Shadowfist Deck: Orange and Lemon Surprise by David Martin

Home > Decks > Decks: Orange and Lemon Surprise (GenCon UK 2002 multiplayer championship winner)
[posted 3 Jun 2003; updated 13 Sep 2003]

Originally posted to the Shadowfist-UK Forum on Yahoogroups on 5 Sep 2002 by David Martin. Republished with permission. The archives are available to non-members, so you can read the original posting if you like.

Dave Martin won the GenCon UK 2002 Final Brawl multiplayer tournament using this deck. He took a slightly different mix to the finals in the previous year.
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Orange and Lemon Surprise by Dave Martin

A mixture of Hand and Ascended factions.

20 Ascended cards:
  4 The Pledged
  4 Family Estate
  5 Shadowy Mentor
  5 Operation Killdeer
  1 Suicide Mission
  1 Monkey Chang

40 Hand cards:
  5 Golden Candle Society
  4 Instrument of the Hand
  3 Yellow Senshi Chamber
  3 Orange Senshi Chamber
  5 Shaolin Surprise
  4 Confucian Stability
  2 Into the Light - brings back mentors
  2 Wind on the Mountain - brings back surprises and Into the Light.
  2 Iron and Silk
  1 Rigorous Discipline - copies superleap
  1 Onslaught of the Turtle - tech characters around in large numbers.
  2 Shield of Pure Soul
  1 Sun Chen
  1 Shan Tsu
  1 Old Man Wu
  1 Iron Monkey
  1 Yen Fan
  1 Xiaoyang Yun

2 Chi States
  1 Contract of the Fox
  1 Fortune of the Turtle

16 Feng Shui Sites
  4 Festival Circle
  3 Whirlpool of Blood
  2 Puzzle Garden
  1 Fox Pass
  1 Gambling House
  1 Petroglyphs
  1 Heavens Peak
  1 City Square
  1 Kinoshita House
  1 Turtle Beach

Total 78 Cards
Includes 6 Z-Man cards

The guys at Finchley have had to put up with this deck making appearances over the past few years. However I have not played any versions of this deck since the last GenCon where it lost in the final. The deck is based around the combo of Shadowy Mentor and Shaolin Surprise. You mentor a character and attack. Then you move the mentor around after attacking to borrow yet more characters. Or you move the mentors around in defence to withdraw characters from winning attacks.

The Orange Senshi chamber is there to increase your hand size to about 9-10 cards. Mentoring characters from other factions does this for you.

The Yellow Senshi chamber kills off those one point characters everyone wants to kill.

The deck has a large site structure. There are 10 non-feng shui sites in the deck and plenty of ways to protect them. Shield of Pure Soul is there to punish those who manage it. The deck generates a lot of power and you need it. In this version I cut some of the more expensive events (Robust Feng Shui, Year of the Sanke). I reduced the number of non-foundation characters to 7. I put in the 2 chi states. The Shields are there to find what you want. I should really add one more.

Playing this deck gives you a different mind set. You want other players to do well. Let them generate lots of power. Let the golden comebacks work. So you are playing Dirk Wisely's Gambit, here can I help you? You need power to play the really good characters however Kiii-YAAAH on you is taking things a bit far and should be cancelled in the appropriate way. Their characters are yours (except Ting Ting). White Ninjas can be part of operation killdeer before she joins your force. The Golden Gunman is really a pledged operative at heart. The Iron Monkey loves making cash for you. Be confident you can stop the attacks with this deck before they crush you. OK, it is a close run thing at times but that's the fun..

Things that give the deck a hard time.
Confucian Stability and Realpolitik are pretty horrible. Steve Bailey played with about four of each when he won GenCon 2001. Shifting Loyalties can be nasty but this still leaves the mentors in play so the situation can be rescued. Neutron bombs get rid of everyone's (your) characters. Waterfall Sanctuaries can remove mentors. Ring of Gates stops card recycling. But the best defence of all is to play Shaolin Surprise yourself. In these days of CB radios, tanks, guns, swords and many others players playing Shadowy Mentors you cannot go wrong.

Most important card.
Other changes I would make. Drop two Festival Circles and add two more Whirlpools of Blood. With the amount of denial sites you are packing you need to be able to cancel other players Whirlpools. Also they cancelled denial sites during my winning attacks. Without them I would have lost twice before the final!

Dave Martin