25)
Auto D: At the start of your Damage Calculation Step, if this card is in your hand and you switch this unit with another unit with VF-25 in its name and the Fighter or Battroid trait, your detachment’s combat speed is -1 this turn.

U-104 VF-25 Messiah (Alto unit) (B)
Ace 1, Switch (VF-25)
Auto D: Each time a Song Coin is placed on this card, it gets +1/+1/+1 until the end of turn.
Auto D: Each time a Song Coin is removed from this card, it gets +2/+2/+2 until the end of turn.

U-105 VF-25 Messiah (Armoured Pack/ Alto unit) (B)
Ace 2, Encouragement (???), [2.4] Switch (VF-25)
Auto D: While this card is engaged, if a Song Coin has been gained or discard from this card, Roll another unit in combat with this unit.
Battle Phase: <1> Deal 3 damage to one unit in combat with this unit, or deal 2 damage to every unit in combat with this unit.

CH-077 Mylene & Ranka
Supply 1
Auto D: If you have resolved a Command with the Song trait, place a Song Coin on a card.
Auto D: If this card has gained a Song Coin or discarded a Song Coin, 1 of your unit gains “Auto D: <1> Negate the destruction of this card” until end of turn.

C-008 Diamond Crevasse
Defense Step: Roll an opponent’s card that is not a Unit.
(Song) Defense Step: Roll an opponent’s Unit.

C-034 Pink Monsoon
(Another impossibly translated card, from Google)
Was transferred to a deployment area of your own one unit of the person you are in the deployment area [attack step of opponent], remove this card from the game. At end of turn, I transferred to the deployment area of the unit owner.
———————————————–
♪ [feedback transferred deployment area of their one unit of the recipient Step] “[3.6]” set card is not set, it is removed from the game card.

C-036 Flow Over After School
Auto D: Discard 1 of your own Unit from the Deployment Area. At the end of the turn, put a Unit card from your Junkyard to your Damage pile.
(Song) Auto D: Discard 1 of your own Unit from the Deployment Area. At the end of the turn, put a Unit card from your Junkyard to your Damage pile.

C-060 Hoshikira
Opponent’s Turn: Put 1 G into your opponent’s hand, place the top card of your deck into G.
(Song) Your Turn: Put 1 G into your opponent’s hand, place the top card of your deck into G.

C-061 Glistening Summer (^ ω ^) Bruno
Auto D: Negate the play of an opponent’s Character, the opponent discards the card.
(Song) Defense Step: Negate the text of a card(? Maybe, maybe not. The translation is really short).

C-062 Forbidden Elixir
Battle Phase: Transfer an opponent’s Unit with a cost of 2 or less to its owner’s hand.
(Song) Auto D: Transfer an opponent’s Unit with a cost of 2 or less to the top of its owner’s deck.

Purple:

C-001 Singing voice you make a galaxy (???)
Auto D: Place all cards with the Song trait from your Junkyard to the top of your deck, shuffle it and draw a card.

C-013 Heavy equipment development
Auto D: Disable the text of your opponent’s card in G.
(Song) Auto D: Remove a card from your opponent’s Junkyard from the game.

C-P005 Star Performer Appearance!
(I think this is stupid powerful, but I can’t figure it out: Google!)
I remove from the game this [combat phase] “R” card. In that case, I want to G his one unit of the other party with a total cost of X or more, the character has not been set. The number of +1 G of the other party] the value of X,
take out one unit in the hand of the defense step] myself, transferred to its owner’s hand one unit of their own. In this case, to pay the cost of the normal, put in the active state in the same location as the unit to be transferred, the units extracted.

Macross 2nd TD Translation: Version Alpha, Part 1

With the absence of Hebime’s active involvement in the Crusade scene, translation for  some of the obscure Crusade series have been rather sporadic. Unfortunately, Macross Crusade is one of those obscure series 😦 I got a pack of the 2nd MC TD for quite some time now but I can’t figure out how to play it. With the help of Google translate…. I still can’t figure out a few of them thanks to bizarre sentence structures. Anyway, let’s start with a few, I’ll update this post until it’s complete. Only game text at this moment:

Blue.

U-102 VF-1J Valkyrie (Ichijo unit) (F)
Quick, Battle Ready, High Mobility, Switch[VF-1J]

U-103 VF-1J Valkyrie (Ichijo unit) (G)
High Speed Battle, Switch[VF-1J]
Auto B: At the beginning of Damage Calculation Step, if you switch this unit with another unit with “VF-1J” in its name and with the Fighter or Battroid trait, this card gets +2/+2/+2.

U-104 VF-1J Valkyrie (Ichijo unit) (B)
Ace 1, Switch[VF-1J]
Auto B: If you do not have a Character with the Singer trait, when this card comes into play, search through your deck for a Character with the Singer trait and deploy it in your Deployment Area, paying all cost. Shuffle your deck afterwards.

U-105 VF1J Valkyrie (Ichijo unit) & VF-1S Valkyrie (Fokker unit) (B)
Ace 2, Encouragement(?), [2.4] Switch[VF-1J, VF-1S]
Auto B: When this unit is destroyed, put a 4/1/4 Valkyrie token in your Deployment Area.
Damage Calculation Step: If this unit is engaged or have sortied to attack, you may discard 2 Song Coins from this card and opponent chooses to discard a card that is not a G. (Discard from the field? Field and hand? Not sure at this point)

CH-077 Lynn Minmay
Boost, Supply 1
Auto B: If you have resolved a Command card with the Song trait, place a Song Coin on one of your cards.
Combat Phase <1>: Remove 1 Song Coin. Until the end of the step, negate an opponent’s card from moving if they move into reroll position.

CH-078 Sheryl & Basara
Supply 1
Auto B: If you have resolved a Command card with the Song trait, place a Song Coin on one of your cards.
Auto D: After you remove 2 Song Coins, look at the top 3 cards from your deck. Put a unit onto your Deployment Area in Reroll position. (Put the rest back on top of your deck I presume, since no other text follows it)

C-009 Do You Remember Love
Battle Phase: All units in all detachments get -2/+-0/+-0 until the end of turn.
Song Battle Phase: All units in a detachment get -1/-1/-1 until the end of turn.

C-010 Love Flows
Self Turn: Recover X, where X is the amount of G cards you control.
(Song) Self Turn: Recover X, where X is the amount of all G cards.

C-021 MY FRIENDS (yes, it’s all caps)
Self Deploy Phase: Draw until you have 2 cards in your hand.
Song Self Deploy Phase: Draw until you have 3 cards in your hand.

C-022 Assault Love Heart
Self Battle Phase: Negate destruction of one of your own units except from your own card effects.
(Song) Self Battle Phase: Negate destruction of all units with Sound Force except from your own card effects.

C-060 Paint An Angel
Auto D: Negate the destruction of one of your Characters.
(Song) Auto D: If you remove 1 Song Coin, negate the destruction of any number of your cards. (Seriously? Need to double check with someone that can really read kanji on this one)

C-061 HEART & SOUL
Battle Phase: The Attack and Support value for one of your opponent’s unit is halved (rounded down) until the end of turn.
(Song) Battle Phase: Combat power of a single unit is halved (rounded down) until the end of turn (Not really sure, the original text is a bit confusing)

C-062 Nyan Nyan FIRE! Assault Planet Explosion
Auto D: Draw a card.
(Song) Damage Calculation Step: Remove X number of Song Coins. Destroy a single engaged unit with Ace X or less.

C-063 POWER TO THE DREAM
After a unit has been destroyed, move it to the bottom of the owner’s deck instead.
(Song) Own Attack Step: Move a single unit to a battle area in any order in reroll position.

Dueling in Ivory (for Cranes)

So we’ve all seen it. The dueling boys got more toys and everything is looking very exciting this time around. Only, dueling is not the lynchpin it once was.

The average focus value for a duel intensive deck has effectively fallen, with really good cards in the fv 2-3 area and not much to spam on 4. With Kharmic Strike making its way into an accessible uncommon slot, what does that leave us?

We duel as normal, but with considerable chi upgrades through items. Duels will also have to be of equal chi footing to negate extensive sighting of Kharmic Strike (which, incidentally, might even make it into your own dueling deck if you want to design it that way). But whatever it is, 2 personalities have the utmost advantage when it comes to dueling this time around:

Suzume Shindo

Kakita Amiki

With these 2, you can focus first. Which will be huge in the current environment. Want to get rid of a champion or a big kensai with buttloads of attachments? Issue a lethal duel with Shindo and focus that Kharmic Strike (toldya it might make it into your decks). That’s just one example. The lack of numbers of redirection, delays and negation this time around makes dueling viable and powerful again.

Of course we’ll have low FV in our decks. We can no longer aim for a 3.25++ average fv in our decks anymore, but then again, no other decks will either. We can expect a more fair fight when it comes to duels, with tying being our best bet to win. On the minus side, we’re no longer guaranteed a kill by issuing duels anymore. But on the plus side, a lot less people will groan when they face a dueling deck and will probably have more fun this time around.