Hello all,

I only have about 5 games under my belt now but I've been letting my dynasty deck do all the work. Maybe I'm over investing fate in my characters, or over buying but I can't seem to get the conflict cards in my hand to work for me unless they're cost one or lower. I don't think I've played a single conflict character any of these games.

I've only played Lion vs Crane thus far, trading decks back and forth with the other player. I think I won twice with Crane and once with Lion. I noticed with the Crane I felt like I was losing and then somehow pulled it together to break the provinces. Once was a Lion dishonor.

Any suggestions or strategies? Maybe with these clans they don't need to use the expensive cards?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Btw Crane splash with Scorpion and Lion splash with Dragon. Our splash clan was determined randomly (d6).

Single core?

The majority of my conflict cards are zero cost, some 1 cost, only a few more than 1 cost.

Perhaps plan to pass first in dynasty phase, or grab a ring with fate on it, to pay for conflict cards.

Conflict cards like Charge are amazing imho, you virtually gain fate by using it instead of playing expensive character in dynasty phase

edit: I play Unicorn, Crane

Actually 2 core. Maybe 2 of the 5 games were single. (The next night I went back and bought the 2nd core-that I knew I wanted anyway )

Managing fate is huge. In 2-3 core, you have a ton of characters, so don't over invest in minimally efficient characters, since you are going to flip characters nearly every turn. Learn who your best guys are for the current situation, look at the cards in your hand, plan your turn, and go from there. If you are constantly putting 2-3 fate on every character, you are going to run into trouble really quick unless they are super cheap. Especially if someone discards your character somehow that you just invested all that fate into. Its kind of a play by ear situation.

You aren't necessarily playing wrong, I haven't really played with Lion myself but as I understand they tend to be more Dynasty-driven anyhow. As Hos would suggest, look for opportunities to gain extra fate, and consider changing up your conflict deck to rely more on zero or low cost cards so you can find uses for them. There's quite a few good ones to choose from, especially among the neutral cards.

Generally you will want as many good cheap conflict cards a possible along with ways to draw more cards so you don't have to sacrifice as much honor to keep your hand advantage. This way you can do more with your conflict cards.

Spending fateon characters is the trickiest part of the game. Working out when you only to have a character for 1 turn is tough especially with crane as they seem to honour their guys so fast for me. Also collecting fate from the rings is very important too to either fuel the following turn or using expensive cards in combat. While most cards are 0 cost the ones that generally cost 1 or even 2 can have some resounding effects in challengese

14 minutes ago, Hos said:

The majority of my conflict cards are zero cost, some 1 cost, only a few more than 1 cost.

Perhaps plan to pass first in dynasty phase, or grab a ring with fate on it, to pay for conflict cards.

Conflict cards like Charge are amazing imho, you virtually gain fate by using it instead of playing expensive character in dynasty phase

edit: I play Unicorn, Crane

This - in 3 core I still use mostly neutral free/cheap cards. Get all your katanas and fans, court games, and banzais out! If you're relying more on MIL more make sure you're using charge, if you're POL and have courtiers use for shame. Honestly in 3 core I only use a few clan cards because they're all so expensive!!

My son and I are trying to figure out all the little nuances to the game. So, I originally thought after you bought a character for say 3 fate you can add a few more fate to the character to keep him around.

Now here comes the tricky part, I read the rules as if your character is still around during the dynasty phase of your next turn, you could take some of your fate and add to the fate on the card to represent the resources to keep them in play.

After reading through the forums, I am now thinking I am completely wrong in my thinking. You only get one chance as you buy them to put extra fate on them, and to keep them around you need an ability via character, spell, event, etc...that specifically says that you can add fate to the character.

That changes my thought on the game dramatically.

Is this the correct way to play?????

On 10/10/2017 at 3:25 PM, Aristin76 said:

My son and I are trying to figure out all the little nuances to the game. So, I originally thought after you bought a character for say 3 fate you can add a few more fate to the character to keep him around.

Now here comes the tricky part, I read the rules as if your character is still around during the dynasty phase of your next turn, you could take some of your fate and add to the fate on the card to represent the resources to keep them in play.

After reading through the forums, I am now thinking I am completely wrong in my thinking. You only get one chance as you buy them to put extra fate on them, and to keep them around you need an ability via character, spell, event, etc...that specifically says that you can add fate to the character.

That changes my thought on the game dramatically.

Is this the correct way to play?????

Yes. Other than card or in game effects, the only time you can choose to place extra fate on them is when they are brought into play.

I'll second (third, fourth, whatever) using cheaper Conflict cards. Most cards should cost 0-1, unless they are a major game changer for your strategy. Conflict characters can be pretty interesting, but I find they are less cost efficient than dynasty characters (plus, I have a hard enough time slimming my deck down as it is).

As for putting fate on characters, I generally use the following as a baseline. Less than 2 never get fate, not only because of assassination, but they're generally not that worthwhile. Cost 2 characters might get 1 fate, but usually don't because of assassination. Cost 3-4 characters should get at least 1 fate if you can afford it, because they'll provide the primary payload for your deck. Clan Champions should have as much fate as you can afford to add, because they're awesome and you want to keep them around as long as possible. Situations will obviously determine details, and you always need to be able to adapt to the board situation. Needless to say, the more I play, the more this may change!

11 hours ago, Mirumoto Shiroiken said:

As for putting fate on characters, I generally use the following as a baseline. Less than 2 never get fate, not only because of assassination, but they're generally not that worthwhile. Cost 2 characters might get 1 fate, but usually don't because of assassination. Cost 3-4 characters should get at least 1 fate if you can afford it, because they'll provide the primary payload for your deck. Clan Champions should have as much fate as you can afford to add, because they're awesome and you want to keep them around as long as possible. Situations will obviously determine details, and you always need to be able to adapt to the board situation. Needless to say, the more I play, the more this may change!

While that may be a decent plan on paper, I doubt it would hold much in practice. The most fate that I have had on a single turn in the dynasty phase was 15, and that was in a game that had been going for way too long (when the turn count is at 7+ and only a single province has been broken on either side, one or both of the players *might* need to change their tactics... for future reference...), aside from cases like that the majority of the time you'll be lucky to hit double digits in the dynasty phase, so even with clan champs if you want to have any fate left over after the dynasty phase (and at least in dragon you very much do) you can't afford to put more than 1-2 fate on anyone in the dynasty phase. Also, with 4 costers, they already take up around half your fate for most turns, so unless they are going to be really important in the current game and will continue to be for a while, putting any fate on them could be a mistake more often than not, because even with only 1 fate on them, that leaves you with only 2 of your base production, and you only get them for an extra turn, and I find that except in extraordinary circumstances in order to avoid being fate-screwed I try to leave at least 2 fate unspent in my dynasty phase every turn, more if I can swing it, so unless it is mid-late game and you have way more than your base production this turn, putting extra fate on a 4 coster severely limits your options for the remainder of your turn.

My guidelines for the dynasty phase (in dragon, mind you) are as follows: Try to leave at least 2 fate unspent as priority A; try to purchase 2 dynasty characters every turn, only do more if doing so does not violate priority A AND you do not need more than 4 fate to play every conflict card currently in hand, only do less if either 2 is impossible, it would violate priority A, or you have both an expensive hand (you would need 5+ fate to play every conflict card currently in hand) AND the 1 character purchased would have a significant impact on the game when considering both the current board AND the cards currently in hand, this is priority B; except in very exceptional circumstances never put more than 2 fate on any given character, this is priority C; only put any fate on a character if either doing so would not violate priority A or priority B AND the character is important to your overall strategy, given the current board state AND your current hand the character would have a significant impact on the game state for more than one turn, OR you have enough fate to not violate either priority A or priority B AND at least 4 more (ie, you have enough fate to purchase 2 characters and still have at least 6 fate left over), this is priority D.

Counting on getting the extra fate for passing first in the dynasty phase is not the best idea because, unless you are only buying 1 character and you are first player, it is never a guarantee. Similarly, counting on getting fate from rings isn't a great idea because it requires you to attack to get said fate, and unless you have a set up where you are confident that you will win said ring at the bare minimum, you shouldn't be attacking, especially against defensive clans like crab or phoenix. This is why I have priority A, as this means that I am guaranteed to be able to play at least 1 conflict card that is not a 0 cost before any other fate gains, and if absolutely nothing else, I am most likely going to have at least 1 fate left over for the next turn. Priority B is great in dragon, but for lion and crane I would waive it, as both of those are single skill focus clans with less hand dependency and cheaper on average characters, going for swarm tactics is probably better so buying as many dudes as possible without violating priority A is probably better. I think priority C is probably a good idea in general, because if you are in a circumstance where you really regret only putting 2 extra fate on someone then you probably have other more important issues going on, like not buying enough characters or having too many dead cards in your conflict deck, because if you don't have a contingency to salvage losing someone worth the extra 2 fate in a given situation, having put a third fate on them would not have made things much better because if losing that guy means you are gonna lose the game, you were gonna lose the game anyway more often than not. Priority D is probably a YMMV type of thing, and I imagine in certain clans (or even certain builds within clans where I would recommend priority D, like dragon, lion, and crane) you may get more benefit from putting fate on most characters purchased rather than buying more dudes and saving the fate for later, like with crab, while some characters are fodder and thus not worth the extra fate, the ones that aren't fodder are generally very heavy hitters and thus you want them to last, especially since crab wants plenty of holdings which can limit the number of dudes available for purchase more than most other clans most of the time.

My post is already too long and I keep getting distracted from it so I'm gonna just stop there instead of trying to work to a conclusion.