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Today's article will be covering the Heaven and Earth Rare holding,
Shrine to Ebisu. This is Shrine costs 4 gold, and bows to produce 3 gold.
However, you can also bow it and reshuffle it to produce 5 gold, instead.
It is also one of the seven shrines which essentially introduced the
concept of 'singular'. This means you may have 3 copies of the card in
your deck, but each player may only have one copy of the card in play.
What is so special about the Shrine of Ebisu? First, it is one of the few
[okay, the only one so far], that actually works with the singular trait.
How? With most of the singular cards, if you include one in your deck, it
might as well be unique. If you include three, as soon as you bring one
into play, you suddenly have 2 blank cards in your deck. This may not
mean much, but it can clog up your deck. If you include two copies of the
card, it can still be gotten more easily than one, but won't clog as many
spaces as two.
So, if the above is true, how does Shrine of Ebisu work with the singular
trait?
As I mentioned in the opening, it bows and reshuffles to produce 5 gold.
Not bows and is discarded or destroyed, like the Dragon Dancers, but is
reshuffled. This allows even one copy to show up multiple times. If you
include 2 copies, it can be even easier to do. If you include three, it
could be a very strange gold structure. Because it does leave play, it
allows any other copies in your deck to enter play that much more easily,
meaning they are not blank cards.
Since it does cost 4 gold, I don't think it would be wise to include it
in any Lion deck, Spawning Grounds deck, or Ratling deck, as it is not
off the box.
It could be used by a blitz deck for an insane second turn, or to
increase your speed. It may hurt your gold production in the short term,
but the list is currently covering the difference between how a little
gold short hurts a short time, while a province gone hurts the rest of
the game. Something to think about. And, as a bonus, even if you don't
have the cards to blitz, it is still a decent holding that produces 3
gold regularly. There are few enough holdings in Diamond that produce an
odd amount of gold, so think about it.
This Rare is difficult to get, but not as bad, in my opinion, as some
people seem to think. Next time you make a deck, think about this
holding, and see if it might not help you.
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