Topic: The Cardboard Geisha Part 6 - Letters to the Geisha (Read 766 times)

Nina Illingworth · « **on:** August 05, 2009, 10:20:30 AM »

The Cardboard Geisha CE Article 6:
Letters to the Geisha

“One who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; one who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.” – Chinese Proverb

Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a special supplemental edition of the Cardboard Geisha. During a previous article I mentioned that I’d be happy to answer email questions as part of the Cardboard Geisha series, whenever I’d collected enough interesting questions to squeeze a cheap article out of it. I won’t lie, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d get any response at all. In fact, I figured any response I did get would likely be people mailing in to say they “disagreed with everything I’d said and hoped I’d die in a fire rather than post another article”. Instead the response has been both overwhelming and positive. I’ve received dozens of emails and private messages from all over the online L5R community this past month. As promised then, let’s look at some of the best questions/arguments/responses from the mailbag. As a note some of the emails have been edited for brevity/clarity but I’ve done my best to keep the original question intact.

“Hey Nina, Great article! I agree with most of your Celestial rankings but I’m shocked you didn’t rank Pokku (Exp)! Isn’t Celestial all about attachments? Is losing 3 honor that big of a problem?”- Bayushi Dave

Hello Dave and thanks for the question. You bring up a great point; yes Pokku Exp is an absolute house in early Celestial and because of the “Blood Money” rule it’s easy to play him in almost any military deck in the format. I think my primary reason for leaving him out of the top 10 was his overall “real” gold cost weighed against his vulnerability to Imperial Census. Not only does he cost as much as an in clan 8GC Personality; but in most decks his 3 point honor hit means you have to buy another personality at full to avoid paying “Blood Money” for the rest of the game. This makes him on par with a 10GC personality in most decks for all intents and purposes. Yet, his 6 printed GC means that he will bow/lock out if Imperial Census resolves. Despite these negatives I’d still rank Pokku Exp someplace in the teens in terms of important Celestial cards and you should definitely consider including him in a variety of military decks.

“Hi Nina, I've been reading your strategy articles with great interest, and I was wondering if I could get your opinion on Famous Bazaar. From what I observed, in Samurai this seemed to be in almost every gold scheme going due to it's ability to make you see more of your deck, especially in the later phase of the game. I notice that you haven't included it in either of the decks you've published so far – why?” – J.Johnson

Great question, this one had me examining my own design processes for a couple days because I honestly didn’t know the answer at first. While I still feel Famous Bazaar is one of the most important cards in Celestial Edition I have to admit that it keeps finding itself on the outside looking in when I build decks. This could of course be a design mistake; as you’ve mentioned Bazaar has a successful track record in top decks from the previous arc. With that in mind however I think it comes down to three things:

A) The average Celestial deck seems to run 2-3 less holdings than the average deck in Samurai. Less slots means greater competition from other holdings.

B) Border Keep already allows me to see as many as 16 dynasty cards before my 2nd turn Dynasty Phase, without committing a single Gold Producing Holding. This not only means I have less need for Famous Bazaar but it also makes it less valuable; since it both costs more and does less than Border Keep. While it’s true having more cycle is better, the opportunity cost of playing Famous Bazaar has risen considerably.

C) The return of Barley Farm to the environment and the importance of 6GC holdings to most gold-schemes simply don’t leave enough room for all the holdings you want. In most cases this leaves Famous Bazaar (and to a lesser degree Akodo’s Grave) in the pile of cards you “really wanted to include” but ultimately couldn’t find room for.

“Welcome back Nina, you probably don’t remember me but I used to come to your Koteis in Toronto years ago. I don’t make it into Toronto much anymore. You said you had an online store but I can’t find it on Google. How do I find the store? How often do you update your stock? Thanks for the Crane deck.” - Justin

Hi Justin, of course I remember you there weren’t THAT many Mantis players from Northern Ontario at our Koteis.

You can find the store by clicking on the big picture (Rekai/Daigotsu Minoko) at the bottom of every post I make on L5R forums. This is a link that takes you directly to our online storefront on the Imperial Auction Block. There are a number of other L5R retailers that use this site to sell singles, feel free to window shop/compare prices and find the best deal possible. The preferred method of payment is Paypal; unfortunately we can’t accept Credit Cards at this time. It’s all there on the site.

We update our singles whenever I trade for/buy/open new ones (about 1-2 times per week). Thanks for your question; it’s a great opportunity for a shameless plug!

“In Nina's original article she gives a great deal of play advice for this deck, how to deal with swarm, big military, and honor. The first question that occurred to me is how this deck performs against dishonor and control decks. It may be because my playgroup contains a brutally efficient Scorpion player, but I have a (I think very reasonable) fear of dishonor and control from the red bordered guys. I'd love some input from the creator or anyone familiar with how this deck runs.” – Togashi Kaneda, Dragon Forum.

(This question has been lifted directly from a discussion about the Mixed Martial Arts deck I posted last week with the poster’s permission. I don’t always have time to read/respond to every post on a discussion forum and recently I’ve learned that I’m not all that good at it. It would seem that without a little time to compose my thoughts I come across as habitually angry and dismissive; obviously this is not my goal. This is however an important question and I thought I’d take the time to answer it properly here.)

Well Kaneda, I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is that your game against Scorpion dishonor is not a total wash like it would have been in SE. They are considerably slower now and their stronghold is essentially blank for the first 3 turns of the game minimum. This allows you to build for a longer/control orientated game by forcing out a personality at full for honor every single turn (even with 5 Ronin/OoC personalities this shouldn’t be hard). Ideally you want to buy less Monks than normal in this match-up because they’re dishonor sinkholes but the overall quality of “dishonor” cards in CE is not so much that you’ll auto-lose for buying a guy who can’t Seppuku like it was in SE. Once you’ve established a good gold base however this becomes a classic case of flooding the board with units until he can’t control all of them. In particular you’ll want to buy enough units and spread around your attachments so that you can afford to leave whoever Jutsushi targets behind until the very last battle. Obviously if he gives you a chance by assigning Jutsushi you want to destroy this unit as soon as possible, he is the heart of Scorpion Dishonor Control and without him they’re fairly unimpressive. Kurumi Exp can be a serious problem because you will rarely want her to dishonor your personalities but in some cases you’ll have no choice. Usually I hit her with a Fury as soon as possible. Also be mindful of Arashii by attaching your items to your lower chi personalities in this match-up.
The bad news is that even played properly you’re probably only a 60/40 match-up with Dishonor because of the Monks. No deck can beat everything every time so this is a fairly acceptable match-up. Unfortunately the same can not be said of straight Spider PK Control, a deck that beats MMA almost 100% of the time. I have no advice for solving this problem because in my opinion it can’t be solved. As a big unit military deck with almost no real ability to prevent/negate/re-direct fatal actions you play perfectly into what the Spider Control player is trying to do. Thankfully Spider Control is very hard to play and thus probably won’t be crazy popular in your local tournament scene or even at GenCon.

“How long does it take you to write a column? Is there any way you’ll get to Scorpion before Gencon?” – Richard

Well that depends a lot on what you mean by writing a column. The actual physical act of writing takes anyplace between 5 hours when I’m flowing well (Crane article for example was done in one night in one sitting) to 25+ hours when it’s not going well (Dragon for example took 10 days, one line at a time). The real kicker is how long it takes to build the decks and play the test games because long before I sit down I like to make sure I’ve played the deck at least 50 times against a varied field. When combined with literally hundreds of “gold-fishes” and a couple more hours spent simply pondering card choices and the entire process from start to finish is quite lengthy indeed.
Originally it had been my intention to have all 9 clans done before GenCon but unfortunately I’ve been ill and work has been difficult. It would now be a minor miracle if I got to Scorpion before GC at this point so I’m going to have to say “no with my apologies”.

“How do you feel about the new Celestial cards?” – Hida Stephen

I won’t lie; I’m terrified that even printing them was a bad idea. Honestly super powerful “event-like” effects have absolutely NEVER been any good for L5R at large. That having been said I don’t think I can comment intelligently on cards I stopped reading because they were bothering me too much. I’ve decided to wait until I see the entire set before passing final judgment. With that having been said however, the Crab one is absolutely broken and a terrible idea.

“Recently I’ve been using Egg of Pan Ku to practice for tournament play online. Do you think EoPK is a good substitute for real life practice? My playgroup died in Lotus and it’s the only way for me to find opponents.” - Jeff Richards

While I personally find the experience frustrating because my monitor is way too small the Egg of Pan Ku absolutely CAN make you a better mechanical L5R player. Many of the best players in the world play an absolute PILE of “Egg” games before heading to a major tournament like GenCon. Knowing the cards and how they interact is the most important step on the way to improving your L5R player. What Egg won’t do however is teach you how to be a card player. You can’t see your opponent and interaction is minimal/in the form of text messages. This makes skills like reading your opponent, bluffing, feigning weakness to convince him to overextend, etc completely irrelevant. So in short, yes EoPK will make you a better L5R player but no it won’t make you a better card player in real life because it doesn’t simulate real life card play.

“Hello. Ran across your articles in your little subforum here on the crane site. Just thought I should give you some praise for writing good articles with good content which also happens to be readable. Since I'm recently reviving an old interest in the game (still have my ancestral swords lying around in a binder) it's quite a relief knowing that the whole community isn't half illiterate. Keep up the good work.” – Glenn Brunmar

There were literally dozens of emails just like Glenn’s but I chose his because he called me literate and that MAY be a first in my life.

Jokes aside guys thanks for all the positive responses and I’m sorry my lungs don’t let me write more. Just talking with people about L5R is fun for me and the responses I’ve gotten make me want to run out and write some more every single day. I don’t claim to be right but it’s nice to know someone out there is listening and considering the arguments for their own use as players. That’s what I wanted and overwhelmingly that’s what you guys have said these articles provide. Thanks. It wouldn’t be any fun without you.

Well folks that’s all I have time for this time if I hope to get this Lion article done before Friday (and I do). As always thanks for your emails, feel free to send me any questions at Kyuden.Tarantula@gmail.com and maybe next time you’re question will make it to the mailbag. Until then folks, keep asking questions and remember to keep it weird.

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Author Topic: The Cardboard Geisha Part 6 - Letters to the Geisha (Read 766 times)

Nina Illingworth

The Cardboard Geisha Part 6 - Letters to the Geisha