With talk of changing mechanics, one of the things I hope for is increased flexibility in deckbuilding by way of reduced commitment to specific clans. The "clan only" benefits (meaning reduced cost and honor gains) meant that significant numbers of cards in each release were of minimal use outside of their clan, because they compared poorly to in-clan choices.

When building a deck, I'd love it if any combination of personalities in my deck were on the table. Could there be clan synergy? Sure! If a particular clan is good at dueling, for example, and you want a dueling deck, you're still going to be heavy in that clan. But where the old game leaned heavily toward clan play as a foundational conceit, I hope for equally appealing strategies that rely less on a single clan focus.

I would love a little more freedom to mix and match and play dual clan decks, or even ignore clan altogether and build a deck that utilizes some other synergy and ignores clan alignment.

Honestly, I don't even need strongholds to be clan oriented. We could just as easily get strongholds that are designed with specific mechanical themes in mind and without any clan alignment at all.

There were a few characters that had bonuses when you played a diferent clan than their own. But they were few and far between.

Maybe an army of Ronin...

Or just do as I and play Spider, plenty of fallen members of other clans in the Spider...

I little more flexibility sounds good, and sure strongholds could be removed. But I think that the clans should be kept in some form, since long time L5R fans have quite some attachment to their clans.

Maybe special alliances (cards) that let you field multiple clan decks. Or a mechanic similar to netrunner that let's you have X (non neutral) cards from outside your faction.

The problem is that throwing open the door to mixed Clan decks will almost inevitably kill classic single Clan decks in even halfway competitive play, which pretty much kills the game for Clan loyalty focused players. It's one thing to see your favoured Clan wax and wane as the card pool changes, it's another to know that trying to stick to one Clan will leave you permanently handicapped compared to the people who mix and match based purely on mechanics.

The Call of Cthulhu LCG has loyal cards, maybe one could do it similar to that too, especially since L5R calls the certain personalities also already loyal. Have not played any of the other FFG LCGs so I cannot say how similar the various LCGs are to each other, and make guesses based on that how similar they might want L5R to be to their other games...

The Game of Thrones LCG also have a Loyal mechanic, as well as mechanic for running Personalities not aligned with your factions, so it's certainly not impossible that FFG will consider this when they sit down to construct an L5R LCG.

To me, much of the uniqueness of L5R is the clan loyalty and the warring between the clans, and I hope to see that continued in the future of the game. It just won't feel like I'm fielding a Dragon deck if all the Personalities are a mix-match of characters from other clans. XD

The problem is that throwing open the door to mixed Clan decks will almost inevitably kill classic single Clan decks in even halfway competitive play, which pretty much kills the game for Clan loyalty focused players. It's one thing to see your favoured Clan wax and wane as the card pool changes, it's another to know that trying to stick to one Clan will leave you permanently handicapped compared to the people who mix and match based purely on mechanics.

You have a point. Now i believe it should still be possible to include characters from different clans in the same deck (you could do it in the AEG version) it just wasn't a very good idea to do so.

The problem is that throwing open the door to mixed Clan decks will almost inevitably kill classic single Clan decks in even halfway competitive play, which pretty much kills the game for Clan loyalty focused players. It's one thing to see your favoured Clan wax and wane as the card pool changes, it's another to know that trying to stick to one Clan will leave you permanently handicapped compared to the people who mix and match based purely on mechanics.

Except this hasn't been the case in other LCGs produced by FFG. Take Game of Thrones as an example. A pure Stark deck is totally competitive. That said, being able to splash other clan's cards will likely be possible, but there will be pro's and con's to doing so.

The problem is that throwing open the door to mixed Clan decks will almost inevitably kill classic single Clan decks...

Only if you assume bad design and poor playtesting, or that killing single clan decks is a design goal. I haven't suggest that, only that other options should be equally appealing from a balance standpoint.

It's pretty much impossible to design a game in a way that prevents having more options being better than having fewer options and a player mixing personalities freely from every clan would have way more options than a player sticking to one (plus a bit of splashing). It should certainly remain possible to include non-loyal personalities from any Clan but doing away with the old restrictions entirely will ultimately leave pure Clan as sub-optimal theme decks.

One interesting (if possibly difficult to balance) option if they keep the stronghold + sensei system L5R is currently using would be to print a bunch more sensei that cause certain keywords to qualify as in-clan or even a few sensei that essentially make your deck count as being two clans at the same time, like in draft games.

Edit: Now that I think of it, isn't there a Haas Bioroid identity that makes Jinteki cards count as in-faction influence at the cost of having no actual ability or influence to spend on a third faction?

Not sure, but something like that could work.

It's pretty much impossible to design a game in a way that prevents having more options being better than having fewer options and a player mixing personalities freely from every clan would have way more options than a player sticking to one (plus a bit of splashing). It should certainly remain possible to include non-loyal personalities from any Clan but doing away with the old restrictions entirely will ultimately leave pure Clan as sub-optimal theme decks.

One interesting option if they keep the stronghold + sensei system L5R is currently using would be to print a bunch more sensei that cause certain keywords to qualify as in-clan or (if they could balance it) even a few sensei that essentially make your deck count as being two clans at the same time, like in draft games.

Let me provide more concrete examples why this is not the case. Again, using Game of Thrones as an example, there are certain location cards that reduce the cost of characters. Each reducer can reduce two specific houses. While it works just fine in a mono-Hose deck, it gives the option to play the two houses together if you wish. Or you can run a deck based off a certain archetype. I have a friend who very succesfully ran a noble deck that drew from multiple houses. It's very likely both options will be viable.

Another way FFG could go is how the went with Netrunner. Each Identity, which I would equate to a Stronghold has a value that limits how many out of faction cards ( and sometimes certain powerful neutral cards) that can be included in the deck. Does this mean you have to run cards out of faction? Not at all. Mono-faction decks are viable, but you can also splash other factions cards, you are just limited to how many you can splash and depending on how good the card is you might only be splashing a a play set of a single card.

like i said

It's pretty much impossible to design a game in a way that prevents having more options being better than having fewer options and a player mixing personalities freely from every clan would have way more options than a player sticking to one (plus a bit of splashing). It should certainly remain possible to include non-loyal personalities from any Clan but doing away with the old restrictions entirely will ultimately leave pure Clan as sub-optimal theme decks.

One interesting (if possibly difficult to balance) option if they keep the stronghold + sensei system L5R is currently using would be to print a bunch more sensei that cause certain keywords to qualify as in-clan or even a few sensei that essentially make your deck count as being two clans at the same time, like in draft games.

Seems to me your answering your own concern here. It's just a question of costing cards well, including opportunity costs.

In the old game, the costs for playing out of clan were generally too high (assuming you want it to be a viable option). That was a design choice based on a desire to keep decks mostly organized around clan.

Making dual and multiclan decks viable is just a matter of calibrating those opportunity costs differently. If they dominate, and single clan decks aren't viable, you've gone too far in the other direction (assuming that's not what you're going for, of course).

There are many, many ways it could be done without adversely impacting game balance.

Let me provide more concrete examples why this is not the case. Again, using Game of Thrones as an example, there are certain location cards that reduce the cost of characters. Each reducer can reduce two specific houses. While it works just fine in a mono-Hose deck, it gives the option to play the two houses together if you wish. Or you can run a deck based off a certain archetype. I have a friend who very succesfully ran a noble deck that drew from multiple houses. It's very likely both options will be viable.

Spot on. Only instead of "noble," substituted "Duelist," or "Dishonored," or even just some game mechanic that most of your cards synergize with.

One of the keys to all this, of course, is that the relaunch provides an opportunity to change game mechanics, which we already know they're doing. It's just a question of which mechanics, and how they're changing.

Look at it this way:

If there are 6 clans with 4 victory conditions (and each clan has one primary way to achieve each condition), that's basically 24 decks with a little variation for specific cards.

If you can combine two clans in any deck, suddenly you have 36 ways to build for each victory condition (each of the 6 clans can ally with the five other clans, or go "pure" clan) for 144 decks.

Assuming perfect balance, dual-clan will win more, but it's not because those decks are inherently better. It's because out of those 144 decks, only 24 of them are straight clan decks, and the other 120 are dual-clan.

I would be a bit sad if out of faction cards became the norm. Faction Identity is a huge draw of L5R. No other game has people fighting so hard for good things to come to the clan they chose to back. Faction Identity is a big big part of what made the game great in the first place.

Faction identification is fine, and I think you should still be able to play a single clan deck and be competitive.

I don't think that's mutually exclusive with opening up deckbuilding possibilities to other approaches.

Although granted, it does mean you would have no control over whether your opponent plays a single clan deck. That's fine with me, though. I think the clans rarely have the option of preventing opposing clans from allying against them.

That reminds me: how do mirror matches work in relation to the backstory? I don't see two crane armies fight each other without good reason.

That reminds me: how do mirror matches work in relation to the backstory? I don't see two crane armies fight each other without good reason.

Intraclan power struggles and such. Within each clan, there are several powerful families.

That reminds me: how do mirror matches work in relation to the backstory? I don't see two crane armies fight each other without good reason.

There was a whole Crane Civil War.

That reminds me: how do mirror matches work in relation to the backstory? I don't see two crane armies fight each other without good reason.

Intraclan power struggles and such. Within each clan, there are several powerful families.

And within these families, there are individuals who wish to gain more power and influence for themselves. Intraclan conflicts are easily explainable in setting.

The Great Clans are all part of the Empire but they're large enough to qualify as nations in their own right. Two military decks from the same clan going against each other is essentially a civil war. It's not something you really all that often CCG's storyline but it works in the setting. As Kakita Shiro said, the Crane Civil War actually happened in canon.

The crane civil all war with the false clan champion who was spawned by his scored lover was such an amazing story line. Ree for Story leader on new L5R