Okay, first off. I am a total newbie and still learning and trying to understand general L5r strategy. I play Crane with my friend who plays Dragon and I don’t understand with the cards that I have available vs. the cards he has available how I can possibly win. Dragon just seems overpowered to me. With Ancestral Diasho and Kitsuki’s Method always coming back for more beats and card advantage, and two clan champions, and just a well balanced characters that can go military and have decent political for defense (Note: I built both decks for us to play with.). Crane just seems weak to me. I love Crane so I’d love to talk strategy, but I am just blown away when I think of the card pools how much power Dragon has compared to Crane and how Crane can possibly win. (FYI we are playing with no splashing since we don’t have enough core sets so I can splash Dragon.). I know this is a total newb question. I know Crane is powerful, it got 2nd in Worlds, but I just don’t understand how they play and win.
Edited by Aethos528How do you win with a Crane deck?
Do you use the restricted list? But even without it, your strategy should be trying to get many honoured people, use your courtiers in conjunction with for shame to stop his efforts while you create board advantage and honour advantage. Obviously you should bid low to avoid losing too much from restoration of balance and to pressure your opponent on honour. Go for the fire and air rings to keep his people dishonored so they pose little threat and use your cards to honour your guys. I am not a crane player, but that is my understanding of the matchup.
Attack their honor.
Crane have a backup Champion as well (Yoshi is a beast and should be abused massively). Against Dragon I think its a good idea to also pressure Earth Ring when you can, force them to play attachments early or risk having them stripped from hand can go a long way to keeping Niten Masters from getting out of control.
What Splash are you using. If Scorpion you can also run Calling in Favors to steal their good kit, and if you put a Frostbitten Crossing out as one of your provinces (I only suggest this against Dragon as otherwise its not that great an Air Province against most other decks) then they have to be conscious of protecting their towers or risk losing a lot of gear, and using protective items to negate it only opens them up to getting hit with your other tricks.
You could always reconsidering your clan allegiance. Crane is far too honorable to muddy their hands with the Dragons, after all. Have you considered the glory of the Shadowlands?
In all seriousness, though. Crane generally focuses on control, honoring their own characters (thus improving their stats via glory), and are quite adept in the political arena. I'm not quite certain that the full prowess of the Kakita has been realized yet, but once it is, you could always demonstrate exactly why Crane duelists are a force to be reckoned with.
You mention not enough core to splash Dragon, how many cores do you have? And do you have other packs than core?
Try to balance decks around sharing the strong neutrals playsets.
3 coresets are enough for two fun decks by giving 3 banzai and 3 court games for each to even the odds, and each may run up to 9 shugenja easily for 3 cloud the mind. Each benefits from a full set of fantana.
Dragon is quite strong on core only, it's true. And it can start quickly, once it gets a tower.
For Crane core, they need more setup. Try to control the board with honor and courtier mechanics and uses guys like cautious scout and brash samurai and banzai for breaks.
And splash. just splash something else than dragon, scorpion, for attachements control and conflict characters.
And splash crab for Dragon.
And play Dragon. Rotate with your buddy.
Feel also free to try another clan, that's the greatness of LCGs, you can build any deck.
Scorpion Core is strong against dragon, or go Crab/Unicorn. Have him Way of the Crab his tower 😁
Get the World Champion Crane deck to surprise your friend playing their Core only Dragon deck.
Holy necro, Batman. Pretty good chance that OP has managed to find themselves some new cards since last June.
Apologies. Didn't check the dates when I posted. Rookie mistake on my part.
..... or part of my insidious plan.