We’ve got two more new cards from the upcoming Legend of the Five Rings expansion, Embers of War – both Strategies this time. Looks like Strange Assembly is getting on the Monk and Elemental keyword action this preview season!
And, because my mother told me that, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, on to the cards with no further commentary . . .
Pillar Tattoo
0GC
Earth * Tattoo
Battle: Choose your performing unbowed Tattooed Monk: Give him +3F. If he is Earth, you may target and bow an enemy card without attachments.
The budoka watched the Dragon monk feel the power of his kami’s blood. “Is he strong?” The poet smiled. “Listen …”
3FV
Ride the Breeze
0GC
Air * Kiho
Battle: Choose your performing unbowed Monk and target an enemy Personality: Move him home. If he moved, and your Monk is Air, negate the Personality’s (future) movement.
“Surrender yourself to the winds, my friend! I assure you, the experience is highly enlightening!”
2FV
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Well, I’ll add some further commentary…
Both cards have some redeeming factors. Pillar Tattoo is essentially A Warrior’s Wisdom and “A toned down version of what you would’ve spent your additional battle action on anyway” in one card. Sometimes you have a Nerve Strike or Engulfing Flames or Volcano tattoo to perform instead, but let’s face it, usually it’s a bow card. So, really, I’ll probably be adding Pillar Tattoo to my monk deck in place of A Warrior’s Wisdom, since it fills essentially the same slot.
Ride the Breeze is good for Enlightenment… between Ride the Breeze and Tsunami Tattoo, we now have two halves of Unnatural Flood. It’s still not as good, but I can see it making into an ambush-based Military Enlightenment deck, as it has decent military use (excluding a personality from battles for the rest of the turn), and it gives a backup to Tsunami Tattoo. Of course, neither one of them will work particularly well in the current environment, as we only have two Air monks (one dragon, one phoenix) and one Water monk (Chukage). Temple of the Elements will help somewhat, but not as much as getting some water and air monks. I see this as being one of those cards that doesn’t get used much in the set its released, but starts seeing play two or three sets down the road, when there are better actions to replace the overwhelming negation of the current start-of-arc environment.
Pillar seems good for a specific deck type (blitz military) though I’m not sure dragon monk can run that well or not. I know a card like that in the lion scout deck I made for my wife would be amazing.
But the only guys who can use Pillar Tattoo to full effect without happening to hit a holding to give you the proper keyword are Togashi Korimi/Oki (who is terrible) and Togashi Hizumi (who costs 10 gold, and is not going to blitz you any time soon.) And the full effect is to bow a card without attachments and give a guy three force. Is +3 force worth the rigamarole of targeting an earth tattooed monk and giving up the awesome honor meta you would get by just playing Brawl instead?
Similarly, there are only two personalities who can use Ride the Breeze to full effect (without help), Asako Karachu, and Togashi Osawa XP. And even if you get the ‘kicker’ for targeting an air monk, sendhome + negating future movement is what I would describe as an ‘okay’ action.
Much like Chris, I really hope that the expectation is not going to be that monk decks just have to play Temple of the Elements and pray to hit it to make their cards as good as average cards which don’t have to spy an elemental keyword.
The sendhome’s okay. Probably one of the better kiho available, actually, which says a ton about the state of the kiho selection.