And that's on top of L5R in general being quite complex. Repeated rules changes really didn't help the game.

For me, what was wrong with duels was that they were a mini-game in the actual game.

Once someone initiates a duel, you could basically only play cards in the duel, and unless you had a dueling deck, all you could do is focus away cards from your hand/deck/focus pool/whatever. You can't compare duels to battles because battle were a core component of the game and everyone had to take into account that provinces would be attacked in most of your games.

I'd hate to see duels go away completely. I wouldn't mind a total overhaul, but the whole chi stat + focus value component has been a core identity since the game's inception. I agree with others in that focus values were never well balanced and seemed more like a rare perk than anything, or otherwise just random. I also agree that the dueling mechanics were clunky at times. But I think that the whole "stop the battle while two samurai duel in a test of honor" idea played really well into the setting.

Truth be told, I don't really understand the beef with dueling decks. As has been noted, any mechanic can feel broken and NPE (and/or complicated) if you don't plan for it, or are inexperienced playing against it. Or with it.

I do expect the rules to be streamlined and simplified somewhat to accommodate new players. I just think they'd be hard pressed to cut out duels/chi/focus without losing some of the games flavorful identity.

10 hours ago, Ser Nakata said:

For me, what was wrong with duels was that they were a mini-game in the actual game.

Once someone initiates a duel, you could basically only play cards in the duel, and unless you had a dueling deck, all you could do is focus away cards from your hand/deck/focus pool/whatever. You can't compare duels to battles because battle were a core component of the game and everyone had to take into account that provinces would be attacked in most of your games.

This was very much a design failure. Outside of Dueling Focus Values and Focus effects were of limited importance.

20 minutes ago, FunTimeTeddy said:

Truth be told, I don't really understand the beef with dueling decks. As has been noted, any mechanic can feel broken and NPE (and/or complicated) if you don't plan for it, or are inexperienced playing against it. Or with it.

Because it wasn't a mechanic that you just get better at dealing with the more you play against it. It was a mechanic that only served the decks that utilized duels and if your deck didn't utilize duels, the mechanic was dumb. It only benefited the player that duels and nobody else. You could practice a million times against dueling and be no better off than when you first encountered it because unless you also had a dueling deck, the duels didn't matter to you. Very little chance to win them so why even bother going through with the duel? Just strike and move back to the real game. That's not very thematic at all, imo.

10 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Because it wasn't a mechanic that you just get better at dealing with the more you play against it. It was a mechanic that only served the decks that utilized duels and if your deck didn't utilize duels, the mechanic was dumb. It only benefited the player that duels and nobody else. You could practice a million times against dueling and be no better off than when you first encountered it because unless you also had a dueling deck, the duels didn't matter to you. Very little chance to win them so why even bother going through with the duel? Just strike and move back to the real game. That's not very thematic at all, imo.

I disagree. Certain decks had inherent weakness to dueling, just like others had weaknesses to different mechanics and win conditions. One could always build decks to better defend against duels, and it wasn't just specific meta. High chi personalities, high focus cards, action redirect, and action negation were all viable strategies. Not to mention focusing! Sure, if your deck is all 1 and 2 focus value, you might as well not bother, but that feels like a petty complaint considering that's a choice. There are many examples of decks which liked to splash duels and/or were strong against them, including superfriends, enlightenment, tacticians, heros, some shugenjas, etc. There were also times during the game when forcing a dueling deck to focus could mean depleting their fate deck. Not to mention refusable duels which had weighted consequences: shall I accept or not? There was a lot of strategy there.

32 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

That's not very thematic at all, imo.

In Rokugan entire armies would retreat after their commander lost a duel, so it is extremely thematic.

Perhaps this is a mechanic where one could steal from MtG... There are cards which simply say "Target you control fights target you don't control", and then that happens. All cards work just like in a regular fight, with the exception of those that refer to attacking and blocking, because that doesn't happen. (Probably other stuff too, but in general this is what matters)

This would be an easy way to simplify duels and make sure that they work for anyone. I'd only add that "Followers" don't work, and then the mechanic is done.

If needed, a "Duelist" trait could add to a card's strength or give other benefits.

Similarly, the duel cards could also be unified to always follow the same pattern:

Lethal/Non-lethal, cost to refuse (ideally just straight victory points loss or whatever. Simple, anyway), effect for winner, effect on loser (only if there's anything other than bowing/destroying).

Oh yeah, "Duelist" could give better effects for winning a duel instead of other stuff. F.ex. gain 5 victory points or 8 if the winner has the Duelist trait.

Quote

One could always build decks to better defend against duels

Yeah, but why bother unless your deck was dueling?? Because it's just a trashy mechanic that needed to go a long time ago, but I figure it was only kept in the game because people would ***** about it leaving. And rest assured... only people who played dueling decks would *****. Everyone else who played the game would most likely cheer that the mechanic left the game.

2 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Yeah, but why bother unless your deck was dueling?? Because it's just a trashy mechanic that needed to go a long time ago, but I figure it was only kept in the game because people would ***** about it leaving. And rest assured... only people who played dueling decks would *****. Everyone else who played the game would most likely cheer that the mechanic left the game.

I don't play dueling, and I would be upset if it left.

Dude, get a sample size larger than 1

21 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Yeah, but why bother unless your deck was dueling?? Because it's just a trashy mechanic that needed to go a long time ago, but I figure it was only kept in the game because people would ***** about it leaving. And rest assured... only people who played dueling decks would *****. Everyone else who played the game would most likely cheer that the mechanic left the game.

Why bother? I do bother because dueling is very iconic feature. Maybe the mechanic isn't the best, but removing that iconic feature? Might as well remove the Crane entirely at this point, since it's one of their main feature. Sorry, but I do want duel to stay in the game. Removing duel! Haha! Nice one!

14 minutes ago, Crawd said:

Why bother? I do bother because dueling is very iconic feature. Maybe the mechanic isn't the best, but removing that iconic feature? Might as well remove the Crane entirely at this point, since it's one of their main feature. Sorry, but I do want duel to stay in the game. Removing duel! Haha! Nice one!

yeah, i agree with this. dueling isn't going anywhere, and it shouldn't its a part of the lore, and it can serve a function, namely as a way for decks that aren't primarily military to defend themselves. but control decks are extremely hard to do (see also: "dishonor is NPE, get rid of dishonor!" threads)

i think we're gonna see it simplified, possibly down to something as simple as a choice mechanic kind of like dishonor. "if your personality has lower chi than challenging personality, you may send home or take -X force" or things like that.

About dueling stuff. I would to remind how important Focus Values was back in earliest editions:

In other words if you wanted to go first you had to build your deck about high FV and this automatically made your deck much resistant against dueling decks.

/this is part of Jade rulebook/

7 minutes ago, kempy said:

About dueling stuff. I would to remind how important Focus Values was back in earliest editions:

In other words if you wanted to go first you had to build your deck about high FV and this automatically made your deck much resistant against dueling decks.

/this is part of Jade rulebook/

I had no idea.

I loved the highest honor goes first because that allowed the design team to balance accordingly to first player advantage since they knew who'd go first in each match up.

But this is also cool and. Makes FV important. Honestly, any issue with dueling to me seems to reflect on how poorly FV was utilized.

Tangential, this reminds me of cutting in Mtg and highest converted mana goes first. Did that when I was young haha.

Anyway same rulebook has this optional rule:

As ther're 3 different ways to determine starting players honestly i don't know what was used back during tournaments. Maybe some could clarify this?

Revising or removing dueling entirely were discussions had during the development of Ivory and Onyx Edition. Ultimately, it was considered too thematic to remove entirely, and there were few options to change it significantly without making hundreds upon hundreds of cards in the L5R card pool either not work as intended or just not work at all, period.

I personally was always a fan of the LBS system, and if dueling were to change, that was always the point I wanted to start from.

Just a little FYI.

15 minutes ago, kempy said:

Anyway same rulebook has this optional rule:

As ther're 3 different ways to determine starting players honestly i don't know what was used back during tournaments. Maybe some could clarify this?

Ha, I find it curious that the official tournament rule is the optional one.

There was once an optional rule that you would lose 1 Honor when touching another player's cards without permission.

There were few things more satisfying than either playing Scorpion and touching cards until you could Breach your opponent again or playing Junzo and just touching all their cards all the time.

I may or may not have done both of those things at one time or another.

3 minutes ago, Tetsuro said:

There was once an optional rule that you would lose 1 Honor when touching another player's cards without permission.

Would have loved this. I hate it when people just reach over and grab my cards.

Just now, Kakita Shiro said:

Would have loved this. I hate it when people just reach over and grab my cards.

So go back to Jade then.

I found generally more mystically-inclined cards (kiho and spells) tended to have high focus value while more "pragmatic" cards such as battle and political cards had low focus values. The result was mystic decks - Dragon monks, Phoenix spellslingers, etc. - had decent duel defense while military offensive decks - Crab, Lion, etc. - were duel vulnerable. That actually felt pretty in-setting for me.

Jade was a mess of an Edition but it had its moments.

Also we were looking to expand the types of decks that cared about Focus Values going into Onyx. We just never really got a chance to dig too deeply into it before it all came to an end.

2 minutes ago, Tetsuro said:

Jade was a mess of an Edition but it had its moments.

Also we were looking to expand the types of decks that cared about Focus Values going into Onyx. We just never really got a chance to dig too deeply into it before it all came to an end.

I had been invited to the play test only 2 MOnths the before it all went belly up.

Yall were doing good work from what I saw

Just now, BayushiCroy said:

I had been invited to the play test only 2 MOnths the before it all went belly up.

Yall were doing good work from what I saw

Not good enough, apparently!

Yeah i've found Onyx really nice to play. Especially with Lion, Spider and (corrupted) Scorpion.

Honestly nearly all L5R games i play nowadays are Onyx ones.