Doji Challenger is all about losing the battle to win the war. You attack, pull in the opponent's Toturi or Yokuni or whatever, and you both bow at resolution. Your opponent now can't attack you with them and you're free to go wild on your second attack.

22 minutes ago, shosuko said:

The ability is to pull more strength against you. Unless someone has a seriously unbalanced character out, like one of the neutral Imperial cards, you are losing your advantage using the ability. I will laugh when I win a conflict because a Doji Challenger pulled another of my characters in for me. 1 fate can be important, but so is 1 action. When I would want to move any other character to the conflict, and you bring them in for me lol.

shosuko I feel you didn't play the game yet right?

It is good against any character that has not equal political and military stats since you are always denying the higher one. Also you don't lose any advantage using it since winning defence in this game gives you close to nothing.

Here is a usual situation when you use Doji challenger - you attack into a board of 3 characters as first attack for the round. If any of them has a "dash" in any of their skills it is just a straight up bow which is already better than covert. If not than a painful declaring defenders step starts for your opponent. He has an option to not defend with any - in which case you pull the weakest one and win the conflict with free bow. Defend with one - you can pull another one, later you either win the conflict or just lose it in which case you still bowed 2 of their characters. Case 3 he defends with 2/3 in which case you just pull the remaining one and get his whole board bowed. If this doesn't look strong to you I don't know what will.

But seriously why all of the sudden hate on Doji Challenger? Is it your inner hipster? or you plan on playing crane?

1 minute ago, shineyorkboy said:

Doji Challenger is all about losing the battle to win the war. You attack, pull in the opponent's Toturi or Yokuni or whatever, and you both bow at resolution. Your opponent now can't attack you with them and you're free to go wild on your second attack.

The Mountain does not Fall - and possibly Defend the Wall.

This is more like it! A Crab card that keys off Holdings and is geared towards attacking. After last week's exciting story with its 'attack is the best form of defence' theme, this is exactly the kind of thing i was hoping to see (rather than the 'park the bus and prevent your opponent from playing' fare that we saw yesterday).

The Covert keyword seems nicely thematic and fitting with this card, and it has decent artwork too.

Overall, this is my joint-favourite Crab card so far, along with the equally-cool Witchhunter.

1 minute ago, Caldera said:

Overall, this is my joint-favourite Crab card so far, along with the equally-cool Witchhunter.

Man I love Witchhunter's art. I just wonder why is she a shugenja. I guess you need to be a shugenja to hunt the monsters/mages?

Also why earth exactly Wouldn't fire/wind better suit a hunter

6 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Man I love Witchhunter's art. I just wonder why is she a shugenja. I guess you need to be a shugenja to hunt the monsters/mages?

Also why earth exactly Wouldn't fire/wind better suit a hunter

Witchhunters are from the Kuni Family who are the Crab's shugenja family and primarily teach Earth magic.

6 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Man I love Witchhunter's art. I just wonder why is she a shugenja. I guess you need to be a shugenja to hunt the monsters/mages?

Also why earth exactly Wouldn't fire/wind better suit a hunter

Because Earth does Jade and Jade does for those with the taint.

You don't have to be a shuggie to be a WH, but by precedent all WH cards are shuggies.

46 minutes ago, BordOne said:

But seriously why all of the sudden hate on Doji Challenger? Is it your inner hipster? or you plan on playing crane?

It's not sudden, and it's not hate. You act as if Doji Challenger is clearly superior, as if all cards can be compared in a vacuum. We have 7 clans, and only 4 are revealed - and there are still missing pieces within those revealed clans. It's a bit early to proclaim any card OP. There is going to be an imbalance at different points in the game, part of the game is in dealing with your strengths and weaknesses. Part of the game is identifying which cards are good, and which are garbage.

My issue here is that it is fruitless to bring up, yet again, as it has happened with every clan reveal, how Doji Challenger is extremely efficient for stats. Is Doji Challenger great for the cost? Yes. Does that mean anything when looking at Kaiu Shuichi? No. Shuichi is great because is it s Crab card that answers what Crab are worst at - political battle. With a POL attack using Shuichi you can use covert to dodge the biggest POL defender and possibly get a win in POL - something Crab needs. They have a higher stronghold strength, and some great defenders, but their POL sucks across their personalities.

I don't expect any card to beat out Doji Challenger in a vacuum - and I am absolutely sick of hearing about it.

Have I played the game? No. We don't have all the cards, and we don't have all the rules - and Scorpion clan isn't out yet. 2 of those apply to those currently "playing" the game, and who knows what skill level those players have in judging an incomplete game. DTA The number of times I've heard rants of OP day 1 tech some scrub wins with that gets thrown out the window once a game releases and a meta forms...

@shosuko She sure does look superior to me xd

Dude nobody was bringing her up until you decided to comment. My response was also quite clearly a joke, self depreciating one while we are at that, I guess the large amount of smiley faces and "xd"'s was not enough for you to understand this?

5 hours ago, shosuko said:

It's a bit early to proclaim any card OP.

Please don't put words in my mouth, I never stated that she is "OP". And again you were the only one bringing her up, insinuating her ability is weak in original post while you don't have any in game experience. I just called you out on that.

Also if you feel sick of hearing about her it might be a good idea to not be the one starting the discussion.

5 hours ago, shosuko said:

The number of times I've heard rants of OP day 1 tech some scrub wins with that gets thrown out the window once a game releases and a meta forms...

Determining which decks will be strong in the meta is nearly impossible, looking at the cost effectiveness of a card is painfully simple.

Anyway I am a bit disappointed with you today.

See ya

56 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

Witchhunters are from the Kuni Family who are the Crab's shugenja family and primarily teach Earth magic.

Granted, many of the Tsukai-Sagasu (Witch Hunters) were not Shugenja, according to the 1st Edition RPG book Way of the Crab.

That said, pretty much all of the ones printed for the CCG were indeed Shugenja.

I watched a Team Covenant Crab reveal with Nate French yesterday. In it Nate said something to the effect of "Crab cards are stronger in the game then they appear on first read".

I think people are seriously underestimating this guy. His stats, his glory, Crabs defensive tricks, and his ability to potentially spam out fate can easily offset the costs of having a 3/3 or 5/5 guy running around blocking stuff all day leaving you to direct your fate to invest more in your massive guys.

Very excited for this character.

And don't even get me started for the potential possibilities of alliances with Scorpion or Unicorn. This guy with movement tricks? This guy helping to offset the seemingly fate heavy Scorp stuff? Come on dawg...

3 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

Doji Challenger is all about losing the battle to win the war. You attack, pull in the opponent's Toturi or Yokuni or whatever, and you both bow at resolution. Your opponent now can't attack you with them and you're free to go wild on your second attack.

I find her to be extremely effective on turn 1 and 2 especially. Most people start the conflict phase of turn 1 with 2 maybe 3 characters. If Doji challenger attacks, you have a choice. You can defend with 1 character, in which case they pull in a second character and essentially force your hand to wasting resources. Or, you don't declare any defenders. They can then either win unopposed (probably a province break and you lose an honor) or they can pull in a character that they can beat (probably one that has 2 political strength so they can bow it with the Crane box) to further deplete your resources while still winning the conflict.

The more often the board is small like this, the more often she is stronger than any character with her same cost.

I'm surprised to see someone say she's bad because I consider her the gold standard for what a 3 cost character should be designed for. Good stats with a strong ability or, if the stats or ability are lacking, they need to make up for it on the other side.

Only reason I hate Doji Challenger is because I don't much like the crane in general. (Objectively she's a good card, even if I don't agree on the best for her cost.) But this is a thread for Kaiu Shuichi, so perhaps not the place.

For the spoil, I like him. A fate gen, with strong stats, and it'll be pretty easy for crab to get a holding out. I know I'm going to hate running against crab here, like I did in old5r.

"If there is a holding in play"

So he can use his ability as long as there is an active holding on the board, just not at his conflict?

Doji Challenger is definitely a good card. The Crane is almost analogous to the Space Marines in Conquest. A straightforward deck full of mid ranged and efficiently costed characters with few true control or choke tricks. In the Space Marine card pool there was a card Sicarius’s Chosen, which did almost the same exact action in that it pulled a unit over to a different battle. It was always a good card throughout the life of the game. That said everyone had good cards so Sicarius's Chosen was good, but wasn't killing the balance of the game. I have faith that Doji Challenger will be similar. It will be a staple in Crane decks and one of their more power control options, but other clans will learn how to play around it.

He's good. Gaining Fate to play cards is such a strong effect, and his stats are quite good. A 5/5 once honored is nothing to scoff at.

2 minutes ago, phillos said:

Doji Challenger is definitely a good card. The Crane is almost analogous to the Space Marines in Conquest. A straightforward deck full of mid ranged and efficiently costed characters with few true control or choke tricks. In the Space Marine card pool there was a card Sicarius’s Chosen, which did almost the same exact action in that it pulled a unit over to a different battle. It was always a good card throughout the life of the game. That said everyone had good cards so Sicarius's Chosen was good, but wasn't killing the balance of the game. I have faith that Doji Challenger will be similar. It will be a staple in Crane decks and one of their more power control options, but other clans will learn how to play around it.

Just don't give Crane a "Drop Pod Assault"

3 minutes ago, Shu2jack said:

"If there is a holding in play"

So he can use his ability as long as there is an active holding on the board, just not at his conflict?

I'd read it as an active holding, since holding abilities can be used when conflicts are not at them, meaning they are always in play.

@Shu2jack If there is any holding in play, even controlled by your opponent you can gain fate from the ability is how I understand it.

@phillos I agree with you. I also think that the card on its own can have stats or ability that is "too strong" for its cost and still be balanced. It only becomes "OP" or "problematic" if there is a strong/oppresive deck in the meta that consistently abuses it. That being said I don't think Doji Challengers effect is "abusive" so I guess she might be forever an overstatted but not op card.

I think we will see a lot of "Spike" players going Crane in tournaments if the comparison between the two games hold. Space Marines straightforward and consistent play style usually attracted players that just wanted to place high in the rankings and didn't care too much about what faction they were playing. I feel Crane will be similar so make sure to test your decks against a strong Crane deck.

2 minutes ago, BordOne said:

@Shu2jack If there is any holding in play, even controlled by your opponent you can gain fate from the ability is how I understand it.

I hadn't even thought of your opponents holdings. It doesn't say your holdings. Wow that makes the condition even easier to jump over.

5 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

I hadn't even thought of your opponents holdings. It doesn't say your holdings. Wow that makes the condition even easier to jump over.

Yup, it's the same with Shrewd Yasuki and hopefully any other crab cards requiring holdings in the future.

11 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Yup, it's the same with Shrewd Yasuki and hopefully any other crab cards requiring holdings in the future.

I'd forgot about him. Yeah, Crab love them holdings.

13 hours ago, Kubernes said:

It seems weird that he has covert with that picture and engineer trait.

I'm not quite sure he will used that often in a Crab deck since he doesn't necessarily play into the sacrifice playstyle. He does give you covert, at a cost of 4, so that cannot be underestimated. His ability to give you more cash is nice so he might simply be paired up with the Steadfast Witch Hunter to get the most out of it.

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the "sacrifice playstyle" by thinking too much of the CCG. In the CCG, personalities stayed around forever unless destroyed by a card effect, so killing off one of your own guys would be a big deal. In the LCG, however, every single character will leave play, if given enough time. This is true for every single clan in the game. The difference is that the Crab can get one more use out of these guys before they leave.

Will there be some decks relying on swarming small guys and discarding as many as possible every turn? Probably. However, we need to consider that there are other ways to use this mechanic as well.

As for my opinion on this card:

In a game with inevitably small boards, I feel like Covert is going to be incredibly powerful. I know the comparison is stealth in Game of Thrones, but considering characters in Thrones stick to the board until they are killed, either by claim, effect or plot reset, stealthing one character typically just meant you'd just use another smaller character to defend, to keep it from being unopposed.

In addition, a lot of times, allowing an opponent to win a challenge in Thrones wasn't 1/4th of the victory condition of the game (one province is roughly worth 3 to 4 power) so there wasn't all that much emphasis on winning on defense in Thrones.

L5R certainly seems like you'll need to successfully rebuff at least 1 or 2 conflicts over the course of the game, which typically lasts about 4 rounds. And Covert seems to make that significantly more difficult to win on defense.

That in addition to the balanced 3/3 stat line and fate production makes me thing this guy is a dandy of a card.