If a player destroys Sacred Cow, that player looses 2 honor

Boo! Hisssss!

Don't you mean: "Mooooo! Hissss!" ?

Well you have killed the sacred cow! My Original idea was to have both players loose honor because the controling player allowed it to be killed. But that would make it just bad.

Controlling player loses the game, because he allowed Sacred Cow to die, and attacking player loses the game, because he dared to kill it.

When Sacred Cows Moo, Noone Is Left Alive.

I think it is best to considered not individual clans but initially see temporary alliances of clans as dictated but the story arc. This has been mentioned before but examples could be in the onyx setting. Some examples may include ...

Defenders of Enlightenment: Brotherhood, Dragon, Pheonix

Champions of the True Emperor: Lion, Crab, Crane. Scorpion, Seppun Imperials

Warriors of the Onyx Emperor: Spider Samurai, Shadowlands, Scorpion Courtiers, Otomo Imperials ,

Destroyers of the Fowl: Naga, Unicorn, Dragon, Ratlings,

Champions of Culture: Crane, Scorpion, Pheonix, Miya Imperials

Defenders of the People: Unicorn, Mantis, Miya Imperial, Ronin

Just some examples that I tried to pull together. I think that starting with all the great clans will make the game harder to jump into.

With Spider avatars on the forums, that may be a clue our arachnid friends are (unfortunately) not going away.

I hope the Spider stay. I think it is good to have a evil faction for players that doesn't break the game (like the Shadowlands did).

Also, for someone using a Crane mon, your comment was not especially diplomatic, I thought the Crane approach is to try to make everybody our friends. So, be more welcoming to them, no need to make the Spider our enemies, since then they can focus on fighting the other clans instead of us.

With Spider avatars on the forums, that may be a clue our arachnid friends are (unfortunately) not going away.

I hope the Spider stay. I think it is good to have a evil faction for players that doesn't break the game (like the Shadowlands did).

Also, for someone using a Crane mon, your comment was not especially diplomatic, I thought the Crane approach is to try to make everybody our friends. So, be more welcoming to them, no need to make the Spider our enemies, since then they can focus on fighting the other clans instead of us.

Sometimes when courtesy doesn't work, the Crane have secondary methods.

With Spider avatars on the forums, that may be a clue our arachnid friends are (unfortunately) not going away.

I hope the Spider stay. I think it is good to have a evil faction for players that doesn't break the game (like the Shadowlands did).

Also, for someone using a Crane mon, your comment was not especially diplomatic, I thought the Crane approach is to try to make everybody our friends. So, be more welcoming to them, no need to make the Spider our enemies, since then they can focus on fighting the other clans instead of us.

Please tell me you're kidding to make a point. By this logic someone with a crab mon is allowed to punch spider players in the face, because character. Right?

With Spider avatars on the forums, that may be a clue our arachnid friends are (unfortunately) not going away.

I hope the Spider stay. I think it is good to have a evil faction for players that doesn't break the game (like the Shadowlands did).

Also, for someone using a Crane mon, your comment was not especially diplomatic, I thought the Crane approach is to try to make everybody our friends. So, be more welcoming to them, no need to make the Spider our enemies, since then they can focus on fighting the other clans instead of us.

Sometimes when courtesy doesn't work, the Crane have secondary methods.

Recently Imperially-approved methods.

I agree that Spider have some terrible synergy in their cards from one time to another, but I don't think you can prove that for the last 5 years they've consistently been mechanically crippled as you've stated in your OP. Winning 2 Gencons with Spider doesn't sound like mechanically crippled. It sounds more like you are exaggerating. Understandable, since we are mostly fan boys posting on a website for a game from FFG that won't exist for almost 2 more years. And yet even Spider won this last weekend in Kansas.

breeder was a single, preposterously environment deforming deck. it speaks to a failure in design, not a success.

other than that, it is only in the last half arc that spider has been able to put a few kotei wins together. go back and look at tournament results going back to SAMURAI. spider are consistently the worst, or bottom 3, performing clan. we have not had a single mechanical success unless you count having good personalities that other clans use better than we do (hi there Hotako) that lasted for more than lets say two expansions.

a really good example was Sparks' movement shenanigans TSL ninja deck in Emperor. which was a legitimately decent deck, if you were good enough to play it. i was not, but i know a lot of spider players were. problem was, it immediately fell behind the power curve as the rest of the environment rocketed past it. even when we got GOOD cards, design failed us.

look, you can doubt me all you want but at the end of the day, you ask 100 people who've been playing this game for more than the last 18 months, 98 of them will laugh and agree that the poor spider have had the worst design ride of all the clans. the only factions who have gotten a worse ride than us were the ratlings and the naga, and thats because they got written out of the game.

Here's what you said:

" if they hadn't spend the last 5 years being mechanically crippled by terrible design they likely would have been the most popular"

You are wrong. They have not been mechanically crippled by terrible design.

The spider faction have not spent the "last 5 years being mechanically crippled by terrible design". Plain and simple. Winning 2 Gencons does not equal mechanically crippled for 5 years.

(Unless your definition of "crippled" is different from what I understand.)

I have frequently talked with Sparks about said situation, and as I told him, Spider have some really good deck options. IMO, the biggest problem Spider had wasn't mechanical issues, it was number of good players playing Spider.

And yes, I will doubt you because I have been to tournaments and I have been playing L5R all these years, and I have been talking to people about Spider issues and no, it's not as dramatic as you make it out to be.

With Spider avatars on the forums, that may be a clue our arachnid friends are (unfortunately) not going away.

I hope the Spider stay. I think it is good to have a evil faction for players that doesn't break the game (like the Shadowlands did).

Also, for someone using a Crane mon, your comment was not especially diplomatic, I thought the Crane approach is to try to make everybody our friends. So, be more welcoming to them, no need to make the Spider our enemies, since then they can focus on fighting the other clans instead of us.

Please tell me you're kidding to make a point. By this logic someone with a crab mon is allowed to punch spider players in the face, because character. Right?

That is a weird interpretation you have on what I said.

With Spider avatars on the forums, that may be a clue our arachnid friends are (unfortunately) not going away.

I hope the Spider stay. I think it is good to have a evil faction for players that doesn't break the game (like the Shadowlands did).

Also, for someone using a Crane mon, your comment was not especially diplomatic, I thought the Crane approach is to try to make everybody our friends. So, be more welcoming to them, no need to make the Spider our enemies, since then they can focus on fighting the other clans instead of us.

Please tell me you're kidding to make a point. By this logic someone with a crab mon is allowed to punch spider players in the face, because character. Right?

Yeah, I agree with DJarvis. I'm hoping that super imposing clan traits and values onto players who play them is something we can move away from. I remember I played someone once, and he took every floor rule allowed way to check, cut, and shuffle my deck. He explained to me that he was only doing this because I was a Scorpion, and that Scorpions were most prone to cheat.

It pissed me off. No, I'm not a Scorpion. I'm playing Scorpion. And I'm the kind of person who doesn't activate cheat codes in single player games, and who will hand back a ten dollar bill if a cashier counts back incorrect change. If he wanted to do that to all of his opponents, that's fine, but he didn't.

So saying that a Crane player should be more courteous because they are Crane is downright silly. Let's try to have less of that, shall we?

Well we all be in strange waters as we go sailing to isles unknown, crammed in the same ship, on a voyage that will take us two years time to reach.

MANTIS

A)If we continue the story, Mantis get to stay temporarily and then get promptly booted out as we are forced to rebuild after "The Blackest Storm" hits.

B) If we reboot the story, Mantis cannot be included and we be starting from Square 1 and even then we won't be seen as a Clan but instead an Unaligned Faction.

C) We ignore the "The Blackest Storm" event and maintain Mantis as a clan.

SPIDER

A) If we continue the story, Spider simply stay and possibly become part of the Horde over time.

B) If we reboot the story, Spider cannot be included and we be starting from Square 1 and will start off as an expansion faction known as the Shadowlands Horde.

We can only start with nine, eight or seven clans when it comes to the core.

I think it is best to considered not individual clans but initially see temporary alliances of clans as dictated but the story arc. This has been mentioned before but examples could be in the onyx setting. Some examples may include ...

Defenders of Enlightenment: Brotherhood, Dragon, Pheonix

Champions of the True Emperor: Lion, Crab, Crane. Scorpion, Seppun Imperials

Warriors of the Onyx Emperor: Spider Samurai, Shadowlands, Scorpion Courtiers, Otomo Imperials ,

Destroyers of the Fowl: Naga, Unicorn, Dragon, Ratlings,

Champions of Culture: Crane, Scorpion, Pheonix, Miya Imperials

Defenders of the People: Unicorn, Mantis, Miya Imperial, Ronin

Just some examples that I tried to pull together. I think that starting with all the great clans will make the game harder to jump into.

There was an idea I saw floating around on the AEG forum not too long ago about having Strongholds represent one of the five elements (and then using Sensei to further identify with a particular clan or alliance thereof). The "Fire" stronghold would be more designed towards military. The "Air" stronghold for honor and/or spells. Basically fewer strongholds with broader designs and the Clan-focused shrongholds.

Seemed like a neat idea to me. Not sure how it well it would work in practice.

Well we all be in strange waters as we go sailing to isles unknown, crammed in the same ship, on a voyage that will take us two years time to reach.

MANTIS

A)If we continue the story, Mantis get to stay temporarily and then get promptly booted out as we are forced to rebuild after "The Blackest Storm" hits.

B) If we reboot the story, Mantis cannot be included and we be starting from Square 1 and even then we won't be seen as a Clan but instead an Unaligned Faction.

C) We ignore the "The Blackest Storm" event and maintain Mantis as a clan.

SPIDER

A) If we continue the story, Spider simply stay and possibly become part of the Horde over time.

B) If we reboot the story, Spider cannot be included and we be starting from Square 1 and will start off as an expansion faction known as the Shadowlands Horde.

We can only start with nine, eight or seven clans when it comes to the core.

For the card game FFG could go with a timeline neutral approach, meaning they could make it nine clans, but for the story the Mantis could be defunct, a bunch of minor clans, what have you, while teh Spider could be everything the shadowlands have been. So, everybody is happy, the Mantis and Spider get to be still part of the game, while their clans might gothrough interesting times.

And just like I hope the Spider will stay, I sure hope the the Mantis will too!

If the last AEG set is about evil portents, then I'd imagine that FFG would do something with that story line even if its relatively minor just to provide something for the old players.

If they skip the Mantis I skip the game but that is just me.

I kinda won't even though I've played the clan for nearly 20 years, but it would feel empty without the Mantis.

The Dragon had a decided lack of direction in their Onyx votes

The top Dragon choice got 42% of the vote, which was the third-highest percentage for the winning choice out of the nine Clans (Crab and Unicorn weighed in at 48% and 47%, respectively). That 42% was double the next most popular Dragon choice. I'm not sure why one would conclude that the Dragon voting produced a lack of direction.

Because that's the way it appeared to me with all the writing/rewriting debating about their options. That the eventual vote ended up fairly even doesn't remove the fact the Dragon were rather heatedly annoyed about their options in the first place, and many of them--perhaps not you, but many--were the ones claiming they'd have loved to be the group with the Mantis option of being destroyed and restoring themselves.

Don't confuse the volume of a voice with the number of voices.

Here's what you said:

" if they hadn't spend the last 5 years being mechanically crippled by terrible design they likely would have been the most popular"

You are wrong. They have not been mechanically crippled by terrible design.

The spider faction have not spent the "last 5 years being mechanically crippled by terrible design". Plain and simple. Winning 2 Gencons does not equal mechanically crippled for 5 years.

(Unless your definition of "crippled" is different from what I understand.)

I have frequently talked with Sparks about said situation, and as I told him, Spider have some really good deck options. IMO, the biggest problem Spider had wasn't mechanical issues, it was number of good players playing Spider.

And yes, I will doubt you because I have been to tournaments and I have been playing L5R all these years, and I have been talking to people about Spider issues and no, it's not as dramatic as you make it out to be.

we'll just have to agree to disagree. 1 successful deck in the entire lifetime of a clan does not, by any metric i consider rational, constitute anything less than an abject failure of design, even if the place where its successful was gencon.

I personally just want to see some Sparrow. That's priority number one for me and I hope in some expansion they come out.

On the question of core clans and flow of cards to support each faction per expansion, the comparison to the CCG came up when discussing if there'd be room to support each. Its worth remembering that the CCG had a fairly fixed 150 card format as determined by the business model.

But that doesn't mean every card in that 150 was essential to driving the game forward or was considered great support for each faction. There was a lot of filler.

There's no reason to think we can't have the base factions receive good new cards every set even with a reduced total card count each expansion

The simplest thing for them to do is to "reboot" by leaping us to 1300 or so, then give us backstory about why some clans have lost the limelight. Base set with 5-6 clans released with an announcement that others are coming in the future. Placation complete!

I know theres a lot of hate for the spider, but heres the thing: spider has the most active fanbase of all the clans, and if they hadn't spend the last 5 years being mechanically crippled by terrible design they likely would have been the most popular. so relegating them to the bottom of the list doesn't make a lot of sense if you're trying to bring over as many of the legacy fans as possible. this all presupposes that they're not using the onyx plot, where the spider having taken over the empire and are ruling it.

Agreed. The Spider Clan playerbase has been incredibly tenacious and passionate in the face of adversity and it would be very smart to keep that fire burning. As a Spider Clan player myself, I would prefer no clan gets cut, and I would be happy sharing an alliance with any of the existing clans if that ended up being necessary.

I'd be content if the Spider were in the core set simply as neutral/Imperial cards. We are simply biding our time and letting all the other clans curry our favor.

I think it will all depend on where FFG starts the story, If we take examples from when they acquired most of the other games, they will take a time period where they feel the setting really shines and start from there. That doesn’t mean other clans not in the base set won’t show up, just mean it will take a couple of chapter pack before your “favorite” faction makes it back.

Of course they're going to be more active and popular. Among other things, they spent years getting story time vastly disproportionate to their tournament wins and received exclusive prize options unavailable to anyone else. It'd be more surprising if they weren't. It's not the spider playbase's fault, but they were clearly given far more attention than everyone else by AEG "for story reasons", and some people just got tired of their concerns falling on deaf ears.

I know for a fact that the Phoenix Clan forums are basically a tomb right now, in no small part because the Phoenix as a whole basically did nothing for the better part of the past decade. Although Ivory Edition also pounded a few nails into the coffin...

L5R can include all 9 factions. Unless FFG does something drastic, the core set would need the universal cards to represent spells and peasants.

Unless they said Earth Becomes Sky is crab only or something o.0

I'm not a fan of Shugenja in setting and them feeling like Wizards, so I wouldn't mind spells becoming abilities printed on specific Shugenjas, instead of a whole different category of cards that can be attached and snowballed into ubergenja. Same thing about equipment, btw.

Less armors/weapons/spells/"fillers" in general is something I would enjoy. Refocus on the story and personalities; again, I always felt annoyed that a sword literally doubled my personalitys Force, and that sometimes (quite often in fact) sword was more important than it's wielder.