Hello! Some of us from the Crane Clan Discord server have come together once again to take a look at the latest L5R Premium Expansion, Children of the Empire! Here we are going to be looking at the cards specifically with a focus on Crane cards, some neutrals, and a few potential splashes to see how we think they will perform within the context of a Crane Deck. Please enjoy our review!

CRANE CARDS

Ichigenkin Soloist

Overall Rating – 1.4/5

Chuterêve

Not as bad as it looks like at first glance but still bad. The only competitive logic to play this would be a need of a filler 1 drop in the dynasty deck. The composure effect is mostly irrelevant as your opponent will rarely want to target a 1 drop 2 pol with anything. I guess if you really need more meme in your life you can also tower this in an attachment heavy deck.

Rating: 2/5

Asahina Neph

So much for the Composure mechanic eh folks? I had hoped we would get a cool one to go with all our dueling but this one is a real dud. Its smaller than Doji Whisperer and how often are you like “Man, I hope they don’t target my Doji whisperer with their cards.” It gets .5 for being a courtier I guess?

Rating: 1.5/5

Daidoji Erik

Basically a worse Doji Whisperer. But Whisperer is 3x in all Crane decks, so does losing 1 political skill really make the difference between auto-include and not worth playing? I’m afraid the answer is yes, because 1 drops have the inherent problem of messing with passing fate a lot of the time.

Rating: 2/5

Kakita Onimaru

I want to like this character but there just aren’t enough triggered actions in the game worth worrying about to justify trying to activate her Composure trait. Without that, she’s just a 1 drop, and we already have better options than this.

Rating:1/5

Doji Liforre

Basically our worst drop 1, although it’s pretty close to the power level of Asahina Artisan. The effect is strangely situational, which isn’t really what you want for your one drops.

Rating: 1.5/5

Courtly Challenger

Overall Rating- 3 /5

Chuterêve

This one is a wild card and already the source of a lot of debate. Courtly Challenger is one of these characters that either will prove extremely oppressing if a deck can make her work reliably or will just be quite disappointing.

I will reassure everyone by starting to say that the fact that Courtly Challenger has the duelist trait is awesome because it synergizes so well with the bow effect of Kakita Academy. /sacarsm

The first effect printed on the card is largely irrelevant. You are almost never going to trigger a duel you can’t win with Courtly because giving 2 cards to your opponent would be a disaster. You also really do not want to start a duel with Courtly Challenger non-honored given that her base stats are pretty weak for dueling anyway.

The duel itself has a very strong reward. Draw 2 written on a 2 drop is certainly quite good to make an impression. If the card wasn’t a dash military, I would have given it a minimum rating of 4 very easily but the dash is really the part that makes it tricky. Your opponent can play around it and without some help like Doji Challenger’s ability, some board state will just make it impossible to have a small enough duel target for it.

I heard that some people are worried or complaining that the body could be assassinated easily, making it tricky to start investing the necessary attachment on it to win a duel. I personally think that it’s almost a non-issue if we are cautious enough about it. Assassinate is already the first card that we keep our Voice of honor for. Just don’t play her if you don’t have any event cancel up. Alternatively, some fingers of jade can do a great job helping.

Rating: 3.5/5

Asahina Neph

I usually try to be optimistic when thinking about new cards (probably where the extra .5 comes from) but I just have a hard time seeing a place for this guy. Generally investing in two drops (which you probably need to do to win the duel) isn’t great and for similar reasons heavily fating two drops (to maximize the value of that investment) also isn’t great. I would consider her with Asahina Artisan for now, but that’s probably it. Drawing cards is sweet, but I’m less excited to do it at a 2:1 honor rate.

Rating: 2.5/5

Daidoji Erik

Drawing 2 cards is good. Having to win a political duel during a political conflict (because of the ‘-’) with a 2-cost body with 2 base political skill is a tall task though, that you will probably only accomplish by wasting Way of the Crane / Court Games / Ornate Fan on the Courtly Challenger. On top of that, there is absolutely 0 synergy with Kyuden Kakita and Kakita Dojo :(.

Rating: 2/5

Kakita Onimaru

I am not sure if this card is incredibly broken or complete garbage. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s somewhere in between. Gaining 2 cards is POWERFUL, so powerful that you cannot afford to ever lose the duel. At only 2 Pol, he is going need card support to get into a position where he can win a duel, at which point he will still end up costing a LOT of honor since your opponent will never defend against it with someone who could easily be bully dueled. And of course, there is the ever present Assassination that threatens to his parade at any time.

But like I said, your opponent will never go to battle against him with anyone who even might get caught in a duel. So, potentially, Courtly Challenger might serve as a Pol poke defender kind of like Shizuka Toshi. Also, in a dueling heavy deck that I think will be more prominent when the Crane set comes out, I think Courtly Challenger’s duel will be another useful tool for activating a number duel combo’s, like Proving Ground. Testing will ultimately decide how useful she is but I am going to give it a high rating out of pure optimism that things will work out well.

Rating: 4/5

Doji Liforre

On command duel that you don’t mind losing TOO MUCH is just what you want in a deck relying heavily on duels. It’s not incredibly impressive otherwise, but it should end up being pretty good in the correct shell.

Rating: 3/5

Paragon of Grace

Overall Rating – 3.3/5

Chuterêve

Tyler (L5R designer) confirmed that despite the wording the action is supposed to work like Brash Samurai so your opponent can have characters in the conflict and you can still trigger the effect.

The Bushi trait is mostly irrelevant right now but it’s still a fun little addition. The stat of the card fall a bit short from being exciting because of the 1 glory, making this having less political stat honored than our others 3 drop and less military stat honored than Kaezin or the Menacing Iron Warrior. Also, being non-unique hurts the card in the Phoenix matchup, a clan that he is quite dominant recently.

The ability is a good one and probably 2/3 of the time; you will get the random discard effect by having the Parangon honored. I don’t think this characters totally fits our current competitive decks but if Crane hand control deck end up being a thing, it will be partially because of this character.

I would say that Parangon of Grace is not quite there yet but the potential is here.



Rating: 3/5

Asahina Neph

I want to like this card but I’m not sure. I want hand-hate-Crane (Shigeru, spies at court, this card, etc) to work, but I’m just not sure if its a thing yet. More than that, we already have two good cards that care about being alone and if you’ve ever flopped them after turn 2 you know it can sometimes be hard to get the alone condition to trigger. I can tell you it’s the first thing I’m going to try, but weather or not it works well enough to stick around is TBD.

Rating: 3.5/5

Daidoji Erik

It was confirmed that ‘participating alone’ means the Paragon has to be the only character on your side, not the only character including opponents. That means the ability will go off almost every turn. The non-honored effect is already good in most situations (sometimes your opponent might have dead cards, but not that often) and the honored effect is great. Unless you are pushing hard for the dishonor win condition, this is an easy replacement for Kakita Asami in my opinion.

Rating: 4.5/5

Kakita Onimaru

Discount Kitsuki Investigator is certainly interesting. There is a good chance that this character can randomly eliminate one of your opponents most critical cards, or at the very least provide the ever coveted hand advantage. However, I simply cannot get that excited about an ability that ranges from my opponent getting to discard the least useful card in their hand to use against me or hoping the RNG gods are in my favor. I do wonder if this and Spies at Court can be combined to make a deck that absolutely eats an opponent’s hand, but that might be a bit of wishful thinking on my part. With the fresh slew of new dynasty options in this set and coming on the horizon, I wonder if this character will even see play in the long run.

Rating: 2/5

Doji Liforre

Paragon of Grace might just become one of the best Crane cards that never see play. Having only one Glory is a little bit underwhelming, especially with this text box, but the effect and overall body/traits are good. If the Crane card denial deck become more prevalent, this could be very good in it, but I have my doubts. Our 3 drops slot isn’t extremely crowed at the moment though, so this might find a x1 room in the meantime.

Rating: 3.5/5

Kakita Toshimoko

Overall Rating – 4.6/5

Chuterêve

Crane flagship duelist, very popular character amongst old lore enthusiast.I can’t help but think that his art could have been way better. I still have my hopes us that one of the alternate card art of the Crane fiction will be Toshimoko.

I am usually not fond of 4 drop statline because for one more fate, you can just play a 5-drop with a way better body but still, Toshimoko has one of the best statline for a 4 drop in the game. Crane lack of good military stats on non-assassinable body already makes Toshimoko a bit tempting.

Before delving into his ability, I want to clear a misconception: You do not need to play a full attachment or duel deck to make duel playable. Fine Katana/Ornate Fan are already in almost all Crane decks and they offer the best stat ratio for cost possible. Toshimoko honored and with two Katana is already a 10/5. Just throw a couple of Kakita Academy in your decks and you are almost ready to go !

Toshimoko’s ability will outright win some games but also will be really marginal in some others. If you lose a duel in defense against a big opposing character, Toshimoko will probably not be able to win his duel (but at least might be able to steal some honor). His duel obviously starts to shine against swarm and is very welcome against Unicorn rising.

One of the most powerful uses possible of Toshimoko is bringing him in the conflict bowed after he attacked or already defended one conflict this turn. This can be achieved with Favorable Ground but also Formal Invitation (a card that was already playable before) or even Favored Mount.

Is Toshimoko the Crane duelist character that finally will show the world that we are the masters of Iaijutsu ? I am optimistic that he is.

Rating: 4.5/5

Asahina Neph

The Grey Crane himself! Toshimoko thankfully has competitive stats for his cost and gives us some much needed mil skill. But lets talk about the real spice here: his text box. First the negatives: You can’t use his duel with any “dueling matters” cards since it necessarily happens at the end of a conflict so no Storied Defeats from this guy. On top of that, his text box might as well not exist of he doesn’t lose any conflicts which seems not great since you don’t really ever want to lose conflicts. That said, lets look at the positives: he can singlehandedly hold back any attack in the game as long as he can stay in the conflict and win his duel! Ideally, you probably use him to offensively to break something, then use a Favorable Ground or something to move him in on defense and have him negate an attack. Keeping him larger than his opponents might be tough as he will really need some Katana’s to get his mil up, but I bet he’ll be pretty annoying for our opponents to deal with (until he gets clouded).

Honestly I’m not sure how he’s going to work in practice, but on paper he sure is cool and I think still a good card despite that maybe not so glowing review

Rating: 4/5

Daidoji Erik

So you want to win conflicts, eh? Not if this guy has anything to say about it. With a base military of 4, he can easily get to 8/10 by being honored and equipping a sword or two. Then the real fun starts: every time your opponent is trying to win a ring or even break a province, they had better bring a massive military body or be willing to spend a lot of honor to get there. It works in political conflicts as well.

Because his ability is an interrupt to your opponent winning the conflict, you also prevent Pride and all their other reaction-on-win triggers if you win the duel. If you lose the duel and use reactions to the duel, they also take place before the ‘determine winner’ step, so for example if you could honor Toshimoko as a reaction to the duel with a certain Crane stronghold, the +2 will also count toward determining the winner and whether the province breaks.

Rating: 5/5

Kakita Onimaru

God, I love dueling.

I am fairly certain decent players will have a gameplan prepared to counteract Toshimoko without too much effort, but the undeniable fact is that this is a character that MUST be respected or he will lock out the game very quickly. And that is just in his base form. When included into a dedicated dueling deck he can become even more monstrous, gaining a number of resources as he prevents your opponent from making any meaningful impact.

Perhaps my favorite aspect on this card is that he only needs to be present to activate his ability. This give new purpose to cards like Formal Invitation and Favored Mount, allowing him to be useful even if he is already bowed. Heck, I might just play Hawk Tattoo and use it as intended!

Rating: 5/5

Doji Liforre

Well, that’s a duelist. Effects that only work when you lose are very often way less good than they look, but completely nullifying a conflict with a duel that you don’t mind losing is indeed very powerful. Even if you don’t use his ability, the huge body, alongside the « Duelist » trait, make this one of the best character you can play in both a control or a duelist/voltron deck. I predict we’ll see a lot of Toshimoko in the incoming future, and that it’s considerable support for the « Duelist » archetype.

Rating: 4.5/5

Kakita Dōjō

Overall Rating – 4.3/5

Chuterêve

I like the design direction to put support duel card on holdings rather than only characters or conflict cards. Kakita Dojo will be without any doubt a very important part of duel decks or even decks incorporating some basic duel elements and is currently the only payoff for characters with the Duelist trait (Insult on Injury never existed).

The non-duelist related ability is situationally useful and makes us not feel to bad to flip that holding with no duelist in play. The duelist-related ability is the main reason why we will be playing this card. Like most duels, it will be more efficient against decks that do not run a tower-ish strategy but even against these kind of decks, I expect us to have some targets reliably for it.

An essential question before including Kakita Dojo in our decks is : How many duellist characters do we want to run to trigger that reliably ? My bet would be that Challenger, Toshimoko and 1-2 Kaezin might be enough to run it as a 2x.



Rating: 4/5

Asahina Neph

This card is cool as its a duel we don’t have to spend a conflict card to initiate for stuff like Storied Defeat (if you aren’t dueling with a duelist) and eventually Kyuden Kakita. It’s effect is okay without a duelist, and great with one. I was thinking how often I have a chance to fire Menacing Iron Warrior to any effect and it ins’t very often and this is very similar so its gets an “okay” from me there. But the potential to bow someone or even just threaten a Storied Defeat from anyone (if you can make other use of their ability) is pretty good.

Rating: 3.5/5

Daidoji Erik

Good holdings are good, and in my opinion we badly needed at least one more of them. Getting a +1 holding on Magistrate Station feels great. The main ability is of course the ‘duelist’ part, but I think ~9 duelists is already enough (remember Doji Challenger is an automatic 3x duelist). Even the non-duelist effect can be useful.

I expect this to be at least 2x in basically all Crane decks, and it will only get better with more duelists and duel synergies.

Rating: 4.5/5

Kakita Onimaru

This, ladies and gentlemen, is going to be the backbone of many Crane decks for the foreseeable future, dedicated dueling or not. And between this and its sister Mirumoto Dojo, I think this is the superior version.

The beauty of this card is that as long as you activate it with a duelist, it’s a win win. I can’t imagine the first part, preventing the triggering of abilities, will be much of a factor most of the time but it will be a deterrent for anyone with a repectible ability. But the bow if the winner is a duelist is significant because there are almost no duelists outside of crane. So you can safely bid 1 in most duels and leave your opponent with an option: bow, or forfeit honor.

Further, if this is in a heavy dueling deck, it is a dynasty side duel in which you get to select the target, letting you option if you simply want to bully duel to trigger any number of effects.

This card is why Rebuild is on the restricted list now.

Rating: 5/5

Doji Liforre

One of the best reason (aka payoffs) to play duels, alongside Storied defeat. I doubt those kind of « Duels matter » decks will be relevant pre-Dynasty Pack but should definitely part of the metagame after it. It should be noted that this is a prime example of « Very good effects if I win, don’t care if I lose » duel, which should be the key for a good Duel/Choke deck.

It should also be noted that Crane is severely lacking good holdings so this make this card even better!

Rating: 4.5/5

Iaijutsu Master

Overall Rating – 2.9/5

Chuterêve

+1/+1 for 1 is not really what we are supposed to want from an attachment but it’s actually not that bad in a duelist/semi-duelist decks because it’s not restricted and therefore, allow to improve a character stats further than just 2 fantana.

The ability is decent but not exciting and the fact that it allow to bid 0 make it an interesting option for any potential dishonor duel deck. Even in a “normal” deck, it can allow honor bleed from your opponent a little more and combined with the others duels that you might want to lose willingly; it can end up making the accumulated honor loss pretty important. Aside of that, by allow to bid 6, Iaijustu Master can virtually be considered as a +2/+2 instead of a +1/+1 when it comes to duel.

Despite all that, I am worried that Iaijutsu Master is not doing enough to justify his inclusion as a 1 cost attachment, especially if it is the only one -or nearly only one- 1 cost attachment here.



Rating: 3/5

Asahina Neph

The direct point of comparison for this is Kakita Blade. Both give you effectively +2 to a duel stat and can gain an honor. With this you can bid conservatively and adjust to win, or bid to win and adjust to save an honor if they bid low. Or you can just bid 1 and go to 0 if you don’t care. So basically you trade a natural mil 1 boost and honor on win, for an unrestricted flexible honor gain on a duelist. I think its a legitimate option, especially as it works against “set” cards like Unleash the Djinn and can always ensure an honor gain. Of note though is that it might be tempting to run Seal of The Crane to give this more targets but be not fooled! If your opponent removes the seal and the character is no longer a duelist this card falls off too. This is for heavy duelist/dueling decks only pretty much.

Rating: 3/5

Daidoji Erik

Iaijutsu Master gives you a lot of flexibility in either trying to win a duel or stealing an extra honor. Even outside the possibility of going to 0 or 6 I think that is somewhat valuable. The real place for this is in a dueling deck where dishonor is a big win condition. However, remember you have to attach it to a duelist and you can only use the reaction once per turn.

As with the other attachments that cost fate, you have to run a good number (I would say 6+) of them to mitigate Let Go / Calling in Favors.

Rating: 3/5

Kakita Onimaru

I like this card.

Obviously the ability to fine control the result of duels is tremendous in of itself, relieving a lot of pressure in trying to guess what your opponent is going to bid and turning bully duels into honor factories. Its real strength is being able to push your bid down to 0, allowing you to syphon some honor from your opponent while you duel them.

Rating: 3/5

Doji Liforre

Yet another way to choke honor. Still, it’s slightly unimpressive otherwise and would only work in a completely all-in duel deck.

Rating: 2.5/5

Storied Defeat

Overall Rating – 4/5

Chuterêve

Now, that’s a real duel payoff ! Aside of the anti-synergy with Kakita Academy or Duellist Training, it’s a very strong effect even without the kicker effect. With Children of the Empire alone it will be hard to take advantage of it because we still need more non-bow duel. If it has to be tried currently it would be in a deck with Policy Debate as the RL card as it seem very strong with it. Once the Crane clan pack is released I have very little doubt that people will learn to fear Storied Defeat.

Rating: 4/5

Asahina Neph

The card I’ve mentioned in half of my other reviews! This card is good. This is to dueling as Void Fist is to monks. Not as strong, but has a still impactful payback if you can have the bigger body. If we duel, we pack this card at least 2x. I think as we can throw out seemingly innocuous, minor duels that would have very little effect (I think Kakita Dojo will offer a lot of chances for this) and our opponent has to respect that we could have this card and maybe be so kind as to give us some honor for the threat.

Rating: 4/5

Daidoji Erik

The effect is amazing, especially considering you have the option to pay 1 extra fate to also dishonor their character. Unfortunately it does not work very well with Duelist Training, Kakita Dojo and Toshimoko, so ideally we need some more non-bowing duels to make use of this.

Because the option is in the effect (after the ‘-’), your opponent has to decide to cancel Storied Defeat before you decide whether to spend the fate. If they do not cancel the bow, and you pay for the dishonor, they still have the option to cancel the dishonor effect (just like cancelling the second +2 of Banzai). However, the rules people tell me that Ready for Battle is played after you decide and resolve whether to dishonor, so keep that in mind.

Rating: 4/5

Kakita Onimaru

Mind Games: The Card

The fact that your opponent knows this card exists is what makes it so exciting. Any duel that they would normally ignore now becomes a potential bow, making them second guess if they want to go all in or not. Even better, that this card does not activate right away leaves the potential for its activation in your hands. Any character that has lost a duel now has a Sword of Damocles hanging above them, a threat that might stop an further investments from being played on them. All of that is before the Dishonoring is even considered. Between the potential bow or even Noble Sacrifice, this is also a good way to bait out your opponents protections. Just from the THREAT of this card.

Rating: 4/5

Doji Liforre

Bowing anyone for 0 is very strong and the added benefit of potentially turning on Noble Sac is simply superb. You obviously only want to play this in a deck with a decent amount of duels, and especially a decent amount of duels that don’t bow or return home.

It should also be noted that the simple fact that this card exist will make your opponent afraid of every single duel you initiate (even “bad” ones) which is even stronger, whether or not you actually run this in your deck. Let’s be honest though, you probably should.

Rating: 4/5

Try Again Tomorrow

Overall Rating – 2.9/5

Chuterêve

Interesting tool that can be used either on offense or defense for different effects. A bit too much requirement to probably be worth the inclusion in our usual decks but if an honor stall deck becomes a thing; this card could be looked at.

Rating: 2.5/5

Asahina Neph

A flexible 0 cost send home seems good to me. We have a lot of courtiers and a lot of honor effects so this should be on when you want it to be generally. You can attack in and try to force a commit, then come home and swing big later (the ol Challenger FG play) or just send people home as they attack your box. Not more than a 1 or maaaaaaybe 2x if you’re spicy, but a solid card.

Rating: 3.5/5

Daidoji Erik

Can you guess what my favorite fate cost for events is?

Unfortunately an honored courtier is easier said than done. The only good ones that come to mind are Yoshi, Asami, Fumiki and Paragon of Grace. However, you do get the flexibility of either retreating yourself when you are attacking, or removing an attacker when you are defending.

I think this could be a solid 1x in all Crane decks, and more than that is specific builds.

Rating: 4/5

Kakita Onimaru

I was one of the few people running Outwit for a long time, and even I stopped playing it after a while. And there is a reason for it. Send home by itself isnt very exciting since there are 4 potential conflicts each round, and unlike Void Fist this card isnt bowing anyone. And while it has no cost or POL check, not being able to use this card offensively really hurts it IMO. There is potential in using it on yourself to eject from a conflict, and having and honored courtier chump-defend a province has its appeal, i feel like this card will struggle to find a home in anyplace other than a dedicated courtier build. Which sounds odd: “A crane deck without many courtiers?”. Yeah, I know, but the number of courtiers in Crane decks have actually been dropping for a while, and since most of these new duelists seem to be bushi, I feel like that gap is only increasing.

Rating: 2/5

Doji Liforre

Send home effect (well, not bowed) have seen generally very low play and I doubt this will be an exception. The kind of decks that want this effect are often very aggressive swarm decks like Unicorn or Lion, and this is kind off unimpressive there.

It could however work in some sort of conflict denial deck with the upcoming Asahina Damiyo. Alongside some covert option, Toshimoko and harpoons, it might end up being just the right critical mass of effects that lock your opponent out of relevant challenges.

Rating: 2.5/5

Civil Discourse

Overall Rating – 1.5/5

Chuterêve

Why is this role locked ? And Earth of all role?

That being said, Crane can be happy that this specific conflict card is our role locked option of the expansion.

Even if Testuko/Crone-like effects have proven effective in the past, two things are seriously crippling Civil Discourse : The fate cost and the fact that your opponent can choose the target for the duel.

Rating: 2/5

Asahina Neph

Making your opponent pay 1 more for all their cards? Good. Locked to an otherwise bad role? Bad. Opponent chooses their duelist? Bad. 1 Cost? Not great. If we wound up with an earth role I’d play this maybe as a 1x but we don’t get anything else from an earth role besides effectively losing access to UA. Vote Air and Void!

Rating: 2.5/5

Daidoji Erik

You have to pay a card AND a fate AND win a duel against the character of their choice AND be Earth role just to get this effect that is only profitable if they play 3+ cards afterwards? No thanks. If this kind of card is what is needed to play Kyuden Kakita then we are better off with Shizuka Toshi.

Rating: 1/5

Kakita Onimaru

…..

Cards like this give credence to the #freetheroles movement. I am fine-ish with role locking as a concept, but when garbage cards like this get printed it makes me wonder what the point of the whole thing is. Like, if I had to choose between Fight on and this, how is that even close to a decent comparison? And that is not even factoring in things like how an Earth Role makes Upholding Authority less good.

But lets ignore that for now. If for some reason I did have an earth role, I still wouldn’t play this. Ageless Crone demonstrates that adding a tax to cards can be annoying but is by no means insurmountable. And while I do enjoy the idea of playing a duel to activate other effects you really care about, that does not mean that the duel itself can be so inconsequential that id play this rather than something better.

Rating: 1/5

Doji Liforre

I know some people seem to be very high on this card but I think it might be the worse crane card of the cycle.

The length you have to go to make this slightly ok (your opponent playing at least two cards) are way to extreme, and it’s even worse in today’s meta of banking fate. It’s another pol duel which Duel decks lack, but that’s about it.

Rating: 1/5

NEUTRAL CARDS

Kiku Matsuri

Overall Rating – 1.8/5

Chuterêve

This province might fall short even in Crane because it’s hard to abuse a such straightforward symmetry effect. Still, an interesting province to experiment with and i have the intention to test it further. If I can ideally just honor a small opposing fateless character and my big body with 3 fate on it, it seem interesting.

Rating: 2.5/5

Asahina Neph

What are you gonna do when your opponent attacks this with something like Yokuni? We’re good enough at honoring ourselves, and we don’t like it when our opponents guys are honored too. The only use case for this I see is hope your opponent pokes it with some chump and you can get a much more advantageous honor but after that you probably just have to let them break it because they won’t give you another unimportant target.

Rating: 1/5

Daidoji Erik

You can’t even choose an already honored opposing character for this, you have to actually honor someone on both sides.

Rating: 1/5

Kakita Onimaru

I actually like this card.

Honoring both my and my opponents character is annoying, but there are some factors that make me enjoy this in a crane deck. We are starting to see a lot more effects that require us to simply have honored characters, not more honored characters than our opponent (Paragon of Grace, Try Again Tomorrow, ect). And while getting our characters honored has never been too much of an issue, it’s not like we have an unlimited amount of honoring sources. Besides, once we start seeing cards like the previewed The Spear Rushed Forth that eat our tokens, we are going to need as many of them as we can get.

Also, none of the other Air povinces are very interesting anyway so who cares?

Rating: 3/5

Doji Liforre

Ok, so just bear with me for a second here: I think Crane might be the best clan in the game to play this? Is it good however? Heh … probably not.

We love honor effects and it’s also likely we get more “Honored status matters” like Storyteller in the future. However, unless you’re going all in on this theme, I don’t think you want to play this at all.

Rating: 1.5/5

Midnight Revels

Overall Rating – 3.8/5

Chuterêve

This one is a big deal as the Water province was usually the weakest link in the province chain before. The reaction not being forced can help using the effect at your advantage by keeping it for the second attack of your opponent or just not firing it if it’s going to be detrimental. With the importance of big characters in the current meta, Midnight Revel can be played as the water province of choice in Keeper deck over Rally to the Cause but it is obviously as risk if you run any 5 drop in your deck (aka Yoshi).

Rating: 3.5/5

Asahina Neph

I’m super into this card. Finally a viable alternative to Rally! Knowing you have it means you can play around it and potentially keep some big boys down. Will it replace Rally? Hard to tell, but it’s existence seems good to me for the sake of diversity.

Rating: 4/5

Daidoji Erik

An interesting alternative for Rally to the Cause. Revels triggers on declaration, so you can use this multiple times across turns. If your opponent has a Mitsu or Tadaka out when they first attack your stronghold, this could make a large impact. It does get stopped by Finger of Jade.

How about the other clans beside Dragon and Phoenix? It seems a lot less likely that your opponent has one of the most expensive characters on the table if they are Lion, Scorpion or Unicorn, with Crab and Crane landing in the middle.

Testing will have to prove whether or not this is better than Rally to the Cause, but even the possibility of this being under your stronghold is good for the game. Personally I think I will stick with Entrenched Position, but I am prepared to be wrong.

Rating: 4/5

Kakita Onimaru

Holy Crap, its a water province that doesn’t suck.

Not only that, but it appears to be especially good against towers, a decktype we historically have a lot of trouble against. I am especially happy about this card because it lets me play Upholding Authority. Theoretically, I could have played it before, but Rally to the Cause REALLY doesn’t do a good job of protecting the stronghold. And even when I put Rally in the row, I sometimes get a cute auto win conflict from mil units not prepared to be in a pol fight, but it immediately become a farmable province that I end up boosting my opponents in the hopes that they break it and go someplace more interesting.

Why am I spending so much time talking about other provinces? Because THAT IS HOW LOW THE BAR HAS BECOME FOR WATER PROVINCES.

Honestly, this card is really only a 2 or a 3, but I am giving it a 4 because its competition is horrible.

Rating: 4/5

Doji Liforre

I mean, this is a water province that’s not atrocious, it has to be like a little bit playable. I think this is very often better better than rally, as it will often be harder to scout effectively, while still being good if your opponent just go all for it. Also more viable alternative to Rally mean people will have to try harder to play around it, which is a plus.

Rating: 3.5/5

Vassal Fields

Overall Rating – 3.1/5

Chuterêve

There is Vassal Fields and there is…Upholding Authority. The first one is just an annoying effect and the second one is often a game changing effect. It does not matter that Upholding is on break only when the difference of power level between both “on row” earth province is so big.

I can only see Vassal Fields being tried in some sort of Seeker/Keeper of Earth role and even then, I think I still prefer to run Upholding with 5 PS/Entrenched/Ancestral.

Rating: 2/5

Asahina Neph

And a good Earth row province besides UA! Basically a reverse Manicured Gardens (a card we all know and love), this does the same thing as far as economic advantage goes which is to say gives you +1. Goblin Sneak is a justifiable card and this gives you the same effect without the downside of dishonoring yourself by playing shadowlands cards.

Rating: 4/5

Daidoji Erik

Hooray, a good Earth province! Removing a fate from your opponent is roughly the same as Manicured Garden. Sometimes it will be worse because they have no fate, but other times they might get screwed by missing a crucial fate. It is a bit easier to farm because your opponent can put themselves on 0 fate, but do you really mind playing against someone without fate?

What a shame that Upholding Authority is only good in non-Earth roles, otherwise Vassal Fields could even have made Seeker of Earth playable. As it is, Upholding Authority is probably better than this unless you are Keeper of Earth.

Rating: 4/5

Kakita Onimaru

I kinda like this card and can’t really think of much bad to say about it. Fate denial is nice, but frankly there are a bunch of fate denial tools in the game already that don’t see play because it’s not THAT useful. But I can’t rate it very high because Upholding is very good and Entrenched Position pretty much lives under our stronghold. While this card is solidly the 3rd best option we have, that just isn’t good enough by a long shot.

Rating: 2/5

Doji Liforre

This is an earth province playable in Keeper of Earth (unlike Upholding Authority) which is nice. The fate denial is also pretty good most of the time, especially against clans like Phoenix. The fact that you can defend this (as opposed to UA) is very relevant for its playability and it should be a pretty good option for Control decks

Rating: 3.5/5

Illustrious Forge

Overall Rating – 1.1/5

Chuterêve

This is really not a card for us.

Rating: 1.5/5

Asahina Neph

Probably sick in something like Isomalt’s attachment Crane deck. Otherwise pretty junk for us as our attachments are generally not worth running this thing.

Rating: 1/5

Daidoji Erik

Not even close to good enough for a “when revealed” effect.

Rating: 1/5

Kakita Onimaru

I’m sad because this card has buff crane art on it but it’s so bad.

And it’s funny because if this card worked every time it was attacked instead of just revealed it would be a 4 or 5 and would be a handy tool that any clan could use to build a solid attachment focused deck. It would even make the fire role appealing again since Feast or Famine is now on the restricted list. But any deck that is so attachment focused that it is willing to use a province slot to help fetch them can not afford to only use an ability like this one time.

Hell, you can’t even position the drawn, non-selected cards in order.

Rating: 1/5

Doji Liforre

Yikes. This card keep the dream of “Big Weapons Lion” alive, so it actually is a 10/10 card.

Rating: 1/5



Humble Magistrate

Overall Rating – 2.2/5

Chuterêve

The seeker only magistrate. The stats are quite bad but courtier trait is almost always an upside and the passive ability could find some use in a meta filled with high drop, something that seem to be the case in the pre-Children meta. The issue with cards supposed to act as counter is that they are very subpar if you do not play against a deck they are supposed to be good against. Plus, the ability only work when attacking which allow very comfortable play around by your opponent. Still, enough decks might revolve around big character to make this character worth trying at some point.

Rating: 2.5/5

Asahina Neph

The “Red Tape” of L5R. Kinda. Courtier is nice, but I’m not super keen to play a 2/2 for 3. This is the kind of guy I think you build your deck around and I don’t Crane does that. We love our Guests and our Yoshis and our Ujis soon enough.

Rating: 2/5

Daidoji Erik

Why would they want to defend against a 2/2 with their expensive characters anyway, unless you are attacking their stronghold? And if you are, you are not bringing your own big hitters? The ability does not make up for the poor stats I think.

Rating: 1.5/5

Kakita Onimaru

I kinda like this. It’s a nice check against an over commitment of big units and its glory can help it become a threat. And since Crane tends to lean more heavily on 3 coster than some other decks I dont think it would get in the way that much. Still, it may potentially lock up your own attack plans, but not in a way that you couldn’t play around. It would not be surprised to see him fill out a deck as a 1x or 2x

Rating: 3/5

Doji Liforre

Traditional Magistrate (eg, 2/2 for 3 that only work on attack) have seen barely any way, even if most of them seemed very playable. I have no doubt this will continue the tradition.

Rating: 2/5

Righteous Magistrate



Overall Rating – 3.1/5

Chuterêve

The keeper only magistrate. Contrary to the seeker one, the stats are quite good but the ability is less impactful. The main use would be to lock duels immediately.

Rating: 3/5

Asahina Neph

This is the more interesting one to me. 3/3 for 3 is very reasonable and courtier is still cool. While defending all honor gains and losses are prevented so you can basically glue your dial to 5 and pop off those assassinates. That’s pretty cool? I could maybe see it in an honor deck as a way to still go hard on defense without having to give up your precious honor tokens, but I don’t think it makes the cut in a more general deck.

Rating: 3/5

Daidoji Erik

3/3 for 3 is a good statline, so the question is: how relevant is his text? The main thing it does is guarantee you can win all duels in which you start up, without losing any honor. However, I think you would win those duels most of the time anyway. Disabling all the cards you have to pay honor for does not seem such a big deal to me.

Rating: 2.5/5

Kakita Onimaru

Its gonna take a while for us to fully get a grasp on this new dueling meta, but one thing that I think is apparent is that dueling too much can lead to honor issues. Not with Righteous Magistrate. She essentially turns any slight edge over an opponent into a bully duel, which can open up your deck to include more duels you cannot afford to lose, like Duelist training.

She also screws with a lot of cards that have an honor cost to it, especially Scorpion and Crab cards. Heck, her ability to shut down Watch Commander alone makes her worth consideration In my opinion.

Rating: 4/5

Doji Liforre

Good stats are good and the ability is superb in a duel deck. However, the very peculiar timing where this card good might end up being too narrow, in a deck that will already have a ton of good 3 drops to play. Sadly, I think this card is just a little be to fair for its own good/

Rating: 3/5

Akodo Toturi



Overall Rating – 2.5/5

Chuterêve

So this is what a fair version of Tadaka or even Guest of Honor looks like. Toturi keep his original normal-good 5 drop stats and trade his double ring ability for a symmetrical hand lock during a conflict (attachment and characters included, not only event but it is always possible to play them before the conflict for both players). The favor requirement sadly is probably what push this card from “interesting” to “probably won’t see much play”. Despite the nice military stats, we just have better high drop in Crane than Toturi…and compatible with Way of.

Rating: 2/5

Asahina Neph

First let me say how much I love the flavor on this guy. Toturi is a cool character with a cool head and the way he makes everything just happen on board, straight up, no tricks is pretty neat. Is he a good card? Well he’s a 6/3 for 5 which is cool but if you can’t be 100% sure you can win a conflict if your opponent plays 1 card from hand I don’t know about him. He also isn’t a Crane so sadly no Way ofs for this guy.

Rating: 3/5

Daidoji Erik

A big military stat is useful for us, but in the end I think the symmetric nature of his ability means he is not worth 5 fate.

Rating: 2/5

Kakita Onimaru

I am not sold on this.

If you find you need more MIL, Toturi will definitely get the job done. But we already have a champion level card that requires the Favor to use its ability and Toturi doesn’t even become close to Yoshi.

That said, the presence of duels in the environment, not just Crane duels, means we have to give certain awareness to cards that passively have a high mil.

I am not sure if high MIL will be so important that he ever warrants a cut in our decks, but if MIL is something we need, at least he isn’t Yoritomo!

Rating: 3/5

Doji Liforre

This is kinda unimpressive in the face of Guest for sure, and has slight anti synergy with Yoshi too, which is a x3 is basically every single Crane deck right now. With our lord and savior Uji landing soon, I doubt this card will become better for us.

Rating: 2.5/5

Hantei XXXVIII

Overall Rating – 2.3/5

Chuterêve

The Emperor Himself. The Son of Heaven is an interesting case and make us theorycraft a bit about his playability. In the fact, some conflicts card that at first glance were dismissed as unplayable by a majority of players turned out to be powerhouse (A Fate Worse Than Death and now Consumed by Five Fires). The Emperor clearly bring that to the next level of control. The question with have at hand is : How much should we be ready to pay for a control tool?

If we play this card, we are going to want to invest at the very least 3 fate on him, which means a 9 fate investment for 4 turn worth of effect. During these 4 turn, you will each turn most likely because of the card auto-win favor, bow a character (or sadly just make burn a finger of jade) and redirect an effect. I think it is overall a “fair” price to pay for it.

The issue is that unlike AFWTD who is very strong because of a full direct impact and Fives Fires who gets full impact the turn after being played, you are not likely to get return on investment on the Emperor the first turn you play it and not even the second. How hard will you be hit during these first two turns because of your 9+ fate investment?

It honestly depends. The ideal way to play the card I think would be to effectively invest really few fate in first turn and make it out of it in a very good shape (which is quite possible in this game) and then play the Emperor T2 with 4 fate. It’s something I see being possible and even likely lock the game but really situation dependent.

That being said, of all Clan, i am a bit skeptical that Crane is the best to run the Emperor. It seem to fit way more naturally in Phoenix or Scorpion and some players are already finding success with him so maybe the question we should ask ourselves is not how to play the Emperor but how to counter it.

Rating: 3.5/5

Asahina Neph

I have to cop out and give this guy a 3/5 because honestly I’m not sure. If you can get him in play for a bit and not lose the favor he will wreck house and dominate the game. That said, he is a 6 cost -/- so no cheating him in. I’m terrified of him being good enough to play (as of this writing I’ve heard tell of him being played) because I think strong neutral characters are bad for game and I super just don’t want to deal with this guy.

Rating: 3/5

Daidoji Erik

You need serious favor control to make this guy work, and unfortunately we just do not have enough of that.

Rating: 2/5

Kakita Onimaru

So, he costs 6 Naturally and you will want to put at least 2-3 fate one him. 9 fate. You can do a LOT with 9 fate. Yeah, he might bow 1 character and redirect 1 action, but he isnt attacking or defending while he does it. If my opponent plays this I am happy, because while I have been inconvenienced in my conflict, I am probably still going to win because I will have 9 fate worth of characters on the board compared to his none!

Rating: 1/5

Doji Liforre

There’s is “backbreaking” and there is “Losing the favor when you paid 8+ on a character with -/-”. Maybe in a slow grindy archetype that only care about gaining the favor this could be good, but the tools just aren’t there quite yet. Sorry Son of Heaven.

Rating: 2/5

Proving ground



Overall Rating – 4/5

Chuterêve

Imperial Storehouse alternative for full duel decks who are unlikely to be super competitive for now. We might have to wait for the Crane clan pack release to see this being seriously played. Still, when a competitive focused duel deck really become a thing, this is going to be a quite good inclusion.

Rating: 4/5

Asahina Neph

Drawing 2 cards a turn is pretty sick. Obviously we need some duels to make this card really shine and I’m not sure if we’ll be there with CotE but I suspect we will be with the clan pack and we will loudly and often proclaim how much we love this card.

Rating: 4/5

Daidoji Erik

The potential of this holding is high: drawing 2 cards per turn is certainly powerful. Of course you have to win duels to accomplish that, and if you win about 1-1.5 duels on average per turn then it is probably still better to play Imperial Storehouse. If you play enough repeatable duels though, such as characters with a printed duel (Kaezin, Toshimoko, hopefully more great ones will appear in Masters of the Court) or attachments like Duelist Training, this could become the stronger choice.

It seems like we will soon have more good holdings than we can reasonably play, and that is a great place to be at.

Rating: 4/5

Kakita Onimaru

This card single-handedly is why you would want build a deck that consists mostly of duels. It’s bit to niche to include even in a crane deck that has a few duels here and there, but in a deck with a decent number of repeatable duels that you intend to win at any cost then this card is a STAPLE.

Rating: 4/5

Doji Liforre

I mean, that’s a way to make EVERY duels better. It can quickly become a nightmare for your opponents to navigate between all your duels when you also get to draw cards when you win them. This seem very, very good in the right shell.

Rating: 4/5



Defend your honor

Overall Rating – 2.5/5

Chuterêve

It’s a very good counter for Crab but it’s unlikely to be our counter of choice. On paper, I prefer to run Censure rather than this card that might be tricky to efficiently play because you can’t use it if unopposed and you still have to win a duel. That being said, it’s one more duel card and that might have some relevance with Kyuden Kakita when our clan pack comes out.

Rating: 2.5/5

Asahina Neph

This cards biggest problem is it suffers from “opponent chooses” syndrome. Then conflict only syndrome. That said I still like the card, its a duel to maybe draw cards with from Proving Ground and activate our incoming box (I know this is supposed to be a CotE review but it’s hard to not consider all our upcoming duel synergies). On the Kyuden Kakita line, it’s also a duel with no loss condition so it can function as a Way of the Crane with the box or maybe just drag some honor out of our opponent depending on what’s going on. Because we tend to be honored it’s also not uncommon for us to have respectable mil stats in a political fight, perhaps big enough to make this duel less arduous.

Rating: 3/5

Daidoji Erik

The real problem here is that Defend Your Honor is “Keeper role only” and Keeper roles are just not as good for Crane as Seeker ones. But let’s ignore that for a moment and pretend we are playing Keeper anyway.

The reason Voice of Honor is a good cancel is that you can be sure when it is on or off, and if it is on there are no hoops to jump to cancel something. That does not apply to Defend Your Honor. Winning a military duel against a participating character of their choice is a big condition. First of all it has to be during a conflict; second they must have at least one character participating; and finally you have to be able to win the duel or be happy just taking honor. I don’t think there are that many conflicts where we have the biggest military guy.

One upside is the ability to trigger Kyuden Kakita, but I am convinced it will not be worth it to play bad duel cards just for that.

Rating: 1.5/5

Kakita Onimaru

No, stop it. This is not a Crane card.

This is the kind of trap a rookie dueling player would add to their deck. After All, its a duel, right? I like duels and have a bunch of cards that key off duels, right? So I want to play this.

WRONG!

This is a card only for a deck that expects to routinely have 1 or 2 character that with a crazy amount of MIL hanging around. we’re talking fully loaded Dragons and Crabs. Not even most Lion and Unicorn deck can boast this because they get their high mil from event set-ups and attack in large numbers. While Crane CAN get some high MIL people on the board, its rare and the odds that your character just happens have more MIL than your character strongest person to the point where you can bully duel them is even rarer. And even then, not only should you not have more than 1 or two of these in your deck but frankly you should probably just run censure over it anyway because it is more reliable. Also, we’re Crane. We have enough event cancels as it is.

Rating: 2/5

Doji Liforre

I’m gonna base my rating on the powerlevel, ignoring the “Keeper only” part.

Cancels are apparently good in a game where most decks avec 20+ events and this double up as duels synergies because why not? The timing restriction is a little bit awkward though, but it’s yet another duel that you don’t really have a drawback when losing it. It should only be played in specific build where you have the military power to abuse it, but I do think it’s definitely going to be good to very good there.

Rating: 3.5/5

Stay your hand



Overall Rating – 1.4/5

Chuterêve

Hard counter. Will be only played if a Duel deck become tiers 0 or several decks including very dominant duels are tiers 1.

Rating: 2/5

Asahina Neph

The dueling tech choice. A highly specific cancel in the vein of Yogo Kikuyo, I expect we might see this if Crane or Dragon dueling becomes a very predominant deck or if every clan regularly uses some duels. Outside of those cases, I don’t see it being played (except to be sideboarded in against us in group games because if we play Kyuden Kakita this probably really sucks for us to deal with)

Rating: 2/5

Daidoji Erik

There are not that many duels worth canceling at the cost of a card, and in general a cancel effect needs to be stronger than the thing it cancels. For example, Voice of Honor is strong because you can spend 1 card 0 fate to cancel any number of events that cost 1 or more fate. The same goes for Let Go; you can often trade up in fate with it. I don’t see the same thing happening with Stay Your Hand, and on top of that there will be matchups where your opponent does not have any duels at all.

Rating: 1/5

Kakita Onimaru

That’s funny.

This card simply isnt worth running. It is way to inconsistent to be worth considering. If you are up against a deck that has duels in it they probably have so many repeatable duels that trying to stop just one of them is nothing more than a fools errand. The only one shot duel worth trying to cancel is Policy debate and if they are running that as their restricted card then they probably have about 500 other duels right behind it.

But most decks aren’t going to run duels at all,so this is effectively blank in most matchups.

Rating: 1/5

Doji Liforre

I have trouble imagining the metagame will shift towards one where you need this in your deck.

Rating: 1/5

Warm Welcome



Overall Rating – 2.8/5

Chuterêve

The effect is extremely strong, especially after early game. All deck would include this as a 2-3x if it wasn’t for the requirement. Good Omen had the “composure” requirement too in exchange to be an almost free reprieve and it ended up not being played because of how unreliable/hard fulfilling the condition was.

Children of the Empire give us more direct tools and duel to turn the requirement on but I still doubt that it is enough to make it work reliably enough. According to my testing with Warm Welcome, the card is very close to make the cut but because of its inconsistencies, it’s a hard sell. I can still see it played as a 1x.

Rating: 3.5/5

Asahina Neph

I like to play tool boxy decks and this is another potential tool in that box. You basically give up a card draw (or a duel) to play a card from your discard at +1 fate. Is that worth it? Maybe. Flashback is always powerful but 1 fate is a cost and there is a not insignificant condition applied first. I think its maybe a 1x but we’ll have to see how Composure plays out.

Rating: 2.5/5

Daidoji Erik

I feel obligated to remind you of Good Omen. Putting a fate on a character (with printed cost 3 or higher) for only a card and 0 fate is an excellent deal! It is better than Reprieve in most cases, and that is a staple Crab (splash) card. So why does it see virtually no play? It has to be this little condition: “Play only if your honor bid is lower than an opponent’s.”

The same restriction on Warm Welcome takes it from amazing to unplayable in my opinion.

A little side note: suppose you are playing against Tadaka and have a Way of the Crane in your discard pile. If your honor bid is lower, you could then still play Warm Welcome on the Way of the Crane, but the effect would not go off; Way of the Crane would just be put on the bottom of your deck. This is such bad value that Warm Welcome does not really help diversifying against Tadaka.

Rating: 1/5

Kakita Onimaru

Kyuden Isawa is REALLY good. It’s good not just because pulling card from the graveyard is very efficient but also because being able to choose the card you pull essential makes your discard pile a large “bank” in which you can store any spell you need and pull it out at just the right moment. This card is Mini Kyuden Isawa, but instead of spell it can pull any card we need of any type. Characters. Attachments. Whatever. That is BIG.

Now, the only problem with this card is you need composure to use it. Frankly, i think this card is worth a cheeky 4 bid to try to activate it, but that is unreliable and costs hand advantage.

Have I mentioned I like dueling?

Duels give us means of resetting the honor dial any time we want, and with cards like Iaijutsu Master and Mirumoto Daisho we can guarantee ourselves to have a lower bid against anyone but maybe the Scorpion sometimes. And other duelists.

This card is not to be ignored.

Rating: 4/5

Doji Liforre

Ok, I WANT this to be good, I really do. The effect is superb with Yoshi and Test of Skill and pair well with our “tooblox” aspect. However, Good Omen had the exact same condition to play and was basically unplayable in every single clan. Now that Composure and duels are more prevalent this might be a easier condition to achieve but I kinda doubt it. Still, the dream lives, this might be a sleeper great card.

Rating: 3/5

Prayers to Ebisu

Overall Rating – 2/5

Chuterêve

Anti honor and dishonor tech. Cycle itself too. I can see this being played as a 1x if the meta ever become really centered around dishonor victory or cough honor victory. Obviously, it’s not the case for now.

Rating: 2/5

Asahina Neph

The “Oh shit we accidently made honor winning viable” card. Kind of. 3 cost is a hell of a lot for whats basically a safety net. I expect honor or dishonor would have to be very prevalent for this card to see play.

Rating: 1/5

Daidoji Erik

Clearly a safety card in case honor or dishonor wins ever become too strong and common. They would have to make up a very large part of the meta (75%+) before this is worth running. Even then, you are paying 3 fate for a bit of breathing room without actually furthering your own game plan.

Rating: 2/5

Kakita Onimaru

I really hate win conditions being nerfed before they are even a things, but Most L5R players hate it even more when non-conquest wins become too common. Oh well.

I have no idea how honor running will shake out after this set, but dishonor is currently prevalent enough that I would not be opposed to running 1x of these in a deck.

Also, I have been talking a lot about how initiating many duels can be a problem for maintaining honor. This might prove to be an effective “get out of jail” card for the times when you MUST win a duel despite the honor cost.

Rating: 3/5

Doji Liforre

Again, this is a meta card that I can’t really imagine worth of a slot currently. It has the added bonus of countering pretty effectively both dishonor and honor deck though, and might end up being a 1x at some point in the future.

Rating: 2/5

SPLASHABLE CARDS



Kirei-ko



Overall Rating – 3.1/5

Chuterêve

Kirei-Ko is the closest replacement from A Fate Worse Than Death we can splash. 1 fate bow has proven really efficient in the past even conditional and I expect Kirei-Ko to be played as a 1x or 2x in Crane/Scorpion decks despite the influence cost. Be aware that good players will be able to limit the impact of Kirei-Ko by playing around it as much as possible.

Rating: 3.5/5

Asahina Neph

An interesting 3inf card to throw back into the Scorpion splash. I haven’t really looked at the numbers of characters who use abilities in a way that makes this card good, but I feel like it could be a solid 1x surprise. Also hoses the emperor making getting the favor a wee bit easier.

Rating: 3/5

Daidoji Erik

On first sight this looks similar to Mirumoto’s Fury, a very strong splash card that has been put on the restricted list for its prevalence and powerful effect. The problem is that you need your opponent’s character to trigger an ability. This makes it much less reliable, and you can never predict when you will actually be able to use it because your opponent can always choose not to trigger abilities.

Unfortunately it also costs 3 influence, but then again there might be some space in the Scorpion splash if we end up without an Air role for Mark of Shame.

Rating: 3/5

Kakita Onimaru

There still just are not a lot of characters that even have triggered abilities worth worrying about to use this card. And for the ones that do exists, if your opponent knows you are running this card (which they surely will by the end of a tournament) then it becomes very easy to play around this card. And if all of that wasnt enough, this card is 3 influence, making it a hard slot for anything other than maybe a support of the scorpion deck.

The only reason I do not dismiss this card entirely is because there are a few characters running around with triggered abilities so annoying that this card deserves consideration as a spite option.

Rating: 2/5

Doji Liforre

I absolutely love this card, and it should be a staple in Scorp splash, although the steep cost of 3 influence make it pretty likely as a one of or a two off at best. Still the very generous windows of « any phase, anytime » means it’s pretty unlikely this stays dead in your hand, although it will always be pretty meta depending.

Rating: 4/5

Hand to Hand



Overall Rating – 3/5

Chuterêve

Hand to Hand is great at one thing : dealing with Cloud the mind. When you want to deal with attachment like Reprieve or Talisman of the Sun, it’s going to be trickier if your opponent know you might be playing this card. It still does force some awkward play around. To make this work very efficiently in Crane/Lion decks we would need to play attachement-less decks, something that does not work very well with our new duel cards and that overall has proven tricky to pull. I don’t think Crane is that interested right now in playing a worse Let Go to open up a not that exciting Lion splash. (But Lion splash is fun, i will recognize that)

Rating: 3/5

Asahina Neph

New 0 cost attachment hate? Woooooooooooo! Oh it doesn’t hit Reprieve or Talisman of the Sun, the two cards I really really want attachment hate for? Booooo. It lives up to the nickname “Bad Let Go.” It definitely makes Lion splash a bit more interesting which is great, but its also definitely worse than Let Go. It’ll take some other good Lion cards to wrest my full art Let Gos from my deck.

Rating: 2.5/5

Daidoji Erik

I don’t want to be too negative about this, because it is finally an attachment control card in a different splash than Dragon or Scorpion. That is a big deal, because the lack of such cards was the major downside of Lion splash.

That said, this is not exactly Let Go. It will not hit Reprieve and Talisman of the Sun, severely limiting its applications. Still it seems worth playing in Lion splash especially at only 1 influence.

Rating: 3/5

Kakita Onimaru

This card is kinda limited. It only works during military conflicts and its has the potential to destroy your own attachments, some of which (Duelist training, Kakita Blade) we are dusting off for the first time in a long time now that they are becoming viable again.

BUT, attachment hate is still the most important control aspect of this game. Not only does that make this card an auto 3x but it opens up Lion as a viable splash option for every clan in the game.

Rating: 4/5

Doji Liforre

This card vary between bad and downright insulting. Yet attachment removal is so important that it will see play. I’m not a huge fan of Lion splash, but I know it has its adepts and the influence cost of 1 make it pretty easy to find slots. I just hope one day we won’t have to play such terribles cards in our decks to make them decent.

Rating: 2.5/5

Mirumoto Daisho

Overall Rating – 3.3/5

Chuterêve

First, I don’t like the idea of sacrificing two potential Fan or Katana on a same character for just a +2/+2 (which is the equivalent of one copies of each but here you pay 2 fate). I also think playing 2 cost attachment is always very risky with Let Go still everywhere. That being said, the ability can turns out to be very oppressive and lock a lot of duels. Its main use is to push a dishonor win by stealing 3-5 honor in one conflict to an opponent.

Is it powerful enough for the cost and the risk to just see that discarded ? I am going to say no but it’s still one of the best 2 cost attachment out there.

Rating: 3/5

Asahina Neph

I was excited about this card as soon as we saw it in a way I don’t usually get excited about for 2 cost attachments, long hailed as immediately the death knell of any card. Winning duels is cool and all when your opponent can’t bid 5, but I suspect the real power here is making them bid 2 to your 1 a stupid number of times to drain their honor (or gain your own, but dishonor has so much less distance to travel). I will definitely be giving this one a shot down the line.

Rating: 4/5

Daidoji Erik

As with the other attachments that cost fate, this absolutely requires you to have a good number of attachments outside Ornate Fan/Fine Katana. The fate cost is steep, but the stats are okay and the effect could pressure your opponents honor fast by forcing them to bid 2 to 1.

Because the effect is static, it is not limited, except by the number of duels you can do with the character is on. If you can build a deck that can reach 3 to 4 (or more) duels, that you can either win or not care about losing, this could take your opponent to 0 honor fast.

You can still play this on a character that has a Fan/Katana, but you will have to discard all the other restricted attachments (or choose to discard everything).

Dishonor could be a very real win condition for dueling decks, and I am excited to see how it pans out!

Rating: 4/5

Kakita Onimaru

The good News: Everything I said about Iaijutsu Master applies here.

The bad news: This card has a lot more restrictions. 2 Fate attachments are still very risky and playing this prevents any other restricted attachments from being played.

It’s hard to make a very big tower with this card, but it might be helpful in making a suit of mid-sized towers. If you have a deck that is going full blown towards triggering composure effects (Warm Welcome!) then I recommend it. Otherwise, it is just a redundant version of Iaijutsu master with a lot more downsides.

Rating: 3/5

Doji Liforre

In a fair deck, I think this is bad to very bad. It’s just too expensive and restrictive for what it does. In a combo deck however, where you use it to dishonor bomb your opponent by doing 4 or 5 duels in the same conflict, it might actually have huge potential. Will this kind of deck exist someday ? I kinda doubt it, but it’s still a potentially very potent combo card.

Rating: 2.5/5

Magnificient Triumph

Overall Rating – 1.2/5

Chuterêve

Please don’t play that. It’s not because it has duel synergy that it’s good.

Rating: 1.5/5

Asahina Neph

Le Vuong does it again with the amazing art. Sadly, this card probably isn’t that great. +2/+2 and shroud isn’t bad and if this was a reaction I’d like it more, but as is I think it will be hard to fit. If you want to win harder after you win your duel hit em with a Storied Defeat. Additionally, in Kyuden Kakita (where it’s always time to duel) we only have 9 inf out of seeker and let’s be real those 3 Let Gos aren’t going anywhere so we can only import one of these tops.

Rating: 1.5/5

Daidoji Erik

+2/+2 until the end of the conflict is not as good as it looks, and requiring you to win a duel BEFORE boosting your stats is simply not good.

Rating: 1/5

Kakita Onimaru

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI

I gotta say, from a lore perspective I really enjoy that Dragon keeps getting mirrors of Crane dueling cards that just are not as good as the Crane version. So, 5/5 for story.

As for playability, this card just doesn’t work. There are surprisingly still very few events that target an opponent’s character that are worth heavy consideration about. If those types of effects ever become a real bother, we have Above Question sitting right there in the binder waiting to be taken off of the bench.

The only thing left is the +2 to stats, which already isnt that impressive on its own, but if you consider that you just won a duel I wonder if you even NEED a bonus to your stats.

Rating: 1/5

Doji Liforre

The fact that it’s an action basically make it unplayable as it’s pretty likely your opponent already played whatever event he wanted to. As a reaction, it would have been reasonable I think.

Rating: 1/5

Solitary strength

Overall Rating – 2.3/5

Chuterêve

Same thing as magnificent triumph. Just not good enough.

Rating: 1.5/5

Asahina Neph

I want an air role partially to mess around with this card. +1/+2 and a potential honor gain is cool and we have a “solo participant” theme that jives really well with this. Like all attachments that cost fate though you’ll want to bring some others along to not just feel bad about Let Go. Another card that might fit into an honor deck down the line.

Rating: 3/5

Daidoji Erik

It’s a way to get more honor in a deck focused on reaching 25, I guess. Only costing 1 influence is nice, too bad it’s limited to Air roles only. The ‘participating alone’ clause has good synergy with a lot of our characters, but it’s still a big downside.

Rating: 1.5/5

Kakita Onimaru

(More restrictions on role locked cards?)

I do not know how to rate this card. I know Cautious Scout gets cute sometimes but it’s kinda hard to win a conflict with only one character. I also do not know what stat Honor Running will be in this new meta, but I do know I am not a fan of “win more” card and dislike how the card gains honor after I have already won the conflict.

That being said, its a 1 for ½ attachment that is not restricted and only costs 1 influence. Also, POL increases are generally hard to come by so its does give itself some value there. Finally, we do have a number of character who prefer to be alone in a conflict already so its not THAT an awkward of a slot. I remain optimistic.

Rating: 3/5

Doji Liforre

This might actually be close enough to see play, although the direct competition with mostly Ancient master (same influence cost) isn’t pretty. The restriction of having to be alone should be fine in early game, and the stat boost alongside the honor gain is nice. It’s still a bit unimpressive overall, so it shouldn’t revolutionize Crane deckbuilding.

Rating: 2.5/5

Karmic Balance

Overall Rating – 2/5

Chuterêve

I have a hard time thinking that this will never be played effectively. Despite the cost and the (probably not that hard to fulfill) requirement, we are in presence of a game changing effect. Ironically, one of the best use of Karmic Balance is to help against Restoration of Balance but the card is really hard to splash with a 4 influence cost.

Keep an eye on Karmic Balance because its time will come and it will be warping. If not now, in another meta.

Rating: 4/5

Asahina Neph

Earlier today I was looking at my Dragon splash list and trying to cut cards. I thought “do I get rid of two Tattooed Wanderers and play Karmic Balance?” The answer was no, because 2 fate is a lot and matching bid dials is probably non-trivial (and because TWs are good). You want this when you have less cards than your opponent so maybe if you play a lot of cheap attachments this can find a spot? Maybe. And also not in Kyuden Kakita for the 9 inf reasons mentioned in Magnificent Triumph.

Rating: 2/5

Daidoji Erik

That is a really cool effect, but 2 fate and 4 influence is quite a lot. I generally don’t have much fewer cards in hand than my opponent either, except maybe vs Scorpion.

Rating: 1/5

Kakita Onimaru

This card would be hard to play if it was a neutral. If your opponent has such a massive hand advantage over you that you need to reset the hands then you might have some other serious problems going on that this band-aide of a card will not solve in the long run. I dont want to be too mean. After all, some clans have access to a ridiculous amount of card draw and can leave you in the dust, but generally speaking these issues are manageable. Heck, in an ironic twist this card can even be used to recover from a Dragon opponent’s Restoration of Balance!

But at 4 Influence it is guaranteed that this card will not see play in anything but Dragon, if that!

Rating: 1/5

Doji Liforre

I’ll eat a whole pineapple if this is played in a competitive crane deck and I don’t even like pineapple. The effect is obviously extremely powerful and potentially meta warping, but a 2 cost event with a pretty strict condition to play it as well as costing 4 influences make it pretty unlikely to make a big splash in Crane.

Rating: 2/5

Smuggling Deal

Overall Rating – 1.4/5

Chuterêve

The art make you realize why Yoritomo is wearing an edgy mantis mask in his own card. Truly the Kylo Ren of L5R.

That being said, this is the kind of card that can have very strong and oppressive interactions. If none are found right now, this will inevitably be the case in the future. I just doubt that it will be the Crane benefiting from it.

Rating: 2/5

Asahina Neph

We don’t really have many characters this is really good on. Doji Challanger? Paragon of Grace? Maybe Toshimoko if you can get him around? That’s about all that jump to my mind right now. I don’t think Hotaru can use it (unless she wins 2 political conflicts somehow) because you can only use a given reaction once per triggering condition anyway. You also have to look at how ugly Yasuki Taka and Yoritomo are while it sits in your hand.

Rating: 1.5/5

Daidoji Erik

The effect seems marginal except on Doji Challenger. Influence cost of 3 unfortunately means it will almost certainly never be worth it for us.

Rating: 1/5

Kakita Onimaru

There are EXTREMELY few characters that Crane have access to that even have triggered abilities, and most of them alter the board in such a way that trying to do it again is either pointless of impossible. This card simply isn’t an option with our current card pool. It might be decent a few packs from now, but not now.

Rating: 1/5

Doji Liforre

The effect is cool, but giving an honor is a pretty real cost (although it’s not as bad in Crane), for an effect that have very few targets for now. Would have been cute if it didn’t have an influence cost of 3, making pretty hard to justify.

Rating: 1.5/5

BONUS REVIEW

Kakita Ryoku

Overall Rating – 3.6/5

Chuterêve

I am skeptical of Paragon of Grace but pretty hype about Kakita Ryoku as a replacement to Kakita Asami in my decks. You only need to get the imperial favor one turn for the ability to trigger twice (once after the conflict phase after you get the favor and one the next turn). In a world where we are slowly moving away from Soul Beyond Reproach, Kakita Ryoku might really help us having our key characters honored.

Rating: 4/5

Asahina Neph

Lion gets 2/1 bushi for 2, Crane gets X/3 courtiers for 3. Fortunately for us, ours tend to be better. Ryoku (who has great art) is another addition to our suite of very reasonable mid cost courtiers. Having an honor effect (a conditional one at that) is kind of a blessing and a curse for me. If we have enough consistent ways to honor, then I would rather have a body that does something else for us. But if we don’t, then it’s pretty cool! We already like getting the favor for Yoshi and Censure so Ryoku is another reason to care. The timing of the reaction is cool so you can use it at the end of a turn when you get it, or after the dynasty phase where you bought her. My hang up is if you don’t get the favor. Yoshi works because his favor payoff is huge, and even if you don’t have it he is just an absolutely huge boy. Ryoku without favor is much less impressive. The biggest point of comparison is probably Kakita Asami, who packs the same stats, traits, cost, and uniqueness. And if you’ve played with Asami (and we all have) you know her text box isn’t always relevant either, but boy when it matters are you glad to have it and I feel the same about Ryoku. I think Ryoku has an edge over Asami for being meaningfully on more often and the occasional clunkiness from Asami’s restriction making you overcommit sometimes (and Ryoku’s art is better). If you still play Asami I would consider swapping Ryoku in and seeing how she does. If you’ve dropped her already, I don’t know I would go digging for the space to fit her in now.

With Kyuden Kakita giving us that more consistent honor and hitting the shelves a month after Ryoku’s release, I’m not sure she’ll stick around long, but is a reasonable card to play until it does get here.

Rating: 3.5/5

Daidoji Erik

If you have favor, honoring a character is clearly a nice ability. It’s too bad that it has to be at the start of a phase, so you can’t do it during a conflict or in response to an important character getting dishonored. Still, the ability itself is a bit better than what you get from Asami or Paragon of Grace.

The problem is that you don’t always have favor. On the first turn Ryoku does not really help you win favor, so she seems worse than Asami/Paragon there. After that, in my experience it is quite hard to consistently win favor unless you are quite far ahead in the game anyway. Generally speaking, cards that are better when ahead and bad when behind are not great. And let’s be honest, when you are behind and don’t have favor there are a lot of cards you would rather see than Ryoku.

Rating: 3/5

Kakita Onimaru

I am just not that impressed by this card. Frankly, the amount of honoring effects we are getting are kind of redundant at this point and many of them are getting cut for more proactive actions. Besides, its not like getting the favor is so easy to get that her ability even activating is even guaranteed. We already make less than optimal plays trying to secure the favor for Kakita Yoshi, on Ryoku is no Yoshi.

That said, she’s not really a bad character. Crane DOES like to be honored, and with more effects like The Spear Rushes Forth on the way we may need to a few more honor token generators handy. I can even see some honor running potential if you choose to honor people before they die each round. With solid stats, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her finding a home in courtier focused decks, but I’m not holding my breath.

Rating: 3/5

Doji Liforre

This is simply our best 3 drop since Doji Challenger. Crane work as a tempo deck most of the time and as such, it’s pretty likely you’ll get the favor. It also help that Yoshi, which is a huge staple of Crane deck want you to have it. Unlike Censure, there isn’t any anti synergy between Yoshi and this card, which make it even better. It should also be noted that you can play it without having the favor, and then use it at the beginning of the fate phase, before using it the following turn. Unless a deck revolving around the emperor become very popular in another clan (probably Scorp or Phoenix), I predict we’ll see a lot of Ryoku in upcoming Crane decks.

Rating: 4.5/5