Episode 059 of the Strange Assembly Podcast (Embrace: Part 2) is now available for download. Chris, Trevor, Jay, Mike, and Justin continue the Shadow’s Embrace set review, touching on the Spider, Crab, Scorpion, and Crane.
Strange Assembly – Episode 059 – Embrace (Part 2)
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One tournament win at a tiny Kotei tournament is not ‘average’. It’s bad.
But keep pushing your agenda.
“Size matters not.” -Yoda.
Don’t worry, I’ve spent five years pushing my agenda that just looking at raw # of wins is a lousy way to assess clan/deck strength, and I don’t expect that to stop anytime soon.
Pure wins may not be the best way to gauge a clans strength but sometimes even making the cut a lot isn’t accurate either as with the case of Spider, the other top tier clans that consistently made the cut were poor matchups. I’m can’t agree that Spider was average this season.
Did we say Spider was average this season in the podcast? I could be wrong, but I think we said that Spider was doing better than the were in the last legality arc (first part of kotei seaon) but still below average, and that this set wasn’t going to help a ton.
I believe I said they were average in the EoW environment (aka, June). The biggest environmental weakness of Goju IMHO isn’t a particular bad matchup, it’s that Interference wrecks the stronghold and a lot of players knew Goju was a real threat and so were running Interference.
We have an agenda? Why am I never told about these things?
Apparently your agenda is to ignore all of the dragon clan wins in favor of bashing the crab, which you still all hate from CE. For clarity’s sake, Kuon was a beast but, even with duty, broke as it is, crab is still not embassy of the crane good. Part of me thinks its an elitist thing, “crab is easy, so anyone can be good playing it”, but I’d like to give you all the beneifit of the doubt there. More than likely it’s because you don’t have an actual crab player to give their side.
I think more of the disdain for the new Crab box is the fact that Crab got another generically good box which is good for Superfriends, when Bryan said in the Gencon interview last last arc that Shattered Peaks Castle was a mistake and they didn’t want to print generically useful Superfriends-style boxes like that again. Now, Bishamon’s Tower is no SPC, but you get the idea.
Other than that, I don’t think anyone is really upset about Crab’s performance. Crab are at or near the top of power level this arc, but not ridiculously so. But yeah, Duty of the Crab is a really dumb card… I saw Unicorn throwing in a bunch of Crab and playing it last Kotei season. And even though I don’t think Duty was specifically mentioned as the reason Perplexing Guest got changes, there’s a good chance it was the main reason it got changed.
However, I will say that I wouldn’t shed any tears if Crab were more towards the middle of the pack… I did start playing the game in Samurai, and over the last 4 or 5 years, I can’t remember a time when Crab and Lion weren’t both near the top in terms of competitiveness.
I’m confused as to how saying that Crab are really good is the same as bashing. The strength of the Crab overall is better than every other clan when you gauge it by the fact that all of their decks have done well. That doesn’t mean Crab is auto-win, but all of their decks have good tools which are among the best available in the game, especially including Duty.
As a side note, over the 2012 Kotei season the Crab were 2nd with only one win less than Dragon (11 to the Dragon’s 12) and had the strongest making the cut number the entire kotei season.
While we may not have anyone who self-identifies as a Crab player, that’s not because they’re excluded. It’s also not as if we’re talking about Crab having not built and played Crab decks ourselves. Trevor won Orlando with Crab so that has to count for something, right? 🙂
Is there something specifically that bothered you? I’m just curious as you say that we’re bashing the Crab because of hate left lingering from CE which seems like a total disconnect from what I recall anyone saying, which leaves me wondering where that may be coming from.
The only Agenda that I know of for the podcast is to make a semi-entertaining listening experience with some hopefully useful strategy guidance that is probably horribly, horribly incorrect. 🙂
Justin: True enough on all points. Duty could easily be changed to requiring a performing crab at the battle and still be very good.
Mike?: There seems to be a general destain for crab in many of the discussions where they are mentioned. That’s all.
I keep scratching my head over the “good overall” statement. CC is ok at best, with 9ps being its main saving grace. Yasuki has yet to do all that much despite it looking to be very strong now with TSE, it has one kotei win right? I can’t argue KHxp and HotF as being good but, every clan but crane and spider has 2 good boxes.
Excuse me in advance if I’m wrong but, trevor seems to play whatever is strong and everything else is “crap” to him. I don’t really see him as defending any clan. The rest of you seem fairly clan loyal. So No, I do not get the impression most of you have played a crab deck yourselves.
I probably pulled the CE bit from my rear. Sorry, chalk that up to misplaced annoyance.
I could have left out the agenda bit but, it was such an easy way to start the post. 🙂
Let me clarify, I enjoy the podcast and have for awhile. I always respect you all’s opinions, even if I don’t always agree, and its nice to get another playgroup’s opinion on the environment. So, thanks for the great podcast.
I tend to play Mantis as long as there is an acceptable deck to me, otherwise I play whatever inspires me. If I played whatever is ‘strong’ I guess I’d be stuck with Kalani’s, which doesn’t really do anything for me (I’ve said a number of times that its playstyle is the antithesis to my own) or Scorpion. The high honor clans turn me off for the most part (also at odds with my desire to play honor decks. Love me some Kitsune). I played a different stronghold at every kotei this year. ‘Strong’ is not the word I’d use to describe most of them (see: bucket of jank). I played Crab twice, Kyuden Hida and Yasuki Palaces. 5-2 was my worst finish. In fact I hate crab so much that one of my two glass strongholds is Yasuki, which is probably the deck I’ve played the second most over this arc. And a Yasuki Makoto playmat.
As far as ‘crap’ goes, cards need to be either efficient or flexible, preferably both. Anything that doesn’t fit these categories is firmly filed as ‘crap’, no matter how ‘good’ the card may be.
But then again, I never though embassy was a problem. Shikishi was the problem of the deck (and there was ample meta for her).
The only agenda I have to advance is my extreme hatred of the Lion. Hate them. A lot. You should too.
Damn your logic, my chosen clan is being bashed. 🙂
Trevor, sorry if your vocal support of mantis being followed by playing KHxp for a kotei win then switching to yasuki once den of iniquity became legal somehow skewed my opinion of your clan preferences. I saw “likes to play strong decks”, pardon again if I was mistaken.
Just wondering, what is the other glass stronghold?
I always thought it was the 8 starting honor that was the problem with embassy, “Honor that goes first” and all. Well you learn something every day.
I like the lion in general. The marshalling fields blitz looks like fun at least, especially with the summer pack having a few useful blitz cards in it. If your talking about story-wise, my only issue is that they are very “vanilla” and tend to overreact every now and then. (the latter was understatement, fyi).
Any reason for the hate?
Kyuden Kitsune! And I only played Kyuden Hida as as very last minute thing. I was convinced to bounty hunt the night before.
Lion ‘mentality’ (word gives them too much credit) is completely baffling to me. It is basically ‘what is the stupidest, most short-sighted, and needless way to solve this problem. I’ll have three.’ Tactician is another misnomer attributed to them. Hate Hate Hate.
Trevor- LOVIN the Hate, my man. Not that I even hate the Lion, but I love your Hate. Bring the Bliss, brother.
There’s a story? I’m not sure I understand.
Also, I think you might be picking up on some “scout envy”. It’s frustrating to play one of the other themes, and basically always see Crab wind up with better stuff than what you have (Box, champ, clan virtue, Naga Item, any new ‘bow a scout’ action, personalities etc). Crab Scouts is given a level of flexibility that the other scout clans aren’t, as a result of its box and personality base.