*I do not claim to be a great deck builder or a player and I couldn't have tuned this deck by myself. This article is for those who are interested in looking into the creation of the Lion swarm deck or are just bored and have nothing better to do.

Preparing for Gen Con from nothing was a new experience. I have built very few original decks of my own and they usually suck because I try to limit myself to one clan for an arc. Fortunately, over the past year, I have been able to see and play decks that I got from some good players. They will remain anonymous so that they don't get a million personal messages for decklist requests. After playing these decks I noticed some trends which were not always obvious to me:

1- Emphasis on card draw.
2- Using the best personalities available in or out of clan.
3- Different types of actions. Bow, kill, movement.
4- Meta. Strengthen your weaknesses.
5- Lack of combos. Clogs up your decks.
6- Always 40/40. You want to see your best cards as often as possible.

These trends would be the criteria that I tried to meet in building a deck for Gen Con. The environment looked to be very limited on the card draw and the only clan that I really thought had excellent card draw was Lion with their Central Castle and Lightwater Bay. The personality base of the Lion was very diverse, but thanks to the return of Barley Farm and the utter failure of certain personalities in testing I really didn't have to do too much choosing. The dynasty build was both efficient, resilient, and surprising. It bought people like a swarm deck, but they were better on average than your normal swarm personalities and it played like a blitz deck because Lion goes first and attacks first. Two very key advantages.

The Stronghold:
Central Castle: Card draw is a beautiful thing.

The Dynasty:

1 The War of Dark Fire : This event is amazing and by far the best anti-honor event.
1 Winter Solstice: I had an extra slot which could have gone to a holding, but in testing this was virtually a win condition for some games and almost always helpful.
3 Barley Farm: Auto-include.
3 Copper Mine: Auto-include.
1 Corrupt Officials: Meta choice for Chugo Seido and other important holdings.
3 Large Farm: Auto-include.
1 Traveling Peddler: Auto include.
3 Famous Bazaar: Important to see as many people as possible in swarm decks.
1 Akodo Kurogane: I would have played any 3F tactician for 6GC. His badass ability was just icing on the cake.
3 Akodo Shunori: Auto-include.
1 Akodo Tsudoken: Amazing ability.
3 Ikoma Hagio: Hagio was great in Samurai Edition and Celestial Edition is no different.
2 Matsu Fumiyo: Big debate over on the Lion boards about Fumiyo or Shunran being better. Just run both you dummies! :D
3 Matsu Youko: One of the best non-uniques in the game, 4F, and 6GC.
3 Matsu Shunran: He is the MVP and slightly better than Youko. Threatening 8PS strongholds without attachments is very helpful in pressuring opponents.
3 Ikoma Toraji: Toraji was in the deck mainly to eat Duty, but stayed in even after the Duties were taken out.
3 Matsu Notsuo: Notsuo was one of the borderline inclusions. But, he fit the mold of being 4F for 6GC so I thought I'd test him. Being straight all the time was a wonderful thing to have as it gave me an extra defender and allowed for attacking aggressively.
2 Lightwater Bay: So fucking good.


The fate took a bit more time to tune. I opted to start with a follower build, but luckily that didn't work well and seeing everybody running Rout I just gave up on attachments altogether. This opened up room for a lot more battle actions, which is a very good thing when your card draw engine is in battle. You definitely do not want to draw attachments when you are in a fight. The Dynasty was set and only had room for The War of Dark Fire for meta, so the fate would have to make room for any deck that gave me problems and you could always Lightwater Bay the meta you did not need. It was also important that I fit as many low cost actions as possible (gold or otherwise). This would keep my personalities focused on destroying provinces and keep my dynasty phase smoothly flowing and make my fate hand better than my opponents. As you will see I don't have any jank like Impressive Resilience and Preserving honor.

The Fate:

2 A False Accusation: Lion PH is pretty good on average and the extra force reduction helped out a lot.
3 Charge!: A wise man once said, "They took it away from Lions for a reason". I didn't even have this in my first build, but once it went in it never came out. It was useful in every matchup.
2 Courage: Phoenix Honor meta and could always burn it for a 4F tactician boost.
1 Do Not Turn Your Back: Gotta have some straighten.
2 Unfamiliar Ground: Crab and Mantis meta.
3 Final Duty: Auto-include. Just a fantastic card and a really easy restriction to meet when I just send my guys in to die all the time.
3 Game of Sincerity: Great against high force personalities and honor decks.
1 Incredible Resilience: Tempo swing!
2 Kami Unleashed: Free with Hagio and not a bad way to remove some presence.
3 Low Stance: Auto-include. Low cost action that really hurts opponents.
3 Outer Walls: Auto-include. Too many ranged attacks and Retribution is a popular card.
3 Rout: Auto-include. Bargain action for 1GC and fantastic against the two most popular military decks in Crab and Mantis.
2 Settling the Homeless: A little bit more presence-less defense, can be used on either turn, and either players' personalities.
2 Swift Counterattack: I stand by my meta choice here. Obfuscation was everywhere at Gen Con.
3 The Height of Courage: Auto-include. Super test of courage without the drawback and extra ability.
2 Unpredictable Strategy: Debated putting 3 in the deck, but just couldn't fit them all. This card is just amazing for all that it can do.
2 Will: Like I said earlier, I send my guys in to die all the time and being able to bring them back to life was a nice surprise for opponents.
1 Ring of Water: I go through battle actions often enough to put this into play very often.

Card I wish I included: Justly Earned Victory
Card I should have included: Ring of the Void

Just remember to stick with the six foundations for building a deck and you will see your results improve. I hope this was helpful.

To go along with our New Player Spectacular and bringing you more in-depth information on the game, Roku-Cast & Roku-Mart are proud to present our first strategy article: Celestials, by Case Kiyonaga.

In the future we plan on bringing you more articles as well on subjects too vast to cover in the podcast but that are important none the less. This will also allow us to bring you the views of other very good players besides our own crew of hosts.

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Celestials
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Generally, new sets are fairly similar animals. You can usually count on most decks getting a few upgrades and maybe two or three viable new decks. For example, the Imperial Gift Two, while not adding any truly significant strongholds, gave most decks five or six playable cards. Path of the Destroyer is a larger, more powerful set and will likely form the backbone of many tournament decks for the entire arc. However, the most significant cards from Path are an entirely new card type. I mean, of course, the Celestials.

Let's consider, first, the anatomy of a Celestial. You may only have one Celestial in play at a time (potentially important, as there are two ronin strongholds in the environment). This more or less will limit all players to playing one Celestial per deck, which is probably exactly what design intended. The important part of Celestials is that they enter play as soon as they flip face up in a province. This is highly significant when it comes to game play: you can dig for a Celestial using your border keep at any point in the game, and they will enter play immediately when you flip it after buying a famous bazaar. Let's take a look at the Celestials themselves (in alphabetical order):

• Akodo's Guidance: In my opinion, this is the strongest Celestial. There is no game situation where it isn't at the very least useful, and it provides a ton of force for the attacking lion player. If the lion player is defending, it becomes an almost no-questions-asked kill action that goes through anything.
  
• Bayushi's Guidance: This guidance gives two moderate effects. Being able to discard a champion in province is nice, and the trait seems decent but in reality you are activating the ability at first opportunity. The trait does nothing against military.
  
• Doji's Guidance: Combined with Shiro Daidoji, this could make crane honor a nightmare for some decks. A blanket force bonus of +2 is incredibly significant, and the battle action is effectively a kill action in some situations. Also potentially very potent for military and switch decks.
  
• Fu Leng's Guidance: While this looks incredible, it's fairly easy to play around the second ability. The blanket force bonus is nice, but requiring opposition limits any blitz possibilities that might otherwise exist. Spider has a few very good military decks right now, but this doesn't really do anything to help them with their bad matchups. It will get better as the personalities available get stronger.
  
• Hida's Guidance: The trait is almost negligible. While the ability seems very strong, there are also situations where it will be entirely dead. Crab players didn't use Seiden Sanzo on their personalities early in Samurai to sleaze provinces, and I don't see them using this effect early either. It might make I Do Not Die So Easily! more useful(keep your Hida Tatsuma alive for one more action and sacrifice him to Hida), but for now it's too situational for me to really get excited about it.
  
• Shiba's Guidance: Sort of the opposite of the spider guidance, it provides what is effectively restriction-free force bonus and an effectively restriction-free resurrection. This is definitely one of the stronger guidances, but doesn't really fit into honor decks.
  
• Shinjo's Guidance: Between the new stronghold and this, I guess unicorn wants to be opposed now. A free upgraded Chugo Seido isn't bad, though your opponents will be able to play around it because it's on the board. A very solid but unexciting celestial.
  
• Togashi's Guidance: The trait is fairly significant, and the ability is potentially a great source of card draw between Void and Satsu. I see it being played in all dragon decks, but the split will be a bit interesting: enlightenment decks will play it mainly for the trait, and military/honor for the reaction.
  
• Yoritomo's Guidance: Similar to the crab guidance, this is a somewhat situational effect with a somewhat meaningless trait. Mantis players will use it as soon as possible, but flipped any time after turn 6 and it's effectively a dead card.

As I said before, all the celestials are likely to be played by their respective clans, but the biggest twist comes in how many clans will run the celestial-nuking event. The decision isn't an easy one: a number of the guidances are fairly situational, and some will be used as soon as the player can activate them. Some of the guidances will be difficult to handle for opposing decks, and some of them just plain don't fit nicely into current clan deck themes (I'm looking at you Shinjo's Guidance). Oddly, the decision to include The Lost Path will likely depend on how debilitating other guidances are for the deck as well as how long the player's own celestial is likely to stay in play. Clans like Lion, Phoenix, and Crane are unlikely to ever run the event because their celestials are likely to sit in play. Clans like Mantis, some Dragon, Scorpion, and Spider will occasionally run both the event and their Guidance. Crab and Unicorn will only ever run one or the other.

The Lost Path might actually bring more meaningful deck construction changes than the celestials themselves. A lot of decks will simply throw in their clan's celestial and be done with it, but let's glance at possible deck additions:

• Nothing
• Celestial only
• The Lost Path only
• Celestial and The Lost Path
• Celestial and Forewarning
• Celestial, The Lost Path, and Forewarning

Decks will have to decide on whether their Celestial is debilitating enough to run forewarning. A scorpion dishonor deck out of Stings might decide to run forewarning for the phoenix honor matchup, as keeping the celestial in play might give the scorpion deck just enough time to crack all of phoenix's provinces, and because phoenix honor is the most likely deck to run the event and nothing else. If the scorpion player also decided to run The Lost Path, Forewarning would be able to prevent them from destroying their own Celestial in honor matchups. Lion players will have to decide if their celestial is strong enough to run forewarning to keep it around. Since forewarning has other uses for that particular deck, it's a much more enticing option: it breaks terrains, hits imperial census and other troublesome events, and could just be a generally useful card. Clans like Mantis and sometimes Dragon are unlikely to have their celestial in play for longer than a turn or two, and there aren't any celestials that are exceptionally harmful to them, so those two clans are likely to just play their celestial and stop there. Phoenix honor will probably run The Lost Path and nothing else - their celestial doesn't really do anything for that decktype.

Path gives us a new super powerful card type and a single answer to them. Players will have to decide for themselves whether their guidance is strong enough to protect or weak enough to ignore for whatever deck they choose. These deck constructions choices will have to be very carefully considered and weighed against potential game situations, then backed up by playtesting. The celestials won't define the environment, but like clan champions everyone will have to deal with them in one way or another. Start planning.