Totengräber's Workpläce

So I went to Games To Die For last night while the (awesome) wife was at Yoga class. Normally, Wednesdays are Magic and Roleplaying day, but with the new excitement over Legend of the Five Rings, I figured there’d be at least one or two people there wanting to play some L5R.

I picked up the Lion starter as I’d heard it came with 4 rares rather than the 3 most others have. I didn’t get much to help my deck except the fixed 3x card called ‘A Legion of One’, which helps my Heroes. However, over the course of the evening, I acquired a ‘Setting Sun Strike’ and three copies of ‘Dangerous Reconnaisance’.

Mike Morgan and I played another game, but this time I played Crab and he played his Spider Clan deck.

Early game I was able to buy a Secluded Outpost and put it to good use, getting ‘Hida Manoru’ and the ‘Heavenly Tetsubo of the Crab’ in play and taking a province. Unfortunately for me, he got Daigotsu in play the next turn, which make me really reluctant to go after more provinces. The next several turns were spent building up. I ended up having all three copies of ‘Advance Position’ in my hand and no scouts I wanted to bow to do the action.  I ended up going for his provinces with my whole army and ‘Hida Kuon” was able to take one on his own. However, most of my army got decimated by the Spider’s tricks. Surprisingly, he didn’t attack at my weakest moment. Eventually, he was able to take two of my provinces, so we were even on the province side of things. While most of his people were bowed out, except ‘Michio’ with a couple of attachments and ‘Daigotsu’ with a ‘Balanced Yari’, I decided to go in for the kill. My huge mistake was trying to be sly with Kuon with ‘Fubatsu Blade’ and ‘Imperial Elite Guard’ and not send him, hoping to use his Battle action to get him in the fight before Daigotsu could take him over. I had ‘Sneak Attack’ and ‘Peasant Vengeance’ in my hand. Of course, in deciding not to send Kuon in, I screwed up as he’d just wait until he did move in to take him over. This pretty much ended the game as I’d be all bowed out while his army would be able to attack next turn.

We wnet ahead and played it out to see what would have happened had I sent Kuon like I should have. I would have used ‘Sneak Attack’ to use the ‘Imperial Elite Guard’s’ battle action, destroying Daigotsu’s ‘Balanced Yari’. As a Reaction, he would have played ‘I Carry Two Blades!’ to give Daigotsu a ‘Balanced Yari’ from his hand, thus allowing him to take over Kuon anyway.

It was a good and relatively close game. I need to get a few more cards and a few more games in to help with my tactics, but I think I do okay for not having played in a while.