The Fiendish Blades (Monk/Kensai)

Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:57 pm

Greetings all,

After a week hiatus to scheme things out, I'm happy to report that this updated version of the deck plays really well. I had a close loss to a Dragon Monk Deck (partially due to having to play fast and not think) and a pretty easy win against a Unicorn follower deck.

The Cold Hands/Obfuscation combo worked quite fiendishly on a couple of occasions. I went ahead and put Susumu into my one empty slot, saw him both games, and was able to use him nicely both games.

Weapon balance is still good. I could potentially see Rising Sun Blade doing down to 2 for something else, but I think that will depend on going through the weapon list again and finding the balance of utility.

I did lose one match to a Crane Dueling Honor deck, and part of that was that I didn't get out fast enough, and all the weapons in the world don't help, unless they have Chi bonuses. Most of my weapons do, but I think part of it is just experience with the deck.

I will say that Cold Hands, Stone Heart did tend to stay dead in my hand for a bit against Dragon and Crane, since they have such high Chi values compared to my monks. I'm debating about dropping Suikotsu for Nagataka since I get get 1 more force and chi out of a personality for the same cost. I have plenty of bow actions in the deck that I'm not worried about the loss of that. If that's the case, then I'd swap Susumu back for Furmaro, which would help the hi chi balances as well.

So that's the latest, any ideas are freely accepted as always. Thanks!

Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:46 pm

can we see a new list of the deck? i am not really up-to-date with this deck, would be interessting to see the new list :3

Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 3:18 pm

Sorry, I realized that there was a lot of discussion after the posting, so it got lost on the last page. Assuming the Suikotsu swipe out, here's what we're looking at:

== Stronghold ==
The Shadowed Dojo

== Dynasty Deck ==
.. Kami ..
Fu Leng's Guidance

.. Events ..
Inheriting an Heirloom
I Am Ready

.. Personalities ..
Michio
Kazuwaru
Furumaro
Ao-bozu [3]
The Dread Kar [3]
Momiji [3]
Tetsuo [3]
Torao [3]
Nagataka [2]
Utogu no Oni [2]

.. Holdings ..
Shinomen Marsh [3]
Border Village [3]
War Encampment [3]
Secluded Outpost [2]
Tetsu Kama Mine [2]
Permanent Encampment [2]

== Fate Deck ==

.. Weapons ..
Rising Sun Blade [3]
Radiant Steel [2]
Throwing Knives [2]
Tempered No-Dachi [2]
Fubatsu No-Dachi
Chain and Sword

.. Armor ..
Armor of the Ryu

.. Kihos ..
Cold Hands Stone Heart [3]
Darkness Unleashed [2]
Nerve Strike [2]
Spinning Heel Kick [2]

.. Strategies ..
Sneak Attack [3]
Obfuscation [3]
Hundred Fold Cut [3]
Yarijutsu [2]
Inexorable Defeat [2]
The Cost of Pride [2]
Justly Earned Victory [2]

.. Rings ..
Ring of Water
Ring of Air

I'm thinking I might flip the Cold Hands/Darkness Unleashed values around depending on how many more matches I run into where I don't have the Chi requirement for Cold Hands, but everything else has been playing well.

Servant of Daigotsu Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 133

Have you seen the new Scorpion Follower "Bitter Lies Student".

0F/0C 1G

Battle/Open: Remove this card from the game: Seath your discard pile, then your Fate deck for a non-Unique Weapon. You may attach it to your target Personality.

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:01 pm

@Cambeul: I did see that follower and it does have potential, but currently I have some good recursion on the weapons, and I'm not sure what I'd slide out for it. Obfuscation works pretty close to the same for 0G.

Giving the EaW previews a look see for us, I'm looking to test the following out tonight:

== Stronghold ==
The Shadowed Dojo

== Dynasty Deck ==
.. Kami ..
Fu Leng's Guidance

.. Events ..
Inheriting an Heirloom
I Am Ready

.. Personalities ..
Michio
Kazuwaru
Daigotsu Hotako
Ao-bozu [3]
Momiji [3]
The Dread Kar [2]
Tetsuo [2]
Torao [3]
Nagataka [2]
Shinran [2]
Utogu no Oni [2]

.. Holdings ..
Shinomen Marsh [3]
Border Village [3]
War Encampment [3]
Secluded Outpost [2]
Tetsu Kama Mine [2]
Permanent Encampment [2]
== Fate Deck ==

.. Weapons ..
Rising Sun Blade [3]
Radiant Steel [2]
Blade of Perfection [2]
Tempered No-Dachi [2]
Fubatsu No-Dachi
Chain and Sword

.. Armor ..
Armor of the Ryu

.. Kihos ..
Darkness Unleashed [3]
Cold Hands Stone Heart [2]
Nerve Strike [2]
Spinning Heel Kick [2]

.. Strategies ..
Sneak Attack [3]
Obfuscation [2]
Hundred Fold Cut [2]
Yarijutsu [2]
Inexorable Defeat [2]
The Cost of Pride [2]
Unstoppable Cut [2]
Justly Earned Victory [2]

.. Rings ..
Ring of Water
Ring of Air

A few notes:

Personalities...
I have enough bow actions that Suikotsu was given the boot for Nagataka. This also gives me a little more force, a little more chi, and a bit more enter play loss for the same gold.

Now you would think Furumaro would be the best candidate to go back in, but I'm dropping Susumu for Daigotsu Hotako for the moment. Yes she's not a monk, but there is SOOO much to love about her.

I agree with some comments in the previews that the Dread Kar isn't as powerful anymore, and Tetsuo is great, but I don't think I need 3. So dropping one of each puts in a pair of Shinrans to look at. I debated about dropping the Rhino, but he still is a fierce pet to have with my monks. If I like Shinran that much, I'll drop the Rhinos.

Strategies...
Cold Hands, Stone Hearts starts to be a clog in the hand when the weapons really start coming out, as much as I want to pair it with Obfuscation, consistent play is a bit more important. I'm dropping it down to 2, and raising Darkness Unleashed up to 3 (especially with the Nagataka inclusion) to balance this out.

I definitely want to give Unstoppable cut a try, so for the moment I'm dropping Obfuscation and Hundred Fold cut down by 1. Shinran has his own equipping ability, so I'm not as worried about the Obfuscation drop, but I'm not sure about Hundred Fold Cut. I could keep the numbers and drop Justly Earned Victory, but it dawned on me that having at least two of each card gives me a pretty good chance and protecting my monks against a wide variety of stuff in a battle, plus they all have secondary actions as well. Very potent cards.

Weapons...
Finally, I'm finally dropping the Throwing Knives for a pair of the Perfect Blade. I'm getting enough kill/ranged actions with the changes, and Perfect Blade does well with Unstoppable Cut and it has its own I carry two blades ability built into it. I get more force and chi boost out of it as well.

So that's what things are looking like for now. Anything you think I'm missing?

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 4:03 pm

The 1x JEV should probably be chaggs armor. Also, fosuta could probably fix your chi problems. With the amount of attachments currently being run I like disarm. Nerve strike probably needs to be in the deck because 2x yarijutsu seems to be your only follower answers (aside from tetsuo). I haven't read the entire post, but the sinister bisento would probably be a good weapon to use, especially with the new kensai strategy.

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 4:40 pm

Thanks Mouth! JEV is supposed to be at 2 (I've updated the post now) but I'll definiltely give Chags Armor a peek. I know it's lethal. The Bisento has served me in the past, and I yes, it definitely has more potential here as well.

Any recommendations on what to swap out for Fosuta?

EDIT: Come to think of it, dropping the Rhinos for Fosuta/Susumu could add some nice control elements to things...

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 5:09 pm

Some other additions I thought of if you decide to run nerve strike. Scout armor and Kami unleashed. With 2 actions that bow your own guy scout armor would never be dead. I can't stress enough how good nerve strike is especially with spinning heel kick/ring of air/ scout armor.

Mouth

p.s. Inexorable defeat is amazing. Monks are going to be pretty good after eaw with that new monk.

p.s.s. If you find yourself having too many sub-par matchups you may have to focus some more. Just my $.02

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 5:20 pm

I'm currently running two nerve strikes (listed right below Cold Hands, Stone Heart). I love that card. Drives those massive follower decks nuts! 8^D Inexorable has been great for me as well, and I've only had it in the deck for one iteration of changes so far.

I had Scout Armor in the deck a couple iterations back and swapped it out for Ring of Air and Chain and Sword. Its hard to tell which has served me better yet since it has only been a few matches.

I'm thinking as well that I'll need to specialize a bit more. I had to force myself to do that with my breeder deck as well. So many great cards and so little deck space! 8^D I'll see what strategies generally fare better to my style and then max those out.

Many thanks!!! I should have and update tomorrow or so when I get test results in.

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 5:54 pm

Looking foreward to it.

Mouth

Servant of Daigotsu Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 133

How does your deck fair against Honor/Dishonor match ups?

I could Scorpion just being a down right pain in the arse.

Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 7:49 am

It's funny you mention honor, because the biggest problem I had last week was a Crane Dueling honor deck. It worked me over pretty well.

This week things were a lot better, I still lost, but I'm going to chalk that up to a lucky entrance of Oki on their second turn (I had Shinran ready to pounce on a province all by his lonesome and Oki stopped it) and to some very impressive play on the last turn to shoot their honor up and then hold it through a couple of cards.

I also played a Lion deck, with a handful attachments, that was a pretty tight knit battle. He has that gift armor can't be destroyed. This didn't concern me too much since I can get my guys pretty beefed up and had a lot of battle actions. What I DID notice is that I'm getting a little too reliant upon Sneak Attack. With our personality counts pretty even the entire time, I was waiting on that Sneak Attack to make the first move and not lose momentum. I think work through those issues (and probably toss in a third Hundred Fold Cut) I'll be okay with that.

Swapping out the Rhino's for Susumu and Fosuta worked out quite well actually. I hit Fosuta early in my game against the dueling deck and used it to pick off a few 3C duelists along the way. I hit Susumu mid game against the Lion deck and it helped during my turns to prevent a key personality from entering the game.

I haven't gone up against Scorpion dishonor since our Scorpion guy hasn't been around. I think we'll need to throw a basic one together to test with. I have a crab scout deck (out of obligation I promise 8^D) that I need one of my buddies to run against me as well.

As much as I love the card, I haven't seen the play out of Cold Hands, Stone Heart that I want. Now part of this problem is that the primary decks in our play group are currently Dragon and Crane, which are prone to high Chi anyway. In addition, when I'm really running efficiently, all of my personalities are loaded up with weapons anyway. I'm thinking I may just drop this out and give me 2 slots. Disarm has worked well in the past for me.

I'm still thinking about Retribution/Ambush in the deck. Part of this moves back to the reliance upon Sneak Attack, but at the same time, having a lot of good personalities that can jump on somebody during the open phase, or swing around and take a province seems to be a great reason to put in the card.

So that's the current report. I also realize I need to finally "commit" to a configuration and play it into the ground for a while to really flesh out all the cards in the deck. 8^D

I'll have a few more changes up here soon, any thoughts/recommendations always appreciated!

Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 3:09 pm

Well friends, I'm 0-3 vs. a Crane Dueling deck that wins by honor and I've never made any headway. I did have one decent match where I had an Ao-Bozu with two weapons on turn 2, moved in with a Sneak Attack plus a JEV to send the defender home to get a province, but shortly thereafter I was outnumbered.

So time for a bit of honor meta eh? In the past I've run War of Dark Fire to help my breeders, but I'm also done using Cold Hands, Stone Heart, so I thought I could put a couple of that honor meta card that does -4 to force and negates all honor if they hit 8 or more. I think this might be a little more effective than Only Actions speak.

Haven't had many duels except the honor deck as of late, but the rest of the deck seems to be really nice, the lineups are looking good, and our new Daigotsu Hotako is just brilliant.

Still pondering Ambush/Retribution. Anybody else use them in their monk/kensai decks?

Servant of Daigotsu Joined: 15 Jul 2009 Posts: 72

Can you work a third hundred fold cut in? That thing has saved my butt in critical duels vs crane/dragon honor runners so hard so many times, I don't know what I'd do without it.

Also, I'm really looking at that new "Shameful and Cowardly" as my new military-anti honor meta star. It requires no setup, and if you hit two 3-4 PH guys with it and then lock them down till battle resolution, it's a pretty hefty FYAD to the opposing player.

Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 4:46 pm

I really like Hundred Fold Cut as well. You're right, it does deserve a third slot.

I hadn't seen that new card yet. That definitely shows a lot of potential, against lots of decks. I'll slide that one in and see how it goes.

Group night is tomorrow night, so hopefully I'll have more feedback then.