The Painting Tiger of Kunwu

Eat your vegetables – Kunwu's Iron Rule of the Earth

Latest version: V5

Season: Spacetime Mirage

Updated on: 8-Jun-2025

Introduction/Overview

At first glance, the Kunwu Tiger is a relatively simple character to play, and he probably is. Thematically, he was designed as a slow, beefy character that hits hard.

Tiger has a powerful game plan, and if left un-countered, will tend to overpower a lot of other builds. That's part of the reason why his win-rate at "lower MMR" (roughly under 4000) tends to be higher.

Unfortunately, once his game plan is countered, Tiger will struggle due to his natural playstyle being relatively inflexible, making it harder for him to adjust around these counters. Finding a way around these counters was the main bulk of what I did during the time I was stuck at 4,000 ~ 4,500 MMR. Starting from this MMR, people will start to play around/counter your board a lot more (among other things, which will be discussed later), and a new game plan other than “cope till P5” was needed.

Being the 2nd character from the bottom in SenpaiBlank's tier list, and universally recognized by the Discord community as a "weaker" character during the early season of Life Shop, Tiger is probably not for you if you're looking for a character to climb MMR quickly with. However, if you simply like his playstyle and want to find ideas on how to pilot him & find decent success on Ranked Mode, read on :) By the time of the guide’s 2nd revision, I’ve used it to climb up to #1 on Mu Hu’s Dao Mindset leaderboard, so it’s certainly a viable way to play him.

General Build Concept

Tiger is unable to naturally activate any element other than Earth & Metal (with Kunwu Metal Ring), so Earth & Metal is the most natural way to play him. This guide will only discuss this "natural" direction, and not any other alternative (e.g. Water Tiger, UWF Tiger), as I believe that for each of those other things, there will be someone (or everyone) that does it better than Tiger).

We will almost always go second (speed has been the dominant meta since day 1, pretty much), and there’s not much we can do to change that, due to our P1 Fate not offering any extra cultivation. Embracing this fact, we choose to:

Bulk up, so we can hopefully survive the initial beatdown from faster characters.
Hold cards without reservation, especially in P5, where we can afford to hold both Tech cards & even an alternate build. Our “final form” of the build is holding both a Mono-metal & Mono-earth line on our hand and swapping between them on an as-needed basis based on match up.

Side-job Discussion

This is the "Painter Tiger" guide, so it's obvious which side-job we will choose. However, we will also briefly discuss other side jobs & how they might fit our playstyle/game plan.

Elixirist: Probably the most "supportive" side job, as their cards almost exclusively give stat buff, and don't enable additional build paths/directions. Can go relatively well with Metal as metal is functional within itself without help. Earth needs more help to be enabled though.
Fuluist: Tend to go well with jobs that use a lot of Qi (not Tiger) and need tempo advantage (that's not our game plan for this kind of Tiger).
Musician: There is a Musical/Water Tiger build out there, with a logical game plan. I don't think it's very strong though, and we won't discuss it here.
Painter: Painter is chosen because it allows for the most consistency, while only giving up a little bit of ceiling/high-roll potential.

Flying Brush being a combo-enabler allows us to do huge damage with Landslide, among other things.
Extra exchanges help us a lot as a whole, as we hurt for exchanges a lot, especially in P2, P3 and P5.
Ask Dao by Paint being a P3 card is great, as most of our mid-game stability (P3 & P4) comes from our P3 cards, being able to exchange your “Ask Dao” immediately as you get them feels really nice.

Formation Master: FM theoretically offers the highest potential ceiling for a "strongest scaling Earth board" that a Tiger can field. It takes hitting a lot of specific high-level cards to get there, though, and is kind of flat when you don't so I don't prefer this option.

Choosing “Formation Master” if you choose to take Additional Side Job in P4 is quite reasonable, especially if you have locked Heavenly Marrow Rhythm during Daoist Omen.

Plant Master: PM is almost Elixirist, but better (though harder to properly utilize), and is a "best job" for quite a number of characters. Unfortunately, like Elixirist, it doesn’t fit with our overall game plan.

Gameplay Strategy

Tiger is a slow character, without any native cultivation gain, so competing in speed with the natural speedsters (Yan Xue, Yao Ling, Nangong, etc.) is a lost cause.

Since we are going second anyway, we can afford to hold cards without reservation. This affords us the ability to hold tech cards, or even entire alternate boards on hand without fear of losing the speed edge (since we have none to begin with).

Going second means the opponent will almost certainly get to finish their cycle/damage combo first. We need to bulk up to survive it, then dish out our own. This mindset will show clearly in our Fates choices, to be discussed in more detail below.

Seasonal Mechanics (Spacetime Mirage): This season’s mechanics provide either permanent benefits (cult/exchanges) to characters, or give them access to special sect cards that come from the future.

Best: As of this update’s time of writing (8-June-2025) there is no other option we will take over the guaranteed future card

M - Earth Spirit - Mountains: gives us more option (and a great option at that) going into a mono-earth late game.

Phase 1: Meditation Phase (R1 - R2)

There are 2 goals for this phase:

Don't use any exchanges, we'll need a lot of them soon --> just construct a board based on whatever junk you get. Losing early rounds doesn't deal a lot of destiny damage, and we will live with that.
Prioritize eating Wood card: We will need to roll a lot after breakthrough in R3 to find a Formation, and hopefully a board. We don’t like to roll away our vegetables since we eventually want to eat them.

With that, just build whatever cope board we can for R1 & R2, without using any exchange. Remember to front-load your damage to minimize destiny lost due to losses (if any).

Phase 2: Foundation Phase (R3 ~ R5)

Immortal Fates: Personal Fate, always. As discussed in "General Strategy", we want to bulk up to survive, so taking Tiger's personal fate is a given.

“Echo of The Dao” Update (12-Mar): We are exclusively picking vegetables here. Pick anything else (including the honorable mentions below) at your own risk.

Honorable mention: V3 Update: added some notes on certain Fate choices here found during 9k+ climb

Way of Adaptation: If the lobby has a lot of early pressure (e.g. Wu Ce, Xiao Bu, Wu Xingzhi), this may be preferred in order to give us stronger P2-P3 boards (and stronger transit boards, by extension).
Shattered Dao: Similar to Way of Adaptation, but slightly worse (it gives stronger board on R3, but ends up with less chance to draw key cards like Formation overall).
Fortune & Luck. A lot of P2 & P3 pets, artifacts & secret enchantments are a huge power boost when you get them on R3. Additionally, the extra 1 cultivation may help win fights at this stage when non-Long Yao characters have yet to manifest their natural speed advantage.

Daoist Rhyme Omen: Our top choices are rather static, while a few cards that are “on the cusp” are really lobby/meta dependent.

“Spacetime Mirage” Update (8-June): Updated some choices here.

Best:

Flying Brush: Flying Brush enables both of our Earth boards, while still remaining quite useful on our Metal board.
Heavenly Marrow Rhythm: With the high combo ability of M - Mountains, this can help us win some early P5 match-ups even without Combine World, so we rate this higher than Combine World.
Combine World: Combine World gets our Earth Board going so hard, it really doesn’t feel too bad to lock it, even if we only get it on R12.

Decent:

Shuttle: Not as good as Flying Brush end-game, but tends to stabilize your P4 nicely without a need to expend too much of your rolls.

Situational: These choices are really MU/lobby-dependent. Outside of their niche situations, picking 1 cultivation is usually better.

Tripod: If you managed to find a Metal Formation before Daoist Omen, and the lobby is somewhat metal-vulnerable, it might be a decent option. Not worth locking otherwise.

Gameplay: The goal for this phase is to get at least 1 copy of Metal Formation or Earth Formation. For each round in this phase:

If I do not yet have Metal/Earth Formation, I roll aggressively until I have a functional board (prioritize Metal/Earth boards at this stage).

If we get wood cards during rolling, and still haven’t maxed out our P2 personal fates, feel free to eat the wood card.

If I already have Metal/Earth Formation, I roll only the side job card each turn, unless I have empty slots on the board, and unplayable cards, then I am inclined to roll more.

Note, I'm also slightly more inclined to roll more for upgrades if I have only Earth Formation & not Metal Formation. Metal is the much more consistent mid-game board, and an Earth board can be played w/o Earth Formation, but a Metal board absolutely needs Metal Formation.

Key card to look out for: Billows.

Most fights at this stage of the game lasts 8-9 turns, which means Billows gets insane value (14 ~ 24 dmg on average, depending on fights & upgrade). Our P3 board can also synergize with Billow better than most.
Billows are only worth it at level 2+, level 1 Billows is often not good enough to win you rounds (especially in P3)

“Spacetime Mirage” Update (8-June):

Exchanges going into P5 is more important now (since M-Mountains is just strictly better than Dust in most cases), so we can prioritize getting a formation a bit less, and save exchange if our board is already functional.

Phase 3: Virtuoso Phase (R6 ~ R8)

Immortal Fates: Personal Fates, always. Kunwu Metal ring is compulsory in 95%+ of our end-game boards.

Gameplay: The goal for this phase is to build a strong board, that will be the core board to sustain us going all the way to P5 with minimal upgrades in P4. P3 has a lot of our high-value cards, and a roll-down here until we get ~3 “key cards” will be enough to stabilize our board & have us winning most mid-game fights.

Some key notes:

Dust & Cliff are universally useful (Mountain is quite decent as well, especially if upgraded), while Charge & Sharp is only useful on a Metal Formation board.

Dust & Cliff are of so much value that often it’s worth it to play multiple un-upgraded copies of them at this stage. Unless, of course, when you can field multiple other good cards, then feel free to combine & upgrade them.

While we usually play a mixed board here, we tend to prefer an Earth-based board (especially with Formation) when we’re running Billow, since dragging the fight out allows Billow to get more value.
Vs other powerful boards that are also “hitting” on P3, pay attention to get extra values out of your cards. 2 most common way we try to find values are:

Getting a good Cliff in: Cliff-ing 1 of their big hits is huge value, if you manage to do it. Always go for Cliff value whenever possible.
Sharp lets you + 50% value for Penetrate stacks generated by Charge (or even Needle).

Even though it’s possible to break through P2 -> P3 early while playing 1-2 empty slots, it’s usually not worth it to do so. The exception being when you’re stuck playing level 1 Earth/Metal seal on your current board, then maybe it’s worth absorbing those to break through early.

Key card to look out for: Five Element Circulation (hereby referred to as Circ), Dust, Cliff, Charge, Sharp.

Circ > Billow opening is our mini “Spring Rain” and will hold our board together quite nicely in P3.

“Spacetime Mirage” Update (8-June):

Saving exchange is more important now. Once you feel like the board you have can last through P4, it’s time to stop rolling (more than 1/round). An example of what’s usually enough is Charge, Circ and Cliff/Dust (lobby-dependent, but this is usually enough to fight in P4 reasonably well).

“Echo of the Dao” Update (12-Mar):

Positioning your Cliff vs the Fortune-Teller Cloud Sword decks is very important. If you manage to put a big Cliff up against their Flying Fang sword, you win on the spot. Otherwise, we usually lose, since their P1 board is very oppressive in the early phases of the game.
Mid-game pressure is higher than ever before in the season of “Echo of the Dao”. With this, our Billows board (while still playable) is less preferred over direct damage boards (like Charge + Sharp, in P3).
On the same note, we deprioritize the Billow + Full Earth board in P4 even more, going for Metal (as long as enough pieces are available) despite potentially being able to assemble a very good Earth board most of the time. Situational judgement for specific lobbies & corresponding potential match-ups still applies, of course, but overall the generally safer choice is just Metal if you have the chance.
Vs healing decks, however, Billows boards are usually your best choice.

A typical mid-game P3 board may look something like this (differ depending on what you find, of course).

Phase 4: Immortality Phase (R9 ~ R12)

Immortal Fates:

If we have only Metal Formation, or if our Earth board is completely non-functional: Vigorous. (if neither your Metal nor your Earth board are functional by this point, you’re probably looking at a fast-8).
If we have an Earth board, but also have Metal Formation, we will still pick Vigorous if we can construct a 1-cycle-kill board with it. Usually this is possible if Penetrate Generation * Penetrate Conversion >= 14.(actual math is slightly more detailed, but the abbreviated version below is close enough).

Penetrate generation: score = sum of all the options below that are available to you

Charge: 4 points. (1 additional point if charge is upgraded).
Locked Shuttle: 3 points.
Lvl2 Needle or Circ (without Cliff): 2 points (notes that these 2 options are exclusive, meaning they don’t add up to additional points if you have both of this available)
Iron Bone: 2 points (actual damage value is closer to 1.5 points, but I give extra 0.5 to its high defensive utility, which tends to let you live longer & deliver 1 extra hit sometimes).
Upgraded Metal Formation: 1 point/upgrade level.

Penetrate conversion: score = sum of all the options below that are available to you

Vigorous: 1 point.
Circ (with Cliff): 1 point.
Sharp: 0.5 point.

If we don’t have any of the above (hopefully, you at least have an Earth Formation, else it’ll be rough), I take fates as follows:

Best:

Inheritance of Earth: Earth boards need a lot of help (Quicksand is especially helpful here). Also the extra cult to breakthrough to P5 on R11 (if desperate), or more cards to roll in R12, is nice.
Epiphany: Extra cult is very nice specifically for P4 ~ P5 transition, fixing our biggest weakness (and Destiny leak) in R12.

If you ever find yourself in this position (trying to breakthrough P3 -> P4 with a full Earth board), it’s best to burn all your exchanges in P3 before breaking through, because:

Earth boards need more help in P4 than Metal boards.
Having 0 exchanges let us pick Epiphany with no penalty.
If you do pick Epiphany, use 0 exchanges/round in p4, almost always. We need the rolls in P5.

Decent: Especially with Landslide Resonance, we can afford to take some much needed stats here.

Inheritance of Metal: Having a chance at Shuttle, along with 2 cults, is great.
Recuperate: R9 - R12 is usually tough, we need all the help we can to get there in 1 piece (more than 1 lives).
Bodybuilding.
Other +2 cult options.

Cope: Some marginally useful things. What you need may vary depending on your current game state, but in general these options should come in handy/useful. The order presented loosely reflects how good each of these options are, but take them with a fistful of salt, since Fate choices here are heavily context-dependent.

Solid Foundation: pickable again, but be very careful how the -2 Cult will affect your R12 breakthrough, and have a good idea what cards you can eat to break through when you do pick this, since you are likely to have to eat some decent cards.
Way of Adaptation: if your board really sucks and you need to roll to stabilize.
Shattered Dao: I really hope you don’t have to click this one.

Gameplay: The goal for this phase is to get to P5 safely, with a healthy amount of destiny, while conserving our exchanges as much as possible (i almost never exchange here other than using Practice Writing or Reason by Analogy). Usually, we would have built a powerful board on P4, and function reasonably well with just Vigorous, any additional Shuttle or Iron Bone (for metal boards) is a nice bonus. Earth boards tend to need more help in this stage though.

Some key notes:

Metal Board: We transition out of Billow immediately once we get here.

Ideally our payout is Vigorous > Sharp > damage card (Dust/Heart Pierce), which lets us scale Penetrate by 2.5 times. However, this combined with our Kunwu + Formation, means that we only have 3 cards for build-up Shuttle, Charge, Iron Bone) or filler at the end.
Circ > Vigorous (after having built up some Penetrate), or even Circ > Metal Formation are fine transitional boards. However, considering we only have 3 slots for build-up & flexing, feel free to drop the Circ combo once you’ve hit a few cards.

1 thing of note when using Circ, is that it tends to make a chunk of your board stuck together, making it harder to adjust (e.g. Cliff-ing the right things).

Iron Bone placement can help a lot, try to use your Iron Bone to catch as many hits as possible.
Sharp does VERY poorly into defense-stacking boards. Consider an alternate payout (Heart Pierce, Dust, etc.) when fighting these boards, if possible.

Earth Board:

We run mostly Earth cards here, with Quicksand as the ideal payout. Without Quicksand, we have no damage & get run over by most things that scale or apply DoT.
In straight-up value battles (like vs Hexes board, or Spirit Sword Boards, or Metal boards) we may not even lose in the value, so use your judgement to see whether you can save rolls to P5 here without losing too much Destiny.

It’s almost never worth continuing to run Billow here. Have an idea of “how your P4 board will look like” before breaking through, then sell the right cards (Billows usually among them).
As usual, getting a good Cliff in is still good. Unless you’ve assembled a power-board with good Vigorous + Charge payout, then getting extra value from Cliff may not be as important.
Similarly to Cliff, try to connect with as many hits from your opponent board while under Iron Bone buff as possible while keeping it in front of Vigorous).

Key card to look out for: Shuttle (!), Iron Bone, Quicksand (if you’re running an Earth board only). P3 key cards are still good finds here.

Steep is awkward to find in this phase, as you almost never play it (almost never on Metal, not that often even on Earth), but you want to keep it for P5. Usually finding a Steep & holding onto an Earth Formation can delay your breakthrough by 1 round.

A few sample mid-game P4 boards may look like this. Again, play around your high-value counter cards like Cliff and/or Iron Bone, or set up a value chain (if high Penetrate generation) with Vigorous & Sharp.

Sample Metal Boards

Sample Earth Board

Phase 5: Incarnation Phase

Immortal Fates:

Innate Fates - Landslide: we pick this 80% of the time, in the following scenarios.

If we are playing an Earth Board -> always pick Landslide.
If we are playing a Metal Board, and any of the following is true, we pick Landslide.

We are healthy destiny-wise, and there is at least 1 Earth-weak board left in the lobby (there almost always is, Earth has more favourable MUs than Metal, in general).
If our destiny is <35, but we locked Flying Brush during Omen (sometimes even Combine World is enough), and the immediate next match is not vs a hard counter/bad MU.
Our Metal board has been losing, and we don’t see “Inheritance of Metal” as a P5 Fate -> we might prefer to pick Landslide & hail-mary swap anyway (since Earth has more favourable match-ups in general, and Metal without Tripod just doesn’t work P5).
There are no good Fates to be picked in “Other Fates”, we hail-mary anyway.

Other Fates: In the sad event that we can’t afford to pick Landslide, we’ll have to choose between a few alternatives:

Best:

Inheritance of Metal: If we’re stuck on mono-metal, having a chance at Tripods & Shuttles is always nice.
Recuperate: If it’s not desperate, we would’ve already picked Landslide.

Cope: Bulking up is usually no longer enough at this stage, especially for mono-metal, so we no longer have preference for Bodybuilding or Meteor Quench.

Shattered Dao: Draws a bunch of cards & hope that will fix our dying board.
Tool Governor: Painters have a few nice cards, hopefully we draw those.
Solid Foundation: Our mini-Recuperate. Having additional HP to go with is nice too.

Gameplay:

“Cycle of Fate” Update (2-July): General mindset:

Metal: Metal is fairly straightforward. It’s almost exclusively a burst deck which operates quite linearly:

Can they burst you down faster than you burst them?

No: Play your standard burst line, tech-ing as needed (e.g. Heart Pierce) vs their anticipated counter.
Yes: Putting up defenses to prevent you from dying (Combine World, Iron Bone, or sometimes even both), then burst them down.

Earth: Earth is a very flexible deck that presents a lot of options (unfortunately, this also means that you are more prone to choose the “wrong” option, and “misplay”).

At the core, Earth is a deck that uniquely provides all 3 of:

Big burst damage: This can range from 3TK/4TK threats, to 100->0 lethal after tanking up for a few turns.
Tanky defenses: This is native to mono-earth in 5-element.
High scaling: Also native to mono-earth, providing us advantages vs other scaling match-ups like vs Sword Formation or Mono-Water.

At the risk of over-simplifying things, the basic mindset of playing late-game mono-earth as Mu Hu starts with identifying whether bursting or scaling is the answer (when in doubt, bursting is probably better, like the saying goes in Chinese: “Long night, many dreams/nightmares”).

If “bursting” is the answer, identify which turn is the right one to burst. Note that keeping your Combine World stack up going into the burst turn is important (almost mandatory). With the exception of P5 DX where Dust might work as a poor man’s substitute.
If “scaling” is the answer, this is simpler, cuz usually in these cases the game lasts for too many rounds to properly calculate. Just avoid key match-up specific stuff (like getting Combine World chipped off cheaply).

Beyond that, there’s not much to be said about gameplay in this phase. You pick between Metal/Earth lines (or hybrid, in some cases) based on who your next opponent is, adjust as best as you can, and hope that you come out on top. More specific notes to be found in section “Match Up Discussions”.

Sample late-game boards:

Some sample of the most common boards that we run in P5 are: - pending updated late-game boards -

1. Variant #1: Scaling Earth

2. Variant #2: Hybrid Scaling Earth

3. Variant #3: Bursty Earth

Outside of the 2 outlined variants, the line can be extended a little bit into 5TK or even 6TK, depending on when the ideal burst window is (keeping at least 1 Combine World stack up is key).

3.1 Sub-variant: 3-turn-kill

3.2 Sub-variant: 4-turn-kill

4. Variant #4: Metal

Match-up Discussion

“Cycle of Fate” Update (2-July): –update in-progress–

Duan Xuan:

Crash Fist: Earth Tiger generally dominate this match-up, you can just play normally here, it is their game to lose.
Debuff: The usual mind-game/dance with Predicament of the Immortal still applies, of course. The good thing with this MU is that unlike when being against other people, we usually out-speed these Debuff Musicians. Under the assumption that you guess right about Predicament:

With predicament: This is the more difficult line since they can usually just front-load their healing enough that sometimes you just don’t have enough damage.

The goal here is to deal as much damage as possible by turn 5 (depending on their upgrades it can be slightly different, but T5 is a good guess most of the time), depending on your upgrade, whichever line among Earth/Metal hat will do more damage will work. If they run Weakened + Cocentric Tunes/Cleave --> usually this is Metal.

Apr-9 Update: Following your Landslide with as many Quicksand as you can (and as upgraded as you can) tend to do the job, so if you are in a lobby with Musical Xiao Bu, and can afford to hold onto Quicksand, you should, you will almost certainly need to run it at some point vs her. Don’t delay damage since she will most likely heal up with Soul Seizing if you give her the chance.

Without predicament: Just run your best Bursty Earth (or Metal, if it’s much more upgraded) here. Somehow the goal here is the same, kill in 5 (or in 4, if they are very upgraded, in which case Bursty Earth is your only choice).

RKP: The standard 4TK line works most of the time, beware to make according adjustments when they run Vine, though.

Most notably, if you expect them to play Frozen Blood Lotus before your burst on T4, you can extend it & burst on 5 with this line

5-Element Alliance:

UWF: There are a lot of variants for UWF decks, some are unique to Nangong Sheng.

UWF Prairie Combine World: Scaling/Hybrid Earth tends to crush this deck, even with less upgraded cards.
UWF Heart Fire + Penetrate: These usually run Combine World for defense & Ignore DEF to bypass our Earth. There’s very little we can do vs them. Bursty Earth can kill if they don’t pick P4 innate. If not, we probably just lose.
UWF Thorn Prairie: Most lines do decently vs this, but Mono-Metal with Iron Bone just crushes it.
UWF Iron Bone Combine Rivers: Scaling/Hybrid Earth is slightly favoured in this match-up (depending on corresponding upgrades on both sides) if they Circ > Greate Waves. If they Circ anything else, we just crush. The most important thing in the match-up is avoid letting them chip your Combine World stacks with Plum Blossom Seal or Forest Guard.

World Smash: Apr-17 Update

vs non-Elixirist: This is usually easy, they almost never kill 1st cycle, and only puts up a token amount of defenses most of the time, so just set up a 5TK (or 6TK if you’re faster).
vs Elixirists: Earth usually does better here, since we need to survive multiple cycles vs their Ice Guard Elixir. Try to build your deck with the normal combo order, but also achieve the following: (1) have Combine World up turn 2 and (2) have some extra hits outside of just Landslide (Cliff & Shuttle both work decently well here). This sample solution from Adthor illustrates this nicely.

Mono-Earth: Heart Pierce tech in Mono-metal wins this MU.
Mono-Water: Mono-Earth wins this match-up handily (Metal wins too if they don’t run early Combine Rivers, and instead runs Dive), the only thing you should pay attention to is to not lose Combine World stack easily to chips from Peach Blossom Seal, or Forest Guard. Sample board:

Mono-Fire: Just rush them down with Metal, (or Earth, if your Earth line can also kill in 5).
Mono-Wood: Metal + Iron Bone just crushes here if they run no Guard Up. If they run Ice Guard Elixir, put your Tripod early so it loops around & kills them at the start of 2nd cycle, once the Guard Up stacks has been chipped off (this stops working once they are sufficiently upgraded, after which point we don’t have very good answer other than trying for a 4TK ourselves (maxed Metal Formation, Charge & upgraded Tripod is needed).
Wood-Fire: A popular build in season of Spacetime Mirage (mostly QWY, DLY, but also run by others). The goal here is to survive their initial burst, then kill them before they loop around. Sample board:

If they have maxed IGE, you might need to be trickier & run something like this:

Mono-Metal: we have the mind-game advantage here. Mono-Earth crushes them if they don’t have Heart Pierce tech, but if they tech in Heart Pierce, our Metal line will wreck them since Heart Pierce is a terrible payout for their Penetrate stacks.
Overcome: Only “MWF Overcome” is really seen on the ladder now. Either way, Scaling/Hybrid Earth deals well with almost all variants of Overcome. Metal also does well vs MWF.

Heptastar Pavilion:

Hexagram Formacide: We usually have the advantage here, until they max out everything & kill us too quickly (T3).

If they run Ice Guard Elixir, Scaling Earth is better.
If they run full offensive, Hybrid/Bursty Earth is better.

Polaris Starpower:

If they run Ice Guard Elixir, it is a difficult match-up. Iron Bone + Metal, putting your Tripod in front to have it hit right after you eat through the Guard Up stacks & hope that it kills
If they don’t run any Ice Guard Elixir (aka full-on offensive), Iron Bone Metal or Bursty Earth tend to both do OK.

HHH Wu Ce: This is another difficult MU, if they run multiple Escape Plans, we just lose. We treat this the same as with Force + Plant, run Bursty Earth & hope they let you burst them down before putting up their Guard Up stack (putting Cliff before Landslide may help here if they run a single Guard Up).

If you’re up against Cide, this is a reasonable line to try

Music Healer: This build is only available in the season of Spacetime Mirage (with M-Incessant). They usually run it with Predicament of the Immortal (without Predicament, just run a basic scaling setup & win easily). Sample board vs Predicament Healer

Debuff Yan Chen: Same as Debuff Xiao Bu. The usual mind-game/dance with Predicament of the Immortal still applies, of course. Under the assumption that you guess right about Predicament:

With predicament: This is the more difficult line since they can usually just front-load their healing enough that sometimes you just don’t have enough damage.

The goal here is to deal as much damage as possible by turn 5 (depending on their upgrades it can be slightly different, but T5 is a good guess most of the time), depending on your upgrade, whichever line among Earth/Metal will do more damage will work. If they run Weakened + Cocentric Tunes/Cleave --> usually this is Metal.

Without predicament: Just run your best Bursty Earth (or Metal, if it’s much more upgraded) here. Somehow the goal here is the same, kill in 5 (or in 4, if they are very upgraded, in which case Bursty Earth is your only choice).

Stunner Jiang Xi Min: Same as with other MU, just try to burst him down before he goes into his stunning cycle. You usually have 1 chance to hit him. If he doesn’t run Escape Plan, stacking up on Penetrate (by replacing Shuttles with Charge) tends to do the job.

Cloud Spirit Sword Sect:

Fulu Dharma: This MU is rough if they high-roll

If they keep a Qi Perfusion, just run your best burst & hope for the best.
If they don’t run Qi Perfusion, and you can put up enough Defense to not die (do math!!), then it’s better to do that, else it’s the same “kill them first or die trying” strategy.

Sword Formation: Scaling/Hybrid Earth crushes this match-up.
Painter Long Yao: There’s almost nothing we can do here, especially if they find Finishing Touch & upgrade their Sky Bracelet. Run your best Earth line, put Cliff before Landslide, and hope for the best. (Spacetime Mirage update (8-June-2025): with M-Mountains there is probably something we can do here. But Painter Long Yao pretty much no longer exists, so we have had no practical experience to put a sample board in pplace)
Musical Long Yao: Most of them run Earth Tune, time Landslide immediately after Earth Tune for an easy win. If they don’t, try to run your Landslide early to strip down their defenses & not let them build it up. This MU is 40/60 when played right, we’re still behind though.
Chaos Cat (or other Sword Intent variants from non Catgirl):

If they try to kill in 5, Iron Bone + Combine World is usually enough to survive, after which their deck tends to just fizzle out.
If they try to run longer lines to build up more Sword Intent for a sure kill, we can just ignore defense & rush them down first.

ATK Up Multi-hit: Iron Bone Metal works well here. Bursty Earth doesn’t do too badly either.

(Spacetime Mirage update (8-June-2025): Iron Bone doesn’t work well enough vs the new variant of multi-hit MYF, so the preferred approach here is to use Earth. Sample board (same concept as vs QWY: survive the first cycle, then burst them when they loop around):

Unrestrained Sword: Iron Bone + Metal crushes them.
Cloud Sword (really, only Yan Xue is ever seen with this deck):

Scaling/Hybrid Earth & Bursty Earth are both 50/50 lines, depending on how many Step Lightly she draws. If she high-rolls, we tend to just lose.
Against the Step Lightly version, if you can make sure to hit their defense wall with Heart Pierce, the follow-up Vigorous & Tripod will kill, in which case this is the most consistent answer.

General Gameplay Tips & Tricks

About rolling: Note that none of these rolling “tricks” substantially improve your card quality, or your game. They are just some min/max-ing that will maybe (hopefully) help you push you over the edge 1 in 50 or 100 games.

A large part of our end-game success depends on whether we get Flying Brush in P5. Therefore, as much as possible we try to exchange side-job cards during rolling, to maximize the chance of drawing Flying Brush in P5 via natural start-of-turn draws.
During P2, P3 and P4, prioritize rolling away cards from that phase first. This is because the first exchange will be more likely to give a card from the same phase, and by thinning out unwanted cards from the card pool of “current phase” we can have a slightly better chance of getting what we need. Especially in P2 & P3, this will be more helpful as P2 holds cards that will make or break our board (Metal/Earth formation), and P3 just has a lot of value cards in general.

About losing: Of course we want to win, but when it looks unlikely that we can win, try to front-load your damage more, that way even if you lose, you’ll have brought your opponent low, thus reducing destiny loss. Destiny loss is calculated based on HP difference between you & your opponent when the battle ends.

Version History

There have been (and will be) multiple updates made to the guide as I discover something new. These minor changes, however, won’t be recorded. Only the major updates will be documented here.

Version 1: Initial version. Wrote this when I first got over 6000 MMR in the season of “Life Shop”.
Version 2 (April 09, 2024): Updated with additional information I learned, as well as gameplay adjustments during my climb from 6000 MMR to 9000 MMR in the season of “Life Shop”.

Updated Fates Selection for P4.
Updated 1st Daoist Rhyme Omen selection.
Added sample boards for P4 & P5.
Updated match-up discussions.

Version 3 (April 29, 2024): Added notes about P2 Fate selection.
Version 4 (July 02, 2024): Major updates for Season of “Cycle of Fates”, including

Fate Branches preference.
Fate selection for P2, P4, P5.
Gameplay notes for P3, P4.
Late-game:

General mindset/approach to late-game as painter Mu Hu (mostly Earth).
Updated sample boards to include more late-game Bursty Earth variants.

Match-up Discussion: is too long due to meta changes & re-assessment needed across multiple matchups. Pending completion in a future update.

Version 5 (April 20, 2025): Updated for Echo of the Dao, upon reaching rank #1.
Version 6 (June 08, 2025): Updated for Spacetime Mirage, upon reaching rank #1.