The Cardboard Geisha CE Article 12:
“Bad Moon Rising” – A Review of the Harbinger
“Part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. I knew the risks, or imagined I knew.” – Willard, Apocalypse Now.
The hardest part of throwing oneself into a new or unknown situation is accepting that fact that all of your prior knowledge and experience may be rendered irrelevant; or worse still dangerously inaccurate. Survival instincts tend to encourage you to cling to your pre-conceived notions as a sort of grounding point for your own sanity. From this rooted anchor you then begin to experience this new environment in smaller more “digestible” packets. Put in simpler words, it’s much easier for us as human beings to absorb new information through a filter made of and defined by previously learned knowledge. While this method of learning has served the human species quiet well throughout its development, its effectiveness is based on the idea that these pre-conceived notions are in fact correct. When they are not you run the risk of “corrupting” all of the new things you learn with inaccurate assumptions based on previous experience. Like looking through the bottom of a wet bar glass, the image you see is based on but warped significantly from the true object you are viewing. While obviously I’m talking about adapting on a base animal level this systematic approach to learning is so ingrained in the human psyche that it tends to spread to almost every facet of our lives, including L5R deck building. In fact because L5R is a game that has historically remained the same for entire arcs it has traditionally rewarded this “go with what you know” mentality in spades. So what happens when the Design Team releases back to back sets that radically alter the environment while simultaneously bringing the errata/MRP hammer down on many of the cards that previously defined Celestial Edition? How useful is yesterday’s knowledge when the entire tournament field has changed overnight, multiple times in a single month? I don’t know the answer to these questions but I suspect we’re all about to find out. For better or for worse the Jungle has changed Mowgli and the only way to survive change is to embrace it.
Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another edition of The Cardboard Geisha. For those of you just joining us this is the 12th part in an ongoing series of articles about building decks here in Celestial Edition. This time let’s take a closer look at CE’s newest set, “The Harbinger” and what it means for L5R; both in terms of overall impact on the environment and key cards that will help create this impact. As always please remember that this article represents only one woman’s opinion on the post-Harbinger environment after roughly a month and a half of testing. If you find yourself becoming angry or upset by anything you read in this article I strongly advise closing your browser window and forgetting you’ve ever read such nonsense.
To quote the immortal Dennis Miller “I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but” I have some serious questions about the overall design philosophy behind this set. For starters, did anybody ever talk to anyone else during the entire design/testing process while making this baby? It took about 4 games worth of play-testing for me to realize that the game had become significantly faster and more lethal post-Harbinger. So on one hand you have cards like Civility and Reinforce the Line helping to shave an entire turn off the set-up time for Samurai based military decks like Lion and Unicorn. Additionally powerful support cards like Banish All Doubts and Determined Force significantly improve the consistency/reliability of these same two decks. Add cards like Akodo Senzo and Shinjo Yamauchi to the mix and you end up with well-oiled killing machines every bit on par with any of the “broken” decks from the post-Path of the Destroyer environment. Alternately Design releases multiple MRPs/errata seemingly to slow down the game and eliminate hyper consistent blitz/swarm/honor decks like City of Tears Blitz, Goblin and Crane rocket. Throw Burn the Village on top and you have a recipe for destroying any deck/clan that requires the use of boxable Personalities; many of whom would be natural foils for the new top tier military options. So which is it, are we slowing the game down or speeding it up? By doing both at the same time you’ve simply destroyed Phoenix and Crane to replace them with Lion and Unicorn. This of course brings us to the even more confusing situation with Spider Breeder/Goblin decks post-The Harbinger. Why would you go so far as to release multiple errata/MRPs in an effort to re-balance this clearly broken deck-type only to turn around and print a card like The Wrath of Kali-Ma? It took me exactly one game playing against this ridiculous card to question if anyone had actually read it during play-test, let alone built a deck designed to take advantage of it to win the entire game in one quick shot. At this point I certainly don’t expect anyone to answer these questions for me and so I’m forced to rely on my own play-test results. If I were a betting woman however, I’d lay odds on Lion, Unicorn and Spider running roughshod over the early Kotei season.
With this in mind let’s look at the 10 cards (and an honorable mention) that I believe will have the biggest impact overall on the post-Harbinger environment. When compiling this list I focused on the cards that would affect the largest number of tournament games over the early Kotei season. This by nature means that cards which play in multiple clans/deck-types will be ranked higher than equally powerful cards that work only for a specific deck or clan. Of course some cards are so powerful they force the entire environment to warp around their existence regardless of how many Clans/Deck-types can run them (The Wrath of Kali-Ma). I have learned my lesson from the Path of the Destroyer review however and in the interests of completeness have decided to include a list of the top 5 Clan/Deck Specific Actions and Personalities later in the article. Thanks to the many readers who emailed in to suggest this format change after the Path article, I love the idea!
Honorable Mention) Reinforce the Line – Let’s face it; L5R isn’t really ready for the concept of a creature with “Haste”. The Dynasty Phase occurs after the Attack Phase for a reason and being able to plan around what your opponent might do next turn is an essential part of playing L5R well. Cards like Reinforce the Line and Civility (see below) allow you to essentially cheat the normal rules for buying personalities, generating a surprise attacker an entire turn before you could normally do so. Obviously this is particularly effective in the early game when generating a faster/better attack can render a potential defense ineffective/borderline suicidal. How exactly do you answer an opponent who buys Kuon on his 2nd turn Limited Phase and immediately starts swinging? Remember when buying a personality outside of the Dynasty Phase it is impossible to either reduce their cost or gain their Personal honor by paying the full cost. This means the Kuon from the above scenario would cost you his full printed gold cost of 14, a two point increase from the 12 most Crab players are used to paying for him. I think you’ll find after testing however that this a small price to pay for circumventing the rules of the game with turn 2 rampaging Clan Champions. Finally don’t forget that Reinforce the Line doesn’t choose it’s target on resolution, meaning you can mulligan aggressively to find a Personality worth buying the turn you resolve the event.
10) Senseki Province – The only reservation I have about putting Senseki Province on this list is the general devaluation of the Follower card type since the beginning of Celestial. It would be fairly easy to argue that since Followers aren’t very good, a card that helps pay for Followers isn’t very good either. This however ignores one of the classic rules of L5R deck design, namely that “free cards that produce gold are broken.” You see despite masquerading as a region, Senseki Province works more like a gold producing holding that attaches to a Province. A better if more archaic comparison might be the old-school Fortification card type. The downside is if you lose the province, you lose the production ability from Senseki Province. The upside of course is that it’s completely free because it’s a region. As for the only being able to pay for Followers part, just ask yourself “how many followers in the game would be pretty bent at 2-3 less gold?” Here’s a sample list off the top of my head: Cavalry Officer (2 followers for 2-3G), Ronin Brotherhood/Imperial Elite Guard (single Diamond Mine pays for them now), Village Guardian/Legion of Toshigoku (draws cards and generates 3F for 2G). Even heavy hitters like Taoist Archer and Heavy Elite become more manageable with a free 2GP region smoothing out your curve. I’d also like to point out that Senseki Province pays the ENTIRE cost of Junghar Legion in any deck and Utaku Gunso in a Unicorn deck. Even mediocre followers are pretty solid when they don’t cost you anything you paid for. I highly doubt the inclusion of these 3 cards in the same set was an accident.
9) Oyo Seido – When talking about high impact cards in The Harbinger it’s hard to ignore a holding that changes the very nature of an entire victory condition; in this case Dishonor. Cheap, versatile and incredibly easy to use Oyo Seido allows military decks to effectively Meta classic Scorpion Dishonor “Bleeder” strategies and to some degree Dishonor PK Control decks as well. If you’re strategy involved clawing your opponent to -20 in 2 and 3 point increments this card is literally your worst nightmare. This in turn should force dishonor to become more of a combo based “bomb” deck that tries to take an opponent to -20 primarily in a single turn. I can’t say for certain but so far early testing indicates the “new” Scorpion Dishonor bomb is considerably more fragile than the PK Control model that Oyo Seido seems to render obsolete. As a final kick in the pants to Dishonor, Oyo Seido is non-unique, non-singular and doesn’t even BOW to gain the 2 Honor so you can still use it for gold later in the turn. Also remember that losing honor when one of your dishonored personalities dies is in fact a rulebook effect. The common misconception that this counts as an honor loss from one of your cards and thus shuts off Oyo Seido is therefore completely incorrect.
Scout Armor – While I disagree strongly with the popular sentiment that Scout Armor makes every deck-list in Celestial, it’s hard to quibble with its effectiveness in a deck designed to take proper advantage of the straighten effect. Don’t get me wrong; obviously it’s nice to lobby for the favor without losing a potential attacker or defender. Additionally Scout Armor makes for at least reasonable Meta against opposing “bow” actions. Where this card really shines however is making actions that including bowing a Personality as part of their cost practically free. Typically bowing a Personality is considered a significant drawback and thus this cost will often be tied to a strong effect. Good examples off the top of my head include Bayushi Tsubaki’s ability to poison and bow a Personality, Togashi Satsu’s ability to bow and draw a card, Unexpected Intimidation/Wrathful Defense or the ranged attacks from Kami Unleashed, Shiro Daidoji and Shinjo Yamauchi. Obviously every one of these effects becomes considerably stronger if you straighten immediately after bowing to perform them. I can assure you that making RA 7-9’s without losing any force in Unicorn is a highly effective battle strategy. Additionally however Scout Armor also has a huge impact in places you might not expect to see it; particularly control/combo decks. For example equipping Soshi Yoshihara with a Scout Armor allows you to give out force penalties and potentially 1 point honor losses on both your turn and your opponent’s. Give the armor to Asako Serizawa and he can dish out force penalties to set up limited/open actions (Impossible Force/The Direct Approach) while still helping to reduce Force from Personalities on your turn. Pretty much any deck that repeatedly bows its own Personalities to produce powerful effects can find a way to take advantage of Scout Armor.
7) Enticement – Let me start by saying that Show of Good Faith was a ridiculously broken card and that while Enticement isn’t *quite* as good, it’s pretty solid knock-off here in the post-Harbinger environment. First and foremost you need to ask yourself; if they printed a card that said “Pay a unit’s total gold cost: it can’t assign to battles this turn” would you play that card? For a surprising number of Military and Control decks the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Obviously the 3 point honor loss can be unmanageable in some clans but the reality is that Enticement could find a home in a huge number of decks just to control the assignment of key units. Of course you also get to take control of the Personality for an entire turn, allowing you to use a resource your opponent paid for to pay costs on your side. While Enticement itself prevents you from assigning this personality to an attacking army you can still defend with it, bow it to produce effects/lobby for the favor or if you’re very lucky mercilessly sacrifice it to further your own nefarious goals. My favorite plays include sacrificing my opponent’s Personality to make 7/4 Oni Tokens with Power Corrupting or to bring back one of my key dead Personalities with Emma O’s Guidance. You can also grab an opponent’s Samurai and then use him to produce an action that causes an honor loss, like say Ambush. While he can’t actually assign into the Ambush he can still Seppuku in response to the 5 point honor loss at the end of the action. As an interesting side note the OTHER Personality will still assign into the Ambush, making the soon to be classic Scorpion mega-combo of Enticement/Ambush/Multiple copies of Bayushi Jutsushi/Bayushi Suboru into a dishonor bomb game winner. Finally remember that you can always simply defend with the personality and sacrifice him to an Expendable Resources to draw a card. Drawing cards by killing your opponent’s broken (but non-Loyal) unique is incredibly satisfying.
6) The Thriving Light – I’m still struggling to understand why a card like The Thriving Light would be printed. I’m certainly not complaining however because it’s an excellent Meta option against a huge number of annoying situations in Celestial Edition. That’s really my problem with it in fact; it’s so versatile that it makes very little sense not to include it in every single fate deck you build. While it would be near impossible to explain every single situation this card can Meta in Celestial Edition let’s take a brief look at some of the environment defining cards The Thriving Light attacks: Impromptu Duel, Hamstrung, Unfortunate Incident, Pull The String, Unfamiliar Ground, Encircled Terrain, Well-Defended Border, Lightwater Bay and Besieged Borderlands all spring to mind quickly. You can even use it to turn off key attachments for a turn or an important battle. For example you could bow your opponent’s Touch of Death after he attaches it or lock down his Chagatai’s Armor before he can use it to move into undefended Provinces. There’s really no end to the difficult scenario’s a well timed The Thriving Light can get you out of and that makes it a card worth watching in the post-Harbinger environment.
5) Banish All Doubt – Continuing with the theme of printing slightly different versions of older cards that defined previous L5R Environments, Banish All Doubt is in many ways actually better than the classic Banish All Shadows. First of all you don’t bow the Tactician to perform the action; you simply use up his tactical action for the turn. Post Harbinger the military game has definitely become a question of unit superiority and the ability to “tutor” for a Sneak Attack or other key action without losing potential attacking/defending power can and will decide entire games in this format. Even putting the remaining cards on the bottom of your deck can be a serious advantage, allowing you to churn towards multiple copies of the card you just tutored for and hide less useful cards on the bottom of your deck. Of course the downside is that the Tactician trait is a little less common than Shugenja was and thus it will not be playable in the vast majority of decks in the format. This however won’t be a problem for the Lion clan because they have numerous in-faction Tacticians (5 non-unique, 6 unique) including the new wunderkind, Akodo Senzo. Now why you would give exclusive access to such a powerful deck manipulation card to the faction that was ALREADY the best at drawing/cycling cards is completely beyond me. Between Central Castle, Banish All Doubts and the Lightwater Bay/Thorough Preparations combo it would seem “drawing cards” is practically an in clan “flavor” ability for Lion. How exactly other clans are supposed to keep up with Travelling Peddlers and self-replacing attachments that cost 4+ gold remains an elusive mystery to me after a month and a half of testing. I suppose it’s possible for anyone to run 3x Kuronada, 1x Tamago, and sundry Uniques with a manageable HR and the Tactician trait. Even Senzo has a 4HR, making him playable in Dragon/Unicorn/Crane/Phoenix quite easily. Unfortunately I doubt you’ll be able to keep up with Lion’s excellent spread of battle actions when they are playing both better tacticians and paying significantly less for them.
4) The Wrath of Kali-Ma – I’m pretty sure I could write an entire article on what’s so obviously wrong with a card like The Wrath of Kali-Ma. In fact if this card has the kind of impact on the environment that I’m anticipating I may very well have to do so in the future. As it stands now I’m expecting some form of errata/MRP change almost immediately after the Kotei season gets into full swing. I don’t think I’m over-reacting in the slightest when I say The Wrath of Kali-Ma is the single most “broken” card in Celestial Edition. Rather than waste time explaining why buying 6 units on your limited phase tends to mean you win the game please allow me to describe a recent test match I played against Mid-Game Central Castle Lion. His first turn he bought 2 holdings, and I bought 2 on my first turn as well. He proceeded to buy an Akodo Senzo and 2 more holdings, while I purchased an Isawa Fosuta Exp, a Gutobo and 2 Holdings. His 3rd turn he resolves Akodo’s Guidance and uses Civility to push a 2nd Senzo in play. I bow Fosuta to prime him for the start of next turn but I have no presenceless defensive actions so he takes a province easily. Now at this point I have a bowed Fosuta and a Gutobo in play and my opponent decides to load up on gold so he can flood the board with units on later turns and thus outlast my Fosuta. It probably doesn’t hurt that he’s starring at a couple of 2chi Matsu Youko’s that Fosuta will mulch before they ever get a chance to assign. He buys 2 holdings instead of a 6G defender and passes the table to me. My dynasty flip is Random Guy/The Wrath of Kali-Ma/Udo and for about half a second I thought about waiting another turn so I could buy the Udo. Of course I decided to blow up my right-most province and fished out 2x Pokku nonexp and 3x Pokupo (17F for 14G), saving 3 Gold to make an Undead token as my next limited action. Then I split for two Provinces and dropped a Flanked by Nightmares in response to my opponent using Beloved of the Clan to bring the Senzo with the first Curse Token into the battle. 2 Border Ambush’s later and the game was tied at 2 Provinces a side. My opponent turns over 2 holdings and concedes with only a 3/2 Senzo in play (because of the 2nd Curse Token). Now there’s no question my opponent made a sketchy choice by moving in w/ the Beloved and it’s also fair to say he had a touch of rotten luck flipping over 2 holdings on turn 4 like that. However, without Wrath resolving at that exact moment I have essentially lost that game and once it did resolve my opponent immediately lost control of the game despite having *all* of the current momentum. If you had inquired about my chances of winning that game at the end of my opponent’s 3rd turn, I probably would have said “slim to none”. It is my honest opinion that if you’ve played even a single game against a good deck designed to take maximum advantage of this card you will immediately question the wisdom of ever printing it. Of course the 10 point honor loss and the requirement to fish out non-unique non-human Shadowlands cards make this pretty much a Spider-only trick, which is in turn why it ranks only 4th on this list.
3) Determined Force – One of several “Super Meta” cards with multiple actions printed in this set; Determined Force is probably the most effective card in the entire lot. For starters, in an environment that’s at least partially defined by so-called presenceless defensive actions, a Reaction that counters these actions automatically becomes relevant. A growing number of decks simply refuse to defend against early attacks. They instead rely heavily on cards like Settling the Homeless/Outer Walls/Reinforce the Gates and Shameful Injury to stymie smaller enemy armies; stalling the game long enough to flood the board with units and negate blitz/cavalry based strategies. By acting as a “silver bullet for all of these actions at once Determined Force allows you to consistently force through your initial attack; seizing early momentum and forcing your opponent to defend against future attacks with real armies. Additionally of course Determined Force can also be used to effectively Meta against cards that modify province strengths. Mostly this will be used to lower provinces to their initial PS in response to cards like Wall of Honor, Last Step Castle, Ring of Earth and Weigh the Cost. I have however on one glorious occasion used it to save my last Province by negating the effects of a Burn it Down and letting my opponent’s lone Utagu no Oni bounce like a tennis ball. Finally you can play Determined Force to fire off a RA 2; which is funny until you combine it with Force Reduction effects like the Battle Action on Utaku Plains. I’ve also just flat out shot the occasional Matsu Yosa, Kakita Hideo and Mirumoto Kuroki to remove my opponent’s defensive presence. While this kind of versatility makes Determined Force an attractive card for many decks it’s probably most effective in Cavalry or Movement based military decks. Unicorn military and SPC Crab in particular have been dying for a better answer to Reinforce the Gates than Height of Courage presently provides. It’s also something of an absolute necessity if you intend to Blitz (turn 2 attack) in the post-Harbinger environment. In testing however I’ve found that the only effective blitz deck in the format is Central Castle Lion and even then I think Lion has better options with a standard turn 3 attack.
2) Burn the Village – Contrary to popular belief, the existence of Burn the Village does not render all “boxable” personalities obsolete. It does however severely restrict how you can use these Personalities going forward in the post-Harbinger environment. In particular it’s now incredibly important that you build your deck to avoid losing momentum/tempo/the ability to defend your provinces in response to a Turn 3-4 Burn the Village. Typically this means running either 0-4 boxables or running 18+ boxables (a majority of whom are Samurai) and 3x Duty. In my testing it’s very rare that an opponent can profit from spending an early Burn to kill a single Personality; after all a 6G investment in the Limited phase likely means buying one less 8G Personality with a printed battle action in the Dynasty phase. It’s not even really a 1 for 1 Personality trade since typically 2 Holding Personalities are vastly superior to most boxables in the current environment. Alternately of course you can react with Duty by destroying one target (who’s a Samurai) to negate the destruction of the other to essentially create the same uneven 1 for 1 situation. This either pre-supposes that you have numerous disposable Samurai lying around and a Duty in hand or that your Clan/Deck-style has enough quality non-boxable Personalities to build a competitive deck. This is hardly true for all 9 clans and in particular this change favors the “Battle Control” decks in CE; Unicorn/Lion/Dragon and possibly Mantis. Alternately testing has shown that Crane and Phoenix in particular have a hard time replacing the speed running 10-14 boxables formerly provided. Amusingly enough the deck Burn the Village seems designed to hurt most (Goblin Breeder) can pretty much shrug off multiple Burns so long it he sees the Wrath of Kali-Ma. This is because Burn isn’t an Open Action and it does very little good to destroy Gutobo and a Pokku if you’re already down 3 Provinces to 1. I don’t think I need to tell anyone still reading that Burn the Village is not my favorite card in Harbinger but just in case I wasn’t 100% clear; I find the card restricts deck-building options, ruins most Crane/Phoenix decks that helped balance the environment and is ultimately ineffective against the Goblin Breeder Kali-Ma Bomb decks it was clearly designed to stop. The fact that I hate this card doesn’t however change anything about its impact on the post-Harbinger environment, which I believe will be considerable.
1) Civility – As previously mentioned above, I seriously question the wisdom of printing cards that allow you to circumvent the normal rules for buying Personalities in the Dynasty Phase. The very structure of L5R is based on turn to turn planning determined by available resources in play and potential cards in hand. To use a familiar metaphor, this forced a player who wanted to be successful to behave rather a lot like a Feudal Japanese Warlord. You build your strength early, avoiding the enemy army and striking for easy objectives until such a time as you feel comfortable entering a huge battle and liquidating all of your opponent’s “mans”. P.S. for those history buffs out there who are about to chide me on some small inaccuracy just be advised that my entire understanding of Japanese Feudal warfare comes from having beaten Samurai Warriors 2 Empires on Hard my first time through. You have been fairly warned. The ability to buy “surprise” units on the Limited Phase was bad enough on a random one-shot event but as a 3 of Fate-side action to which there is no reasonable counter it’s absolutely brutal. Let’s take a look at some of the more obvious uses for Civility in the post-Harbinger environment:
A) Force out an extra unit for an early attack – The most basic/obvious use for Civility is to generate better/faster early attacks. Whether it’s forcing out a turn 2 Crab Hero for a blitz rush or generating a 5th attacker to guarantee a turn 4 Lion push it’s always easier to attack with an extra guy. Due to the overall “fatality” of battles in the post-Harbinger environment it’s generally important to have unit superiority before declaring your attacks and an extra body will almost always mean an extra (fatal) battle action in your first engagement. As a general warning; using Civility to “blitz” (turn 2 attack) is not really any more likely to succeed than a standard blitz attack. Almost every deck in the format runs the 9 standard presenceless answers for blitz decks (3x each of Settling the Homeless, The Direct Approach and Outer Walls), making it probable that they will have an answer on turn 2. What it does do however is give you the first turn to buy a couple holdings and thus make a potential early bounce far less painful than it would be for a more traditional blitz deck. Personally I find Civility most useful on turn 3, either to generate a 2nd attacker when going first or to generate a 3rd attacker and swing the unit numbers game in my favor. Typically these attacks will be backed up by a Sneak/kill effect of some kind so I don’t mind bouncing so much as long as I killed a unit or two. Really however there’s almost never a bad time to have an extra Personality in play.
B) Hide key Personalities in the discard pile until you can afford them – Have you ever turned over or “mulled” into a truly lynch-pint Personality on turn 1? I’m talking about cards like Kuon, Tamago, Utemaro Exp2, Satsu Exp5, any of the clan Champions, etc. You really do need that card but you don’t want to clog up your development by leaving such a long term investment sitting face up turn after turn. In the past I would typically discard or mulligan that card away and begin working on how to win the game without my key fatty. Assuming the target is a Samurai, Civility changes all that by allowing you to purposely throw that key Personality in the discard pile at the end of turn; thereby keeping it safe until you have enough gold to buy it later. In fact, it doesn’t even really have to buy a key Personality; it’s typically a good idea to discard ANY Samurai you see after your turn 1 mulligan to create potential Civility targets for later. This allows you to flush harder for early gold with no real loss of purchasing options later in the game while actually speeding up your attack options at the same time. Wow.
C) Purposely let Provinces with face up Personalities fall to generate more/better attackers on your next turn – This one is pretty self explanatory in my opinion. You leave a face up guy with a key battle action in your provinces and tempt your opponent into attacking. When he does you either assign no defenders or assign only disposable units with the idea of killing a few units before letting the province fall. Once it does your key Personality is now “discarded” and thus can be fired out on the Limited Phase as part of your next attack. This back and forth style of province trading is VERY common in the post-Harbinger environment based on my testing and conversations I’ve had with a number of people who play often.
D) Force out an extra unit on defense – This is a fairly rare trick but it is in fact possible because Civility is randomly an Open action instead of a Limited one. Typically this will only happen when you’ve lost a few provinces and thus you end up with a few unused holdings at the end of your Dynasty Phase. There’s really no reason to let all that gold go to waste when you can drop a Civility and buy an extra defender to help keep the wolves at bay is there? Amusingly enough I recently played a Mantis deck that specifically tried to use Civility as a pseudo gold producing engine. He ran 3x Rich Coffers, 3x Barley Farms, a Belly of Fudo and the Ancestral Kama of the Mantis and kept unbowing his own holdings on my turn. Then he’d play Civility to grab a guy he’d purposely discarded the turn before, thus giving him a 2nd mini-dynasty phase whenever he drew a copy of it. This sounds cute but in an environment dominated by unit superiority tactics it is deadly effective.
If you aren’t sold by now on Civility’s raw power to reshape the L5R environment I’m not sure you’re playing the same game I am. I would however like to address the two most common reasons I see/hear given for not running this card because I don’t think either of them make any sense at all:
A) “Civility isn’t a battle action and thus it clogs up my hand. I prefer cards that say Battle:” – This is silly because the obvious answer is to use Civility to purchase a Personality with a printed battle action. This shouldn’t be very hard in most clans that use Civility well because good Military decks now run almost entirely guys with Battle Actions (Crab being the exception). It doesn’t really matter where the actions come from in battle, merely that you have more of them to take than your opponent. Unless you played a card draw effect in battle and topped a Civility this argument doesn’t hold much water.
B) “Civility doesn’t let me get the 2 Gold Dynasty Phase reductions on my in-Clan people. Paying more for my Personalities isn’t worth it” – You’ve never bought a guy at full before? Haven’t been caught in a “Blood Money” situation because of honor requirements? You’ve never played an out of Clan or Unaligned Personality? There are already a huge number of situations in this game where you might have to pay the full printed cost of the card, isn’t essentially skipping ahead an ENTIRE turn worth it? In fact in our testing most of my environment has found that Civility makes it EASIER to use key out of Clan or Ronin Personalities because they were going to pay the full gold cost anyways. Cards like Shinjo Yamauchi, Tamgo and Tsuruchi Mochisa Xp all come to mind as wonderful “whore-in” options for a number of decks in Celestial that can in turn combo well with Civility.
Well folks, that’s about all I can write about The Harbinger without getting into specific deck-lists and minutia. I’m sorry this took so long to finish; it was partially my need to test “everything”, partially that I was sick and partially that I’ve been afflicted with a terrible case of writer’s block from time to time for the past month or so. Thank you for your patience and for reading if you made it this far in the article. I’d also like to remind people that I operate a well stocked L5R card store should you need any singles this Kotei Season. You can get there by clicking on the image in my signature at the bottom of this article. We’ve recently done a massive restock and lowered a bunch of prices to match market values so I encourage you to take a peek if you need cardboard. Okay, enough shilling from me and as promised here’s a short top 5 list of the most important Clan Specific Actions and Personalities in The Harbinger:
Actions (In no particular order):
1) Arranged Guilt – Pretty much a Scorpion Dishonor only trick, this card typically causes your opponent to Seppuku in response and thus makes it a “free” Limited kill action. That’s pretty much NEVER a bad thing.
2) Learn by Doing – So let me get this straight; I bow your guy, I draw a card and if I played this off Pillars of Virtue, a Hundred-Hand Strike or a Spinning Heel Kick I get 3F too? Where has this Kiho been through the beginning of Celestial? (Honorable Mention for One With the Flame and Spinning Heel Kick. Dragon truly did get some wonderful toys this set).
3) Prepare for the Worst – The downside here of course is that most honor decks don’t have great cards that say “Scout”. Even Crane merely has a bunch of decent but not spectacular 7G Scouts who may or may not be relevant outside of the ability to play Prepared for the Worst. The upside of course is an amazing defensive option (compare Well-Defended Border) that should gain you 3 Honor more often than not. It’s not Forging the Gift but it’s certainly a start.
4) The Light of Justice – Doomed Intentions was probably the single most important fate card in Samurai Edition. The Light of Justice isn’t doomed intentions but in a Magistrate Dueling Control deck it does a fairly good impersonation. Eventually I’m hoping their print enough military options to let me use this in an attack deck but for now it’s at least passable in Dragon/Crane Magistrate honor.
5) Stolen Property – Okay so I play Friendly Traveler Sake on my Personality, then I give it to your Personality and gain a bunch of honor. Then I target Magistrate and return the Sake to my hand with Stolen Property. This is pretty important because once a card goes back in my hand it “forgets” that it’s been played already this turn (no really it’s a rule). This means that YES I absolutely can pay to attach the Sake to my guy again and then transfer it back to your guy again to gain more honor. Now combine that with say Walk the Way to stack multiples in your hand and a Phoenix Magistrate who unbows gold holdings and you have a recipe for 15+ honor turns against key opponents (not Spider).
Personalities (in no particular order):
1) Bayushi Suboru – There is no question in my mind that Poison Tokens as a concept are still pretty terrible. On the other hand the ability to copy other abilities off Personalities in play with a Poison Token is obviously pretty broken. I played when Ninja Shapeshifter was legal and I’m pretty sure that means you’ll just have to suck it up and run Blowdarts. Don’t forget that Suboru CAN copy your own Personalities; if they have a Poison Token on them. Think extra Jutsushis, Yoshiharas or ever out of clan Udos; we’re talking some serious mayhem here. Remember he can’t copy unique personalities so there’s almost no point in putting a Poison Token on your own Karumi, Kazanori or Hiosaka.
2) Togashi Kiyoshi – Dragon Military has been waiting for this Personality every since Pillars of Virtue was released at the start of Celestial. Great stats, affordable cost, excellent battle action and the Monk/Tattooed traits are an excellent place to start but its Kiyoshi’s trait that really seals the deal. Activating Pillars on the defensive in the early game makes Dragon Military downright dangerous to attack in the post-TH environment and as such I often find myself mulling hard to find a Kyoshi by turn 3.
3) Shinjo Yamauchi – Yamauchi almost made the top 11 overall list because he’s seeing more and more play out of clan as the post-Harbinger environment unfolds. Put simply, Kami Unleashed is a pretty strong card. Printing a free re-usable Kami Unleashed on a Personality is even stronger. Remember you don’t even have to bow to make the ranged attack if you’re defending. Yamauchi obviously also combos well with straighten effects like Scout Armor, Shattered Peaks Castle, Yoritomo Tatsuhiko, Shinjo Hwarang or even Sword and Chain.
4) Chuda Atsuro – So the going rate on a disposable undead Personality seems to be about 3 Gold. That means out of Spider I’m paying about 2 Gold for a 3F/4C Shugenja (Touch of Death/Walk the Way/Unclean Sacrifice/Power Corrupting machine) whenever I buy a Chuda Atsuro. I think you can safely describe that as “above fair value” at this point in the CE environment.
5) Akodo Senzo – At some point the sheer embarrassment of riches that is Lion’s Personality base has to hit a point where it can’t get any better. I was almost sure that point had already occurred after Path of the Destroyer but obviously Design feels otherwise. Wow is this guy a complete house. 4F/3C tacticians with manageable honor requirements are a MINIMUM of 8G in Lion historically. Senzo is of course only 7G in a clan that makes 5G for personalities in its sleep. Then of course there’s his ability to “double activate” someone else in his army’s printed battle actions without losing tempo/passing priority in battle. Amusingly enough this “replication” isn’t even a Tactical action, so he can still use on turns you Banish or Tact for force. Of course I guess you could point out that he’s only 2PH and doesn’t actually do very much without someone else to charge up in battle but then you’d just be whining. Yes I mean you Lion player/forum dweller.
