Zhuge Jin 6
Zhuge Jin 诸葛瑾
Conscientious Ambassador of the Alliance 


Make Peace 言和
If Zhuge Jin is not at his maximum health level at the beginning of his turn, he can select another character with equipment in their equipment area. He then selects X of their equipped cards and places them in their hand. X is defined as the difference between Zhuge Jin's maximum and current health levels.  

Sorrow Between Brothers 忧戚
Awakened Ability: If Zhuge Jin has only one unit of health at the beginning of his turn, he must reduce his maximum health level by one. He then permanently acquires "Empty City" and "Alliance."
Clarification:
  • Note that "Make Peace" happens at the beginning of his turn, before his judgement phase. In fact, in QSanGuoSha, "Make Peace" occurs before "Sorrow Between Brothers" is activated. 
  • Zhuge Jin cannot target himself with "Make Peace."
  • In QSanGuoSha, Zhuge Jin cannot return fewer than X pieces of equipment to a targets hand when he activates "Make Peace." For example, if Zhuge Jin is missing two units of health and targets a character that has three pieces of equipment with "Make Peace," he cannot choose to only return one piece of equipment to that character's hand - he must return two. If a target has fewer pieces of equipment in their equipment area than X, all pieces of equipment are returned to the target's hand. We are unsure if this is how the designer of this card intended for this ability to work, but this is how QSanGuoSha handles this ability.
  • Remember that "Sorrow Between Brothers" is an Awakened Ability. Zhuge Jin cannot choose to not activate this ability once the conditions are met.
  • "Empty City" is one of Zhuge Liang's abilities. It is an enforced ability that prevents other characters from targeting him with an Attack or Duel when he has no hand cards.
  • "Alliance" is one of Lu Su's abilities. It allows him to choose two characters and discard X cards, X being the difference between the numbers of cards in each of their hands. These two characters then swap hands.
    Strengths Weaknesses 
    • "Make Peace" is useful against enemies with +1 Horses and armor equipped, particularly if they are to Zhuge Jin's left (as they will be without this defensive equipment for many turns). It can also be useful if used on allies with weapons, as they will be protected from Coerce if their weapons are not in their equipment area. Use this second option carefully though, as in QSanGuoSha Zhuge Jin must return X cards to the hand of the target and it may result in armor or +1 Horses being returned to your ally's hand. Additionally, if your ally is the target of Capture, they may have to lose this peace of equipment in their next discard phase.
    • "Make Peace," "Alliance," and "Empty City" are useful together. "Make Peace" can be used to return equipment to an enemy's hand. Then, Zhuge Jin can activate "Alliance" to make this enemy swap hands with one of Zhuge Jin's allies, forcing the enemy to lose both hand cards and their originally-equipped cards. Finally, it is easy to end Zhuge Jin's turn with no hand cards to activate "Empty City" since he has to discard cards to activate "Alliance."
    • "Make Peace" is typically not useful against enemies with only weapons and -1 Horses. To put some perspective on the usefulness of this ability, +1 Horses and armor account for only 6.3% of the standard deck. When an enemy has one of these pieces of equipment equipped, this power is quite useful. However, this ability may not be useful every turn before "Sorrow Between Brothers" is activated.
    • The activation condition of "Sorrow Between Brothers" is that Zhuge Jin must start his turn with only one unit of health remaining. Unfortunately, this ability does not provide him with any way to regain health. As a result, he might not live very long to enjoy the two additional abilities after "Sorrow Between Brothers" is activated.
    • While "Alliance" and "Empty City" are outstanding abilities, they do not work as well together as they do with the other abilities of Lu Su and Zhuge Liang respectively. "Alliance" works best after Lu Su draws two additional cards via "Charity," as he can make two characters with a greater difference in cards swap hands. "Empty City" works best after Zhuge Liang uses "Astrology" to rearrange the top few cards of the deck to ensure that he gets exactly the cards that he needs so he can end with no hand cards. 

    Notable Combinations: 
    • Ling Tong/New Ling Tong/Sun Shang Xiang - These characters have abilities that activate when equipment leaves their equipment area. Zhuge Jin can be a good ally for these characters, as "Make Peace" allows him to frequently return these cards to their hands. However, these characters also have leverage over Zhuge Jin if they are enemies as "Make Peace" is not a good option to employ when fighting them.
    • Guo Jia/Liu Bei/Xu Shu - These characters have abilities that allow them to give other characters cards. These abilities could disrupt Zhuge Jin's "Empty City."
    • Dian Wei/Xun Yu/Xun You/Yuan Shao/Sun Lu Ban/Zhang Jiao - These characters have abilities that either allow them to cause direct damage or more easily use Barbarians or Hail of Arrows. This allows them to bypass "Empty City."
    KingZhuge Jin is a poor king choice. His abilities are not powerful enough to sustain him when he is the center of attention. Despite what one might think, the additional unit of health does not make "Make Peace" significantly more powerful.
    LoyalistZhuge Jin is a decent loyalist choice. "Make Peace" is useful for removing the defensive equipment of the rebels. Once "Sorrow Between Brothers" is activated, Zhuge Jin can use his abilities to strip an enemy of their armor and transfer it to the king via "Alliance."
    RebelZhuge Jin is a decent rebel. Again, "Make Peace" is useful against his enemies (the king and his loyalists) when it comes to taking away their defensive equipment.
    Spy Zhuge Jin is a poor spy choice. He usually cannot make enough of a difference to change the tides of the game if once side suddenly gains a large advantage. 

    Final Remarks:
    Zhuge Jin is a very creative unofficial addition to San Guo Sha. While he shares powers with Zhuge Liang and Lu Su, he is not as good as either of these characters. However, it is not really fair to point this out, as these characters are very powerful and among some of the best in the game. Zhuge Jin is a pretty well-balanced character, but we cannot help but to wonder if he would fair better if "Make Peace" allowed him to choose X pieces of equipment owned by other characters, removing the requirement that all pieces of equipment must be owned by the same character. Also, it is unfortunate that "Sorrow Between Brothers" can only be activated once he begins his turn with only one unit of health. In our test games with this character, we have found that he has a difficult time recovering health once he reaches this point.  

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