Secret HQ
art (c) Mike Trap
The first thing you should do is check out what I have to think about the individual cards that make up the Seven Masters faction.
After that, you must remember the TWO COMMANDMENTS OF PLAYING THE SEVEN MASTERS:
First off, I can't emphasize how important Fortune of the Turtle is to the Seven
Masters. It is going to be the key card in keeping you heavy hitter in
play. All of the Masters (and their foundations) provide
, so
finding the resources is never going to be a problem. Sky Dragon just
loves Fortune. Li Mao is the only master with a little bit of event
protection, so if you are playing a deck with multiples and he is your primary
hitter, you can probably cut down a few on the Fortunes, but Li Mao is only
protected against one faction, and that's not enough in multiplayer unless you
get real lucky. The only faction that can skimp on Fortune of the Turtle
is when playing them in combination with the Guiding Hand, whose Confucian
Stability is top-notch. Secrets of Shaolin is okay, but you don't want to
be holding that in hand when a Nerve Gas heads towards Red Bat. Festival
Circle also makes a nice, reusable, backup to any other even protection.
Remember, the Seven Masters are only cool if they live long enough.
And, we all know what a pain in the butt-kicking Shadowy Mentor can be.
Your first line of defense is going to be the best defense that the faction you
are comboing with can provide, backed up by Waterfall Sanctuary and Stone
Dolmens. It's not just coincidence that Wing of the Crane has been
reprinted in 7MvU -- this amazingly versatile card is going to be one of your
weapons against Shadowy Mentor. Although I hate to suggest it, Return to the
Center might turn out to be a key card for the Seven Masters -- it's going to
get you some after-the-fact Shadowy Mentor protection, which is going to be
crucial, even if it does nuke your Fortune of the Turtle (Fortune is not a schtick,
so the character retains immunity to your opponents' events, not yours).
The nice thing about Wing is that it can be used after the Mentor has resolved,
for a little extra surprise. If you absolutely can't mange
,
Return to the Center makes a poor man's alternative.
Building a Good Foundation
Well, you don't have a lot of options when it comes to getting those first few
Seven Masters resources in your pool. You have a very basic
Golden-Candle-Society-esque foundation in the Wah-Shan Clan, who are at odds
with the Kunlun Clan Assault for space in your deck. If you're running a
"tower of power" style deck, you're going to need all 10 foundations, but most
of the time you are only going to want 7-8 foundations for the average 60-70
card deck. Do you omit the Wah-Shan or the Kunlun clan? Well, it can
be an easy answer -- if you are playing with another faction with easy access to
, you
don't need load up on the Kunlun Clan as a foundation (although you may still
want it for the damage). Most of the time, you'll want a mixture of both -- Wah
Shan for speed, and Kunlun for versatility.
Another thing to consider is that nothing in the Seven Masters costs more than
two resources, so you don't need to be playing a lot of foundations to ramp up.
Beneficent Tao can also give you a second
to play
your hitters. While the Seven Masters don't have a foundation site, they
do have the reasonably powerful Wudang Mountain, which is also going to get you
plenty of resources, and can be played second turn after dropping a Wah-Shan
(not a great play though, as it costs you an extra power over a face down FSS)..
One last thing to consider is the prevalence of Inauspicious Reburial in your local play environment. The Seven Masters do have the ability to make themselves immune via Kunlun Clan Assault, backed up with Beneficent Tao.
So, What do the Seven Masters Do, Anyway?
Each faction has it's defining cards, which are usually (but not always) non-character cards. With very few cards, almost every card in the Seven Masters needs to be one of these defining cards, but, some of them seem to fall short.
Unexpected Rescue stands out among the events as what you are expecting from the Seven Masters. There is going to be some big thugs getting in the way when you attack them. Beneficent Tao is okay-ish, but I'd rather not see my sites damaged over healing them (I'm ignoring this as denial against a damaged site for now). Monkey Fools the Tiger looks good -- it's a Nerve Gas that doesn't target, and the controller of the subject gains 1 power -- sure, this doesn't compete with the old-school Standard Edition power events, but it's still very playable.
I do like the copy cards Occult Kung Fu and Wudang Monk. With the lack of non-Unique characters in the Seven Masters faction, you are going to have to look outside, but that's okay.
The Factions
While not designed for it, you can play the Seven Masters solo. You are
going to be pretty limited -- while you only need two resources, you are going
to have to draw them pretty early, so that's going to limit you to about 50-55
cards, tops. At this point, you pretty much play all the good 7Masters
cards, all the good Chi cards, and a spattering of Magic -- I think all of these
decks are going to be very similar, and somewhat bland to the taste -- I expect
they will power up with Violet Meditation and Pocket Demon, and drop a Master
asap.
The Dragons look to be strong partners with the Seven Masters. The card
that jumps right to mind is Golden Comeback -- once you paid for your Master,
you are just going to keep getting him back. Also, the Dragons have a lot
of useful 1-3 cost non-uniques for Occult Kung Fu. If you want to stick to
low resources, the Dragons have several excellent hitters that require only two
Dragon resources, so this is going to be one of the most powerful combinations
for the Seven Masters. Adding Final Brawl to Kunlun Clan Assault (if you
have the power) is a fair amount of character suppression. Red Bat and Is
That All You Got?!? also make a super-powerful combo late game.
This is the other obvious combination for building a multi-faction Seven Masters
deck. This gives you up to 15 1-cost
providing resource characters, a major shift is Shadowfist resource dynamics.
Shi Ho Kuai can grow to monstrous proportions. I can see a couple of
different ways to go with this combo -- the first is very control oriented, much
like the traditional Guiding Hand deck. Bide your time, get out an evasive
hitter, and protect it until victory. A couple of the 7 Masters should be
petty good at this. The other deck that cries out to be build using new
cards is a Swords deck. Most of the Seven Masters are way better than a
lot of the Hand hitters that seen light over the last couple years (especially
the ones in Shaoling Showdown).
Thematically, you get Kong Jun She, who does provide a
, which
you might be able to work into something. I've seen a really cool Bloody
Horde deck, getting extra juice out of Occult Kung Fu and Wudang Monk -- it's
like having 15 Bloody Hordes in your deck!
The (pre-Z-Man) Monarchs were known for their low resource requirements, which
makes them more resilient in multi-factioning.
I haven't put a lot of thought into combining these two factions (I feel that
the Purists really lack a cohesive and compelling reason to be interesting), but
both factions to provide Magic which gives some possibilities.
This combo is very doable, but mostly boring. You are playing the Ascended
for their trash cards and the usual dirty tricks, and the Seven Masters for
their hitters and Fortune of the Turtle. Actually, I expect this to be an
okay combo, since none of the Seven Masters cards cost more than two resources,
and the Ascended usually don't have trouble cranking out their own resources --
maybe some version of the Paper Trail / Curtain of Fullness deck is in the
making.
A lot like combining with the Ascended, you are looking to Nerve Gas, Imprisoned
and maybe Neutron Bomb. Again, the Seven Masters bring you Fortune of the
Turtle, and some
evasive hitters.
This combo I'm not really seeing. All your
and
has to
come from the Seven Masters, and all your
has to
come from the Jammers. Sure, the Jammers do have a couple of good
characters to copy (such as Dallas Rocket), but unfortunately, you can't copy
the interesting and new Shaolin Monkey, since it's a come into play ability.
One of the Jammer's strong points is Who's the Monkey Now? which isn't needed
with Fortune, and the Jammers don't give you much in the way of Shadowy Mentor
protection. Of course, if you're into Monkey madness, you can draw a card
from Monkey Fools the Tiger...
The last deck I have to mention is what is known as a Peacock deck (the name
comes from the Feng Shui Site, Peacock Summit). I think I still like the
Wah-Shan clan as my foundation -- it's going to give me 1 more cheap
provider, which means I will have more access to Blade Palm later in the game.
I'm not sure if you play any other card --
the Seven Masters don't really do anything that isn't duplicated by the other
factions.
