Well, there seems to be a trend of these "Cereal Discussions" going on in these forums, so I'm gonna make one about my favorite character, Yi Shan** . In his King of Iron Criticism thread, Shinji gave Yi Shan** a pretty bad rap, but I think he's massively underrating The Dragon of Mt. Lao . Let's do a more in-depth analysis, shall we?

As far as the character card is concerned, he looks solid, but not really impressive. 6/26 are just OK stats, and though the character itself has all the tools necessary to run his face-up momentum gimmick, it doesn't have a whole lot of "wow" factor on paper.

His attack support changes a lot of these things. You see, there's not a bad attack in all of Yi Shan's support as far as stats are concerned. Let's have a look at the list:

Dragon Punch (4/2 4M6 +2M; Punch)

Rage of the Dragon (6/3 4M6 +1M; Punch, Yi Shan Only)

Striking Thunder (5/3 3M6)

Yi Shan's Dragon Tail Leg Sweep (3/3 3L3 +2L; Kick)

Yi Shan's Spinning Backfist (4/3 3M4 +1M)

Yi Shan's Tiger Claw (4/3 3H5 +3H; Stun: 1)

See what I mean? None of these is a bad attack, and most of them have some pretty nice effects while they are face-up in your momentum (well, hellooooo, +2 damage/card pool cleaning/keyword ability negation/ Stun: 1 for everything I play). Although it could be argued that throws would be more favorable, because they produce fail-safe face-up momentum, these effects combined with their stats (as compared to throws' usually mediocre ones) put them over the top. Additionally, the Life resource symbol provides a healthy amount of speed bonuses, which allows these attacks to hit and have their effects be felt. Sounds good to me. Now, let's look at the rest of his support.

Tieh Lei, Iron Thunder is absolutely insane; it has some discard punishment with a great block, can pump speed AND damage, or can give you the face-up momentum you need at that moment (or let you have another go with all the face-up momentum you already had, a la Reanimated ). This alone makes me want to run this deck. Add in the (IMHO fantastic) Pendant of the Western Paradise , which provides damage buffing and/or searching FOR ANY ATTACK IN YOUR DISCARD PILE AND PUTTING IT INTO YOUR HAND when you discard face-up momentum (you can use this to fish for blocks while using Repentant Hero , or to grab one more attack when using Dark Past on a kill turn). If you want to use the damage pump, you will have to have attacks running off Earth and Life , which includes all of his support, plus some other very solid stuff ( Siegfried 's support comes to mind here, as does the fantastic Close Throw ), so it's not that big a deal.

Yi Shan** is also one of the few characters to have damage pumping AND damage reduction in his support (with Iron Body and Zhao Family Discipline as static damage bonuses or penalties, while Dark Past and Repentant Hero require you to burn face-up momentum). This means those 26 Vitality actually have a lot more mileage than what is apparent at first glance. Considering the only other character to have pump and redux is Astaroth* (and the only redux card is the very conditional Laughable ), this makes Yi Shan** the NewFS character with the most tanking support built in, which in turn makes him able to take more shots to the face than perhaps anyone. Additionally, Atoning for the Past offers a shot of acceleration for the face-up momentum strategy (or a way to redeem a completely blocked attack) and some card pool clearing by sending the attack directly to the face-up momentum. And true to the Yi Shan** tradition, most of the foundations have pretty good stats, too.

Although one CAN make the argument that anyone can use most of this support, and thus gain the benefits, the fact of the matter is this has not panned out in practice; I have extensively tested decks using Yi Shan** 's support, and I have found that I am either very limited or simply unable to use it at all. The reason why is that I have to do two things:

1) I have to draw the Yi Shan** support that allows me to generate face-up momentum (if not using one of Yi Shan** 's attacks).

2) I have to commit foundations to get my attack in the momentum face up.

3) I have to draw the support that uses face up momentum in order to use it.

Yi Shan** takes 1 and 2 out of the picture, so it makes the whole strategy run a heck of a lot smoother. You haven't seen it run correctly until you've seen it run with Yi Shan** . Additonally, the strategy in practice has proven remarkably resistant to momentum discard, which is at a relative premium in the new format anyway, so I think he's a very solid character overall, and certainly not bottom tier, since I can think of more than one character that doesn't work this smoothly. Comments?

P.S.: As far as tier rankings go, I give him a solid B . He certainly isn't at the level of Astrid , Jin Kazama* , and Rashotep **, but he's no Temujin** .

Steve Fox has Built in Tank Ability. That makes him the best at Tanking.

Yi Shan seems really fun and I don't think he is bad but he is not on the level of others. One thing he does have going for him is that Rashotep doesn't really do anything to him as all of his attacks have his E at the cost of a foundation.

The character is complete garbage. The end.

Homme Chapeau said:

Thanks for the trolling, Hatman , and for eroding some of my respect for you (that's something I didn't even expect from Shinji ). Care to elaborate, or you can't be bothered even to do that?

I really like Yi-shan and I agree with Lord aggro that he can be quite the monster if built correctly.

Unfortunatly I haven't focused on making him competitive since he is my "friendly deck for newer people" deck.

Top tier I would not say he is, but somewhere higher up than what Marco gave him cred for

LordAggro said:

Considering I tried playing him since he was out, both in B3 and in B4 and I just recently quit doing so out of sheer frustration at his inability to win in a consistant manner. Of course, in Block 3, he was indeed very strong and a great alternative to his Promo version. If you played him with 8 character cards, you had a very potent tank and damage buff, where Tieh Lei, Iron Thunder came in and swooped in easily for the kill, especially with the second E and his support. Checking attacks served to fuel the Tieh Lei, and Earth's momentum gain was good enough so you could start going in for the kill as soon as turn 2.

In B4, I dare say he is the worst character released. Utter trash. Not even worth the cardboard he was printed on. Even Christie has the SSS Loop/PotM. Algol has Alshaim Najm which punishes defensive discard and allows you for a pretty decent kill condition. Even Nina's character only equivalent has the merit of being unblockable.

Don't take my word for it. Let's look at his abilities - he foregoes the "you must commit a foundation to get it face-up" through two cards - himself and Tieh Lei, Iron Thunder. Himself requires that you play attacks in order to get the momentum needed, and Tieh Lei, Iron Thunder is fueled by momentum. It's a great momentum cycler, no doubt and it is a good card in Yi Shan, but that doesn't really make the character better, at the same time as it doesn't win games because of the momentum cost. Neither Earth, Life nor Water has any momentum manipulation to write home about (does it actually have any? Doubt it.) So, you have to get your momentum through attacking, which is fine normally, but not when you need a good 3-4 momentum for it to really matter (and said cards in your discard pile in order to fetch them with Tieh Lei.)

Let's take a look at the attacks, generally, they have a low speed, or if they have a high speed, their difficulty requires a mid-game to late-game set-up (ohai Rage of the Dragon). The only two worthy of a mention are Yi Shan's Tiger Claw and Striking Thunder. Tiger Claw benefits other decks more because they can generally abuse the stun more, and Striking Thunder is absolutely deadly if you can get one or two in momentum. Now, you can probably build lantern's Yi Shan build, which is all Throws with the exception of Striking Thunder, all to abuse Iron Body Technique and Zhao Family Discipline. Still, I haven't seen that build rock the world, and to be honest, if it wasn't for IBT and ZFD, it would suck. IIRC, he switched the deck around to make a King deck which has rocked more faces than Yi Shan ever could. Still, the best build for Yi Shan I've seen barely uses any of his stuff !

I have to make a special exception for Rage of the Dragon - an attack that matters so little in the history of UFS, the apathy of all players will crush it into oblivion. The only thing it has going for it is that it's got a good block. Wow. I am impressed. It's 6/3 4 speed mid 6 damage. That in itself is not so bad. Except for the ability, making sure it's not even worth a **** - commit 2 foundations : This attack gets +2 damage for every face-up card in your momentum. That in itself wouldn't be so bad except :

-It's a 6 Difficulty attack, pretty much guaranteeing that you will see a few foundations committed.
-If you launch this early game, you won't have enough cards in the momentum to make it worth it. Mid to Late game it will get blocked because it's a mid with too little speed.

So, let's see - his support is badly designed because it requires either a up-front cost of momentum or it requires attacking, at which point any effect you would gain from Yi Shan's face-up momentum is pretty much inconsequential to your victory. Is that bad enough already? No! In order to assess my criticism of "complete garbage", I have to take a look as to what other symbols do, and what meshes well with Yi Shan.

Through Earth, he's lucky in the sense that the symbol is so generic that anything in it can likely help him out more than his own support. Damage buffs and nerfs, alongside the Ragnar support / Man Behind the Mask shenanigan, will always help out a Earth deck. Anti-committal in Torn Hero, Journey of Repentence (who also share Life) makes for a protective deck. However, because he relies on face-up momentum for his defense (Repentant Hero, Iron Body Technique), he has to score some momentum before being able to defend himself other than blocks. I don't know about you, but the inability to defend yourself or overwhelm the opponent through your own mechanic simply tells me you'd be better off playing someone else. It's not like other Earth characters don't exist, and beyond liking the gimmicky "Face-up momentum"

Life is the symbol that holds the most potential, because it is featured prominently on Siegfried, Tira, Lu Chen, Ivy, etc. Robes of the Grandmaster, combined with Eiserne Drossel, gives a +4 speed to attacks, allowing them to reach the momentum faster (haha puns). However, again, it requires set-up, running more assets than most are comfortable with, and forcing all your attacks to go through Life (preventing possible dual-symbol shenanigans). Not only that, but Life has better options be they Ivy, Lu Chen or Siegfried. Of course, if you REALLY like the mechanic, sure, but again - it's more the mechanic than the actual strength of the character.

Water, considering it's "I'm just like Life except with a whole lot less support" state right now, I am not going to comment on. Why would I need to? It's arguably the worst Standard symbol in the game right now! Anything it can do Life can do better, with more variety, while pointing and laughing at the little wave.

The logical conclusion is this : if Earth and Life are good options for Yi Shan depending on what you want to do with him, why not go and dual-symbol it? He's got enough Earth/Life card to warrant a good look see, and with Earth's damage pumps and Life's speed pumps, your attacks will hit hard and fast. I'll agree to that point, but I'll counteract with : "So?" There's another character named Siegfried out there, he's Earth / Life, has more Vitality, and is likely to be a better face for your deck than Yi Shan ever will. Oh, and he also gets Soul Calibur *, which will literally **** your opponent's staging area so much they touch yours. It is especially nasty against Paul.

Had the promo not rotated, he would be one of the best characters in the game right now, even at 6 CC. Except it did, and it left him with as the punching bag of UFS. There is literally zero reason to play the guy beyond "I like the character in the stories on the website." because everyone else does what he does better and faster.

Also, as far as "respect eroding", you should know by now that if I had let that stop me from posting anything, I probably wouldn't have posted much of anything these past two years.

Well, I think there are worse characters out there (hi there, Temujin** , and your borderline-useless abilities, how do you do?), and Christie can draw bunches with SSS and PotM , but to no real utility, since she can draw by herself anyway. Algol* IMHO is terrible. I think Yi Shan** is better than all of these guys, and than some others (hence my placement at mid-tier; he's no Astrid , but he's very playable).

3 speed is hardly low; most attacks are around that level. I'd say average, and they have a good damage/difficulty ratio (never lower that 1 : 1, and can go as high up as 1.5 : 1), which means they hit pretty heavy.

I'm sorry to hear you've had that negative an experience with Yi Shan** (and I agree, he would have been S Tier if Yi Shan* had stayed, especially against stackers like Jin Kazama* and Kazuya Mishima* ), but mine has been the exact opposite. I've tried running Siegfried* , and I've gotten my teeth knocked in. While Siegfried* 's support is godly for preventing commits and buffing damage, I have been unable to prevent damage to me. I've been able to land my attacks effectively with Yi Shan** (while only running 6 assets, which is pretty decent), and as you know, if he gets his stuff to hit, he usually wins.

As for Rage of the Dragon , I can safely say across the course of more 50 games played, I have gotten it blocked exactly 0 times.

I think Life is the way to go for Yi Shan** ; as you mentioned, none of the attacks are throws, and most of the speeds are just average, and it is important for your attacks to hit. Earth has throws, but so has Life to a degree ( Close Throw , Cobra Clutch ), and I have found that Earth is slower as a symbol overall, and Yi Shan** can't afford to be slow (I expect to be attacking on turn 2 very regularly).

I agree that the strength of the character lies in the gimmick, rather than the character himself. But that's not necessarily bad, since no one can run the gimmick better than he can and the gimmick works reasonably well, so that makes him pretty solid.

As a side note, it's probably too little, too late, but I did like your Ragnar** deck, and I incorporated some of it into my own build (in my sig). I'd like you to take a look.

Mordai said:

This is what I mean; I'm not saying he's an S Tier character, because I'd be lying If he had ( Jin Kazama* runs well with 60 random cards that happen to share a resource symbol with him, and Astrid just needs Weapon cards, and Rashotep* * screws anyone over, though Yi Shan** is one of the best equipped to deal with Rasho ). If he had 30 HP and didn't have to pitch momentum for his damage pump, he might have been S Tier . However, he's not under B Tier IMHO, and he can certainly pull off wins on S Tier characters if he gets going quickly.

LordAggro said:

Not the proper thread for it, but Temujin can effectively fake out the opponent using many Combos, considering that's what he was built for, and if all else fails, use fire (Powerful : 3). I classify Christie about at the same level as I do Yi Shan**, to be frank. I've played the deck, and honestly it's worse than Yi Shan. There is zero way to make that deck work with what we have right now. Algol I've seen do some damage, but it's tricky to make work.

But yeah, the only reason I'd see Earth as viable is because Berserker Rage is simply too good to ignore, and most of your attacks are gonna have Earth anyway, so linking through it isn't a lot of work.

Hmm... there's an interesting idea. I hadn't thought of Berserker Rage with Yi Shan** . Thanks! That's a nice alternative; it puts more sting on his attacks, and the 3 HP doesn't hurt him that much, since he has tanking.

LordAggro said:

In an Earth / Life build, toss it for 5 diff on your second attack, watch your opponent weep.

Thing I'm looking at is that momentum jacking is making a return. If he could protect his momentum then he would be awesome. Also if he could get cards from his dicard back into his momentum that would make him s tier in a second. I think he needs more support. King doesn't help him out at all really. So your stuck with Siegfried, Ivy and Tira. The way things are now attacking is better then damage reduction.

darklogos said:

Momentum jacking is making a return in Air and Chaos. In anything else, forget it. Until SCIV 2 comes out.

Air and Chaos have traditionally had momentum jacking, so it's not surprising. I'd like to see if Earth , Life , or Water gets some momentum muscle to push Yi Shan** over the top.

LordAggro said:

Earth has some in the form of Maniacal Laughter, but that's only one, and you have to destroy it in order for that to happen. Still, I'll take it over anything at this point. Plus free Stun : 1.

I realize I've become quite the trendsetter lately (NEWFS, Cereal Discussion), but must I be referred to so frequently? =/

Homme pretty much covered everything I'd say. He RELIES on support, similar to how Daiyu would not see play without Twilight Embrace (although Twilight is actually reliable). He should have been 6/29, and his E should have been free, or commit 1 foundation.

I would have loved for him to have been designed that way (especially if the pump E would have been free): he would have been BEASTLY.

Sure, Rage of the Dragon may not look like all that on the surface, but in my experience, that Thunder Uppercut wins games. I just played a set against Astrid today, and I came out on top because of the Rage , and I can't think of any other attack that could have gotten my skillet out of the fire and finished her off.

The problem with being support-dependent is that it allows for less customization room, since you have a couple more non-negotiable cards than your average character. But I'm OK with that (what I'm not OK with is Tekken giving him a big shipment of ALMOST NOTHING USEFUL). Hopefully SCIV will give me a hand...

LordAggro said:

Could be worse, you could be in Christie's shoes in which SW/SC gives her nothing and neither will the next SC set.

Actually, Maniacal Laughter might give you something off Earth. Blow it up, get a free momentum (for Tieh Lei) and Stun : 1.

Homme Chapeau said:

To steal Alex's idea.

Evil Sparrow, Genius Alchemist, and Frantic Search. They all make Fruit Picker (a card I have extreme doubts about) actually usable. That, and Soul Calibur DOES have kicks! Just...not a whole plethora of them.

MarcoPulleaux said:

New Taki or she gets nothing.

Homme Chapeau said:

Sad, but true. She'll get 2 kicks from Xianghua , tops, and that'll be the end of it.

Hey, Ivy gave her ONE kick, and apparently its mattered a lot in this block.

I guess so.

Anyhoo, back on-topic.

I've been tinkering around with several Yi Shan** builds off of Life , and I've come up with some results:

1. Anything that can pump speed is godly in Yi Shan** : Because most of his attacks have average speed (aka 3), but great damage-to-difficulty ratios, so I recommend a healthy helping of Eiserne Drossel , Keeper of the Watchers , and Robes of the Grandmaster to make your stuff hit.

2. You can usually take plenty more damage than your rather average 26 vitality indicates: Iron Body Technique and Repentant Hero work really well, so you can actually absorb quite a bit of damage.

3. Rage of the Dragon works: I know it looks mediocre on paper, but it has finished plenty of fights for me, and it's hit the 20-damage mark faster than a Odin's Wrath with Dual-Wielding with Hilde* , so it's been very useful, as long as you have around 2 copies, so you don't draw into it too early.

LordAggro said:

If you can gather enough momentum, sure. Otherwise it's just not worth it. Committing 2 foundations for +4 damage is just not enough for a character only.

Granted, it's not the worse one (honor would go to Jotun's Fury for that!) but it's... well, not that good.