Okay, we have a family tournament over turkey day weekend.

I have a decent Crab but I want to build a Scorpion. I played the old CCG in the 90's. I'm old so talk slow, lol.

Reading through all the cards, the Scorpion are dishonoring themselves and loosing honor like crazy, how the heck do they stay above water?

Strategy advice Please! I have all cards. 3 cores and 2 new dynasty.

(Disclaimer: I do not play Scorpion, but play against it a lot as a Phoenix. This is from my perspective)

As long as you are less honorable than your opponent, you can take an honor from them each turn with your stronghold. It does an incredible amount of work to keep you in the game. If you ever find yourself low, you can go after the air ring a bit to recover, but usually being low means your opponent is, too, and you can start attacking their honor more aggressively (mostly by dishonoring their characters and letting them leave play, but also air ring.) The nice thing about dishonoring characters is that not only it debuffs them, but the honor loss from dishonor is delayed, so you can use your stronghold while their honor is high, then let the dishonor ping away afterwards.

Scorpion conflict cards are great at preventing province breaking, what with all your courtiers, outwit, for shame, and court games, as well as Agent of Shadows popping in whenever necessary. work on dishonoring their guys, and sneak in a political province break where you see the opportunity. A good offense can be a strong defense in this game.

Scorpion's stronghold is essentially a free Air ring every turn. Lets say the game goes five turns - that's +5 honour they get from their stronghold alone. And due to it being an any phase action, you almost always get to trigger it every turn. And since you're stealing the opponent's honour, you're also putting them under pressure on that front - so combined with things like cancelling events, that means the opponent often has less resources on hand, which means you have to do less work to stop them, which can often translate to saving honour.

I hope these will help get a basic strategy. Mind you I'm primarily a dishonor player from the Old CCG so just take that into consideration. Also, don't have the 2 dynasties just yet so you're in a better position than I am.

1. The deck I built goes aggressive for economy. I have most 2 or less costed peeps a 3-of, have most 4 or more characters a 2-of (barring my champ). I loaded my conflict characters to the max at 10. And I make sure I get the first pass during conflict phase; I buy 2 when going first, and buy 1 when second.

2. My splash is Phoenix; Seeker of Knowledge and Know the World. I trigger multiple air rings with the help of both cards.

3. I bid aggressively from 3-5 depending on my hand. I never bid lower than that, not until I hit 4. I manage my honor losses; I allow undefended provinces when I know I have a loaded hand, and assasinate a valid target if I could. I let my SH do the dishonoring for me, rather than bidding conservatively, not until 5 honor. I make sure I'm not that far off from my opponent's honor though.

4. Breaking provinces is not my biggest priority, specially at the early stages. Usually I'd rather load my hand and prepare for the time I can't bid aggressively anymore. I attack provinces mainly to trigger rings. I'm extremely happy when I flip a upon-revealed province to bang my head against multiple times. I do go for a break, only if assassination allows it. But never the upon-revealed one.

5. Opponents usually bid accordingly against me. 3 at the start, then gradually lowers it when he realizes what I'm doing. When I start getting significant hand advantage (4vs8), I go for earth. If he reads my bids pretty well and keeps hand parity, I go fire/void. I don't have any ring preferences for Know the World. If I'm happy with result of the triggered ring, I trigger it again.

Very rough stuff, and I didn't even include the decklist but since you're in a better position than I am when it comes to cards, I figured there's no point.

Good luck and welcome back to the fray!

Another thing that I find helps Scorpion a lot is controlling the fate. Scorpion is heavily reliant on their conflict deck to manipulate the board. This can be expensive. As a practice I almost always invest extra in the characters that have the most impact against my opponent and try to always control the extra fate from passing first. By spending 2 - 3 extra on your 4 cost character means you are getting the value of 8 - 12 fate from them (of course barring voids ect.).

Meanwhile putting extra fate on 1 and 2 costs can be a double edged sword. From a fate economy standpoint if they get assassinated, clouded, or otherwise negated in some way you lose all extra fate (generally). For scorpion many of the 1 and 2 cost characters are tech rather than stat bodies. Now on the contrary, having a good 1 or 2 cost that has 1 extra fate can easily bait an assassinate (learn to read your opponent in how they react to the various characters you play). This leads into the other side of scorpion, honor pressure. If you can bait out those assassinates along with the use of your Stronghold every turn you are can push them into an Honor position they are not comfortable playing at.

While (other than paying 1 for Banzai or 3 for Assassinate) there is no difference between being at 2 honor or 20 honor, there is a psychological effect. People will get nervous at low honor and change the way they play. You can use that against them.

Thanks everyone!!! I played my first Scorpion deck tonight. I took down my kids Unicorn by knocking him to zero honor! What a fun deck to play and totally piss him off! Ha

2 hours ago, Fu Leng said:

Thanks everyone!!! I played my first Scorpion deck tonight. I took down my kids Unicorn by knocking him to zero honor! What a fun deck to play and totally piss him off! Ha

And now hopefully he will learn to adapt to your new deck and playing style. The arms race between players is how people grow to be good/great players.

5 hours ago, Fu Leng said:

Thanks everyone!!! I played my first Scorpion deck tonight. I took down my kids Unicorn by knocking him to zero honor! What a fun deck to play and totally piss him off! Ha

Pissing off your kids in gaming must be one of the guilty pleasures in life...

Weirdly enough I find my honour is usually quite high with Scorpion, it maybe dips down at the start of the game but it rarely gets to danger level. Usually I’m actively looking for people to assassinate to get it down!

Maybe I’m playing it wrong but I’ve won quite a lot of games by dishonouring my opponent now.

On 11/18/2017 at 10:20 AM, Serazu said:

Pissing off your kids in gaming must be one of the guilty pleasures in life...

What is life if not a quest to overcome your parents? What parent is worthy of the name who does not wish them to succeed?

I run an extremely low cost conflict deck (36 cards that are 0 cost) and run all of my high cost (4 + fate) characters (3 of each). It is quite aggro and splashes Crab for 3 x Pathfinder's Blade and two The Mountain Does Not Fall. I find it fun to play and people seem to be caught off guard how aggro it can be.

2 hours ago, cforfar said:

I run an extremely low cost conflict deck (36 cards that are 0 cost) and run all of my high cost (4 + fate) characters (3 of each). It is quite aggro and splashes Crab for 3 x Pathfinder's Blade and two The Mountain Does Not Fall. I find it fun to play and people seem to be caught off guard how aggro it can be.

I have all 0 cost and 1 cost in my Conflict too..... But I am not running many big boys in my dynasty. I'll have to give your option a try!

9 hours ago, Fu Leng said:

I have all 0 cost and 1 cost in my Conflict too..... But I am not running many big boys in my dynasty. I'll have to give your option a try!

Adept of Shadows is an extremely powerful conflict character, I highly recommend using her. The dynasty deck is where your powerhouse characters are, however you need to be mindful of balancing out POL vs MIL characters as it is far too easy to shove in a bunch of political heavy characters and then be left with pitiful military. Scorpion is second to Crane when it comes to political but their military might is decent which gives them much more versatility overall.

13 hours ago, cforfar said:

Adept of Shadows is an extremely powerful conflict character, I highly recommend using her. The dynasty deck is where your powerhouse characters are, however you need to be mindful of balancing out POL vs MIL characters as it is far too easy to shove in a bunch of political heavy characters and then be left with pitiful military. Scorpion is second to Crane when it comes to political but their military might is decent which gives them much more versatility overall.

whoi do you splash?

8 hours ago, Fu Leng said:

whoi do you splash?

I splash Crab for 2 The Mountain Does Not Fall and 3 Pathfinder's Blade.

I usually do Dragon for Mirumoto's Fury and Tatooed Wanderer / Togashi Kazue.

Have been playing around with Phoenix for Display of Power / Know the World and Seeker of Knowledge.

If all else fails you can always pull the old "what's that over there" and then remove your opponent's fate while they are not looking. When they realize what you've done, /smokebomb and disappear into the shadows.