CE + IG2: Central Castle Swarm GenCon Finalist

By Ryan

1 Central Castle

# Fate
2 Reinforce
3 Charge!
1 Ring of Air
2 Courage
2 Unfamiliar Ground
1 Incredible Resilience
3 Final Duty
2 Kami Unleashed
3 Low Stance
3 Game of Sincerity
2 A False Accusation
3 Outer Walls
3 Rout
3 The Height of Courage
2 Unpredictable Strategy
2 Settling the Homeless
2 Will
1 Ring of Water

# Dynasty
1 The War of Dark Fire
1 Winter Solstice
3 Barley Farm
1 Chugo Seido
3 Copper Mine
3 Large Farm
1 Traveling Peddler
3 Famous Bazaar
2 Fumiyo
1 Akodo Kurogane
3 Akodo Shunori
1 Akodo Tsudoken
3 Ikoma Hagio
3 Matsu Youko
3 Matsu Shunran
3 Ikoma Toraji
3 Matsu Notsuo
2 Lightwater Bay

Deck Strategy:
The dynasty deck is meant to be fast and swarmy. Given the gold cost of personalities, your first turn holdings and the flip of Winter Solstice, the deck is capable of some really fast starts. The speed is used to keep the opponent off his game. Basically, don't let them set anything up. Threaten a prov. so quickly that they will either defend and lose people or lose the prov, sometimes both.
The fate deck is just full of battle actions. There are zero attachments. We tested with the clan weap, but pulled it a couple days before GenCon because the guy with the weapon became a target.
Between the speed of the dynasty and the battle abilities of the fate, the deck is scary good in a fight. For this reason I enjoy being opposed. The deck is very capable of splitting its forces to two or sometimes three prov. at a time.
As for matchups, the speed and swarm of the dynasty is enough to beat honor. Military matches rely on the fate side, good force and a lot of people. I was actually able to dodge Mantis all of Gencon, but in testing the deck was fast enough to get ahead of the mantis, before it could start playing and recycling big followers. Mantis is a bad-ish matchup though.

If anybody has questions on the deck or playstyle, please post and I will be happy to answer questions. Its hard to discuss everything in a vacuum.

Good/Bad/Ugly of GenCon

Good:
- I want to thank John Hall and the rest of the AEG staff for a great event.
- FUJItheFISH made a damn good deck, which we both played, I just had better matchups
- A fine showing by Team Takanaka Think Tank !!!!!!
- finishing the top 16 match, just before the entire convention was evacuated
- L5Rchives for all their coverage of the event
- A Great game with a better player base (I'm still technically new to the game, so it was nice to meet a large number of players at my first large event)

Bad:
- I think Spider will be the clan to beat for a while. Apparently bad guys rule...

Ugly:
- Shameful Tactics... yup, lost me GenCon.