The problem has never been printing the sensei, it has been having enough support for it when it is released. Some sensei's in Ivory and 20f would sit there for sometimes as long as a year without proper support, then an expansion comes out and the deck is golden.

And some never got there.

The Susumu Clout mechanic basically vanished after the set it appeared in (I think it got one or two cards that interacted with it the set after and then no more).

Rae for the Phoenix started getting the cards it needed to (kind of, almost, not really) justify its economy-maiming drawback... after it cycled out of legality. Koiso utterly shredded your freedom in designing your deck in exchange for the ability to kill one of your own cards in an effort to maybe kill one of theirs.

Gidayu for the Mantis did very little to justify its drawbacks.

Suikihime Sensei (a multi-clan option, incidentally) was basically a coaster and never escaped that status.

The problem has never been printing the sensei, it has been having enough support for it when it is released. Some sensei's in Ivory and 20f would sit there for sometimes as long as a year without proper support, then an expansion comes out and the deck is golden.

And some never got there.

The Susumu Clout mechanic basically vanished after the set it appeared in (I think it got one or two cards that interacted with it the set after and then no more).

Rae for the Phoenix started getting the cards it needed to (kind of, almost, not really) justify its economy-maiming drawback... after it cycled out of legality. Koiso utterly shredded your freedom in designing your deck in exchange for the ability to kill one of your own cards in an effort to maybe kill one of theirs.

Gidayu for the Mantis did very little to justify its drawbacks.

Suikihime Sensei (a multi-clan option, incidentally) was basically a coaster and never escaped that status.

I think this is something that bothered me the most about the Sensei.

How much support some of them needed to work.

If you consider this Sensei:

Amika Sensei

+0/+0/+0

Scorpion Clan

Your Stronghold has no abilities and each of your Scorpion Clan Personalities has the ability, "Battle, bow: Bow a target enemy Follower or Personality without Followers."

This Sensei would work identically to the The Towers of the Yogo.

A stronghold which as legal many times, is clearly battle oriented and need almost no personality support.

Yes we had some coaster strongholds in the past, but far more sensei did fall into this category. Which is a shame because I really liked the idea.

The problem has never been printing the sensei, it has been having enough support for it when it is released. Some sensei's in Ivory and 20f would sit there for sometimes as long as a year without proper support, then an expansion comes out and the deck is golden.

And some never got there.

The Susumu Clout mechanic basically vanished after the set it appeared in (I think it got one or two cards that interacted with it the set after and then no more).

Rae for the Phoenix started getting the cards it needed to (kind of, almost, not really) justify its economy-maiming drawback... after it cycled out of legality. Koiso utterly shredded your freedom in designing your deck in exchange for the ability to kill one of your own cards in an effort to maybe kill one of theirs.

Gidayu for the Mantis did very little to justify its drawbacks.

Suikihime Sensei (a multi-clan option, incidentally) was basically a coaster and never escaped that status.

I think this is something that bothered me the most about the Sensei.

How much support some of them needed to work.

If you consider this Sensei:

Amika Sensei

+0/+0/+0

Scorpion Clan

Your Stronghold has no abilities and each of your Scorpion Clan Personalities has the ability, "Battle, bow: Bow a target enemy Follower or Personality without Followers."

This Sensei would work identically to the The Towers of the Yogo.

A stronghold which as legal many times, is clearly battle oriented and need almost no personality support.

Yes we had some coaster strongholds in the past, but far more sensei did fall into this category. Which is a shame because I really liked the idea.

Yep agree with this.

I think this kind of effect was partly a symptom of Strongholds being designed to be more generic, which meant it should of been the sensei's role to lay out what the particular theme does/aims to do.

Despite that, your point remains. If it were a sensei that read as above it would not need support anymore. It looks to me that there was a design intention to really focus sensei's toward their deck theme, and to avoid the sensei being useful for the clan's other decks. This led to sensei's like the Clout token one being very poor.

I think if your example were created as a sensei a couple months ago, it would of read something like : Your Stronghold has no abilities and each of your Scorpion Clan Ninja Personalities have the ability, "Battle, bow: Bow a target enemy Follower or Personality without Followers."

Seems to be the way design were going with deck defining cards like sensei's and sh's.

This is just my take as a long time gamer, and enjoy-er of specifically card games on the pros and cons of factions and the ability to mix factions.

To really understand what we are talking about here, you have to recognize what a faction represents, and the context of the game in which it is utilized. As many have pointed out in this thread M:tg's Colors are only loosely aligned, and indeed at different points in the games history the power of going mono-color vs multi-color has waxed and waned. The point is that trying to examine just the pros and cons of different points on the "monostyle-freestyle" spectrum inherently involves some discussion of the overall theme or context of some fictitious game it might be applied to, because for some games qualities at one end of the spectrum might be detrimental while for others those same qualities are beneficial.

The original poster seems to posit that there is an "ideal" position on the spectrum. I am going to reject that notion (as many others have). Like so many things there is no single best answer for every game. Every game coalesces around several collections of things. You can call these things faction, color, clan, house, energy type, Force, anything you want really. All of these things have a primary goal of making those aforementioned collections of things distinctive. But it is the context of the game and the expression of the relationship between those collections that determines what the appropriate level of "ease of mixing" IN the game should be.

In M:tg, for instance there is not an inherent conflict between any two pairings of colors or combinations of colors, and in that game colors are freely encouraged to be mixed. This makes a lot of sense in the context of that game because the colors represent elemental forces of the universe, which are not seen as having particular vendettas against each other, they exist as tools for the players and story characters to advance their agendas, as opposed to having agendas themselves. The Pokemon, and Harry Potter card games are similar in this regard.

Where as in games like GoT, L5R, High Command, and Vs the factions exist to structure and drive the conflict, so each of those games falls much farther towards the low to no mixing of the factions end of the spectrum. High Command being at the extreme end. So mixing factions and the ease at which a game allows that is inherently an expression of the state of the relationship between the distinctive groups.

From a Mechanical perspective the more you compartmentalize those groupings the more you cull the tree of combinations of things you have to play test for balance, not only in a vacuum, but against the rest of the potential field. The other thing to consider is what the faction cards are allowed to do. For instance, in L5R, if personalities either didn't have abilities, or had very generic/basic abilities that don't bend the rules, the faction distinction basically comes down to flavor, and so there is almost no "balance" issue to consider by not incentivizing clan focused play. I.e. if all factions have a 3F samurai with no other traits or abilities for the same cost, mixing those together is irrelevant for balance.

However, this example does demonstrate in the most obvious way the issue of homogeneity, i.e. if these generic 3F samurai are aggressively (read cheaply) costed and everybody has access to them, and all things being equal, most personalities look the same way, then faction distinctiveness is mostly irrelevant and game play is likely pretty dull. That is not to say that clan distinctiveness could not be expressed in some other way. On the other hand, if the personalities are more unique, and ALSO more compartmentalized you run the risk of creating imbalance through exclusion (Kuon or Chagatai for instance), especially if a correspondingly powerful and restricted card for a different faction does not exist, or is relatively too expensive (multiple Lion and Dragon Clan Champions over the years).

One of the things I think the AEG L5R team did really well over the past couple years (back to the start of Celestial, really), was showing how the different clans operated within the context of different roles. Take Mantis Magistrates, vs Crane Magistrates, vs Dragon Magistrates, vs Scorpion Magistrates as an example. Each factional grouping had a very distinctive style within those parameters, and had the ability to meld some other distinctive elements from the respective clans to allow for variation even within the pool of decks of that type for a given faction. But they all also had some common elements for how magistrates generally worked which was pretty consistent across all the decks. Where they did badly (at times) was balancing things, and in some cases, just missing the obvious (Akagi Sensei or Consuming the Flesh anyone).

As applies to L5R, I think one of the biggest things that will need to change (and the adjustment will likely shock people) in the transition to an LCG will be faction scope. Yes all the clans have samurai, magistrates, courtiers, shugenja, and even monks. However, an LCG format is going to necessarily trim that to it's essence. And to be fair even with 400+ card base sets and 4 annual 150+ card expansions AEG was not really successful at showing all aspects of every clan.

So I am anticipating maybe a 6 faction Main box (hearkening back to Imperial Edition) at most, maybe only 4, or possibly and this is really wacky for an LCG model, but maybe individual Clan Main boxes, where you get all your faction specific cards, plus a pack of 1 copy each of the rest of the cards(or maybe a play set). This presumes that the LCG version of L5R is not completely dissimilar to its current version. Of course that is a pretty big assumption.

Here is some wild speculation - at various points designers who were involved with L5R have said if they were designing it today it would not be setup with player turns, but rather in a free for all action round system (ala Dune/Doomtown/Burning Sands). Maybe the next iteration will do that (and to be fair Ivory was pushing hard in that direction).

And now that I am completely off topic I will retire...

You get a 'like' for that post!

Looking more at the new aGoT core, I'm leaning towards 6 factions in box than 4. although aGoT used 8 so they might actually try to fit all the current ones. I'd also expect the stronghold card to do more than look pretty (and bow for gold).

The problem has never been printing the sensei, it has been having enough support for it when it is released. Some sensei's in Ivory and 20f would sit there for sometimes as long as a year without proper support, then an expansion comes out and the deck is golden.

And some never got there.

The Susumu Clout mechanic basically vanished after the set it appeared in (I think it got one or two cards that interacted with it the set after and then no more).

Rae for the Phoenix started getting the cards it needed to (kind of, almost, not really) justify its economy-maiming drawback... after it cycled out of legality. Koiso utterly shredded your freedom in designing your deck in exchange for the ability to kill one of your own cards in an effort to maybe kill one of theirs.

Gidayu for the Mantis did very little to justify its drawbacks.

Suikihime Sensei (a multi-clan option, incidentally) was basically a coaster and never escaped that status.

I think some of the lack of future support for certain family mechanics was based on just how many there were and the fact that there's limited space in expansions. There wasn't even any Susumu members in Evil Portents so that didn't help them at all. Almost like they gave up on the whole honorable Spider thing! That's why I hope they only do 2 family pulls at the beginning and release new ones over a 6 set cycle. Like LotR, they could eventually add one or two here and there for them too.

Actually, Design basically admitted that they simply forgot about supporting the Clout mechanic for the Susumu... because the family got cards after the sensei, but almost none of them interacted with the sensei's design, which is, to put it mildly, one hell of an oversight.

Many sensei, good and bad, weren't family-specific- and honestly, shouldn't be. Starting from a "this family does X"perspective, in my opinion, is what hamstrung a lot of the Ivory and later sensei.

Perhaps someday we can toss out some of the alternative Susumu Sensei designs that were tabled during the PT process for one reason or another, just so people could see 'what-if' scenarios.

Actually, Design basically admitted that they simply forgot about supporting the Clout mechanic for the Susumu... because the family got cards after the sensei, but almost none of them interacted with the sensei's design, which is, to put it mildly, one hell of an oversight.

Many sensei, good and bad, weren't family-specific- and honestly, shouldn't be. Starting from a "this family does X"perspective, in my opinion, is what hamstrung a lot of the Ivory and later sensei.

They forgot Susumu cards for two expansions? I think they just should have had clout on a few other families so they wouldn't forget stuff like that. I'm sure the Scorpion could have used a different version of clout and maybe have the Ide or other clan family. Of course, let each family use clout for different ways.

I don't mind some Sensei being specific to a clan, but it just depends largely on the sensei in question and how many sensei's the designers want to push. I can easily see some sensei being only usable for a few clans based upon. For example, I'd rather see a ninja sensei focusing only on the Spider, Scorpion, or other faction that gets a few ninja rather than every clan. The same can be said of a merchant, market, or economic sensei focusing on the Unicorn, Mantis, or Crane.

Point is, I shouldn't need a sensei to make my Shiba guys feel like Shiba guys. They should already be doing that by the design of the personalities.

I'm not averse to single-clan Sensei, but if there is one arena where I definitely think the game could go for a more multi-clan approach, it's there (assuming sensei or anything like them have a place in LCG L5R)

Point is, I shouldn't need a sensei to make my Shiba guys feel like Shiba guys. They should already be doing that by the design of the personalities.

I'm not averse to single-clan Sensei, but if there is one arena where I definitely think the game could go for a more multi-clan approach, it's there (assuming sensei or anything like them have a place in LCG L5R)

Ok, that's what you meant, then absolutely. I don't mind sensei for multi-clan but I would want some sort of twist on it and not something generic as the banners in aGoT. Something like letting me get some Dragons but only the alchemists or tattooed monks plus some sort of ability for them. Maybe something that let's me use dirty lower caste citizens and some other in flavor ability with them (leading ashigaru or covering for merchants).

Privileging monoclan allows factions to share some overlap as regards themes and ability foci on their cards while discouraging building a deck comprised entirely of the best of each faction.

As someone who usually played honour runner my decks have been mostly very mono-Crane (to be capable to proclaim everyone, and back in the days, I could buy them all with honour, not just one per turn), but it was always possible to play L5R multiclan, especially military decks that went for the expensive peeps, or enlightenment decks that needed a specific kind of peep (monk, shugenja, or duelist) that another clan had cheap or with an ability that could be useful. I have seen people win tounaments with Crane boxes but not a single Crane peep in the deck. So, I don't get all the fuzz here.

Different mechanics lead to different levels of 'monoclanning.' Legend of the Five Rings makes it easy to splash in a personality from out-of-clan. As long as that personality isn't Loyal, just spend two extra gold. But since that tax occurs with every out-of-clan personality, L5R did not easily allow decks with high percentages of out-of-clan personalities.

On the flip side, you have games like Magic: The Gathering. In that game you need certain colors of mana to cast certain spells. If you throw in one off-color spell, you've also got to have some way to produce that other color of mana. Simply splashing one or two out-of-color cards puts you at risk of either drawing the off-color land or the off-color spells, but not both. The mechanics of that game encourage players to run multiple colors in parity, but discourages splashing individual cards.

Suikihime Sensei (a multi-clan option, incidentally) was basically a coaster and never escaped that status.

Suikihime top 8'd every kotei it was played in the entirety of Ivory and 20f, sadly for it, it was only played seriously by a couple people. Both the Crane Honor build in IvE and Phoenix Dishonor in 20f were incredibly solid, albeit with a pair of incredibly bad matchups.

es we had some coaster strongholds in the past, but far more sensei did fall into this category

Until CE/ EE, most strongholds had to fit multiple aspects of a clan, while Sensei emphasized a specific theme shared by multiple clans (or in some cases, something the box didnt necessarily support well, or something that was a big theme of the clan)

If you have a generic box, having a generic sensei for one clan is just a "why isnt this a box" question. Amika sensei above, for instance, just turns your sensei into "new scorpion box thats also on the table with current scorpion box".

Sensei as a whole have been incredibly bad because some of the design teams had the idea that for a sensei to be balanced, its drawback had to be bigger than its benefit. Its why the best sensei stand out in an obvious way; they never had a downside, or had a downside nowhere near approaching their upside.

We started getting things that keyed off keywords heavily because... Reese wanted to move away from Theme Specific Strongholds to Generic Strongholds and Theme specific Sensei. It was more or less a complete failure, with most every single-clan sensei being ta coaster, but the idea could have worked if drawbacks were less about "your economy is terrible now, have fun" or "you cant first-buy 75% of your personality base, good luck" and more emphasized deck construction elements that played into theme more. Historical examples would be something like Shirasu Sensei Magistrates out of Utaku Palaces. Its something that really wanted to be a legitimate thing. It just had to more or less concede to any dishonor match in addition to whatever else it already had a bad matchup with. In return, in arc constructed, you got... more or less nothing. It was amazing in Pre-Ivory big deck though. 1 gold for 3/4 force scorpion/mantis guys is hilarious.

Take, as an example, how to address Off-themes.

The Buttressed Walls of Some Crab Fortress

8/4/3

Tireless Reaction: Once per turn, negate the bowing or movement away from the current battlefield of your opposed Crab personality.

Tono Sensei

Crab

0/0/-1

Limited, (bow): If you control a Crab Courtier, target a personality controlled by an opponent. If he is Dishonored, you may straighten a holding. Dishonor him.

You now have a sensei that works as the "dishonor" sensei without needing a dishonor box, your courtiers are designed around low or dash honor req's anyway, so the HR isnt an issue for things you'd use in the theme, AND it can be used as a sensei in a military deck that has a handful of courtiers for their abilities (the thing you generally have to do for a while in new card games) as holding straighten or as a way to slow honor a little, but may require designing around not using a full complement of higher honor requirement guys. It also reinforces thematic ideas, as Yasuki are the eco warfare Courtiers. Tono also isnt going to do work for you if you arent employing the Yasuki, and are just whoring in the best Unaligned or out-of-clan courtiers.

The FFG L5R will likely be so mechanically different from existing L5R, that it's unlikely that much of the essence of what we call L5R (ie Strongholds, Sensei, the Provinces, two decks, et all) will remain.

And yes, Suikihime was deceptively quite strong. Much like Sukihime herself.

The FFG L5R will likely be so mechanically different from existing L5R, that it's unlikely that much of the essence of what we call L5R (ie Strongholds, Sensei, the Provinces, two decks, et all) will remain.

And yes, Suikihime was deceptively quite strong. Much like Sukihime herself.

What leads you to believe this?

The FFG L5R will likely be so mechanically different from existing L5R, that it's unlikely that much of the essence of what we call L5R (ie Strongholds, Sensei, the Provinces, two decks, et all) will remain.

And yes, Suikihime was deceptively quite strong. Much like Sukihime herself.

A lot of this was said about Netrunner, based on the early cards. Once it came out, most converted. I expect a lot of this to happen here. And I can tell you, as an outsider looking in, a LOT of changes needed to be made.

As an insider looking around where I am, I concur.

That they won't have to worry about having any of the previous 20 years worth of cards be any way compatible with their new product gives them a freedom to address certain systemic issues that we never quite could, in that context. I'm a little jealous. There were many things we often discussed needing to change, but several were non-starters due to that.

The FFG L5R will likely be so mechanically different from existing L5R, that it's unlikely that much of the essence of what we call L5R (ie Strongholds, Sensei, the Provinces, two decks, et all) will remain.

Based on how they handled Got 2.0 and Netrunner, I dont really see that being the case. Some things will change, but I dont see end of the world, everything is different changes, based on the names internally that wanted L5R.

The FFG L5R will likely be so mechanically different from existing L5R, that it's unlikely that much of the essence of what we call L5R (ie Strongholds, Sensei, the Provinces, two decks, et all) will remain.

Based on how they handled Got 2.0 and Netrunner, I dont really see that being the case. Some things will change, but I dont see end of the world, everything is different changes, based on the names internally that wanted L5R.

They've made it no secret that the game they develop will not be compatible with previous versions of L5R in any way.

Whether this is a positive or negative thing is up to the individual.

The FFG L5R will likely be so mechanically different from existing L5R, that it's unlikely that much of the essence of what we call L5R (ie Strongholds, Sensei, the Provinces, two decks, et all) will remain.

Based on how they handled Got 2.0 and Netrunner, I dont really see that being the case. Some things will change, but I dont see end of the world, everything is different changes, based on the names internally that wanted L5R.

Both of those games had far fewer mechanical problems than L5R does now

The FFG L5R will likely be so mechanically different from existing L5R, that it's unlikely that much of the essence of what we call L5R (ie Strongholds, Sensei, the Provinces, two decks, et all) will remain.

Based on how they handled Got 2.0 and Netrunner, I dont really see that being the case. Some things will change, but I dont see end of the world, everything is different changes, based on the names internally that wanted L5R.

Both of those games had far fewer mechanical problems than L5R does now

They also haven't been around as longer as L5R too. Yes, Netrunner hit in 96 but only had releases till 99. If I remember from the last set, the corporation pretty much had a huge advantage over the runner decks. That's a pretty big flaw in my opinion but was fixed in the Android version.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the core mechanics of l5r, just with the cardpool. Since we're starting from square 1 in that regard, while I imagine it won't be backwards compatible, I'm hoping that not too much changes in terms of the overall 'stronghold, 2 decks, 4 provinces' structure.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the core mechanics of l5r, just with the cardpool. Since we're starting from square 1 in that regard, while I imagine it won't be backwards compatible, I'm hoping that not too much changes in terms of the overall 'stronghold, 2 decks, 4 provinces' structure.

I have a feeling that the way provinces have been will be changed drastically.

I think There are a few core mechanics that have been problematic for the game, but I think what happens is you get so used to them to the point where it feels normal! Personally, I've been playing a few other card games over the last couple of months, and when I play L5R again it feels very clunky. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but I think much of that is nostalgia and how fond I am of the theme and the setting more than the mechanics of it.

That said, I think there is still an awful lot to work with for FFG from what exists already. It could only take a small change to make the entire previous card pool incompatible, so I don't think the comment from FFG about it not likely being compatible gives away too much about what they plan to do.

I just hope it keeps the epic theme it had. Netrunner and GOT both feel so small scale, I always got a sense of large armies duking it out in l5r. I hope that remains at least!

I have always wanted an overhaul of the all or nothing nature of battle resolution. Always felt like YU could of been a keyword given to all samurai rather than just crab, would of added another layer of strategy to the game and would of stopped the stall that sometimes occurred between two military decks!