Forget it. Only 'old' players, maybe, will follow this way. Every other, just like in other card games, will choose playable stuff, at least in competetive environment. Unless FFG will introduce some non mechanical motivation factors which i doubt personally.

You know, it's Living and that's philosophy behind it.

Isn't that mostly a result of the lack of story interaction in most games? There often is very little reason to stay faction loyal because tourney results have no influence on future events.

I do not believe Netrunner, GoT or Conquest allow for any player faction based storyline influence.

That's i believe new L5R will be only pale shade of old game becasue i can't imagine FFG will introduce same level of interaction like in CCG era. (as a game i mean all environment: mechanic, story, interaction, rpg, loyalty). And as so called clan loyalty will be nearly non existent, it will be another card game, with same problems like other LCGs but this time with magical samurais. One year hype and... "Wait for GenCon 2018 for brand new Dune/MutantChronicles/Whatever LCG. We're so excited It will be best game we ever produced!".

For those of us who haven't played as many of their games for as long, can you explain what you're talking about here?

Basically, in L5R every faction has a "gimmick" and there is a very strong faction loyalty thing around these gimmicks. Like, the Crane Clan is the super political faction, and everyone who loves their super political faction is a Crane hardliner, while everyone who is not into this kind of thing hates the Crane. Y'know, it is like LARPing, but with cards, and most of the interactions happening on the internetz.

There is a thread somewhere that has pages-after-pages of Spider players defending their special snowflake clan from the attacks of the other player, and the whole argument is pretty much "Your Clan is ****!" "No! My Clan is awesome! Your Clan is ****!" kind of bickering that has been the quintessential inter-faction player interaction since the beginning of the game. So yeah, find that conversation and burn through it to see what's up with this clan loyalty business .

That's i believe new L5R will be only pale shade of old game becasue i can't imagine FFG will introduce same level of interaction like in CCG era.

Now, the question is whether this is a bad thing or not. Like, I'm not saying that the AEG style story-player interaction had its share in L5R dying because of disappointing story interactions (Destroyer War anyone?), but I'm heavily implying it.

Now, the question is whether this is a bad thing or not. Like, I'm not saying that the AEG style story-player interaction had its share in L5R dying because of disappointing story interactions (Destroyer War anyone?), but I'm heavily implying it.

Eh... the game survived terrible stories and it survived that weird hazy gap we like to call "Spirit Wars" (where not knowing what happened was better than the actual plotline...).

A "share" here is pretty tiny compared to the fact that L5R was primarily a CCG with a BRUTAL learning curve, frequent design issues, and two base sets in a row getting delayed long past the point of initial hype thanks to the woes of shipping it from China.

Did it help having the too-long and essentially awful Destroyer War story followed by a timeskip to no characters we were invested in bopping around in the Colonies followed by the murky succession struggle of the Iweko brothers? No. But let's not overstate the damage it did.

Eh... the game survived terrible stories and it survived that weird hazy gap we like to call "Spirit Wars" (where not knowing what happened was better than the actual plotline...).

The share might look small, but it sure made things much worse. It pretty much compromised the RPG too, kicking out the only solid leg of the franchise that could have kept things afloat.

I hardly think the RPG was compromised- it actually made some good material out of the scraps the ST had to imply here and there in the fictions.

4th Edition came out of the gate claiming "timeline neutrality," and that served it well.

4th edition L5R didn't terminate because of the Destroyer War-it terminated because they were out of new books they thought anybody would want.

There is a thread somewhere that has pages-after-pages of Spider players defending their special snowflake clan from the attacks of the other player, and the whole argument is pretty much "Your Clan is ****!" "No! My Clan is awesome! Your Clan is ****!" kind of bickering that has been the quintessential inter-faction player interaction since the beginning of the game. So yeah, find that conversation and burn through it to see what's up with this clan loyalty business .

True loyalists hate their own clan most of all.

There is a thread somewhere that has pages-after-pages of Spider players defending their special snowflake clan from the attacks of the other player, and the whole argument is pretty much "Your Clan is ****!" "No! My Clan is awesome! Your Clan is ****!" kind of bickering that has been the quintessential inter-faction player interaction since the beginning of the game. So yeah, find that conversation and burn through it to see what's up with this clan loyalty business .

True loyalists hate their own clan most of all.

Isn't a true Spider just about hate everything?

Please lets avoid the use of True Clansman (Scotsman) fallacies.

I do hope that loyalty will stay strong in the new game, despite the ease of playing other clans inherent with the lcg set up.

Forget it. Only 'old' players, maybe, will follow this way. Every other, just like in other card games, will choose playable stuff, at least in competetive environment. Unless FFG will introduce some non mechanical motivation factors which i doubt personally.

You know, it's Living and that's philosophy behind it.

this would be a disaster for the game, and thats not just the "old player" clan fanatic talking. the worst eras of the ccg (i'm looking at you Kalani's Landing) i can recall are the ones where a single deck was so strong people flocked to it regardless of clan. building a game with rich enough mechanics and thematics that people will want to play their chosen clans is what l5r is about, at a real fundamental level. if FFG builds just another lcg where people netdeck whatever is winning, without any regard for clan, then they've blown it. period. l5r is as much about the story and setting as it is about the game, and abandoning that will be a failure by the design team to reproduce the essential nature of this game. maybe thats a failure that we're destined for, but that won't make it any less of one.

Original L5R had more win conditions than most other card games.

Honor, Dishonor, Military, and Ring victories were all possible in every addition. Each of these win conditions had multiple ways of achieving them. Military by Force, Military by Dueling, Military by Spells, etc... Dishonor and Ring victories were fairly hard to come by save for a few extraordinary Strongholds that usually saw errata.

A highly doubt they will eliminate all imbalances, so netdecking is inevitable. Meta is Meta.

On that note, if you take into consideration their other LCGs, FFG usually designs their factions with less than optimal cross faction support. GoT did not allow cross factions until Banners, and Star Wars uses resource matching to make splashing a few cards from another faction less than appealing (though it is getting much easier of late). Netrunner has it's own stat for how many cards can be out of faction (and it happens to be my personal favorite flavor of doing so). In the original game cross clan personalities were penalized, sometimes heavily, to enter into play on the side of another clan. So it is safe to say that this points to heavy clan aligned design.

I personally like the tight clan design and hope that it is harder to use out of clan cards in decks.

Please lets avoid the use of True Clansman (Scotsman) fallacies.

I will not if there is a joke to be made.

There's a difference between everyone netdecking the top clan and a player base being less tied to a single clan because it's more practical to experiment when it's easy to have a play set of everything, as is the case with LCGs.

People can still have favorites. But if clan loyalty is the only reason the whole field doesn't flock to a top deck, you have a design problem. Kalani's Landing was an issue with Kalani's Landing, not a lack of clan loyalty.

People can still have favorites. But if clan loyalty is the only reason the whole field doesn't flock to a top deck, you have a design problem. Kalani's Landing was an issue with Kalani's Landing, not a lack of clan loyalty.

Thankfuly LCGs are nearly perfect designed and balanced so there won't be any problems and i'm pretty sure everyone will play their favourities with same chances of winning!

Well, there has always been players who didn't care about Clan loyalty, and some who wouldn't play anything apart from their clan in storyline tournaments.

It has not always been about the cards for different clans being hard to collect.

I still think there will be Clan-Loyal players, and players who couldn't care less about Clans and will just want to win. Yes, some factions will be stronger than others. Yes, you will see a lot of decks from the reigning factions in the meta.

A perfectly balanced environment is a nice dream, but it's not really something we can count on.

OTOH, it would be really boring...

Well, there has always been players who didn't care about Clan loyalty, and some who wouldn't play anything apart from their clan in storyline tournaments.

But percentage of so called "loyalists" was so huge. There was no other card game i've played, where after looking at preregistered players at Kotei (Regionals/Nationals) i had 90% chance to know what will be clan breakdown (not decktypes, but pure clan distribution). You saw someone and you just knew what clan he is going to play.

You also know where you should go directly with questions if you're looking for help in specific clan buildings or meta.

At least in country where i live. And this dedication + testing determination + skill caused many surprises, like fe 100% hardcore loyalist Jabbas winning World Championships in 2014 with nearly non existent in meta Unicorn shugenja blitz build or Nimuro (100% Lion fanboy) taking single one Lion Kotei win in 2014 season or 100% Crane lover Aoshi winning Worlds in Karlsruhe 2008 with Crane in environment dominated by Unicorn.

And this part of L5R will be gone for sure.

In LCG environments i found things look just different. Most people changes their factions even from tourney to tourney (also at local Store level). Main events are nearly dominated by various overall T1 decks of different kinds, but names in tops are still same.

Well, I think Clan Loyalty will still be part of the game. But if there's no storyline prize in your local tournament, why not play something else than only always the same clan?

Well, I think Clan Loyalty will still be part of the game. But if there's no storyline prize in your local tournament, why not play something else than only always the same clan?

Good question but my answer is not connected with loyalty but LCG model. Whatever you say LCG decks look so familiar, there're so many staple cards (because of limited cardpool) that people tend to call their decks "original" when they're different from other build with literally 3-4 cards. So overall boredom of playing same again and again options for your faction causes that people experiment with other. That's a factor that also kills loyalty. Instead having 3-5 options like in CCG in one clan to test you're limited to 1 or sometimes 2 that becomes boring so fast.

I think that the number one rule for L5R LCG to keep this Clan Loyalist is mainly about having an interesting Clan mechanic, a Clan synergy between their personalities and a chance of winning. Without those, it will be hard to not be tempted to play something else for changes.

I'll bring some experience from when I was playing Warhammer Fantasy, because I was playing Dark Elves since 4th edition and, at the end, before the 7th edition, it was pretty discouraging to play them when I had to bring master level of strategy to be able to have a small chance of wining games, when the opponent just had to play badly and still have a good chance of winning. I bring this experience, because it is the same thing and why I decided to play something else before the upgrade to the 7th edition. Which is:

- Race loyalist, check.

- Poor race mechanic, check.

- Poor units synergy, check.

- Almost no chance of winning, check.

I feel like it's the same thing. Let's not forget the main objective of a game: "Having fun." It's pretty hard to have fun if the mechanic is boring, if there's no synergy in the Clan and there's no chance of winning. With these 3 factors, there's good chance of having Clan Loyalty. Once this is achieved, that's where it will be interesting to have storyline prizes. Of course, it's a dream to think that the chance of winning will remain the same to every Clan all the time, but as long as people has a decent chance of winning, they'll stick to their Clan.

they're different from other build with literally 3-4 cards.

I dunno, but if you think about it, the Clans really only had the Stronghold and the Personalities as differing factors (plus some minor extras like the Clan-specific Holdings and the Clan Armor). Differences mostly went down to "How do you want to win?" rather than "What Clan do you play?"

In LCG environments i found things look just different. Most people changes their factions even from tourney to tourney (also at local Store level). Main events are nearly dominated by various overall T1 decks of different kinds, but names in tops are still same.

That's because there's no LCG that rewards faction loyalty. We should see what L5R looks like before criticizing how disloyal people will be.

they're different from other build with literally 3-4 cards.

I dunno, but if you think about it, the Clans really only had the Stronghold and the Personalities as differing factors (plus some minor extras like the Clan-specific Holdings and the Clan Armor). Differences mostly went down to "How do you want to win?" rather than "What Clan do you play?"

It also really depended on edition. These with more generic cardpool (like Gold i heard or Ivory+) had these problems. But if you want to convince me for example that only deck differences between most "iconic" defensive honor decks of Emperor (Lion Halls of Memory ancestors, Phoenix Temple of Purity inquisitors and Dragon Dragon's Breath Castle semi-faceless) were just Strongholds/Personalities, i can only laugh.

they're different from other build with literally 3-4 cards.

I dunno, but if you think about it, the Clans really only had the Stronghold and the Personalities as differing factors (plus some minor extras like the Clan-specific Holdings and the Clan Armor). Differences mostly went down to "How do you want to win?" rather than "What Clan do you play?"

It also really depended on edition. These with more generic cardpool (like Gold i heard or Ivory+) had these problems.

Ah. I see. I'm an Ivory+ kid, so excuse my ignorance .

I started in emperor and loved how thematically different the cards were. There were strategies that just were not for you.

Ivory changed that for me. It wasn't bad, but I definitely preferred emperor specialization over ivory generalization