From a mechanical standpoint comparing LOTR keywords to something like a Clan in L5R is a straight up unfair comparison.
I would expect if the first deluxe expansion doesn't introduce a new clan you will get new ones till a rotation if you do at all.

6 minutes ago, Obscene said:

From a mechanical standpoint comparing LOTR keywords to something like a Clan in L5R is a straight up unfair comparison.
I would expect if the first deluxe expansion doesn't introduce a new clan you will get new ones till a rotation if you do at all.

compared to the ccg, yeah. who knows for the lcg. clans might be entirely keyword based for all we know. but clans don't map to spheres either. the lotr lcg honestly is SUCH a weird beast, its kind of hard to compare it to anything without a handful of caveats. its very much its own thing.

That is my point mechanically comparing something like a clan structure to the keyword trait is a faulty comparison.
I believe certain things are reasonable deductions based off of FFGS previous games and the designers who have worked on them:
Tokens are more then likely in as a form of record keeping, whether it be economy or a win condition.
Hard factions are in with some cards being able to be splashed. Mechanically this has been done different ways with a loyalty symbol, a point value, an alliance matrix, or a separate card declaring the alliance. These could be combined in any of these ways.
Clans will have defining styles of play to list what they are good at and obvious holes in their card pool to show what they are bad at.
Keywords are used to create themes and sub themes among these play styles available to a faction.

I think looking at Conquest or GoT is a very clear indicator of FFG's design priorities for card games. While victory conditions, game play, turn architecture, and so forth can be mechanically very different, the previously mentioned things have been present and continuously refined to a greater product in all of FFGs card games. I think it is incredulous to expect such a departure from FFG's design history.

Also, I believe I read they announced at GAMA that Nate French and Brad Andres are the big names behind the game which is GoT and Conquest respectively.

20 minutes ago, Obscene said:

Also, I believe I read they announced at GAMA that Nate French and Brad Andres are the big names behind the game which is GoT and Conquest respectively.

Honestly, looks like lead designer of competetive card games for FFG was always Eric Lang (Call of Cthulhu, original AGoT CCG, Warhammer Invasion, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K Conquest). Nate, Brad were just engineers that were/are responsible for individual card design and tweaks of Lang's designs.

1 minute ago, kempy said:

Honestly, looks like lead designer of competetive card games for FFG was always Eric Lang (Call of Cthulhu, original AGoT CCG, Star Wars, Conquest). Nate, Brad were just engineers that were/are responsible for individual card design and tweaks of Lang's designs.

I don't think Lang had as much imput on GoT 2.0, I could be mistaken, but to expect a radical skunk works departure from their signatory elements for a skunk works design philosophy would be a bit extreme. It would be them effectively throwing out the window of hundreds of lessons in lcg design.

1 minute ago, Obscene said:

I don't think Lang had as much imput on GoT 2.0, I could be mistaken, but to expect a radical skunk works departure from their signatory elements for a skunk works design philosophy would be a bit extreme. It would be them effectively throwing out the window of hundreds of lessons in lcg design.

Sure, but AGoT 2.0 was just tweaked AGoT 1.0 (these games aren't so much different). And AGoT 1.0 LCG was just mostly same as CCG, it just got changes in distribution model.

1 hour ago, kempy said:

Honestly, looks like lead designer of competetive card games for FFG was always Eric Lang (Call of Cthulhu, original AGoT CCG, Warhammer Invasion, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K Conquest). Nate, Brad were just engineers that were/are responsible for individual card design and tweaks of Lang's designs.

As Lang is now in charge of Cool Mini or Not's game design division (after years of being freelance), I don't think we'll be seeing too many of his designs back at FFG for a while.

6 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

In all the LCGs I've played (AGoT 1st ed, Netrunner, Star Wars, Conquest, AGoT 2nd ed and Arkham Horror), only Conquest has added factions beyond those that were present in the Core Set.

And for Conquest, the two additional factions were openly described as "factions we will be adding in expansions" in the core set rulebook.

The only major faction FFG has ever added to a CCG/LCG they did was Silver Twilight to the old Call of Cthulhu game. Netrunner got the mini-factions of love (Sunny, Apex, and Adam), but they have less than 5% of the in-faction cards that the other factions have.

8 hours ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

I don't think it's a game. I think it's being epistemologically responsible. There's a difference between what one believes and what one knows . And it's good to differentiate between the two, so as not to confuse others.

Adding factions later in the game is certainly a possibility, but it's by no means a certainty. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think AGoT 2nd edition has added any factions beyond what that version started with, has it? Or LotR with "spheres?"

I agree. However there are times when you can speak about something with certainty without knowing.

For example - I don't KNOW (cause I don't work for them and I haven't been told this by anyone who works there) but I KNOW Nintendo will develop another Zelda game.

2 hours ago, BayushiCroy said:

Sorry should have scrolled up to see it was you. I get lazy when on phone. Also I will enjoy you not speaking for me.

What I am doing, is making a distinction between things I believe (assume) will happen from things I know will happen (certainties). We know very little about the game, but in fairness I think people have made some very fair assumptions. The problem is when people speak in certainties.

As Sparks pointed out, people have done the same with the idea of tokens in the game. We don't know there will be tokens in the game. However people are assuming there will be. It might seem fair to equate "there will probably be tokens in the game" and "there will probably be additional factions included in expansions", but I claim that one is a fair assumption (that we still can't claim as a fact) and the other, despite how much I want it to be true, is less likely. Here's why:

I do not know of an FFG game that doesn't have tokens. In fairness, AGoT 2.0 uses a very small diversity of tokens, and probably could have been designed without them. But because they are still included in the design of the game, despite having less variety than in other games, that seems to be their insistence on including tokens. A quick recap on only the games I know of with tokens: Netrunner, Agot 1, Agot 2, Arkham Horror, Star Wars Destiny, Conquest, LoTR, CoC Cardgame. That is...*counts* 8. 8 Cardgames that uses tokens. I may have missed some but I believe that is all of FFG's card games.

The likelihood of l5r NOT having tokens, is in one sense, 1/8. We still can't say for sure we know there will be tokens, but it seems likely. I am not including their board games because I feel they are too dissimilar in design to be comparable.

Now, games that had additional factions added post release, from thats ame set, I think is only Conquest, right? I am less sure on this one. that would mean, in a sense, there is a 8/1 chance of having a faction added. Still possible, we don't know, but it is a fairer assumption that they wont. That being said I still think they will, but that is because of story

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE STORY!?

Yea, so here is where it gets weird. We know they are going to have story be important to the engagement of l5r, and have not said how, yet. Where they pick up the story, or do their own (WHO KNOWS!?) is the main factor as to whether the Mantis could even exist and/or they want to try to make Spider/Shadowland Horde a playable faction, which I have been told they don't like to make the bad guys a playable faction.

Now if the Spider AREN'T the bad guys, that depends entirely on the story, which again, we simply don't know.

Does that clarify my point?

You didn't need to clairfy. I get it. I know what you were doing, as I already pointed out. Dragging down the conversation by responding to every point that we can safely say assume will be true with "well we don't know that for sure" is pointless and you only do it cause you think it makes you seem smarter then those fools assuming things and thinking they are going to happen.

You make the point as to why you doing this is stupid yourself - see your token example.

I guarentee you EVERYONE who has said "the game will have tokens" or "more factions will be added" or anything else like that knows its possible that it won't, but its reasonable to assume it will so many/most people are/will until proven wrong. Not everyone is going to take the time to say "I think maybe there will be tokens because of reasons A/B/C, but there might not be so I won't say for sure, but I'd say 99% there will be" etc...

48 minutes ago, Jedi samurai said:

I agree. However there are times when you can speak about something with NEAR certainty without knowing.

For example - I don't KNOW (cause I don't work for them and I haven't been told this by anyone who works there) but I am PRETTY SURE Nintendo will develop another Zelda game.

FTFW

42 minutes ago, Jedi samurai said:

You didn't need to clairfy. I get it. I know what you were doing, as I already pointed out. Dragging down the conversation by responding to every point that we can safely say assume will be true with "well we don't know that for sure" is pointless and you only do it cause you think it makes you seem smarter then those fools assuming things and thinking they are going to happen.

You make the point as to why you doing this is stupid yourself - see your token example.

I guarentee you EVERYONE who has said "the game will have tokens" or "more factions will be added" or anything else like that knows its possible that it won't, but its reasonable to assume it will so many/most people are/will until proven wrong. Not everyone is going to take the time to say "I think maybe there will be tokens because of reasons A/B/C, but there might not be so I won't say for sure, but I'd say 99% there will be" etc...

As your above post shows, it seems you don't get it.

You wont acknowledge the difference between less/more likely.

Words mean things.

Saying: " "I guarentee you EVERYONE who has said "the game will have tokens" or "more factions will be added" " or anything else like that knows its possible that it won't ,..." shows that you equate knowing with suspicion , and it is dishonest to do that when all we have is speculation and potentially new players are coming here for news and info.

It is very important we give people accurate information.

I would instead say: "the game will probably have tokens" or "more factions can be added" or even "more factions may be added"

Either way, I don't want to beat this horse anymore.

24 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

And for Conquest, the two additional factions were openly described as "factions we will be adding in expansions" in the core set rulebook.

The only major faction FFG has ever added to a CCG/LCG they did was Silver Twilight to the old Call of Cthulhu game. Netrunner got the mini-factions of love (Sunny, Apex, and Adam), but they have less than 5% of the in-faction cards that the other factions have.

And there was also something like this for Warhammer: Invasion https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2014/11/7/about-hidden-kingdoms/

Deluxe expansion that changed "neutral" cards from previous sets into 4 playable factions.

22 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

In all the LCGs I've played (AGoT 1st ed, Netrunner, Star Wars, Conquest, AGoT 2nd ed and Arkham Horror), only Conquest has added factions beyond those that were present in the Core Set. AGoT 1st ed and Star Wars fleshed out factions that were barely present in the Core Set (Greyjoy and Martell for AGoT, Smugglers & Spies and Scum & Villainy for Star Wars). AGoT 1st ed added a neutral House card and Netrunner added neutral runner identities. Also, the extra factions for Conquest were announced in the Core Set: they appear beside the wheel of alliance at the end of the LtP (Necrons inside the wheel, Tyranids outside).

So, my take on extra factions is that they're a possibility, but by no means a certainty. And we'll know when the game comes out.

SMugglers and Bounty Hunters were added to Star Wars after the core set.

You call it "fleshing them out", but when a faction isn't playable, its not really in the game.

31 minutes ago, Jedi samurai said:

SMugglers and Bounty Hunters were added to Star Wars after the core set.

You call it "fleshing them out", but when a faction isn't playable, its not really in the game.

Actually, you could make a viable deck using the Smugglers & Spies or Scum & Villainy affiliation card (and using 2 copies of that affiliation's objective), because Star Wars encourages you to use the affiliation card that matches your minority faction (so you can guarantee a resource match for it). I'll concede that you couldn't make decks using only those factions until the first expansion came out. In contrast, it was impossible to make a viable Greyjoy or Martell deck with only the AGoT 1st ed Core Set, because you only had the House cards. However, the first cycle was already out (since it was designed to go in the last CCG block) and it might have been possible to make a viable Greyjoy or Martell deck with it and the Core Set.

18 hours ago, BayushiCroy said:

Yea, Arkham is an odd case.

They don't translate perfectly, no, and I don't mean to imply that this is strict probability, only an acknowledgment of patterns.

Hold on

Wait, Arkham totally has factions. Guardian, Seeker, Mystic, Rogue, Survivor. I don't see how adding another color card is dissimilar from adding a faction.

I guess I view factions a bit differently. Factions, to me, are a way of tying characters together thematically, not just mechanically. In L5R, clans are factions, and the personalities are tied together thematically. Similarly, in Lord of the Rings LCG, you have traits like Dunedain, Rohan, etc. which tie characters together thematically. Arkham Horror doesn't (currently) have these sorts of connections, thus why I say they it doesn't have factions.

What it does have is colors (classes), but I don't think these are exactly what one would call "factions". Colors are far more mechanical than factions, and exist primarily just to tell us what a particular person is good at (and to restrict what cards they can play). In Arkahm Horror, there isn't (so far as I've seen) any real connection between Agnes Baker and Jim Culver; they're just both more concerned with mysticism than anything else. On the other hand, Aragorn in LotR has been in four different spheres so far (Leadership, Lore, Tactics, and Fellowship), but thematically he hasn't changed factions; he's just really skilled in a lot of different ways and can focus his talents differently as the player sees fit.

17 hours ago, Obscene said:

From a mechanical standpoint comparing LOTR keywords to something like a Clan in L5R is a straight up unfair comparison.
I would expect if the first deluxe expansion doesn't introduce a new clan you will get new ones till a rotation if you do at all.

I'd agree that it would be unfair to compare keywords like "Ranged" or "Healer" to L5R clans, but how are the clans any different from the faction keywords like "Noldor" or "Gondor"? Even in the AEG CCG, personalities had their clan alignment printed as a keyword! And just like the faction keywords in LotR, your clan in L5R helped decide the way you'd play (e.g. Unicorn focus on moving a lot vs. Lion focus on incredibly high force while attacking vs. Mantis do a lot of fun, tricky stuff during battles).
No, it's not a perfect, 1-1 relationship (they're not copies of one another, after all), but it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that faction keywords are alien to L5R and completely different from Clan keywords.

2 minutes ago, Jedi samurai said:

SMugglers and Bounty Hunters were added to Star Wars after the core set.

You call it "fleshing them out", but when a faction isn't playable, its not really in the game.

This is an interesting point. The base set could just be showing 7 playable clans, while still having a couple other personalities who have clan keywords but aren't playable as a clan, yet. If the setting is during the Clan Wars, we could easily have a Yoshi-Mario's Alliance personality or two without having it be an entire, playable faction shown on the box.

1 hour ago, JJ48 said:

Even in the AEG CCG, personalities had their clan alignment printed as a keyword!

Where is a faction keyword on this card?

https://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=11592,#hashid=518fbda1c9bc6e14f91549b168e0e885,#cardcount=0

1 hour ago, JJ48 said:

I guess I view factions a bit differently. Factions, to me, are a way of tying characters together thematically, not just mechanically. In L5R, clans are factions, and the personalities are tied together thematically. Similarly, in Lord of the Rings LCG, you have traits like Dunedain, Rohan, etc. which tie characters together thematically. Arkham Horror doesn't (currently) have these sorts of connections, thus why I say they it doesn't have factions.

Well, one of the problems is that the mechanical factions are called by a wide variety of names depending on the game (color, class, sphere, faction, clan, etc.). And another is they don't always mesh with thematical factions.

I don't expect FFG to keep clan keywords, because they tend to separate the different kinds of keywords the CCG had in 3 game concepts: affiliation (clan keywords - Lion Clan, Unicorn Clan), keywords (with a rules definition - Cavalry, Naval) and traits (for card interactions or background - Clan Champion, Farm).

1 hour ago, JJ48 said:

This is an interesting point. The base set could just be showing 7 playable clans, while still having a couple other personalities who have clan keywords but aren't playable as a clan, yet. If the setting is during the Clan Wars, we could easily have a Yoshi-Mario's Alliance personality or two without having it be an entire, playable faction shown on the box.

Well, L5R has always had personalities who had "faction traits" that weren't really considered to be faction traits except for the short times they had the particular strongholds.

The problem has always been that virtually no one can play such personalities in a workable deck. Not unless the personality has a very powerful ability for very cheap-- then one might find a use for it. But, in such a case, such a personality is likely to be far too powerful if you ever allow them to be played out of their own stronghold.

Granted-- that had everything to do with how out-of-clan samurai were handled within the previous game and a whole new system might not need to run into that problem.

I did have a fruitful discussion about this point.

I figure the best way to do a new faction is to sprinkle in the cards in small numbers. Generally a few Mantis here and there, a few Ratlings, a few Naga, a few Goju/Ninube ninja, a few Imperial Families, a few Ronin, a few unaligned monks.... just enough to keep people interested... and then after a while you just drop an expansion that fills out everything the faction needs to function with their stronghold.

Sure, they won't be as deep as the other factions, but they'll be there and people can be happy to use those cards. I was thinking each of those expansions should include a card for each other clan, but... it turns out the expansion card sets are so tiny that such a thing wouldn't be feasible.

30 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Where is a faction keyword on this card?

https://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=11592,#hashid=518fbda1c9bc6e14f91549b168e0e885,#cardcount=0

Yeah, with Ivory they removed XXX Clan keywords from cards, and clan alignment were determined by color mon in upper left corner.

32 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Where is a faction keyword on this card?

https://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=11592,#hashid=518fbda1c9bc6e14f91549b168e0e885,#cardcount=0

Interesting. It looks like after Ivory Edition, they started removing the faction keywords for some reason. Maybe they figured the printed mon was a viable stand-in?

EDIT: kempy beat me to it.

32 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:

Well, one of the problems is that the mechanical factions are called by a wide variety of names depending on the game (color, class, sphere, faction, clan, etc.). And another is they don't always mesh with thematical factions.

I don't expect FFG to keep clan keywords, because they tend to separate the different kinds of keywords the CCG had in 3 game concepts: affiliation (clan keywords - Lion Clan, Unicorn Clan), keywords (with a rules definition - Cavalry, Naval) and traits (for card interactions or background - Clan Champion, Farm).

My point was simply that, when trying to figure out whether FFG is likely to add new clans, and looking at other FFG games to do so, we need to compare like with like. The colors in Arkham Horror are not at all like the clans in L5R, so it's not really a fair comparison. Similarly, the spheres in LotR don't function anything like clans, so it's also not a good comparison. The faction keywords in LotR, however, do seem very similar to the concept of clans in L5R (less restrictive, but often a faction keyword will be a focus when building decks), and FFG has certainly added more faction keywords over the years!

Ultimately, I wasn't trying to argue about how clan alignment would be implemented or what effect it would have on the game. I wasn't even claiming that new factions will or won't be added. I was simply pointing out that it's not as unheard of as some people have suggested.

7 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Interesting. It looks like after Ivory Edition, they started removing the faction keywords for some reason. Maybe they figured the printed mon was a viable stand-in?

They did it for cosmetic reasons and to make this card much weaker.

3 minutes ago, kempy said:

They did it for cosmetic reasons and to make this card much weaker.

Glad to see they were worried about cards being OP even after their legality expired. XD

55 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

The problem has always been that virtually no one can play such personalities in a workable deck. Not unless the personality has a very powerful ability for very cheap-- then one might find a use for it. But, in such a case, such a personality is likely to be far too powerful if you ever allow them to be played out of their own stronghold.

Back in Celestial, this card was a single reason to play all various types of Ronins and other scum.

13 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Ultimately, I wasn't trying to argue about how clan alignment would be implemented or what effect it would have on the game. I wasn't even claiming that new factions will or won't be added. I was simply pointing out that it's not as unheard of as some people have suggested.

I don't think most people were really suggesting that it was unheard of, just not agreeing that it's a foregone conclusion.

It just hit me today that they could theoretically do exactly like they did with Conquest, having an "alignment wheel" of alliances with 7 clans in the core, and introducing Shadowlands/Spider like Tyranids that exist outside the wheel and can align with no one, and Mantis/minor clans like Necrons can ally with anyone.

It wouldn't be a perfect fit, but the alignment wheel in Conquest wasn't a perfect fit for that game's lore, either, but it worked well enough.

59 minutes ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

It just hit me today that they could theoretically do exactly like they did with Conquest, having an "alignment wheel" of alliances with 7 clans in the core, and introducing Shadowlands/Spider like Tyranids that exist outside the wheel and can align with no one, and Mantis/minor clans like Necrons can ally with anyone.

It wouldn't be a perfect fit, but the alignment wheel in Conquest wasn't a perfect fit for that game's lore, either, but it worked well enough.

Yeah... this is nothing new. Other people have already brought this up.