*decklist has been added if you want to skip to the end of this post without having to read my sob story about how I was unable to attend the Seattle Kotei*

So a little backstory before what is likely my last post for awhile:

Last year at the Seattle Kotei I missed the first cut with Unicorn with a very unimpressive 1-3 finish.......however terrible that record looks on the surface I actually did quite well. If not for two really bad beats (Scorpion opponent ripping their single Consumed by 5 Fires off a Secret Cache top deck when I had just turned the corner and was in a dominant board position, or my loss to Crane, who I had a 12 to 5 card advantage over in a decisive battle, having the 5 perfect cards needed to prevent me from getting the final province break, and then losing to time) my Unicorn with Phoenix splash deck that I built a couple weeks before the event would have got me Unicorn Hatamoto. Keep in mind this was before the end of the Elemental Cycle so Unicorn didn't even have their goodies from those packs yet.

One thing I have always prided myself on was my ability as a deckbuilder. In old5r I built a lot of off beat, but very successful, decks and although my skill as a player probably hovers around average, I have been able to get good results with these brews. Last year's performance, despite the poor record, or maybe because of it, gave me some motivation to try harder this year. For one thing I started deckbuilding much earlier. I also vowed to not break one of my cardinal rules by making a deck that required a lot of decision making. This time I was going to keep it simple.

Fortunately I didn't have to wait too long for inspiration. Although the Children of the Empire expansion would not come out until much later, we got the spoiler for the Imperial Akodo Toturi well in advance and I didn't waste any time building a deck around him. The initial concept came together pretty easy. Unicorn was still without a decent 5 drop at the time so building around Toturi felt "right." I have to admit that the posibility of a Child of the Plains into Toturi made me somewhat nostalgic about old school l5r Sneak Attack / Deadly Ground style decks......which I had great success with, 20+ years ago. Granted much of this testing was somewhat premature because there were still plenty of cards to be released before the Seattle Kotei. I didn't even know the full contents of the CotE expansion yet, let alone the Unicorn pack, but, I refused to wait. I decided I'd rather move forward and hope to tweak the deck as new cards were added and gain some valuable play experience along the way. And that's exactly what happened.

The deck changed dramatically over time. What began as more of a midrange deck that looked to use HMT to just find the right opportunity to 3 break for a win.....ultimately became a very aggressive swarm deck.

As the event drew nearer I was even lucky enough to get the week before the event off so I could do more testing. After months and months of testing, the Seattle Kotei was only a few days away and I felt genuinely confident about my deck and chances at a decent finish.

So of course my car breaks down on Wed and the mechanic is not going to be able to fix it until the Monday after the Kotei. No worries I'll take the wife's car, because our daughters will be getting back from camp on Fri and plan on a nice recovery weekend at the house. So it only stands to reason that my wife's car breaks down on Thurs. Our neighbor is a mechanic and offers to help me fix my car since it seems like an easy enough fix. But of course he comes down with a case of vertigo. So where was I at tournament start time this morning? Yep just finishing up the repairs on my car.

While there is no past history, in the LCG, for me to point to that objectively justifies the confidence I had going into this event, I can't help but feel a little cheated this year. Its almost like the universe just rose up against me and in one loud voice told me "NO!"

I think I'm gonna need an extra cold ice pack to to recover from this nut punch of watching months and months of work get flushed down the toilet.

Or maybe I just need beer, lots and lots of beer, and some time off from the game.

Since this is a deckbuilding forum a decklist will follow once I've properly vented my frustrations and/or sobered up. Not sure how long my deck will remain relevant as new cards are just around the corner and I see the potential for a few new decks that I'm going to try out.

Unnamed
By: Not Logged In

Hisu Mori Toride (Elements Unbound)
Keeper of Water
Along the River of Gold (Meditations on the Ephemeral)
Appealing to the Fortunes (All and Nothing)
Demonstrating Excellence (Breath of the Kami)
Khan's Ordu (Warriors of the Wind)
Upholding Authority (Tainted Lands)

Dynasty(40)
Character (34)
3 Child of the Plains (Into the Forbidden City)
3 Moto Youth (Core)
3 Border Rider (Core)
3 Keeper Initiate (Core)
3 Shinjo Trailblazer (Warriors of the Wind)
3 Young Warrior (Warriors of the Wind)
2 Master of the Swift Waves (The Ebb and Flow)
2 Moto Nergüi (Disciples of the Void)
2 Utaku Tetsuko (Underhand of the Emperor)
2 Miya Satoshi (Meditations on the Ephemeral)
2 Shinjo Shono (Breath of the Kami)
3 Akodo Toturi (Children of the Empire)
3 Moto Chagatai (Warriors of the Wind)

Holding (6)
2 Shiotome Encampment (Breath of the Kami)
1 The Imperial Palace (The Chrysanthemum Throne)
3 Windswept Yurt (Tears of Amaterasu)

Conflict (40)
Attachment (8)
3 Curved Blade (Warriors of the Wind)
3 Fine Katana (Core)
2 Seal of the Unicorn (Meditations on the Ephemeral)

Character (10)
3 Ancient Master (Breath of the Kami)
3 Iuchi Wayfinder (Core)
2 Shinjo Ambusher (Children of the Empire)
2 Tattooed Wanderer (Core)

Event (22)
2 Banzai! (Core)
3 Captive Audience (Core)
2 Censure (Into the Forbidden City)
1 Challenge on the Fields (Children of the Empire)
2 Hurricane Punch (Breath of the Kami)
2 Let Go (Core)
3 Spoils of War (Warriors of the Wind)
3 Charge! (Core)
1 Gaijin Customs (The Chrysanthemum Throne)
1 Peasant's Advice (Underhand of the Emperor)
1 Rout (Core)
1 Cavalry Reserves (Core)

Deck Built using https://www.bushibuilder.com

Feel for you man. Don't worry this is just our Lord Jigoku pushing you in the right direction.

Remember this caused you to be disappointed and lonely...

and Loneliness leads to anger..

Anger leads to hate..

Hate leads to Suffering..

and Suffering leads to our Lord Jigoku's realm.

BEER will be good!

I can only said, if you come here, let's have some sake!

About the deckbulding. You were going to play a swarm deck? I am so happy to have Shinjo-jo, and don't need to play swarm deck

Yes it's the Unicorn/Dragon splash, swarm deck that I posted on the Unicorn FB page. When I get a moment, I'll update my list on the various deckbuilding sites and get them up here.

Once the next dynasty cycle hits I think it will blow open the deck building discussion for Unicorn. FGG will become viable again and that allows for a true swarm deck as opposed to the Charge based ones that are currently the clear cut winner. While many Unicorn players are currently using the Lion splash already, the months and months of testing I did kept bringing me back to Dragon splash. I strongly feel that it is the best Charge based swarm deck for Unicorn at this moment.

Shiro Shinjo never felt great in testing. There wasn't enough lead time to get the same amount of reps in as I did with HMT. It ultimately kept getting pushed into a mid range build that wanted to grind into the late turns. That is not a style I prefer to play, nor is it a strategy the Unicorn are well positioned for, at this moment.

When I finally moved off the initial mid range build with Toturi and converted the deck to a Charge swarm deck with Toturi and Chags......the results were outstanding.

So, you use both Toturi and Chags.

I found myself to have great time with Crane splash: using Admit Defeat and now The Spear Rushes Forth really helps me to win many conflict, or create problem to other.

Not totally swarm, but it works very well (for me).

Just one thing: I really like our Champion, and she helps me with my strategy (take people out of the way). So for now I am still using her.

Altansarnai certainly should not be dismissed anymore.

The game is changing and her ability is becoming more relevant.

Crane splash is also very good. I think the lack of attachment hate and that controlling the favor is so important is what keeps me from playing Crane splash now. However, if I was playing a non-Dragon splash, in a Charge based deck, Crane would be my next choice. It's evolved way past the "unicourtier" approach of old.

I briefly tested Crane options but again came back to Dragon. There simply wasn't enough time and it just doesn't have the same amount of favor control, which is necessary for Toturi and is very important in the current meta.

Winning the fight over the favor is one of the best things you can do in certain match ups. Typically I can secure the favor by the end of the fist turn with multiple attacks, Ancient Master, and Imperial Palace. After that it's a matter of keeping the favor and making sure you have a superior board state to make your final push at the Stronghold. Its very important not to rush it or you can find yourself losing the critical battle and then allowing your opponent to take over, turning the match into a long game......which you proably lose.

Swarm decks naturally spend more cards from their hand than other decks. Chags and Toturi both help mitigate this. An early Charged out Chags will generally net you 2-3 province breaks with very little else being played from your conflict deck. Therse are the easy games and the most obvious path to a quick win. For me this was the icing on the cake since my testing began well before Chags came out. It's what solidified the move to a fast aggro/swarm deck, instead of the more mid-rangey deck that I started with.

Originally I was just jamming as many quality characters as I could fit in around Toturi and then grinding to a point where I had or could sustain a clear board advantage and then force conflicts where Toturi's ability shut things down. It was effective, but, once Chags and the rest of the Unicorn pack hit, it had far more potential for early aggression. The Unicorn deck that was generally thought to be the best quickly moved to Lion splash, but, I was not convinced it was the best clan to splash and that swarm/aggro was even the correct strategy. I continued playing mid range, but, it became more and more clear that swarm was where I wanted to be. Game were lasting too long. I was getting outplayed, or sometimes outplaying myself. I took a much closer look at successful aggro lists from all the clans and started making the difficult but necessary changes to make my deck as potent as possible.

I revisited my thought's on Toturi, and even retooled the deck to remove him entirely. I played other non-dragon splashes.........I worked through it more extensively than I have in the past 20+ years. Ultimately I kept coming back to Dragon and Toturi because when it came down to 4+ drops, Toturi was/is the best fit for and aggressive military deck. Shono is decent, but, only shines in the mid to late game, when you have a swarm on the board. Chags is great in the early game, but, is just dumb stats later on when you are going for the stronghold. MKR are beefy but really only good for Charge, I've rarely wanted them to stick around for more than a turn because if you pay for them, you likely won't have the money to buy a swarm that makes them relevant. Juro is not a good fit. Altansarnai was ok..........but, just ran counter to what my deck was doing.

Toturi was always good. Toturi's ability does a couple things. It forces your opponent to spend their fate to maintain a board state that is higher military than yours. The moment they cannot do this by board plus one conflict card, they lose. If you have Child of the Plains and or Censure, it's even worse for them. The other somewhat less obvious advantage of Toturi is his ability can essentially nullify your opponent's conflict hand advantage. You might say "well there is spyglass for that, or big higher, etc" that's all well and good but the deck space for an aggro deck simply isn't there and the reality of how swarm decks function is something you have to be able to cope with.

In a Charge based swarm deck, there are plenty time where you don't have Charge. You still have to win that first turn. This often leads to a first turn where I spend 5-7 cards to get 3 province breaks. My opponent is now banking on being able to leverage their now sizeable hand advantage to take over the late game. I kept experiencing this when I was testing the different non-dragon splashes and all of them were having an increased fizzle rate due to my opponent being able to leverage their hand advantage against me. Toturi shuts this down and essentially gives your opponent a max hand advantage of +1. And again Child of the Plains and/or Censure remove that entirely.

I hope this doesn't come off as cocky or braggy or seem to suggest that I'm the only one to have thought of it. I did put a lot of time into developing the deck. The amount of testing and end results have left me with some pretty strong opinions of its viability.

Decklist now in OP

Any questions about card choices or how I play the deck are always welcome.