Hey folks, Handsome Dan here. I'm finally home after a very long but amazing trip to Winter Court 2019. Just wanted to take a quick second to write about the deck I brought to Worlds.

Why Kyuden Ikoma?
If you've followed my decks in the past, you'll probably notice that this is the first event I've been to where I played anything but HMT. This ultimately ended up being a tough choice for me, but in the end I decided to go with our new stronghold, Kyuden Ikoma. The stronghold offers a very solid midrange gameplan, and after flaming out last year at Worlds and earlier this year at Gencon, I wanted to play something a little less volatile and give myself more control over the game.

Settling on the Keywords
The Inheritance Cycle and the Lion pack brought a ton of new options for Lion deckbuilding, particularly in the form of new Courtiers, Commanders, and Shugenja. However, in early deckbuilding, I quickly discovered that it was difficult to find enough space to cover all three options. Accordingly, I chose to focus on just Commanders and Shugenja for a few simple reasons: 1) Cloud the Mind is a very important card; 2) Tactical Ingenuity is an amazing card; 3) Commanders like Motso fit naturally into the way the deck wants to play.

The Splash (and the Role)
It all seems so long ago now, but the Seeker of Earth role for Lion was one that was met with a lot of resistance. The role itself is negative value as it encourages play of Earth provinces. However, Earth provinces tend to be quite weak, and the best Earth province, Upholding Authority, gets worse with an Earth role. That being said, Earth Becomes Sky was alluring enough of a card to warrant consideration for Seeker of Earth.

In an effort to try to avoid Seeker of Earth at all costs, I tried splashing every other clan besides Phoenix. My goal for building the deck was to combat the big tower decks like Crane, Crab, and Dragon. However, what I found was that most of the other splashes--Dragon splash included--felt like they weren't doing enough to help in the matchup. I wanted something with a little more punch, and I felt that Phoenix splash had the power level of cards that could really bolster Lion's improving--but still middling--core decklist.

The card that ultimately sold me was Pacifism--a very popular meta choice thanks to the prevalence of those aforementioned clans. After watching Jade Throne co-host Fro Ttop's Unicorn/Phoenix video, I figured "Why not us, too?" and added Pacifism to my splash. With both Cloud the Mind and Tactical Ingenuity, Lion finally had enough attachment removal buffers to warrant running a big 2-cost attachment. Pacifism performed well for me in testing, but ultimately ended up being a little lackluster in the event since the meta was already hyper-sensitive to it and accordingly running lots of attachment removal (thanks, Chris).

(Mis)reading the Meta
My expectation going into Worlds was that Crane was going to be the most dominant clan, and while they certainly showed up in droves, what I did not expect was that they would be matched in almost equal number by Scorpion and Unicorn. Luckily, the deck was already well-situated against Scorpion thanks to the new Commander cards, but I was unprepared for the large number of Unicorn and lost both in Swiss and in the elimination bracket to the purple horde. Had I been able to do it again, I may have opted to play a deck stronger against Unicorn--namely Lion HMT--but overall I felt comfortable with how this deck turned out and felt that it had reasonable play against most of the field.

The Future
As part of my Top of Clan status for Day 2, I along with the others voted to free the roles--a scary but exciting proposition. In this Wild West meta, I have no idea if this deck is even still viable. However, if I were to rebuild this deck and keep it as true to its intent as possible, I would rebuild it as Keeper of Earth. Ancestral Lands would be replaced by Dishonorable Assault; some amount of chaff from Dynasty would be cut for Keeper Initiates and Matsu Agetoki; and in conflict I would try to find space for another Display of Power. All this being said, there's plenty more to explore than just Earth Becomes Sky, so take this opportunity to find out what works best for you.

Thanks
I had an amazing time at Worlds, and though I wish I could have gone further, I feel really happy with how I ended up doing. Shoutouts to all of the people who helped me test and engineer this deck, namely Wharrison, Jokingly, and Mozi, who I messaged endlessly asking about one-card changes; MindsDesire, who beat me up a million times until I was ready to throw this deck in the trash; my local metas both at Little Wars and at Big Easy Comics for helping me get the paper reps I needed; and everyone else that I asked for advice or played against in preparation for this event. Additional shoutouts to all the new people I met and anyone who came up and gave some feedback for either me or for The Jade Throne Podcast.

Special shoutouts to two people: First, my buddy Andrew, who I've been playing the most in paper. He came up to Worlds with me and did amazing for his first big L5R event, but we sadly got paired against each other in the 6th round of Swiss while both at 3-2. Thank you for being a good friend, a good student, and a great competitor.

Second, shoutout to my late friend Bryand McIntosh, GOL Krucial B. He was a pillar of my local fighting game community, and in the wake of his loss I felt like I really needed to push myself in the same way that he pushed our local scene to get better and to want better. I'm proud of the improvements I made, but I can't rest on my laurels just yet. Next year we take Worlds for the Lion Clan. GOL.