So, we know almost all of the Crane cards at this point. While we don't have enough context to look at the faction as a whole and see where they'll shake out, we can look at the conflict cards as a collective to see what they offer someone who might want to splash. For reference I've copied the splashable card text.

Above Question (attachment) 1 cost 2 influence. Condition. Attached character cannot be chosen as a target of an opponent's event.

Admit Defeat (event) 1 cost, 2 influence. Action: Choose a character that is defending alone. Bow that character.

Duelist Training (attachment) 1 cost, 1 influence. Technique. Attached character gains: "Action: while this character is participating in a conflict, choose a participating character controlled by your opponent - challenge that character to a military duel. Instead of giving honor for this duel's bid, a player may choose and discard the required number of cards from hand. Bow the loser of the duel.

Height of Fashion (attachment) 2 cost, 3 influence, +4 political. Condition. This attachment cannot be played during a conflict.

Noble Sacrifice (event) 1 cost, 2 influence. Action: Sacrifice a (friendly) honored character. Choose a dishonored character - discard that character.

Steward of Law (character) 1 cost, 1 influence, 1/1/0. While this character is participating in a conflict, characters cannot become dishonored.

The Perfect Gift (event) 0 cost, 1 influence. Action: Reveal the top 4 cards of each player's conflict deck. Choose 1 revealed card owned by each player and add it to its owner's hand. Shuffle.

Voice of Honor (event) 0 cost, 2 influence. Interrupt: When the effects of an event would initiate, if you control more honored characters than an opponent - cancel those effects.

So what does Crane offer as a splash Clan?

For one, it offers a pretty nice suite of event control cards. With some combination of Voice of Honor, Above Question, and Steward of Law, you can narrow opponent's options, provided you can reliable trigger Voice. Having some protection against the nasty conflict actions from clans like Scorpion could be a huge boon depending on how the meta shakes out.

The battle control suite consists of Admit Defeat and Noble Sacrifice, both of which punish opponents whose board state is too thin. This could be good for clans who prefer to go wide, as it has been implied Lion will prefer to do. It could also be good for clans who prefer to pummel opponents with strong characters supported by a few weaker characters, as it has implied Dragon and Crab might do.

The other main thing that Crane offers is a splashable reusable duel. While this doesn't seem amazing by itself, there could be future cards that supplement it, or clans that can find ways to abuse it. Dueling as a whole seems to be a lightly supported mechanic, but this will likely change as more cards are released.

What other thoughts can be gleaned from the Crane splashables in a vacuum?

I think Dragon duel decks could play a playset of Admit Defeat, which has some synergy with a Mirumoto Prodigy. And a play set of Duelist Technique would also fit into such a deck...

I really hope the Dragon will also get some intersting duel stuff that could enhance a Crane deck.

I don't like Voice of Honor or Noble Sacrifice outside of clans that have reliable ways to (dis)honor people. We'll see who can do that. Noble Sacrifice has a c-c-combo with Shameful Display, but... c'mon.

Admit Defeat looks like the most powerful effect here, especially from a Unicorn or Dragon perspective. Height of Fashion seems like the most powerful general use card for the clans that need a political backbone.

Steward of Law is easily the best "filler" card of this faction.

Assuming the SHs have 10 influence, which I suspect may be different as starting honor decreases, I could see splashes like:

2 x Admit Defeat, 2 x Height of Fashion

3 x Height of Fashion, 1 x Steward of Law

3 x Admit Defeat, 1 x Height of Fashion, 1 x Steward of Law

etc, with Voice and Noble becoming choices if your clan can pull them off.

This potentially looks good for Lion, assuming they will have real good Military strength. Use your superior Honor to draw lots of cards, and bully your opponents with Duelist Training, using cards you didn't need to feed your Duelist Training while still maintaining decent Honor *and* a threat of game changing conflict card play. Height of Fashion could be used to help Political weakness. Duelist Trained Height of Fashion Lion Brawler sounds like a strong political cushion defender who hopes to bow enough attacking politicans to save the province from breaking.

Above Question Duelist Trained Mirumoto Prodigy sounds like a terrible pain in the butt. Can't target it with events, can't defend against it with more than one dude, and if the dude isn't strong enough to outduel the prodigy he will get bowed by Duelist Training, and if he is strong enough to face her, there is still a chance of being lolbowed by Admit Defeat.

1 hour ago, WHW said:

This potentially looks good for Lion, assuming they will have real good Military strength.

I think the one thing we can know about the Lion, even without seeing many cards yet, is that they will, indeed, have real good Military strength.

From a Lion perspective, I'd definitely be looking like 2x Voice of Honor, 2-3x Admit Defeat, 0-2x Steward of Law

If the Pride keyword is thrown on another guy or two, then Noble Sacrifice becomes an option. I'm a little leery of the actual payoff from it.

Several of their cards combo nicely with several known Scorpion cards / themes.

Blackmail + Noble Sacrifice is especially amusing.

1 hour ago, Yogo Gohei said:

Several of their cards combo nicely with several known Scorpion cards / themes.

Blackmail + Noble Sacrifice is especially amusing.

Some of us are not convinced that Noble Sacrifice is worthwhile.

Suppose you dishonor my Shinjo Outrider. She is now a 0/0 character. Do you really want to blow up your own guy to get rid of that? Sure, I can think of a few cases where you might want that. In general, it seems like a honored character way out-values a dishonored one. That makes Noble Sacrifice an under value play a majority of the time.

15 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Some of us are not convinced that Noble Sacrifice is worthwhile.

Suppose you dishonor my Shinjo Outrider. She is now a 0/0 character. Do you really want to blow up your own guy to get rid of that? Sure, I can think of a few cases where you might want that. In general, it seems like a honored character way out-values a dishonored one. That makes Noble Sacrifice an under value play a majority of the time.

Depends who has fate and who doesn't. Killing my honorable guy with 0 fate to kill your dishonorable guy with 2 fate seems like a decent trade to me.

4 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

In general, it seems like a honored character way out-values a dishonored one. That makes Noble Sacrifice an under value play a majority of the time.

Exactly. Even if you're sacrificing a bowed, 0-fate character, Noble Sacrifice is only worth it if the target still has credible value while dishonored. Doji Hotaru is only a 0/3 while dishonored, but she still would be able to effectively use her great game-text, so she would be a worthwhile target. I imagine the other champions will be similar. For cheaper targets, Lion's Pride Brawler is still pretty effective as a 2/1. Beyond that, most characters are pretty close to neutralized while dishonored. You would need your opponent to commit other cards to the target before using it.

The Blackmail combo is sweet, but it's really expensive.

19 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Some of us are not convinced that Noble Sacrifice is worthwhile.

Suppose you dishonor my Shinjo Outrider. She is now a 0/0 character. Do you really want to blow up your own guy to get rid of that? Sure, I can think of a few cases where you might want that. In general, it seems like a honored character way out-values a dishonored one. That makes Noble Sacrifice an under value play a majority of the time.

Also, as a scorpion player, it will often be nice to off the dishonorable guy before the opponent has a chance to reverse his fortunes.

I am not saying Noble Sacrifice is the absolute best-est. But I think it can definitely serve a purpose in a Scorpion deck, at least on paper.

I'm thinking Lion's Pride Brawler at the Height of Fashion or Duelist Training (I'm assuming if a character has two action abilities he can use each once in a turn). Attack with him politically. High enough cost to avoid many removal cards and my opponent has to waste some political characters/conflict cards to keep him from winning the ring.

Of course, there is also the possibility that some Clans (Scorpion, for example; I can also see Crab going there) might have very low Glory scores. I totally could see Scorpion having assymetrical symmetrical effects like "Both you and me dishonor a character", utilizing the fact that they get -0 to their skills while you get -3.

28 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Some of us are not convinced that Noble Sacrifice is worthwhile.

Suppose you dishonor my Shinjo Outrider. She is now a 0/0 character. Do you really want to blow up your own guy to get rid of that? Sure, I can think of a few cases where you might want that. In general, it seems like a honored character way out-values a dishonored one. That makes Noble Sacrifice an under value play a majority of the time.

Ah, but if I'm comboing blackmail, I'm not blowing up my guy to kill your guy. I'm blowing up your guy to kill your guy, which seems like a much better trade to me.

2 minutes ago, Kiseki said:

Ah, but if I'm comboing blackmail, I'm not blowing up my guy to kill your guy. I'm blowing up your guy to kill your guy, which seems like a much better trade to me.

You don't win a war by dying for your country. You win by making some poor b***** die for his.

1 hour ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Some of us are not convinced that Noble Sacrifice is worthwhile.

Suppose you dishonor my Shinjo Outrider. She is now a 0/0 character. Do you really want to blow up your own guy to get rid of that? Sure, I can think of a few cases where you might want that. In general, it seems like a honored character way out-values a dishonored one. That makes Noble Sacrifice an under value play a majority of the time.

Which is why you do not use Noble Sacrifice to take out a high glory character. You use it to pop strong low glory characters like an Aggressive Moto with a Fine Katana.

8 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Which is why you do not use Noble Sacrifice to take out a high glory character. You use it to pop strong low glory characters like an Aggressive Moto with a Fine Katana.

This requires you do spend the resources to dishonor a character you otherwise get no value from dishonoring. If you dishonor him and then your opponent plays something like Reprieve, you're getting blown out.

45 minutes ago, williamobrien said:

This requires you do spend the resources to dishonor a character you otherwise get no value from dishonoring. If you dishonor him and then your opponent plays something like Reprieve, you're getting blown out.

Depends. That Agressive Moto may have just attacked solo into Shameful Display so using the action to set up a Noble Sacrifice that gives me an honor might not have been much of a loss. Also Reprieve is an attachment not an event so you can see it coming.

31 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Which is why you do not use Noble Sacrifice to take out a high glory character. You use it to pop strong low glory characters like an Aggressive Moto with a Fine Katana.

I realize that if "dials are set here" and "knobs are set there" that it could be a good play. I still think, a majority of the time, it will not be. I also think that a smart opponent will actively try to always make it a bad play.

Unrelated - Aggressive Moto is possibly the worst character previewed so far. He is effectively 1/4 a character (only participates in one out of four conflicts) and costs twice the amount of the same stated Lion who has no restrictions. It could imply that Cavalry is amazing because he can still move into defending conflicts. So, maybe he is overpriced because Cavalry just rules. Maybe we could dredge up "Cavalry costs 1 fate" arguments. I guess we'll see with the pony previews.

3 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Depends. That Agressive Moto may have just attacked solo into Shameful Display so using the action to set up a Noble Sacrifice that gives me an honor might not have been much of a loss. Also Reprieve is an attachment not an event so you can see it coming.

That's a lot of ifs. Cards that require a lot of ifs to make useful tend to not be all that great.

Attachments are played during the Conflict phase, just like events. We know that they can be played between conflicts because Height of Fashion requires it. They are essentially events that stick around. But really, it could be anything that messes with your plan. An opposing Crane player could use Way of the Crane to rehonor the character, or Voice of Honor to cancel the event. There might be an event that cancels discarding a character. A lot of things can go wrong.

1 minute ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Unrelated - Aggressive Moto is possibly the worst character previewed so far. He is effectively 1/4 a character (only participates in one out of four conflicts) and costs twice the amount of the same stated Lion who has no restrictions. It could imply that Cavalry is amazing because he can still move into defending conflicts. So, maybe he is overpriced because Cavalry just rules. Maybe we could dredge up "Cavalry costs 1 fate" arguments. I guess we'll see with the pony previews.

I was using Aggressive Moto as an example due to it being one of the currently biggest low glory characters shown so far. A Wandering Ronin with 2+ Fate or a Seeker of Enlightenment with a lot of Fate on unclaimed rings might have been better examples.

My point was that if you want a big military/political swing you use it to take out mostly unaffected by dishonor low glory characters rather than mostly neutralized high glory characters.

1 minute ago, williamobrien said:

Attachments are played during the Conflict phase, just like events. We know that they can be played between conflicts because Height of Fashion requires it. They are essentially events that stick around. But really, it could be anything that messes with your plan. An opposing Crane player could use Way of the Crane to rehonor the character, or Voice of Honor to cancel the event. There might be an event that cancels discarding a character. A lot of things can go wrong.

Which does not make it a bad option to have.

My comment on Reprieve being an attachment is to point out that while it can be played to protect from a possible Noble Sacrifice it is not an Event interrupt that will give them Tempo.

I need to see the Scorpion cards but the Crane are a pretty mixed bag.

On the one hand, there's Height of Fashion and Above Question that you should avoid at all times. HoF is costly, has a narrow window of playability, and has the disadvantages of being an attachment. Above Question has a lower cost and the fact that there might be many other ways to deal with a personality that can targeted by events.

On the other side are Admit Defeat and Noble Sacrifice, which seem to play into the control or event aspect of the Scorpion* and are quite worth it to splash. Voice of Honor is also viable just because counterspells, albeit a narrow one, can really swing a conflict.

Duelist Training might be worth a look because of its low influence cost and the possibility of the clan being able to manipulate the honor dial. It helps that there's an alternate honor cost involved as well. It's an attachment so it might simply lead to fate or card disadvantage.

Stewart of Law might be counter productive for the clan but having more conflict personalities might be interesting to explore.

* - This is going by two of their cards, City of Lies and Rumourmonger.

15 hours ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

"Cavalry costs 1 fate"

In the ccg that made sense but in the lcg cavalry does nothing by itself, so I would hope for that not being the case. Maybe the Moto is costed based on in clan card balance. Or maybe he is one of those base cards meant to be replaced as the card pool grows. Unlike Shinjo Outrider who looks like a staple for the near future.

As you said, we will have to wait for the Unicorn previews.

I think Lion will love splashing Crane as much, or even more, than Crane enjoys the Lion splash - call it a Griffon deck.

Duelist Training works well with their military swarm as you can bow a large political threat with it. In conjunction with Lion's Pride Brawler that's some decent control against a political deck.

Admit defeat is great most places and Noble Sacrifice may be a contender as Lion swarm shouldn't care too much about any 1 weenie, getting the dishonor to stick to the opponent may be a bit difficult but they have access to the Fire ring and For Shame!

Steward of Law is a nice 1 cost weenie that can be played into a conflict and helps vs scorpion. He'd be aces if his effect negated the downside of Pride but I don't think it does (Pride reads "...after this character loses a conflict, dishonor it")

Above Question and Height of Fashion have potential too but I think they're too expensive for traditional Lion, both Fate and influence wise

Voice of Honor could be very good (or very bad) depending on how many Prideful Lions there are

The Perfect Gift gives some nice utility in the Conflict deck. I don't suppose Lion will have many Conflict deck draw cards, as they have a lot of Dynasty cycle effects AND this delays three potentially pesky cards on your opponent's side too.

Overall I think Crane splash is a very solid option for Lion - I think Lion's strategy is general enough that they'll have a pretty good time splashing any of the other clans

4 hours ago, Reiga said:

Pride but I don't think it does (Pride reads "...after this character loses a conflict, dishonor it")

I'm not 100% sure of this either. All of it would depending on timing etc. Steward of Law's ability triggers so long as the character is participating in a Conflict. It's unclear if a Conflict is over right after determining a winner or once the Resolution step has been finished.