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.

As is Military will always be the on average strongest deck type, period, because its like a mixture of fast creature blitz + blue control to compare it to a magic decktype.

Well, if you increased Fate-side personality removal capabilities, you might see that change. But scrubs tend to cry about 'negative play experiences' when their pretty toys get wrecked. Again, tweaking the cardpool can/will fix this.

Well, if you increased Fate-side personality removal capabilities, you might see that change. But scrubs tend to cry about 'negative play experiences' when their pretty toys get wrecked. Again, tweaking the cardpool can/will fix this.

It's about balance to be fair. Not all claims of NPE are unfounded.

You can't make it too easy to kill a super unit.With something like kolat asassin for example, the card alone has a pretty big effect on the environment before it's even put into any decks, it is quite a meta shaping card.

Difference between creature/personality removal between L5R and mtg has been that units in l5r took a lot more resources and investment to become a threat, and had to be in play for a turn in the first place before it gets a full gold phase of attachments.

Different paced games with different dynamics. You can get away with a lot more and cheaper kill in something like mtg. L5r struggled with perfecting pkill, and this wasn't down to card pool, it was down to the nature of units and the pace of them entering play and becoming an effective unit.

Since the following two mechanics of L5R were brought up, and have been voiced to me personally as creating NPEs for new players(multiple times over the years), I thought I might pontificate a bit on them. 1) Province Destruction for losing a battle and 2) The all or nothing nature of Battle Resolution.

Here is the cut and dry of it. The two mechanics above make large scale battles in L5R very swingy (in some cases epically so), and encourage careful/thoughtful play as well as considerations for what could potentially occur. Going all in on a single province (especially early) and losing (especially on defense) generally leaves you down resources AND with a potentially reduced ability to recover. Hence the general rule that "good military decks don't defend".

The problem with this is the new player. The new player is just learning the game, and the level of swingy to the point that the game can be over before it feels like it really began can be a big turn off. Also, those quick defeats generally fail to teach a new player exactly what they did wrong, unless they have a particularly knowledgeable mentor.

On the other hand, those mechanics are definitely what give L5R it's epic feel. Loosing a province hurts and it is meant to. Also, doing things to curb that basically just slows down the game. Which just leads to an even more swingy battle later, as more resources are at risk. The other issue that L5R has (in comparison to magic for example) is the amount of investment required to take provinces, and the balance between spending resource to get more resources later or having offense/defense now.

The main thing is it is a double wammy when you lose (especially on defense). If I were king of L5R design (or redesign) I'd look for ways to have battle resolution be more attrition oriented. One of the things Magic got right early on is keeping the board fluid (in that stuff tends not to stick around for the entire game). In L5R, that tends to only happen to one side (except in certain periods of the games history where power was ramped up). Incidentally, some of my favorite memories of L5R are from those same periods, specifically because the higher the power level of the cards (especially action cards), the less losing armies or provinces matter (but the more important and powerful card draw becomes). The advantage to that situation is that games become more back and forth instead of the more lop-sided victories that tend to happen today (especially with less experienced players).

So the question is do you put it on the cards or do you build that board clearing mechanism into the rules. Yu was a pretty good idea that was terribly implemented, but is an example of a rules solution. The main problems were the cost of having Yu, and that it was almost exclusively handed to one faction (flavorful, but abusive).

The suggestion of essentially having every Samurai by rule effectively having Yu, has merit, though I might also extend that to Bushi as well. I might also suggest Bushi/Samurai have some Innate province strength boosting ability when defending at resolution (bowed or not), making them more desirable if you expect to go to battle, and also bigger targets for movement tricks on defense.

Of course that ignores the core mechanic of destroying provinces in the first place. Maybe that just needs to be done away with? Or curbed in some manner (as my suggestion above would do). I've often thought it might be neat to have "Devastated provinces" where instead of losing it out right, buying something from the "devastated" province costs something extra for the rest of the game, with military victory being opponent has no undevestated provinces.

Anyways, just some thoughts...

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

A lot of L5R's biggest issues come down to the game not being capable of supporting comeback mechanics when designed around turn 5 wins, and we spent many, many years watching a card pool designed around ending in 5-6 turns scream "THIS DOESNT WORK RIGHT" at the top of its lungs.

Unlike a lot of games, L5R gets tactically, strategically and thematically better the longer the game goes.

Then you have to add Honor and Dishonor are prone to stalemate/drag on/go to time when placed head to head.

Also: Enlightenment as a victory condition tends to either be completely unviable, or play its own game separate from the game the opponent is playing when it wins.

The holding system encourages both exponential resource growth which is harder to balance, and increases the odds of resource screw via the 4 province system.

The bones of the game are warped just enough that hanging any meat off them increases the chance of abusive interactions later on quite a lot.

Dueling has undergone at least half a dozen changes and still isn't quite right.

[wrote some stuff that was pretty much categorically true]

The starts in play holdings while not perfect, were a step in the RIGHT direction, and the abandonment of same was one of the biggest steps backwards for the game mechanically. If it were me and I was going to keep much of the structure intact, but try to avoid the exponential resource growth, I'd set up a system where during setup after SH are revealed each player gets a certain amount of "gold" to purchase starts in play holdings enough so that you eliminate the roughly 2-3 turns of resource build up, AND you eliminate resource screw. It can be inferred from deck construction trends through Celestial/Emperor that it would also eliminate the exponential growth factor as well (as the need for "extra" holdings would be less). Alternatively, you could print SHs with flat out MORE GP on them, but I liked the idea of having a little bit more variety, and you could go back to the Imperial Tax mechanic which was simpler than gold pooling(not saying gold pooling was bad, but once a player has 4-5 holdings in play plus SH; gold pooling just matters a lot less).

I like dueling and always have flavor wise, but the basic mechanics of it have never lent themselves to being particularly balanced. Mainly because the balance between the theoretical opportunity cost, vs the potential Meta opportunity cost just never can even out over the course of a single game. It does manifest itself over the course of a tournament, but that is little consolation to either side in the debate. Not to mention particular cards just hosing one side or the other.

Dueling should move to a mechanic more like the keyword actions from Ivory, where the card does something probably bad for your opponent, based on the difference between the "duel stat" of the two personalities involved, and then each player discards a card from the top of their deck, and if you have the higher FV, you get a bonus effect from the same card (for "winning" the duel). That way dueling cards and other cards can be "about the same power level" while still sort of capturing the "feel" of a duel. Also eliminate Focus Effects, as an unnecessary complication to a much simpler mechanic. Sample card text might be something like "Iajutsu Battle: Target your personality and a personality opposing him. If your personality has higher Chi, bow the opposing target. If you win the duel destroy a target attachment in the losers unit."

Enlightenment: Fix #1: The Rings are not cards in your deck, and once "played" cannot be removed. Everybody, brings a set to the table.

Fix #2: Requirements to play the Rings should always involve your opponent at some level (i.e. no 3 random spells to get a Ring), but should also never be entirely dependent on your opponent taking (or not taking!) a particular move (I.e. no requirement for the opponent to attack). The Ivory Rings were almost there, as were the celestial rings...

Fix #3: win at start of turn always.

Honor vs. Dishonor - Move to a "War of Honor" type system for at least one of these victory conditions, maybe something like each time a personality is dishonored, and/or each time a personality dies dishonorably, and/or anytime a player loses 5 honor in a single turn that player gets a dishonor token, and if you ever END your turn with some number of Dishonor Tokens you lose. You could even have especially nasty "Shadowlands" personalities add a Dishonor Token (or 2). The key point would be to not have a repeatable way to remove them (or have it be extremely rare and single use/RFG type cards).

Anyway, I don't think the game is as warped as McDermott, but mechanically it could definitely use an overhaul. One of the biggest things that bugged me about all the changes over the years is I always felt like some things were at once too much, and at the same time not enough. Or the ensuing design based on those changes didn't line up in one or more areas some how. Like Dueling changes, like monks alternately being the only folks to play Kiho, then NOT, leaving them in a mechanical vacuum. Eliminating Clan Discount AND blood money, but then screwing the proverbial pooch on how some personalities got costed, relative to the available gold schemes. Not to mention the disparity of efficiency between attachments and personalities. Water under the bridge at this point. Here's hoping that FF can address these issues without gutting the things that really do make L5R an enjoyable game.