Tips & Strategies (2)
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Mai-Star - Tips & Strategies

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Tips & Strategies (2)

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Legend of the Five Rings Fan
Advanced Reviewer
Tactician
Guardian Angel
Jeff W. {Avid Gamer}
Oct 7th, 2015| Strategy
“Oboro: The charms of an experienced geisha”

Oboro, Hazy, is the matron among the geisha of Mai-Star, bringing a seasoned perspective. Her age gives her a distinct advantage — all of her skills start at level 5, compared to an average of 3 for most of the others — but at the same time, she has to work harder to distinguish herself, starting with two extra cards in hand that she must get rid of to finish the round.

Oboro prefers guests that allow her to slough cards more easily. A self-targeted Sumo Wrestler, available to her without even any Advertisers, can get rid of an extra card handily; a Courtier can chain into an extra guest of the same color. Oboro also gets best use out of the Doctor card, requiring only a +2 total in Advertisers of the appropriate skill to reach their requirement of 7.

The coup de grace for Oboro is the Monk card, which instantly overcomes the problem of extra cards in hand by discarding the player’s entire hand and ending the round. With a requirement of 9 to play as a Guest, the Monk does not care which skill has reached that level, so Oboro begins with a structural advantage.

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8
Legend of the Five Rings Fan
Advanced Reviewer
Tactician
Guardian Angel
Jeff W. {Avid Gamer}
Oct 19th, 2015| Strategy
“Akenohoshi: A smile fresh as morning”

Akenohoshi, Morning Star, is a geisha of many talents, specifically distinguished at none, but able to entertain guests with any of Performance, Service, and Intelligence. Her baseline skills all start at level 3, but once per round, she may add 3 points to one of her reputation skills for the current turn.

Without a particular specialty, Akenohoshi needs to work harder at advertising to reach mid-level guests, but her advantage is that she can opportunistically take advantage of high-level guests: she only needs +1 in Advertisers of a specific color to attract a Doctor for that color, +2 for a Daimyo, or +3 and +4 in any color to reach the Monk or the Shogun, both round-winning options. Akenohoshi loves to take advantage of Advertisers which add +1 to all reputation skills, such as the Actor or the higher-level colorless Guests.

Beware the Akenohoshi player who dumps too much into a specific color of Advertiser, as she can suddenly leap forward to take control of the current round!

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