Scorpion Clan Meta Guide

By Poogin#4183

Updated 25 October, 2020.

My Thoughts on the Scorpion Meta

The new imperial law has shaken up scorpion up once again, with the new errata to City of the Open Hand. City of the Open Hand has not won a tournament in a long time but it did recieve alot of complaints from the general public and may have been changed to make the game more enjoyable for other clans to play against. This won't just effect scorpion but now all the clans might find it safer to play cards that cost them honor with less repercussions.

The Forged Edict ban has to be the next biggest change for Kyuden Bayushi players. We lose control over assasinations as well as some of the strong action cards that are around but we still get to gain a strong tool with our other restricted cards. It is still unclear what path we will go but i feel quite confident in saying that each card could be viable.

The next errata is Stoke Insurrection, Making the overall blowout effect to be much less. I think we will see less of it but i can't say we won't see it since scorpion players have really enjoyed this card. Depending on your new choice of restricted list card, you may find that you need it to against unicorn while other matchups it feels like to much fate for the value you are gettting out of it.

Last thing is Bayushi Kachiko is now on the restricted list. This might have the smallest effect on us since it wasn't seen in every deck anyways. I personally only felt like i needed to run her for the mirror match, and not having to run it kind of opens more slots to target other clans.

So what does this all mean? Well, the two decks that i will list below are still very viable and that is Kcoorey's Regal bearing/Dial Manipulation deck. The other is an updated version of my Kyuden Bayushi deck at worlds, which is a switch deck but these two decks are just guidelines, because now more then ever is a great time to experiment with new deck designs!

Competitive Archetypes

Kyuden Bayushi - Keeper Of Air/Crane Splash

The most common competitive Scorpion deck archetype for this current meta. This deck contains small characters that are used to poke rings, scout your opponents provinces and defend your own. Midnight Revels and Courteous Greeting provide a much needed bow to help compensate for the lack of stats you may have as a scorpion player. Shameful Display combined with For Shame! or Noble sacrifice also take opponents characters out of the mix while Secret Cache will most likely grab you the card you will need to keep that province standing. This deck has a ton of action cancels such as Forgery and usually some Censures to make sure you always feel in control.

Strengths- This deck has a ton of action cancels and character removal with Noble Sacrifice and Dispatch to Nowhere. With Kyuden Bayushi and Elegant Tessan, there is no shortage of unbows to make sure you have presence in every conflict.

Weakness- There can be a lack of military stats, you are really relying on using Shosuro Sadako to provide you with any sort of relevant numbers without using conflict cards to make up the difference.

https://www.bushibuilder.com/l5r/deck/?deck=68ceb6ed-11a8-11eb-83ff-020c407d2d9d&public=y

Kyuden Bayushi- Regal Bearing/Dial Manipulation

Not a commonly played deck but it has won multiple gold cups as well as the most recent LLO. If you like card advantage then this is the deck for you, using Regal Bearing to draw tons of cards as well as using a Slovenly Scavenger to reuse the cards another time through. A unique style that uses Duty as an rl card to keep your bids high, partnered with I Can Swim to punish anyone opponent who puts their draw bids low. Social Puppeteer can also throw any of your opponents low bids on their head to set you up for another huge Regal Bearing.

The last notable achievement was Kcoorey winning a LLO event with this style of deck and he also gave us a great write up on how to play it in the link below.

https://bushibuilder.com/l5r/deck/?deck=f3d5ac65-14ea-11eb-83ff-020c407d2d9d&public=y