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Control
This is an article on the use of control decks in L5R, especially for the Scorpion and in Gold. I wrote it as an answer to someone's question on the Scorpion Clan List.
Control is a difficult concept. At its essence it has to do with limiting your opponent's resources in as many ways as possible, so that you can do whatever you want to do without opposition. This usually involves destroying them militarily with limited force, or winning by dishonor.
Control & Dishonor
Control is not dishonor, but it usually goes hand in hand. Causing your opponent to lose honor generally limits what they can play and who they can bring out. When enough dishonor is available to seriously reduce the number of personalities your opponent plays then it becomes very easy to take them out of commission or kill them. For this reason some sort of honor loss usually forms part of a control strategy. In Gold this generally involves Shame, Secrets on the Wind, the Wind's Truth, and Bayushi Kaukatsu. Many more options are available in Open of course.
Control & Personality Removal
Another form of control is personality removal (or PK). In L5R it is hard to do things without personalities, so it makes sense to remove them. Kolat Assassin and Kolat Master have always been favorite cards to do this, and are still strong in Gold. In open there are also cards that make it easy to kill dishonored people (Force of Will and Test of Honor) for which reason PK and dishonor have generally gone hand in hand in open. In Gold there are less options of killing personalities cheaply and without honor loss, so other cards are used instead. As well as things like Ambush and Touch of Death there are the many fatal duels. Duels carry risk, but also provide a way of killing personalities without losing honor yourself, so for this reason Dueling and Control are often associated. Iaijutsu Challenge, Iaijutsu Duel, Judgement and For the Empire are the mainstays of this sort of deck.
Control & Holding Destruction
Holding destruction as a method of victory now seems, fortunately, to be impossible in Gold. The use of either Minor Illusions or Fist of Osanow-wo can help to disrupt an opponent, but will not shut them down. In Open both Ninja denial decks and Shadowlands (SOLID and Toolbox) have enough holding destruction available (Night of a Thousand Fires, Fist of Osano-wo, Doom of the Crane, Explosives, Contested Holding, etc.) to pretty much remove an opponent's ability to pay for anything, while either pounding them into dust (shadowlands) or putting them into a position of complete lockdown (Ninja). Nevertheless some form of holding control has always been part of a control strategy, if only to remove honor producing holdings that might counter the use of dishonor.
Control & Hand Destruction
Control of your opponent's hand has already been mentioned in response to your question. Hand control, is, of course, another form of preemptive removal of your opponent's ability to resist you. In Gold the ability to decimate your opponent's hand is limited, unless you wish to try Kakitak Kyruko, you will mainly be using the Underhand and Diaru no Shiryo. In Open Kuni Yori and the Obsidian Mirror provide more reusable hand control.
Control & Action Cancellation
The final element of control is action cancellation. In Magic, counter-magic is the province of blue control decks, and in L5R it is again the control and dishonor decks which have most heavily used action cancellation. In Open the most common of these control cards are Bad Kharma and The Sun in Shadow. Other choices include Way of Shadow, Flee the Darkness, A Test of Courage, Confusion at Court, and so forth. Unlike counter-magic there is still not enough action denial (Asako stronghold aside) to totally prevent an opponent's actions. However the combination of hand control, PK and dishonor tends to limit their effective action to a very few cards, giving you the chance to cancel those few Key actions.
Victory
So now that you have shut down your opponent, how do you win? This is actually quite difficult. The more resources (cards in deck) you devote to paralyzing your opponent, the fewer remain for you to achieve some sort of Victory. In Open the most popular response to this is to try and win by dishonor, since dishonor is already one of your control mechanisms. An Alternitive is to use some sort of event based victory to win (Abbandoning the Fortunes or Doom of the Dark Lord), supplemented by a small amount of force (Ninja denial decks, for example, had only two personalities capable of taking provinces, Kage xp5 and Yokatsu xp3). In Gold the victory is more likely to come from honor than dishonor, especially if you are using duels and Doji Nagori, which will give you honor as you make your opponent lose his. Another option is to go light on the control and use it to supplement a military strategy.
The current generation of Scorpion Military decks in Gold, armed with Kolat Assassin, ranged attacks, action-cancellation (Shoju, Daiu, Underhand, Distractor), in-battle removal (Yogo ability, RA followers, Higatsuku) and a little bit of honor control (Kaukatsu, In Time of War etc.) are clearly control/military in strategy.
Bayushi Hituro
