1) It is, but it unfortunately answers many things that Trick cannot, such as Student of Anatomies and Bayushi Shoju. The only meta threat that runs Let Go is Crabbits, which you can trade Censure for or use Tadaka to scope out to still force a stick [continue reading]. Trading cloud for Calling in Favors is often very favorable for you, so I'm fine with that and of course the same point applies if you really need one to stick (though you cannot censure it if Shoju just hit the board.) I don't really care about cloud sticking in the lion matchup usually so if they just trade to remove it that's fine.

2) The character balance of the deck is on point, I don't feel I need more cheap shugs than what is already in the deck.

3) Space, mostly; but also because I tend to defend City of the Rich Frog more early on and then Shameful of course, so seeing an early DoP was not as vital as other options in conflict. When the deck ran Upholding Authority instead, 3 DoP was nice because I had 3 provinces I was perfectly fine trading a break for. Now it's down to 2 and one of the provinces I want to keep alive will always be attacked until it breaks.

Matchmaker is better than FTI and the deck justs wants as many 1 cost shugs as it can to make storms huge since that's all it buys from dynasty naturally anyways.

I did find 4 air spells for Uona just slightly lacking. My current Seeker version of the deck has 2 Benten's touch to shore up the air spells and the extra seeker fate makes using a Benten's Touch and an Against the Waves as a way to honor a Shugenja [continue reading] less painful.

Karmic Twist lost a lot of edges with a lot more uniques in the field. It's pretty solid against Lion still as a way to deal with Spiritcaller and Crane, but everyone else - especially Dragon - can easily play around it and make it dead. Beyond that, [continue reading] with increased unique counts in the Phoenix deck as well, it can be clunky to set up as a pseudo-reprieve as the only big characters you can do this with are Prodigy and Master of Gisei Toshi.

and no other spells come close to matching what Hurricane Punch gives. I effectively have a 37 card conflict deck and also get extra raw stats for 0 extra card investment.

It is more consistent than you would think. Considering Shrine Maiden is also a conflict card it is not hard to line them up with a punch or two; and Keeper Initiates are in play the whole game once you see them because it's really hard for anyone to [continue reading] stop you claiming the Water ring. So if you see a Keeper early then you practically always have a punch target and otherwise you just try and line up your Maiden uses with them.

I have 7 Air cards. 3 Cloud the Mind, 3 Hurricane Punch, 1 Benten's touch