Let's discuss, because I think a lot of roles make sense for some and very little sense for others.

When picking a Seeker Role you have to look at your province selections and think "Can I use two of these provinces of the same element to really dig out an amazing advantage for my clan and leverage the extra money from them?"

When picking a Keeper Role you have to look at each ring and think "Which ring am I going to leverage the most in order to advance my win-condition and trigger my Keeper Initiates, also which of these rings is most likely to be chosen AGAINST me for the sake of gaining a fate and triggering initiates?"

Here are my picks:

Crab : Seeker of Air in dishonor tech for the cards/resources of Gardens and Fertile Fields; but keeper is way too tempting for sacrifice targets, so my pick is Keeper of Earth.

• Why? KoE is a strong option in my opinion. Earth is typically not a common ring in early-game because it doesn't advance the board state, but when both opponent's are looking at 4-6 cards in hand on turn 2, 3, 4 etc it becomes much more common. By this time, your initiates will be cycled into discard, hopefully 1 or 2 by this point in the game, and you can defend and gain board advantage when you win, or attack in a strong late-game ring to get a card, discard from your opponent and trigger your delicious sacrifice-fodder. Keeper initiates are also even better because when you win on attack for Earth they can defend next attack while you trigger Shiro Nishiayama.

Crane : Keeper of Fire.

• It's their best role, specifically because they want to hit the fire-ring as often as possible and their opponents know this. So when a Crane is second player, an opponent to a Crane will go for a Fire Ring. If you defend, you've got the resource, the Initiates, and you've got Guard Duty - the card that I believe can take Crane to the "Honor-Win" level along with their other hard-honoring tricks. I think the keeper roles often go entire games without a single trigger, Keeper of Fire in Crane could trigger 2-3 times in a single game.

Dragon : I have moderate experience with Dragon, mostly as an opponent but I really like Seeker of Air for them.

• Having the extra resources and card draw from Gardens and Fertile Fields seems strong to me. They need their options, they need their cash, and they have strong offensive and defensive capabilities, enough to challenge a defense while still setting up a Voltron. Runner up for Dragon is Keeper of Void (Current). In a high-glory, low-unit-count faction like Dragon, I see them defending against Void attacks often to clear out their board presence, the increased incentive of winning these attacks for cash and getting initiates is obvious.

Lion : Another tough one for me, I don't play Lion often. My sense is Keeper of Air.

• Honor-tech with Air Ring trigger, Guard Duty, and all the other Lion Honor tricks can bring honor wins to the forefront this cycle in my opinion. Honor-lions want to use Air Rings to gain 2 honor. Opponents to a Lion will want to use the air ring to deny the ring's use, so winning an air ring means triggering Initiates and gaining a resource. In both scenarios, Keeper of Air is a phenomenal choice of role for the Lions.

Phoenix : Seeker of Void (Current) is great, the extra cash and shameful display is very powerful, however, my pick is Keeper of Void.

• Keeper of Void simply because of the mixture of Isawa Atsuko, Keeper Initiates and Kuroi Mori and Elemental Fury. You can take any incoming attack to your province, defend it with Isawa, change the ring to void, use Isawa, gain a fate for defending, trigger the Initiates. The new harmonize ability in keeper will also assist in defensive plays like these, making your opponents either under or over-commit and come out with serious card and board-state disadvantages. Also Guard Duty in Phoenix is flat out amazing in Phoenix. They are a high-glory faction with the right stronghold to leverage the **** out of that card.

Scorpion : I love Seeker of Air on them currently, I wouldn't change it. Cash and cards from Gardens and Secret Cache is excellent. If I had to choose something else, it would be Keeper of Fire.

• Fire ring is an often-overlooking strong ring against Scorpion, its also a strong ring for Scorpion for dishonor tech, I can swim, and re-honor dishonored Courtiers. Between their high-glory characters and Forged Edict, dishonoring their characters is a solid move against them, so in a meta where your opponent understands this being Keeper of Fire means defending the ring and gaining the fate.

Unicorn : Seeker of Earth.

• Unicorn's current (and probably future) play-style revolves around trading provinces with your opponent. This leaves them open to powerful counter-plays and they can often have their provinces broken. Seeker roles will allow them to attack hard and defend hard as well. They can take both Earth provinces, using Fortified Position against players like dragon and lion, and ancestral Lands against Crane and Scorpion.

Please feel free to discuss and give your opinions, thanks!

I definitely agree that at the least Phoenix would do well with some sort of Keeper role, as I really like the looks of both Harmonize and Guard Duty. Even outside of Lion splash, Crane and Scorpion are both popular splash options for Phoenix as well, and their keeper cards look useful. Even the Unicorn keeper role card is good on the defensive, plus as an attachment it also gives a small bonus to skill values. In general, Keeper just seems to give Phoenix players a lot of good options. As a comparison, I'm not as big a fan of the Seeker role splash options, although Crab's Pathfinder's Blade attachment could come in handy against particularly nasty province abilities.

Edit: Weird, my first double post on here. I'm a real member now!

I would want Dragon to have a Keeper role so I could try some Keeper Initiate monk tricks.

I would also want a Keeper role for the Crab to make use of that zerker.

Outside of that, the Seeker roles to allow you to change up your province selection seem to be good in general and likely provide enough of a boost to offset whatever small gains could be made with the cards spoiled so far. I wonder if the other packs in the cycle will continue the keeper/seeker split and if those cards will be known by the time the players choose roles at worlds.

I do wish they would reveal the new neutral provinces that are supposed to be keeper/seeker only. Seems like a potentially useful piece of information to know going into Worlds.

Here's my take on roles given to new keeper/seeker cards:

Crab - Keeper of Earth
Crisis Breaker is a truck of a card and only Crab can use it. Additionally, Keeper Initiates are phenomenal for Crab as a utility piece that I'm not sure they want to give up. I think Crab is fine being any element as well, but Earth suits an attrition style that they fit nicely.

Crane - Seeker of Air/Keeper of Fire
Crane can honestly go two ways here, as both options for their cards are quite solid. I'm leaning towards Seeker of Air in order to run both economy Air provinces, Test of Skill, and Yoshi for a fantastic economic game plan. There's just so much extra fate and card draw potential, that it has to be worth considering. Keeper of Fire is mostly good with Hotaru being able to honor the keeper initiate as it comes into play with her reaction and Crane generally liking to claim the fire ring.

Dragon - Seeker of Fire
There's not much to this other than Dragon being able to mix up their province allotment to be more tempo driven. Running both Restoration of Balance and Meditations on the Tao in the home row gives some nasty board and hand control which suits their tempo game nicely. Running both Restoration and Night Raid can also be fun, if they don't end up stepping on each-others toes too much.

Lion - Keeper of Fire
Guard Duty seems leagues better than Time for War at the moment, and Toturi can honor Keeper Initiate as he comes into play with his reaction to claiming the fire ring, making it a 3/3 immediately. The Lion Stronghold really likes keeper initiates in general, so I expect Lion to stick with a Keeper role overall. We might also see an honor deck for Lion on the horizon.

Phoenix - Keeper of Fire/Void
Seeker of Void is fantastic for Phoenix; but since it's not an option, Phoenix obviously want a keeper role to make use of Guard Duty and Harmonize. Fire and Void are the two rings that Phoenix care about most, and as such seem to be the current best options going forward.

Scorpion - Keeper of Air/Fire
It's hard to say, but I think Backhanded Compliment may put Scorpion Dishonor as a real deck on the map. With lots of incremental dishonor loss from just being Scorpion, I think what Scorpion was missing for the dishonor strategy was a way to finish off an opponent down to 2-3 honor, and Compliment does that well while also being a pocket cycle when you need it. If a dishonor strategy is the way to go, then the air and fire rings make the most sense for the role as well.

Unicorn - Keeper of Anything
Talisman of the Sun. Nothing else needs to be said.

Once more it seems like Keeper is more desirable than Seeker overall, but I imagine one clan will "settle" for Seeker of Void, which is not a bad option at all but probably not the first on anyone's list. I project Keeper of Fire will be the most hotly contested role.

1 hour ago, I Fight Dragons said:

Dragon - Seeker of Fire
There's not much to this other than Dragon being able to mix up their province allotment to be more tempo driven. Running both Restoration of Balance and Meditations on the Tao in the home row gives some nasty board and hand control which suits their tempo game nicely. Running both Restoration and Night Raid can also be fun, if they don't end up stepping on each-others toes too much.

Unicorn - Keeper of Anything
Talisman of the Sun. Nothing else needs to be said.

Agree 100% with both of these, and hope folk at Winter Court don't make a hash of it

Frankly, as a dragon player I prefer seeker of air over fire because I'd prefer to have card draw and fate production over discard and fate removal, of course both are quite viable out of dragon, and with the few dragon cards spoiled thus far for the coming months I see two ways the clan can go with the new seeker only card.

Option 1 is monk shenanigans that focus on grabbing up loads of fate, loading the rings with fate to control the board (kitsuki investigator, togashi initiate, and ascetic visionary), benefit from having rings loaded with fate (enlightened warior, seeker of enlightenment, just gaining fate from the rings), and preventing your opponent from benefiting much from fate (stone of sorrows, togashi kazue, MotT). The goal here is obviously to break your opponent's provinces before they break yours. I think seeker of air works better for this because you get both the gain a fate province and the draw a card province, both of which support the overall idea of having the most resources. Good splashes here would be crane or crab for keeping your guy with the emo stone in play, crab or lion for keeping your guy with the emo stone readied, and uni for the draw power.

Option 2 is economic pressure with an honor/dishonor pressure component. The focus here is on using things like discard mechanics off of kitsuki investigator and RoB/night raid with kitsuki yaruma acting to reset those traps to pressure your opponent's hand, using togashi kazue and the emo stone to pressure their fate resources, and using some courtier/political play to pressure honor/dishonor (of course I would want at least one more in clan non-unique courtier before including much in the way of courtier events). Seeker of fire works better here because this allows you to use either both RoB and night raid (thus doubling up on the hand manipulation) or one of those with MotT (thus allowing you to use gain the fate pressure and the hand pressure). Good splashes here would be crab for levy and watch commander for added dishonor/fate pressure and scorpion/crane for added honor/dishonor pressure and on the board control as well as possibly some conflict courtiers for some added support if need be.

Personally, I much prefer option 1 because right now it has the most support and because I always liked monk shenanigans, whereas I've always had trouble playing control properly in just about any card game (and let's be honest, if I wanted to play control I'd be playing a different clan at least some of the time instead of diving full on dragon).

The best role for Dragon is victorious!

The best role for Scorpion is unseen!

I honestly don't think there are roles as such anymore. Right now, anyone is capable of capitalizing on dishonor to knock an opponent out. Likewise, cracking provinces is just as managable for each clan.

I'm yet to honor win or see one yet. With how the game plays, it's far easier to dishonor an opponent than to honor win.

I have been seeking Earth for the extra earth province.

Just my current experience, and without knowledge of future provinces, but for Scorpion, Seeker of Void feels pretty good to have both shameful display and pilgrimage. Maybe after that keeper of Air/Fire?

For those who like Seeker of Earth, please could you give me some insight into what you find so good about those provinces?

I absolutely love Entrenched Position (usually under the Stronghold) in Captive Audience decks, but otherwise I find them both to be the weak-point of the Province line-up. You've got a 50% chance they have zero impact on the game. If they do have an impact it's only the first time (I guess it makes it harder if the opponent decides to attempt to break it with both challenges in a round, but if it's come to that you should be ahead in other areas).

They are also very easy to farm when the opponent doesn't care about the break, but just wants the ring trigger as they have no impact on who wins the conflict (like Shameful Display), nor do they hurt your opponent or benefit you (like Meditations of the Tao or Manicured Gardens). I would almost always prefer 2 economy provinces, 2 anti-economy provinces, or Shameful/Pilgrimage, if given the choice (not even taking into account clan-specific stuff).

I realise they are 5 strength, which only Pilgrimage matches, but I just don't find that extra point of strength as useful as the abilities that most provinces have.

On 10/20/2017 at 6:21 PM, GKZhukov said:

For those who like Seeker of Earth, please could you give me some insight into what you find so good about those provinces?

I absolutely love Entrenched Position (usually under the Stronghold) in Captive Audience decks, but otherwise I find them both to be the weak-point of the Province line-up. You've got a 50% chance they have zero impact on the game. If they do have an impact it's only the first time (I guess it makes it harder if the opponent decides to attempt to break it with both challenges in a round, but if it's come to that you should be ahead in other areas).

They are also very easy to farm when the opponent doesn't care about the break, but just wants the ring trigger as they have no impact on who wins the conflict (like Shameful Display), nor do they hurt your opponent or benefit you (like Meditations of the Tao or Manicured Gardens). I would almost always prefer 2 economy provinces, 2 anti-economy provinces, or Shameful/Pilgrimage, if given the choice (not even taking into account clan-specific stuff).

I realize they are 5 strength, which only Pilgrimage matches, but I just don't find that extra point of strength as useful as the abilities that most provinces have.

Basically against a crane/scorp player you throw Ancestral lands on your stronghold and vs lion/crab/dragon you use entrenched position. Sure they aren't the greatest, but fending off that one break at the end of the game makes all the difference if you can chump-defend, save your entire army for a counterattack and win the game. It's not so much about the ring's triggering as it is defending your province and then smashing theirs.

4 hours ago, Etaywah said:

Basically against a crane/scorp player you throw Ancestral lands on your stronghold and vs lion/crab/dragon you use entrenched position. Sure they aren't the greatest, but fending off that one break at the end of the game makes all the difference if you can chump-defend, save your entire army for a counterattack and win the game. It's not so much about the ring's triggering as it is defending your province and then smashing theirs.

I hadn't really considered the flexibility of being able to choose which one to put under your stronghold depending on match-up. That makes sense. Still not convinced it's worth selecting Seeker of Earth over other choices, but I get where you're coming from now .

I completely misunderstood this topic when I posted ?

Right now, I don't think the roles really do much. I always play the official ones just for practice.

I just want Dragon to keep a Keeper roles so I can hold on to my sweet sweet influence.

I want Dragon to get access to the rock that keeps fate on rings.

1 hour ago, SideshowLucifer said:

I want Dragon to get access to the rock that keeps fate on rings.

This. It opens up a whole new archetype. Whereas losing 3 influence and Keeper Initiates doesn't stop other play-styles from still working (for Dragon at least - Unicorn will probably cry if not allowed Talisman of the Sun). I'd like Keeper of Fire for Crane-Scorp ridiculousness, but again I don't think the deck dies without it, and if Seeker opens up other builds then so be it.