My first pick was some completely random personality. The rare in the pack was completely useless in limited and the uncommons were unplayable as well as it required a ring to play them or something similar. Later on I started picking Dragon Kensai and some strategies that I could use with them. It seemed to me that there were two cards that should be picked right away - Defensive Stance and Frozen in Place. Frozen in Place is a card that can immediately win a game against certain military decks and in Shugenja deck with Suck the Marrow can be pretty awesome as well. It seemed that one player next to me was drafting Shugenjas and one was drafting Dragon Kensai. I did not want to switch so I continued in my theme. My deck was Phoenix/Dragon military but was doomed to fail... I picked early Sturdy Armor and Uji's Saboteurs as those cards seemed really good.
In the end I ended up with military deck. My fate deck consisted of cards that usually were giving force penalties or force bonuses. A Cleansing Breath seemed as a card that can give tempo and can be deadly for military opponent. Frozen in Place was simply awesome. Uji's Saboteurs, Sturdy Armor along with Chiyurei's Axe (which was hardly awesome), Destriers and Goju Kaxt. I thought that this card would be really great but with lack of kill actions ... and Saboteurs being uncommon. My dynasty deck consisted of all Phoenix and Dragon personalities that had power of at least 3. Not really good military personalities though. I was trying to pick personalities with Elite and Stalwart keyword but in the end I did not need those keywords at all. The advantage was more or less ... none.
I did not like the fact that there are many cards that give force penalties and bonuses (and I don't even talk about the stronghold's ability). Almost no bowing nor kill actions (melee/ranged attacks) in the set in common or uncommon slot. This makes Imperial Favor a HUGE advantage. What seemed rather sad .. that if you wanted to be picking certain keyword you had to be picking the very same card. Thus having a card with same cost and that was something I did not really want. I needed more box personalities for my scheme but it was in vain. It was much better to wait for a big ONI personality and pick that one. If you can't buy 2 personalities of good force/gold ratio it's better to buy one that almost no one can do about (except Imperial Favor). There were two movements in the pool we had and I supposed that's all (considering commons and uncommons). One was Zerk uncommon and the other one.. I don't even remember. A must for a military deck fighting Honor deck.
A player did not need to care about honor loss so adding cards with honor loss wasn't an issue - if it meant a personality with 6-7 force in the end...
Honestly I thought that this set would be better designed. I haven't drafted Legend of the Five Rings much...several times actually. But I would expect something more fun and more ... interactive .... than FORCE vs FORCE and the biggest problem being 'sending home from Imperial Favor'.
Next time I need to give it more thought before I start to draft. I usually pick cards that seem good. But in the case of L5R I should start picking Honor cards right away. I just don't like military and in the first game I simply did not want to attack and that is the reason I terribly died. Ok, the other reason was Bofana Exp. ^_^.
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