Also, for the whole week I was dealing with a massive cold, and was coughing and snuffling the whole way (and had almost no voice). So, my recollections may not always be totally correct.
Deck design
There aren't many choices when playing single core, so the choices you do have are all the more important. I already knew I wanted to play the deck as dishonour, which equates to a resource control strategy. People have talked a lot about going for Ring of Air every time... that was not the way I intended to play. Right from my first game with the new cards, I was playing control. That means, every deck choice was made with a view to "does this choice help me get resource advantage over my opponent".
Dynasty: Only real choice is whether to include the 2 movement holdings, or just more dudes. I went with more dudes. Playing control, having lots of small bodies is a very good thing.
Fate: Many more choices here.
- Firstly, what to splash. Dragon were the obvious (and most popular) choice, offering two recursive attachments, attachment kill, an attachment with covert and a second dude or unbow effect. Looking through the Scorpion cards though I quickly settled on them - a recursive personality (Adept of Shadows), a recursive attachment (Court Mask), a covert dude (Unassuming Yojimbo), a negation effect (Forged Edict) and attachment theft (Calling in Favors). Adept of Shadows in particular may be the best card in the game, certainly for this play style.
- Secondly, which Clan cards to leave out. I ditched Way of the Phoenix, Know the World, Grasp of Earth and Magnificent Kimono. None of them are bad cards (in fact, all may become staple as the environment evolves) but in a single core environment where nothing is reliable, the narrow meta of the first three and unreliability of the kimono meant I preferred to use neutral cards.
- Thirdly, which neutrals to fill the deck out with. Playing 5 Scorpion and 6 Phoenix cards, I had 19 slots to fill. 2 each of Fine Katana, Ornate Fan, For Shame!, Court Games, Cloud the Mind, Charge! and Banzai! were all obvious, and even though I strongly believed dishonour to be a real thing, Assassination was too strong not to play. For the last 3 slots, I went with 2 Rout & 1 Outwit. Send home is weak in this game (the sent home party is still ready, so can participate in future conflicts that round) but the theory ran that getting rid of opposition on the attack to trigger the 1 point honour loss would make the cards worth it. Sadly, since most of our courtiers and bushi are at 2 base skill, neither really worked out; for Saturday I switched in 2 Good Omen (wasn't any better) and 1 Spies at Court (which was worth the dishonour cost).
Play style
This is the magic bit, and the game plan that got me my result.
1. Always bid 1. Always. This builds you an honour cushion to spend on Assassinate and Adept of Shadows, and puts your opponent on a squeeze. I broke this rule in one game, trying to recover a losing position, and it didn't help... it just let my opponent play Assassinate.
2. You are trying to grind out economic advantage over a series of turns. Ring wise, I picked Void a lot to remove tokens from my opponent. Fire to dishonour them (and then use the box to increase their glory penalty). Water to reduce their ability to attack and activate ring effects. Earth more rarely, unless Solemn Scholar was in play. And Air only late in the game once you already have a measure of control. But attack and defense are also key. You don't care about breaking provinces - so can stop investing resources once you have an attacking tie. And you can throw your 1 cost Imperials in front of your opponent for marginal cost, making them invest additional resources to break your provinces.
3. Breaking provinces actually doesn't help you (except for tie breakers). You want to find an opposing province that does nothing and attack it repeatedly to trigger ring effects (and the 1 point penalty for not defending). If you're attacking face down provinces, your opponent gets to bring additional resources into play.
4. Losing battles on the attack is actually a good thing. Your opponent burns a bunch of resources to win the battle and doesn't get to use the ring. Look at the resources they used to win it and compare to the effect of activating the ring... and you will often feel satisfied with the outcome. (Even if you lose the favour that turn!).
While 1 is pretty obvious, 3 & 4 in particular are anathema to people who are playing L5R as a military game. The way most games go is that you start on the back foot, and your opponent breaks an early couple of provinces, but then they start having to attack into your more useful provinces, and stop being able to bid high (or play Assassination) because their honour is getting low. At that point you can start going on the attack more, and they're forced to make choices to avoid losing the game rather than to try and win it.
Adept of Shadows and Court Mask were also both really useful, able to be used in multiple conflicts in one turn when I had spare Fate (or gained it off picking Rings with Fate on them).
Match reports
I really don't have good notes here. I think my opponents per round were as follows.
1 - Unicorn
2 - Crab
3 - Unicorn
4 - Lion (L)
5 - Scorpion
6 - Dragon
7 - Scorpion (L*)
Most games were made straightforward by my opponents bidding high. Kyle, my Lion opponent, also bid low repeatedly, and buying 3 Lion Clan personalities turn 1 (including the free one) had me on the back foot from the beginning. I was never able to get a foothold in the game, and conceded once it was clear there was no path to victory.
Round 5 was a fun game... my opponent bought T1 Shoju, so I bought T1 Tsukune. He used Fire to dishonour her, so I slapped an Ornate Fan on her and claimed three rings, including Void... and since he'd hit Meditations on the Tao, Shoju lost both his Fate on T1 and vanished at the end of the turn.
Round 7 was the most interesting game. When time was called, my opponent had broken 3 provinces and had the favour... but was on 2 honour and it was the start of a new turn where I was first player. He had two people in play to my 4 or 5, and had very little chance of avoiding being dishonoured out that turn. However, under tie breaker rules (2 for each broken province, 2 for having more honour, and 1 for the favour) he had me beat by 5, which meant the game resolved automatically as a win for him. That is the massive weakness of this play style - the current tie breaker rules disadvantage it horribly. Don't go to time, at least until the tie breaker rules are fixed (and that was my only game all weekend that did).
T32, T16 and T8 matches were all against Scorpion. T32 and T16 were both routine dishonour matches, playing out as described above with a slow, gradual squeeze on resources. T8 I'd agreed to concede before the match started, so I played blitz military (T1 Tsukune, T2 Wandering Ronin) and actually attacked a stronghold province for the first time all tournament, narrowly failing to take it before being dishonoured out
I'll add more as I think of it! Questions welcome.