Choosing themes for your Kenjutsu Kata can be a difficult task.  Up until recently, DT hasn't publicly listed all of the themes that they are using.  Some of them are obvious, others are not.


Crab Shugenja have never had a Stronghold printed yet they do have 31 personalities printed in the game's history.  The problem lies in the fact that there are 2 Soul of personalities and 8 personalities who have multiple Experienced version making it difficult to get a good foothold on a decent deck.  It is still possible but difficult.

Crab Siege only has a certain number of cards for its themes due to it being a relatively new theme but they seem like a better choice than the Crab Shugenja.  They have 18 personalities only 2 of which are Soul of.  That gives them 16 unique personalities on the Dynasty side.

There are 19 Castle holdings / fortifications in the game's history, 17 of which are playable by the Crab Clan and 15 of which produce gold.

Now let's examine the Fate side.  There are 11 different Followers with the Siege trait, 9 different Strategies with the Siege trait, and 2 Items with the Siege trait.

Besides just the obvious cards with the correct traits, any card that increase or decreases province strength, like Kaiu Fortress are welcome additions.

Other cards like Kuni Kiyoshi Exp 2, who bows or straightens a card with less force than the current battlefield's province strength, also fits the idea of Crab Siege.

You actually have 3 different strongholds to choose from to finish off the theme: The War Fortress of the Crab, Carpenter Castle, or The Great Carpenter Wall.

Let's take another theme that is not easy to build.

Lion Deathseekers have 23 personalities, non of which have any experienced versions.  The problem with the theme is that they really don't have a stronghold to really call their own.  Most of the options for the strongholds would have to be mostly generic.  Great Hall of Records, Shiro Matsu, The Ancestral Home of the Lion, or The Halls of Ancestors are probably the best bet here.

There are only 11 strategies that deal with Deathseekers most of which have an honor gain attached like Honorable Death.  These help you reach one of your win conditions and most of them help both of your win conditions.

A card like Duty helps you keep your big unit out while continuing to have your Deathseeker personalities die to gain your honor.
Followers like Deathseeker Troop and Hida Defenders also expand upon your win conditions.  Items like Blade of Fury, Ancestral Urn, and Chrysanthemum Blossom are also welcome additions.

Creating Tension

This is an important aspect of designing a Kenjutsu Kata.  With so many clans and overlapping themes, players are going to be fighting over similar cards.  For example, both Crane and Dragon have Duelist and will be fighting over Dueling cards and Focus Effects.  You would also want something like Dragon and Spider fighting over Kensei cards and weapons.  Without this, each player would be able to draft a deck unimpeded which is no fun. 

The L5R Kenjutsu Format is a new unofficial format developed by The Kolat Informant.

The Kenjutsu Format is the Legends of the Five Rings equivalent of the Magic: The Gathering Cube Format.

For those of you who have not heard of the Magic the Gathering Cube Format, allow me to explain.  A person or group designs a cube using cards from every available set and only using 1 of each card.  The cube is designed with an appropriate number of the different card types and colors for balance.  Once the cube has been designed and sleeved, you would then shuffle the cards for randomization.  You would then create 15 card packs from the shuffled cards so that each player had enough packs (Magic used 3 15 cards packs).  Once the 'packs' of cards were created, each player would be given 3 of these packs and then normal booster draft rules would apply.

Goin' Old School

Now, I'm sure some of you are wondering how this would translate with L5R.  Well it was a bit harder than I originally imagined.  First, unlike the normal L5R draft rules, I wanted to incorporate actual constructed strongholds to be drafted.  So to do this I had to make sure everyone got strongholds and got them early so that you had an idea of how to draft your deck.  I came up with the Stronghold Pack.  This pack would be nothing but strongholds and would be the first pack drafted for all players.  This pack would be several cards worth (my initial pack ends up being 6 cards times 8 players which is 48 strongholds) so every player would end up with multiple strongholds.

There is no reason you cannot just use a draft stronghold instead and choose two clans but I chose something a bit more challenging.



Once those issues were resolved, then I needed to decide what card types to include.  For this first run, I decided for the Dynasty cards would be Celestial, Region, Events, Holdings and Personalities.  Fate cards that I included was Items, Spells, Followers, and Strategies.  Personalities and Strategies are going to take up the most space in the Kata, then Holdings, then the rest.  You are welcome to include other card types like Ancestors and Sensei.

You can choose to put any number of the clans into your Kata.  I choice the 9 current clans + the Shadowlands and Toturi's Army for this first attempt.

I also decided that each clan would have 2 themes.  For example, Crab themes I did Scouts and Berserkers.  The Berserkers I also did a small sub theme, the Damned (Berserkers with the Shadowlands trait).  I chose some personalities who didn't have the right traits (like Hida Yakamo Oni Exp who's not a Berserker but is Shadowlands) but they could still fit the theme.

I ended up putting 5 stronghold per current clan (except Spider I only did 4 for them) and 2 each for the Shadowlands and Toturi's Army.   With Crab, I did 2 Berserker strongholds, 2 Scout strongholds, and 1 generic stronghold.  This gives players the ability to draft a theme with a usable stronghold.

Once each theme was set and cards were added to the Kata, it is time to sleeve up and shuffle this massive pile.  The Strongholds would be shuffled together (if you chose to go that route) and then packs would be created.

Then everything else (save Elemental Rings, Clan Holdings and Border Keep Basic / Bamboo Harvester Basic) would be shuffled together and then 15 card packs would be created.  What we decided on was giving each player six (6) 15 card packs + one (1) 6 card Stronghold only pack.  Each player would start by drafting the stronghold pack, then each of the 6 other packs of cards.

We decided on doing 30 dynasty / 30 fate card decks.  Once all the cards were drafted, each player would then construct a deck using only those cards and basic (Rings, Clan Holdings, BK basic, BH basic).  Then it is time to duel.

Above on the menu, I have attached links to the basic rules that I've come up with along with the first draft of the Kenjutsu Kata.  I will be doing articles and updates to the Kata and refine the Rules for you folks to follow.  I certainly hope other players get interested in this exciting format.

I am also taking other suggestions / ideas to add to this aspiring new format.