I'm really scared about all the thing i've read in this forum, all the people here want absolutely change the game, ok their right to ask changes but all i read conduct to everything but L5R...

All you get this way wasn't L5R, my opinion...

You all hit everything that makes L5R unique ...

Sometimes when i read some comments i ask myself if you have ever played the game ...

f.e you'll ask for mixed clans, so like magic you'll ask for multiple color decks, it's the same, and this for just having all the big personalities in one fat big deck that run on every other ...

Another point: make the 2 decks smaller, conduce to less different card used, because you'll probably use the 10 sames cards in each various decks....

instead of giving L5R the chance to get some diversity, you'll kill it (my opinion)

Each kind of game have it's bonuses and maluses, each of them have ressource problem when you missed your deckbuilding, it's not the fault of the game if you are a bad deckbuilder, it's true that some clans are better competitor than others, it's also true that some way to win the game are easier than other, but it mainly depend on your ability to deckbuild and the cards you have to reach the point.

AEG kill the cavalry trait, I'd really hope FFG would not break the game by applying all I read here ...

I think it's safe to say that FFG is a bit more on the ball than to let random forum blather inform their design decisions-in any given direction.

I gather that the OP is more interested in an All-Stars deck than in splashing in one or two highly effective outsiders- not sure how I feel about it.I'd have to see how it was implemented.

If Clan-Loyal decks can remain viable against "I put all the best duelists/shugenja/ikebana-eaters I could find in this deck, let's dance!" then I have no problem with it in practice. If letting people do so means that a mono-Clan deck simply can't beat them, then I am a long way from wild about the idea.

The OP is actually *most* interested in being able to field two clan alliance decks, but "all-star" decks would be fine, too. Although I have to say, if the most competitive deck is, "Just shove in all these good cards from any clan," that's pretty poor game design. If it's organized on some axis other than clan, though, it could be a fun, competitive deck. A specific trait, or personalities that interact with a specific game mechanic. Whatever.

In any case, as I've said (but possibly not in this thread), I would want pure clan decks to remain competitive, of course.

Another way to assure a certain type of clan loyalty would be stronghold design. If your stronghold needs a personality from the own clan to work.

Let's take The Grand Halls of the Lion for example:

Battle: Give your target opposed Samurai a Force bonus equal to his Personal Honor.

If you would change it to:

Battle: Give your target opposed Lion Clan Personality a Force bonus equal to his Personal Honor.

You would need a certain amount of Lion Clan Personalities in you deck or you can't use the box properly.

So yeah you can probably put in a lot of other good personalities to archive your goal, but a certain amount of own personal is required to use your strongholds ability reliable.

This is how they solve the problem in AGoT, at least. The vast majority of abilities on cards belonging to any given house interact with cards of that house.

Honestly, the pure clan decks should be at the forefront of the game and supplemented to a lesser extent by the various other types. You can easily avoid making every clan deck the same through overall game and clan family design.

Honestly, the pure clan decks should be at the forefront of the game and supplemented to a lesser extent by the various other types. You can easily avoid making every clan deck the same through overall game and clan family design.

This gets easier when the card pool expands, but at the beginning? Not so much. There are likely to be around 200 cards in the core set. Even at only six clans, which is probably the lowest number we'll get, alliances will go a long way to opening up deckbuilding options and preventing the game from becoming stale before the card pool grows.

At any rate, you're welcome to build your straight clan deck, and I hope it's competitive. Whether or not I can build an aliiance deck that's competitive really has no impact on that, assuming halfway decent design, and clan alliances have a long history in the setting.

Honestly, I'd be *really* surprised if FFG didn't include easy alliances as a deckbuilding option. In addition to the advantages it brings to the card pool, every single LCG they currently produce (plus Cthulhu) at least allows and in most cases actively encourages faction alliances. In some cases (Star Wars) to a ridiculous degree where you're better off, mathematically, playing more objective pods out of your allied faction than your actual affiliation (and I hope it doesn't go that far). <any of those settings are more contentious than L5R. The 40K races don't just want to rule the empire, they want to wipe each other out!

In that light, I assume FFG is going to include some kind of fundamental alliance mechanic. But as said, above, I truly do hope that you can also play the kind of deck you want and be competitive, and I'm sure that will be a design goal. It would be pretty stupid for FFG to say, "So, we've got alliances and they're pretty good." "How are clan decks?" "Screw 'em."

Using old l5r mechanics references, I'd hate to see the proliferation of [insert clan name] Bob 2/2 for 4g just to keep clan purity possible.

Instead some generic personalities that become useful would be good.

Ronin Bob 2/2 Samuai for 4g with say "Ronin Bob permanently gains your clan trait when you have a clan personality in play" . Cuts nine simple personalities to one, and requires a clan personality to make him a clan member too.

Then if you want some special personalities, say artists, duelists, ninja or magistrates with some funky ability. Select an appropriate range of clans and make them multiple aligned. As a few examples:

Byako Mei 1/3 Shug, Artisan, 5 gold. Fox, Mantis, Crane, Unicorn. Will not join a player with Maho cards in play. "Political Open Bow Mei: Once per game, search your deck for a Political spell, show it to your opponents and add to your hand"

Chuda Chan 0/2 Shug, Maho, 4 gold. Snake, Spider, Shadowlands. Costs 2 less gold if you have a maho card or shadowlands card in play or discarded. "Maho Open Bow Chan: add a 0/0 blood token to a personality in play."

Hitomi Hosan 1/3 Sam, Duelist, 5 gold. Dragon, Crane, Scorpion. Will not join a Phoenix player. "Once per game may play a kiho card from your discard pile. Battle: Bow Hosan, shuffle him into your deck, any attached cards are discarded".

Usagi Nochai 3/2 Sam, Magistrate, 6 Gold. Hare. Costs 2 less gold if you have a magistrate in play. "Battle: Bow a dishonoured personality, or any card with the kolat or maho traits."

Still in flavour of l5r, allows some cross usage too.

I wonder if things like Family and School alliances and rivalries could be built into the card game somehow as well...

I wonder if things like Family and School alliances and rivalries could be built into the card game somehow as well...

I would *guess* that it'll primarily be with traits and synergies, at least for a while.

Maybe this'll be a thing when the deluxe boxes hit. Like, if each box features two clans, each of those clans gets a stronghold featuring 2 or 3 families. Not necessarily as traits, just naming them and incorporating some mechanic that supports their theme particularly. I know the Netrunner boxes come with at least two identities per feature faction (maybe more?).

Using old l5r mechanics references, I'd hate to see the proliferation of [insert clan name] Bob 2/2 for 4g just to keep clan purity possible.

Instead some generic personalities that become useful would be good.

Ronin Bob 2/2 Samuai for 4g with say "Ronin Bob permanently gains your clan trait when you have a clan personality in play" . Cuts nine simple personalities to one, and requires a clan personality to make him a clan member too.

I think it's a bit too generic for my tastes. Instead of making a bunch of similar personalities in the base set to fit as the 4g standard, make them all have more flavorful abilities that really represents the clan they are with. I don't mind some generics here and there but I'd rather they be unaligned or somewhat rare. The fact that we're dealing with a LCG and the removal of rarity means we don't really need to see them that often either.

I wonder if things like Family and School alliances and rivalries could be built into the card game somehow as well...

I would *guess* that it'll primarily be with traits and synergies, at least for a while.

Maybe this'll be a thing when the deluxe boxes hit. Like, if each box features two clans, each of those clans gets a stronghold featuring 2 or 3 families. Not necessarily as traits, just naming them and incorporating some mechanic that supports their theme particularly. I know the Netrunner boxes come with at least two identities per feature faction (maybe more?).

My thought was... hey, another kind of deck that's not pure Clan... say, a deck built around the Kuni Witchhunter and the Kuroiban?

Just brainstorming ways that more deck concepts could come out of the same number of cards.

There were some exceptions, but they were outliers. Building true rainbow decks has never really been a competitive thing in L5R.

True, but there were also frequent cases of "who cares what Clan Alignment this clown has,he's going in my deck," especially in military decks.

Daigotsu Hotako in early Emperor, Komori Taruko pretty much any time after Emperor, Ninube Shiho,

I gather that the OP is more interested in an All-Stars deck than in splashing in one or two highly effective outsiders- not sure how I feel about it.I'd have to see how it was implemented.

If Clan-Loyal decks can remain viable against "I put all the best duelists/shugenja/ikebana-eaters I could find in this deck, let's dance!" then I have no problem with it in practice. If letting people do so means that a mono-Clan deck simply can't beat them, then I am a long way from wild about the idea.

Yeah, I was specifically thinking of Hotako when I wrote that. I'd like to see less of that, and more of "Hey look, I can build a great deck using Phoenix and Dragon, and there's no real reason not to. I wonder if it'd be better to main Phoenix or Dragon for my concept."

I don't really want to see rainbow being a thing personally, but I'd love cross clan deck that could use two clans fully, maybe with some restriction on the secondary clan.

The biggest issue with faction purity is the way card distributions work in the LCG model.

You start with a core set that is about 240 cards. Some cards are 3 copies, some are 2, some are only single copies in the core. The maximum number of copies of a card you can have in a deck is 3. So you're likely buying 3 core sets to get a full play set. But how many cards are in a full play set? Let's look at Netrunner as an example.

There are 241 cards in the core. But if you buy 3 copies, you have 295 cards that are just wasted because you already have 3 copies in the first core or 4 after the second core. That means your actual card pool is 525. If we assumed 9 clans in the core (very unlikely) you'd have 58 cards per clan. that's actually pretty good. Most LCGs have a minimum deck size of 50. But could you actually have 9 playable starter decks out of 1 core? 240/9 = 26.6. So no, you can't have a playable mono-faction deck out of the box. That means that FFG would have to include neutral cards or some way of mixing factions in order to let a player play with a legal deck with just 1 core. Now Netrunner only has 5 factions out of the box and a bunch of neutrals. Granted, Warhammer: Conquest has 7. But the point is that you have to have neutrals and/or out of factions in order for the core to work when it's released.

The problem doesn't go away with the core, either. Each expansion pack has 60 cards with 3 copies of each card. That gives you about 2 new cards (6 total because of 3 copies) for each faction in each pack. If your clan-loyal, that's a lot of wasted cards. So FFG will probably give you incentive for allied clan decks so that you feel more compelled to buy each pack that comes out.

I predict that as the card pool grows, we will start to see powerful cards that support mono-clan decks, especially through deluxe expansions that have about 130 cards. I imagine these will support 2 clans each and give you bonuses for playing mono-clan decks.

These are my predictions, considering what I've seen of the LCG model so far.

That is quite alright really.

One need not buy cards alone and there is still a matter of trade. People will still trade cards with each other for stuff they need and don't use. Some groups form communal pools, its a common occurrence here for a lot of card games, we currently play around 7 here.

The clans need to be kept intact. The game has 20 years of clan loyalty that completely disbanding the idea of the clans would make this game L5R in name only.

That said, a little flexibility to encourage the occasional out of clan card would be wonderful. Something like Netrunner's Influence where the majority of your cards will be neutral or faction specific, but you can pull in a few other cards from other factions to round out your concept or shore up your weaknesses. Crab shugenja spending influence on Phoenix earth spells to increase their already impressive defenses, Lion armies using the occasional Unicorn mounted patrol, etc.

Not really but I would like to keep the families intact. As many of them as possible. To be honest a lot of people wanted to axe the Mantis once upon a time, the Spider are having a similar experience now. The we have families who have been eaten wholesale by the oblivion to the point there are of little or no consequence (ie Horiuchi)

We've had instances of families and personalities changing allegiances. The new L5R kind of streamlined it into a silly 4 families per clan which kinda gave me a face palm when it happened. Would like to see diversity in such a way it makes it believable and real. (L5R is such a symmetric world in some of the most impossible ways)

I do hope they give us something amazing in terms of the story line. (For me the playability of the game comes second, but apparently this is where its survivability comes from so meh, few people pay for stories)

I would also like the game at give presence to at least some of the minor houses/families/factions/entities (ie naga, spirits, kansen, forest critters)

Unless you were aiming for an honor victory, there was little reason not to consider the best cards regardless of clan identity, as long as they had a "-" Honor requirement. How would that be a big change for anybody except, say, Crane?

Reminds me that honor decks should have that option too.

Remember so many United Nation decks, sigh

Just place the biggest and cheeziest baddies you can find in the stronghold with the best gold scheme.

I ran a few of these so I may be hypocritical if I say I didn't like doing it, but a deck that has everything always has had a special appeal to me. I do agree that it is disheartening when you are on the other side of the table of it, especially when it works.

There were some exceptions, but they were outliers. Building true rainbow decks has never really been a competitive thing in L5R.

True, but there were also frequent cases of "who cares what Clan Alignment this clown has,he's going in my deck," especially in military decks.

Daigotsu Hotako in early Emperor, Komori Taruko pretty much any time after Emperor, Ninube Shiho,

I gather that the OP is more interested in an All-Stars deck than in splashing in one or two highly effective outsiders- not sure how I feel about it.I'd have to see how it was implemented.

If Clan-Loyal decks can remain viable against "I put all the best duelists/shugenja/ikebana-eaters I could find in this deck, let's dance!" then I have no problem with it in practice. If letting people do so means that a mono-Clan deck simply can't beat them, then I am a long way from wild about the idea.

Yeah, I was specifically thinking of Hotako when I wrote that. I'd like to see less of that, and more of "Hey look, I can build a great deck using Phoenix and Dragon, and there's no real reason not to. I wonder if it'd be better to main Phoenix or Dragon for my concept."

I don't really want to see rainbow being a thing personally, but I'd love cross clan deck that could use two clans fully, maybe with some restriction on the secondary clan.

It feels like it (cross clans or alliances) should be a story thing rather than just simply throwing it around without a care. I'd want there to be a some reason why I'm seeing Phoenix and Dragon together in a deck outside of the player.

There were some exceptions, but they were outliers. Building true rainbow decks has never really been a competitive thing in L5R.

True, but there were also frequent cases of "who cares what Clan Alignment this clown has,he's going in my deck," especially in military decks.

Daigotsu Hotako in early Emperor, Komori Taruko pretty much any time after Emperor, Ninube Shiho,

I gather that the OP is more interested in an All-Stars deck than in splashing in one or two highly effective outsiders- not sure how I feel about it.I'd have to see how it was implemented.

If Clan-Loyal decks can remain viable against "I put all the best duelists/shugenja/ikebana-eaters I could find in this deck, let's dance!" then I have no problem with it in practice. If letting people do so means that a mono-Clan deck simply can't beat them, then I am a long way from wild about the idea.

Yeah, I was specifically thinking of Hotako when I wrote that. I'd like to see less of that, and more of "Hey look, I can build a great deck using Phoenix and Dragon, and there's no real reason not to. I wonder if it'd be better to main Phoenix or Dragon for my concept."

I don't really want to see rainbow being a thing personally, but I'd love cross clan deck that could use two clans fully, maybe with some restriction on the secondary clan.

It feels like it (cross clans or alliances) should be a story thing rather than just simply throwing it around without a care. I'd want there to be a some reason why I'm seeing Phoenix and Dragon together in a deck outside of the player.

I am looking at the same thing through the other side: dual factioning could present some really interesting opportunities to write stories about why exactly the Lion are having the Spider help them with whatever problem.

This is also true of Doomtown, and for my money, 4 factions was a pretty good number for that game. Even then, some strategies for each outfit were underserved (though this was also a problem of introducing too many themes to each outfit given the small card pool).

Doomtown started with a much smaller card pool.

You can do 9 factions with 10 guys, 6-12 ronin, encourage initial cross-clan splashing for secondary themes, and have enough slots for holdings, events, attachments and strategies, and do that in 175 cards. If you go the route of a heap of 2 of's and 1 of's in the base set, and just expect people to buy 3 (which is roughly the cost of a booster box currently), its incredibly doable. A few of us have this mapped out using Magic Set Editor, in fact.

Reese got carried away with triple redundant actions (Things like 'X theme has 6 different strategies that give force penalties in the first 3 sets' or 'I need to print 5 different cards to stop blitz, but then need to print cards to stop the cards that prevent blitz, but then need to print cards to stop the theme thats enabled because all those cards work together in a different way' [when the answer is FAR MORE SIMPLE]., or Each keyword getting multiple kill cards without attachments, ect) and didnt have to design for consolidated sets.

Remember so many United Nation decks, sigh

Just place the biggest and cheeziest baddies you can find in the stronghold with the best gold scheme.

I ran a few of these so I may be hypocritical if I say I didn't like doing it, but a deck that has everything always has had a special appeal to me. I do agree that it is disheartening when you are on the other side of the table of it, especially when it works.

This has gotta be an arc/era specific thing (going both ways; for all I know more of the game's 20 years were like this than like my experience). I don't remember this at all when I was playing, because the 2g clan discount or honor gain from in clan was so important that it made no sense economically (for military) or in terms of running honor to include large numbers of out of clan dudes.

It feels like it (cross clans or alliances) should be a story thing rather than just simply throwing it around without a care. I'd want there to be a some reason why I'm seeing Phoenix and Dragon together in a deck outside of the player.

I am looking at the same thing through the other side: dual factioning could present some really interesting opportunities to write stories about why exactly the Lion are having the Spider help them with whatever problem.

This is exactly what I mean when I say story should follow game, and not the reverse.

Remember so many United Nation decks, sigh

Just place the biggest and cheeziest baddies you can find in the stronghold with the best gold scheme.

I ran a few of these so I may be hypocritical if I say I didn't like doing it, but a deck that has everything always has had a special appeal to me. I do agree that it is disheartening when you are on the other side of the table of it, especially when it works.

This has gotta be an arc/era specific thing (going both ways; for all I know more of the game's 20 years were like this than like my experience). I don't remember this at all when I was playing, because the 2g clan discount or honor gain from in clan was so important that it made no sense economically (for military) or in terms of running honor to include large numbers of out of clan dudes.

6 4g personality becoming 8 6g is worth ability to literally remove your opponent's unit from the game, for example. Some abilities introduced on personalities are so strong that having them is not "a nice thing to have"; NOT having them is like shooting yourself in the foot.

6g personality becoming 8g is worth ability to literally remove your opponent's unit from the game, for example. Some abilities introduced on personalities are so strong that having them is not "a nice thing to have"; NOT having them is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Sure, a particular character or two can be worth the investment. But people are describing "United Nations" decks, which says to me many out of clan characters from all over the clan spectrum.

Which is a thing I never saw while I was playing. *shrug*

My suspicion is there was a rules change after I stopped that made it more common.

Maybe they were referring to decks built around the card United. If you had 5 non SLH peeps with different/no faction alignments you gave each of them +4F and negated move actions targeting them. There were definitely decks built around it during its legality.

Maybe they were referring to decks built around the card United. If you had 5 non SLH peeps with different/no faction alignments you gave each of them +4F and negated move actions targeting them. There were definitely decks built around it during its legality.

Ha! Maybe so. Didn't know about that card.

There were some exceptions, but they were outliers. Building true rainbow decks has never really been a competitive thing in L5R.

True, but there were also frequent cases of "who cares what Clan Alignment this clown has,he's going in my deck," especially in military decks.

Daigotsu Hotako in early Emperor, Komori Taruko pretty much any time after Emperor, Ninube Shiho,

I gather that the OP is more interested in an All-Stars deck than in splashing in one or two highly effective outsiders- not sure how I feel about it.I'd have to see how it was implemented.

If Clan-Loyal decks can remain viable against "I put all the best duelists/shugenja/ikebana-eaters I could find in this deck, let's dance!" then I have no problem with it in practice. If letting people do so means that a mono-Clan deck simply can't beat them, then I am a long way from wild about the idea.

Yeah, I was specifically thinking of Hotako when I wrote that. I'd like to see less of that, and more of "Hey look, I can build a great deck using Phoenix and Dragon, and there's no real reason not to. I wonder if it'd be better to main Phoenix or Dragon for my concept."

I don't really want to see rainbow being a thing personally, but I'd love cross clan deck that could use two clans fully, maybe with some restriction on the secondary clan.

It feels like it (cross clans or alliances) should be a story thing rather than just simply throwing it around without a care. I'd want there to be a some reason why I'm seeing Phoenix and Dragon together in a deck outside of the player.

I am looking at the same thing through the other side: dual factioning could present some really interesting opportunities to write stories about why exactly the Lion are having the Spider help them with whatever problem.

I want to avoid the potential problems of simply throwing together the best of two clan. The other problem is the difference between a Lion/Spider alliance is fitting it into a game. Of course, this is partially looking at through the lens of the current game where flavor is sometimes at a minimum with these sorts of decks.

Fiction wise, getting two completely different clans to work together is potentially fantastic.

Uh...wow.

Uh...wow.

Yeah... when you say "multi clan decks" that's the first thing a lot of us think of. "Oh, you mean a deck that you put all the good Spiders in. Gotcha."