So, I thought I had a little more time to come to grips with the Fire Chickens in Ivory, since they’re late in the countdown. But since Chris has decided to *gasp* go out of order, and call me out as doing this, I guess I’ll give you my take on Bushi League Phoenix. OBLIGATORY RULES LINK.
So, my style of deck building is different from Chris’s, but the basic idea of cramming a bunch of cards together and seeing where we are works for me. Let’s start by figuring out what we want to do: we can do Rae Sensei Sam/Shug Synergy, battle Shugenjas, or Honor Shugenjas. Let’s start by looking at why we won’t be Samurai/Shugenja in Bushi: While the personality base is pretty solid with both quality support shugenja and quality meat shields…err I mean samurai, the gold scheme and support spells needs too much rare help. Normally the 3 gold scheme’s pretty good: it looks like the 444 scheme everyone wants to do, but with enough out already to support it. The problem is too many are rare. With Traveling Market out and (unlike Lion) no Suana Dojo in our rare slot, the gold is not good. Combined almost all of the spells we’d want to be running being in the Rare slot and I’m not going to bother with the too many moving pieces deck.
As to the Honor deck, while the starter does give us a few of the honor spells, I feel like on the whole the deck is too slow. Maybe it’s ok for bushi league, but I’m not really inspired. So let’s go for face nuking instead!
Now that we’ve decided to nuke some faces, what cards would be good for the deck? Since this is the Fire Chickens, let’s start by looking at the spells. Our free Rare spells that’d be good to use are: (yes, these are the ones that yojimbo like. But 1 of is insufficient for our needs)
1x Blistering Rain
1x Kiyoshi’s Wrath
1x Sailor’s Warning
Those are all pretty good here. Let’s go ahead and pencil them in. Next let’s expand out to the rest of the military spells we might want to use:
3x Deafening Thunder — shrinking is good setup
3x Fire and Air — pew pew! with run away
3x Fueling the Flames – pew pew!
3x In Awe of the Earth — Boo! Did I scare ya?
1x Koan’s Whisper — Province Dropping
3x Overwhelming Power –Muhahahahaha! … I mean, Force is good.
3x Servitors of Stone — Straighten
3x Steal the Candle’s Flame — Dibs! Make your pew pew moar better!
3x Suitengu’s Embrace — Bow is good
2x Typhoon Surge — Get Over Here!
So, that’s waaaaay too many spells, but trims come later. Let’s jump over to dynasty now that we’ve seen our spells. We need some shugenja to hold on to them. Let’s look at some good spell platforms:
3x Agasha Kyokuta — pew pew! and force
1x Asako Kaitoko • Experienced — may be cut, but in consideration at the moment due to her 4s
1x Isawa Ikariya — we get one from the starter, let’s use him. Reserve is awkward here, but load him with spells later and you get a free ranged attack, so he’s got that going for him, which is nice.
3x Isawa Kosea — Isawa Elvis is an easy choice, what with playing spells like they should be and all.
3x Isawa Kouka — 2F for 4G is pretty good for us, and mixing/matching keywords helps hit thresholds for the few times it’ll matter.
1x Isawa Norimichi • Experienced — you tell the master of earth no. Plus he can pretend to be 6 force.
1x Isawa Shunryu, the Infinite Eye — Shunryu goes in for support. Leave him at home to help out your in-battle attackers.
2x Isawa Uzuyumi — Another support shugenja (thus the 2 of) her ability is almost fake cavalry.
3x Komori Taruko — 3F for 5 is good, plus her straighten means she can use the box or show up for the D while still being on the Offense.
1x Natsumi • Experienced — another cav option.
Now, we run into danger here: for the attack deck the crazy people are pretty good: but as an honorable clan the honor hits are a special concern, especially with everyone and their dog running Nexus of Lies. But they’re good enough, they’re smart enough, and doggone it you can flush them if you need to. Stupid Lying Nexi. But these people are worth it:
1x Asako Chukage • Experienced 2 — big guy so he may get cut later, but 5F cav with an action is nothing to sneeze at.
3x Isawa Hajime — Force, or more bigger force. You decide.
1x The Dark Naga • Experienced — lots more force. Plus he does a nice shot. Just watch that honor.
So, that puts us at 24 people. We’ll probably want to cut a few, but let’s come back to cutting later. For holdings, we’re aiming for about 16 even gold producers: anything else goes into the event slot. So, 242/444 that I like (not trying 343/141 in bushi)
3x Ashigaru Fort — For that last minute defense
3x Coastal Pearl Bed — Cause holdings are good
1x Counting House — Card draw is good
3x Family Library — Late game get back somebody you flushed
3x Fudoist Advisor — Going in for the kharmic. The eyeliner is bonus
2x House of Exotic Goods — We really don’t want to get screwed in the last few turns out of people.
3x Nexus of Lies — Cause 1 444 turn 1/2 can make all the difference
3x Silver Mine — A duh.
1x Temple of Tengen — Card cycling is also good.
And a holding that counts in our event slot:
1x The Jade Temple — From the starter deck. Reuse of spells is good.
I didn’t see any events that I feel I need since I’m not so worried about dishonor. If you are Military Alliance slots in nicely. So, let’s see, that puts us at 24 people, 22 holdings, and 1 event(ish). Only 7 over’s not bad for a first pass. Let’s try to cut one person and the rest from holdings so we’ll have the 16 I like. So, sorry Dark Naga, but you’re expensive and have a large honor hit. Bu-Bye. Let’s cut to two the destroy holdings: Ashigaru Fort and Family Library. Much as I like the Pearl Beds, we’ll be spending our gold so blocking the opponent’s actions isn’t always an option. Since we need one more, cut let’s drop Fudoist Advisor to 2 as well since it’s just their for Kharmic.
Ok, now we need to jump to Fate. We’ve already got waaay too many spells, but let’s add before we subtract. First off, since our box requires discards let’s try to get around that. We don’t have Move the Troops (which I don’t like anyways) so we have to get creative to get around that: cards we can play from discard. Specifically:
3x Frontier Farmer
3x Gumbai-Uchiwa
Now let’s look at other attachments: we’ll want some since our shugenja are awful vulnerable with just spells. I like the Koan’s gear since it plays nice with your shugs:
1x Koan’s Jingasa
1x Koan’s Robes
1x Koan’s Scroll Satchel
1x Koan’s Staff
And followers (picked for their pew pew)
3x Ashigaru Spearmen
3x Firestorm Legion
3x Spearmen
Now we move over to strategies:
2x Contentious Terrain — We need some force. And some terrain meta.
2x Deliberations — Buy some pew pew!
2x Fall Back! — Save a big unit and wake up another.
2x Incapacitated — No, no defense. shoo.
2x Reprisal — Since the force boost is off of attachments, those spells actually help! Hooray!
2x Strategic Withdrawal — Save a big, bowed unit and shrink the enemy
3x Tactical Setback — One of my favorites. Because it’s absent it can save you an early province.
3x The Wrath of Osano-Wo — PEW PEW!
1x Unchecked Fury — One out of the starter. Getting our spells back to untelegraphed is good.
2x Unholy Strike — Pew pew moar!
Ok, so that puts our fate deck at…. 70! Seriously? I need to get better at the pre screen. Ok, what is not helping us very well here?
Ashigaru Spearmen — I like you, but 1 is not a lot of pew.
Firestorm Legion — you’re a big pew, but 5 is awful costy.
I like the Koan cards, but after the Staff and the Spell they drop off quickly as far as performance to cost, so the other three go.
Deafening Thunder — Force jabs don’t hold up to pew pew. cut
In Awe of Earth — Similar, but fear.
Overwhelming Power/Servitors of Stone/Steal the Flame — Your reactive nature hurts, but you’re still good. Cut to 2.
Typhoon Surge — I just don’t think there are many passive decks in bushi.
Fall Back/Strategic Withdrawal do the same thing. Let’s cut the latter.
Deliberations — We have enough pew pew, why buy more mid battle?
Next, let’s trim some more 3s to 2s. As you play the deck you can figure out what’s working to bump and what isn’t to cut:
Tactical Setback
Gumbai-Uchiwa
Fueling the Flames
Suitengu’s Embrace
Ok, after all of that trimming we’re at… 42. I’m ok with that. Should probably trim the last two, but really at this point you should play it some to figure out what those two are. So, finally, our deck list looks like this:
Pre-Game – (1)
Stronghold – (1)
1x The Eternal Temple of the Phoenix
Dynasty – (40)
Holding – (17)
2x Ashigaru Fort
1x Counting House
2x Family Library
2x Fudoist Advisor
2x House of Exotic Goods
3x Nexus of Lies
3x Silver Mine
1x Temple of Tengen
1x The Jade Temple
Personality – (23)
3x Agasha Kyokuta
1x Asako Chukage • Experienced 2
1x Asako Kaitoko • Experienced
3x Isawa Hajime
1x Isawa Ikariya
3x Isawa Kosea
3x Isawa Kouka
1x Isawa Norimichi • Experienced
1x Isawa Shunryu, the Infinite Eye
2x Isawa Uzuyumi
3x Komori Taruko
1x Natsumi • Experienced
Fate – (42)
Follower – (6)
3x Frontier Farmer
3x Spearmen
Item – (3)
2x Gumbai-Uchiwa
1x Koan’s Staff
Spell – (17)
1x Blistering Rain
3x Fire and Air
2x Fueling the Flames
1x Kiyoshi’s Wrath
1x Koan’s Whisper
2x Overwhelming Power
1x Sailor’s Warning
2x Servitors of Stone
2x Steal the Candle’s Flame
2x Suitengu’s Embrace
Strategy – (16)
2x Contentious Terrain
2x Fall Back!
2x Incapacitated
2x Reprisal
2x Tactical Setback
3x The Wrath of Osano-Wo
1x Unchecked Fury
2x Unholy Strike
Good luck with the burninating!
With 3x Wrath of Osano-Wo you really should stick with 3 Servitors of Stone – if you’re bowing your own guys as well as your opponent bowing them, more straighten is good 🙂