pace yourselves guys. You have 2 more years of speculation without facts:)

i think Strongholds are actually kind of a dangerous road to go back down. personally, i think using a box that grants an ability that supports a given victory condition, then a sensei that layers loyalty on top of that, seems like an easier way to manage 9 clans. or something like that. L5R suffered a lot over the years trying to balance 9 (or more) strongholds.

I dont know, they did pretty decently with something similar in Netrunner. The key would be to get it right the first time and just not try to put out 2 to 3 new ones a year. Also to not continually add new subfactions with new strongholds to the game.

I'd say that you'd see six factions in the core box: Lion, Crab, Scorpion, Crane, Phoenix, and Dragon. Assuming the basic win conditions remain largely intact.

Clans and potentially major ways to win

Lion: Military and Honor

Crab: Military

Scorpion: Dishonor (and ninjas)

Crane: Honor

Phoenix: Honor and Enlightenment

Dragon: Military and Enlightenment

Military: 3

Honor: 3

Enlightenment: 2

Dishonor: 1

The only problem with this is that dishonor is only evident with the Scorpion right now. You could do the Yasuki dishonor approach too if there was need for another faction (temporary of course) to go about it for the first set.

Other clans would obviously come out in their own big box expansions. I love the Unicorn battle maidens and the Fox Clan to death but I can wait. Eventually you could also do minor clans and the Spider/Imperial faction among others. Hell, maybe we'll see more gaijin or Ivory Kingdoms?

Practically every faction has had a dishonor victory. It's just that no other faction is really defined by it like the Scorpion.

Well maybe the Yasuki like you said be that is a family not a Clan

Yeah, the "Which victory conditions make the cut" is really the most important one here.

No real point in keeping the Crane if the game is purely based on military victory conditions. (Actually, I'd rather the Crane not be kept if crushing your opponent becomes the only way to win the game - they'd just be a sad mockery of the Crane).

Still fingers crossed for Naga still coming back.

Likewise, but I don't have high hopes.

Formerly Qashar, the Naga Herald

Ah the Spider clan, where the future is nebulous and the player base all have their own views to how the clan should work.

Here's hoping we finally get something and that the FFG stick to it.

For real all we really needed was a focus and a pursue of said focus. We have been pinballing all over the place.

FFG has a ton of mechanics that can mimic what L5R did with strongholds:

Houses in Game of Thrones - you pick a primary and a secondary.

Identities in Netrunner - You pick an ID, and you spend influence to use other factions' cards.

Warlord in 40k - you pick a warlord, he comes with 8 other cards out of the box, and you can ally with forces on a wheel of adjacency

Factions in Star Wars - You get the ability to focus for resources on a given identity and the right to pick some faction-only objective sets. (Honestly Star Wars is the closest to L5R in terms of mechanics, ignoring the pod idea).

Fantasy Flight's LCGs are heavily influenced by L5R, it feels like. I know they got this.

Be careful of the Star Wars path. The way resources work in that game, it turns out that a deck with the Jedi Affiliation may have 2-4 Jedi objective sets and 6-8 Smuggler or Rebel cards. You see, the way resources are handled in that game, you want to ensure you can always pay for whatever you draw. Since the affiliation provides a resource match with other cards of that affiliation, you want more objectives in your deck that don't match your affiliation. It's rather off-putting and I doubt they'll do that again for any LCG. It's still one of my favorite games, but I don't think it would work in a game like L5R where clans are such a big part of it. In Star Wars, affiliations don't really matter as much as whether you're light side or dark side and those cannot be mixed, so there's really no issue.

Yeah, the "Which victory conditions make the cut" is really the most important one here.

No real point in keeping the Crane if the game is purely based on military victory conditions. (Actually, I'd rather the Crane not be kept if crushing your opponent becomes the only way to win the game - they'd just be a sad mockery of the Crane).

The Kakita and Daidoji have issue with being thought of as not competent fighters.

I strongly doubt there will be enough space for all nine clans. The ones I think you need are Scorpion, Crane/Phoenix, Lion/Crab/Unicorn, and Dragon.

Competent fighters they are, but fighters whose job is to buy time and turn back attacks. Not to invade, pillage and burn.

Crane who take to the battlefield to defend is one thing. Crane who have to go in and destroy provinces (or whatever the equivalent ends up being) to win aren't the Crane.

Sure.

Which is why it is SO IMPORTANT that all the Clans are represented in this move. I only see the Mantis and Spider being able to be lost. The Mantis only if they maintain the current story and the Spider if they make them not a playable faction but still important. All the Clans are too important to not have.

I think that, with a little work, you can have you pie and eat it, too. So, lets say you want keep all 9 Clans. However you can only realistically support 5-ish factions. Instead of single clan strongholds you make alliances strongholds. For instance, form the previous arc, Dragon/Spider was a clear alliance. Perhaps the stronghold add a general trait/ability, plus one trait/abilty for Dragon Personalities and a different one for Spiders. At the start of the Arc/cycle/whatever of course you would be forced to use both clans to put together a deck. As the cycle advanced, you might make a "pure" deck if you wished so, at the cost of lots of options, of course. Also, this alliance-stronghold might change at the start of every arc, or in the middle of it, as a plot twist. This is just an example of many things that can be done with a little thought...

Mantis were on the chopping block for Onyx anyway, so if a cut HAD to be made, that playerbase has already been poked with the misery stick.

But really, depending on where FFG's design goes, representing everybody is possible.

Yeah, S pider has a crazy fanbase. If they kee p the colonies the S pider should remain. How much of the Onyx story remains is left to be seen, but I, and MANY players, would be devastated if our clan of evil samurai were kicked.

We were the most played faction in the last kotei season, FFG would be blind to disregard the villains of the game.

We could even not be in the original core release, but be in a future "colonial" ex pansion and I would be fine.

Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Mantis, Phoenix, Scorpion, Spider and Unicorn are the nine clans. However, the game only started with Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, and Unicorn with the Clan Wars. Crab were allied with the Shadowlands, the Scorpion were disbanded, and neither the Mantis or Spider existed.

To my knowledge here there are 14 distinct factions that FFG has to consider here.

There are the 9 Great Clans as of this time frame

Crab

Crane

Dragon

Lion

Mantis

Phoenix

Scorpion

Spider

Unicorn

Then there are 3 beloved factions that need to be addressed.

The Naga

The Shadowlands

The Ratlings

To round out the player base there would need to be 2 more factions added

Imperial (Toturi's Army)

Ronin

This is where the crux of what to keep and what to cut comes into play. What I would like to see is the base set be a core group of cards that everyone needs aka the fate deck style stuff and then have a clan pack based on each faction so the purchase point for the reboot is more focused for the player getting into or back into the swing of L5R. From there the clan packs can focus on a particular style of game play for that clan. Dueling, Courtiers, Tattoos etc. I also would like to have the good people here at FFG give us a developers blog on the new card game to give those of us who are going to be without new L5R for two years something to look forward to.

I would like to see all 9 clans plus Ratling and Naga.... so like 11 factions plz

I would like to see all 9 clans plus Ratling and Naga.... so like 11 factions plz

Oh, God, no.

6 clans seems like a good number to me, given the release model we can probably expect. There's always room to expand later, although I'd just as soon there be as few as 4 if decks are going to be strongly limited based on clan makeup. Expansion can always come later.

Edit to add:

As far as which clans, if I were to cut it to four, I think Lion, Crane, Dragon and Scorpion would be a good mix, but that's assuming no major changes in the rest of the game. That'd be one clan oriented toward each of the victory conditions.

At 6, I'd add Crab to the mix, definitely, and probably Shadowlands/Spider. Give every clan some cavalry and spells to varying degrees, rather than making them the territory of specific clans.

I always wished they would use Sensei as signifiers of "alliances" rather than alternate strongholds. It would avoid the inevitable "exception" results in every storyline tournament (ie, winner gets X, unless they're Shadowlands and then Y happens). So I would do something like the following for the initial run:

Strongholds: Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Mantis, Phoenix, Scorpion, Unicorn

Sensei: Shadowlands, Spider, Naga (This would be really extensible... you could also include Bloodspeaker, Imperials, Gaijin, or any of the various minor clans.)

Go with the original 7: Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, Scorpion, Unicorn. Unaligned cards have always been fun, so perhaps keep them around, with the Shadowlands, Ronin, and Naga/Nonhumans playable through that pool of cards. They have the richer history to reboot the game.

I'd like to see the game back down to the Original Six clans ( Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, Unicorn) and maybe Scorpion, then go forward from there.

you're wrong but thats cool and i was taking expansions into account.

I would like to see all 9 clans plus Ratling and Naga.... so like 11 factions plz

Oh, God, no.

6 clans seems like a good number to me, given the release model we can probably expect. There's always room to expand later, although I'd just as soon there be as few as 4 if decks are going to be strongly limited based on clan makeup. Expansion can always come later.

people in this thread seem to have missed that they appear to be continuing the storyline from the "current" point in time, at least in so much as there will be an Empire and Colonies, which is to say there will be 9 clans. Whether they are all mechanically represented, and how that happens, is anyone's guess, but hoping to back to Clan Wars era 7 or what have you is wishful thinking.

the only way we get any number != 9 is by going forward, which will by necessity start with 9.

Honestly, I can see a return to the "original" Five, having Scorpion, Mantis and Spider be additions to the other 5 for shenannigans.