CHARACTER SECRET LAIRS: TOUHOU PROJECT

For now, I only have Secret Lairs for Patchouli Knowledge and Remilia Scarlet. These two being both from the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is only technically a coincidence, or something. Look, part of this is a gag about how severely certain projects, including Touhou LostWord, shill EoSD. Anyway, Patchouli is my favorite 2hu by a pretty wide margin. I had to make these two as a pair pretty much by default. Originally I had been designing UB commander decks for the franchise, featuring a deck with Patchouli, Remilia, Sakuya and Meiling using a unique mechanic called "four of a kind" that was basically a partner mechanic to use all four of them. Not well-balanced and not a thing that's even really reusable. This is probably better.

I don't have illustrations for all of these cards. If you have ideas for things from actual official Touhou media, let me know.

Here are some explanations for why things are what they are with these:

• Patchouli, One-Week Witch is a glass cannon due to her poor physical health but her incredibly powerful spell cards. Synergizing with her spellslinging and her intelligence and desire to learn (represented by card draw) is her ability to trade cards for prowess counters - mechanically inspired by Emissary of Soulfire.
• Patchouli's Servitor represents the nameless little devil, usually called "Koakuma" (Japanese for "little devil") and treated as a separate character. But she... really isn't. Sin Prodder plays to her wanting to draw cards, and its burn represents the highly aggressive nature of her own magic, something which her servants would probably also have.
• Royal Flare is a potentially very powerful damage spell; Royal Flare is typically considered one of her most difficult spell cards to beat. Why is it Kaervek's Torch, though? Out of all of these spells, Kaervek's Torch is one of the most closely associated with the sun due to its flavor text; Royal Flare is a sun-based spell. Also it probably deserves a reprint.
• Grim Tutor represents Patchouli's tendency to not pay a lot of attention to her health in her pursuit of knowledge. A lot of her health problems are caused by such things as experimenting with mercury.
• Mana Flare Is mostly just synergistic with her other spells, but it can be taken as representing her ability to cast spells unusually fast.
• Stroke of Genius, um, speaks for itself.

• Remilia, Scarlet Devil's wheel effect on entering fits with her theme of having fate-manipulating abilities (even though she doesn't use them) and synergizes nicely with her best friend. She even makes (some of) your creatures into vampires!
• The Scarlet Devil Mansion was almost required to be Xander's Lounge. The triomes (which I'm using to include the SNC lands) are so good and need to be reprinted, a lot.
• Timestream Navigator is Sakuya. Sakuya isn't a pirate, but whatever, she's a creature who can do a time thing. Why do I keep putting so many extra-turn cards into these things? Is it just that extra turns are the most, uh... if there was such a thing as a "Blue Timmy" effect, that'd be it, huh?
• Blood Tribute is because she's a vampire. I got nothin'.
• Wheel of Fate fits, as usual, with her fate-manipulation ability which she doesn't really use.
• Blade of the Bloodchief references a couple of her spell cards, specifically "Divine Spear "Spear the Gungnir,"" but several other spell cards and attacks have a similar slashing style, so her using a bladed weapon doesn't seem completely implausible

PATCHOULI KNOWLEDGE

REMILIA SCARLET

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