Clinical Follow-Up: Raido no Oni

A lot of stuff has happened for me in the last few days.  It started off well when I got to visit my Grandpa who, when I told him that I was starting Internal Medicine residency in July, responded with a resounding "whoopee!" You see, my grandfather isn't able to verbalize as much as he used to but the fact that he was able to muster up a  remark like that brought a real smile to my face.  That smile quickly disappeared later that night though...

The worst part was that this was the night before my last residency interview and it took all of my energy to even go to the damn thing at 6AM the next morning.  On my way back home, every time my GPS told me to turn left I started getting flashbacks and had to pull over to compose myself.  During one of those panic attacks, however, I was glad to notice on my twitter feed that despite my pain at least Raido no Oni had gotten errata'd.  My one real fear about the start of the Emperor format is now resolved, but let's back-track a little bit.

I first heard about this thing back in December, when a fellow Southern L5R player named Jeremy Sumerlin sent me a message about the deck.  I took a quick look at it, said "oh that's pretty neat" and went on with my business of figuring out what I was going to lose Topaz with (and oh did I).  The first time I saw the deck in action was two weeks ago while testing my own kotei deck against it.  When I noticed how this Crane Oni thing was getting at least two copies of a 10 force card out in the action phase of its second turn, I became a bit worried.  Then I saw it attack with 4 copies of a 10 force card on turn 2, I immediately saw the makings of a true NPE. 

Like our lead designer I don't like to use this term lightly.  In fact, when I look at things objectively, there were only 3 NPE items in the entirety of Celestial (those being the Phoenix Blitz deck early arc, breeder as a whole, and Wrath of Kali Ma on two separate occasions).  Most of these (COUGH) were properly dealt with by design once it became apparent that they were a problem, so I was confident that they would do so again.

This is where I give a big fat shout-out to Jeremy.  He is the one who invented this thing and was cool enough to not only post it publicly, but also gave Brian Fox and I permission to aggressively campaign with AEG employees for something to be done.  Both of us (likely along with some others who I didn't know of) got on facebook line with Bryan Reese and Daniel Briscoe extensively about the danger the deck represented, especially to new players.  This last part was the factor that likely swayed the final decision; having a ridiculously strong deck is one thing, but when seeing it even once could cause people to quit the game the decision becomes business more than balance.  I remember nearly quitting myself back in Samurai because of Bayushi Saya, and this was far worse than that ever was.  Luckily for all of us, Bryan was already aware and had gotten all of play test on the issue.  At the end of the day, he thankfully came up with a tidy solution to the problem.

Fast forward again to me recovering from another episode.  See, I was listening to NPR and somebody was talking about how the former Greek President was "kicked" out of office and I just lost it. After I stopped dry-heaving I decided I'd check the facebook feed on the erratum and saw gems such as this:

"one bad game experience for one desigm (sic) team member cause ban for one deck type ... very BAD"

and this...

"BTW, I want errata on Dragon's dishonor stronghold because it makes games unfun (sic) at my house. I expect the errata this week."

aaaaand this

"...I wonder if I would have cried to Dave Williams about Matsu Gohei enough he would have band (sic) him
from the game...NOT...get over it you babies! You're the one's (sic) who RIUN (sic) the game..."

First of all I appreciate you guys forcing me to use (sic) a lot it makes me feel like a real writer despite the magical samurai-ish subject matter of my prose. Other than that though, what you see here is a classic case of "using sarcasm and hyperbole on the internet for no real $#!%ing reason."  Now, I usually don't approve of people starting sentences with "I'm sorry but..." though I will make an exception this once.  I'm sorry but...are you people for real?  Anyone who has seen this deck in action should have nothing but respect for how consistently it could put 20 force on the board in the action phase of turn 2.  Take a look at the deck list, a close look, and you can see how it has a lot of built-in consistency.  I can guarantee that it would have been an issue for the rest of the arc.

I encourage you guys to tell me how you feel in the comments.  To start things off, Daniel Wheeler sent me this message, with impressive grammar and no typos even!

"I think everyone agrees the deck needed errata as it was stupid; they just find Reese's justification for doing so rather weak and that perhaps Raido himself was not the card to errata."

I would somewhat agree that Bryan may still be underestimating the deck in his announcement, but new players were the main issue, and at the end of the day the reasons matter little because the fix got done. On the second part, I think Raido was the right call. Some have argued that you can still One Koku for a Raido along with a bunch of free artisans turn 1 then Amazing Feat a couple times but this is waaaaay harder to pull off as it relies on dynasty flips to a huge extent (much less flexible than just relying on fate). I am sure there will still be plenty of Oni to summon with I Give you My Name in the future and plenty of fine, non-busted ways to use amazing feat as well.

I also hate it when folks end things with "in conclusion" but damn it it's been a long day so in conclusion, I think this was the right medicine for quite a disease.  Playing against this deck was the opposite of fun, and that kind of goes against the whole point of playing a game doesn't it?  Again, please feel free to let us know what you think in the comments section. Was it the wrong call or was this just what we needed to start the season on the right foot.

Right foot....oh god...it's kkhhkfdjfdii22222222222222222222222
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