Sanae Kochiya

Sanae Character Mod

Adds Sanae as a playable character.

Overview (as of v0.4.2):

Colors: White, Blue and Green.
Cards: 76
Exhibits: 5 (including Starter Exhibits)

This is an Early Access version - it's in a "complete" and playable state since its card collection is complete.
(idk what to call the stage between the beta and full release other than "Early Access", so yeah)
It's missing a lot of card art, needs some balancing, and probably some other minor things too.

Main Themes:

Power (Green): With her godly heritage, Sanae has the ability to invoke miracles by gathering enough faith. Sanae's Spell Cards contain the unique property of requiring half the amount of Power to use, while keeping the same amount of Power capacity. This means you can hold up to 4 charges of Spell Cards, which can also be used multiple times per turn.
Coupled with her cards which generate Power and her Exhibit which provides Block on Spell Card use, you're incentivised to use it well and use it often.

Ward (White): Sanae works as a shrine maiden under her two gods, and is capable of handling tasks a shrine maiden would do. By generating Ward, she can exile Status cards before they're added, preventing the hassle of dealing with them while they're in the hand.
You can expect to have 2-5 Ward during combat, and 7-10+ if you lean hard into Ward generation.

Auto-Exile (Blue and Green): Reimu, as a vanilla character in LBoL, makes use of Exile to trigger certain effects (ie. Edge of Fantasy, Hakurei Illusion).
In response, Sanae makes use of Auto-Exile, the cooler™ and definitely more usable™ keyword.
Auto-Exile exiles the leftmost card in the hand with the keyword, whenever you draw cards with an already-full hand. It's difficult to describe how to use this without spoiling too much, so I recommend trying it out for yourself.

Sub Themes:

Amulet (White and Green): Amulets can be used to negate enemy debuffs before they're applied, protecting you from their potentially harmful effects. While they're usually very difficult to obtain, Sanae is able to reliably generate them under some conditions.
You can expect to have 0-1 Amulet during combat, and 2-4+ if you lean hard into Amulet generation.

Moriya Talismans (White and Blue): Sanae's token card is the Moriya Talisman, and unlike other token cards this one is an Unplayable Status card. In order to gain its Block and Barrier you have to Exile it, which can mainly be done via Ward or Auto-Exile, the two previously mentioned themes.
In exchange, these cards scale incredibly well with Spirit (multiplied by 2 due to the separate Block/Barrier gains, and multiplied by the amount of cards added), which provides a reliable defensive core to allow you to spend mana on attacking without getting hurt.

Deck Shuffling and Scrying (Blue): Shuffling the deck returns all cards from the discard pile to the draw pile, and then randomises their order. Sanae can manually trigger deck shuffling, allowing her to play important cards then shuffle them back in an attempt to play them again quicker.
Scrying can also be used to send more cards to the discard pile in order to empty the draw pile and trigger a reshuffle, which supplements this idea of looping the deck as many times as possible for benefits.

Extra Concepts:

Ability Usage (Green and Offcolor): The Act 3 boss Sanae gains Firepower whenever you play an Ability, and you can experience the act of generating abilities and buffing yourself up too! (as long as you find the right cards)

Spirit (White, Blue, and Offcolor): Reimu uses Firepower and Temporary Firepower to beat down enemies before they can attack, so in response Sanae uses Spirit and Temporary Spirit to bolster their already strong defenses and prevent the enemy from dealing damage.

Enforced Setbacks/Challenges:

Lack of Accurate attacks: Similar to Sakuya, Sanae doesn't have many Accurate attacks in her non-neutral library. (2 cards, 5 in total with upgrades)
If you can't find any Accurate attacks - you will have to use multi-hits or direct damage, or use your Accurate Spell Card to remove Graze.

Ward and Amulet management: With easy access to both Ward and Amulet, you might think that enemies who utilise statuses and debuffs will become a cakewalk. However, there are some Sanae cards which cost Ward/Amulet to use, which means that you will have to compete with enemies if you want to make use of those effects. If you ever end up adding a Moriya Talisman with no Ward on hand and no way to overdraw, that card is going to sit there and do nothing.

Hand size management: If you're aiming to Auto-Exile cards, you need a full hand first. But at the same time, there are some cards which add cards to the hand and you need some hand space in order for them to resolve fully. Balancing between having a full hand to exile cards and not having a full hand to add them is important to make note of.

Additional notes

Sanae portrait by alphes, from Touhou 12.3
Korean Translation by coward_montblanc

Bug reports, card suggestions, etc. are appreciated. For feedback, post your suggestions in the modding channel in the LBoL discord.