24 minutes ago, Smobey said:

I kind of imagine betting 1 honour is the standard, unless the duel's something that's absolutely gonna make or break game for you. If you bet 1 and your opponent bets 5, you might lose, but your opponent has most likely severely messed up their card draw for the future, or worse. I can't imagine the duel's outcome would be more important than +/- 4 honour.

Duels also being the traditional purview of honor clans means losing a duel that hard (1-5) and the 8 honor swing involved just brings them closer to winning the game even if they lost the duel. That's compounded by the draw limitations you mentioned. From the SHs we've seen, if you card draw (5-1) and then crush a duel (5-1) then you are basically out of honor and your opponent is a hair's breadth from an honor victory on turn 1.

I worry that this extreme consequence will bring back bully duels - My 5 vs. your 2. Let's bid! Neither player will want to invest very much in this duel because it's basically already decided. With closer duels, I imagine the true goal will be to aim for a tie or a tie +1. Suppose a 4 stat initiates against a 3 stat. The 4 stat should bet 1 or 2, as even if she loses, she still gets some honor. The 3 stat should bet 2 or 3 for a chance to tie or win and minimize honor loss.

And I can imagine a meta where everyone just bets 3 on card draw until they get an idea of the matchup. Just some thoughts.

8 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Duels also being the traditional purview of honor clans means losing a duel that hard (1-5) and the 8 honor swing involved just brings them closer to winning the game even if they lost the duel. That's compounded by the draw limitations you mentioned. From the SHs we've seen, if you card draw (5-1) and then crush a duel (5-1) then you are basically out of honor and your opponent is a hair's breadth from an honor victory on turn 1.

I worry that this extreme consequence will bring back bully duels - My 5 vs. your 2. Let's bid! Neither player will want to invest very much in this duel because it's basically already decided. With closer duels, I imagine the true goal will be to aim for a tie or a tie +1. Suppose a 4 stat initiates against a 3 stat. The 4 stat should bet 1 or 2, as even if she loses, she still gets some honor. The 3 stat should bet 2 or 3 for a chance to tie or win and minimize honor loss.

And I can imagine a meta where everyone just bets 3 on card draw until they get an idea of the matchup. Just some thoughts.

I am guessing that there will be much more fluctuation in the honor bidding than people think. It will be highly situational and ever changing over the course of a game. Each player will likely need to be good at reading the needs of their situation and sometime take acceptable losses in either honor or card gain depending on the need at the time. I am not sure a "static" approach will ever be a good tactic.

25 minutes ago, Silverfox13 said:

I am guessing that there will be much more fluctuation in the honor bidding than people think. It will be highly situational and ever changing over the course of a game. Each player will likely need to be good at reading the needs of their situation and sometime take acceptable losses in either honor or card gain depending on the need at the time. I am not sure a "static" approach will ever be a good tactic.

I'm looking forward to the blank stares an aggressive blitzy type player gives when you announce a turn two honor victory after they've handed you their eight honor. Or the dishonor "victory" when you bump them down by just a couple.

8 hours ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Assuming matchups like old L5R, I predict:

Mil. vs. Mil. Everybody draws 5 every turn. No honor changes hands. Obviously this is the weakest theory. The Imp. Favor or something may encourage more diverse strategies.

(Dis)Hon. vs. (Dis)Hon. These players -want- to have the lower bid, to some extent, in order to get/take honor. Complicated mind games will ensue. Also, they will prefer Earth/Air ring effects.

Mil. vs. (Dis)Hon. Unknown. Mil is hungry for cards but that accelerates Hon deck. Constant High bids versus Low bids would very quickly decide the game for the (Dis)Honor player. Mil would be forced to slow their roll or use sub-optimal ring effects.

Honor players get the advantage of practice here. They know what their deck does and they force other strategies to play by their cryptic rules.

Mil vs Mil might also be about bluffing your way into a honor/dishonor victory - "can you survice militarily with just getting 1-2 vs 5 cards twice ?" While the Lion clan got a starting honor of 12 I can imagine the crab or unicorn starting with 10 or even 8, so a double swing of -4 honor might terminate them.

Or a double swing of +4 honor puts lion into the 20 range, close to winnning.

Also quite alot of the ACtion cards previewed cost Fate, so if there is a hand limit it might be not wise to draw 5 just to have to discard them because you lack the fate to play them (and new personalities!). In general this bluffing system rather leads to deck types and deckbuilding decisions like "do I play lots of cheap actions and draw 5 each turn, accelerating my opponent --- or do I rather play action cards that cost money and rely on personalities more and just play 1 or 2 each turn, thus maximizeing my value and robbing the opponent of free honor gains/being able to win by honor"

Agree on the Dis/honor vs Dis/honor matchups.

Mil vs Dis/honor I disagree that only Mil is hungry for cards. In old L5R the dis/honor decks needed fate cards to compensate the lack of military prowess / power - not sure if being able to make a political challenge changes that race against the clock aka "need moar cards".

Also as a dis/honor deck you can crack provinces with courtly challenges too now ,so it looks like the problem got mirrored here. I can see some weird province races taking place here as the mil deck might not be able to stop losing provinces in court challenges while the dis/honor cant stop the military in strenght challenges.

3 hours ago, Silverfox13 said:

I am guessing that there will be much more fluctuation in the honor bidding than people think. It will be highly situational and ever changing over the course of a game. Each player will likely need to be good at reading the needs of their situation and sometime take acceptable losses in either honor or card gain depending on the need at the time. I am not sure a "static" approach will ever be a good tactic.

I'm leaning more towards this till we actually see most of the cards and how easy it is to gain honor or cards outside of the bid system. Right now all we have is the honored/dishonored rule which seems to lean towards 1 for standard personalities, winning an Air conflict, and winning an Earth conflict. Abilities on unrevealed characters might swing certain clans towards usually low bidding or even high bidding (Shadowlands?).

I almost suspect FFG will keep starting honor somewhat close for the core set, with 8/9 being the lowest and 12 being the highest.

3 hours ago, Kiseki said:

I'm looking forward to the blank stares an aggressive blitzy type player gives when you announce a turn two honor victory after they've handed you their eight honor. Or the dishonor "victory" when you bump them down by just a couple.

Ohman, I don't miss those "what a dumb deck, nothing I could ever do"-comments when people totally overcommitted and didn't care at all how you might possibly win vs them

7 minutes ago, Talaris1 said:

Mil vs Mil might also be about bluffing your way into a honor/dishonor victory - "can you survice militarily with just getting 1-2 vs 5 cards twice ?" While the Lion clan got a starting honor of 12 I can imagine the crab or unicorn starting with 10 or even 8, so a double swing of -4 honor might terminate them.

Or a double swing of +4 honor puts lion into the 20 range, close to winnning.

Also quite alot of the ACtion cards previewed cost Fate, so if there is a hand limit it might be not wise to draw 5 just to have to discard them because you lack the fate to play them (and new personalities!). In general this bluffing system rather leads to deck types and deckbuilding decisions like "do I play lots of cheap actions and draw 5 each turn, accelerating my opponent --- or do I rather play action cards that cost money and rely on personalities more and just play 1 or 2 each turn, thus maximizeing my value and robbing the opponent of free honor gains/being able to win by honor"

Agree on the Dis/honor vs Dis/honor matchups.

Mil vs Dis/honor I disagree that only Mil is hungry for cards. In old L5R the dis/honor decks needed fate cards to compensate the lack of military prowess / power - not sure if being able to make a political challenge changes that race against the clock aka "need moar cards".

Also as a dis/honor deck you can crack provinces with courtly challenges too now ,so it looks like the problem got mirrored here. I can see some weird province races taking place here as the mil deck might not be able to stop losing provinces in court challenges while the dis/honor cant stop the military in strenght challenges.

The fact of the 'ticking' clock on characters, the way the Dynasty phase is a You go, I go style of open information, and the idea that you can only do 1 military conflict and 1 political conflict per turn (yes, there will probably be a card that allows a player to do two of one type of conflict in a round) may complicate the issue.

I'm also speculating that each ring may only be claimed once per turn, so if your opponent beings the conflict phase by declaring an Earth political battle, the other three potential conflicts cannot be Earth. I'm just basing this on the wording for some of the revealed cards, esp. Elemental Fury and Mori Kuroi. I'll also add that it's most likely the least honorable player will get to start each phase.

I started to wonder if L5R will have like the AGOT LCG have the clans as there the houses have each a keyword that is tied to the Clan.

For Lion that would be easy, most likely the Tactitian.

Not sure what the Unicorn could get, since Cavalry is already a Trait. Maybe Battle Maiden?

Monk and Tattooed are also already Traits, which leaves the Dragon also somewhat open.

Phoenix could maybe get Ishiken, who then do something special... but that would then also means it would be found on shugenja.

Scorpion have a lot of option, while I think Ninja would be better as trait, maybe the Stealth keyward? (even though that also would be nice on some other more secretive peeps, like the Harrier of the Crane). Personally I would like to have Instigator for the Scorpion.

Crab could get Siege as keyword that allows them then to do something with their holdings or give them something when they defend.

And last but not least, my Crane. Even though I meantioned Harrier already, I think that would be not a good keyword, I rather would like to see Artisan as Crane Keyword. Since lets be honest, that is why most people thing the Crane are doing all day long. Hope we will find out this week if the Crane have a special keyword just for them, and that every clan has that.

There were house-specific keywords in AGoT 1st ed, but there aren't any in AGoT 2nd ed (and I've not seen any faction-specific keywords in their other games - though some factions get more of some keywords than others, juste like Unicorn and Cavalry in L5R CCG). Also, except for Stealth, I think all of your suggested keywords would be better as traits.