Wow. That was my first reaction on seeing this spell, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Just as Importune Kami revolutionised Phoenix defensive strategy, Essence of Gaki-Do provides a whole new way of playing the game.
The Phoenix can already do attrition better than anyone else, thanks to Morning Glory Castle and the ability to use cards like To Do What We Must and Kuro's Fire very well. One use for Essence is to fight a "perfect attrition" battle - one where you risk none of your personalities, while forcing your opponent to commit theirs. They are forced to expend battle actions simply to stay alive, while the only risk you take is your opponent gaining a bunch of honour. This sort of deck would run a shedload of battle attrition, such as Rend the Soul, Wedge, Overwhelmed. Volcanic Fields, A Fallen Friend, To Do What We Must and so on, cheap honourable shugenja to aid in racing to 40 honour, and probably some Shiba Danjiros to protect the spellslingers. Morning Glory Castle is the obvious stronghold choice - because if you don't draw a copy of Essence you're going to play your attrition actions with your own personalities. However, the cost reduction of Kyuden Agasha is tempting, especially if you're running lots of other spells.
Perhaps the more obvious use of Essence is as an attack strategy. The ability to summon an army where your opponent isn't is a powerful one, as shown by the success of mobility military decks in Diamond. However, whereas decks like Unicorn and Water Monk often have trouble with the last province, there is no reason why an Essence deck should suffer the same problems. While the above Clans are generally short of battle actions, Phoenix have access to cards like Kuro's Fire to incinerate anything that stands in their way. Essence tricks also don't suffer from the main problem of military - the vulnerability to battle attrition.
However, an Essence deck still has vulnerabilities. The two chief ones are speed and pkill - speed because basing your strategy around an 8G (or 6G) spell that you have to draw from your Fate deck is not a reliably 3rd or 4th turn strategy, and pkill because you're relying heavily on an attachable card. Minimising these disadvantages requires careful planning. Speed can be gained by running card search (such as Walking the Way and the Voice/Introspection combo), and slowness can be offset by early defense cards (Such as To Do What We Must, Overwhelmed and Kuro's Fire). Kyuden Agasha also lends speed by making your spells cheaper - that 2G reduction is powerful.
Protection against pkill requires a different selection of cards. Asako Genjo can save your spells when personalities are killed, while Shiba Danjiro is a great protector. Of course, Morning Glory Castle is the more useful stronghold here, allowing Danjiro to keep coming back. Hence, when building your deck around Essence you have a very real decision to make over which stronghold to use. The speed boost of KA will help you in every game, but the ability to resist pkill will make MGC the stronger choice for certain matchups. Personally, I'd be inclined to run KA - though I might throw in some copies of Balance in Nothingness to back up Danjiro.
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