Enlightenment II - Void
Dark Path of the Shadow Strategy Article - iguesi@aol.com

As mentioned before (Enlightenment I), the Kaede Sensei gives us easy access to the elmental rings buried within our fate deck or discard pile. Although there are other methods for retrieving a ring, none are more reliable for the Ninja.

The Easiest Ring?

I have found that the Ring of the Void, is probably the easiest ring to put into play for the Ninja. However, I usually am forced to put it into play last, because I hate discarding the cards I might need to get the other Rings into play. What's the condition for playing this Ring? Reaction: Play when the Ring of the Void is the last card in your hand. So how do we empty our hand?

A Case for Merchant Caravans

Merchant Caravans have come under the wrath of numerous cards with the release of Honor Bound. However, for the sake of speed and for getting the Ring of the Void into play, we cannot avoid this card. And with the Kaede Sensei, Merchant Caravans may give us an extra benefit.

The DPOS stronghold makes three gold. But what if we used our stronghold to fetch a Ring and then tossed it to a Merchant Caravan? That's 4 gold. Sometimes that one extra gold is all we need to get the right card in play. Furthermore, we have not lost the Ring forever, Kaede will also pull it out of the discard pile too!

Finally, once I have put a particular ring into play, any cards remaining in my hand that would normally be used to achieve that ring, now become food for the Merchant Caravan.

The One Card, Empty the Hand, "Combo"

I have heard somes player suggest that Flattery is a strong action for getting the Ring of the Void into play. In my opinion, it's just ok. It's first weakness, is that it's a battle action. Apart from Earth and Water, we generally want to avoid battle to achieve our enlightenment victory. Next, you must have enough Focus value in your hand, minus the Ring of the Void, to activate the card and play the Ring of the Void. Otherwise you must discard you whole hand, including the Ring if you drop this card!

A more fitting choice for those that follow the Dark Path is the action Toturi is Drugged which reads, "Ninja Open: Target a Personality and discard any number of cards from your hand so that their Focus values add up to be greater than the Chi of the target Personality. Bow the targeted Personality. Lose 2 honor. This action cannot be performed during a battle action phase. Considering the that you can target your own cards with this action and the fact that it is an open action, makes this card much easier to play than Flattery.

Other Empty the Hand Tricks

There's a couple of Mantis personalities, just begging to empty your hand Bayushi Aramasu and Yoritomo Massassue Exp. As an open action, you can just dump cards to these guys for a force or force/chi bonus respectively. Massassue however, is a bit pricey at nine gold. Aramasu, however, may fit well if you use other Bayushis in your deck and the event the Agasha join the Phoenix.

Returning to the darkness of the shadows...