The Basic Honor Runner Starts with People
Deck Building 101 - iguesi@aol.com

Before we jump into building an honor deck, let's set a few ground rules. First, if we are talking about the basics, most newcomers to the game do not have access to rare and/or expensive cards, ie., Shinsei Shrines, 6 Ancestral Swords, etc... Also, we will try to stay within the Jade Extended environment of cards. Wizards' L5R site has more details on the Jade Extended Rules.

Gaining Honor

Your clan may gain honor several different ways in L5R. Some of the most straightforward methods are as follows:

 - Paying full price for a personality aligned to your clan.
 - Winning certain types of duels (ie., Iaijustu Art, I.Challenge, I.Duel).
 - Destroying opposing cards in battle.
 - Bowing honor producing holdings.
 - Using the special abilities of certain personalities.

Generally, using only one method for gaining honor is not enough. Therefore, to be successful we need to combine several of the methods listed above.

The Foundation

A viable honor deck starts with the Stronghold. High starting honor is obviously a plus for reaching the ultimate goal of 40+ honor. Furthermore, having the stronghold gold needed "buy" honor, cannot be emphasized enough. Finally, to build an honor running deck, you need to select a clan that has access to low-priced 'honorable' people.

Obviously shadowlands' decks fail to meet any of the above requirements. The Ninja stronghold with only 3 gold, 0 family honor and low honor personalities would also have a difficult time racing to 40 honor.

It can be easily argued which strongholds might be best at gaining honor, but right now we'll look at Esteemed Crane, Eternal Halls Phoenix, and Palace Toturi's Army. All of them make 4 gold. Crane can bow the stronghold to make 2 honor and has access to cheap but honorable personalities. Phoenix, starts with 7 honor and has tremendous access to honorable shugenja outside of the Phoenix family. Finally, with the release of Honor Bound, Palace T.A. gained Seppun Nakao and Otomo Yayu, a serious boost to their honor running potential.

Wanted, Cheap Honorable People

In order to be effective at helping our clan gain honor, we need relatively cheap personalities with solid honor. The four gold to two honor ratio, is a great place to start when searching for honor boosting personalities. Personalities with a higher ratio, definitely deserve an extra look.

Starting with the Phoenix, we have access to five peeps with the 4g/2h ratio. "In clan" the Phoenix have Isawa Hochiu and Shiba Gensui. Using the 'whore' clause adds Hida Rohiteki and Kuni Yasashii from the Crab and Kitsu Okura from the Lion. That's 'fifteen' people. Throw in a similar gold to honor production ratio at 6g/3h gives us Shiba Testu. The only changes we might make would be for added ability. For example, we might replace Hida Rohiteki with Seppun Kossori (5g/2h shugenja that bows to make 2 gold) or we might use Agasha Gennai 6g/2h shugenja who helps us mill through our fate deck. We could go high end adding the Shiba Tsukune Exp. 2, Shiba Testu Exp., Naka Kuro Exp., Isawa Osugi, and/or Isawa Kaede Exp.

Moving to the Crane at the 4g/2h level we have Daidoji Uji, Doji Reju (a nasty dueler when combined with Kharmic Strike), and Doji Shizue Exp. Two "weaker" personalities we could add are Kakita Ariteko at 2g/2h and Daidoji Sembi at 5g/3h. That's 13 people. Too fill in around the edges we have some very solid personalities. Daidoji Rekai, a good defender, is 6g/2h. Furthermore, the Crane have one of the best tactician's in the game: Doji Kuwanan Exp 2, 11g/3h. And depending on the style to deck, we have another solid dueler from honor bound Kakita Kaiten 9g/3h or perhaps we could use the shugenja Asahina Dorai 5g/2h.

Over at the Palace of Otasan Uchi, resides the cheapest personality in the game, Toku. He has no honor requirement and is a 0g/2h samurai. It's hard to beat "a free" 2 honor personality. If nothing else, he can bow for the favor, sacrifice himself to play blocker or simply act as a leader for attaching followers. The only 4g/2h personality T.A. has is Toku Exp. Surprisingly, Toku Exp. 2 is actually cheaper for T.A. players, because of the imperial trait. Therefore he's a 2g/2h samurai. At the 5g/3h level we have Seppun Nakao a very hardy 3f/4c samurai, Tohaku 2f/3c samurai and Seppun Mashita 2f/2c Samurai from Ambition's Debt. To fill in the remaining positions we have Otomo Yayu a 5g/2h shugenja that will give our samurai a 2f/2c bonus (making one follower a turn 2g cheaper). Toturi's Army also includes the 9g/4h Toturi, Seppun Toshiken, a host of 7g/2h people, some very high priced samurai and some cheap samurai with 1 personal honor.

Our Starting Line Ups

Esteemed House Crane Not much force here, but quite a bit of easy honor. We'll need to pack our fate deck full of defensive cards. We can hopefully use the Imperial Favor to draw extra cards from our Fate Deck. Kakita Yoshi, will definitely help in this regard. Personalities (18) 3x Kakita Ariteko 1x Doji Shizue Exp. 3x Doji Reju 3x Daidoji Uji 3x Daidoji Sembi 3x Kakita Yoshi 1x Kakita Yoshi Exp. 2 1x Doji Kuwanan Exp. 2

Eternal Halls Phoenix There are no Jade Phoenix, with a - honor requirement. Because of this an early card or two from a good dishonor deck can stop Phoenix dead in their tracks. (Crane can always bow their stronghold to get 2 honor, so this is not as critical for them). We'll 'borrow' a few shugenja using the fealty clause, to help cover this weakness. Personalities (18) 3x Yogo Shidachi 3x Soshi Jujun 3x Seppun Kossori 3x Isawa Hochiu 2x Agasha Gennai 1x Shiba Testu 1x Shiba Tetsu Exp. 1x Isawa Osugi 1x Shiba Tsukune Exp. 2

Palace Toturi With the right mix of followers, we should be able to build force rather quickly with this deck, while still gaining honor. We added Seppun Mashita from Ambition's Debt. He has 2f/2c 3hr/5g/3h and an interesting dueling reaction. Hasami and Makashi would be cheaper alternatives. Tzurui, is a solid 2f/4c -hr/7g/2h Tactician and Seppun Hoitaitaka from Seige of Sleeping Mountain is 3f/3c -hr/7g/2h with an "Enlistment Clause". Personalites (18) 3x Toku 1x Toku Exp. 2 3x Seppun Nakao 3x Tohaku 3x Otomo Yayu 3x Seppun Mashita 1x Seppun Toshiken 1x Toturi

A common thread for all of our decks, was the exclusive use of personalities aligned to the stronghold. There may solid reasons for reaching outside of the clan for personalities, but this must be measured against our main goal of obtaining an honor victory. Finally, we are using these decks as simple guidelines. There is no "one" correct way to build a deck, just some general principals follow.

Returning to the darkness of the shadows...