The Shadow’s Embrace Preview – Wartime Preparations

Seasons are a funny thing in L5R-land. Not for us is there nostalgic talk of summer being known by the smell of a fresh mowed lawn or the crack of a wooden bat. No, we have Kotei season, Con season, Winter Court. And, most anticipated of all – preview season.

The first Strange Assembly preview today might provide relief to those who hate Open control:

Repeat after me: "I will not accidentally confess to anything."

Event – Wartime Preparations
Unique
Until the game ends, before the second or later time each turn another player’s card’s effect bows any of your Personalities during the Action Phase, negate that effect, and before the second or later time each turn another player’s card’s effect prevent any of your Personalities from assigning, negate that effect.
Even in times of peace, a samurai’s duty is to prepare for war.

There are definitely a lot of cards out there that Wartime Preparations can mess with. On the tougher-to-deal-with “can’t assign” front, you’re certainly going to see Accidental Confession, Delayed Arrival (because Wartime Preparations triggers on the effect itself, it’s one of the very few ways to negate a trait), and Yasuki Daiki running around. Hotei’s Contentment might show up to (Iuchi Sunshi, A Quiet Transaction, Necessary Evil seem less likely). Open bow is less scary because there are actually Open straighten effects and Know No Fear exists, but it still does cute things like negating half of Caught Unawares, and there’s nothing wrong with having some more meta in your deck against Duel of Haiku or Paid Off.

On the other hand, how often do multiple of your guys get hit with the same effect in a turn? Sure, you get tagged with Delayed Arrival or Accidental Confession all the time – but how often does Accidental Confession take out your second-best guy after Delayed Arrival has taken out #1? It happens, but does it happen enough to justify Wartime Preparations? Seems like a tough hurdle for the Event, especially when your opponent can (usually) just save the Confession for next turn.

8 thoughts on “The Shadow’s Embrace Preview – Wartime Preparations

  1. If Delayed Arrival resolves on my turn, I can still Accidentally Confess you on your turn. Quite nice against WED which can reliably bow out most of your attackers but quite a niche meta card.

    1. Delayed Arrival sets up an ongoing effect. But “parent” ongoing effects can create “child” indefinite conditional effects. I was thinking that it would be a distinct prevention effect on the next turn as well. On the other hand, saying that a Personality “may not” assign prevents the choice of assigning them, so maybe you never get far enough to actually have a “child” effect happen. Ugh. So the main thing we’ve learned here is that the L5R rules on stopping things from happening are (still) a gigantic mess. And that this might be even worse, since if it doesn’t stop delayed arrival then the anti “may not assign” part is spectacularly narrow to the point of uselessness.

      Although, yeah, it does smack WED pretty well (especially if the deck was trying to use Governor’s Court).

  2. Caught Unawares bows both personalities at the same time. Based on the wording of Wartime Preparations, it seems its the second action that gets negated. If there were a card that bowed all you personalities at once, it would be able to do so. At least that is what the wording leads me to believe.

    1. Yeah, you’re right. I think I’m mixing up how Magic deals with this (where nothing ever really happens at the same time, IIRC) and L5R (where things really can happen at exactly the same time, such as when you reveal two Celestials off of a Border Keep).

      1. I’m fairly new to the game, I was under the impression that provinces always revealed left to right one at a time, is that not correct?

  3. Maybe I’m missing the effect, but this also helps out against those control decks where they’ll take a bunch of open actions to bow or prevent assignment of your personalities during your turn, yes? I’ll admit my Monksai ran up plenty of times where I had a good 3 or 4 people ready to attack, but after all the open actions I was down to 1 or 0.

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