Preview – Find Your Center (Aftermath)

And here’s your final Strange Assembly preview from the Aftermath expansion for the Legend of the Five Rings CCG (sorry, no Ivory Edition previews yet to accidentally post a month too soon)!

Aftermath_Final-124

Just to save you the trouble of double-checking, that is Mirumoto Shikei in the art (which I like, although he does seem to have two katana instead of a daisho), and I’m assuming that Togashi Noburo is supposed to be Togashi Noboru. Of course, this card still leaves unanswered the question of whether Shikei can find his center while pining over Naleesh over on Desire (oh, Shizue, don’t think I’ve forgotten that it was the Crane who manipulated their breakup in the first place).

As for playability, you can go two ways. If you just want to use the ability for itself, then this sort of Ring card is, I think, typically most useful in a deck that uses lots of Rings (or starts with a Ring in play, or very reliably tutors for and plays a Ring early on, or whatever), but isn’t aiming to win via enlightenment, or only uses that as a secondary win condition. A dedicated enlightenment deck is trying to combo out too quickly to be able to use this enough to matter, and while it likes card draw, it usually doesn’t want to pay gold for it. However, it does have some potential value for an enlightenment deck because you can use it for Ring of the Void when you’re playing it as a Limited, and then use it for Ring of Water when you’re taking the Battle ability.

The Kharmic is a nice touch. That keyword shines most when you have a solid amount of gold late game and don’t need the extra copies of this you drew. And early on you can chuck it for cards you need to get your first Rings into play (or the Rings themselves, as the case may be). Although early on you’re probably going to have a tough time finding the gold to activate Kharmic.

Keep in mind that, although Find the Center lets you straighten a Ring, it doesn’t let you use an ability on the Ring a second time. You’ll have to bow the Ring for other purposes, or spread the printed activations out over both players’ turns.

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