In many ways, Morning Glory Castle epitomises the Phoenix Clan. With its theme of rebirth mirroring our own history and the natural history of our namesake, it's unmistakeably a Phoenix stronghold. But how is it best used? For an honour, control or military deck? Are there any combos that can abuse the ability to recycle personalities and buy them for honour on the same turn?
Sadly, the answer to the last part of that question appears to be no. Though combos to get obscene amounts of honour for little gold do exist, they're very card-intensive and thus rely on you (a) putting lots of otherwise-useless cards in your deck and (b) drawing all the cards you need. Even with the card draw available in Diamond, you'll have lost the game before you pull any of them off.
Still, the ability is very strong even without combos. It excels for an honour deck, where you can chump-block with personalities in order to save a province, and simply resurrect them afterwards. The extra personality flow from doing this enables you to keep blocking long enough to hit 40 honour; playing an MGC honour deck I frequently keep all 4 provinces past 30 honour, at which point your opponent will find it very tough to take out all your provinces in the turn or two he has left.
Military decks also get mileage out of MGC's ability, especially with the Diamond MRP. Being able to bow a shugenja to bring a samurai back makes it effectively free: Phoenix decks tend to have a few support shugenja anyway, and bowing one of them to bring back your Clan Champion turn after turn is definitely a good investment. Thanks to the stonghold and the ability to overlay, we have the most accessable Champion in Diamond - once he hits the table, he'll be there to annoy your opponents for the rest of the game.
Control decks get the least mileage out of MGC, mainly because in a control deck the cards attached to a personality are more important than the personality themselves. Kyuden Agasha, with its spell cost reduction, would seem to be the stronger choice for this sort of deck.
Playing MGC honour decks is rather different from most others. You treat your personalities as totally expendable, and use explosive actions in your hand to get the most out of them before they die. And die they will - but that's OK, because as long as you keep your provinces alive you're on course to win. In a military deck you can afford to take a few more risks than other military decks: losing a personality slows you down by a turn, but being able to rely on a strong late-game personality flow is an advantage that many other Clans would pay substantial amounts for. It's potentially game-swinging if you can bring out two personalities after flipping 4 holdings, while your opponent is stuck with 4 holdings. In this sort of deck you only recycle personalities when you have the spare gold, or really need a personality - doing it just because you can is wasteful and may lead to you regretting it if you run out of dead guys! |