Older cards? When new scene appear you can always try to interest new people with "Classic". All i know i'm going to have fun with cgg as there will be people to play with. And i'm pretty sure i'll find someone to play during big lcg meetings. So, sort your cards, build some decks and be ready for 2017!

Could always just make several fun decks for everyone to have fun and experience L5R. I break out the Scorpion Coup deck every now and again for multiplayer despite the fact that it would lose to most. I've even been going back to make decks that were featured in the old Clan books.

It was the same thing for the WoW ccg and all those raid decks.

I'm just hoping I can use my old deck backers. I'll be happy with that.

I try to keep my expectations realistic.

I played during the Gold arc and dropped out shortly after Diamond began. I stopped playing for reasons unrelated to the game.

I toyed with picking it up again in the last couple of years and even bought some product. What struck me was the quality of the packaging was far better than the cards themselves. That really held me back from committing to the game a second time.

So, for me the quality of the physical product that I am going to hold in my hand while playing has to be non pareil. Also, the cards have to be readable. The font can't be too small and the colors/color conventions have to be clearly distinguishable for those of us with common color blindness (e.g. red-green).

As to the game itself and the flavor... What attracted me to L5R in the first place was the foundation of Asian philosophy and military strategy. So I want, the Code of Bushido, the Art of War, the Book of the Five Rings, the Tao te Ching, and Confucius, to have significant place in the structure of the game. For me, what distinguishes L5R from Magic, Doomtown, 7th Sea, and other thematic card games is that it is fundamentally a war game. As such, on some level it must represent a physical battle field where armies will stage, maneuver, and clash and heroes and villains can impact the flow of battle with inspiring charges or sacrifices or tricks.

I am playing Magic now because that is the only viable game in my town. I was glad to see Doomtown revived and I hope 7th Sea will be as well; but L5R is by far the one I have the highest hopes for; FFG please don't disappoint!

i agree with you, i believe that if L5R is to truly rise above the end of its CCG era it will need to remedy the mistake made by both AEG and Wizards of the coast. a big flaw of the CCG is that it has become unbalanced favvouring certain factions (scorpion, crab, mantis), if fantasy flight fix the mistakes made it could be a great game.

that being said i love the CCG and will ALWAYS play it.

Pal, there's no "balance" in FFG LCGs. Even with smallest cardpool they can't do it. Or - as i suppose - it's "moderated" to keep some factions/decktypes T1 and change meta drastically with expansions.

i believe that if L5R is to truly rise above the end of its CCG era it will need to remedy the mistake made by both AEG and Wizards of the coast. a big flaw of the CCG is that it has become unbalanced favvouring certain factions (scorpion, crab, mantis), if fantasy flight fix the mistakes made it could be a great game.

A flaw both thematic and mechanical that existed both in L5R and in AGoT First Edition, was that players were heavily discouraged from mixing Houses/Clans for economic reasons, and I expect this to change with the L5R LCG. The flavor of both settings features frequent alliances of convenience between the major factions, while the flexibility in mixing them would add variety to the game, and especially given the limited cardpool inherent to the LCG model, invite more deckbuilding options sooner. I feel that doing something like the Banner agendas in AGoT 2E is the only feasible way to give us the clans we all love.

Balance between all clans is an utopia.

Look at it from this angle: A balanced game should have a reasonable amount of decktypes that can win tournaments. At the very least, considering a theorical 7 clans at launch, it means to really have a balance between all seven clans, you need seven top tier decks. This is a lot for such a limited card pool. And that assumes only one theme per clan. So no, you cannot have a balanced environment with a competitive asako henchin AND a shugenja theme for phoenix, unless the dev team miraculously manage to have 8 or more top tier deck. Just two balanced themes per clan would mean 14 balanced decks.

18 with 9 clans,

21 with Shadowlands, Nezumi and Naga

23 with Imperial and Ronin...

That is simply not going to happen, unless they all have pretty much the same cards in them with very limited variation.

One of the reason FFG has a reputation for balanced decks is because Clan allegiance is not serious business like L5R. Even if more than half the Clans managed to get balanced, you still end up with 2 or 3 factions with no hope of winning a tangible number of koteis. And that would be considered bad balance in L5R even if 5 decks are top tier.

In Magic, if blue isn't able to win a tournament, people will simply not make Blue Decks in tournaments. Go ahead and try to give this advice to a Crab player...

I think it'd be interesting if the Honor and Dishonor victory types were merged into a single "Influence" victory type, which represents gaining control of the Imperial Courts by either boosting your own Clan's reputation or reducing that of your rival(s).

I was thinking that perhaps courtiers could "attack" in a fashion similar to the combat phase in the CCG, with a more political outcome versus the militaristic destruction of enemy provinces, and the quirk that your attack could be defended only by characters with Personal Honor equal to or greater than your attackers'. For the "Honor" player, this would mean simply sweeping through with your superior-PH characters, whereas the "Dishonor" player would reduce opposing characters' PH values to zero, thereby eliminating them as potential defenders. This is a heavy change from the CCG, I realize, but it's one example of how the two victory types could be reconciled so that one is not inherently superior to the other, especially in multiplayer.

I think it'd be interesting if the Honor and Dishonor victory types were merged into a single "Influence" victory type, which represents gaining control of the Imperial Courts by either boosting your own Clan's reputation or reducing that of your rival(s).

I was thinking that perhaps courtiers could "attack" in a fashion similar to the combat phase in the CCG, with a more political outcome versus the militaristic destruction of enemy provinces, and the quirk that your attack could be defended only by characters with Personal Honor equal to or greater than your attackers'. For the "Honor" player, this would mean simply sweeping through with your superior-PH characters, whereas the "Dishonor" player would reduce opposing characters' PH values to zero, thereby eliminating them as potential defenders. This is a heavy change from the CCG, I realize, but it's one example of how the two victory types could be reconciled so that one is not inherently superior to the other, especially in multiplayer.

http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=11139 as player rulebook ability. This also uses tokens and ffg LOVES tokens.

Looking at things realistically....

The best thing to compare to would be the WarHammer Invasion game. It is the only game LCG that has been put out with more than 2 factions. It has 6 factions.

So let's start the game there. 220 cards in the set. 6 Clans.

If you have only 6 clans, I think they should be Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, and Scorpion. Yes, the others are popular, but also.... the others are popular because they require funkier mechanics that were not really part of the core game. You can do these 6 factions without really figuring out how taint works or how ranged attacks work.

The game should strive for the 4 victory conditions.

Crab will try to go for a military victory.

Crane will try to go for an honor victory.

Dragon will go for an enlightenment victory or military victory or a dishonor victory.

Lion will go for a military victory or an honor victory.

Phoenix will go for an enlightenment victory or an honor victory.

Scorpion will go for a dishonor victory or a military victory.

Or, in a weird situation, they can try for a different one.

Mantis can be introduced in an additional pack along with ranged attackers and naval units for other clans.

Unicorn can be introduced in an additional pack along with cavalry units for other clans.

Spider can be introduced in an additional pack along with rules for taint and corrupted units for other clans.

Former-Imperials ("Owl Clan" unless they come up with something better) can be introduced with more courtiers and monks for other clans.

Remember, the nice thing about the way LCG work is that your entire starting cards for your faction will all come in one box. You won't need to start pulling and collecting the new faction from a random starter that is half made up of other clan cards and various blister packs that likely have tons of cards you can't use. By including with them cards that other clans can use that will utilize the expanded rules that they introduce, they will be valuable to even those who don't necessarily want to play the new faction... but then, once they have that set, they can play that faction right away as long as they kept the cards that came in the box.

There could be a pack of nothing but shugenja and spells for all the factions since most of the introduced factions would just increased military options. Another set could give all factions ninja or something equivalent.

Ronin, creatures and Minor Clan samurai can just be "unaligned" cards that are pretty much free to use regardless of your main faction. I suppose eventually there could be rules introduced on how to choose "Ronin" or "Minor Clans" as the faction you are representing. In fact, I think they would do well to just ignore that goblins and trolls had ever been part of the game for a long, long while. Maybe eventually some sort of "creature" expansion could come out that would introduce creatures for the various factions.

The set will need to possibly have item tokens and follower tokens as well as honor counters and a set of the 5 rings (or at least one large card that tells you what you need to do to activate each ring and a token to place on it when activated).

I don't think many, if any, of the old mechanics need to be precisely similar. Again, I think it would be good to look at the WarHammer LCG and figure out which mechanics could be adapted.

The best thing to compare to would be the WarHammer Invasion game. It is the only game LCG that has been put out with more than 2 factions. It has 6 factions.

Uh, Conquest has 7 out of the box and A Game of Thrones 2.0 has 8.

The best thing to compare to would be the WarHammer Invasion game. It is the only game LCG that has been put out with more than 2 factions. It has 6 factions.

Uh, Conquest has 7 out of the box and A Game of Thrones 2.0 has 8.

Then I suppose it is likely that Unicorn and Mantis would also be in the base set. Although the more factions you start off with out of the gate, the less card support each is going to have. In addition, the more wonky mechanics that are primarily used by only a single faction (cavalry & ranged attacks) will not only get pretty much stuck as only available to that fact, but will probably have less thought put into them.

In fact, I am guessing that the only real way to do it would be to give each faction only a small number of actual named personalities and have a lot more generic clan samurai cards that could possibly be used by any faction. If there are 220 cards in the set and one has to figure that half of those are going to be taken up by followers, items, actions, etc. There would only be 13 cards dedicated to a single faction. And not 15 types of cards-- 13 cards total. So if under the old paradigm you could have 3 copies of a personality card, this would mean only 4 personalities and 3 unique cards, one of which would be the faction card itself naturally, to make up the entirety of the faction.

The Spider, if it even comes out as part of the game, will likely be in the expansion set that is set to launch along with the base game. That would allow all the shadowlands corruption stuff to be in its own pack. It looks like the standard expansion is between 110-120 cards.

If there are 220 cards in the set ....

Looking over the other LCG base sets, there doesn't seem to be a consistent number of cards (I would say two hundred something, but Call of Cthulhu blew that 'number' out of the water). Who is to say that they won't do a three hundred card base set? Or four?

I don't have much experience with LCGs, but my understanding is that the expansions come quickly (by CCG standards) and the ranks of each faction will grow steadily. With that in mind, it wouldn't bother me if each group starts with a small collection of personalities at the start.

If there are 220 cards in the set ....

Looking over the other LCG base sets, there doesn't seem to be a consistent number of cards (I would say two hundred something, but Call of Cthulhu blew that 'number' out of the water). Who is to say that they won't do a three hundred card base set? Or four?

I don't have much experience with LCGs, but my understanding is that the expansions come quickly (by CCG standards) and the ranks of each faction will grow steadily. With that in mind, it wouldn't bother me if each group starts with a small collection of personalities at the start.

I looked at the Star Wars, WarHammer Fantasy, WarHammer 40K, and Game of Thrones base sets on the site. They either listed a specific number that appeared to be 220 or 240 or "over 200" which would mean more than 200 and less than 250. So it is fair to believe that those are within the same range.

Even if there is a larger set out there, they would have to charge more in order to print a larger set. They will want the cost of the box to be relatively in-line with the other comparable products they sell. They aren't going to print a super massive set and discount it extraordinarily.

Now, granted, they say up front that they are going to be making an expansion called "Evil Portents" at the same time. So technically that will be another 110 to 120 cards.

So in all the total initial set, with a third of it being in the expansion box, will be between 340 to 380 cards. I guess you could average out to about 360. Assuming no factions are dropped, at least 9 of those will need to be explanations on how to play the factions. And, again, that sounds like a lot-- but these aren't 360 uniquely different cards, these are 360 cards with likely maximum number of the common cards allowed in a deck (or a lot more than that for cards that multiple factions will want to have a maximum number of in their decks!)

Unless the game does away with items, followers, actions, etc. and everything is triggered off of personality card abilities alone, something that seems highly unlikely, then you know those sorts of actions are going to take up at least half the set.

That leaves very few spots available for faction-specific personalities. Maybe someone with more experience with the Game of Thrones set can give better insight about how many faction-specific cards you get out of a 220-240 card set when you have to split it across 8 factions. Because when I work out the math, it doesn't seem like one is going to have enough to make them feel particularly robust.

That leaves very few spots available for faction-specific personalities. Maybe someone with more experience with the Game of Thrones set can give better insight about how many faction-specific cards you get out of a 220-240 card set when you have to split it across 8 factions. Because when I work out the math, it doesn't seem like one is going to have enough to make them feel particularly robust.

Each faction gets 19 unique cards, with one of them being a resource that is included 2x in the Core Set for a total of 20.

We all know it takes three copies of a Core Set to have a complete card pool, while expansions offer a playset of everything. Even so, the game all but requires you to run several neutral cards for your deck's economy, as the L5R CCG did and presumably will again as an LCG.

You are also allowed to choose a secondary faction to run as a "Banner" faction, and the rule there is that at least 12 of your cards must belong to the Banner faction, and you may not include Loyal cards from that faction. I would be surprised if the L5R solution was terribly dissimilar given the above-mentioned flavor overlap between the two games' settings. Clan loyalty could still be a thing, as you would need to run Crane as your primary faction to win story prizes for the Crane, for example (and only Crane players would get to have the kickass Duelist from the core set that everyone is afraid of), but we would now see more of the inter-clan politics that occur in the setting but were hardly ever seen in the CCG.

• Easy to teach, easy to learn without a teacher.
• Real multiplayer
• Player influenced story (but IMO, not 100% necessary). Clear access of that story; maybe story synopses that accompany each cycle in case I get behind on fictions
• More time between world-endy type threats in the story (that 20 years was packed, from what I could tell…)
• Clans as factions, with other playable factions in expansions
• No unbeatable factions (i.e. balance, but not perfect balance)
• Multiple win conditions, preferably of the same types
• No auto-include cards
• Shorter games (20 min for basic games, 1 hr tops for advanced games)
• Great art

Real mechanical differences

• Single deck model, which to me has these benefits 1) streamlined play, 2) easier to learn/less intimidating, 3) decouples draw power from getting your butt kicked 4) fewer cards=lower cost OR ability to play more factions.
• Multiple use abilities: This single-use ability thing was annoying and often hard to keep track of. I like the A:N approach of pay-to-use abilities.
• Fewer tokens/clearer bookkeeping: the number of +1F/+1C tokens sometimes made games irritating for me.
• Avoid mechanics that encourage turtling: my group found that we often felt unable to make an attack because it always seemed like too much of a gamble. We made increasingly large militaries without attacking, so the game stalled and became a headache when someone finally did attack. I think a possible solution is to permanently attach defenders to provinces, like ice and servers in A:N.
• Easier to save personalities from death: At the end of a battle, all the present personalities of the defeated side die, which I think makes sense thematically. However, it encouraged my group to turtle, and makes throwing everything you have into a battle really risky. I think a better approach would be to have a retreat-for-honor loss as a player mechanic; example: you can pull a personality home at any time, but you lose honor equal to his personal honor +1 for each card in his unit.
• Make some shugenja that feel like priests instead of battle wizards

There are a few mechanics that can be tightened up or removed to make the game play smoother and make it more welcoming to new players:

1. Consolidate honor and dishonor into an influence mechanic
2. Remove Imperial Favor
3. Consolidate into a single deck, this was probably the biggest barrier of entry I found when teaching new players.
4. Remove rulebook adjustments to personality costs, the value on the card is what is paid. Restrict in the deck building rules. Remove honor gain on recruitment and balance the game accordingly.
5. Keywords... so many keywords. If it's a mechanic include it in the personality's ability text. How is a new player supposed to remember that "Mantis" and "Naval" mean two different things mechanically?
6. Consolidate all movement based mechanics into a "Mobile" mechanic combining Cavalry, Naval, etc.
7. Dueling is a major part of L5R, but it could be simplified, plus it doesn't necessarily take into account Shugenja duels. Have duel mechanics printed on the specific duel card that is played.

Take and polish Legend of the Burning Sands mechanic.

I think LCG L5R could be perfectly launched with 2 base sets. Let me explain:

Android: Netrunner Core Set comes with 7 factions and some neutral cards. In order to give many different playstyles with just the Core Set, some cards come three times, some two and a few come just once. So if you want to have 3 Desperado or 3 SanSan, you need three Core Sets, which gave you lots of unused cards, since as a general rule you can only have 3 times the same card in your deck.

Assuming max 3 copies of each card in a deck, L5R could be launched in 2 Core Sets (let's call them "Sun" and "Moon" just for fun with 4 clans in each set, with 3 times each clan card and two times each neutral card (economy, tutors, whatever...). While Sun and Moon have different clan cards, they share the same neutral cards. This way, if you want to be able to play with the eight clans, you just buy Sun and Moon (maybe not at the same time) and only one of each neutral card would be to spare.

It could be done with three differente Core Sets ("Sun", "Moon" and "Happy Vinegar Vampire") with just one neutral card of each kind in each set, but that looks much more difficult to sell, and buying just one Core would be pretty much unplayable. But I think launching the game in 2 Core Sets could be an option.

Yeah, a new game is a perfect opportunity to try a different method of distribution. I'd like a core with 4 full decks for 4 clans, each with maybe 10 of the same neutral cards. Just four decks you take out of their bags and start playing. Ideally the next expansions would be a full deck of cards for two clans in each, with new neutrals as part of the decks.

But I expect it'll be more like AGoT 2e - a wide selection of clans, one copy of every non-neutral and approximately NOT BLOODY ENOUGH of the neutral cards. Then deluxe boxes will introduce further clans, Conquest-style. and monthly packs pad the holes in the card pool.

And we'll buy three of those cores

There are a few mechanics that can be tightened up or removed to make the game play smoother and make it more welcoming to new players:

[...]

5. Keywords... so many keywords. If it's a mechanic include it in the personality's ability text. How is a new player supposed to remember that "Mantis" and "Naval" mean two different things mechanically?

6. Consolidate all movement based mechanics into a "Mobile" mechanic combining Cavalry, Naval, etc.

[...]

To 5. Maybe bold the important keywords that have actual effects, and write their effects on cards in the core set? (like naval, cavalry, kensai, as opposed to those that are just tags that are relevant to card effects). I like how many there are, both from a flavor perspective and from a mechanical perspective; cards effects can apply to particular keywords. Plus, designers can put on extra keywords they think might be fun to use later, even if they don't have a plan for them yet (creating a backwards compatibility, of sorts).

When I think about learning/teaching the game from a core set, clans end up restricting which keywords you really see (you'd see a lot of Kensai in Dragon core, but not any Cavalry or Naval). My group was able to rock the keywrods within one game when we learned.

(Also, don't cavalry and naval do different things? Cavalry lets you move someone, naval lets you take the first battle action if you are attacking?)

This is serious nitpicking, and isn't needed , but I think it would be cool:

I'd like it if you could only have one of each named personality in your deck (i.e. all named personalities are "unique"). I'd rather see generic cards like "Niten Warrior" than have three copies of "Mirumoto [name]" out on the table. Or--even cooler--have some mechanically identical cards, but give them different names and art. (Because of the LCG format, you don't have to worry about getting a zillion copies of "Mirumoto [whoever]" and no copies of "Mirumoto [other guy]" who serve the same purpose in a deck but are limited to one copy because of their names).

This is serious nitpicking, and isn't needed , but I think it would be cool:

I'd like it if you could only have one of each named personality in your deck (i.e. all named personalities are "unique"). I'd rather see generic cards like "Niten Warrior" than have three copies of "Mirumoto [name]" out on the table. Or--even cooler--have some mechanically identical cards, but give them different names and art. (Because of the LCG format, you don't have to worry about getting a zillion copies of "Mirumoto [whoever]" and no copies of "Mirumoto [other guy]" who serve the same purpose in a deck but are limited to one copy because of their names).

I would even go a step further and wish to see either A) no named personalities in the Core Set, or B) only major, MAJOR figures - e.g. the Seven Thunders. This is because, in the L5R lore, characters die frequently, and it would be really cool if, through the magic of set rotation, the progression of the game shared continuity of sorts with that of the storyline.

This is serious nitpicking, and isn't needed , but I think it would be cool:

I'd like it if you could only have one of each named personality in your deck (i.e. all named personalities are "unique"). I'd rather see generic cards like "Niten Warrior" than have three copies of "Mirumoto [name]" out on the table. Or--even cooler--have some mechanically identical cards, but give them different names and art. (Because of the LCG format, you don't have to worry about getting a zillion copies of "Mirumoto [whoever]" and no copies of "Mirumoto [other guy]" who serve the same purpose in a deck but are limited to one copy because of their names).

I would even go a step further and wish to see either A) no named personalities in the Core Set, or B) only major, MAJOR figures - e.g. the Seven Thunders. This is because, in the L5R lore, characters die frequently, and it would be really cool if, through the magic of set rotation, the progression of the game shared continuity of sorts with that of the storyline.

This would be boring, sorry but I don't like the idea. Also, this was debated a lot a while ago. Why I find that boring? Because it removes one feature that I really like: Flavor Texts on the card. Honestly, there's soo many awesome flavor text that sometime, I'll admit that when I play them, I just yell the flavor text when it's a quick awesome one. I don't think that "Niten Warrior" can have a flavor text, because it's a generic character with nor purpose than fill up a deck.

I really prefer to keep the actual way, where those "Niten Warrior" are attachments to personalities...

This is serious nitpicking, and isn't needed , but I think it would be cool:

I'd like it if you could only have one of each named personality in your deck (i.e. all named personalities are "unique"). I'd rather see generic cards like "Niten Warrior" than have three copies of "Mirumoto [name]" out on the table. Or--even cooler--have some mechanically identical cards, but give them different names and art. (Because of the LCG format, you don't have to worry about getting a zillion copies of "Mirumoto [whoever]" and no copies of "Mirumoto [other guy]" who serve the same purpose in a deck but are limited to one copy because of their names).

Hell no! In CCG you're allowed to have three copies of every personality unless he's Unique (kind of hero, daimyo, champion etc.). It's really hard to explain someone who didn't play CGG how funny and exciting was following evolution of many personalities. "From zero to hero" and how sometimes these feeling were broken when he/she died (or was intentionally killed). Generic "Lion Clan Beastmaster", "Dragon Clan Kensai" could be another dumbdown i don't want to see in LCG, but sadly, will probably happen becasue every FFG LCG goes this way.

Having all chacters named also open many option to build flavor on cards and story. They just put him here or there so you could just say sometime "Ah, it's Matsu Kasei in this picture, i wonder why he's fighting against Utaku Kohana" instead "Oh, some Lion is cuting this Unicorn cheek, bleh".