EoW Main Page Preveiws!

http://www.l5r.com/embers-of-war/

I am excited about Sankaku-Yari! It has all the strength of Tsurich Diaku and none of the draw backs (having to bow).

Hotei’s Contentment actually solves some issues the dragon Clan had about its Tamori and Kitsuki personalities having lower then normal personal honor.

Unstoppable Strike is something I am still trying to figure out if I like or not. Your broadcasting massively where your going to attacking from when you use it. So, the other player is going to do all in their power to bow, send come, destory or comprimise that personality... making the action almost wasted on the set up. Its like an old fashioned scorpion deck. =Phttp://www.l5r.com/embers-of-war/

I like Unstoppable Strike. Any time I can choose my opponent's next target for him is a win, in my eyes. Or out of kensai, it's just a straight-up unit kill with the right negation in hand (or Kanpeki xD). I could see running it as a one off, just to screw with people.

The Sankaku-Yari is great for my monks too. I'll happily pay 5-6 gold for an 8 force unit (Sutigu or Sandayu + yari).

Daigotsu Thrakhath wrote:I like Unstoppable Strike. Any time I can choose my opponent's next target for him is a win, in my eyes. Or out of kensai, it's just a straight-up unit kill with the right negation in hand (or Kanpeki xD). I could see running it as a one off, just to screw with people.

The Sankaku-Yari is great for my monks too. I'll happily pay 5-6 gold for an 8 force unit (Sutigu or Sandayu + yari).

I agree on both fronts. A lot of people are overlooking the "misdirection" aspect of Unstoppable Strike. There is very little functional difference between:

My opponent has a printed kill action. He uses it to target my clan champion. I play loyalty of the scorpion, blow up irezu, clan champion is not destroyed.

and

My opponent has a printed kill action. I target Irezu with unstoppable Strike. He kills Irezu to prevent the unit destruction.

At the end of both examples, I am down one card in hand, irezu is dead, and my clan champion is alive.


In regards to Sankaku-Yari, a LOT of people are undervaluing the card. 1) it doesn't bow to perform it's action, so it's still great with Hundred Fold Cut. 2) Melee 4 is big enough to kill almost anything you want dead outside of power uniques/clan champs. 3) 5f for 6g is fucking BONKERS. This card is WAY over budget. 4) 6g is going to go REALLY smooth in the new gold scheme once second city dojo becomes legal (4-for-4 when paying for attachments).

In all honesty, I'd drop hunger/daikyu for this card, and then drop 1x wyrmbone/1x modifications to get this card to a 3x. Making a 3f personality province crushing, or making a 4f province crushing ANY non Kaiu province is STUPIDLY strong when you factor in that you also get a kill action AND it only costs 6g. Look at followers: You pay 7g for 4f melee:4 with Stalking Tiger. You pay 8g for 5f ranged:4 +2 on Khol Regulars. Hell, if you could run a 6g (8g in clan) personality with 5f and a melee 4(5 vs cavalry) you would. THIS CARD IS REALLY GOOD.

Anyone who drops Wyrmbones under a 3-of in a Kensai deck should be kicked in the stones, Sleep.

Gosh wrote:Anyone who drops Wyrmbones under a 3-of in a Kensai deck should be kicked in the stones, Sleep.

SHHHH I'm trying to make Corey build a worse deck.

Well Corey's sabotaging aside... I am on to you! >:{

Its a good weapon, and will find some room in my deck.

Temple Fortress - This is what my Tamori have been waiting for! More steady honor ticking! Now... if only I could master its fate deck!

Games of Will - Where were you all last arc? How many times have I felt the sting of dishonor, loosing two honor and then I don't contribute force?! Well those days are gone by! Mwahahahaha!

Sorry that was the sound of large unit decks rising up in the face of honor/dishonor decks and slapping them for all the indignities they have spawned.

like you said, one arc too late, game of sincerity isn't in too many decks. I ran 2 of in my scorp paragon deck. in the 20 games i've played it saved a couple of provinces, maybe won one smallish battle, the dishonor/-2 loss never mattered. The ONE game it might have won me the game I failed to fetched for it from my discard with jurojin's. Play error, but that is one game potentially out of 20. With potential meta out it just means i remove it from my deck, not a loss at all, there are tons of other good battle actions for military. By itself (ignoring sincerity meta) i'm not sure if games of will will make the cut for military.

It replaces the Force Penalty negation Corey's already running as a 2-of.

Gosh wrote:It replaces the Force Penalty negation Corey's already running as a 2-of.

what is he running? tireless efforts? in big units unbowing your guy > bowing their guy imo

Yeah Tireless, but I think he's primarily running it for the Force pen negation- he already runs Again, Creating Order, and Houken.

Ok, two Daimyos... this suggests that we may see more of our supportive cast of our Clan structure in this set. Meaning we may see more Family heads soon in the future expansions. Both are rather good, and the Crane's artwork is magnificent.

As for Indecision, doesn't anyone else find it ironic that as soon as we start seeing massive card draw we see a new check and balance for it? I feel like thats what the main page Actions are. Just check and balances. Mind you, thats not bad, but its going to be rough finding room for the appropriate meta. Meaning you will need to pick and choose carefully.

Indecision makes me kind of a sad panda, but I also like it. It means I'll have to be careful drawing off of my shiny new paragon and playing Grateful Reward in the same turn, but it also means I can screw with honor/dishonor decks that do lots of action-phase drawing, kensai decks, or other paragon decks (sometimes). And since my guys are almost always naked, the battle action on it is just fine.

Daigotsu Thrakhath wrote:Indecision makes me kind of a sad panda, but I also like it. It means I'll have to be careful drawing off of my shiny new paragon and playing Grateful Reward in the same turn, but it also means I can screw with honor/dishonor decks that do lots of action-phase drawing, kensai decks, or other paragon decks (sometimes). And since my guys are almost always naked, the battle action on it is just fine.

You can draw 2 cards a turn, every turn and not incur the wrath of indecision, you have approximately 0 to worry about.

Moto Damasko wrote:
You can draw 2 cards a turn, every turn and not incur the wrath of indecision, you have approximately 0 to worry about.

No, read the card again Patrick.

Indecision can be played in response to ANY action, as long as the player has drawn cards from 2 OR more action that phase. So...

Lets say you BH exp to draw a card. Then you use your SH "tactical:draw a card" action. After the resolution of that 2nd action, the window to react with indecision opens. I can immediately react at that moment to make you discard two cards.

It's not "more than 2" it's "2 or more".

Now, also keep in mind that this only counts cards drawn from actions, not traits. So the paragon stronghold for spider does not trigger this. Grateful reward does, but grateful reward triggers during battle, so you'd need to draw a 2nd card THAT battle from an ACTION to trigger it.

I wouldn't be too worried unless you are running a deck that does a lot of BH exp/trav peddler/etc. Also, game of dice doesn't trigger this either, because when this card checks, you haven't yet drawn any cards from that action (the cards are drawn at the end of the turn)

Plus honestly you can always save your ring of void for their turn... *twiddles finger* I was going off the wording from a post instead of the card. The first section didn't use the word resolve so I was slightly confused. Either way it'll see play or it won't, it's kinda finicky. I look at it this way, most decks you run meta for run lots of card draw because they need to see it. Instead of running honor or dishonor meta you can run this... so when they BHXP to cycle, and favor cycle you put this down and they cry.

Although I don't know if I could play a card with two crane on it...

Perfect Sacrifice looks good. double the current force of a unit, and if followers are there they get doubled too?! Granted they all die at the end. But for decks with throw away guys or... decks with recursion its rather awesome. Yay dark virtues!

I see that the long-standing tradition of printing bad dark virtues is still alive and kicking.

Edit: Although with Tenbatsu, it might be worth playing just to discard it for something better. I guess it's worth playtesting at least.

Keep in mind that it isn't required to target a paragon, only samurai.

Wedge has always seen moderate play in arcs it's been legal... and wedge prevented the unit from taking actions after it was used. This doesn't. I think this card will surely see play. It may not see a LOT of play, and it may not be immediately apparent which decks will run it... (keep in mind using it on a kensai doubles his total force... including the weapons force)... but it will be run, no doubt

So the Master of Fire... sweet zombie, maggot ridden Jesus. She is just murdering people left and right! Also.. I think she and Nitoshi sho0uld be dating. Thy love murdering their own people to damn the other player. I see burning murderous love is in the air!

Precision... is umm... I do not think I could find room for it in a deck. I think some scout and Mantis decks will like it. But I think even then it will see little amounts of play to only be replaced when a better action comes along.

I think precison could have served the same purpose as outer walls did last arc, but, range 3 ain't gonna kill anything, so it is a no go. Range 4 on the other hand... it would have replaced siege volley in most decks.

Pruto wrote:I think precison could have served the same purpose as outer walls did last arc, but, range 3 ain't gonna kill anything, so it is a no go. Range 4 on the other hand... it would have replaced siege volley in most decks.

Agreed a ranged 4 or a bigger modifier. I would have used it maybe as protection in my commanders but generally not good enough I don't think.

Precision is as good as it could be and still be at even card budget. It's been proven that an unperformed ranged 4 is good enough on a strategy to see play, so one can assume that is just about "baseline" for the card budget for that kind of action. It's not played by EVERY deck, but quite a few find a place for it.

This card trades one force from the ranged attack to give you the flexibility of changing another ranged attacks strength. It's still on budget and the flexibility is what makes it a good card.

That being said, it wont see play in some decks. Ranged 3 isn't that great. It's better than a lot of people give it credit for, but it's still pretty bad in a vacuum. So, taking that into consideration, it's probably not going to go into decks that have a problem with big force units. But it WILL see play in decks that have ways of dealing with big units, or cards that already modify ranged attacks. For example, in my Phoenix TNT deck, I run 3x personalities that give +2 to a ranged attack once per turn, and I run 3x holdings that give +1 to a ranged attack. It's very likely that the action will be a ranged 4 or 5 out of that deck. And THEN you add the possibility of turning a ranged 4-5 from another card in that deck into a ranged 6-7 (or higher when paired with the aforementioned pumping cards) so that you can get there vs large unit decks makes this card GOLDEN.

I see it being played out of mantis scouts, KH scouts, and Phoenix fire shugs. Possibly lion scouts but I doubt it, will have to playtest.

Now, the final part of it's ability... the possibility of giving -2 to a ranged attack. Outer walls was played all last arc and anyone who played against a deck running it knows how frustrating it can be to have a ranged attack negated in this fashion. This effect is INCREDIBLY good and honestly makes the card slightly over budget IMHO. The only thing stopping it is that in this arc, you have melee attacks to worry about (so it can't stop EVERYTHING), and that you don't get the option of boosting a province by 3 strength w/out presence if necessary.

So, again, I see it out of scout decks and Phoenix RA decks. That being said, after playtesting, i would not be surprised if we see it in more decks than that.

Sleep wrote:The only thing stopping it is that in this arc, you have melee attacks to worry about (so it can't stop EVERYTHING), and that you don't get the option of boosting a province by 3 strength w/out presence if necessary.

It does affect Melee attacks.

Gosh wrote:

Sleep wrote:The only thing stopping it is that in this arc, you have melee attacks to worry about (so it can't stop EVERYTHING), and that you don't get the option of boosting a province by 3 strength w/out presence if necessary.

It does affect Melee attacks.

You are absolutely right... the fact that we haven't seen melee attack manipulation yet made me totally gloss over that. In that case, the card just become MUCH better because it works against the most popular scorpion SH, the military phoenix SH, and many clan champs. I think this card is GREAT.