I'm a dragon player and although I've only been to the release event I've done alright in games. I tend to have the most trouble with dishonor losses to crab and crane, and shenanigans from scorpion. below is my decklist. all constructive criticism is welcome.

Its bad, you chose dragon. That is unforgivable.

Very cut and dry, so to speak. It’s respectable and effective, imo.

I would remove the Secluded Temple, add another Niten Mater, get rid of the Ascetic Visionaries (till a monk Stronghold is released), add a favored Ground (I like to have 2 FG and 2 Imperial Storehouses in my current deck), and see if you can add or sneak in an Indomitable Will or 2...

mind you, in 2 weeks a number of other options will be available for us through the new release.

Now that the new cards will start getting released over the next several weeks, I expect your deck will undergo several changes. It's hard to properly evaluate a deck when the game will be in such a state of flux.

If you're having difficulty with dishonor, Crane is generally a good splash as it gives you Steward of Law to stop some of the dishonor. The one problem here is that Dragon are not really stocked with couriers so you might find it difficult to cover your political shortcomings with the typical political cards.

If you can find a way to fit the Crane package in you have Fury, Steward/For Shame, and Admit Defeat which all produce very strong effects during a conflict.

If you stick with Crab then Pathfinders Blade should be your first upgrade. Then to protect your big units from nasty stuff try the neutral card, Finger of Jade.

Maybe take a look at the spoilers and see if there is anything new that catches your eye.

I think in core only levy isn't a very worthwhile splash for dragon, however once the new stuff comes out in the next few weeks it'll be great.

I'd drop the levies for indomitable wills.

As far as Ascetic Visionary goes, I actually don't get all the hate on him. I mean, yeah he doesn't take most attachments and his ability will be blank most of the time, but a 3/4 is nothing to laugh at, and frankly I'd run him even without the ability (at least until better stuff comes out).

I don't see why Otomo Courtier is in there, as you don't run anything that requires courtiers, she gets turned off whenever your opponent has the favor (which in my experience is a lot, depending on which clan you are facing), and in terms of political skill you'd be better off having 3x of your 3 2x characters (4, 3, and 1+ political, respectively from the top).

I agree with LordBlunt about the holdings, favorable ground over secluded temple.

I hope this helps!

5 hours ago, LordBlunt said:

Very cut and dry, so to speak. It’s respectable and effective, imo.

I would remove the Secluded Temple, add another Niten Mater, get rid of the Ascetic Visionaries (till a monk Stronghold is released), add a favored Ground (I like to have 2 FG and 2 Imperial Storehouses in my current deck), and see if you can add or sneak in an Indomitable Will or 2...

mind you, in 2 weeks a number of other options will be available for us through the new release.

Why remove Secluded Temple? I'm honestly curious.

I don't have the card in front if me, but the activation still works even if the conflict is not at its province, correct?

Because it really not that great of a Holding.

It has several conditions that need to be met in order for it to work.

First you Opponent needs to have more characters than you, second one of them needs to have Fate on them.

I would drop the Otomo Courtiers, the Seppun Guardsman and the Seekers plus consider no more than two Holdings Max for now.

Bring all of the Dragon Characters up to three each and until we get more Dragon Characters run three of the Wandering Ronin. Sure he cost more than the above neutral Characters but he does not have any of their limitations.

5 hours ago, Shu2jack said:

Why remove Secluded Temple? I'm honestly curious.

I just don't find that it can compete with the other Holdings that Dragon has access to. Specifically, I especially care for Favored Ground and Imperial Storehouse in a 1-to-1 bundle, as they seem to be a good buy for what you are getting. The Secluded Temple on the other hand is not worth the space in my deck, as it just doesn't seem to pay off. Sainhann (above) has a more descriptive response than my post regarding ST.

As for the Ascetic Visionary, I tend to think that the Niten Master for instance is a better 4-coster due to his abilities. But I can see the validity of the Ascetic Visionary for its 3 Mil and 4 Pol. I guess at this early stage in the game it's just a matter of preference.

Thing is, by the end of December we should have access to a host of other cards that can dramatically change the makeup (and focus and direction) of the 'common' Dragon deck, so most of what we are theorizing will possibly take another turn for the better or worse, depending on the interaction of the various cards coming out. I still believe that there isn't much elbow room to tinker with the available Dragon cards in order to come up with variable decks (such as compared to Crab, Crane or Phoenix for example) to play against my opponents. Right now, I see only one type of deck, which is very similar to what the Original Poster of this thread put up; but hopefully this will soon change.

to respond to a few cards called out

otomo/seppun: these cards are cheap defense platforms which allow me to either prevent a province break with attachments or at least prevent the uncontested honor loss.

indomitable will: I took this card out of my deck because I realized 2 things: 1. there are a lot of cards out there in the other clans with bow or send home effects and 2. Dragon does not inherently have a stop event card like forged edict. therefore I rarely use one card to attack at a time.

ascetic visionary and niten master tend to be my go to' s with charge. ascetic ilunbows my initiates and my champion, and niten unbowed himself

holdings:

I agree I should find a way to fit in a few favored ground to allow me to insert or eject characters. imperial storehouse I use all the time as it gives me usually another attachment. secluded temple has actually done well for me as it opens up more possibilities for the water ring, and helps to not need the void ring first. however I do have it limited to one in the deck.

dropping all neutrals to bring in the rest of the dragon clan: honestly until stone of sorrows comes out the seeker of enlightenment sucks as there is rarely more than 2 fate on rings by the time she gets to fight. also enlightened warrior is a decent platform, but is too expensive for his stats. also wandering ronin is not a fate efficient card. +2 for one fate means im paying 4 fate for a 4/4 for one turn. that's more than half what I earn each turn and frankly I rarely have that much available with the attachment play

I do plan to switch levy for something more useful with the 1st expansion

My biggest issue with otomo courtier and seppun guardsman is the whole "cannot participate" against the favor, on top of both of them having a dash stat. These two factors lead to them being severely limited (especially since I find I have a hard time getting and keeping the favor unless I'm just curb stomping my opponent and getting all the rings, and I imagine this true for dragon in general due to our strategy of having a few powerhouses over a ton of mooks, as such we rarely have peeps ready for the favor contest, and when we do it is usually because we didn't have the board strength to attack twice and defend twice, meaning we probably are losing out in rings in that case) even as chump blockers for defense, and if cheap chump blockers is what you want then I don't understand the problem with seeker of enlightenment, because she is cheap and even when she isn't a powerhouse for offense, she is a useful defender that can potentially be very powerful, and if absolutely nothing else you can use her the same way as the courtier and the guardsman, but even when they have the favor AND on both political and military conflicts.

As far as secluded temple goes, if you are actually getting use out of it more power to you, but most of us don't and that's why we generally don't run it and recommend dropping it, I'd be curious to know how you manage to get its effect off consistently enough to feel that way about it, but I imagine that just boils down to variation in play environment (ie, your opponents aren't shying away from dropping fate on peeps once it flips the way most of us have encountered).

I genuinely don't understand why so many people have the opinion that anything less than 3/3 for 3 is weak, considering that there is one, maybe two cards with those stats in the entire game, and the one is generally considered to be one of the most powerful cards in the game full stop. Fact of the matter is, most 3 costers have stats that add up to 4, so I'd say enlightened warrior is par for the course stat wise, and he has an ability that is extremely useful in that it keeps him on the board for very long periods of time most of the time, and if you have togashi kazue on someone you want to keep around forever too (like our clan champ) then he is fodder for that, even if your opponent is avoiding putting fate on peeps to prevent that.

And @LordBlunt , I never understood why people seem to view ascetic visionary and niten master as one or the other, especially in the current limited card pool. I can run both rather easily because they are not competing with each other for space (and frankly if I dropped my ascetics I'd be at a loss as to what to run in their place), and if they both flip in the same turn on my provinces and I don't have the fate to afford them both (which is most of the time) I look at the board state to see which is better right now, because if I have monks on board and/or the hand to make ascetic into a political powerhouse ascetic is usually better, whereas if I have a hand full of weapons the niten master is better. And as far as the usefulness of their respective abilities goes, not counting splash options, there are six weapons in my deck (3x fine katana, 3x ancestral daisho), and most of the attachments in my deck are restricted, including all those weapons, as such if I want to use his ability and he already has two restricted attachments I have to drop one, and if it was an ancestral attachment it is gone forever, thus I lose the recursion, and if it was a political booster then I just lost 2 political skill, which while rather simple to work around in most situations, is nothing to scoff at considering one of the big draws for dragon is the ability to do both political and military well, and if they were gonna make niten master into our military powerhouse instead of a powerhouse in general they shouldn't have given him balanced base stats. Granted this isn't me hating on niten master, because I do really like him, but I just see people extolling his virtues and hating on the flaws of the ascetic visionary while ignoring the flaws of the master and the virtues of the ascetic, so I'm trying to point out that he isn't as perfect a card as people seem to think and ascetic visionary isn't anywhere near as bad as people seem to think. And frankly, while once we have a larger card pool running only one 4 coster is likely to be a good idea for most builds, we just don't currently have the breadth to do that right now without having to run subpar neutrals or more holdings than is advisable.

@psychie

Your post above is very well written. I cant argue with it or its premise; both being solid. However, as more and more cards are released, I hope that Dragon players such as myself will have an option of running either a Monk deck of sorts (backed up by various Conflict and Dynasty characters), or the common Dragon deck that is usually seen.

Now with the Dynasty pack releases, the Ascetic Visionary and the 2 other Monk characters come into a different light as more options (Conflict cards) become available. As of right now, the Niten Master (imo) is way more effective for its role as compared to the Visionary and has an easier method of pressuring its opponents with its ability to ready itself through a weapon attachment. The Monk characters have a different approach as to their usefulness, which, as you said, isn't anywhere near as bad as the Monk characters have been made out to be.

In just a few weeks we shall see what other options come into play for Monk cards. I'm certainly looking forward to that.... as well as a Monk Stronghold.