What I love in the "old" L5R game, among other obvoius things people have already written about, is the fact that while there are 4 main victory conditions, there are in fact many more ways to achieve victories. Military victory - we have bliltz, swarm, big naked units, big attachments, shugenjas with spells, movement shenanigans, action phase control... Honor victory - we gain honor with courtiers, with military units, shugenjas, we have duels, action phase effects, battlefield effects, battle resolution, dynasty gains... Dishonor follows pretty much the same path. We can also switch from one condition to another...

Those are subtleties that constitute the "old' game. I'd miss them very much, should they be gone from the future release..

Real talk, this guy

http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=11767

I wasn't keeping up with the story as much as I would have liked, but this guy as 3 personal honor. I never trusted him.

New players will ready that sentence and wonder what I am talking about.

Well...

He is a Junshin....

When you get down to it, I would consider almost nothing to be a necessary mechanical carryover. Clan/faction alignment, I guess, and that was pretty unlikely to be in question, since every LCG has that. It should be a great game, and it should capture the feel of L5R/Rokugan. Any specific mechanic is more than expendable in achieving those goals.

Hmm me would like honor loss/gain to change especially when looking at it retrospectively. It makes for head-ache inducing games. Makes head hurt just thinking about how it made head hurt.

Talking about things the game could surely be improved on - I would love to see more love for multiplayer games! So, maybe a revamp of the game could lead to a much more multiplayer friendly game.

Talking about things the game could surely be improved on - I would love to see more love for multiplayer games! So, maybe a revamp of the game could lead to a much more multiplayer friendly game.

The absolutely terrible multiplayer in L5R has been a problem in trying to sell it to friends for a while.

Siege.... kinda-sorta tried to address it (and the Siege games I've played have been a hoot), but yes, multiplayer has never been L5R'sstrong suit- which is a shame, since it's a great way to deal with odd numbers of players on game nights and hey, whaddya know, actually reflects the setting, too- "Oh, the Crab and Lion are having a scrap? Here, let us...help."

As long as the mechanical changes do not maintain a format where 1 victory condition reduces the opponents production by 25% every time you advance it we'll probably be good. That's the primary reason Military has been OP for most of the games existence and why when honor/dishonor/enlightenment manage to be good compared to it they were overpowered to the point they were considered NPE.

^Does this really matter though? With things like multiple province flips, and only a once per turn proclaim, I don't think the losing of provinces is a crippling blow anymore.

Also forgive my lack of quoting, I seem to be really bad at it on this site.

^Does this really matter though? With things like multiple province flips, and only a once per turn proclaim, I don't think the losing of provinces is a crippling blow anymore.

Also forgive my lack of quoting, I seem to be really bad at it on this site.

You'll get the hang of it.

Military is not as OP that it breaks the game, but look at it like this:

You can be at -19 honor and and your oponent can be at 39 honor with 4 rings in play, and you are still just as combat capable as your opponent as when you started the game. But once you start to loose provinces things can go down hill quick.

One thing I do like is that if you draw nothing but holdings for a few turns you'll have so much resources that when your characters do turn up you almost can play all of them at once.

Played a game against my buddy J once: My Spider clan invade his Crab lands, and nobody was in sight, we started burning down stuff and next thing we now there's a ton of big angry crab people comming at us. Tough In the end the Spider was victorious

Well the rings in play actually make you way stronger. Earth, Water, Air and Void have all strong and useful effects.

Higher honer grants you the imperial favor, which is pretty weak at times.

However cutting down the enemies dynasty production by 25% is very mighty bonus.

Well the rings in play actually make you way stronger. Earth, Water, Air and Void have all strong and useful effects.

Higher honer grants you the imperial favor, which is pretty weak at times.

However cutting down the enemies dynasty production by 25% is very mighty bonus.

Oh yeah, I agree. In my example the one player is literally at death's door and defeat seems imminent, but he can still access al his provinces. The only good thing about loosing provinces is that it makes it easier to predict where those blasted unicorn cavalry are about to attack!

Speaking of provinces. I hope they keep (reprint) cards that let you gain a province.

^Does this really matter though? With things like multiple province flips, and only a once per turn proclaim, I don't think the losing of provinces is a crippling blow anymore.

Also forgive my lack of quoting, I seem to be really bad at it on this site.

One province might not hurt that much, but if every turn a province falls you will find that you cannot buy enough people to defend you last province, while the military deck can maybe then take one or two turn to build an even larger force before you hit 40 honour to wrack the last province. As a Crane player who usually goes for honour, I sometimes have to sacrifice provinces without even trying to defend them, but losing them too fast will cropple you in a way from which there is no coming back. And even though that is is sometimes an interesting decision to sacrifice a province in hope to still win the game and defending just the last province, I would rather have the game find another solution for it, like the "objective cards in the middle" approach that was talked in various threads already.

All valid points, I cannot argue that. It will require a serious overhaul though, and I bet the resource/province thing is completely scrapped for something new.

Sacred cows for me:

- 4 Ways to Win: Honor, Dishonor, Military and Enlightenment

- 2 decks

That's it

Sacred cows for me:

- 4 Ways to Win: Honor, Dishonor, Military and Enlightenment

- 2 decks

That's it

It wouldn't really be L5R without 2 decks (though the size of those decks could be cut down to 30/30 or something). Having said that, though I wonder if they can manage 4 victory conditions at launch... I would prefer they go with fewer victory conditions (maybe just honor and military) "out of the box"... and work their way up to all four as the card pool progresses (maybe by the 1st or 2nd deluxe expansion).

Thaddok

Sacred cows for me:

Death to the Cow Clan! BANZAI!

Sacred cows for me:

- 4 Ways to Win: Honor, Dishonor, Military and Enlightenment

- 2 decks

That's it

It wouldn't really be L5R without 2 decks (though the size of those decks could be cut down to 30/30 or something). Having said that, though I wonder if they can manage 4 victory conditions at launch... I would prefer they go with fewer victory conditions (maybe just honor and military) "out of the box"... and work their way up to all four as the card pool progresses (maybe by the 1st or 2nd deluxe expansion).

Thaddok

I think three victory conditions during the core set release would work well. Just mix dishonor into the honor victory condition. Miscellaneous and story based victory conditions can come from deluxe or monthly expansions.

I wouldn't mind seeing dueling become a base mechanic, similar to the way runs work in Netrunner. At its core everyone can run, but certain cards allow you to make runs with added bonus. This allows you to add enough of an advantage to focusing in it, without making it a mechanic no one wants to pay attention to unless you are specialized in it. I loved dueling back when I was beginning so many years ago, because I didn't know what I was doing and everybody just kind of ran duels. It meant that for all intents and purposes I was almost as likely to lose as win, but man it was worth trying because the payout was so sweet.

I also agree that honor/dishonor needs to be reworked although not altogether removed. It is a very interesting mechanic, but the stalemate gets so boring so fast. As an almost exclusively Crane courtier and duelist player these are the big ones.

I would also like to see the rings and enlightenment change to a more reliable win condition. One thing that drove me nuts about the rings for many of the cycles is they focused two or three of them on combat. So regardless you had to build a deck that had to be combat focused to enlighten a lot of times. My favorite rings to use were always void an air because a lot of them had to do with playing sequences of actions or cards instead of focusing on provinces and battle. I liked when fire was duel centered too, that could go a long way in making sure two different win conditions occupied common ground, and the other teched against it if nothing else.

I wouldn't mind seeing dueling become a base mechanic, similar to the way runs work in Netrunner. At its core everyone can run, but certain cards allow you to make runs with added bonus. This allows you to add enough of an advantage to focusing in it, without making it a mechanic no one wants to pay attention to unless you are specialized in it. I loved dueling back when I was beginning so many years ago, because I didn't know what I was doing and everybody just kind of ran duels. It meant that for all intents and purposes I was almost as likely to lose as win, but man it was worth trying because the payout was so sweet.

The difference here is that Netrunner is based (almost) entirely around running. That mechanic would be way too complicated if it was just a sideline in some other game. Dueling has been a mechanical issue for L5R for a long time, for a number of reasons. For example, while you might have enjoyed duels that were truly up in the air, making duels so that you're almost as likely to lose as to win generally makes duels unplayable - "flip a coin; heads you die; tails they die" is generally not something that is tournament viable (and even if it was tournament viable, having games decided by de facto coin flips is not exactly ideal).

IMHO, dueling in something like its current function is unlikely to exist in a new game. Dueling thematically will still be around, I would presume, but not the overly-complicated side mechanic it is now. To exist as a free-standing mechanic it would have to take on a much more central role in the game, and apply to concepts far broader than what we'd call a duel now. But if you end up with something as broad as, say, challenges in AGoT, I don't know if that really counts, even if the word "duel" is used.

Sacred cows for me:

- 4 Ways to Win: Honor, Dishonor, Military and Enlightenment

- 2 decks

That's it

It wouldn't really be L5R without 2 decks (though the size of those decks could be cut down to 30/30 or something). Having said that, though I wonder if they can manage 4 victory conditions at launch... I would prefer they go with fewer victory conditions (maybe just honor and military) "out of the box"... and work their way up to all four as the card pool progresses (maybe by the 1st or 2nd deluxe expansion).

Thaddok

I think three victory conditions during the core set release would work well. Just mix dishonor into the honor victory condition. Miscellaneous and story based victory conditions can come from deluxe or monthly expansions.

Avoiding honor/dishonor "stalemates" is something that is hard enough on its own... let alone trying to "get it right" along with everything else in the initial release. I would prefer the product is more polished with 2 balanced victory conditions rather than squeezed at the edges to have 3-4 just for tradition's sake. Additionally, I believe the card pool in the initial set (and in the first year) will simply be too small to deal with 3 victory conditions (nevermind 4).

... better to build up to the four traditional L5R victory conditions rather than have some of them included in a crippled state just for the sake of inclusion.

Thaddok

Depending on the extent of the redesign, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Five Rings themselves as the victory condition(s). Something like trying to control X Rings before the opponent, or place X tokens on Rings. Different clans would have different rings that they are good at. This should help balance both the "downhill" effect of military and the stalemate aspect of honor v dishonor.

Having one "turn" where both players move through the phases together should help address the going first advantage.

One rule change I think is almost certain is that Unique will act more like Singular, where you can have a full amount in your deck but only one in play.

Speaking as someone who helped build and maintain those mechanics for many years, take this to heart - honor the themes of L5R, not the mechanics .

Honor, Dishonor, Battle, Magic, Armies, Rokguan, and the Great Clans etc - these are themes . Creating a new Living Card Game out the brand means you give a treatment to these themes.

So butcher the sacred cows of mechanics and hose down the design table, but keep the Core Themes of the brand close to your heart. You guys will do just fine.

This, absolutely. I want the FFG team to start with the themes of the game and work the mechanics around those from scratch.

The themes I want to see translated into the LCG are the Clans*; and the tension between Honor, Victory, and Enlightenment. All three victory conditions represent key themes.

The feel of war between the clans is not one of total war, but of war constrained by considerations of honor and standing and a common loyalty to the Emperor. Players should feel these constraints as they deploy their soldiers and employ their strategies. The possibility and power of Enlightenment is just as key to the flavor of the setting to me, distinguishing Rokugan from a european fantasy setting. Enlightenment should interact with the game in ways that cut across the military and honor mechanics at a tangent, reinterpreting and reworking those mechanics as it goes.

The idea of a once per turn player initiated Open/Battle duel is something I've always wanted to see. You always see some one calling out an enemy for a one on one duel in a Samurai film.

And I've never been a fan of the "all or nothing" battle resolution. Something like an attrition based battle resolution needs to happen. All or nothing usually leads to stalemates in a Military vs. Military match up. Which isn't fun.

1) 2 decks

2) Honorable vs Dishonorable personalities mattering

3) Dueling

4) 5 Rings and the Enlightenment victory

That's it for me.