4 minutes ago, Tetsuhiko said:

You serious?

Apart from the fact you have one whole turn more than your adversary? Which means one more limited phase for actions. (for military control, honor, dishonor and enlightenment, this means the world). Against Blitz deck, it means you have twice as many personalities when you are forced on the defensive on turn 2. More gold, sooner than your opponent to pay for open actions. It's huge. I might not be the best one to explicitly state all the boons of going first, since I'm a Spider player and never really fully wrapped my mind about going first, but I,m sur eothers can add things.

Your "one turn advantage" is incredibly fleeting, though. As soon as your opponent goes, you have now taken equal turns, and extra phases only matter if you have anything you can do during them! I suppose it's possible someone could buy personalities on their first turn rather than gold, but does anyone actually do this and manage to pump them up enough to threaten a province on their next turn? I suppose it's possible, but claiming that first player has a massive advantage based on one fringe case seems a bit sketchy.

I'm sorry if my tone was a bit incredulous. The idea of the first player having an advantage is so counter to my own experience that I found the claim rather shocking, but then again, my own experience is rather limited. I shouldn't expect that everyone else's experiences match my own, especially as this may be something that becomes more pronounced in competitive, tournament-level decks.

JJ48

First and main advantage being first in military vs military matchup is a fact your first attack is supported by all of your unbowed resorces against (mostly) unequipped Personalities with all gold resources locked.

Sometimes i have the feeling you haven't played this game.

And even after your counterattack, you are developing from one fewer Province than your opponent.

There's an easy solution. Reprint Take the Initiative.

Every arc of the game, just for fun, I discovered a way to take a turn 1 province or two or three.

Consistency aside (because it usually wasn't,) at top levels of play, this strategy was typically easy to play around even when it worked. Nothing was ever as good as consistent economy and a consistent personality base.

As Unicorn, I went first or second approximately equally. The difference between going first and second was when I went second, I had to either stop a province loss or take two provinces at some point, and when I went first, I had to be aware that my opponent wanted to stop a province loss or take two provinces at some point.

9 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Every arc of the game, just for fun, I discovered a way to take a turn 1 province or two or three.

Consistency aside (because it usually wasn't,) at top levels of play, this strategy was typically easy to play around even when it worked. Nothing was ever as good as consistent economy and a consistent personality base.

As Unicorn, I went first or second approximately equally. The difference between going first and second was when I went second, I had to either stop a province loss or take two provinces at some point, and when I went first, I had to be aware that my opponent wanted to stop a province loss or take two provinces at some point.

Maybe that's the difference. As a Tsuruchi player, I focus on defending and whittling away at the opponent's army until I can attack in relative safety.

It'll be very interesting to see how FFG tackle the mechanical difficulty of opening hands/turn order. I'm not familiar enough with their other games to get a good sense of any trend in approach, but I have had enough experience with L5R to appreciate the difficulty of balance. I do think that two-sided strongholds helped address the issue, but also precipitated a pendulum swing where some clans always wanted to go first, while others always wanted second (depending on clan-specific stats and abilities). Case in point, I remember Kobi Sensei being played purely for is honor reduction. Of course, with L5R the problem has always been exacerbated by multiple win conditions: what balances military might slant to honor might slant to enlightenment (ok, rarely if ever, but hey).

Myrion's reference to Dominion's fixed starting resources is interesting, and perhaps alludes to one of L5R's ongoing issues: that of balancing too many variables. Not only did the designers have to consider turn order, but also stronghold province strength, gold production, and starting honor. All of these factors would then snowball into deck-building decisions and game states beyond what playtesters could reasonably anticipate. Granted, many of us reveled in L5R's mechanical complexity, but it obviously led to communal frustration too.

Getting back to Dominion, I love the way they "resolved" first turn advantage: The player with the most victory points wins. If the highest scores are tied at the end of the game, the tied player who has had the fewest turns wins. If the tied players have had the same number of turns, they rejoice in their shared victory! Yeah yeah, I know, this would never work in competitive tournaments. But it's a neat idea. Another simple solution is that of Ascension: After the final honor counter is earned, the game ends at the end of the current round (after the last player to start the game takes a turn). Thus each player will play the same number of turns during the course of the game. I could see there being a Retribution round in L5R where the player who went second gets to catch up, either launching an attack or accumulating honor, to equal or surpass opponent. This could temper the all-in-last-province-assault or honor-blitz-at-the-cost-of-any-defense. I guess the change to honor victory STARTING his or her turn with 40 already did this somewhat, but again, balancing win conditions is tricky.

L5R CCG did a lot to help stabilize play by introducing "Gold Pooling" in Ivory, and allowing you to Cycle during your first turn. While it was still possible to get Gold screwed or Personality screwed, it happened much less frequently in the tournaments that were happening AFTER the introduction of Cycling than before. And that is, basically, a public Mulligan on your Dynasty.

Also, I feel that Gold pooling was a much more beneficial effect to the economy of the game than the Legacy style holdings (Gifts & Favors, Border Keep, Bamboo Harvesters, Forgotten Legacy).

I don't have much more to say right now other than "shared victory" aka draws can totally work in competitive tournaments.
If you have a Best-of-3 structure, for example, you shouldn't end up with 3 draws (in which case there could be various possible resolutions, from coin tosses to tie-breaks) or you could have tournaments that aren't pure elimination brackets. Winning gives 3 points, drawing gives 1, losing gives 0 and then the players with roughly equal points face off in a preset amount of rounds.

I'm sure there are other perfectly playable modes, too.

1 hour ago, sndwurks said:

L5R CCG did a lot to help stabilize play by introducing "Gold Pooling" in Ivory, and allowing you to Cycle during your first turn. While it was still possible to get Gold screwed or Personality screwed, it happened much less frequently in the tournaments that were happening AFTER the introduction of Cycling than before. And that is, basically, a public Mulligan on your Dynasty.
.

My feeling is that introducing 20F+ Legacy system back in Lotus+ era would also help a lot even with no gold pooling. Sadly it was invented too late. Pre gold-pooling L5R was complete different game in term of game flow, number of Personalities/Holdings. If by accident you try fe Obsidian Legacy ruleset (no gold pooling, clan discount, cavalry of your choice) or any old edition again you'll remind how even during Dynasty Phase you face some radical choices instead of just clearing all Provinces.

IMHO gold pooling brought some other problems like gold snowballing gold curve that in combination with really bad choice of gold producing cards (reprinting fe. clan holdings) or strongholds (IvE/20F mantis one) was devastating. There was something unfair when some clans could just drop playset of Spider Elite Sohei in 2nd attack. They were going to fix it in Onyx (no Clan holdings or gold boosting stuff).

3 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Maybe that's the difference. As a Tsuruchi player, I focus on defending and whittling away at the opponent's army until I can attack in relative safety.

Well, the Mantis stronghold (and Mantis in general) were really unbalanced to begin with in the latest editions. So I totally understand the perspective of going second for them being broken. That's more a problem of the Mantis themselves than the concept of having a more powerful second side when you do not begin.

It does bring a point of balance however. Balancing nine factions is already hard, balancing them with two different sets of ability is close to impossible, or the differences are so minor it doesn't fell like playing different clans at all.

1 hour ago, Tetsuhiko said:

...It does bring a point of balance however. Balancing nine factions is already hard, balancing them with two different sets of ability is close to impossible, or the differences are so minor it doesn't fell like playing different clans at all.

This last bit is where the rubber meets the road, in my opinion. Maintaining balance while sustaining unique identities across 9 factions, all the while coming up with new and interesting cards, is like a designers worst nightmare. Unless of course they have limitless resources with which to test and retest...aka fantasy land.

This, in and of itself, is reason enough for me to expect a serious reboot; a paring down to L5R's core flavor/mechanics. We can all speculate, espouse, and angst over specifics, but I anticipate fewer factions, streamlined mechanics, and...a handful of disgruntled fans. Even though there is apt to be some disappointment, FFG has an opportunity to divorce (somewhat) from expectation and deliver something really fresh.

Personally, I'd rather they purged my chosen factions (crab & unicorn) than pander to too many special interests. I think the setting is rich enough for fans to reinvest, if need be. I mean, would you rather have some Rokugan or no Rokugan at all?

Just to be clear, I know nothing. Pure conjecture. I also anticipate - given good reception - more factions to be reintroduced as the new LCG evolves.

Another point worthy of consideration is the issue of the ongoing storyline and its impact on the tried-and-true LCG distribution model, specifically the fact that characters are constantly dying in the story. We can expect that dead characters will cycle out of legality, albeit slowly, due to the rotation system, but in all existing LCGs the Core Sets and Deluxe Expansions contain permanent, non-rotating cards. I find it highly unlikely that there will be zero named (i.e. unique) characters in these, so what? Do they get some kind of plot armor, or will story fans need to accept that these characters can show up in decks many years after they've died in the story? Or am I wrong, and the permanent products will be 100% non-unique characters?

23 minutes ago, Builder2 said:

Another point worthy of consideration is the issue of the ongoing storyline and its impact on the tried-and-true LCG distribution model, specifically the fact that characters are constantly dying in the story. We can expect that dead characters will cycle out of legality, albeit slowly, due to the rotation system, but in all existing LCGs the Core Sets and Deluxe Expansions contain permanent, non-rotating cards. I find it highly unlikely that there will be zero named (i.e. unique) characters in these, so what? Do they get some kind of plot armor, or will story fans need to accept that these characters can show up in decks many years after they've died in the story? Or am I wrong, and the permanent products will be 100% non-unique characters?

At least regarding this I think we can see the answer in AGoT(both editions). The unique characters that drive the story continue to get new versions and remain playable past their death.

Are the FFG developers working on this LCG known yet?

20 minutes ago, Kentares said:

Are the FFG developers working on this LCG known yet?

We assume it is, since they are supposed to be prepared for a August 2017 release at Gen Con.

I think he meant more whether we know who is working on it, rather than if. Though I may be wrong.

I don't, sorry, Kentares.

20 minutes ago, Myrion said:

I think he meant more whether we know who is working on it, rather than if. Though I may be wrong.

I don't, sorry, Kentares.

Youre correct of course.

21 hours ago, MMeinhardt said:

At least regarding this I think we can see the answer in AGoT(both editions). The unique characters that drive the story continue to get new versions and remain playable past their death.

True, but it also doesn't have an ongoing storyline (unless you count the fact that TWoW still hasn't come out, but even then...). Personalities in the CCG era had a limited lifespan, as with only a few exceptions no character went past Experienced 5.

On 1/27/2017 at 10:53 AM, JJ48 said:

I'm sorry if my tone was a bit incredulous. The idea of the first player having an advantage is so counter to my own experience that I found the claim rather shocking, but then again, my own experience is rather limited. I shouldn't expect that everyone else's experiences match my own, especially as this may be something that becomes more pronounced in competitive, tournament-level decks.

towards the end of 20F the going first advantage became so pronounced that even AEG acknowledged it in some of their design articles, iirc. Certainly it was treated as common knowledge on the forums that going second was playing at a disadvantage, especially if you also had one of the weaker side2 strongholds.

Well, you know, in an ongoing storyline, people tend to die. Why give them more versions, unless you're time-jumping around?

4 hours ago, Ser Nakata said:

Well, you know, in an ongoing storyline, people tend to die. Why give them more versions, unless you're time-jumping around?

The argument isn't that dead characters will get new versions. It's that characters featured in non-rotating product will, by definition, be permanent fixtures of the cardpool. And in order for the game to run parallel to the ongoing storyline, those characters either need to have plot armor, or be generic, non-unique characters who could appear regardless of the timeline (e.g. "Tsuruchi Scout").

Or one simply accepts that the cards can still be valid to play even if they don't entirely make sense.

If the cards used have any effect on the story (as opposed to simply looking at Clan & Victory type, say), then this gets a bit trickier, but not impossible. You'd have to have picked really important unique characters, and then it's simply their legacy still affecting the current story. Something they set in motion, etc...

The Game of Thrones LCG example given early explains things perfectly - the Core Sets and Deluxe boxes for that game are specifically designed to always be a part of the card pool even when the Chapter Packs rotate out, and contain many a character no longer alive in the timeline of the current cycle.

Ultimately we're using cardboard representations of imaginary characters from a fictional setting...I reckon we can suspend our disbelief long enough to play a game with some characters that have been offed in the story.