At present, the Unicorn are one of the most versatile clans in open. The Otaku palaces stronghold coupled with the variety of solid personalities available gives plenty of options, allowing you to play standard military decks, reasonably fast honour runners, a mixture of both, and the increasingly popular magistrate duelling deck.

Of these, the PCP probably benefits most in an open environment: The return of Shinjo Goshi (Better IMO than Kamoko, just don’t tell anyone I said so) provides more boxable force, and his zero honour requirement is an important protection against those first turn breaches. Along with the standard open events for military decks (Return of Fu-Leng, Winter Warfare et al) and the deliciously overpowered Moto Gaheris, your opponent’s provinces can start disappearing at an alarming rate. This type of deck is normally packed full of action denial and force boosters, to make sure that opponents have very little time to mount a defence. Look forward to SoP’s, destiny has no secrets, and plenty of sneak attacks coupled with any of Deadly Ground, Storms of War, Crushing attack, Night Battle, The great silence. Oh and did I mention Gaheris? :-P

Soul of the Empire gave unicorn a huge boost in the honour running stakes, with the introduction of Otaku Sahijir. A 1/3 magistrate who will come off the box for 3 honour, along with a reasonably useful ability, you can expect to see her a lot at Gencon this year. The basic versions of Kamoko, Xieng chi, Goshi, Karasu and Tetsuko all come with 3 personal honour also, and with Temple of the Ancestors coming in off the stronghold, unicorn players can make a surprisingly quick journey to the magic 40, while putting up a passable defence. While this deck type is solid, great fun to play, and usually a surprise package, it isn’t quite good enough to stand up to our Crane friends when it comes to a sprint, and has major problems against speedy military decks such as Fox and METH.

The arrival of Shirasu sensei means that you are almost certain to meet a few magistrate decks on your travels, but it looks like the unicorn version is still the strongest (primarily IMO because it doesn’t really need to use Shirasu sensei, and can pack Hantei or Toshimoko instead). This deck is very powerful against follower based decks, most notably TA who generally curl up and die once Shinjo Tashima hits the table. Expect plenty of duels, and more often than not, expect plenty of Kolatty goodness.....Masters and instigators are commonly employed to help relieve you of those bothersome personalities. The piece de resistance is the Guv’nor himself, Shino Shirasu. Once he’s suitably armed, he can dispose of a dishonoured personality a turn, and secrets on the wind will make sure that you have plenty of dishonoured peeps to chose from. Other versions of this deck will go a little more corrupt, and use corrupt jade slivers and For the Empires for further personality removal, and there is also a dishonour variant. All in all, it’s a nasty, awkward deck, and will prove a tough match for most.

The major weakness of all the above decktypes is their susceptibility to bad starts. 5 PS is pretty fragile given the speed of most decks at the moment. Although Nio sensei hasn’t proved to be as bad a hoser as many (myself included) hoped/feared (cross out as applicable) it still has the potential to cripple a unicorn deck, and a well-timed breach of etiquette can ruin a pony players day in no time.

As for that Dragon Stronghold, don’t get me started

grumblegrumblemoanmoanbitchbitch etc