I have been consuming a lot of media recently from various sources about how to build a deck with L5R which compelled me to write this article. It looks like the most widely viewed ones come from team covenant or imperial adviser. In my opinion the ideas presented in it are more for card games in general and not for L5r specifically. This is critical for me as someone who loves L5R and wants it to succeed. Doubly so now that the LCG is just getting started and needs all the new blood it can get. L5R. The game already has a steep enough learning curve and newer players need all the help they can get.

I will take everyone through the way I made my phoenix deck and hopefully this will introduce basic L5R deck building mechanics for use in your other decks. I apologize beforehand for writing such a text heavy article without many pictures as that would more than double the time I need to write. The link to the final deck can be found here.

Stronghold

This is of course Isawa Mori Seido. This is also where your deck building process begins. The stronghold is a card you will have guaranteed access to every game with a powerful ability that can be used every turn. I highly encourage you to look away from any deck building article about l5r that does not begin with the stronghold.

The phoenix stronghold gives the ability to give 2 glory for any character. In theory this will be used in 2 ways. You can either increase the glory of an honored or dishonored character for a stat change or you can use it to increase the glory of any ready character at the end of conflict to virtually guarantee that you end up with the favor. In practice we can see that almost all characters are bowed at the end of conflict trying to win the various challenges. This means that we will be focusing on honoring and dishonoring instead of contesting the favor.

We now have a basic strategy of honoring and dishonoring. Primarily this will be a stat buff or debuff. They also have the additional effect of gaining or losing an honor once the character leaves play. In my opinion a debuff is better than a buff because it causes even unblocked challenges to fail with a 0-0 tie therefore I will focus on dishonoring enemy characters and only honoring mine on rare occasions. I have very limited ability to engage in multiple conflicts a turn while my opponent may have things that enable him to do this furthering my incentive to focus on dishonor.

Dishonor causes my opponent to lose one point of honor every time the character leaves play. Since I will focus heavily on that I can also make it my primary win condition. Reducing an opponent to 0 honor. Since the stronghold has helped me determine this there are three additional things it has helped me determine as well. First my play style for this deck will involve bidding low to siphon off additional honor from my opponent. Second I want a wide board with small characters to cause unopposed challenges further causing honor damage. Third my preferred ring will be fire because of the status effects. Additionally with a name like tsuke how can my preferred ring not be fire.

Provinces

The next thing we look at is provinces. Some of you may ask why? Why not conflict first or dynasty? I prefer provinces first because I am guaranteed to see all 5 of them in my initial draw. My opponent may not reveal all of them but all 5 of them will be there every game. As seeker of the void I am allowed two void provinces.

Kuroi Mori – It is hard to explain how much more difficult life gets for your opponent if this card is on your stronghold. The ability to switch conflicts and rings forces them to spend more cards and generally extends the game helping my win condition.

Shameful Display- I already mentioned how I would focus on honoring and dishonoring so it would be odd not to include this.

Meditations on the Tao- One of my main strategies is to generate honor loss thru unopposed challenges. This province helps me by removing a character one turn early. This potentially causes any dishonor honor loss to happen one turn early as well.

Manicured Garden – I am bidding low which means I want cards. This would suggest fertile fields. I also want a wider board which means more fate. I will have other cards to generate card draw later but not a lot to generate fate which leads me to select this.

Rally to the Cause – As part of the dishonor strategy I want my opponent to spend cards. This leads him to draw more causing further honor loss. Changing the challenge to a weaker stat would help with this. Others may prefer elemental fury and I can understand that choice.

Dynasty

Next we go to Dynasty. Why Dynasty before Conflict? The reason is most of your tribals will be found here. In this deck we are of course trying to exploit the shugenja tribal and courtier tribal. The characters you include in your dynasty deck will have a bigger impact on the cards you include in your conflict deck than vice versa. Let us go thru my picks.

Holdings

Notice I run 3 storehouses and 3 libraries. This is because in an ideal game I plan to bid low. Having conflict cards come from the dynasty deck help me bleed out honor more efficiently.

1 cost

You may notice that I have a lot of one costs. This is because I need multiple bodies on the table to be able to initiate conflicts hopefully generating some that are unopposed. If the one cost characters are blocked and lose the challenges then the opponent is usually spending a higher cost character. Naive Student, Otomo Courtier, and Solemn Scholar are my choices. 25% of my deck are one cost characters. The student allows me to draw a card and the solemn has a powerful conditional ability that my opponent will usually have to spend cards or characters to counter act. This also provides them extra incentive to over commit to defending against earth ring attacks increasing the value of my cheap attackers. Notice that the peacemaker is absent. I did this because first he does not share any of the relevant tribals and second because he cannot attack. I need my characters to be able to poke as necessary.

2 cost

A lot of 2 costs are also included. Miya Mystic, Asako Diplomat, Meddling Mediator, and Adept of the waves. Another 25% of my deck invested in the 2 cost slot. Notice also that 25% of my deck is cheap non unique shugenja. This allows me to generate decent sized supernatural storms. Asako diplomat directly contributes to dishonoring the opponent which feeds into my win condition and meddling mediator takes an honor or fate directly from my opponent. Adept also gives me covert which can be used to generate unopposed conflicts or be used to force a defense to prevent an important character without fate bowing. I also want my opponent to help me achieve my win condition. To accomplish this I made 50% of my dynasty deck 1-2 cost characters giving him plenty of opportunity to use assassination. That is 3 honor I don’t have to work for.

3 cost

I have 5 three cost characters in the deck. Yojimbo is an easy fit. There is so many characters he protects that its hard not to include him. Of the remaining two choices I selected Masahiro. My preference is to dishonor the opponent rather than honoring myself so I would not be using the 4 glory of the serene warrior. Masahiro is also a shugenja and another key word never hurts. The next time I need a slot though Masahiro is the one who will be pitched for it. The 3 cost slot is weak as there is nothing that truly stands out in it. There are just no better options.

4 and up

Tsukune, Atsuko, and Fearsome Mystic round out the last 8 cards. Tsukune triggers rings allowing me to achieve incremental advantage every turn. She would usually be able to trigger air or earth both of which usually translate to additional honor damage. Atsuko carries a self buff which the opponent has spend cards to overcome leading to a more starved hand. Mystic while being the weakest of the three can still remove fate from characters leading to a more open board which give more opportunities for unopposed challenges.

Conflict

Attachments

It is hard not to include 3 fans and 3 katanas in any deck. In fact I would look long and hard at any deck which did not have them at this point in time. Cloud the mind is a luxury I can afford with all the shugenja I run. It helps contain troublesome characters like doji challengers or spirit callers. Notice that pacifism and grasp the earth is missing. Pacifism works directly against what I want to achieve. I want my opponents characters engaging me and bowed so I can take advantage of unopposed challenges later on. Grasp the Earth while useful in theory has a delay. By the time you use it the defender would have already moved whoever he wanted in.

Characters

I have two in clan choices here. Initiate or Seeker. At first glance seeker seems like the better choice as he carries two tribal keywords. I selected initiate because I need the flexibility to be able to poke in a military or political challenge without spending any additional cards. As you will recall my primary ring is fire. This means that the seekers secondary ability is of less use to me whereas the ishiken has one that may be valuable from time to time.

Events

Events are where decks usually differ. Given that I am running Shugenja and Courtier tribals I selected events which help with this. For shame works with courtiers and potentially dishonors opponents. Court games does the same on a more general basis. Since the enemy is giving me honor for the privilege of drawing cards I am more confident in including three assassinations as well. They also help clear the board of defenders. As you can tell I do not really want to engage the enemy. I would prefer that I get unopposed challenges and if in a conflict for my opponent to spend cards even if it means I lose the conflict. This leads me to include three displays of power so that I can get the valuable ring effects while bowing my opponents characters. My province selection also gives me confidence that even if my opponent were to reach my stronghold he would take time in destroying it. Against the waves and supernatural storm both work with my shugenja tribal. They generate additional characters that are ready for attack or bow opposing shugenja leading to more unopposed challenges. Banzai while not a fit thematically is just a good general use card which rounds out my deck.

Splash

Earlier on I said that I was baiting my opponent into using assassination. Since I do this I include a splash that can counteract that. Since I am not focused on honoring my characters crane and voice of honor is out and forged edict and scorpion is in. Since scorpion is already in the next cards I will include are countermeasures for those that give me trouble. Spyglasses generate card draw for my opponent and reprieve allows characters to stay an extra turn. Cloud the mind also turns off potential abilities. Calling for favors was included to deal with all these. Notice the splash is chosen to further the overall strategy of the deck.

At this point people will be wondering where are the routs or outwits? How about the way of phoenix or Know the World? Sending home people unbowed is counterproductive to my overall strategy. In any case with 50% of my deck being one or two cost characters it is unlikely I would have someone big enough to use it. Way of Phoenix and Know the World may be nice luxuries but with one natural card draw a turn I need every card I get to be able to have an immediate impact on the board.

Conclusion

I hope I was able to help some new players learn how to construct an L5R deck with this article. Remember the stronghold is there from the beginning of the game to the end. Your entire deck should work with it and exploit what it wants to do. Even the same clan with a different stronghold will play differently. Keep this in mind and everything will fall into place. It is not a coincidence that I spent a lot of time on the stronghold section of this article. Work with I wish everyone a long happy stay in Rokugan. Banzai!