Imperial Herald: Vol. 1 No. 2: Walking the Way: Designing Decks

Walking the Way

Designing Decks

by Colin Edwards

Colin "Death to Crane" Edwards has been a rabid player and proponent of L5R since it the first release. This issue, we're pleased to bring you his excellent treatise on deck design.

Creating a good deck is central to winning any CCG, and Legend of the Five Rings is no exception. In many cases, the result of a game is in large part decided before the game even begins. The most important part of designing a deck is to ask yourself: "How is this deck going to win?"

Is it going to destroy your opponents in battle? Is it going to hole up and push for the honor win? Is it going to duel your opponents to death? Is it going to load up on cavalry and destroy your opponent's undefended provinces? Or is it going to attempt to render him helpless by using resource denial strategies?

Once you have developed a deck concept/on, choose a Clan that is well suited to the strategy that you want to focus on. It is important not to try to do everything; the bulk of your cards should be chosen according to the way you want your deck to win, the rest to close up any vulnerabilities your deck might have. Avoid the temptation to throw in cards just because you think they are good.

The Dynasty Deck

Making the Dynasty deck is usually very straight-forward; it is hard to really go wrong with it. In fact, many people use "stock" Dynasty Decks that they have pre-prepared for each house, swapping in and out fate cards to create different themes. However here are some of the principles I use when making a new deck:

1. Use between 30 and 40 cards; you want to maximize the chances of drawing important Holdings, Events, and Personalities. The wealth of the house determines how many cards to include in a deck. The numbers I generally use are:

2. Most of your Personalities should be from your Clan. They are cheaper, and more importantly, you get honor for recruiting them. I attempt to time my decks to reach 40 honor, by bringing Personalities out, at about the time I am running out of cards; if you consistently reach 40 honor with 20 cards left, you can probably streamline your deck to be more efficient. Generally, twelve Clan Personalities gets you pretty close to the win.

3. It is critical to include Personalities with low, or even negative, honor requirements in any deck. Those Personalities with high personal honor and low honor requirements are especially important. Also, it is important to include inexpensive Personalities that can be brought out early. Having someone available to defend early on is very important

4. The appraximate ratios I use when sketching out a deck:

5. Some of the all-time great Dynasty Cards:

6. You really have to ruthlessly discard cards that you can not immediately bring in for the first several turns. It doesn't matter who they are, keeping them in your Provinces slows your progress and makes you an obvious early target "Hey, that Dragon ManBeast is a real threat better take it out fast" ... you lose the card and a Province).

The Fat Deck

This is where most the strategy comes into deck construction; making a good Fate deck can be very difficult. As strategies rise and fall, you will start to see a huge variation in Fate Decks. Often you can apply the same Fate Deck to several Dynasty Decks with only minor modifications. In general your Fate Deck should be closely tailored to winning by a certain strategy; never lose sight of how you expect your deck to win. Some basic guidelines:

1. Use a 30 card deck; I have never seen a deck that couldn't be made more efficient by dropping the number of cards You need to maximize your chances of drawing important combinations. Once again, don't throw in cards just because they are good cards. Every card in your deck should serve a specific purpose.

2. The ratios of Followers, Spells, etc I use here change for every deck. However

Castle of Water

Winds of Change

b) Many players overestimate the power of the Rings. Think very carefully about throwing more than the Ring of Earth in; unless the Ring fits your deck strategy closely, don't put It in! It is my opinion that the Ring of Void is the most over-rated card in the game; it can be used very effectively only by a limited number of decks. Most decks would be better off with something else.

c) Don't over-do the Followers. They are vulnerable to having their leader killed off, and are a very obvious threat; the Charge or Frenzy your opponent didn't see coming is often more effective. On the other hand, a limited number of Followers can be very useful; Spearmen are one of the best cards in the game and make almost any deck better.

3. Don't ignore Terrains. They are brutal, and you need a way to deal with them. Always expect your opponents to have a Deadly Ground, Dispersive Terrain, or Entrapping Terrain.

Terrain

This is a list of some strategies I find useful to defeat certain types of decks

Shadowlands Decks - Use Iris Festival and Jade Hand.

Dragons - Summon Fairies and Flight of Dragons.

Crab Clan Decks - Throw in Evil Portents.

Lion Clan Decks - Throw in Breach of Etiquette.

Dueling Decks - Kharmic Strike and Poison Weapon. Use Ninja Thieves to steal pumped up Bloodswords or clear off your opponents Armor of the Golden Samurai.

Phoenix - Plague works nicely (bye bye Scribe, Spirit Guide, etc)

Honor Decks - Explosives to take out honor-producing Holdings, and Evil Portents to hit the Wily Trader and the Crane Liaison.

Attack Decks - Try a Ki-Rin and some Secrets on the Wind. Counterattacks can be devastating; Dispersive Terrain can make anybody look like a formidable army.

Lion -- The Strength of Purity

This is a sample Lion deck that has proven very effective in day to day play. I think it illustrates many of the principles I mentioned above. Like many Lion decks, the deck can win by either a military victory or by amassing enough honor points This deck is designed to exploit the advantages of high honor Personalities. It deliberately attempts to keep the number of rare cards to a minimum; only those rares that I feel are crucial to the deck were included.

Dynasty Deck

3 Copper Mines
3 Jade Works
2 Small Farms
1 Master Smith
1 Temple of the Ancestors
3 Hawks and Falcons
1 Unscalable Walls
1 Inheritance
1 Matsu Tsuke
1 Kitsu Toju
1 Matsu Agetoki
2 Akodo Kage
3 Mastu Imura
3 Matsu Gohei
1 Kakita Yinobu
3 Morito Tokei

Fate Deck

3 Charge
3 Strength of Purity
3 Superior Tactics
3 Rally Cry
2 Block Supply Lines
1 Entrapping Terrain
1 Deadly Ground
1 Counterattack
1 Evil Portents
1 Iaijutsu Duel
1 Samurai Warriors
3 Spearmen
1 Ancestral Lion Clan Sword
1 Ring of Earth
1 Touch of Death
2 Castle of Water
2 Fires of Purity

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