Why are they changing it?

By iLiveAGAIN, in Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

The Land System is an interesting deck-building mechanic.

It is an infuriating play mechanic.

If a mechanic leads to 1 in 10 games not being games, it's not a good mechanic, regardless of how many articles you write saying that it is. If a bad player feels proud of themselves for beating a better player who flooded 15 lands deep into their 18 land deck, that's a player with messed up self-worth, not a positive reflection on the mechanic.

Edited by IsawaChuckles

The Land System is an interesting deck-building mechanic.

It is an infuriating play mechanic.

If a mechanic leads to 1 in 10 games not being games, it's not a good mechanic, regardless of how many articles you write saying that it is. If a bad player feels proud of themselves for beating a better player who flooded 15 lands deep into their 18 land deck, that's a player with messed up self-worth, not a positive reflection on the mechanic.

Actually 1 bad game out of 10 is a very good qoute. If I think back at the lod L5R or other systems I see more games going south than 1 out of 10 due to the ecnomy problem.

The system is still fine and not nearly as bad as the gold system is. If somehow the guy with th 18 lands drew 15 than this is bad luck and it happens cause you canĀ“t

eliminate luck from a card game completely but this is no reason to call the system bad.

Holdings were handled worse than Lands, that doesn't mean Lands are a good mechanic. Doubling-cube resource progression in L5R was wonky, and a horrible part of Ivory Edition game-progression.

It's not about eliminating luck, it's about letting people play the game. There have been plenty of games that don't source your resources to randomized deck-based venues, or that provide a baseline resource progression supplemented by deck-based boosts (FFG's biggest LCG, Netrunner, is in this vein. Even the LCGs that do have a land/holding equivalent, they are nowhere near as important/deck-heavy as they are in L5R/Magic, as FFG's games tend to provide you with a sufficient baseline resource production. It's nice to drop a Limited resource-producer in AGoT or Star Wars each turn, but you win without doing it too.). Even if there is no deck-based resource progression in your game, there is still ample randomness. Did you draw cards appropriate to your situation? Did you draw cards with costs on-resource-curve, or did you have to spend turns not using your resources and likely lose due to that (an argument for stable-resource games, rather than progressing-resource games)? As most of these games cap your copies of a card, did you even draw the cards your deck is founded on in the first place? How does your randomly selected opponent's deck change the way you have to play your deck?

I still love and play Magic and L5R, but it's definitely in spite of their resource systems. Heck, Force of Will almost tricked me into playing with their slight modifications to Magic's system, until the random half naked bunny girls, Engrish, and gender-swapped historical-figure-waifus made me go "Nooooooope."

Edited by IsawaChuckles

I wouldn't be shocked to see card-based resources vanish from the FFG L5R game entirely for many of the reasons cited above. I think it would probably be a good thing.

Holdings were handled worse than Lands, that doesn't mean Lands are a good mechanic. Doubling-cube resource progression in L5R was wonky, and a horrible part of Ivory Edition game-progression.

It's not about eliminating luck, it's about letting people play the game. There have been plenty of games that don't source your resources to randomized deck-based venues, or that provide a baseline resource progression supplemented by deck-based boosts (FFG's biggest LCG, Netrunner, is in this vein. Even the LCGs that do have a land/holding equivalent, they are nowhere near as important/deck-heavy as they are in L5R/Magic, as FFG's games tend to provide you with a sufficient baseline resource production. It's nice to drop a Limited resource-producer in AGoT or Star Wars each turn, but you win without doing it too.). Even if there is no deck-based resource progression in your game, there is still ample randomness. Did you draw cards appropriate to your situation? Did you draw cards with costs on-resource-curve, or did you have to spend turns not using your resources and likely lose due to that (an argument for stable-resource games, rather than progressing-resource games)? As most of these games cap your copies of a card, did you even draw the cards your deck is founded on in the first place? How does your randomly selected opponent's deck change the way you have to play your deck?

I still love and play Magic and L5R, but it's definitely in spite of their resource systems. Heck, Force of Will almost tricked me into playing with their slight modifications to Magic's system, until the random half naked bunny girls, Engrish, and gender-swapped historical-figure-waifus made me go "Nooooooope."

I mean, I think he's doing a fair bit of rationalizing too -- the best system I think is one like the World of Warcraft TCG, where any card can be played as a resource, but certain cards are only to be played as resources and are better for it -- but the point of "Not every card needs to be exciting" is a valid one, I think, and not intrinsically tied to everything about the land system.

And what is the deal, Charlemagne and Ramesses II as half-naked bunnygirls seems like the perfect game to me.

Holdings were handled worse than Lands, that doesn't mean Lands are a good mechanic. Doubling-cube resource progression in L5R was wonky, and a horrible part of Ivory Edition game-progression.

It's not about eliminating luck, it's about letting people play the game. There have been plenty of games that don't source your resources to randomized deck-based venues, or that provide a baseline resource progression supplemented by deck-based boosts (FFG's biggest LCG, Netrunner, is in this vein. Even the LCGs that do have a land/holding equivalent, they are nowhere near as important/deck-heavy as they are in L5R/Magic, as FFG's games tend to provide you with a sufficient baseline resource production. It's nice to drop a Limited resource-producer in AGoT or Star Wars each turn, but you win without doing it too.). Even if there is no deck-based resource progression in your game, there is still ample randomness. Did you draw cards appropriate to your situation? Did you draw cards with costs on-resource-curve, or did you have to spend turns not using your resources and likely lose due to that (an argument for stable-resource games, rather than progressing-resource games)? As most of these games cap your copies of a card, did you even draw the cards your deck is founded on in the first place? How does your randomly selected opponent's deck change the way you have to play your deck?

I still love and play Magic and L5R, but it's definitely in spite of their resource systems. Heck, Force of Will almost tricked me into playing with their slight modifications to Magic's system, until the random half naked bunny girls, Engrish, and gender-swapped historical-figure-waifus made me go "Nooooooope."

I mean, I think he's doing a fair bit of rationalizing too -- the best system I think is one like the World of Warcraft TCG, where any card can be played as a resource, but certain cards are only to be played as resources and are better for it -- but the point of "Not every card needs to be exciting" is a valid one, I think, and not intrinsically tied to everything about the land system.

And what is the deal, Charlemagne and Ramesses II as half-naked bunnygirls seems like the perfect game to me.

I would have to say that Chuckles is correct... L5R gold (and even worse with gold pooling) were handled terribly insofar as the randomized resource "outcome" decided far more games that is even close to acceptable... nevermind the structural resource problems (see Kalani's in EE, Crane/Unicorn in IE 1, and Mantis in IE2). Overall a terrible artifact from 20ish years ago that I hope gets rebuilt from the ground up.

As for the WoW TCG... that system (of any card usable as a "face down" resource) was also used in the VS card game. Even more confusing for L5R...was that one of their draft formats (I believe in EE) used a similar mechanic as well (turning a dynasty card facedown as a 2/2 gold producing holding).

Thaddok

The Spoils TCG also does the WoW TCG thing... in addition to having its own specific resources. HOWEVER I also start a game of Spoils with two resources right off the bat. Now you might question it and ask "why both"? Well that is simple.

1) You start the game with two resources such as 2x Greed if your in the Banker Faction. Each Greed card produces one resource.

2) Each resources such as Greed also provides 1-threshold of that specific type; aka one Greed provides one Greed-Threshold. This is relevant in that there are cards that not only have a numerical cost but a threshold must be met. If I have a character(= Personality) and he so happens have 1 resource cost and 2-Threshold for Greed, I must have two greed cards to satisfy the character's threshold requirement. This should ring a bell with many L5R players in the form of Family Honor.

3) Why does the game also run "facedown = resource" as well? Well believe it or not, there are cards with a threshold for face down cards as well to prevent it from being an isolated feature to faceup cards.

4) Characters MAY also have static thresholds within their textbox (IE: GG - When it enters play, draw a card. [G = Greed]).

Now why do people hate lands/resource cards? Simple. Resource Drought and Resource Flooding. Resource Drought is exactly what it sounds, you don't get any lands/holdings. Resource Flooding is the opposite, you get too much of that resource.

So the most common question for a person having trouble with this is: "How many resource cards are you running?" I've seen it before many times, asking the question can make people flustered like as if they had somehow made an error with their deck composition. Spoiler: Its just an error, just correct it dude. Everyone makes errors.

Also just to point out 1:10 bad games is a blessing. Also because you can cycle your cards on the first turn, you only have the potential to get 2:20 in terms of bad games.

You want some fixed resource in L5R (ccg)? Go purchase a play set of Forgotten Legacy. Your first three turns guarantee you 3x holdings that produce 3-gold a piece.

It was worst at the beginning of the game. A lot of decks didn't run many holdings back then. Some didn't run any at all, like the old Meth decks.

Edited by mordae

I was very interested to see that FFG had picked this up. I rather enjoyed this game "back in the day" but I have no intentions of going back down a "chase rares" collectible game rabbit hole. And if I were to do that the choice is clearly MTG. The LCG model and reboot make me now a potential customer for this game. There are some other things standing in the way but even with my passing familiarity with L5R getting back into it for my card game fix just isn't an option.

I really would like to keep it as two decks even if its only 30/30 or 25/25. I'm actually having trouble of thinking of another cardgame (TCG/LCG/CCG) that utilizes two separate decks.

Star Trek CCG 2nd Edition used/uses two decks. A draw deck with your personnel and ships and tools and a dilemma deck with the cards you play on your opponent to stop them completing missions.