Welcome fellow Lions. As promised this is part 3 of the Lion Masterclass series. This will be the last part of the series and we will be focusing on clan splashes. I know a lot of you have been asking for decklists and they are included. Here are decklists for Lion/Dragon, Lion/Crane, Lion/Scorpion, and Lion/Unicorn.

Lion-Dragon

Lion-Crane

Lion-Scorpion

Lion-Unicorn

Lion Conflict

Before we go to the splash we first have to look at our conflict cards. What cards do Lion regularly use from their own faction? For Greater Glory, Way of the Lion, and Ready for Battle all regularly find its way into Lion decks. Legion of One, Ageless Crone, and Strength in Numbers are also included but not in all decks. There are also some very specific Lion builds that use Sashimono and Stand your Ground.

When you take a look at the Lion cards they are almost exclusively focused on winning Military challenges and tech cards for after the conflict. The only Lion card that interacts with your opponent is Strength in Numbers and that is an imperfect solution to say the least.

If you were able to fall behind or be against a runaway tower the Lion conflict cards would not be able to help you catch up. Lion would be looking for two things when looking at splashes. First a way to handle opposing towers or any big characters in general. Second a way to handle problematic attachments. To be fair most other clans would look for these things as well when choosing a splash. Lion needs them more though as they have no inherent way of getting them. Even an LPB would have trouble
consistently climbing a tall tower.

Dragon

Dragon is still the gold standard of splashes. They will most likely hold this place until the end of the game. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you are homebrewing a deck I would always recommend comparing your splash to Dragon. It has to at least be better than this in some cases for it to be viable. In the deck I provided the cards I added where Let Go and Mirumutos Fury. Fury provides a relatively cheap option to disable big characters. Let Go only becomes stronger in an environment where Seekers regularly use the Pathfinders Blade and Keepers use the Talisman.

It is true that you can counter Miramutos Fury and that it is only for one turn. There are also some effects which allow you to ready your character. Yet
the most important feature of the Dragon Splash is that it is cheap. It does not interfere with your swarm which allows you to bring in the more expensive people like Gifted Tactician.

Crane

We have 3 cards for our Crane Splash. Noble Sacrifice, Duelist Training, and Political Rival. Noble Sacrifice allows us to have hard removal of troublesome characters. It does require some set up but so does Way of the Crab and Crab players pull it off all the time. Instead of always be Crabbing Lions should always be sacrificing. Always finding ways to
trigger Noble Sacrifice. Political Rival allows us to shore up our weak conflict and Duelist Training allows us to bully opposing courtiers as well as letting us pressure our opponents honor by forcing more bids. Remember we have Ready for Battle. If it
means draining your opponent of 4-5 honor we can actually afford to lose the duel.

Like the Dragon Splash the Crane Splash also dictates our deck. We are running a higher number of characters who honor themselves since we are trying to pull off Noble Sacrifice. Since we have Political Rival and have more honored characters than normal we are not running Ikoma Prodigy. Duelist Training also allows us to use Military characters in Political conflicts. Noble Sacrifice also acts as our item control by killing the bearer instead of the item.

Scorpion

For Scorpion we are running A Fate Worse Than Death, Calling in Favors, and Meek Informant. AFWTD allows us to unconditionally remove problematic characters and prevent them from doing anything for the rest of the turn. Calling in Favors acts as our item control and Meek Informant takes the place of Ageless Crone as our Political poker which incidentally also allows us to see the opponents hand.

This build is very different from the other Lion Splashes as it runs Satoshi. We are running a very high cost event that we absolutely must get through. We use Satoshi to pull Imperial Palace and guarantee that we get the favor. Our generally low glory value also helps us with the dishonor we get from Calling in Favors. It would also be nice to run Forged Edict but we just don’t have the room.

Unicorn

Our splash for Unicorn is Captive Audience, Talisman of the Sun, and Iuchi Wayfinder. We are also running a super secret splash in Cloud the Mind. 6 shugenjas allow us to run it and it acts as our counter to opposing characters. Talisman also allows us to send them crashing into Feast or Famine which acts as another form of control. This amount of control allows us to run other tech in the form of Captive Audience.

Since we are running Captive Audience our Dynasty is weighted towards Military. We can always poke with political anyway and use Talisman of the Sun to send Political attacks into Shameful Display or our trap provinces.

I hope these lists help our Lion players. . If there are enough requests I can also do a part four focusing on how to handle particular match ups.