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Asako Barei was one of my favourite personalities in Gold, and now he is
back for Diamond! Before, he was a 0F, 3C, 10HR, 6GC, and 3PH Scribe,
who allowed for card draw as you played more spells. Now, he is 0F, 5C,
6HR, 8GC, and still has 3 personal honour. He has also gained the Water
trait, which fits the story, and has become a small theme with shugenja
of late. He now allows you, once per game, to name a spell card, get it
from your deck, and attach it to him, paying all costs. He also retains
the ability to allow you to draw a card when you play a spell, though he
lost the function that let you do it without bowing if a copy of the
spell was already in play. He also has the Scribe trait, though I don't
know of anything that keys off of that at present.
So why use him? First, he is not that expensive to gain 3 honour, and
his honour requirement dropped to your starting honour. He is also one
of the 5 Chi shugenja Phoenix will now have. He does still retain the
ability to draw cards, it is simply not as powerful as it was before.
The really new thing is the ability to get a spell from your deck. This
means that at the least, you can get a Walk the Way, so as to get any
other card from your fate deck that you want. Several Phoenix decks use
other spells, such as Kuro's Fire, Essence of Gaki-do, Fires From Within,
or the like. This acts a Walk for those spells, allowing you to use your
walks for other cards. This ability, like Walk and others, allows you to
thin your deck, almost always a good thing. The limits of the ability
are that it is only useable once per game, and that it will only get a
spell. This is reasonable, and not overly taxing. If he is in a deck
without spells, you need help understanding the game anyways, so it is
hoped this article will help focus you.
His second ability, the carry-over from his basic version, is to bow to
draw a card when you play a spell. I see no reason this will not work
with his first ability, if needed. This can be a good thing, if the
spell is not time critical, but will likely not be used that way, as most
will want access to the spell right away.
He is useful with this second ability, since card draw is a good thing,
and in the right deck, most probably a Kyuden Agasha one, there will be
enough spells to use the ability at least a couple-three times or more a
game. It is also dupliicated by the Phoenix Library, so you will now
have two chances to do that, instead of the one that we previously had.
He is thus most useful in a deck that uses spells, which almost all
Phoenix do, Walking the Way if nothing else. In Kyuden Agasha he is, I
predict, going to be great, while only being fairly good in the other
decks. Only time will tell.
Isawa Letomo
Phoenix clan Librarian-Shugenja
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