45 minutes ago, ExcaliburTK said:

so excited for all this news but i would be cautious to say 2 core will get you a full playset of the cards as Steve Horvath's Exact words were "2 cores are required for competitive play".

Good point!

Hey-O,

As for a two-card limit, FFG does themself a huge favor with limiting cards in competitive decks because it minimizes the damage of borderline-overpowered cards causing metas to stall-out and designers wanting to errata cards to death.

Also, two-card limits force players into more fluid and novel game situations. As opposed to hard match-up problems where this clan usually beats this clan, like Calvary decks can out-tempo Naval decks.

Furthermore, FFGs deckbuilding concept introduced in Conquest and fully rolled-out in Star Wars involves players making one card choice and subsequently mandatorily adding seven or more cards to the deck. In Conquest, players choose a main character, and his or her posse of seven cards followed. In Star Wars, players chose a resource card, and that place's inhabitants follow along.

I have two main hopes.

One, that V2 allows players more direct control of resources and strategy choices like plot cards in AGOT. I have lived through enough V1 games where my Crane opponent flipped the perfect holdings first turn while I flipped one, low-end holding. By my opponent's third turn, he's dropping personalities and attachments, with a presents-under-the-Christmas-tree look on his face while I'm trying to figure out how to throw some trash blockers in his way, foregoing all of my strategy. And this is two minutes into the game, and playing feels like emptying trash cans into a dumpster.

Two, and forgive the redundancy from earlier posts, that V2 allows me to fight my opponent for victory, in a checkmate-like battle, instead of revving up our victory point engines. For example, the current struggle between Ukraine and Russia will require more than a speed-boat race of prestige, speech-making, and building statues to sway public opinion to resolve their territorial conflicts.

The thirty card limit doesn't really do as much as some would trumpet. Hearthstone also had the huge advantage of being able to change existing cards with a patch or two. After playing Hearthstone since it was first released, I wouldn't be very excited if FFG went with that two card limit. I've had games that lasted for only two or three minutes and I've had games that went on for over an hour. Decks can still get card screwed too.

Also, Hearthstone had the advantage of being able to change its existing cards with a patch.

I am curious just to how close to Conquest it will be. I mean, the Conquest mechanic is now abandoned with GW moving away. There are 7 major clans (Crane, Scorpion, Crab, Lion, Unicorn, Phoenix, and Dragon) and the Conquest core shipped with 7 factions (Orks, Imperial Guard, Space Marine, Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Chaos.... with Tyranids later).

You don't know if it's 2 cards a card per a core or not. Conquest had a ton of freaking cards in a coreset that were unique 1 ofs.

9 hours ago, terryfuller said:

Furthermore, FFGs deckbuilding concept introduced in Conquest and fully rolled-out in Star Wars involves players making one card choice and subsequently mandatorily adding seven or more cards to the deck. In Conquest, players choose a main character, and his or her posse of seven cards followed. In Star Wars, players chose a resource card, and that place's inhabitants follow along.

Conquest came out after Star Wars, though. So it's more like they tried it all-out with Stars Wars (in effect, SW has a 10-card deck with a 2-copy limit) and dialed it back for Conquest. Note that it is also present in Arkham Horror: when you choose an investigator, you get 2 signature cards (a good one and a weakness).

@Obscene Precedent does suggest most cards as 1-ofs in the Core Set (as in SW, Conquest and AGoT 2nd ed). It's much better than what they did before (in Netrunner and LotR) with a lot of wasted cards in the 2nd and 3rd Core Set. Also, it increases card variety in the Core Set.

In SW you choose ten objectives, but you can end with 5 copies of the same card in your deck. Only AH and Destiny have a true 2 card limit per deck.

Also, they may be recycling some mechanics from SW, edge battles always reminded me of L5R duels.

It could also be a 3 cards limit in a 30 cards deck. It's the way a game like Faeria does and I really enjoyed it so far.

3 hours ago, Barbacuo said:

In SW you choose ten objectives, but you can end with 5 copies of the same card in your deck. Only AH and Destiny have a true 2 card limit per deck.

You might, but the contents of your objective deck completely determines the contents of your command deck, so it's not like building a 50-card deck where you can have 5 copies of a given card. And the cards you might have 5 copies of are pretty generic: you're not going to have 5 identical copies of Luke or Darth Vader (and you probably won't have 5 copies of them in total, either).

13 hours ago, XCoconutMonkey06X said:

I am curious just to how close to Conquest it will be. I mean, the Conquest mechanic is now abandoned with GW moving away. There are 7 major clans (Crane, Scorpion, Crab, Lion, Unicorn, Phoenix, and Dragon) and the Conquest core shipped with 7 factions (Orks, Imperial Guard, Space Marine, Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Chaos.... with Tyranids later).

My Necron deck is sad that you mentioned Tyranids but not the awesome Egyptian Lovecraftian terminators from space.

3 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

You might, but the contents of your objective deck completely determines the contents of your command deck, so it's not like building a 50-card deck where you can have 5 copies of a given card. And the cards you might have 5 copies of are pretty generic: you're not going to have 5 identical copies of Luke or Darth Vader (and you probably won't have 5 copies of them in total, either).

SW doesn't follow the general deckbuilding rules, and that's why I don't consider it comparable to other games in that aspect. You only build your 10 card objective deck, and yes, that deck has a 2 copy limit, but you don't play that deck. So L5R could only compare if it brings the pod system from SW, so if it follows the general deckbuilding rules (which I guess it will) with a 2 copy limit, we are talking about something more similar to AH or Destiny.

If it is a 2 card limit you guys should honestly rejoice. It means your card pool will grow faster in the cycle packs.
I will say this, the worst thing about Conquest is how agonizingly long it took for factions to start to develop a decent card pool and deck variety to really appear. The constraints of having 7 factions with a 3x limit is pretty noticeable for the entire first cycle and really until the second cycle ends.

Where is the confirmation of 30 card deck limit? Couldn't it also be 40 cards. It would also depend if they have 2 decks still. Perhaps 30 card Dynasty deck, and 20 card Fate deck for example.

I imagine they might have some "sets" of cards like in Star Wars or Conquest, perhaps related to strongholds or personalities.

Hey-O,

I hope that FFG has us players line up two, forty-card decks, dynasty and fate. Thirty-card decks seem way too small.

30 cards

-7 starting hand

-2 draw phase

=decking out somewhere around turn eleven.

I just imagine battling it out with my opponent, and the epic, thematic battle we are viewing, between samurais and geishas, suddenly turns into stone-walling to watch one of us get decked. That would suck.

Alternatively, we could roll back to one, sixty card deck like ugly, step-sister Magic The Gathering, but FFG has more intelligence to turn L5R into Yu-Gi-Oh, where a third of tournament games turn into one player winning with their opening hand and the other player losing, scrying for resources!

Also, I've played enough poker in my life to wish that FFG would allow us to mulligan like a hand of poker. Draw seven cards. Decide to keep somewhere between zero to seven cards and redraw the rest. If we could mulligan this way, players would get set-up faster and fewer games would start deeply un-even.

Plaid Hat's game Ashes lets players choose their opening hands, which sounds good, but actually destroys replayability because once you've played against someone once or twice, you've seen all that their deck has to offer.

2 minutes ago, terryfuller said:

Also, I've played enough poker in my life to wish that FFG would allow us to mulligan like a hand of poker. Draw seven cards. Decide to keep somewhere between zero to seven cards and redraw the rest. If we could mulligan this way, players would get set-up faster and fewer games would start deeply un-even.

The good news on that subject is FFG has been experimenting with that type of mulligan in Destiny and Arkham Horror.

53 minutes ago, terryfuller said:

Plaid Hat's game Ashes lets players choose their opening hands, which sounds good, but actually destroys replayability because once you've played against someone once or twice, you've seen all that their deck has to offer.

I really thought I'd love this but I agree.

Part of me still thinks there is some chess to be had with this structure. But... It never felt as fun as I'd hoped.

In regards to Ashes, mechanically, all of the creatures seemed so under-powered. I kept looking through the cards, looking for any beefer creatures, and everything seemed ultra, white-weeny. Thematically, the idea of magic users who summon little, glowing, whispy creatures to point at other players felt to me like a scene out of Twilight, which really hurt because the artist for Ashes puts so much emotion and movement into every painting.

The first five sound great on paper, and let's you mini-meta against your opponent based on their PB. But it tends to go just spam my set-up and hope I draw well.

5 hours ago, Obscene said:

If it is a 2 card limit you guys should honestly rejoice. It means your card pool will grow faster in the cycle packs.
I will say this, the worst thing about Conquest is how agonizingly long it took for factions to start to develop a decent card pool and deck variety to really appear. The constraints of having 7 factions with a 3x limit is pretty noticeable for the entire first cycle and really until the second cycle ends.

I also think it's cool for having a bigger cardpool, but I think it dilutes the deck a bit, losing focus, also, you have to make more choices when you can put 1-3 or 1-4 cards in your deck. In the other hand, remember that half of the cards used in L5R (as we knew the game) are usually neutral cards from the dinasty deck (and holdings), so a dinasty pack with half faction cards, half neutral card, would be more than playable for everyone. But all of these is just speculation, FFG may switch to a faction heavy deckbuilding, or the coreset could be 2 copies of each card and a 4 card limit. We'll have to wait. And I hate it!

1 minute ago, terryfuller said:

In regards to Ashes, mechanically, all of the creatures seemed so under-powered. I kept looking through the cards, looking for any beefer creatures, and everything seemed ultra, white-weeny. Thematically, the idea of magic users who summon little, glowing, whispy creatures to point at other players felt to me like a scene out of Twilight, which really hurt because the artist for Ashes puts so much emotion and movement into every painting.

Well, there are some beefy creatures coming in upcoming PBs. There are creatures very powerfull anyways, but my problem with them is that, if not conjurations, they feel no compelling to play, since they are easily removed. And when conjurations, they are annoying.

However many cards will be in the decks, I hope they find a way to eliminate resource starvation/flooding. Uninteractive, unfun games that are essentially lost in the first two turns really really suck.

I am pretty sure every LCG guarantees the player will have enough resources to functionally play the game and is certain to get to start with some things on the board before anyone is allowed to attack them.

I've only seen Netrunner so far, and while that doesn't guarantee it, it has mechanics to mitigate any resource problems which work reasonably.

That's the minimum I'm hoping for and really, that's pretty cool already.

3 hours ago, Myrion said:

However many cards will be in the decks, I hope they find a way to eliminate resource starvation/flooding. Uninteractive, unfun games that are essentially lost in the first two turns really really suck.

Ah yes, the 'Kith' conundrum in Conquest, whereby she could screw your first turn by playing a combo of Raid, Razorwings and Archon's Palace to leave you at a serious card & resource disadvantage from the outset (and bearing in mind there is no preliminary 'Set Up' phase like there is in AGOT). Very demoralising to play against, although if I remember rightly Greyjoy Winter Choke in AGoT v1 was even more enjoyment-sapping.

'Choke' mechanics do seem to be a significant ever-present aspect of most FFG games.

That said, I do like the idea of attacking your enemy's supply lines as a (*pure speculation alert*) tactic in L5R, but it needs to come with a sacrifice, e.g. The effort you spend on 'choke' means you have to forego some combat might: The problem with Kith was that she could choke you of cards & resources without breaking stride in terms of combat prowess.

There's also one problem that i hate about some FFG games - discarding random card from hand mechanism that are part of main rules fe in AGoT. In card game you have to play, you know, cards. They're most essencial resource. So what's funny about removing them from your hand, especially in random manner? How could you build long term plans with your hand when one of the puzzles will randomly disappear? Personally i treat it as NPE, introducing more luck factor. But seems that such "cheap" tricks are huge part of FFG card games and they please their major consumer base - casual crowd.

Caldera, yes that sounds pretty bad too. I don't know Cinquest though, so what I had in mind foremost was Mana flooding/starving in MtG, where you just. Wouldn't. Draw. Any(thing else but). Lands.

So frustrating, keeps you from playing anything unless you stuck to really cheap cards and the lands in your starting hand.

Happened in way too many games I played or watched.