So, time for another design talk, this time about card types.

I think L5R always had to many, so if redesigning allows to butcher some sacred cows, we should should talk about this.

Starting with the box, even though the Stronghold is not always considered a card, we should talk about if the game needs strongholds going forward. Stronholds determined four key aspects, the province strength, the starting gold and the starting family honour and probably most important the faction allignment. I think L5R should move away from the destryong provinces approach, which would make the province strength unnecessary. Starting gold could simply set the same for all. That leaves us with family honour and the clan alignment. I would advocate to redesigning who goes first and the whole honour thing into a political victory condition, so maybe this doesn't need to be tied to the box. And last, but surely not least, maybe we should rethink how narrow the clan alignment always was. I mean I would like to see two clan decks, or more often the use of peeps that are not part of your primary clan (and with a limited amount of cards in the core sets, this might be what FFG is striving for too). Anyway, I guess the whole stronghold thing will require a discussion completely on its own, and I am sure the designers will have that at one point behind close doors.

Next up is then the great divide between Dynasty and Fate cards. And with that comes the question if the game is going to keep the two deck structure or should it change. I personally would say, scrap it and make just one deck, but I that many players are in favour of keeping the two decks. What are the advantages of keeping two decks? I think one is how events work, since they are more random if they are something that simply can show up and is not played from the hand. But maybe the game should have a deck for stories/events independently from the player build decks, too keep that flavour of the game, without tying to much other card types to it. Maybe an event deck, that each player has to reveal one event at the start of the turn, and the events in the deck change with story arc.

Events without a separate event deck, could be that each player can play one event at the start of the turn, so putting too many events in a deck would just clog the hand with such cards.

Regions (and the more temporary battlefields from the fate deck), could be played on contested territories instead of home provinces battles. These contested territories could just be empty placeholders, that players can define by playing cards like regions on them, or they could be objective cards on their own.

Holdings are mostly used to produce gold and often honour or other token. I think the base rescourse producion should be removed from holdings to have a clear and steady progression instead of the unrealiable gold curve the game always struggled with. That would having to worry about holdings much less of an issue. In the just one deck approach holdings could just become another supply card (see below).

Personalities should stay the things arond most actions resolve around. Maybe even more so than currently, with strategies always requiring a personality to perform them.

Follower, Items, Spells, (and even the old Ancestors) should all become supply cards. That could then also include the stuff like Formations, Kata and Tattoos and all those that things that have been coming from strategies so far, but put a permanent effect into the game.

Not much to say about Strategies that I haven't already said

The five rings, probalbly should be no longer cards on puts into decks, but become part of the game in other ways. Like as a icon on most cards, or part of duel mechanics, or a reworked elighnenment victory. But that some rings changed basically every edition showed that AEG never got them balanced, and for a game that is named the way it is, it was a shame that not all decks had a proper use for all the rings. That needs to change!

So, your thoughts? And this is not meant as a speculation threat on how FFG might want to change the game, but as a discussion about what worked and what didn't worked so far and how things could be done differently for a better game!

I won't speculate on things to come, but I'll give my two cents about the advantage of 2 decks under the old paradigm.

In my opinion, there were two primary advantages to having 2 decks:

First is the separation of cards that you basically need to do things, the Dynasty deck, away from the cards that augment how you do things, the Fate deck. This makes it so you always have access to both varieties of cards, whereas with a single deck you'll have games where you skew to having too few of one type and too many of the other. Are there other solutions? Probably. But this seemed to work pretty well.

Secondly, the separate decks allowed for the Dynasty mechanic that is effectively "discard a card to draw a card".* In most cases, Dynasty cards are not individual powerful**, so this let you improve the composition of your "hand" and improve consistency without being unbalancing. This is in contrast to the relative power of Fate cards, where an uncosted ability to discard to draw could and would be exploited.

EDIT:

*The Dynasty layout, in general, also made it so you always had a specific number of the card types that you need "to do stuff" (I'm also not going to get into the can of worms that is Province destruction reducing resources).

**This is particularly true by the fact that almost all Dynasty cards are costed, in contrast to Strategies which are mostly free

This is all probably premature without knowing *anything* about the design goals from FFG, but I like idle speculation and circular discussion, so here it goes.

I liked, and would want to keep the two deck design. One reason is simple: brand recognition. I can see a Coca-cola can across the room and know if it's the brand of soda I want to drink or not. Basically every card game out there plays from one deck, sometimes with a secondary stack of cards that play are set aside. L5R always had two. It made it different and recognizable to people who knew the brand.

Apart from that reason I always thought of the difference in the decks as the separation of strategy and tactics. The Dynasty came at a steady pace (barring province destruction) and you built your economy and long term game from that. Your Fate came in bursts, either from dropping a bunch of them in a battle, a duel, or attaching them. From my experience you could have a player who was a better thinker for one deck or another. I was personally much better with Dynasty decks, and my Fate decks suffered. As a result I either had to playtest much more on the Fate or had to read and get opinions on my options to make it better. A great example of this being relevant is the tendency for new players not to discard their early dynasty flips. When I taught my wife to play she wouldn't discard a 10+ gold card with big flashy numbers no matter what. My problem is that I often blew Fate cards early or too many at once to achieve my goal, and then suffered in the future for it.

Personalities are the core of the game. They need to stay in some form.

Strategies are the core of the Fate deck. They need to stay in some form.

Outside of that I'd say that everything else is up for grabs.

Events were just powerful cards with universal effects that usually played almost like a strategy from the Dynasty deck, so had random timing.

Holdings couldn't decide if they were gold or utility, so they ended up as both, but often couldn't inspire players to break away from certain prescribed sets that were used in nearly every deck.

Regions were somewhere in between an event and a fortification. They fluctuated between binder fodder and one or two auto-includes for every deck per arc.

Items, Spells, Followers - attachments should stay in some way, but I don't think most people really care if they are distinct card types or if they are rolled together with attachment restrictions.

The Rings should stay in some capacity, but whether they are tied to a victory condition, start in play for everyone, or are powerful action cards could go in any direction.

This is just analyzing what already exists and not what "could" exist. It's likely that FFG will bring in some design elements from their other titles or take things in a direction we can't currently predict.

Keep Fate and Dynasty decks. Changing it is frankly bad taste in the sense of:

"If its not broke, don't fix it."

Events/Celestials are weird. They are pseudo-strategies that you place in the Dynasty deck.The only times I got overclogged with Events/Celestials is when I placed too many in a deck.A good rule of thumb is 1-3 Events is 1-2 Celestials. That way nothing clashes.

Regions got rolled into Fortifications. Basically allowing you to customize your home turf. What your thinking of is a specific Strategy subtype called Terrain which already does what you talk about.

Frankly I have to disagree with changing how Holdings function. At this point for me, steady resource is synonymous with mana crystals from Hearthstone and I hate its simplicity, if I wanted such simplicity I wouldn't go and play L5R. Plus Holdings didn't just make gold, dudes or honor gain/loss. It also provided unique tricks you can use to protect yourself from your opponent or gain some leverage outside of just gold.

??? Permanent effect? So like Katas/Followers/Spells/Items/Ancestors? You got me confused. As what you ask for is what already exists. Fate Cards that maintain a presence on the board and attach themselves to personalities.

So you want to change a long-established Win Condition? Rings are used in duels as they have FV 4 which is second only to Focus itself. Um what? There has always been decks that utilized them, its called Dragon Clan as they are the most devote to the five rings. Other clans can certainly try, but Dragon have baked-in support for rings when compared to the other clans. Plus the five rings are only one set of three different types of rings. You also got your False Rings which cropped up because of Fudoism, a religion that twisted the original teachings. Then you got your Dark Rings which are the polar opposites of their counterparts.

You could make Story Events work in similar fashion to current Dynasty - both players have a Story (Fate, ehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe) Deck, and they place X cards from it face up on the board, so they are public. They remain there until solved. Then, when they are resolved, you fill them up, possibly face down and reveal them at first phase of the game (if we go with the 4 Seasons Structure, it's perfect for Spring - Spring is the time where Emperor can make speech/proclamation declaring what Samurai should take care of during this year and what should they be aware of).

I would love to make these Events solvable by *both* players, but it could lead into a mess of "whose card was this again?" during wrapping up the game, if they move anywhere from the "story zone".

Different approach to the proposal:

The single-deck archetype would drastically slow the game, but not in a good way. To offset this, card draw would need to be heavily accelerated. Increasing the standard draw might manage it, but more likely in a "refill up to X" standard format which devalues higher cost cards.

The two deck system allows for predictable resource access (dynasty) and a controllable resource flow (fate). This is the greatest advantage of the two deck format.

Provinces are basically the entire point of the military strategy aspect of the game. That's the part I like. If the resourcrare access loss is a problem, address it in another fashion. They are currently how one defines victory for a military deck. Using a set of ambiguous common battlefields removes the illusion of conflict between players as daimyo, and basically turns them into planeswalkers fighting a proxy war. That loss would hurt quite a bit, I think.

Regions, fortifications, events -- rare to find a balanced middle ground, usually trash or gold. Some of these were part of L5R's emulation of expanding card types per expansion. Ancestors vanished, since 3/4 of them were coasters, and nobody really cared. We barely noticed when the stopped printing fortifications for a while, and I didn't really miss regions. Celestials were neat, but pretty much just super-events. Basically, unique Dynasty cards that aren't experienced personalities are kind of "meh." Oh, and Kihos. Those things can rot.

??? Permanent effect? So like Katas/Followers/Spells/Items/Ancestors? You got me confused. As what you ask for is what already exists. Fate Cards that maintain a presence on the board and attach themselves to personalities.

So you want to change a long-established Win Condition? Rings are used in duels as they have FV 4 which is second only to Focus itself. Um what? There has always been decks that utilized them, its called Dragon Clan as they are the most devote to the five rings. Other clans can certainly try, but Dragon have baked-in support for rings when compared to the other clans. Plus the five rings are only one set of three different types of rings. You also got your False Rings which cropped up because of Fudoism, a religion that twisted the original teachings. Then you got your Dark Rings which are the polar opposites of their counterparts.

I wouldn't say they have to be attacked to a personality, sure current Followers, Items, Spells and the old Ancestors did that, but imagine items that one doesn't have to attack to a peep! Free your mind of old restriction the game had!

Regarding the wincondiotion, I want nothing, I am just here to discuss different approaches. With redesigning the game, why do we have to keep useless sacred cows, when we could get a much better game instead?

??? Permanent effect? So like Katas/Followers/Spells/Items/Ancestors? You got me confused. As what you ask for is what already exists. Fate Cards that maintain a presence on the board and attach themselves to personalities.

So you want to change a long-established Win Condition? Rings are used in duels as they have FV 4 which is second only to Focus itself. Um what? There has always been decks that utilized them, its called Dragon Clan as they are the most devote to the five rings. Other clans can certainly try, but Dragon have baked-in support for rings when compared to the other clans. Plus the five rings are only one set of three different types of rings. You also got your False Rings which cropped up because of Fudoism, a religion that twisted the original teachings. Then you got your Dark Rings which are the polar opposites of their counterparts.

I wouldn't say they have to be attacked to a personality, sure current Followers, Items, Spells and the old Ancestors did that, but imagine items that one doesn't have to attack to a peep! Free your mind of old restriction the game had!

But to what end? An item that doesn't attach to anything is usually represented by a holding in the CCG mechanics. Or it creates a personality out of itself. I don't see what that adds.

Problem with having different "type" for Equipment, Followers, Spells, Ancestors, Underwear and Kata is that in order to make including a type worthwhile, you need to follow up it with enough mass.

If you make one Follower card and make it a type, you need 10 other followers to make it worth. If you want sword as Equpiment, you need 10 other to make it worth. If you want Spell type, you need 10 other to make it worth. This way, your limited card pool will be quickly eaten up by having to "make our card types worthwile". As all of these are, in essence, "things that attach themselves to personalities in order to produce effects", you may consider rolling them into one "attacheable" type - this way if you want a card representing Matsu Lioness Legion, you can have it, and you don't have to come up with 10 other "Legions"; if you want to have a badass sword floating around, you don't need to figure out how to filler up other 10 swords.

So unless there is a great benefit to making it its own type, it might be better to more general so you can make it easier to learn and not have to bloat card pool just to make a type pack enough meat.

??? Permanent effect? So like Katas/Followers/Spells/Items/Ancestors? You got me confused. As what you ask for is what already exists. Fate Cards that maintain a presence on the board and attach themselves to personalities.

So you want to change a long-established Win Condition? Rings are used in duels as they have FV 4 which is second only to Focus itself. Um what? There has always been decks that utilized them, its called Dragon Clan as they are the most devote to the five rings. Other clans can certainly try, but Dragon have baked-in support for rings when compared to the other clans. Plus the five rings are only one set of three different types of rings. You also got your False Rings which cropped up because of Fudoism, a religion that twisted the original teachings. Then you got your Dark Rings which are the polar opposites of their counterparts.

I wouldn't say they have to be attacked to a personality, sure current Followers, Items, Spells and the old Ancestors did that, but imagine items that one doesn't have to attack to a peep! Free your mind of old restriction the game had!

But to what end? An item that doesn't attach to anything is usually represented by a holding in the CCG mechanics. Or it creates a personality out of itself. I don't see what that adds.

Maybe you should take another look at Kata for example, they didn't got atatched to any peep. Basically, I just want to unify all the supplement cards, instead of having useless distinctions, and yes, if it would be just one deck, then I would throw holding also in that catagory, like I mentioned in the starting post. If something gets attached to a peep or not is not that mportant, that could be handled simply with a keyword, like: Attachment. Done!

Make Personalities your new "Provinces", Attach stuff to them. This way, you can say "Yo, this girl is Usagi Mugen, she owns a cool castle, won a tournament, has honor guard of angry Oni, and wields a cursed sword of cursedness." Again, this reinforces the narrative, because your characters become "governors" and "people who did some stuff and this has effect on their future".

??? Permanent effect? So like Katas/Followers/Spells/Items/Ancestors? You got me confused. As what you ask for is what already exists. Fate Cards that maintain a presence on the board and attach themselves to personalities.

So you want to change a long-established Win Condition? Rings are used in duels as they have FV 4 which is second only to Focus itself. Um what? There has always been decks that utilized them, its called Dragon Clan as they are the most devote to the five rings. Other clans can certainly try, but Dragon have baked-in support for rings when compared to the other clans. Plus the five rings are only one set of three different types of rings. You also got your False Rings which cropped up because of Fudoism, a religion that twisted the original teachings. Then you got your Dark Rings which are the polar opposites of their counterparts.

I wouldn't say they have to be attacked to a personality, sure current Followers, Items, Spells and the old Ancestors did that, but imagine items that one doesn't have to attack to a peep! Free your mind of old restriction the game had!

But to what end? An item that doesn't attach to anything is usually represented by a holding in the CCG mechanics. Or it creates a personality out of itself. I don't see what that adds.

Maybe you should take another look at Kata for example, they didn't got atatched to any peep. Basically, I just want to unify all the supplement cards, instead of having useless distinctions, and yes, if it would be just one deck, then I would throw holding also in that catagory, like I mentioned in the starting post. If something gets attached to a peep or not is not that mportant, that could be handled simply with a keyword, like: Attachment. Done!

I'm familiar with kata. They were a strategy type that required its own rules and rulings to handle interactions. Some were played, but I was never attached to them at all. Like terrains, focus effects, formations, and all the other subsets of strategy cards, I feel these can be scrapped without even being missed.

I'm familiar with kata. They were a strategy type that required its own rules and rulings to handle interactions. Some were played, but I was never attached to them at all. Like terrains, focus effects, formations, and all the other subsets of strategy cards, I feel these can be scrapped without even being missed.

Sure, but that wasn't my point, I am not here to say we should have all these useless keywords around, my intention is exactly the opposite, less useless differentiations, and having one card type that is broarder and can be used for more different things, and thus allows the designers more options, instead of of tying them to a formulae that nobody wants.

Card types are a difficult thing.

L5R was always weird with their card types. For card types it is always important to remember one of the most basic rules of design. Form follows function!

What do I mean by that...

Strategies and Kihos were indistinguishable. Kihos are just Strategies with a restriction, and they were properly got rid of the card type.

Items and Spells are indistinguishable. Spells are simply Items with a restriction and a Force and Chi Bonus of +0. So they have the same function but do not follow the same form.

Then you have gold-producing and non-gold-production holdings. Different function but same form. A non-gold-producing holding has simply a completely different quality and function in the deck.

When I look at the old dynasty deck you had 4 functions: Gold-producing Holdings, Personalities, things that come into play permanently (Regions, Events and non-gold-producing holdings) or things that are only there for a short time (Events)

Events therefore serve two functions ... and they were compared to Strategies before which is a good analogy since they typically also had two functions.

Most Strategies were one and done type of cards, but then they were Kata and Terrains, which are closer related to Rings from their function.

All in all I want to say L5R was a mess when it came to card types and that certainly did not help with usability.

And one last thing:

I like the Mana Crystals from Heartstone, at least I can't have a gold screw or flow in this game.

This has nothing to do with simplicity it is simply designed better in that regards... and it is simpler these are two pluses on my list.

If you want a more complicated system... Please pick one that works, like CoC has for example.

Dynasty:

Personalities

Holdings

Fate:

Attachment (items and spells are sub categories: A ttachment-spell , At tachment-weapon , etc.)

Followers

Tactics (Rings)

I'm familiar with kata. They were a strategy type that required its own rules and rulings to handle interactions. Some were played, but I was never attached to them at all. Like terrains, focus effects, formations, and all the other subsets of strategy cards, I feel these can be scrapped without even being missed.

Sure, but that wasn't my point, I am not here to say we should have all these useless keywords around, my intention is exactly the opposite, less useless differentiations, and having one card type that is broarder and can be used for more different things, and thus allows the designers more options, instead of of tying them to a formulae that nobody wants.

But having strategy cards that behave completely different than any other strategy card seems contrary to most assumptions about where the game is headed. Look at kiho - these are a special type of strategy that used to be its own card type. They represent an instant, but usually less powerful "spell" effect. They effectively became a strategy with performing restrictions.

I think a good rule of thumb would be if two cards have the same border, but one requires an extra page in the rulebook, it either needs to be its own card type or it needs to go.

Like what others have said with attachments: you can differentiate items from followers from spells with a line of text or a keyword. That probably means they could be rolled together.

You asked what we thought about card types, and the crux of my answer is: the minimum number possible that retains the depth and feel of the game. Wonky katas and formations and terrains that behave contrary to their card types is the opposite direction I think the game can and should take.

Really there are only four 'card types' that need to be in the game:

1. Something to represent your Clan (be it a stronghold or not)
2. Something to represent characters (Personalities with revamped stats)
3. Something to represent events or moments of action (strategy)
4. something to represent add-ons be they weapons, or a cadre of warriors (attachments)

Everything else can be thrown out, or added in once this core has been stabilized. As far as whats *on* those cards, about the only stats I'm married to are gold cost and Force on personalities, maybe personal honor. Chi can go die in a fire for being the most underutilized stat except when they printed just enough chi death cards to be worried about. Honor requirement should just be dropped in favor of more 'loyalty' mechanics. If I'm playing a clan, or a daimyo, or whatever, no samurai I recruit for/from my own clan should be saying 'no'.
Focus can go too, and/or dueling needs to be reworked. Dueling has always needed to be reworked. Its always been op or a waste of time, time to get it right.

The point is, we don't need 8 different card types, each with varying stats that may or may not be relevant depending on the situation. Make stats always relevant, maybe not impact, but considered.

As for 2 decks. I really don't want to see it in the same thing. Its not 'innovative' any more, at least not in its old incarnation. So many times have I demoed this to players and its turned them off, or just a massive source of confusion. If we're going to keep multiple decks on a side, I'd like to see it smaller, something akin to AGoT does with its scheme (event? I can't recall what they're called) decks.

Make Personalities your new "Provinces", Attach stuff to them. This way, you can say "Yo, this girl is Usagi Mugen, she owns a cool castle, won a tournament, has honor guard of angry Oni, and wields a cursed sword of cursedness." Again, this reinforces the narrative, because your characters become "governors" and "people who did some stuff and this has effect on their future".

I do like that idea but I'd spilt personalities between major and minor. The major ones are those that can attach stuff while minor ones are more temporary or narrow. I'd also keep strongholds as a players "core". Even if the player loses major personalities, they always have that center.

I'd definitely keep strongholds around but I'd remove the province strength, gold production, and honor values. Instead, strongholds would only show the clan and have some sort of text box to differentiate between the clan families, aims, or story particulars.

Most fate cards themselves can simply become action cards, but I think that several other types could easily exist.

I'm not quite sure what to do about events. One way to deal with them is that they can represent a 'clock' mechanism. Another way is to have players 'seed' a part of the play area (event zone or some other name) with events and one event is revealed every turn. When you 'seed' an event, it goes on the bottom of the event deck so you'd get a first in, first out situation and that it's resolved next turn or even a few turns down the road.

Really there are only four 'card types' that need to be in the game:

1. Something to represent your Clan (be it a stronghold or not)
2. Something to represent characters (Personalities with revamped stats)
3. Something to represent events or moments of action (strategy)
4. something to represent add-ons be they weapons, or a cadre of warriors (attachments)

Everything else can be thrown out, or added in once this core has been stabilized. As far as whats *on* those cards, about the only stats I'm married to are gold cost and Force on personalities, maybe personal honor. Chi can go die in a fire for being the most underutilized stat except when they printed just enough chi death cards to be worried about. Honor requirement should just be dropped in favor of more 'loyalty' mechanics. If I'm playing a clan, or a daimyo, or whatever, no samurai I recruit for/from my own clan should be saying 'no'.

Focus can go too, and/or dueling needs to be reworked. Dueling has always needed to be reworked. Its always been op or a waste of time, time to get it right.

I pretty much agree with your top four. Those are the things I think the game will absolutely keep as well.

Thinking outloud: If they kept force and chi as stats, what if there were "force" battles and "chi" battles (or however you want to think of a mechanic that advances victory). Force could remain the military stat and chi could be the political stat or the enlightenment stat. More thinking out loud: They could even extend it to Force/Chi/Honor with battles that awarded victory condition in one of three realms, military/spiritual/political. Or something else maybe.

Make Personalities your new "Provinces", Attach stuff to them. This way, you can say "Yo, this girl is Usagi Mugen, she owns a cool castle, won a tournament, has honor guard of angry Oni, and wields a cursed sword of cursedness." Again, this reinforces the narrative, because your characters become "governors" and "people who did some stuff and this has effect on their future".

I really like this idea, but I guess too many folks want to keep their provinces as means to buy their dynasty deck stuff. Also, the four starting characters are an issue in themselves too, I mean I have played the old Rage card game from White Wolf, and I know that this approach has its own can of worms, so that I am not sure if that should be opened in L5R...

I would like to see the provinces replaced by Strongholds that have effects relative to their position, what Stronghold is next to them, or how many you control. Remove the resource production (PS & FH may be irrelevant with this design as well) so when you lose a Stronghold you only lose it's effects and don't have the production death spiral. This could also change the interaction of the remaining Strongholds.

A quick and dirty example (not entirely fleshed out but the gist):

I have 2 Strongholds remaining:

left SH is Sepulcher of Bone - undead cards cost 2 less, goblin/oni/troll cards at adjacent SHs cost 1 more

right SH is The Halls of the Damned - Samurai have +2 force, Samurai at left SH have +1 force, Samurai at right SH have +1 chi

In this case an undead samurai brought into play from the Sepulcher of Bone would cost 2 less and have +1 force while in combat there or + 2 force while in combat at The Halls of the Damned.

This would make choosing Strongholds and their placement a part of the strategy. Destroying Strongholds would also become strategic beyond mere resource destruction. You could also use this to restrict/enhance movement between SHs. Personalities may only be called to battle that is adjacent without an ability or strategy that extends this range or your opponent may be able to restrict in a similar manner.

I think the card types - especially those in decks - need to be severely curtailed.

1.) No more Gold Producing Holdings in decks. Whatever permanent Gold / Mana / Resources you have start the game in play. Maybe no more Gold Producing Holdings at all - just budget for the round.

2.) No more 8-million card-frame based sub-types of attachments with their own sub-rules. There's one type - Attachment. It can have a keyword like Follower or Sword or whatever.

3.) No more Rings in Decks. Rings should be something like Objective Cards in other CCGs - not introduced by random but static game elements you gain by meeting the conditions.

4.) No more Regions / Events - these should be folded into Strategy Cards

So I could see these types of cards in decks:

Dynasty: Personalities, Non-Gold-Producing Holdings (Retainers?)

Fate: Strategy Cards, Attachment Cards

With Gold Producing Holdings starting in play (maybe these could be a Stronghold, a Sensei, a Clan Holding, and a Farm) and the Five Rings and Imperial Favor starting out-of-play under no-one's control.

At that point you could have like 20/20 decks or something, playing a "round" - taking turns playing one card at a time until someone reaches an Objective on the round. Then shuffle up and play the next round. First person to win X objectives wins the Campaign.

Marty Lund

Monkey Clan * Random * Grognard

I think the card types - especially those in decks - need to be severely curtailed.

1.) No more Gold Producing Holdings in decks. Whatever permanent Gold / Mana / Resources you have start the game in play. Maybe no more Gold Producing Holdings at all - just budget for the round.

2.) No more 8-million card-frame based sub-types of attachments with their own sub-rules. There's one type - Attachment. It can have a keyword like Follower or Sword or whatever.

3.) No more Rings in Decks. Rings should be something like Objective Cards in other CCGs - not introduced by random but static game elements you gain by meeting the conditions.

4.) No more Regions / Events - these should be folded into Strategy Cards

So I could see these types of cards in decks:

Dynasty: Personalities, Non-Gold-Producing Holdings (Retainers?)

Fate: Strategy Cards, Attachment Cards

With Gold Producing Holdings starting in play (maybe these could be a Stronghold, a Sensei, a Clan Holding, and a Farm) and the Five Rings and Imperial Favor starting out-of-play under no-one's control.

At that point you could have like 20/20 decks or something, playing a "round" - taking turns playing one card at a time until someone reaches an Objective on the round. Then shuffle up and play the next round. First person to win X objectives wins the Campaign.

Marty Lund

Monkey Clan * Random * Grognard

This is probably one of my favorite speculative visions of the overall picture. It captures the feeling, trims the fat, and keeps it fairly fast paced.

So I could see these types of cards in decks:

Dynasty: Personalities, Non-Gold-Producing Holdings (Retainers?)

Fate: Strategy Cards, Attachment Cards

You know, I've been kicking around the idea of how a pod system would work. I'm sure I'll get stoned for this, but it'd be neat for personalities to have retinues, a la conquest, that make up part of your fate deck.

Maybe just one in your dynasty deck (or even one starting in play, again like conquest) called your (Clan) Champion. Or maybe a core of X personalities. Idle thought. I know people weren't fans of pods in SW, but I hear a lot less objection about retinues in Conquest. I like the idea of the big guns that are personalities coming with their signature gear/followers/strategies/whatever.

I also wouldn't be shocked to see holdings as they are go away, but if that happens I'd be *really* surprised if FFG's standard "limited" keyword wasn't applied to holdings that produce gold, so your economy improves incrementally rather than exponentially. And only 1 or 2 gold per holding.

Are Action Cards called Strategy Cards now? (Or were they always? ) Aside from that, spot on. No reason the various attachments can't be folded into "Enhancements," as in other FFG games.

I really do wonder how "necessary" a dynasty deck is.

Ooooooh.

What if you drew everything to the same hand, but if you want to play certain kinds of cards, they have to be raised up through provinces. Just drew a good samurai? Play him in your province (maybe face down?), and he'll be ready in some number of turns as he reaches adulthood and goes through his gempukku. Maybe use FFG's counter fetish to create a countdown.

Meanwhile, your opponent is trying to burn your province down. Rather than losing the province outright, they're taking out that specific card. Razing the village and executing your potential Samurai before he comes of age.

There are definitely kinks to be worked out -- come from behind would be pretty rough once your opponent had board control and could wipe out your province at will -- but maybe build in some kind of comeback mechanic where the "clock" ticks faster if you're behind.

Actually, this all sounds not super dissimilar to advancing agendas, but for bringing important cards into play rather than defining victory conditions.

Hmmmmm.

Card types are important and I think I want some clear one. Actuall I think WOTC did a good job with their Creature, Artifact,Entchament, Land, Sorcery/Instant types. So I would transform this into L5r

I woul probably get

Land = Holding

Artifact= Attachment

Enchantment= Regions/Celestials

Creature= Personalities

Spell = Strategy cards

for the attachment I think you can go with key words to make the difference so you coul get at least the spell keyword to show that this onyl can attached to a monk or shugenja and you can get the weapon and armor keyword and limit the attachment for both to 1 with the Kensai being the only one who can wear 2 weapons.

This would allow to steamline at least the attachments quiet a bit without losing cool stuff.

Also if we go for the land analogy we also could go for a different gold cost and streamline it to 1 holding per turn while each holding produces 1 gold and cost nothing some have special effects which in turn could cost gold or have you to exhaust it/meet special conditions. Yes this would resemble Magic very strong but WOTC did a good job with their econmic system so maybe we shoudl learn from it.