One of the things people often complain about is that they have a difficult time against crane. If you were to go to the clan chats in discord and ask what clan people thought they had a bad match up against most would still mention crane. This is not unwarranted. If I were to be forced to rank Clans into tiers I would place lion and crane in the top, Dragon and Scorpion next, Phoenix and Crab third, and Ponies last. I expect worlds will be won by a Crane or Lion. This is with the caveat that L5R is a very skill intensive game and most of the time the better player will with no matter what clan. Hopefully this article will help readers playing against crane.

Imperial Favor

The first step to beating Crane is getting the imperial favor. This may sound like something you want to do against all clans but it is doubly important against crane. I sometimes leave a character ready just to grab the favor. Against most clans the favor is just a +1. Against crane it is something that halves the power of the stronghold. The ability of Shizuka Toshi is to bow any character with two or less political skill. This effectively means that crane can ignore any political probing attack. You can commit multiple characters but that defeats the point of a probing attack and most clans dont have access to a cheap character with 3 or more political skill.

Once you have the political favor this no longer works. Even if they bow your character the favor would still give you 1 political skill. This means that they can no longer ignore your attacks and have to commit to blocking which is already a win for a probing attack.

Honored Status

One of the most powerful cards of in the Crane arsenal is Voice of Honor. When playing against crane there is usually a sub game played of preventing the crane player from having more honored characters than you. If you are a scorpion player or one that splashes scorpion then prioritize way of the Crane. Not only do you prevent the persistent stat boost but you also have to make them at least work to honor their characters. There are plenty of instances where way of the crane will still go through. In that case prioritize removing characters with honor from the board through things like ring of the void to make sure voice is active for as short a time as possible.

For your board prioritize just having one honored character. If you can manage more then great but just having one makes life very difficult for Crane. If your playing lion having just one steadfast samurai honored will turn off voice of honor for the game. The Crane board usually consists of 2-4 characters. If you have one character honored they need to have half of their board honored to use voice which is difficult to maintain.

Voice of honor can be the most powerful card in the crane deck but it is also the easiest card to turn into a dead one. I personally would not splash voice of honor in any of my decks as it is too difficult to make sure it stays active when not playing Crane.

Wide not Tall

Crane excels against single targets. Admit Defeat. Noble Sacrifice. Doji Gift Giver. Doji Challenger. All of these things prefer you to have a single big target rather than one smaller one. Even something like Guest of Honor would prefer having one big engagement per turn to use its ability on rather than four smaller ones.

If you are playing a deck like dragon or unicorn which relies on a tooled up Ide Trader or Niten Master then you have to continually play around noble sacrifice. If at all possible get your character honored and avoid engaging in political challenges until you do. Ive seen something like Shameful Display, Court Games, and For Shame lead into Noble Sacrifice causing blow out losses.

Honor

There is an assumption among players that they cannot dishonor a crane to death. There are multiple reasons for this belief. It could be the number of honored characters that they see, the story behind the Crane Clan, or they way they functioned in the old version of the card game. Whatever the reason this is not true. I have dishonored many crane opponents to death. It is actually harder to dishonor a scorpion than a crane due to their consistent source of honor.

As a general rule Crane players will bid high and will run 3 copies of assassinate. It is not uncommon to see them drop to 5 or 6 just in the first round. Make sure to punish them for it just as you would any other clan.

Bad Matchups

Crane does actually have one matchup where I think they are not favored. That is against Lion. First off Lion has cards that naturally honor themselves. Pride, effects from Honored General and Historian, and the ability to ram through military fire challenges at will make sure that lion have a good shot at having at least one honored character on the board. Steadfast Samurai also sticks around for the entire game and can be a pain if honored.

Lion also has a natural tendency to go wide and always carries three ready for battle which are counters to what crane wants to do. Lions Pride Brawler also trims a board that already has a tendency to go tall.

Last Word

I hope this guide helps everyone struggling against Crane. If you are having more trouble I maintain that one of the best ways to see where a deck is weak is to play it yourself. Here is a link to a standard Crane splash Dragon deck, Crane players may be using a more personalized version but this is the baseline most of their competitive players start from.