Agreed, let duels stay, but let them be less NPE and more interactive for all

I have an idea for fast and entertaining duels - give everybody a small cardboard sword. Whoever stabs the opponent first, won the duel (Crane swords will naturally be longer, to reflect their superiority and Dragon players on the other hand could have two swords!) .

I have an idea for fast and entertaining duels - give everybody a small cardboard sword. Whoever stabs the opponent first, won the duel (Crane swords will naturally be longer, to reflect their superiority and Dragon players on the other hand could have two swords!) .

If I wouldn't be a Crane player myself, I probably would ask now about feeling insecure and trying to compensate for something with a bigger sword...

Crane dueling was my first deck, so its always had a place in my heart (as evidenced by how long i've tried to build shadowlands dueling decks, long after they stopped being viable and before spider dueling showed back up here at the end). personally, i agree that its a fundamental element of the game.

the problem with dueling, like dishonor, is that sure, everyone can do it. but in order to do it well, as its historically been constructed, you needed a lot of tools, which meant you needed a lot of duelists and a lot of fate side tech. the fate side stuff was pretty clan agnostic (mostly, where it didn't key off ph), but the personalities with duelist/double chi/dueling related traits and abilities obviously weren't. so some clans simply couldn't build a functional deck the way others could.

this will be a bigger problem in an LCG i suspect, where there is a much smaller cardpool, unless dueling is changed dramatically, and made into a rulebook ability so to speak, and the whole idea of duelist/doublechi/on personality duels goes away.

No more "dueling" decks. Dueling is so entrenched in samurai fiction that it should be simply a part of the game, like Politics or Battle are.

Also, don't make Crane and Dragon super superior at winning duels. Instead, give them ability to trigger special effects after winning a duel, which in turn will make them more willing to commit their stuff to winning the duel instead of just flat-out being better at it, and making losing to a Crane potentially bigger deal than normally.

And give Scorpion abilities that can trigger off losing a duel .

Honestly, I'd probably just make it a rulebook keyword, like Tactician- give "Duelist" cards the ability to bow to bow an opposing Human card with lower chi, or something (I'm sure others can think of better ideas), then print actions that trigger off it as well (again like Tactician), but without having to introduce the complexity nd general awkwardness of duels in their current form. I agree that duels should absolutely be part of the setting, and having a separate 'combat phase' for them works in the RPG, but it probably causes more problems than it resolves in the CCG.

Of course, given they're redesigning the whole game, rulebook keywords may well no longer be a thing. We'll just have to wait and see, but I doubt they'll get rid of dueling entirely given iaijutsu's centrality to Rokugani society and culture.

1. Let's get rid of the focus values, instead every card is tied to one or more elements.
   
2. The duel is tied to one element (a duel of Fire for example) and both player draw 3 cards at once.
   
3. Both duelist count how many symbols of the duel they have drawn. (Something between 0 and 3)
   
4. The guy with more matching symbols wins. If both have an equal amount of symbols it is a kharmic strike.
   
5. Focus is the only card in the game tied to all 5 elements.
   

• Focusing on one element, gives you the chance to win duels of the respective element, but leave you vulnerable to duels tied to other elements and cripples your card pool.
  
• There are no good and bad cards for a duel focused deck, just different cards.
  
• By observing the cards your opponent plays you can guess if you might be able to win a certain challenge against him.
  
• A deck with does not focus on duels still can actually beat you by chance.
  

Duelist, Open: [NAME] issues a challenge to target personality for a duel of [stat]. The challenged personality may bow to refuse. The loser of the duel is [destroyed/sent home/bowed/dishonored/etc].

Example:

Duelist, Open: Doji Katsuki issues a challenge to target personality for a duel of Personal Honor. The challenged personality may bow to refuse. The loser of the duel is dishonored.

^

Edited because I forgot to clarify when it could specifically be used.

Just an idea for a duel mechanic:

1. Let's get rid of the focus values, instead every card is tied to one or more elements.
2. The duel is tied to one element (a duel of Fire for example) and both player draw 3 cards at once.
3. Both duelist count how many symbols of the duel they have drawn. (Something between 0 and 3)
4. The guy with more matching symbols wins. If both have an equal amount of symbols it is a kharmic strike.
5. Focus is the only card in the game tied to all 5 elements.

Implications:

• Focusing on one element, gives you the chance to win duels of the respective element, but leave you vulnerable to duels tied to other elements and cripples your card pool.
• There are no good and bad cards for a duel focused deck, just different cards.
• By observing the cards your opponent plays you can guess if you might be able to win a certain challenge against him.
• A deck with does not focus on duels still can actually beat you by chance.

Something along the line could work... Perhaps also something completely different.

But I guess you can make a lot of working duel mechanics if you move away from chi and focus values.

I like that approach, it would not make the five elements being more important but also let one have Iaijutsu duels (fire) and Sumo competions (earth) and Sadane (air) and what have you suddenly all have a their own duels. Maybe void could be added to every duel and not have its own duels though.

@ Yandia - Each Samurai has always Elemental Affinity, expressed in a cool looking Ring of XYZ symbol on their card. When they duel, they always look for these smybols.

Though I wouldn't mind dropping the idea of "milling cards to duel".

EDIT

Also, I love idea of a scene where a pretty renowed duelist goes "No, no, I don't think, my dear apprentice, that I'm a good match against this guy."

"Why sensei?"

"Let's say we have a bad affinity."

Different dueling styles and all that jazz.

Implications:

• Focusing on one element, gives you the chance to win duels of the respective element, but leave you vulnerable to duels tied to other elements and cripples your card pool.
• There are no good and bad cards for a duel focused deck, just different cards.
• By observing the cards your opponent plays you can guess if you might be able to win a certain challenge against him.
• A deck with does not focus on duels still can actually beat you by chance.

A bit of a contradiction, I bolded to clarify what I mean.

What it means is there are bad cards if dueling is focused on elements. Lets say I got a personality of Water and Fire for dueling, the elements Wind and Earth are bad for my duelist don't necessarily help him if I construct a deck around him and his elements.

I think resolving dueling as a step of a turn or part of a round of xombat would be an awesome change. That way every one can duel and use it to sway the out come like we have seen in fiction and history.

I think resolving dueling as a step of a turn or part of a round of xombat would be an awesome change. That way every one can duel and use it to sway the out come like we have seen in fiction and history.

Yeah, I'd love it being a phase where you can step out your best duelist to try to gain some sort of advantage for the round. Add some bluffing, some intentional throwing of duels, and some other quirky ways of capitalizing on it when it isn't your niche, and it could get really interesting.

Really like the idea of implementing the elements (5 Rings) on (almost) every card as they're supposed to be central to the culture. Putting them on personalities would tell us something about the character without even having to read up on them. Of course this means that shadowlands would likely be bereft of these traits but that would make sense.

Making duels tied to caste would also make sense and help avoid bully dueling. No more duelists cutting down courtiers/shugenja like paper and still calling it honorable, for example. Cleverly constrain it to opponents who would relish the idea of confronting each other in the hopes of potentially gaining glory (or in the Scorpion's case, doling out humiliation). Truly legendary duels should yield greater rewards than those that is merely thinly disguised murder.

Mechanically we have no frame of reference for how that could be handled. But I agree they are integral to my interpretation of Rokugan and should be given good consideration to ensure balance and flavor are maintained.

Let's not get too far into the details of implementation, and concern ourselves instead with how much/little of a role we want dueling to play in the LCG.

I'd really love a dueling mechanic that can be accessed by everyone, maybe as a built in aspect of the game. Some clans should be great at it, and some should be poor, but that should be a risk vs reward decision you take when you pick a clan.

Two of my favorite gaming moments came from duels.

A couple of my favorites also came from dueling.

During Diamond I ran a dueling Unicorn switch deck out of Shiro Shinjo. I am facing a Kakita Dueling Academy deck. Early game I get Shono exp 2 out so I have a hoss duelist. The KDA player smirks and challenges him with his Domotai. I tell him to pitch two cards because of Shono's trait and he does so. He plays Kakita Tech to focus first and shrug and instead of Focusing play Smoke and Mirrors discarding the Kharmic Strike he focused. After reading the card like four times calls strike in disgust. It is my turn to start smirking as I had two Wear Him Downs in my hand. At the end of the duel, I have the same number of cards in hand, 5 more honor, and emptied his hand. (Old dueling rules had you focus directly out of your hand with no focus hand draw so dueling was a much "harder" type of control)

He looks at me in horror and says, "Are you playing a dueling deck?"

I reply, "I just might, you'll have to keep playing and see."

He was so intimidated by that duel that he did not even try to challenge me to a duel after that.

Later walking around after that round I overhear the following exchange, "Who the hell plays dueling out of Unicorn?! His deck was full weird BS." I look over and see it is my opponent talking to his friend. Sadly I never faced his friend and washed out in the first round after Swiss to a wicked Shadowlands deck.

The other one was watching my friend who playing (Gold arc) a Crane vs Crane mirror match beat a guy by causing him to lose his Doji Reju exp 2 with the Celestial Sword of the Crane in a duel with a 0/1 Doji Nagori. It is close to the end of the game, they both are within 5 of honoring out. My buddy's opponent using the box to pull a duel out of his deck and then goes for the bully duel of his 12 Chi Reju vs poor 1 chi Nagori. He focuses the one card in his hand and Reju's player calls for the strike, being immune to Kharmic Strike makes him think there is no way someone would make up a 12 point deficit in a single card . My manages to keep a straight face when he reveals A Perfect Strike and announces his duel total as 13, one more than Reju. Reju's player looks down with absolute disgust and scoops on the spot. He was so mad he left the tournament.

A mechanic similar to 7th Sea's Boarding Phase based on the 5 elements is something I always thought would work for L5R dueling. Just replace club, punch, dagger, slash, and thrust with Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Void.

from wikipedia:

Each card in the deck has three boarding boxes. The large attack box is first, with two smaller defend boxes below it. Each boarding box has one of the following actions: [C] (Club) , [P] (Punch) , [D] (Dagger) , (Slash) , or [T] (Thrust) . The attacker starts by playing a card from his hand to initiate his attack. If possible, the defender resists by playing a matching defence card from his hand (i.e. the defender's card must have a defend box matching the attacker's attack box ). The defender immediately counter-attacks with the action in the attack box of that defending card. The original attacker then defends himself against the counter-attack. In effect, the exchange is reminiscent of a continuous cinematic "Thrust-Slash-Parry-Riposte" mêlée. The mêlée ends when either player cannot defend against an attack (i.e. the player's hand is empty, he chose the order of his attacks wrongly, or he has a bad boarding hand). The last attacking player wins the boarding attack, and the loser suffers hits .

I've always seen dueling as an important part of L5R's flavor. What about borrowing from Hearthstone's recent 'Joust' mechanic, where a duel can be used to enhance or diminish another card's impact. Mechanically this would bake duels into the game and take away some construction woes while possibly allowing players to pick their representatives; avoiding some bully dueling. Thematically it would push the importance/prevalence of duels in Rokugani culture.

Rough Examples:

An event that increases honor gains for both players when proclaiming, but the winner of a triggered duel gains a Topaz Champion.

A political strategy that bows a target, but can trigger a duel that causes honor gain/loss.

A strategy that sends home a target, but can trigger a duel that dishonors/destroys.

Keywords could be used in the representative selection process, or personalities could have abilities which interact with the mechanic.

I also have the personal opinion that for duels to become more prevalent in the game, they should focus more on rewarding the victor than punishing the loser.

Dueling has pretty much never not been a problem. It was either the principle strategy to advance a victory condition with negligible risk for a few select decks, or was so unreliable as to be unviable. It's had its rules changed over and over, with new little cheats for it and new meta against it. Each overhaul did a pretty good job of trying to fix the main problems in the previous system, but I don't think a perfect method happened.

It's been a really neat mechanic that defines the game, but that mechanic created a really narrow margin of balance.

if you've ever played netrunner, i wonder if they could end up doing dueling like jinteki's psi mechanic is done (an example is here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/05013)

if you've ever played netrunner, i wonder if they could end up doing dueling like jinteki's psi mechanic is done (an example is here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/05013)

Link's borked.

But I hope this isn't referring to the, "Hold out your hand with a number of credits, if you match your opponent XYZ happens! (Or doesn't.)

Because ugh.

if you've ever played netrunner, i wonder if they could end up doing dueling like jinteki's psi mechanic is done (an example is here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/05013)

Link's borked.

But I hope this isn't referring to the, "Hold out your hand with a number of credits, if you match your opponent XYZ happens! (Or doesn't.)

Because ugh.

http://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/05013

stupid end parens. but yeah, thats the one i'm thinking of. its not the mechanic i'd pick, but i wouldn't be surprised if it ends up streamlined in that fashion.

if you've ever played netrunner, i wonder if they could end up doing dueling like jinteki's psi mechanic is done (an example is here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/05013)

Link's borked.

But I hope this isn't referring to the, "Hold out your hand with a number of credits, if you match your opponent XYZ happens! (Or doesn't.)

Because ugh.

http://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/05013

stupid end parens. but yeah, thats the one i'm thinking of. its not the mechanic i'd pick, but i wouldn't be surprised if it ends up streamlined in that fashion.

Still borked.

As I said in another topic, you all secretly want to be Crane. Because you envy our skill with blade, fabulous looks and general Crane awesomeness ;-) .

Why be Crane when you can be Scorpion? Also enviable skill with blade, even better looks, and everyone knows it's more fun to be bad.

@Cielago: http://netrunnerdb.com/bundles/netrunnerdbcards/images/cards/en/05013.png