Flavors of CoT: Mongolian Beef flavor

Before this year’s kotei season I had intended to write a series of articles on different decks out of CoT.  The first article “Five Special Ingredient flavor” was the elemental masters deck I won the Puerto Rico kotei with.  Sadly I never published it.  It was an amazing deck to play.  I decided at the time that since celestial was coming out in less than a month it probably wasn’t going to be worth anyone’s time for me to go through with it.

Now celestial has come out and GenCon has come and gone.  I’ve decided to revive this idea.  I’m only willing to post articles on decks that I’ve thoroughly play tested and can confidently say: “This deck rocks pretty hard”.  Every deck that I post will illustrate a different approach to City of Tears.  My goal is to provide you with decks you can draw inspiration from with a coherent strategic focus much in the same way that Nina “The Cardboard Geisha” Illingworth does, except my decks will all be Phoenix.

This deck is the one I played at GenCon. I placed 25th with it going 5/3. It is Mongolian Beef flavor, which is to say, primarily a cavalry deck.  The essential premise is to take provinces early with Cavalry personalities and then finish with strong infantry personalities and powerful battle actions.

The deck:

Stronghold: City of Tears

Personalities (20):

Agasha Ueda x3

Isawa Yutako x3

Houhou x3

Isawa Tanaka x3

Isawa Mizuhiko x3

Shiba Kosoku x3

Shiba Ikokawa

Isawa Emori

Holdings (14):

Silver Mine x3

Clan Estate x3

Diamond Mine x3

War Encampment x3

Traveling Peddler x2

Events/Regions (6):

Private Shrine

Offered Gift

Festival of Drifting Souls

The Loss of Soul

The War of Dark Fire

I am Ready

Actions (18):

The Height of Courage x3

Phantom Blade Kata x3

Final Duty x3

Certain Death x3

Outer Walls x3

Sneak Attack x2

Impressive Resilience

Followers (3):

Cavalry Officer x3

Items (1):

Heavenly Yari of the Phoenix

Spells (16):

Scouring Flood x3

Consumed by Five Fires x3

Suitengu’s Embrace x3

Ritual of Summoning x3

Servitors of Stone x2

Breath of the Dragon

Essence of Destruction

Rings (2):

Ring of Air

Ring of Earth

Explanation of the cards in the deck:

Dynasty:

Agasha Ueda x3

Isawa Yutako x3

Houhou x3

Isawa Tanaka x3

           These guys are self-explanatory.  They are the cavalry part of the deck.  What you should notice about this list is not who’s there but who’s not there: Jinako and Nosloc no Oni.  The biggest mistake I’ve seen most phoenix cavalry decks make is to try to make the entire deck made out of cavalry people.  That’s really unnecessary. You only need enough Cavalry to consistently take the first two provinces.  Jinako and Nosloc no Oni only adds boxable personalities to the deck that come at a non-boxable price.  What’s worse is that Nosloc no Oni exacerbates the problems we encounter trying to meet honor requirements that we encounter from playing Ritual of Summoning and Essence of Destruction.

Isawa Mizuhiko x3

Shiba Kosoku x3

          Mizuhiko and Kosoku provide late game advantage when you’re attacking provinces opposed.  Mizuhiko usually lets you get off the first battle action while Kosoku soaks up your opponent’s first battle action, deflecting it away from your more important personalities.

Shiba Ikokawa

Isawa Emori

          Emori and Ikokawa round out your arsenal in the late game by providing extremely powerful battle actions, making up for the lack of cards you have in hand.

Silver Mine x3

Clan Estates x3

Diamond Mine x3

          You need to buy two cavalry personalities turn 2.  Half of those personalities cost 7.  Having all three of these cards in the deck ensures you can get the gold to do that on a consistent basis.  Additionally each of these cards can cover the cost of Cavalry Officer easily.

War Encampment x3

          War Encampment pays for the most important, powerful spells in the deck.  Ideally on turn 2 you’d like to have a Silver Mine and a War Encampment and you can consider off to a good start.

Traveling Peddler x2

          Yes, I know it’s singular.  Yes, it’s that important.  Card draw is really important in this deck because you need cards for both force and battle actions.  Neither of these things comes with our personalities.

Private Shrine

           You need the force.  Will I be replacing it with Shiba’s Guidance when it becomes legal? Definitely.  For now, however Private Shrine helps.

Offered Gift

Festival of Drifting Souls

The Loss of Soul

            Card draw, card draw and card draw.  If you’re playing a shugenja-based deck and you’re not running Loss of Soul, there may just be something wrong with you.  This goes double for Festival of Drifting Souls.  Both of these cards are amazing in this deck.

            Offered Gift serves a double purpose for me.  One of the problems this deck has is meeting honor requirements because of Ritual of Summoning and Essence of Destruction.  If I see Offered Gift on turn one or two, I’ll gain the honor.  That way I’m not stuck with an extra card in hand that I’ll have to discard and I have a nice little buffer when I get hit with an honor loss.  Later in the game I’ll take the card.  Ultimately, not having to pay 2 extra to buy a personality for honor early on really evens out my gold scheme.

The War of Dark Fire

            The War of Dark Fire is probably the best honor meta in the game.  It usually buys you another turn against honor decks.  In particular it usually makes the difference in games against Dragon and Crane which run a lot of action phase honor gain cards.

I am Ready

             I am Ready gives you an extra battle action that any personality with an attachment can use.  The only thing better than an event that draws me a card is an event that gives me an extra battle action I can use each turn.

Fate:

The Height of Courage x3

            Boo people moving my people where they want them to be.  Yeah people staying where I want them to be.  Height of Courage is pure meta.  I don’t like people using Reinforce the Gates to move my people to provinces where they would be opposed or sending them home with Settling the Homeless.  Both of these things happen a lot.

            I can has ranged 6 for free on the defense?  Yes please.

Certain Death x3

            Consumed by Five Fires works better when your opponent has fewer attachments.  Ranged attacks work better when your opponent has fewer followers.  Unless I start to see more decks without attachments this card puts a significant hurting on most decks out there.

Outer Walls x3

            Most people aren’t aware that Outer Walls has two actions on it.  Yes, it saves provinces and that is one of the reasons I run it.  On a Retribution, Hiruma Tatsuma has 4+3+1=8 force.  Outer Walls moves my province strength to 9.  Any other card I play on Tatsuma to defend myself is likely to get canceled or negated.  The reaction on the other hand wins me games.  Being able to save your personalities from the ranged 5 and 6 attacks costs my opponent cards and tempo.

Sneak Attack x2

            Sneak Attack is part of your end game, when you are fighting opposed battles.  I run two because it’s only useful when I’m fighting opposed battles and hence I don’t want to see it until late game.  There are some match ups where you know it’s not going to be useful like honor.  It will win you games though.  You just have to be careful with it.

Incredible Resilience

            Personally, I think Incredible Resilience is amazing.  In battle your opponent is going to target your people.  Even Crab can’t just sit there.  When they do you get what essentially amounts to a free battle action.  Sure they can target a spud but it’s just one less person to worry about.  There are very few decks I can’t fit this card in.

Cavalry Officer x3

            Cavalry Officer provides force, attachments and, most importantly, followers.  Ideally on my third turn I want to attach Cavalry Officer and its created cavalry follower to my two cavalary personalities and take a province without having to worry about settling the homeless.  Even with Houhou and Ueda as my two personalities Cavalry Officer boosts me to 8 force, which is enough to take most provinces.

Heavenly Yari of the Phoenix

            With 0 cost spells the Yari is excellent.  On the offense I can use it get an added force bonus.  On the defense I can straighten one of my bowed personalities to defend with.

Scouring Flood x3

            Scouring Flood has a good battle action and a force bonus.  It’s offensive uses are obvious.  You can use it on the defense as well to send your defending unit home. Which is great when you’ve just bowed Mizuhiko no Oni for a ranged 7 attack.

Consumed by Five Fires x3

            Every CoT military deck should run Consumed by Five Fires.  My opponents live in mortal fear of this card and rightly so.

Suitengu’s Embrace x3

            A nice solid reusable battle action for free.  Remember what I said about Certain Death and Consumed by Five Fires?  That applies here as well.

Ritual of Summoning x3

            Ritual of Summoning does three things for this deck.  It gives you a force bonus.  It gives you a nice battle action although you have to bow for it.  It also turns your personality Shadowlands making them invulnerable to Fury of the Dark Lord.

            The downside is that it bollocks up your honor requirement something fierce.  One of the things that make this deck interesting to play is managing that honor loss.  I usually buy a personality for honor early.  Tanaka’s lower than box honor requirement makes him a godsend for this deck.

            The biggest dilemma with Ritual of Summoning though is who to play it on.  Houhou is a natural choice, since he’ll come back from the dead.  Many an opponent has faced the terrible carnage that is Houhou no Oni.  Unfortunately though if your opponent has any dishonor tech Houhou no Oni’s reign of terror is short lived which means he’s not the best choice against Scorpion, Crane or any swarm type deck prone to running Game of Sincerity.

            Mizuhiko is an obvious choice too.  Naval ranged 7 is pretty scary.  However it’s a dangerous choice to make if your opponent is running Reinforce the Gates.  Yutako and Ueda are also solid choices mostly because they are cavalry and boxables that need protecting from the Dark Lord’s Fury.  Ultimately the choice is situational.

Servitors of Stone x2

            Servitors of Stone provides you with some meta against bow tech and ways to straight Houhou no Oni etc. after the battle’s done and all your enemies are dead.  You can target other cards with it, giving it some versatility.  In some cases it becomes a Phantom Blade

Breath of the Dragon

            Breath of the Dragon shines out of CoT.  It’s hard for your opponent to plan for it and best of all it can set up a personality for Suitengu’s Embrace or Consumed by Five Fires on the next action.

Essence of Destruction

            This card is awesome.  It takes down big units like nobody’s business.  It’s also another one of those cards that’s really hard to plan for.

Ring of Air

Ring of Earth

            You can conceivably score both of these rings. You will inevitably score the Ring of Earth.  I use Ring of Earth not so much on the offense as on the defense.  Using the Ring of Earth on a province sends a clear signal to my opponent that I’m probably willing to defend there and I’m probably going to kill all your people when I do so why don’t we save both ourselves some trouble and not have a battle there this round?

Play Guide:

            Ideally on turn three you get to attach a Cavalry Officer and take a province.  Otherwise there’s enough force pump in this deck to get the necessary force and The Height of Courage to make sure that you can avoid being thwarted by Settling the Homeless if you don’t get a Cavalry Officer.

            On turn four you’d like to take another province.  That’s not always an option.  You have to look at who your opponent has to defend with and what cards you have in hand.  On turn five you usually take the second province and turns six and seven you finish the deal.

            Having a lot of Cavalry people gives you a lot of flexibility.  Usually I look at my turn 4 and 5 battles with an eye towards which people I really want to kill as well as which province I'd like to take.

            The most important thing to playing any L5R deck is discarding wisely.  Remember that Mizuhiko and Kosoku are late game personalities.  If you see them early on ditch them.  The same is true of Emori and Ikokawa.  Later on, after you've got a good selection of holdings, you want to discard any unnecessary gold.

            Otherwise the deck is very simple.  Attack where your opponent is weakest.  Blow things up judiciously.  Defend when you can inflict heavy casualties.  Most importantly, hit them hard and aggressively.

Pointers for specific match ups:

Unicorn:

Having Cavalry is not an advantage against Unicorn.  When I play against Unicorn I prefer to buy extra gold my second turn.  I’m going first which usually means I can get people out in time to defend myself when they attack me and having the economy advantage fuels my battle actions, which will almost always win me the game.

Lion:

You need to blitz Lion.  You want to Border Keep aggressively to try to see a Yutako and an Ueda and try to take a province 2nd turn.  Since you’re going second you’ll get a compensation holding and you’ll be able to recover from the economic disadvantage blitzing puts you at.  Otherwise they’ll get too many people out for you to handle and eventually overwhelm you.

Mantis:

Mizuhiko becomes a defensive card against Mantis.  Having a Mizuhiko means that you can prevent them from assigning to attack at multiple provinces and that they have to double up with their naval guys to get that first action.  Mantis will also run Game of Sincerity, which can make Houhou stay dead.

Goblin:

While I wouldn’t necessarily suggest blitzing against goblin, you need to hit them very hard and very fast, the way you need to hit Lion; otherwise they’ll overwhelm you.

Phoenix honor:

I can’t beat Shrine of Champions honor with this deck unless I see the right cards.  The combination of restrictionless move home and cavalry personalities to defend with makes the match up pretty much impossible.  Thankfully, the cards people use to meta against phoenix honor don’t work as well against phoenix military.  My worst match up makes my other match ups better.  I can live with that.

Closing:

I strongly encourage you to try this deck.  Phoenix military is a blast to play.  Go forth and blow things up!