The Red Lion
This is a guest article by Akodo Hato outlining the evolution of his current Lion deck from the start of the game to achieving Lion Hatamoto again at the recent Cork Kotei.
…Elemental Cycle – Lion
In this article we look at the Lion cards in the Elemental Cycle. To give us the lowdown on the Lion we have Trevor Holmes. Trevor is a 2 time Lion Hatamoto who tested the new Lion stronghold extensively coming up to the Houston Kotei and posted a detailed write up following the event. He also creates a fantastic range of L5R themed wood products.
The Ten Orders – Elemental Lion
The Elemental Cycle has given us plenty of food for thought as new archetypes emerge from the increased card pools for all clans. Excitement is in the air from all the shiny new tools we have at our disposal. Unfortunately, not all clans are created equal, and if I was to rank the clans in terms of power as I feel they stand after the Elemental Cycle, it would go a little something like this: …
The Imperial Gauntlet — Decks to Test Against
Top players prepping for a tournament will put together a range of the decks they expect to face and play their chosen deck against this ‘gauntlet’. The first difficulty with this is picking out the right decks, hopefully, I’ve done a decent job below but any suggestions are welcome. Different environments have different playstyles and sometimes a deck that will do well in one area will underperform in another. At the most basic, does your environment typically bid high or low during the draw phase? Just that simple norm can shift which decks come out on top. This might mean you need to shift your playstyle to get the best out of each deck. The hard part then is getting the games in. Practice, practice, practice.
The Imperial Environment
The first Imperial tournament is going to be at PAX south on January 12th followed by Cork on 27th January. So far, we have only the faintest idea of where the clans stand relative to each other as the Imperial cycle added 120 cards to the small starting card pool. At the end of January, we will have a pretty good idea, but that’s no good for us now. This Christmas, Imperial Advisor is giving you the gift of rampant and wild speculation. We’ve had limited testing and nothing to back it all up with. I’ve included win rates based on the results from the Lotus Pavilion tournament website. As tournaments, you’d hope that it would be a little more accurate, but that could still have a lot of noise. With that aside, we present, the Imperial cycle tier list.
Imperial Cycle – Lion
With the Imperial cycle finally out, let’s have a look at the Lion specifically to see what cards in the new packs go into their decks.
Imperial Cycle – Neutral
Although not a faction, the Neutral cards are the most important in any pack. They are playable by everyone and have the greatest potential impact on the meta. For the Imperial cycle a few stand out.
Clan Focus – The Lion
The Lion clan are famous for their prowess on the battlefield and their uncompromising adherence to the code of Bushido. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen the majority of their cards from the base set and have had an opportunity to play some games with the Lion deck facing up against the previously revealed Crane deck. This has given us some insights into how the Lion clan play and also some of the intricacies of the game overall. Join with me as I go through each of the revealed cards and discuss their implications for the Lion.