Kuzuri Ronin: The Wolverine Without A Master

With the new Wolverine game having launched earlier this week, I wanted to post a deck in honor of its release.

It’s well known by now that many of Wolverine’s adventures take place in Japan where he has garnered the nickname Kuzuri—the Japanese term for “Wolverine.”

Logan has also adopted a bit of a samurai persona in many of his adventures there, which means a Ronin build is thematically appropriate for him. And most importantly, it’s extremely fun!

Health as a Resource

I think viewing Wolverine’s health as a resource is a very important key to unlocking his full potential, and something that the protection aspect is best suited for. With Wolverine’s Claws we can play any attack event in our hand by using Wolverine’s health to pay for it. Of course all of this is fairly obvious, but to me the underlying puzzle that we need to solve is:

-How can we keep Logan’s health as high as possible, so that we can spend it to pay for attack events and not worry about dying?

-And how do we maximize Logan’s health to dole out as much damage as possible?

Here’s To Your Good Health

Naturally, if we build up Wolverine’s defense stat then we should also be able to safeguard his health for when we want to unleash a big attack with Wolverine’s Claws.

This is why I think the Ronin build works so well. It’s pretty easy to build Wolverine’s defense up to 6 very quickly with Innate Reflexes, Armored Vest, Defensive Conditioning, and of course Ronin.

It’s not quite enough for a perfect defense strategy, but that’s ok. Remember, we’re only trying to protect enough of Wolverine’s health so that he can safely spend the rest on attack events with his claws.

The Best There Is...

Here’s why the build works:

-He still has plenty of readies with Indomitable, What Doesn’t Kill Me, and Stand Alone. So you can still use his basic 3 attack that he gets with the Adamantium Skeleton, or basic thwart if the situation calls for it

-He can eat a hit to the face if he needs to because of his Healing Factor, and because his health gets built up so high (17 health once fully set up)

-Wolverine may be the character that In Harm’s Way provides the most value for in the entire game

No one has an easier time paying for In Harm’s Way than Logan, and the 6 damage, 6 thwart it provides in this build are each very valuable by themselves. The 6 thwart is especially valuable because this is his easiest source of threat removal and helps shore up his biggest weakness.

Threat Neutralized

In Harms Way isn’t your only tool for threat removal though.

Get Their Attention, although not being the most efficient thwart card in the game is still valuable, and Track by Scent feels a lot better to play now because it’s not your only thwart event. So you can decide to only pay for it when you have extra resources to burn or when you can capitalize on the 2 card draw kicker.

All of these cards work together to shore up what I think has always been Wolverine’s biggest weakness. And they help make each other card in his deck stronger by letting you apply his tools when they will be most valuable. I love Track by Scent, but up until now maximizing its value with the 2 card draw kicker felt very tough to pull off due to a lack of threat removal options. Thankfully that problem is now a thing of the past.

Going In For The Kill

In my experience finding a balance with Wolverine’s damage output can be tricky. I’ve tried him in all four aspects multiple times, and I find that he either has a completely overwhelming number of attack events, or he’s only running his signature attack events and that’s it.

This deck helps Wolverine find his zen. You have 9 attack events in total. Good for roughly 1 in every hand.

This gives you a strong consistent output of damage without forcing you to neglect the rest of the board state.

I recognize that this does sacrifice a bit of Wolverine’s max damage output in favor of controlling the board a bit better, but I’m a board control player so I don’t mind sacrificing a touch of his top end power to help shore up his other weaknesses.

That being said, dealing 15 damage in one turn is not at all difficult to do with this deck.

Anyways, that’s about it. Let me know if you have any questions and I hope you enjoy!