"With the blood in your veins, your mind is opened to the truth... not the petty thoughts of mortals, but the eye of All." -Hitomi
The Dragon clan.

What to say of the dragon clan, everything and nothing, riddles and mysteries. In Rokugan the dragon are like their name sake, rarely seen and a wonder to behold and a meeting with a ise zumi especially so.In the card game, when your opponent reveals his stronghold to be one of the dragon's mountain homes, you can never be sure what to expect, it could be anything.

The Dragon are not one of the high teir clans when it comes to play, this failing is due to their initial concept as being jack-of-all-trades. Without any focus they never excelled at anything. In dueling and honour running we take a backseat to crane, in enlightenment we're beaten by monk and feenix, dishonour is the home of the scorpian while military has multiple adherents that are better than us. In all aspects we are beaten, and this is perhaps our strongest point... we can compete on all sides, and even better when a certain form of deck type proves itself to be strong the dragon can with very few modifications put it in a yellow border. We'll never, you understand be the best at this form, and our deck design is limited much more, but with time and patience a dragon deck can be very sucessful.

Different forms, or how to win.
The basic paths to victory are simple,
1) Destroy all of your oppoenets provinces (military).
Clans skilled at this: lion, shadowlands, crab, unis, meth, ta etc. (theres lots).
Main goals: early provinces, large amounts of force, military vs military tricks.
2) Get all five rings into play (enlightenment).
Clans skilled at this: phoenix and monk mainly.
Main goals: rise early and often, as little interaction as possible, find cheese.
3) Prove what a thoroughly not nice person your opponent is, and he smells (dishonour)
Clans skilled at this: mainly scorpion.
Main goals: suspicions shizue, shame, winds truth, rise.
4) Prove what a darned nice guy you are and get elected (honour running)
Clans skilled at this: Good few, mainly Crane.
Main goals: keep favour, high personal honour, honour producing holdings

Examples in yellow.

a) *eth
Tattooed Deth, something the dragon have been working on for a while to some limited success. The simple idea is to bring out a tattooed personality, empty your hand on him with some crayons and force boosters and take a province second turn while putting your ring into play. Most of the personalities have - honour requirements so corrupt deth was the prefered type untill recently when the SotE personality Togashi Senai appeared.
Have a look at this German kotei report to see how Deth went very close second
http://www.thepearlherald.com/main/tournament%20reports/germankotei2000a.htm

Things to watch for:

Togashi Senai
If you do ever play Deth watch for this guy, 2 1 for 5 with 0 hr and 2 ph samurai, the key part meaning that everytime he gets targeted by a tattoo card he gets a +1 +1 bonus. Anyone who's ever played my Deth deck has seen how big this guy can get out of an opening hand of 5 cards there's bound to be at least 2 tattoos in hand making him at least 4 3 with one of the tattoos probably being mountain or dragon giving an additional 2/0 or 3/3 bonus, that plus tattoo madness gives him +3 +3 bonus without any draw backs (so if u have any tattoo madness's lying around i need another 2). This means the guy is a definite in the deck, his 0 hr means the deck has to keep at least vaguely honourable the whole time though.

Centipede tattoo
battle: move this personality into this battle, at the end of this battle this personality bows and cannot straghten til after your next straighten phase. basically a forced march the draw back to it is worth it if you look at it in context of a definite province early on.

Hitomi Kazaq
This tattooed Naga eats followers, so if you do intend to stand, make sure you sneak.

Hitomi Tashima
One tattooed Uni, only tattooed guy your likely to find with cavalry, his ability means if everyone in the attacking army is tattooed they get first action.

The most distinctive of the decks it is really only a *eth deck with markers.

b) enlightenment
The one deck I've yet to put together so I only really know the idea around it and not the practise. Kyuden Hitomi, under the box 3 rises, something and something (maybe finding the harmonies). Sensei Kaede (well duh) peeps, gennai for fate manipulation RoV playing and RoA playing, Nakuso our only tattooed shugenja, dragon tattoo him for instant one man RoA, Reju and Togashi Yoshi with some arts for RoF. RoE is some entrapping with the Mountains below Kyuden Hitomi for ease of access. Water as always is tricky, perhaps a go master and add 3 flooded passes for use with the mountains below. Then when in doubt FTH. This deck with some free gold should definately rise turn 3, 4 and 5 so if the opponent is lucky they'll get a second turn province and won't have a chance to do anything 'til turn 6 which hopefully by then you should have won (or else theyll be a really angry horde). Without any proper testing I think this deck should be pretty good.... ummv


c) Dishonour,
Take one Scorpion dishonour deck, see Gregs, take all of the Scorpion personalities out... er well maybe better leave Goshiu and Taberu in. Remove the geisha houses and insert goldmines (how come they get geisha houses?? lucky bastichs), put under Kyuden Hitomi insert - hr dragon cheap shugenja, add a Gennai or 3 add some duelers maybe Kaagi x3 and 3 Yoshis just to make sure you win and some challenges instead of DLFs (lowest honour! peh!). Blend and serve cold.

The disadvantage with relation to the Scorpion is that we don't have that nifty lose honour and see if you have a winds truth ability, we make up for it by not playing with a full deck, with 5 cards under the stronghold and a sensei we really only have 34 cards and should draw a take and breach first turn, fingers crossed, Gennai and some key cards under the stronghold also add to our fate manipulation.

d) Classic Exploding Crane,
The idea of this is that personalities are good for one thing and one thing only, personal honour. After that your not too worried what they get up to as long as you can bring out new personalities. This deck in yellow (exploding dragon) was demonstrated by Chris Bergstrom as he took it to first place in the seattle kotei
http://www.thepearlherald.com/main/tournament%20reports/seattle_kotei_winner_2000.htm

By choosing cheap dragon personalities with ph 2/3 you can make up a decent personality base, while although not as good as the cranes, will serve. This will mainly mean personalities from the Mirumoto side of the house.

All of these decks take work. Whilst we can do most things, to get it done decently takes more time than its' standard counterpart. The personality range breaks down neatly into those with tattoos and - hr and those without. When the dragon your facing starts bring out personalities, look long and hard at them, if they're tattooed and not Nakuso its probably tattooed military, shugenja mean enlightenment (rare enough i think) or dishonour (increasingly popular), a Mirumoto on the table propably implies honour running although honour/dishonour dueling is viable. The Dragon have a widespread although limited personality range by watching the personalites you should be able to get an idea of what kinda deck you're facing.

Good luck at Gencon.

Hitomi Hokosaki
(baz@thedragonclan.com)
for more ranting see http://hokosaki.freeshell.org