Lots of questions about Simple Men

I think I know the answer to this one, but I am just checking:
Farmlands is a region, which means that it is NOT a holding, correct? If this is a correct understanding, then Simple Men and Farmlands cannot be used together, even though Farmlands has the "Farm" keyword, correct?

On another note, has anybody tried to combo Simple Men with Private Farm? Obviously, dropping a Fate card to buy Private Farm can hurt in Military, but IIRC, Anthony's Crane deck discards constantly anyway, and he never needs cards for combat since he never engages. Can this combo work with Control?

The combo costs a total of 3 gold+discard to purchase, but it takes up two cards and you only flip 4 cards per turn, max. Considering that the first couple of turns you are not buying everything in your provinces anyway, is this a major issue?

Is there any way to build this combo up with extra Dynasty draw, and possibly extra Fate draw?

Finally, is Card Cycling a workable PRIMARY deck concept in L5R?

The farm holding scheme (simple men, fertile plains, barley farm, etc) only works out of lion and possibly ronin. Out of both there are better more consistent options. I've considered running it out of a interesting Paragon Commander deck I'm building but that's about it.

It doesn't show up in any other deck because it has consistency problems and there are better schemes.

Okay, wow. Treat me like the dumb newb that I am here.

I'm sure you answered my questions, but I still know so little about the game that the answer didn't make much sense to me.

Fertile Plains=never seen it. What set is it from?

I mentioned Private Farm. Did your question address that card, or was it such a silly, uninformed option that the other points addressed it obliquely? (I am very willing to accept this as the answer since I really am Newb, although I could prolly use an explanation so that I am not quite so uninformed.)

Simple Men works with Barley Farm? It seems like it wouldn't, since the essence of my thought was a 4/3 gold pump combo, and Simple+Barley=5/5 pump, with a little extra versatility built in.

Is flipping enough provinces a problem at all with any Simple Men combo? (Or is it always a problem? Is this where the consistency issues come in?)

You mentioned more consistent options; what should I be looking for? (One thing I was aiming for is a non-Clan combo.)

So on that basis, why does Simple work with Lion and not necessarily anybody else? What makes Lion different?

Can a deck be built entirely around Card Cycling? Has anybody tried, and how did it work out?

Aaronious wrote:Okay, wow. Treat me like the dumb newb that I am here.

I'm sure you answered my questions, but I still know so little about the game that the answer didn't make much sense to me.

Fertile Plains=never seen it. What set is it from?

bookmark http://l5rsearch.com and use it to search for cards. Helps when you need to check what set a card came from or what it does. In this instance, Fertile Plains is a farm holding that when it comes into play, you target 2 holdings which now produce 1 more gold each. So it is essentially a 2 for 2 but the holding itself doesn't produce any gold, so it works well with Simple Men.

Aaronious wrote:I mentioned Private Farm. Did your question address that card, or was it such a silly, uninformed option that the other points addressed it obliquely? (I am very willing to accept this as the answer since I really am Newb, although I could prolly use an explanation so that I am not quite so uninformed.)

Private Farm is bad. Anthony discards a lot of cards with his crane deck because he is using the favor to cycle. Private farm doesn't "cycle" a card. You don't get to replace one of the cards in hand with another from the deck. Very rarely will he be over 8 cards at the end of his turn, and for the few matchups where he WILL, private farm wouldn't help him at all because it eats up a dynasty slot that could be a holding that produces more gold.

Aaronious wrote:Simple Men works with Barley Farm? It seems like it wouldn't, since the essence of my thought was a 4/3 gold pump combo, and Simple+Barley=5/5 pump, with a little extra versatility built in.

Yes, Simple men works with barley farm. You can use the reaction on barley farm to help pay for something, and then bow the barley farm along with simple men to produce 4 gold. It's a total of 5 gold off of two holdings, so it makes simple men a "3g producing" holding for that turn. It's not the most efficient (with fertile plains being the most) but it's a decent way of using Simple Men.

Aaronious wrote:Is flipping enough provinces a problem at all with any Simple Men combo? (Or is it always a problem? Is this where the consistency issues come in?)

I'm not sure what you mean? Simple Men doesn't effect how you flip provinces.

Aaronious wrote:You mentioned more consistent options; what should I be looking for? (One thing I was aiming for is a non-Clan combo.)

Out of lion and ronin, the dockside/fortified port combo is good, and the Fudo holding scheme is also very good.

Aaronious wrote:So on that basis, why does Simple work with Lion and not necessarily anybody else? What makes Lion different?

Simple men doesn't really "work" with any clan, but Lion and Ronin work best with it because they produce 3g with their stronghold, so they don't get the option of playing tsi mokotsu, border village, etc. Simple Men costs 3g, so for other clans that run 4g cost holdings, you risk flipping a Simple Men and one of the 4g cost holdings on turn one, and can't afford both. Lion and Ronin avoid this problem because they don't run any 4g holdings.

Aaronious wrote:Can a deck be built entirely around Card Cycling? Has anybody tried, and how did it work out?

Again I'm not sure about your question because the farm scheme has nothing to do with card cycling. In regards to fate hand manipulation, you have one of three options:

Card Discard - You discard a card as a cost or effect. Private farm is Card Discard. This is horrible, and most players avoid this at all costs. You are much more limited with the cards in your hand than you are with your dynasty flips and gold.

Card Cycle - You discard a card from your hand to draw a card. This is strong in some decks that run a lot of clan-specific Meta, so that they can get rid of Card A that is only good against Clan A when they are playing Clan B. That being said, it is essentially no gain, since you end up with the same amount of cards as you started with, and it's entirely possible that you will draw the same card or an even worse card. So it's a gamble.

Card Draw - You draw a card as a cost or effect. This is good. There is virtually no situations where card draw is bad. At it's very worse, card draw becomes card cycle, only better. If you are already at 8 cards, and draw a card and at the end of the turn have to discard one, it's not so bad because you know what card you drew and thus, can pick which card to discard. This is strictly better than "card cycle" because it isn't blind. With card cycle, you are doing it blind, risking that the card you draw will be better than the card you discarded.

A deck centered around card cycle wouldn't work, because you wouldn't ever go anywhere. You would just keep replacing cards in your hand (and oftentimes, every card in your hand is good and you don't want to get rid of ANY of them). Again, SOME decks will run 1 or 2 cards that will enable a card cycle engine IF they need it against certain matchups, but the majority of the time you want to focus on cards that actually do something to benefit yourself directly or hurt your opponent directly.

Aaronious wrote:Okay, wow. Treat me like the dumb newb that I am here.

I'm sure you answered my questions, but I still know so little about the game that the answer didn't make much sense to me.

Fertile Plains=never seen it. What set is it from?

I mentioned Private Farm. Did your question address that card, or was it such a silly, uninformed option that the other points addressed it obliquely? (I am very willing to accept this as the answer since I really am Newb, although I could prolly use an explanation so that I am not quite so uninformed.)

Simple Men works with Barley Farm? It seems like it wouldn't, since the essence of my thought was a 4/3 gold pump combo, and Simple+Barley=5/5 pump, with a little extra versatility built in.

Is flipping enough provinces a problem at all with any Simple Men combo? (Or is it always a problem? Is this where the consistency issues come in?)

You mentioned more consistent options; what should I be looking for? (One thing I was aiming for is a non-Clan combo.)

So on that basis, why does Simple work with Lion and not necessarily anybody else? What makes Lion different?

Can a deck be built entirely around Card Cycling? Has anybody tried, and how did it work out?

In No particular order:

Simple men requires: Bowing a farm and itself to produce gold.

Fertile Plains: is a two gold holding that when it comes into play puts tokens onto two gold producing holdings. These tokens make the holding produce 1 extra gold when its bowed for gold. Fertile plains is also a farm.

The basic gold scheme for lion:
3x fertile plains
3x simple men
3x barley farm
3x copper mine
Random holdings to meet your needs... I wanted to try running it with a new personality that bows to produce 4 gold for farms thus allowing the buying of a farm every turn without the need for an extra holding. The ideal first turn is: buy the personality, buy a simple men or a copper mine, buy a fertile plains.

Now you essentially have 2 3 gold producing holdings (your border keep and stronghold) and a 4 gold producing holding (copper mine)
Or
a 3 gold producing border keep, and a 5 gold producing simple men

The seppun personality buys future holdings, and is still a cheap 3 gold samurai, so all and all not bad, kind of a miniature utemaru.

I would only run it out of a follower build, and its purely a for fun deck IMO. Simple men's consistency problem is that its a 3 gold holding in a lion deck, while this isn't bad for most holdings (the smugglers port/fudo holding schemes) this is bad when simple men by itself doesn't produce gold. So if you see simple men, and no farms you suddenly are in trouble. I would say this could be improved by running more farms in the deck... small farm is a possibility. I would only run this in a follower build because the followers much up for the fact that you need to be running something like 16-17 holdings in the deck and might see less bodies, or lots of holdings pop up. In those turns you go to down equipping followers.

I might even be tempted to run some of the goofy "Discard a card, opponent discards a card, do X"

Any questions about cards or what is currently available in the arc, my suggestion is Egg of Panku or Legendary L5R Card search, both are good options for perusing cards of certain types in the current arc:

http://l5rshop.com/db/main_frame.cgi?ftarget=L5R+Search

http://www.eggofpanku.com/

If you have any questions about installing and using egg, bother Corey or I on our standard gaming days, or message me anytime via AIM: TaurenMooo

Ah! Okay, I see now. Thanks for putting up with newb questions. Hopefully, I won't be forever.

Aaronious wrote:Ah! Okay, I see now. Thanks for putting up with newb questions. Hopefully, I won't be forever.

Anytime bro, After the kotei this next weekend I'll be pulling back from most competitive play back into my fun-deck building, on the line-up:

Lion Paragon Commanders
Unicorn Military Enlightenment Shugenja
Unicorn Scout Blitz
War of Honor Decks once that comes out! (so much fun!)