4 minutes ago, Barbacuo said:Too bad, the game had a really impressive sense of humor and nice artwork (very gory at times). The rulebook was a bit confusing to me. I guess I'd go to hunt every card now.
In a similar way where everycard could be set as a resource we had WoW TCG.
DoD contains rewritten rulebook in form of a small book. It's not one sheet anymore.
Another interesting game that try's to resolve the resource issue is the Final Fantasy Card Game. Every card is aligned with an element (color for MTG standards). The cards that produce resources are typically backup's (think lands) but any card can be discarded to produce two resources of that color, whereas backups can only produce one at a time. In addition you can only have up to five backups in play at a time. This creates a soft maximum resource threshold if you don't discard for extra resources. What's interesting about this is that you have to pick and choose what you want to give up to generate resources. It also reduces 'mana screw' because anything can produce resources you need.
Now I doubt something like that will exist for the new L5R as I cant think of a way for it to fit the theme of the universe. Honestly I'm very curious how they're going to work resource production and utilization in the new version of the card game. Will there be a basic source of resource production, like the stronghold of the past, will they go the game of thrones style route, perhaps like the star wars lcg, or something we can't figure out for ourselves at this moment. No matter how they handle it I do hope they stay away from the MTG style or resource management.
I know some people like it, but I rather have the L5R game based more on something as old as Ani-Mayhem, Ophidian, or Spellfire than the Final Fantasy tcg. Geez, why do I remember those games? Even Sim City!
I've played way too many card games since the 90s.
I really liked the changes in l5r with the emperor/ivory arcs, when you look back to the gold/diamond you realize that some mechanics were terrible, there was a lot of bizarre things like when you were playing a honor military deck like lion or crane and faces a dishonor deck, you easily lost the game by loosing 3 or 5 honor points.. the ancestral/celestial swords (what about dueling against?), the dragon monk combos, the ratling deck (very funny but?!), the cavalry system, the naval, Lion taking 65874 consecutive actions, etc...
In short, the game was fun but usually a rampant killing, where a single action could set the game
Some things that have greatly improved the game:
- the cycling system (incredibly simple and effective)
- the dishonor mechanic changes
- the cavalry changes (unicorn will always complain they were nerfed, but remained one of the strongest decks)
- the naval changes
- honor gain, 1 claim per char
In my opinion the game was spetacular, just missing correct 2 very important things
1 - the duels, i already said that, too cheap for the effects, i would like the duels to continue to be deadly, but at a greater cost, and perhaps the duelist trait should allow the char to challenge another, like a battle action costing discard one focus 4 card, and the challenged personality might choose to use force rather than chi in the duel (of course, force / chi / modifiers would have to be balanced)
2 - the gold production. since i started playing a key point, the "rich" decks (usually unicorn, mantis and crane) have always been more interesting to play, allowing more options to deck construction and to inlclude chars of the other clans, cooler items...
I think it would be interesting if the starting gold was the same for everyone, and the holdings were out of the dynasty deck. who never easily lost the game after losing the first or second province and only comes holdings on the flop of the dynasty phase...
Anyway that's how I would like it, but I think the game must have changed a lot more than that, I think they will cut a lot of things and make the game simpler to attract more players.
18 hours ago, L5RBr said:1 - the duels, i already said that, too cheap for the effects, i would like the duels to continue to be deadly, but at a greater cost, and perhaps the duelist trait should allow the char to challenge another, like a battle action costing discard one focus 4 card, and the challenged personality might choose to use force rather than chi in the duel (of course, force / chi / modifiers would have to be balanced)
2 - the gold production. since i started playing a key point, the "rich" decks (usually unicorn, mantis and crane) have always been more interesting to play, allowing more options to deck construction and to inlclude chars of the other clans, cooler items...
I think it would be interesting if the starting gold was the same for everyone, and the holdings were out of the dynasty deck. who never easily lost the game after losing the first or second province and only comes holdings on the flop of the dynasty phase...
Anyway that's how I would like it, but I think the game must have changed a lot more than that, I think they will cut a lot of things and make the game simpler to attract more players.
Duels were probably needlessly complicated. In retrospect, probably duels could have worked something like this
"Open: Bow and target a Samurai with lower chi. The personalities owner may choose to bow the personality or dishonor the personality. Gain 1 honor."
and
"Batte: Bow this personality, target a personality with lower chi and no followers. Destroy the target personality. Gain 3 honor."
Something along the lines of that.
It would have solved SO many issues about the dueling-- it wouldn't have allowed the Limited phase assassination for honor, it wouldn't have been its own mini game-within-a-game, it wouldn't have required the expenditure of additional fate cards on either player's behalf. It would have been a lock-down mechanism outside of combat (which would have allowed the other player to avoid the lockdown at the cost of dishonoring the personality) and within combat it would have been roughly similar to a ranged/melee attack but with an honor gain.
There wouldn't have been any specific need for any sort of dueling meta (going by what I have above, just equipping followers or having cards to move you into combat would work) and since there is a good chance that duelists would result in the opponent's personalities being dishonored, it would then be sensible to put Courtiers into your deck to take advantage of them being dishonored. So duelists would be an important part of the strategy, not the entire strategy in and of themselves.
The gold production was meant to be counter-balanced by the initiative and the province strength. Yes, technically it could allow you to build up a big gold economy faster if you have a gold production of 5 rather than 3... but if you are an entire turn behind or you were almost certain to lose one of your provinces, that might not be the case. Although the ability to gather gold from all your holdings and then split them up between several costs considerably upped the value of high gold production numbers. Otherwise if in your dynasty slots the only other gold holding for you to buy cost "3" and you lose that extra 2 gold rather than getting to spend it on a second holding... then it doesn't help you out so much.
But if those who were certain to go on turn 2 didn't get some sort of bonus, I am pretty sure the high honor clans would always win.
Edited by TheHobgoblynAnd even in this simplified model you could have fate cards that affect the duel - say chi boost strategies or a card "Unexpected Outcome" which reverses the duel. Or stuff. Still simpler.
Shower thought I had today, as I was checking out my old stuff:
What if there's no honor, so I don't need an honor counter anymore?
Just now, Nickciufi said:Shower thought I had today, as I was checking out my old stuff:
Wait... You were checking out your old stuff in the shower?? Please... we don't need to know that kind of stuff here.
3 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:Wait... You were checking out your old stuff in the shower?? Please... we don't need to know that kind of stuff here.
Quit, Spider. You wouldn't understand. You haven't needed an honor counter for years.
3 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:
Duels were probably needlessly complicated. In retrospect, probably duels could have worked something like this
"Open: Bow and target a Samurai with lower chi. The personalities owner may choose to bow the personality or dishonor the personality. Gain 1 honor."
and
"Batte: Bow this personality, target a personality with lower chi and no followers. Destroy the target personality. Gain 3 honor."Something along the lines of that.
It would have solved SO many issues about the dueling-- it wouldn't allowed the Limited phase assassination for honor, it wouldn't have been its own mini game-within-a-game, it wouldn't have required the expenditure of additional fate cards on either player's behalf. It would have been a lock-down mechanism outside of combat (which would have allowed the other player to avoid the lockdown at the cost of dishonoring the personality) and within combat it would have been roughly similar to a ranged/melee attack but with an honor gain.
There wouldn't have been any specific need for any sort of dueling meta (going by what I have above, just equipping followers or having cards to move you into combat would work) and since there is a good chance that duelists would result in the opponent's personalities being dishonored, it would then be sensible to put Courtiers into your deck to take advantage of them being dishonored. So duelists would be an important part of the strategy, not the entire strategy in and of themselves.
The gold production was meant to be counter-balanced by the initiative and the province strength. Yes, technically it could allow you to build up a big gold economy faster if you have a gold production of 5 rather than 3... but if you are an entire turn behind or you were almost certain to lose one of your provinces, that might not be the case. Although the ability to gather gold from all your holdings and then split them up between several costs considerably upped the value of high gold production numbers. Otherwise if in your dynasty slots the only other gold holding for you to buy cost "3" and you lose that extra 2 gold rather than getting to spend it on a second holding... then it doesn't help you out so much.
But if those who were certain to go on turn 2 didn't get some sort of bonus, I am pretty sure the high honor clans would always win.
Turning duels into basically a rulebook effect sounds so.....boring. That was the point of duels in the first place - a mini-game within the game.
10 minutes ago, Jedi samurai said:Turning duels into basically a rulebook effect sounds so.....boring. That was the point of duels in the first place - a mini-game within the game.
I agree. I wish there was a way to make the minigame engaging without being pointless because the other guy can't win, but also giving an edge to the duelist.
If it had to be a rule book action, I do actually dig the first one being given a choice between bow or dishonor. Very thematic to me.
1 hour ago, Nickciufi said:Shower thought I had today, as I was checking out my old stuff:
What if there's no honor, so I don't need an honor counter anymore?
The good news: there's still honor!
The bad news: you need to track it to 41.
1 hour ago, Nickciufi said:Quit, Spider. You wouldn't understand. You haven't needed an honor counter for years.
no, spider get honor, we have to understand what we set out to destroy. its the shower part we get confused by.
1 hour ago, BayushiCroy said:I agree. I wish there was a way to make the minigame engaging without being pointless because the other guy can't win, but also giving an edge to the duelist.
And that's a summary of 20 years of L5R game design challenges.
37 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:I agree. I wish there was a way to make the minigame engaging without being pointless because the other guy can't win, but also giving an edge to the duelist.
If it had to be a rule book action, I do actually dig the first one being given a choice between bow or dishonor. Very thematic to me.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread it was partially a problem of misusing design space. Most Focus Effects were split between "help win/win more" effects that dueling decks wanted to play in order to progress their win condition and "punish the winner" meta effects. There were very few focus effects that did not care about the winner or loser.
If there had been more "give a personality at this location +XF," "Gain X honor," "Ranged/Melee/Fear X," "chose a player who loses X honor," and "after the duel resolves attach this card" type focus effects and ways to trigger focus effects outside of dueling (i.e. the rulebook tactician action could trigger focus effects) I believe that duels would have been seen as a way to play up to 4 cards from your hand/fate deck.
3 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:As I've said elsewhere in this thread it was partially a problem of misusing design space. Most Focus Effects were split between "help win/win more" effects that dueling decks wanted to play in order to progress their win condition and "punish the winner" meta effects. There were very few focus effects that did not care about the winner or loser.
If there had been more "give a personality at this location +XF," "Gain X honor," "Ranged/Melee/Fear X," "chose a player who loses X honor," and "after the duel resolves attach this card" type focus effects and ways to trigger focus effects outside of dueling (i.e. the rulebook tactician action could trigger focus effects) I believe that duels would have been seen as a way to play up to 4 cards from your hand/fate deck.
I think the only caveat to this is a fundamental design decision: how essential is dueling to the game? If it is deemed necessary (per lore, prior mechanics, whatever), then make it central, and include a variety of focus effects which help balance the mechanic. However, if it is more of a flavorful accessory, then build it as such: like ranged attacks, spells, etc.
18 minutes ago, FunTimeTeddy said:I think the only caveat to this is a fundamental design decision: how essential is dueling to the game? If it is deemed necessary (per lore, prior mechanics, whatever), then make it central, and include a variety of focus effects which help balance the mechanic. However, if it is more of a flavorful accessory, then build it as such: like ranged attacks, spells, etc.
I feel that, considering how iconic the Single-stroke Battle is in samurai media, L5R kinda needs it to feel "samurai."
Yes, but you can have that with or without the minigame aspect of it.
It might even be more single-stroke-y to limit it to the one card that causes a duel, in a sense.
If Duels are still in,I'd like to have only duellists capable of initiating "Duel" actions, like Monks and shugenjas could initiate Kihos.
I'd much rather have a without a mini-game in the game.
I prefer the version where duelists get a bonus / better result than non-duelists, but yeah, no mini-game is also my preference.
It'd also help if duels were consistent in flavor. The same mechanic describing an assassination in the shadows, a game of go, a debate, a series of contests for shugenja, were all described as duels, meaning they were designed around a mechanic primarily about two people staring each other down before cutting one of them in half. It not only doesn't fit the themes, it means those other, specialized cases got undercut because being good with a sword naturally meant being good in all others, too.
Another question about dueling, it makes no sense for followers to be killed along with character, this is something that has always made the choice by using followers risky, it would make more sense if the followers could be transferred to another unit, in any location after the challenged die, and if there was no other personality in play you could use them to defend yourself even without a personality, it would have made the followers much more useful.
15 hours ago, BayushiCroy said:I agree. I wish there was a way to make the minigame engaging without being pointless because the other guy can't win, but also giving an edge to the duelist.
If it had to be a rule book action, I do actually dig the first one being given a choice between bow or dishonor. Very thematic to me.
But it is a no-win situation there.
If dueling is so crazy powerful and so very easy that a dueling deck can pretty much slaughter all personalities in a non-dueling deck without fear of repercussion or losing unless the other players happens to have an ideal dueling meta card in their hand, then there really is no point in there being a mini-game at all. Once they initiate the duel, they have already killed the personality. Giving then additional bonuses for the "risk" when there was never any more risk than someone takes when firing a ranged attack is rather silly. Furthermore, it requires every single deck to run specialized meta for a mechanic that less than a third of the available factions are really going to be using. It really became a slippery slope to the point that Fate Decks ultimately became nothing but meta.
If, on the other hand, the person issuing the duels is taking a big risk in the duels-- that in addition to requiring a card to initiate the duel, they'd better both have a second card in their hand to ensure victory and pray that the other player doesn't have a dueling meta card in their hand... well, it just becomes not worth doing at all.
There is also the issue that gaining honor while wiping out the enemy personalities is always going to be superior to just gaining honor while the opponent builds up their strategy with an ever-growing personality base. This ends up causing the only viable Crane deck to be a dueling deck-- courtiers become an utter waste of space in the deck because they can't possibly do anything on par with the duelists.
Also, I meant that the "Duelist" action could be taken in either situation-- as an open to try to get them to bow so they can't attack you or a battle action to kill personalities without followers. Either way, it would function like a ranged attack with power equal to the duelist's chi against the chi of another personality.
You're not wrong, about risky actions being taken less frequently. Yet, in MtG the 'my creature fights your creature' cards are played fairly often, iirc. Of course, those are also typically used as simply a kill action, with the drawback of also harming your creature, but even so, they are used, even though the enemy might buff up their creature or otherwise protect it or kill your now-hurt creature.
Somehow, it still works, despite being a risk to the player. I can't tell you what makes it work, but it does mean that your explanation that a risky card/action is just not worth it at all falls short of the truth.
Maybe it's the side-benefits, but not all duels have that, so I honestly don't know. Logically I'd agree with you, but practically there must be some reason to play those cards.
Edit: Oh, but I like your version of dueling too!
Edited by Myrion1 hour ago, L5RBr said:
Another question about dueling, it makes no sense for followers to be killed along with character, this is something that has always made the choice by using followers risky, it would make more sense if the followers could be transferred to another unit, in any location after the challenged die, and if there was no other personality in play you could use them to defend yourself even without a personality, it would have made the followers much more useful.
I think the jusification would be something like the followers being demoralized and routed by watching their great leader cut down before their eyes. I understand the argument against destroying the followers after a duel, but thematically it fits with the setting of larger-than-life magical samurai deciding the course of history.