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Card Focus : Political Mistake
Card Focus : Political Mistake
Greetings brethern. This card focus was inspired by the recent excellent article on flanking manuver, and by the rigourous playtesting we have been doing here over the weekend for Strike at Midnight, which has led to a strange conclusion, political mistake is no longer a bad card =)
Wind's Truth War
Until Honour bound nothing in L5R resembled the counterspell wars of magic, then came The Wind's Truth and all that ended. As any dishonour player knows getting honour losses through is now harder than ever. They tend to be redirected back at you with wind's truth. Most dishonour players will be familiar with the 'shame ... wind's truth' battle over where the dishonour stays. Between Honour bound and Ambition's debt such wars were usually won with a Kitsuki Evidence, now they are most likely to end with a sun in shadow. So.. think of the following circumstance... I shame my opponent's personality, grinning, because they were waiting for it, they bow a shugenja to wind's truth it back to me, I respond with sun in shadow and they are left to grit their teeth and take the 7 honour. But then imagine the look on their face when I follow up with Political mistake and dishonour their shuganja, hitting them with another 7 points of honour loss. Worst of all they now have a bowed dishonoured shugenja, ripe for another shame, a test of honour, force of will or, if its their turn, unrequited love. 7 honour loss has suddenly become 14, 16 or even 21.
Lets have a look at Political Mistake
Political Mistake, actions, R, Scorpion Clan Coup Scroll 1
Cost: 0, Focus: 2
Political Reaction: Target a Personality immediately after a
Political action performed by the Personality is unsuccessful
or canceled. That Personality is dishonored and his controller
loses 7 honor.
Clearly in any environment where you expect to be cancelling wind's truths, Political mistake will be very strong. Other ways that a dishonour deck might use are Bad Kharma, and possibly the Emperor's left hand. The last is a bit of a maverick for dishonour, since it only cancels a political action taken by the player with the highest family honour, but a Bayushi stronghold deck can usually arrange this if needed. Playing with Dashmar (now jade Legal) will also let you cancel political actions.
Rise from the Ashes no longer
Of course Political Mistake would be a weak card if it could only target a cancelled wind's truth (though for a dedicated dishonour deck thats probably excuse enough), but lets take a look at another very popular action being used right now, Rise from the Ashes. As of last week Rise, since it can cancel an honour gain, has been ruled political. This means that you can cancel it with Imperial edicts, just like before, and be cancelling a political action! If you are worried about phoenix turtle enlightenemnt or Master of Five decks this is the way to go. Cancelling the rise in another way, without using Dashmar will be a little harder. You can't sun in shadow it, or bad kharma it, but you can use the Emperor's Left hand on it. Another answer is enough talk, if you happen to be duelling, which you can always use the turn after the political mistake has been used when they try and cast it again (if you use the left hand).
The Imperial Favour
What other actions are you likely to see that you can political mistake? The sad truth is, not many. Uses of the favour, while political, are rarely performed by a person (unless you are dealing with Ikoma Tsanuri, Ishikawa, or Kakita Yoshi exp. All of whom have abilities that count as the favour), and a few other popular political actions, such as using Doji Shizue, are not very easy to cancel. (Its easy to cancel the honour loss from shizue, but hard to cancel the action)
One popular action that you *can* rely on seeing, however, is people lobbying for the favour. If someone bows to lobby, and the lobby is cancelled or unsuccessful, you can politifcal mistake. While simply contesting the lobby could make it unsuccessful its unlikely to happen much in a dishonour deck, but there are a couple of ways to make it fail. The first is our old trusty the Emperor's Left Hand again, after all if they are lobbying for the favour they must be on the higher honour. An even better option, pwehaps, for agold rich deck (and especially a Kyuden Hitomi dishonour) would be the Perfect Gift, which not only gives you the favour your opponent should have got, but specifically says that the lobbying attempt is cancelled. Finally you could use the Great Feast, which automatically cancels the first lobbying attempt of the turn, as another weapon to lure lobbyists into a political mistake.Bayushi Hituro
David
