Sorry if a similar question has been asked already, but I've noticed something with my new Scorpion 3-core deck.

I've followed a range of sensible guides to deck building, and I don't think I've done anything too crazy. But I'm finding quite often that I'm flipping up a lot of 3 and 4 cost characters and just never have the ability to play them and invest in them while also playing Conflict cards.

So a couple of questions really - is that normal, and also how many characters would you expect to get out on to the board in one go? I often seem to be outnumbered, but I have only played a few games. I'm focusing more on an honour victory but I don't want my opponent to run riot over my provinces too quickly!

Maybe the answer to all of this is 'it depends', just thought it was worth a discussion for new players like me.

Since I want to buy atleast 2 personalities and if possible 3 per turn I start with including all the one cost characters and most of the 2 costs. Then i'll add the necessary 3 and 4 drops.

2 hours ago, Mig el Pig said:

Since I want to buy atleast 2 personalities and if possible 3 per turn I start with including all the one cost characters and most of the 2 costs. Then i'll add the necessary 3 and 4 drops.

Same here. I usually fill the deck with the least expensive characters and holdings I want before putting in any 4- or 5-cost character. And most of the time, the first to go in are the 3 champions.

2 hours ago, ayedubbleyoo said:

Maybe the answer to all of this is 'it depends', just thought it was worth a discussion for new players like me.

You are correct, It Depends!

I don't agree with Ser Nataka though I don't play unicorn. In most of the games I've played, the clan champions warp the environment, where you have to basically figure out how to play around them, or get stomped. I have not played with/against unicorn and I hear speculation that Altansarnai has the weakest ability, which I can't really argue against.

However, you probably want a balance, though I would cut the cost inefficient (or just bad) cards before I just cut "expensive" cards. Most of the 4 costers are 4 cost for a reason, and are still quite powerful.

Dragon. I try to field 1-2 characters a turn. I'm looking for attachments and to play other cards from hand, so I'm not looking to flood the field. Instead I'm trying to bring in characters with extra fate and build them up for several turns. I usually am looking to put one 3-5 cost character into play, and maybe a smaller character.

Scorpion. Scorpion is looking to play events and other cards from hand as well, if in different ways. It's not unusual to have few characters in play during the first 2 turns. Scorpion plays fairly different from the other clans, and the best thing I can recommend is practice.

Everything here goes out the window if I'm playing against Crab. I'll try to field an expendable character or two at all times against Crab because of the following 2 cards.

This tends to be a dicey space, albeit these can each only happen once per turn.

It's a good discussion to have. I think the only real guide is experience. Play and see how it felt, make a few little tweaks and see if it feels better or worse and keep going from there.

My initial feeling is Scorpion get a lot mileage out of their conflict deck and are maybe slower with their dynasty. There are many ways to manipulate characters so you don't necessarily need many to make an impact.

Yeah, I don't have many games under my belt yet. Just through running through some practice turns it seems a big challenge to get more than one big character out and I often have 3 showing on provinces.

My last experience was being overrun by Unicorn though so I might have a false idea of how many characters I need!

I really can't speak to scorpion, as that is the clan whose cards I am the least familiar with, as well as one that has a unique enough playstyle that I would really need to build a deck for myself and test it out a couple times before I'd feel comfortable giving anyone advice on it.

However, that being said, I don't think any of the clans in the current card pool have so many high-cost characters that what you are describing should be a consistent issue, so the most I can recommend without doing further research into scorpions cards (like I said that is the clan that I know the least about right now, in terms of its card pool, especially dynasty side) is that maybe you aren't shuffling very thoroughly, so your deck is getting clumped, but without knowing exactly how you are shuffling I can't really know if that is your issue or the best way to fix it if it is. If your issue is not your shuffling, then I would ask another scorpion player (or at least someone in your play group who is familiar with scorpion) to look at your build (this can be accomplished by posting a decklist to a forum and asking for advice) and tell you if the problem is with your construction, if the problem is not with the construction I would suggest you play a game against someone familiar with the scorpion clan and ask them to suggest changes to how you tend to spend the dynasty phase, because different clans and playstyles have different optimal heuristics for spending that phase and if you are having difficulty getting the most out of the dynasty phase making even seemingly minor alterations to how you approach it can cause massive improvements in your overall effectiveness in the game.

Digression - I'm a magician and a bit of a playing card nerd, so I have done a lot of looking into various shuffling techniques along with the associated statistics therein, mostly for fun, and I find that the most common shuffle that I see amongst ccg and lcg players is the overhand shuffle or some variant, which makes sense because it is one of the easiest and quickest shuffles that tends to do a fairly decent job of randomizing the order without risking damage to the cards, however unless a more thorough shuffle has been done at some point or you have done an enormous number of overhand shuffles, both of which can take an inordinate amount of time, it is rather prone to clumping. What I find is the best way to get around this issue is to do what I call the extended gamer shuffle, it goes more or less like this, you find a number of piles that your deck can divide into more or less evenly (four and five are fairly common and rather manageable), then you deal out the cards one at a time into that many piles, making sure to do so putting one card in each pile before returning to the first pile, once all the cards are dealt thusly you pick one pile, and do a couple overhand shuffles with it, repeat for a second pile, then combine the two piles by taking each pile in one hand and alternate dealing cards from each pile into a single pile; do an some overhand shuffles with this pile; repeat all that with two more piles; you should now have two decently sized piles of more or less the same size, combine these two as before, or to save time you can do a riffle shuffle, but most people don't like doing that with these kinds of cards as riffle shuffles bend the cards and can increase wear as well as potentially training the cards into a permanent bend that can decrease the value, so YMMV; continue doing this until you either have a single complete deck or have a single left over pile, I deal with a left over pile by sticking the cards from the pile into the rest of the deck at various intervals trying to make sure they are not right next to each other, but that isn't entirely necessary at this point, just pick a way to add them to the rest of the deck that works for you. After all that proceed to shuffle a few times in your preferred method (commonly the overhand shuffle) just to be sure. I always do this after building a new deck and occasionally after some games because play can lead to clumping over time. /digression

My issue, as Joe from Cincinnati told me, is when I put a 3+ cost player out with just one fate he runs a real risk of being Void Ringed.

At the same time, I'm thinking about how to build my board up. I don't want to "reset" every turn with new characters from my flops. Every turn I feel like I want to put 2+ fate on one guy, then bring out some scrubs for abilities/chump blocking. Hopefully by turn 3 I have three decent sized guys around and can keep up that pace.

That said, I'm always looking to see where I can nap extra fate. Passing first, rings with fate....I think in some games I under spend because I end up with a lot of fate for my conflict deck. Of course, I've been doing a lot of 1-core recently.

Just wanted to come back and say I’ve played a bit more and this issue is coming up much less often.

Either the cards are coming out more evenly or I’m getting better at using and conserving fate. Also picking up a few here and there like Shu2jack suggested.

Also learning how to look at how many characters your opponent is likely to play and get the most out of the various matchups.

On 10/16/2017 at 9:03 AM, ayedubbleyoo said:

Yeah, I don't have many games under my belt yet. Just through running through some practice turns it seems a big challenge to get more than one big character out and I often have 3 showing on provinces.

My last experience was being overrun by Unicorn though so I might have a false idea of how many characters I need!

I've played about 10 games in total. I have won 2 of them. Crab is a strange beast and I had to make concessions on characters to keep the sacrifice keyword useful, most of the time.

I just don't invest fate in crab so I can sacrifice any I want to. Each crab is worth 2 of most others, especially if you can keep their fate hand down through honor pressure.

Part of it is knowing when to place Fate on characters and when not to. It's always great to have people stick around, especially if they have a useful ability, but sometimes that Fate can be more useful elsewhere. If you find yourself just needing to get bodies into play, look for abilities that will allow you to sacrifice them so they can both fight and perform another useful action that round. Crab tend to be good at this, as are cards such as Miya Mystic.

16 hours ago, Jorgyn Ryss said:

I've played about 10 games in total. I have won 2 of them. Crab is a strange beast and I had to make concessions on characters to keep the sacrifice keyword useful, most of the time.

Invest in the big dudes and let the little ones die. Crab also likes more warm bodies.

I find with Dragon a good rule of thumb has been "bring up one 3+ with 2 fate on them and 1 2 or less cost with none per turn" and you'll be ok. Granted different dynasty flips can mess with this, but it's worked for me so far.

With Scorpion I would never not have 3x of the 4 and 5 costers so far, since they are all unique I can usually invest in them and hopefully draw into another copy to keep them around even longer.

8 hours ago, ChuckBTY said:

I find with Dragon a good rule of thumb has been "bring up one 3+ with 2 fate on them and 1 2 or less cost with none per turn" and you'll be ok. Granted different dynasty flips can mess with this, but it's worked for me so far.

I usually do the same with Dragon. Also, don't be afraid to use Charge on big characters, especially if you feel you can't afford them at the time anyway...it's better than having them clog a province, and can be game changing if timed right

4 hours ago, DarkBlack said:

With Scorpion I would never not have 3x of the 4 and 5 costers so far, since they are all unique I can usually invest in them and hopefully draw into another copy to keep them around even longer.

Considering that Yunako is pretty useless, and you probably want to run 2x of Miyako (at most), we are really just talking about Shoju and Hiroue...

1 hour ago, franzvong said:

Considering that Yunako is pretty useless, and you probably want to run 2x of Miyako (at most), we are really just talking about Shoju and Hiroue...

Yunako is one of my favourite characters, what’s useless about her?

4 minutes ago, ayedubbleyoo said:

Yunako is one my favourite characters, what’s useless about her?

4/2 with cost of 4. The 2 glories are a liability, meaning that you cannot dishonor her to trigger your abilities (unless you invest extra fate to clean her, but she's already expensive enough). The ability is nice, but you can be only sure of flipping her own skills, as you cannot trigger char with dashes and many strong chars have a similar stats in pol and mil (Kisada being the big exception but well, there are other ways in Scorpion to manage him). Shifting her skills makes her a 2/4 at best (a 0/2 at worst), but you have better cost/benefit characters in pol then her.

I don't know, I just find the investment often wasted, when I could have Hiroue on the field for the same price. She may be stronger in the future in a military/bushi based Scorpion deck, but that's not there yet...

22 minutes ago, franzvong said:

4/2 with cost of 4. The 2 glories are a liability, meaning that you cannot dishonor her to trigger your abilities (unless you invest extra fate to clean her, but she's already expensive enough). The ability is nice, but you can be only sure of flipping her own skills, as you cannot trigger char with dashes and many strong chars have a similar stats in pol and mil (Kisada being the big exception but well, there are other ways in Scorpion to manage him). Shifting her skills makes her a 2/4 at best (a 0/2 at worst), but you have better cost/benefit characters in pol then her.

I don't know, I just find the investment often wasted, when I could have Hiroue on the field for the same price. She may be stronger in the future in a military/bushi based Scorpion deck, but that's not there yet...

Interesting, I’ll keep an eye on how she’s working. Just think the flexibility seems really useful, along with the military strength.

Switch her stats, switch an opponent’s, see what you need at the time.

I see what you mean about a lot of characters being balanced though, I have noticed that a bit.

8 hours ago, franzvong said:

Considering that Yunako is pretty useless, and you probably want to run 2x of Miyako (at most), we are really just talking about Shoju and Hiroue...

What.

I won a game where a Kisada came out on turn one and stayed there for the entire game because I realised quickly enough that Yunako is basically a hard counter to everyone with a linear stat-line. She is a beast.

I want you to be better.

16 minutes ago, Daigotsu Steve said:

What.

I won a game where a Kisada came out on turn one and stayed there for the entire game because I realised quickly enough that Yunako is basically a hard counter to everyone with a linear stat-line. She is a beast.

I want you to be better.

From being on the Kisada side of things in a similar situation, yes, this is a pain to deal with.

You can also switch Shoju's stats from 3/7 to 7/3, because conflict changes are a thing.

2 hours ago, Hordeoverseer said:

You can also switch Shoju's stats from 3/7 to 7/3, because conflict changes are a thing.

While true, you just went from a total of 7/9 to 11/5, since Miyako is a 4/2. While it can be relevant, the conditions might not require the switch very often. Not to say +4 kill isn't a big deal in conflicts, but if a switch happened, you just lost 2 skill total, and might not need the extra oomph.