Katana - by Steve Crow [Instead of playing a Special card,] anytime during your turn you may make an Exertion to remove a Situation from play. You may have up to 5 Master cards. (Errata'd text) Overview Known and feared by many, General Katana is one of the most dangerous Personas. His main strength is his versatility: more than any other Persona, he has all the bases covered: attack, defense, direct damage, anti- direct damage, and Situation removal. First, game mechanics questions. As in every other case, Katana's Exertion to remove a Situation can only be used for one purpose. If he Exerts to remove a Situation, he cannot also use that Exertion for a Power Block, or for attacks. The new errata limits Katana's ability somewhat, but it still provides him with the option to remove a Situation practically any time that he wishes to. That is how General Katana functions. What resources does he have available to him? Persona-Specific Cards Among the non-Reserved cards, Katana has most of the typical ones: Back Away, Combination, Dodge, Extra Shot, Power Blow, and Trip. All of these are the "traditional" versions. With Ancestral Blade Restricted to one, and the addition of cards like Lunge in Watcher's Chronicles, Katana's lack of Continuity leaves him open to an aggressive Power Blow strategy. This is a weakness that we will look at a little later. Going down the list of Katana's Reserved cards, we see the following: Do It Yourself: This card is a potent one for dealing with direct damage, since the "mirrored" damage cannot then be reversed again. Direct damage decks rarely rely on the most effective anti-damage card: Greenfield Hobby. So you have a good chance of nailing an opponent using direct damage. It will only work on Event damage that originates with your opponent, however. This makes it immune to Nakano's Persona ability. However, it also means that you can't use DIY against any damage Events you play that are bounced back at you. Intimidate: Often overlooked, this card is useful for setting up an opponent. If they choose not to attack, you can set up a Taunt attack to any area. It is almost as good as Slan's and Luther's version, and if you use Power Blows it can be just as effective in preventing Hidden counter-attacks. Useless against Kern. With Toadies and Taunt it forms a trio of Exertion-forcing cards. Master's Attack: This card seems an unusual one for Katana. Still, using this in conjunction with Taunt means your opponent is even less likely to draw the necessary defense. Still, given that Katana needs other Master cards, ignoring this card may be an easy decision. Master's Block: Another unusual choice for Katana. This is more useful then Master's Attack, since it gives full coverage against Hidden attacks, Slashes, etc., while still allowing a counter-attack (typically with Taunt). However, as noted above, Katana may wish to save his Master slots for other things. Run Away Train: Like Intimidate, another often- overlooked card. Against the right type of deck it can be very useful, preventing the play of annoying Situations without requiring you to Exert or waste a Police/Remove Sit on them. It also removes the (errata'd) Angry Mob/SE from their hand. Taunt: One of the most powerful cards in ME, and one that should be used in any Katana deck. This card at the very least forces an opponent to exert past useful cards. Better still, they may not get the defense they need and be hit. If Katana has minimized his Exertion or is using Master Swordsman, he should make the "Taunted" attack a Power Blow. Kastagir can cope with this card more easily than others, but he can still be hurt. Toadies: This is the third Exertion-forcing card that Katana has available to him. Like Taunt, it forces the opponent to Exert _and_ they may not get some or all of what they need. The damage can be bounced back, however, and Do It Yourself is typically useless against such bounceback damage. Generic Cards As noted above, the choice of Masters is a hard one for Katana. Master/Swordmaster minimizes the Exertions he will probably need for Situation removal and Power Blocks. Master's Stratagem is always useful for card cycling. Master Swordsman allows Katana to Power Block without an Exertion, and make exertion-less Power Blows with Taunt. Since he has only five slots, it is likely he will give greater consideration to these cards than his own Masters. The promotional Collect card is the other option for Katana players looking to minimize their Exertions. Three of these will make his Exertions much more viable - combine with Master/Swordmaster and he can remove Situations at little cost. Since Toadies already gives Katana a good Persona- specific direct-damage Event, other such cards (Street Punk/SE, Angry Mob w/Careful Planning) are good choices to enhance that strategy. If you do use a direct-damage strategy, Bystander, the Situation variant, is a useful card since it reduces the chances of you taking damage from attacks, while letting your direct damage cards do full effect. Despite Katana's Persona ability, Police/Remove Sit is still a useful card for when he does _not_ want to Exert, or needs to use that Exertion on something else while dealing with Situations. Simple Mind similarly is a useful card for clearing the board of a large number of your opponent's Situations. Depending on the number of Situations you are using yourself, this could backfire, but it's not a bad last- ditch measure. A recent promo, The Path, is handy for Katana. This card removes any Master from the game when it is removed from play. Although restricted to two (due to errata), this means that important Master Situations like Master's Advance and Master's Stratagem are taken out of the game when Katana Exerts to remove them. Location Cards With the current errata, there are not a great many Locations that benefit Katana. Dead-End Alley or Catwalk can restrict a Taunted opponent further. Verona (the errata'd version) can hold off the nastier attacks of an opponent while allowing Katana to launch his potent non-Special attacks augmented by Taunt. If Katana is using Master's Attack or Master Swordsman, then he shouldn't use Verona. If Katana is not using Pedestrians himself, Rooftop is a good "placeholder" card. It will remove an opponent's Location, and perhaps hurt an opponent's strategy. This makes it a better bet than Get Away From It All. Of course, if you are going to employ direct damage with Angry Mob-SE/Careful Planning, you shouldn't use this card. Desert and Battlefield are poor choices, costing Katana the powerful resources he has. Lighthouse, if properly timed, can be useful. You are much more likely to hit due to Taunt, leaving you more defensive options. Master's Block gives you a good defensive option against Hidden attacks since Lighthouse restricts Guards and dodges. Since Katana's primary strength is in his cards, the more the merrier. Watcher Regional HQ lets him draw more cards, while employing useful Watcher and Watcher Field Agent cards like The Armory, Watcher/Rearm, Watcher/Counter, and Watcher/Involvement. Generally, there is no specific Location that helps Katana. He should use a particular Location, but which one is up to whatever strategy you decide to use with the good General. How to Win As noted above, Katana is one of the best Personas from a versatility standpoint. He covers just about everything one way or another. Because of this, how you choose to win with Katana is entirely up to you. Want to use direct damage? Use Toadies and mix well with Street Punk and Angry Mob- SE/Careful Planning. Katana's Situation removal will let you keep up with the potential six Greenfield Hobbies your opponent will have ready to play. Want to go on the offensive? Taunt and Thrust. Or Taunt and Power Blow via Master Swordsman. Or Taunt and Power Blow/Exert. Even if they block every attack, they're Exerting to do so. When you're not Taunting, use Intimidate to keep them from attacking, or make them waste more cards to do so. Master's Block and both 9-grid dodge cards help you defensively. You can cover all the grid areas, allowing you to avoid most Hidden attacks. Master's Block lets you avoid unpleasant attack cards like Bloodlust, Berserk, Battle Rage, and Extra Shot/Flashing Blade. Run Away Train and Do It Yourself let you avoid, reverse, or prevent your opponent's most powerful non-combat options. Katana's Situational-removal ability can let you play with fewer Police/Remove Sits. However, Exerting is never a good thing. It is better used as an "emergency" measure. Thanks to Katana's ability, he almost never has to worry about Plots, for instance. How to Defeat Katana's primary weakness, with the new errata and the release of Watcher's Chronicles, is his vulnerability to Power Blows. Without six Ancestral Blades to rely on, a Power Blow/Lunge can almost certainly force him to Exert for the Power Block or waste his turn playing Ability- recovering Specials like Reporter. Katana is also vulnerable to his direct damage being bounced back at him. Unexpected Assistance, David Blake, or a Darius'd Do It Yourself can nail him right back. Greenfield Hobby is another good counter. He can remove it more easily than most, but he still has to Exert (and not play a Special) to do so. Just make sure not to have multiple Greenfields on the table, in case Katana is using Simple Mind. One thing you have to realize against Katana is that while your Situations probably won't assist your strategy against him, they are still hurting him. They force him to burn cards and waste turns' worth of Special play to deal with them. So you're not going to trap Katana with a Master's Advance or two. However, you are going to weaken him. This brings us to Psychosis, Katana's Nemesis. Although this has gone through several iterations, it currently remains as it was originally written. What does it now do? Every Situation you play acts as a Renee Delaney. He cannot play a Special, since he is forced to Exert to remove each Situation you play, one turn at a time. Psychosis also makes Katana users very leery of using Situations, since they may be forced to cannibalize them when your Situations (if any) run out. This impacts particularly on Exertion-reducers like Master/Swordmaster and Collect. The best overall counter to Taunt _and_ Toadies is Dr. Alan Neyman (CotW #2). This card is useful for a quick "emergency" burst under most circumstances. Against Taunt, it lets you dump two useless/unplayable cards, and get the defense you need. It also works for Toadies, letting you put those three defenses back on top of your deck and then Exerting. Kastagir and Nefertiri w/Battlefield can also deal with Taunt more effectively. So Katana can be beaten. He is annoying, although less so with the errata'd change to his Persona ability. Playing Situation will slow him down, either letting you keep them on the table longer, or delaying his play of powerful Specials of his own. Overall Steve gives Katana a _9_. His versatility is his strength, more than any other Persona. He has something for any circumstance, and I suspect some Personas will never catch up to him in terms of this versatility. Against a Katana deck, you simply never know what is coming if you see him across the table from you at the beginning of a game. What Our Other Raters Say: Jim - General Katana is one of the more powerful personas. He's a bit weaker now that he must sacrifice playing a Special in order to use his special ability to Exert and remove a Situation. Katana has a diverse set of cards which are among the best available to any Persona. Taunt is especially good for swordfighting. Katana also has both damage inflicting and anti-damage cards. He's also got Master's Attack and Master's Block to give him an advantage when swordfighting. Katana is an all around well balanced persona. He can swordfight or cheese with the best of them. Rick - Katana, even with his new power is still powerful. He has a good mix of combat cards as well as cheese/anti- cheese stuff. His Persona ability does what it is supposed to do: make those lock decks tougher to pull off. Hank - The reigning king of cheese. I hate cheese, I hated Highlander 2, and I hate Katana's ability: it's broken way too much of the game. I have to be a fair judge, however: it's a powerful ability, he's got cool cards, and when I _have_ played him (usually to demonstrate how broken he is) I've been very successful. >From that perspective, he's perfect . . . so I'm forced to give him a 10. Alan - The errata to Katana's power has depowered the General somewhat, but not so much so that he still isn't a good Persona to play; the ability to remove Situations at any time is perhaps one of the most powerful and useful in the game. His Nemesis is quite possibly the most crippling, too: if several Situations are out, it becomes a Renee Delaney _and_ Carl built into one! Still a cheesemaster, but not as powerful. Jeff - Katana's the man; what more need be said? Even with the rewriting of his ability (which serves more to reign in his Quickening than him), Katana still has some of the best Persona cards in the game, along with a useful ability. Pity that TCG saw a need to try to lower his power rather than raise the others to his level. Katana's a dynamic and useful persona that lends himself to cheese, lock, denial, _and_ combat. Wayne - In my opinion, Katana is far and away the most powerful Immortal. This is not because of his ability to remove situations (that just makes him play more consistent) but because he has the best cards. For example, Toadies is the best persona cheese card in the game, Do It Yourself is the best anti-direct damage card, and Taunt is the best attack card. He even has Master's Block for playing against Bloodlust. His main vulnerability is his Nemesis card, which kills him in playing against Slan or anybody who makes power blows. Prodipto - I regard Katana with mixed feelings. He has a very potent ability, and his support cards lend themselves to cheese-type decks. There is no denying, however, that he is a very effective persona. Between Toadies and generic damage events, he can generate a lot of direct damage without having to play many attacks. One thing to note, however, is that if you want to make an attack deck with Katana, he lends himself well to this also. He has Master's Block, which is by far and away the best defense against the three B's of attack decks (Battle Rage, Bloodlust, and Berserk). Between that, Intimidate and Taunt, he can make a potent attack persona. I expect to continue seeing a lot of Katana decks in tournaments, and will continue to play with few Situations (except perhaps for Psychosis...) The only real problem with Katana (aside from the likelihood he'll see a lot of Psychosis cards), is that he doesn't lend himself well to a Location. An effective tactic is to use Collects and Master/SE to bring his exertion size down, and TSC Troopers to remove opponents' locations from play. Since reducing exertion-size is very desirable for Katana anyway, you can quickly eliminate an opponent's location strategy on the first pass or two through your deck. Allen - Great at cheese, the best at anti-cheese, and a very good swordsman. I find Katana to be one of the best rounded immortals in the game. His ability to remove Situations with an Exertion is a great defensive power. It also relieves the requirement to use Police in your deck, allowing you to be more specialized. Use Focus and Exertions to remove Psychosis. Use your exertions to remove your opponent's ability to shut down your strategy. It costs you cards and the chance to play a Special, so ignore situations that don't bug you. Your ability to be good at your own strategy lies within your cards. Toadies give an extra bite to Careful Mobs, and burn your opponent's ability and deck at the same time. Do It Yourself and Run Away Train are great cheese-slicers. Master's Block and Master's Attack serve their usual purpose. Taunt is a powerhouse card for swordplay, giving you greater odds at scoring sword damage (especially power blows). Use it on the Catwalk with Master for exertion control. Ratings Overall: Steve 9 Jim 8 Rick 7 Hank 10 Alan 7 Jeff 9 Wayne 9 Prodipto 8 Allen 9 Average: Highlander is a protected trademark of Gaumont Television, used under license by Thunder Castle Games. The card text is copyright 1996 by Thunder Castle Games. All rights reserved.