For those of you with game experience, I've been playing with deck construction in the FiveRingsDB and trying to play with the ideal cost breakdown for my Dynasty Deck.

I realize we don't have many options with the limited card list to start, but with a 3-core environment I feel the following breakdown is good (in theory);

20 cards (50%) of the cards are 1-cost and 2-cost characters
14 cards (35%) are 3+ cost characters
6 cards (15%) are holdings

The idea being that with my initial flop I should mulligan for a holding, 2x 1 or 2-cost characters, and a 3+ cost character. This gives me a holding ability to work my deck, up to two "chumps" to work with, and a heavier hitter I can put some extra fate on for future turns to build my board off of. Either through playing my Dynasty characters or discarding them at the end of the turn I can get three new characters - hopefully 2x "chumps" and a heavy hitter.

For those who have played, what have you found to be your ideal cost curve for your dynasty deck?

In my experience this is a good starting point with one exception.

One thing I would change is the 6 holdings. With Crab, which counts on holdings, 4-5 is acceptable; for all other clans I wouldn't go with more than 3. You just don't want to have the RNGs fill your provs with holdings when you need chars. We were playing 3-4 early in our playing and wow, when even two holdings hit when you just had a total or near-total board wipe on the previous fate phase it's a hard turn to survive. You might consider replacing 3 of those holdings with 1 (1-2 cost) and 2x (3+ cost).

-tpl

38 minutes ago, tobinator said:

In my experience this is a good starting point with one exception.

One thing I would change is the 6 holdings. With Crab, which counts on holdings, 4-5 is acceptable; for all other clans I wouldn't go with more than 3. You just don't want to have the RNGs fill your provs with holdings when you need chars. We were playing 3-4 early in our playing and wow, when even two holdings hit when you just had a total or near-total board wipe on the previous fate phase it's a hard turn to survive. You might consider replacing 3 of those holdings with 1 (1-2 cost) and 2x (3+ cost).

-tpl

I had wondered about that with the holding issue. I want a holding out, but I don't want to get screwed on the flop.

Would having conflict. Characters help with that? This way on bad flops your hand could mitigate most of the damage?

My Crab deck's currently running 15 1-2's, 18 3+'s, and 7 holdings. I kind of doubt I'd ever dig for a holding. As long as I'm seeing 2 3+ guys I can buy in the same turn I usually keep the flop.

As for holdings I think everyone can afford at least 2 Imperial Storehouses. The Clan holdings that give card draw are also pretty easy to justify including and Staging Grounds pretty much cancels out the cost of taking up provinces.

19 hours ago, Shu2jack said:

I had wondered about that with the holding issue. I want a holding out, but I don't want to get screwed on the flop.

Would having conflict. Characters help with that? This way on bad flops your hand could mitigate most of the damage?

Aren't Conflict characters limited to 10? They can certainly supplement your Dynasty deck, but if that deck stalls due to too many holdings, your Conflict deck will only be able to do so much.

Curve depends a lot on deck purpose. I would imagine the lion curve is 0.5 fate or more lower than the dragon curve, for example.

With regards to Phoenix, I think we sit in the 2-3 wheelhouse, with Peacemakers and Tsukunes at either end of the spectrum. People are starting to come around on our 4 cost people, and are realizing that their cost per stat isn't very good.

When Kaede is released, I expect things to get really weird.