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Card Focus : Disgraced
Card Focus : Disgraced
I have decided to write this card focus because I keep finding myself defending this card over and over again. I am one of those people who things disgraced is great, as opposed to those who think that its a coaster, so I have decided to sit down and see if I can come up with a cogent argument as to why.
Lets Look at the Card
Disgraced, actions, U, Dark Journey Home
Cost: 0, Focus: 2
Reaction: Play when a Personality is about to commit seppuku.
The Personality cannot commit seppuku, and all effects of committing
seppuku are negated. The Personality is Dishonored, and until the end
of the game he or she cannot become rehonored or commit seppuku
without a card effect.
There are three main effects of this card, the first is to stop someone from comitting seppuku, the second is to prevent them from becoming rehonoured, and the third is to dishonour them. I will have a look at all of these effects.
Shame Samurai, Shame!
One of the best cards in the dishonour player's arsenal has to be shame. A seven point honour loss is not something any clan (well except the shadowlands) is going to be happy about. There are quite a few techniques to make your shame bite home, shaming shugenja and monks, who just have to sit and take it, or shaming yourself and redirecting it to your opponent, are all quite likely, but sometimes the only dishonoured people around are samurai, and then you have a problem, because you know they will comitt seppuku, reduce the honour loss to 1 and there goes the shame. Why, you ask, would you have only dishonoured samurai? Well there are a lot of reasons. Some decks just don't have any shugenja to get, robo crane, toturi's army, and mantis all come to mind, and there are dragon decks that will look the same. Again, even if your opponent has shugenja to dishonour they are likely to get rehonoured first, by the favour or perhaps kakita ariteko. Finally the trusty standby Marries a barbarian, while clearly not as good as secrets on the wind, only dishonours samurai.
So what do you do when your opponent's samurai slits his belly rather than accept the shame on his family? Disgraced is the answer.. hand that samurai a wooden bokken and don't let him kill himself. The number of games that can be won against a military deck just with marries, shame, disgraced on a first turn samurai is amazing. And its not just shame that gets benifits from this, martyr, unrequited love and any other action that causes a samurai to be involved in an honour loss will benifit just as well. Your honour loss goes through and the samurai is left sitting there with his wooden sword looking stupid.
Better than that the samurai still cannot commit seppuku without a card effect, and that basically leaves only remoseful seppuku (which you are most likely to have) or honourable seppuku (which is not commonly seen). Disgrace a samurai trying to kill himself over some unrequited love, and you can shame him to your heart's content next turn without him being able to do a thing about it.
Betrayal and Extortion
So once you've got your disgraced samurai what next? A lot of people are used to rehonouring their personalities in a number of ways, using he imperial favour, bowing kakita aritekao, or having them be involved in some honour gain. Of these only ariteko works on a disgraced person. This is the second function of the card, and its just as important as the first. Since the person cannot become rehonoured without a card effect they simply suck up honour gains. Attaching an ancestral sword to one, winning a duel with one, allying, destroying an opposing army, all of these things gain no honour for a disgraced samurai. Since all of these things are tactics likely to be used to recover from dishonour it gets even better. Even that staple of dishonour, unrequited love, becomes a no win situation. They can stay unbowed and lose more honour or bow for nothing.
As if that wasn't enough there are other actions that can capitalise on dishonoured people if you want to go down that route. Betrayal can cause them to switch sides in battle and Extortion (unfortunatly a kolat action, but also a foil) will prevent that person from attacking you or targetting any of your cards for the rest of the game!
Dishonour
The last function of Disgraced is to dishonour people. Yes there are times when a samurai can commit seppuku without already being dishonoured. For the purpouses of a dishonour deck the most likely reason would be because you have played martyr after being killed in a battle or duel. A samurai can try and commit seppuku to stop this, and disgraced will not only stop them, it will dishonour them as well, which the martyr alone would not have.
Bayushi Hituro
