The Ikoma Sensei is one of the more overlooked senseis in the world of Rokugan. To better understand the use of this sensei, we must first know what it does.

-Ikoma Sensei
All Clans*Sensei
+0 Province Strength
+0 Gold
+0 Family Honor
You may play technique cards as though you were aligned to every clan.

Now, at first glance this card doesn't have many uses. You only get to play technique cards for each clan, nothing special right? Well, which of the techniques better fit a Lion deck? More than you might think actually. Let us take a look at some of the better techniques.

-Shiba Technique
1 Gold
Battle: All your shugenja in this battle gain the ability Battle: bow to give all samurai in this army a +1F. If you are a Phoenix player, all of your samurai gain 2F, instead.
3 Focus

-Ikoma Technique
1 Gold
Battle: All of your Followers at this battle gain 1F. If you are a Lion player, this technique's gold cost is reduced to zero.
3 Focus

-Shinjo Technique
3 Gold
Reaction: Play when another player targets one of your personalities with an action card. Redirect the action to one of that player's Personalities, if a legal target is available. If you are a Unicorn player, the gold cost of this action is reduced to zero.
3 Focus

-Daidoji Technique
0 Gold
Battle:Target an opposing personality and one of your personalities in this battle. Discard your Fate deck's top card. Lower the opposing personalitie's force and your personalitie's chi by the focus value. If your personality is Crane, this cannot drop his chi under 1.
2 Focus

As you can see, these are all pretty good techniques. With the Ikoma Sensei, you may use them at your discretion. By adding a Lion Shugenja such as Kitsu Sanako (I preffer no taint), you can give major boosters to your armies for the cost of only 1 gold with the Shiba Technique. The Ikoma Technique is our clan's standard techinique card. Although, it is nothing to sneeze at. With Farmlands, this card can become a godsend. The Shinjo Technique is (in my opinion) the best technique card out there. It gives your deck a major helping of denial, plus you can redirect that action back at the player and let it bite him/her in the ass. The Daidoji Technique is the newest technique card from Soul of the Empire. This card gives you the ability to drastically lower the force of the opposing army. Because us Lions don't have heck of a lot of Chi (Morishigi and Suhada are fine examples of this), this card is only benificial to us. The other techniques such as the Hida Technique and the Kakita Technique aren't all too helpful for a Lion Deck. Takuan Technique might work, if only it didn't have to target an unaligned samurai. As the sets progress, there will be more technique cards printed. So try a few out for yourself, and see how it can benefit your deck. Always remember that the simplest card can be the greatest benefactor. Happy Hunting!