I am sure I'm not the only Phoenix player who looked at the list of holdings in Diamond and wondered what the Clan would do with no Mystic Dojo and no Jade Works. After some experimentation, I've come up with a series of gold schemes that fit different sorts of deck. In this article I outline some of the thought processes behind efficient gold schemes, and see how they apply to the various options available to us.
In general, there are is a trade-off in any gold scheme between reliability and production. Reliability in practice relies on two counts - how many of your holdings can be bought by Gifts and Favors (allowing you to maximise your chance of getting 2 holdings turn 2), and how well your holdings chain (buy each other), minimising your chance of drawing 2 holdings turn 2 but being unable to buy both. In general, schemes with high production have low reliability, and vice versa. I'll demonstrate this by describing three types of gold scheme.
Since our personalities are pretty darn cheap. We can build entire decks quite happily including no personalities with a gold cost above 7, a trait shared only by the Lion Clan - and they have a 3G producing stronghold. Bearing this in mind, it's tempting to go for a gold scheme with lots of 2-for-2 holdings.
The advantage of this scheme is that all the holdings buy each other, and that they can all be bought by Gifts and Favors. With Shrine to Daikoku and Silver Mine, we can throw in 5 or 6 holdings that make 3 while still costing 2. This looks great - until you ask what you're going to use it for. Sure, it will pay for our personalities happily. However, it's not very efficient at buying them for honour (paying 3 holdings is generally not good) and it doesn't leave much gold for followers or items. Given the low force of our personalities, we're not going to be able to go military effectively without attachable Fate cards, so we need a gold scheme able to pay for them. However, this analysis of a gold scheme leaves one important point out - all the holdings buy each other. Thus, your Stronghold is free to pay for personalities and followers- which frees up a significant amount of gold. It's not immediately obvious until you play this sort of scheme how much of a difference it makes to be able to use your stronghold to buy guys every turn.
A 2-for-2 gold scheme, then, is alright for our purposes. With all the Shrines and other funky 2-for-2 holdings, such a scheme also gives access too a wealth of abilities and works well with Military Advisor and similar cards. Still, the lack of Sanctified Temples (and their inefficiency in a scheme in which only the stronghold can buy them, and in which we want to save our stronghold for buying personalities) means that only military decks can really use this type of gold scheme - control and honour decks really need the temples. So the next gold scheme needs to be able to buy Sanctified Temples, preferably while keeping the reliability of a scheme in which Gifts and Favors can buy most holdings and in which the holdings mainly buy each other and keep the stronghold free.
The key to such a scheme seems to be Devout Acolytes. These guys are a 3-for-2 holding that pay 4 for Shrines, Temples and Oracles. Sadly there are no oracles cheap and effective enough to run, so that leaves shrines and temples. There are a lot of these that cost 3-4 gold. Some of the most useful ones include Sanctified Temple, Shrine to Ebisu, Shrine of Stone and the Ki Rin's Shrine (nonXP and XP). In addition, Devout Acolytes can, without bowing, pay 1G towards the cost of an action on a shrine, temple or oracle - meaning that 2 of them can pay for a Sanc to bow for 2 honour, and still be available to bow for gold. This leads to a great gold scheme for an honour deck, with Acolytes, Shrine to Ebisu and Sanctified Temples, plus Gifts and Favors and a lot of cards that cost 2G and so can be bought by a gifts. An early Devout Acolyte really makes this scheme flow, and it's worked very nicely for me over many games.
A third gold scheme that we could use looks more like that of other clans. If we use a reasonable number of samurai, a gold scheme with Hiruma Dojos becomes workable. This sort of deck uses few shugenja (Agasha Seruma at 5G and Isawa Toshiji at 6G would seem to be the best bets) and lots of samurai and shugenja followers. This deck is military, and though the holdings make a lot of gold they don't chain so well meaning that the stronghold is more often bowed to pay for holdings than personalities. Thus, the actual benefit from such a scheme is lower than it could be.
So we have three broad options. The first is the ultra-reliable, low production option. The second is the Devout Acolyte scheme, which seems ideal for honour decks. And the third is the lower-reliablility, higher-production option that works best for decks containing mainly samurai. Gold schemes don't stand in isolation - you choose the scheme that fits the rest of your deck - but the strength of your deck is often limited by the amount of gold you can produce. Whether you use one of the ideas listed here or something else, give careful thought to your gold scheme; it is the foundation of your deck.
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