The Dragon

It is said that no-one can speak of the Dragon with certainty.

Ask any five l5r players about the Dragon, and you’ll get back six or seven answers, an opinion on the HDM, and possibly an argument or two. Ask any five l5r players about Dragon decks, and you’ll get a similar reply.

Truly, the Dragon are mysterious.

Oh – and ask any Dragon player for an essay, and you can be pretty sure they’ll bring in references to the elusive nature of the Clan, and the Riddle, and generally act all mysterious and vague. If you’re very lucky, you might even get a "you do not understand" out of ‘em.

Anyway, the Dragon. Billed as the jack-of-all-trades, master of none Clan, they don’t quite live up to their billing. Every clan can muster at least a few different paths to Victory (even if the Naga are pretty much either slow military or fast military). Dragon can attempt nearly every path, but have several clear preferences.

* * *

The strength of every Clan is greatly dependant upon its stronghold. The massive rise of Yoritomo’s Alliance due to the FoxBox, the ascendance of Toturi blitz with the Palaces of Otosan Uchi, and the Phoenix dominance thanks to the Eternal Halls proves this point. Dragon’s strongholds have always been firmly seated in the second tier. The Mountain Keep is a solid defensive stronghold, if somewhat outdated in these days of stronghold inflation. Kyuden Hitomi has a nifty sideboarding ability – but oh! 2 starting honour hits honour running, and denies the early use of popular personalities like Togashi Mitsu. Finally, the Iron Mountain has a nifty 5 starting honour, solid province strength, and two nice little abilities.

Iron Mountain makes the Mountain Keep pretty much redundant (unless you like double-digit province strengths). Iron Mountain (Tsuyama, to translate it badly into Japanese) is the obvious choice for honour running. Dragon military can be run off an of the strongholds, although Kyuden Hitomi’s ability to trim a fate deck makes it a better choice for many decks. Enlightenment and other combo-heavy victories seem tailor-made for Hitomi’s Basement, but having to bow the stronghold to retrieve the cards makes the decks rather slow to start.

Still, there’s no obvious advantage to any of these strongholds. Tsuyama’s 5 starting honour is only average for an honour runner. Kyuden Hitomi’s 34 card fate deck is nice, but certainly won’t make or break a military deck.

Oh – one thing to note. All of these strongholds produce 4 gold. Four.

* * *

Hmm. The Dragon clan personality base. How to discuss it?

Right. Take every dragon clan personality printed in the Clan Wars arc. Put them in a grassy field. Take Mitsu, Daini, Hitomi, Yasu and Yoshi out. Oh, and Togashi Yokuni. Taki senses trouble, and runs after Hitomi. A few on the edge of the field, like Rinjin or Yukihara, shuffle nervously. Others, like Togashi Mikoto or the rest of the Agasha, stare blandly with cowlike indifference. Togashi Yama sits down in the mud and starts playing with his mountain tokens.

A jet flies by and drops a fuel-air bomb on the field, wiping every single personality out utterly. The Dragon clan personality base is not effected one little bit. Dragon got about 2 good new personalities out of all the expansion sets up until HE.

Wanna why Hitomi started stealing people from other Clans? Would you rely on Togashi Mikoto to protect you when you’re trying to stop Lord Moon?

Anyway: the Dragon clan got an embarrassment of riches in the new arc. Agasha Gennai is an amazing card manipulator. Mirumoto Uso and his little brother, Yuyake, are great for honour runners (3/3 with 3ph for 6 and a 2/2 for 4 – tasty). The Hitomi family have range of weird and wacky abilities, but unlike many of their Togashi brethren, their weird and wacky abilities include blowing up opposing samurai and doing sneak attacks instead of refighting duels or giving sodding mountain tokens out very slowly.

So, Dragon are sorted, right? With the five or six standouts from Imperial Edition coupled with the zillions of playable post-Jade personalities, Dragon do have an excellent personality base. The problem is that a lot of this personality base doesn’t work well together. Uso and Daini work fine for honour running, but none of the tattooed men have a PH worth speaking of (yeah, ok, Juppun does. But he was riding the fuel-air bomb as it came down.) The tattooed men have an uneasy mix of – and 0 honour requirements, and with KH’s low starting honour, you don’t have the honour to burn on Black Markets or corruption when mixing 0HR guys in.

Still, I can’t really fault our personalities too much. I mean, for all their problems, some of them are truly outstanding. Daini is up there with Gohei and Reju in terms of super-efficient samurai. The Hitomi family have a lot of potential. And as for Gennai, he was so good, the Phoenix bought the family. J

Before I finish this bit though, I must note that the Dragon consistently have some of the coolest Champions in the game. Yokuni did a masterful Kosh impression throughout the Clan Wars. Hitomi is probably THE most talked-about and debated personality ever. Hoshi…um…has a good XP2 version.

(We don’t talk about Hoshi.)

* * *

Holdings, you ask? Since when are holdings an important part of any analysis of the Dragon? Well, y’see – possibly the major weakness of the Dragon is our gold. Take the other four-gold clans. Crab have Blacksmith (a playable card, as opposed to the severely sucky Goldsmith), and Empty Crevasse. Crane…Crane can use the port scheme, have generally cheaper personalities (and Kosaten Shiro makes discussion of Crane gold impossibly without using phrases like ‘gold dripping out their ears’ and ‘buying the Empire on turn 3’). Phoenix have always had either a gold production advantage, or Seppun Kossori.

The Dragon gold scheme isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just…dull. We’ve got no great holdings that are especially good for us. We just use the old faithfuls like gold mines, jade works, small farms etc. Hiruma Dojo helps, but has no real place in Tattooed Attack.

Speed rules L5R. Either you have speed, or you defend against it. Decks like Meth acquire speed from super-cheap guys like Masasue or cost reducers like Denkyu. Defensive decks can get the favour quickly or use defensive cards. Dragon are stuck with the choice of getting a holding and personality for honour, two holdings, or two personalities cheap by turn 3. Many other decks can squeeze out an extra personality or holding. It’s not much of a reduction, but it slows Dragon down enough to keep us down.

Anyway, enough whining about holdings. There’s no good Dragon gold scheme, only average ones.

* * *

There are two obvious Dragon military roots – Tattooed Hitomi Carnage (THC), or some form of duelling attack deck based around the Mirumoto. In reverse order of effectiveness…

The Mirumoto deck is pretty poor military deck. Dragon don’t have that many cheap high-force personalities – we’ve got a few 3s, but we can’t kick out the obscene levels of force other clans are capable of. Dragon aren’t especially great at military tricks either. Overall, we’re pretty similar to Crane military – a solid amount of force, but a bit slow to compete with Shadowlands and speed military, too little force to overcome slower military decks like Naga, and just a bit too few tricks to beat Yogo towers Scorpion.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Duelling is a pretty nice advantage to have in a battle. Most of Dragon’s duelling power is concentrated in Daini’s early 4-chi, and Yoshi’s bonus. The problem with using duelling as an adjunct to attacking is that duelling requires a lot of cards in the fate deck, cards that could be used for followers or force boosters.

While many people feel that Tattooing is a Dragon-only strategy, that’s not true. Monks can use tattoos very effectively…and, um, Phoenix have that tattooed Agasha…and anyone can use tattooed. (snigger)

Ok, Tattooing is pretty much a Dragon-only strategy. How does it work? You stick your tattooed guy down. You put your fate hand on him. Repeat until he’s got more traits that Toturi, and attack until your opponent is dead. That’s the theory, anyway. While THC functions as a DETH (Dragon Empty The Hand), it’s slightly slowed by two issues. Firstly, there’s the slow-starting Dragon gold scheme. Secondly, only two tattoos actually provide a force bonus (Mountain and Dragon), and Dragon tattoo tends to be counterproductive, keeping its user bowed for a few turns. THC has an awful lot of tricks, but not a whole load of force.

That said, THC can be pretty powerful. Hitomi Nakuso and a Crane tattoo can tear through samurai like tissue paper. Arrowroot tattoo on l’il Kobai means that you’ve got to kill a heavy hitter like Hitomi or Hoshi twice. Also, the average cost of the tattooed personalities tends to be slightly lower than average. Nakuso, Kobai, Iyojin and Senai are all off a gold mine…

Kyuden Hitomi is usually used as the base for THC. Sticking the ring of void underneath the stronghold means it can be retrieved on turn 3 or so, opening up the DETH floodgates. Another common tactic is use Breach of Etiquette and a 34 card fate deck, in the hope of getting an early Breach. First turn breaches aren’t as devastating as they used to be, but they’re still welcome.

THC isn’t quite in the top tier of military decks, but a good draw can work wonders. The future of the THC is a bit uncertain, though. New tattoos like Hummingbird offer new possibilities, and the advent of Togashi Senai (who gets force bonuses from tattooes) may bring a new lease of life for THC. Some have experimented with going corrupt or using Yoritomo Sensei for Silk Works, but I’ve yet to see a really impressive THC.

Dragon can’t quite do Robot decks, but we do turtle fairly well. A Dragon deck can happily sit back and churn out the honour holdings and high-PH people like any Crane. Chris Bergstrom used a variant of the old Exploding Crane deck to win a Kotei a few weeks back. However, Dragon’s lack of high-PH personalities in the 4-5 range (Daini and Yuyake are great, but Phoenix have lots of 4g/2ph people, and Crane have people like Reju and Uji) means we start slightly slower.

A close cousin of the Defensive Honour Runner is the ever-popular

Dragons started duelling about 2 minutes after the invention of the katana, and have kept doing it ever since. Crane have traditionally been our main competitors for mastery of the duel, and do have a lot more duellists. However, lacking the Crane’s honour running ability, Dragon players are more likely to rely on duels as a significant portion of their honour running.

Duelling is one of my favourite aspects of l5r. My two favourite cards are (as anyone who plays against me in a tournament knows) Come One At A Time and Enough Talk! An often-repeated mantra on the Dragon list, though, is "duelling is not a victory condition". It’s true – you can play all the duels you want, and you won’t win the game. Duelling is also very fate-intensive (obviously). Still, a combination of solid defence, the odd Iaijutsu duel or ComeOne in the battle phase, and the Kitsuki (Yasu/Kaagi/Mizochi) getting your duels off in the limited phase can propel a DDDD to 40 fairly quickly.

The Dragon-Scorpion alliance prompted this deck type. It’s pretty much Scorpion-in-a-Can. A more Dragony variant uses duels to set up Shames. Still, dishonour is spectacularly ineffective against many Clans. If the Scorpion start winning with dishonour, then the Dragon can follow them….but they’re not, so we don’t.

Well, Ring of Fire isn’t a problem. J Seriously, Dragon are probably one of the top three or four Clans for enlightening. Water causes a lot of problems, though.

Our very own victory condition! It’s not entirely impossible, either. KH can be used as Hitomi’s toy chest. The two major problems with it are 1) keeping a Hitomi alive long enough to actually put all her toys on her and 2) getting an Obsidian Hand.

* * *

If the above analysis sounds a bit negative, sorry. Dragon are a fairly good clan, and have a great deal of potential. Most Dragon decks, though, as just a small bit too slow or too weak to bring Dragon to the top tier. We may play with honour and make an acceptable showing, but it’s a good thing we’re not supposed to be interested in glory. It won’t take much to fix Dragon’s weak points, though, and it’s entirely possible that the winning Dragon deck already exists, it just hasn’t been found and perfected yet. Time will tell. Togashi is dead, and the future is hidden even from the Dragon.

One thing I will say for the Dragon – they have character. We’ve had some of the coolest personalities in the game, and some of the best moments in the story (yeah, include a rant about Ree and the HDM here if you must, all I can say is none of us were there, none of us know the full truth, your mileage may vary, and there’s a special list set up for discussion of the whole issue, called L5Rinfo.)

Honour to the Dragon!