What? Reliably gain honor? Scorpion?
Yeah, I know, hear me out!

So Scorpion options are full of "dishonor yourself for X" and "pay honor to do Y" and "if your honor bid is higher than your opponent's do Z."
How is all this honor loss reliably offset? The Stronghold helps but only a tiny bit (heck, it's ability is practically mandatory to have, lol). The Air Ring exists, but you can't rely on it for obvious (ie: contested through game-play) reasons, and given the toolkit available I imagine Fire is going to be used much more often to dishonor your opponent than to honor your own personalities.

What's the consensus on this one?

Hmm a Dragon in Scorpion's clothing. Better not get yourself find out by other Bayushi or you will be in real trouble.

Didn't your Monk sensei teach you in the mountains the Scorpion tricks before he sent you down to infiltrate them? He deserves a High Kick for that.

...Anyway pretty sure some real Bayushi here can teach you that. Yes I am a Yogo but let's just say there are other things i am working on right now with my Daimyo.

I did hear rumors that you may want to try some Lion splash in the future once you get back the Keeper role, they have cards that can help you honor your guys. For now Scorpions are made to lean playing the current way which is to go low honor and pull down your opponent with you (though actually we had a saying that Crabs...real crabs are the type to pull each other down to escape a basket).

In short - they don't. What they do is pull the opponent down harder than they fall, so that they don't hit the bottom first.

11 minutes ago, shosuko said:

they don't.

/thread.

Also, the best mitigation for it is the stronghold, and not running too much of that stuff in the first place when deckbuilding.

There's also the guy that steals honor when he wins a fight, and I honestly think Before The Throne is gonna be a new Dishonor staple.

23 minutes ago, shosuko said:

In short - they don't. What they do is pull the opponent down harder than they fall, so that they don't hit the bottom first.

I mean sure, in theory... But what happens when you're losing that race? (Crane, Lion, maybe Phoenix - ie: they can stay honored enough to keep ahead of that game)

27 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

I mean sure, in theory... But what happens when you're losing that race? (Crane, Lion, maybe Phoenix - ie: they can stay honored enough to keep ahead of that game)

Then the Scorpion needs to play better. But this situation hasn't happened to me once, but I suppose if they've got that kind of honor tech good luck to them. Sometimes you just lose a game.

Lion is probably Scorpions worst matchup though, incidentally.

31 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

I mean sure, in theory... But what happens when you're losing that race? (Crane, Lion, maybe Phoenix - ie: they can stay honored enough to keep ahead of that game)

If they are high on honor they are probably losing on card advantage so you should be winning conflicts.

Scorpion being lower on honor is not really "losing the race", since with a few stronghold activations and dishonor effects you bring opponent down to the same level. Actually it is preferable for you to be as low as possible(aside from phoenix matchup) so when you bring them down to your level you can dishonor them out of the game with the least effort. Against the clans that you can't dishonor effectively(Lion) use honor for card draw and you will probably have nice CA.

That being said Lion is probably one of the harder matchups for Scorp.

1 hour ago, Daigotsu Steve said:

Then the Scorpion needs to play better. But this situation hasn't happened to me once, but I suppose if they've got that kind of honor tech good luck to them. Sometimes you just lose a game.

Lion is probably Scorpions worst matchup though, incidentally.

Your experience is clearly different than mine then. I'm finding Crane can honor often enough to offset any dishonoring I can manage to do, which means they either gain honor during Fate phase or break even most of the time (not always, but enough).
Meanwhile, those Assassinations, Court Masks, Forged Edicts, I Can Swims, Calling In Favors, Spies At Court, etc. are taking a real toll. The Stronghold can only do so much and Soshi Illusionist/Blackmail Artist are only 6 out of 40 cards that you may not even see.

1 hour ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Your experience is clearly different than mine then. I'm finding Crane can honor often enough to offset any dishonoring I can manage to do, which means they either gain honor during Fate phase or break even most of the time (not always, but enough).
Meanwhile, those Assassinations, Court Masks, Forged Edicts, I Can Swims, Calling In Favors, Spies At Court, etc. are taking a real toll. The Stronghold can only do so much and Soshi Illusionist/Blackmail Artist are only 6 out of 40 cards that you may not even see.

Then....don't use all that stuff?

Honour is a resource, and more so than Scorpion than other clans. If you're spending more honour than you can soak, you're running too many cards that cause you to lose honour. Look at alternative options for some of those slots.

1 hour ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Your experience is clearly different than mine then. I'm finding Crane can honor often enough to offset any dishonoring I can manage to do, which means they either gain honor during Fate phase or break even most of the time (not always, but enough).
Meanwhile, those Assassinations, Court Masks, Forged Edicts, I Can Swims, Calling In Favors, Spies At Court, etc. are taking a real toll. The Stronghold can only do so much and Soshi Illusionist/Blackmail Artist are only 6 out of 40 cards that you may not even see.

Whats your usual bidding pattern? I usually find that between low bidding, the stronghold, dishonour tech, rings and unopposed defences I have ways of threatening it enough that single assassinates and Banzais can mean ruin.

Between the Air ring, Policy Debate, and the draw bid, you should have plenty of opportunities to take some honor from your opponent. I try to almost always bid 1, but when you need a burst of conflict cards, you take just enough to fall just below your opponent, and then use your stronghold to even the playing field back out. Rinse and repeat. Bayushi Manipulator is great for giving you some flexibility in this area as well. He's great for getting them into this hand pressure groove where they have to keep bidding low....you try to match their bid, but use the Manipulator to go one ahead, and then use your stronghold to mitigate the honor loss.

Of course it depends on having a strong foundation as well - your deck. It has to draw pretty consistently. 95% of your games, your opening hand, if not strong, should be at least NOT BAD. If you find that you are getting multiple dynasty flops per game, you should look at either shaking up your deck a little, or perhaps just the ratios of cards.

1 hour ago, Daigotsu Steve said:

Whats your usual bidding pattern?

I usually start high (4-5) to build a hand, then stay low (1-2) for the rest if I can get away with it.

7 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Your experience is clearly different than mine then. I'm finding Crane can honor often enough to offset any dishonoring I can manage to do, which means they either gain honor during Fate phase or break even most of the time (not always, but enough).
Meanwhile, those Assassinations, Court Masks, Forged Edicts, I Can Swims, Calling In Favors, Spies At Court, etc. are taking a real toll. The Stronghold can only do so much and Soshi Illusionist/Blackmail Artist are only 6 out of 40 cards that you may not even see.

Are you winning conflicts? what are your ring choices?

What I find is that my first goal isn't to attack my opponent's honor - sometimes you win through honor, sometimes you win through provinces. I attack my opponent's hand. I draw more than they do, grab the honor back with my SH, and go for Ring of Earth, Spies at Court, and Policy Debate to nix their hand. Once they have a small hand they must either draw more cards into my low bid (I usually bid low after the first turn) giving me honor back, or lose provinces to my card advantage.

The reason Lion is such a tough matchup for Scorpion is the combination of their auto-honoring cards AND their ability to play off of their Dynasty, bidding low throughout the game. I don't expect to win a game via dishonor going into the game, because there aren't good enough cards to force honor loss yet (or rather there are, but some players wanted to troll the scorpion picking a seeker role.) Sometimes a player will make a mistake and you can win through dishonor, sometimes its easier to leverage their inability to defend at low honor and you just walk through their provinces.

Get your opponent bidding 5 along with you and then juke them with a low bid and play https://l5r.gamepedia.com/Way_of_the_Chrysanthemum ?

17 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

The Stronghold helps but only a tiny bit (heck, it's ability is practically mandatory to have, lol)

You are contradicting yourself here. The ability helps a tonne, its the best honor steal in the game. When I feel honor pressure I drop to biding 3 and its very hard to dishonor scorp out with 3 bid and 4-5 honor.

The other way to effectively gain honor is to pressure their hand to make them need to bid higher while bolstering yours so you don't have (all the time anyway).

When feeling honor pressure: Policy Debate > Earth ring > Fire Ring (juicy target) > Air Ring > Liar > Storehouse > Niece (to cycle out dead cards like assassination) > Fire Ring (poor target)

Not a big fan of blackmail artist. He seems like an obvious choice but rarely works out in my experience. Spies is good too but I can't find room for it.

On 12/1/2017 at 7:09 AM, Abyss said:

Then....don't use all that stuff?

Honour is a resource, and more so than Scorpion than other clans. If you're spending more honour than you can soak, you're running too many cards that cause you to lose honour. Look at alternative options for some of those slots.

Exactly. Dishonorable tactics are very important to the Scorpion, but that doesn't mean you can just fill your deck with every single one. Just like how a Phoenix deck doesn't work well if you exclusively use 4-5 cost characters. You want some, yes, but you need to balance them with the cheap folks that help flesh out the deck a bit. Similarly, Scorpion need to balance out their honor-loss tools with other options that are "cheaper" in regards to honor.

You mean my scorpion (splash crane) honor deck isn't a good idea?

Wait for a new Stronghold.

On 12/1/2017 at 3:59 PM, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

How is all this honor loss reliably offset?

By careful balance, both in deckbuilding (I don't use I can swim, spies at court, and court mask. Post release of whole cycle, this will change though mainly because of Policy Debate.) and using what you do have intelligently. (I run 3 assasinates in the deck, mind you.)

City of the open hand, atleast for me, was one of the most cleverly designed strongholds out of the core. It was like Midday Shadow Court was for the CCG. It rewards you reading your opponents well. I often find myself not defending provinces from time to time just to keep my honor lower than my opponent. I am playing dishonor though, just so you know.

Everything said, it's all about knowing which losses you're willing to take. Do you really need to call in favors that katana? Do you really wanna assassinate that peacekeeper?

I often find I'm higher in honour than my opponent, except against the real honour clans. Quite often I'm doing an assassination just to get my honour down so I can use the stronghold and the Outcasts etc.

I don't really agree with the 'single win condition' approach to playing anyway, I very rarely know, until a few turns in, how I'm planning to win. It might be through honour or it might be through provinces - I don't want to pack my deck with loads of stuff that costs me honour.

I've never lost by dishonour from what I can remember, the lower you get the more dangerous to your opponent the stronghold becomes. I have stolen someone's last honour when I was on 1 myself, but that was against another Scorpion