Onyx Lives #rules-questions

Asking for a friend (honestly): Shadowlands Crane. Is it as bad an idea as it seems? Is it possible to at least make it fun? Would it work better in a particular format?

I feel like this isn't so much a rules question as a deck strategy question.

The trouble with Shadowlands is that you're gonna start having to play cards with Shadowlands. And there are some Crane cards with Shadowlands, but not a lot. So, at some point, you have to decide a path. Does that path care more about playing a Crane deck that happens to include a few Shadowlands cards? Or do you want to get Shadowlands cards all the time, and augment it with Crane?

Then you have to start looking at what each of these things does to support the rest.

Crane is good at taking and using the Imperial Favor. The favor can be used for a lot of things, and Crane can use it twice before getting rid of it because of their Stronghold.

So if that's the route you want to take, just find a way to make that useful.

Maybe it's a military deck where you're augmenting the force of your personalities by adding a few Oni.

Maybe it's an honor deck where you're playing all the Shadowlands cards that don't lose you honor. (There are quite a few)

Maybe you're happy to lose a bit of honor because of how much you're gaining, and the option to go into military is worth that risk.

I'd play CrOni 😄

Daigotsu's strongest soldiers

Big Daddy D take the wheel

I appreciate the feedback.

I'd like to teach a friend the game, and I was thinking about building him a deck based on his L5R TTRPG character, who was a corrupted Crane iai master.

You've reaffirmed my suspicions. Still, good to get a second opinion.

During pre-ShE Onyx (black/blue bug) I attempted a Tainted Kagami deck, using the strong-for-cost "defense-only" yojimbo and purposely tanking my own honor with SL followers to enable the yojimbo to attack, cracking provinces as early as turn 3, with the right hand even being able to crack Crab PS

However, it was an incredibly glass-cannon blitz build, if you didn't have the cards to crack by t3 or 4 you might as well concede, and i haven't attempted to recreate it since the rotation that came with ShE

Hmm ok I understand your reasoning and that is how we played it. However it does seem quite unfair to allow Sacrifice to work on cards with multiple targets. It would have a disproportionately powerful effect because it could work on all actions with multiple targets eg Nokkai exp's battle action. Maybe the designers could be made aware of this?

Thanks, now I have just seen the comprehensive rules which state that "targeting and costs are not effects". Given that Nokkai's battle action doesn't say the shugenja needs to be an "enemy", can it target shugenja outside the current battlefield?

Pretty sure location and relevance still apply there

Oh I see so you are saying that cards in units cannot be targeted if they are outside the current battlefield, and only non-personality/non-attachment cards can exist outside units, so Nokkai's action doesn't cause the same problems that Tadaka XP2CW's action caused. Got it

Just one more question please: If I play Chasing to bow my Monk and give a big force bonus to a second target, and my opponent plays Sacrifice to redirect the force bonus to his Yonimbo, can I then play my own copy of Sacrifice to redirect again, back to my own Yojimbo?

Prepare for the Future: Just a small typo, it says "You Monk". Also, what if I negate the event action, and my monk gets +2/+2, and then the event pops back up again but I use another copy of Prepare to negate it a second time. Does my monk get +4/+4 until it pops up a third time?

he gets +2/+2 until it event returns

and I think then next copy is in action so it stays as +2/+2 from second one /it is as I understood that card/

if it would stack .. that would be interesting but i highly doubt it

Thanks!