Here were my take a ways from my testing leading up to the release event and the release event itself.

Pair Unicorn with with Dragon, Crab, or Lion. Scorpion is a nice pair, however, there is just too much self inflicted dishonor caused with this pairing.

Play the Seeker of Air or Seeker or Earth. Generally I prefer the Keeper role in the single core format. The recursion of characters is extremely valuable. However Unicorn have a hard time honoring things and have some key cards that trigger off cavalry or the character being in clan which the monks are neither. Unicorn are very fate dependent so having two provinces that can gain you extra honor when revealed is crucial. Entrenched Position under your stronghold is about as good as anything else and being able to use Captive Audience defensively is a neat trick. If you choose to go with Seeker of Earth then you just switch between the two Earth provinces depending on which clan you are facing.

Movement is important. Obvious statement but it's important to move your people around, even if they are bowed. Your core movement cards are, and in no particular order of importance, Shinjo Outrider, Ide Trader, Giver of Gifts, Shinto Tatsuo, and Spyglass. Keeping Ide Trader and/or Spyglass in play will help you build a hand advantage w/o having to sacrifice too much honor. This is crucial to your success, so mulliganing when you don't see these cards in your first 4 needs to be considered.

Born in War is overrated and if you pair with Dragon in particular, there are better items for the cost. Breakthrough and Way of the Unicorn have little use in the deck. Contingency Plan was much better than I first thought and should ne what you full out your deck with if you find yourself short on conflict cards. Good Omen is also good filler as you will have several important 3+ fate characters you'll want to keep in play to help maintain you hand advantage.

You don't have a very high Shugenja or Courtier counts so keep this in mind and limit the number of cards which require you to have one or the other.

Despite being the worst single core clan, you can be successful with a little luck and clever play.

Step By Step on how to play Unicorn successfully out of the box:

1. Gather all Unicorn cards.

2. Set these cards aside, and make a scorpion deck.

- By a Guy with a Spider Name, Phoenix Mon, and currently wearing a crab shirt... ya, Ill see myself out.

While Scorpion may be one of the better clans in the single core format, Unicorn is not the pushover many of us thought they were. I buried my Scorpion opponent in hand advantage, baited out their counter to set up a back breaking Captive Audience. My 3-0 record was against Scorpion, Crab, and Dragon......arguably three of the best clans in the single core format.

If you know the other clan cards to look out for you can force your opponent into a bad situation. By playing Watch Commander, or Honored Blade, or an Ancestral attachment......heck sometimes even an Ornate Fan can be a threat, you force your opponents to destroy or steal an attachment that is less important, when the true power card is the Spyglass getting two 2 extra cards a turn while still being able to low bid.

You can slow your own honor loss with lower bids, threaten dishonor, and just grind out wins. You also get to stop the honor loss from undefended provinces better than most other clans by moving in bowed personalities.

While I was also originally in the "play something else" camp, I began to see that the Unicorn is much more capable than I first thought. Its a mistake to underestimate them.

Yeah, I don't have a lot of games under my belt, but so far, it looks like the unicorn clan is a kind of a "fake-out" deck. Like, your opponent will think you are doing one thing, then you suddenly draw in characters from other places like home or the discard pile, and totally throw off your opponent. In one game, a player sent several characters, one of them quite powerful with invested attachments, and unknowingly attacked endless plain. So, I sent no defenders, paid the one honor, and discarded his big powerful character with 2 faith points on it. Then I counter attacked as the bulk of his army was bowed after that. It was totally worth the one point honor loss. I also like how one character, after breaking a province, can put a non-participating enemy character into the discard pile.

I did have a lot of success with scorpion tonight, though I did lose one game with them due to loss of honor. After my honor was fairly low, the crane player challenged me to a dual and the difference in skill values meant that I couldn't bid low enough to avoid losing honor. The crane literally out-politicized the scorpion by purposefully losing a dual! But I did beat the tar out of crab, but I think that is because the crab player (as well as me) are still learning the game. Tomorrow we do rematches!

5 hours ago, Moes1980 said:

Yeah, I don't have a lot of games under my belt, but so far, it looks like the unicorn clan is a kind of a "fake-out" deck. Like, your opponent will think you are doing one thing, then you suddenly draw in characters from other places like home or the discard pile, and totally throw off your opponent. In one game, a player sent several characters, one of them quite powerful with invested attachments, and unknowingly attacked endless plain. So, I sent no defenders, paid the one honor, and discarded his big powerful character with 2 faith points on it. Then I counter attacked as the bulk of his army was bowed after that. It was totally worth the one point honor loss. I also like how one character, after breaking a province, can put a non-participating enemy character into the discard pile.

I did have a lot of success with scorpion tonight, though I did lose one game with them due to loss of honor. After my honor was fairly low, the crane player challenged me to a dual and the difference in skill values meant that I couldn't bid low enough to avoid losing honor. The crane literally out-politicized the scorpion by purposefully losing a dual! But I did beat the tar out of crab, but I think that is because the crab player (as well as me) are still learning the game. Tomorrow we do rematches!

Just to clarify, Endless Plains allows the opponent to select a character to discard. If he attacks alone with a big guy, you can force him to discard it. If he attacks with multiple people, he gets to choose who gets discarded. Its primary benefit, then, is to force the opponent to attack with more troops than necessary, to protect his big unit.

I do not recommend Endless Plains. Lion, Scorpion, and Phoenix provinces are the only ones worth playing, imo.

EP gets played around until you opponent reveals whatever your true water province is, generally Rally since switching a conflict type is almost always going to save your province, or at the very least force your opponent to dump a bunch of resources into a battle they hadn't anticipated.

You really cannot go wrong with Crab or Dragon in support as both have cards that are generally better than anything you could include within Clan or Neutral to fill those last 5-6 card slots. I also think players will find single Core has less power differences between Clans (other than specific keyword based mechanics) due to the lack of consistency with x1 in faction cards. On the other hand, the importance of Neutrals (the great equalizers) are more amplified due to the ability to include x2-3 of them in a single Core build.