I actually think the game would be better if having a few out-of-clan personalities in any deck was viable, but maybe I'm just insane.

2 minutes ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

I actually think the game would be better if having a few out-of-clan personalities in any deck was viable, but maybe I'm just insane.

It would make for some interesting storytelling.

I just hope cross-faction splashing is handled better than it was with AEG. In 20F, it was clear that they were trying to encourage some mixing (particularly in Thunderous Acclaim), but the benefits were often too minor to justify the extra 2 gold you'd pay.

I mean, look at Akodo Toshigure. He's a duelist who gets +1PH when he's controlled by a Mantis player. A few questions immediately come to mind. 1) Should Mantis really pay 6 gold for a 3/3 personality with 7 honor requirement and no abilities? 2) Should Lion pay 4 gold for a 3/3 personality with no abilities and only 2 PH? 3) Is a Mantis player really going to care about +1PH all that often? 4) What in the world is Mantis doing trying to duel, anyway?

I'm guessing there's some storyline reason that for his ability, and I think it's great that they were trying to tie that into the game, but unfortunately, the Fate cards which would benefit Toshigure the most just don't fit with most Mantis decks, meaning either the player must waste space with cards which could be completely useless discard-fodder, or else play Toshigure unsupported (when there are a lot of better 6-gold personalities for most Mantis strategies).

As for the idea of alliances, I think if FFG went that route that the alliances should be a card (perhaps not in your deck, and starting in play) rather than a strict rule. As much as possible, I support having rather simple printed rules and limiting oddities and exceptions to card text. (This seems odd to me, considering one of my fondest memories of Decipher's Star Wars CCG was discovering that the Special Edition glossary had something like a 2-page entry just on prepositions , but in fairness, that was a rules clarification for when there was a disagreement not a rule which needed to be memorized just to play the game normally.)

2 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Well, if you could tie it to specific story arcs, it might be able to work. But then one couldn't really be designing the game for it. It would just be an arbitrarily assigned thing that could change all around on a whim. It would almost entirely defeat the purpose of having it at all.

I am not sure what you mean by "wheels within wheels" though.

Possibly "Plans within Plans", the key to so many zany card plays.

Multi-post...

Multi-post.

1 hour ago, JJ48 said:

I just hope cross-faction splashing is handled better than it was with AEG. In 20F, it was clear that they were trying to encourage some mixing (particularly in Thunderous Acclaim), but the benefits were often too minor to justify the extra 2 gold you'd pay.

I mean, look at Akodo Toshigure. He's a duelist who gets +1PH when he's controlled by a Mantis player. A few questions immediately come to mind. 1) Should Mantis really pay 6 gold for a 3/3 personality with 7 honor requirement and no abilities? 2) Should Lion pay 4 gold for a 3/3 personality with no abilities and only 2 PH? 3) Is a Mantis player really going to care about +1PH all that often? 4) What in the world is Mantis doing trying to duel, anyway?

I'm guessing there's some storyline reason that for his ability, and I think it's great that they were trying to tie that into the game, but unfortunately, the Fate cards which would benefit Toshigure the most just don't fit with most Mantis decks, meaning either the player must waste space with cards which could be completely useless discard-fodder, or else play Toshigure unsupported (when there are a lot of better 6-gold personalities for most Mantis strategies).

Many common and uncommon Personalities in sets were created with these strange alliances in mind because of Draft, where you got to declare for two clans and had a 8FH Stronghold.

Admittedly, this thread is super long so I didn't read all of it, but how much has been discussed that they might just restrict down to a set of factions, where clans are grouped into them, and then have something like Netrunners Out-of-Faction point system (Which I have always thought was a great idea)? It might not make sense for them to support 7 factions to begin with.

Although, 7 clans don't divide easily. 9 you might be able to manage, but 7 you can't, unless the Dragon stay in their mountains and just come down to war on everyone.

I do actually sort of like JJ48's alliances idea, though it could be part of the stronghold. Maybe it lists a set of clans you are allowed to play with it.

31 minutes ago, Mirith said:

It might not make sense for them to support 7 factions to begin with.

Well, they started with 7 factions in Conquest, and 8 in AGoT 2nd ed. I'm sure they can manage 7 clans in the L5R Core Set.

Just now, Khudzlin said:

Well, they started with 7 factions in Conquest, and 8 in AGoT 2nd ed. I'm sure they can manage 7 clans in the L5R Core Set.

Yeah, and there were technically 7 factions in Netrunner. But the asymmetry made that less apparent in my mind until I thought about it more.

I think a lot of people are kind of missing the point about the alliance wheel. Yes, it's fairly restrictive to the player. But it also makes balancing much easier. If you're trying to root out broken combos, you only have to look at three factions at a time, rather than having to evaluate every single card interaction.

This also has a trickle-down effect: if the design team knows that, say, the Scorpion and Lion can't ally this cycle, they don't have to worry about card interactions between them at all. This opens up design options that they couldn't have used otherwise, allowing each faction to develop a more unique playstyle.

1 minute ago, Fumi said:

I think a lot of people are kind of missing the point about the alliance wheel. Yes, it's fairly restrictive to the player. But it also makes balancing much easier. If you're trying to root out broken combos, you only have to look at three factions at a time, rather than having to evaluate every single card interaction.

This also has a trickle-down effect: if the design team knows that, say, the Scorpion and Lion can't ally this cycle, they don't have to worry about card interactions between them at all. This opens up design options that they couldn't have used otherwise, allowing each faction to develop a more unique playstyle.

You say this, but the one issue I've had with the FFG's LCG model (at least as of 1-2 years ago) is that it takes a while for cards to no longer be valid, and the core set is always valid. When cards are valid for either 7 years or forever (Netrunner and AGoT v1's policy as of a few years back), you always have to balance around them. So immediately combos might not be valid, but maybe in 3 years, they will want to change stuff up and then what will you do? If they went down this road, you'd either be stuck with the same clan alliances forever, or you'd still have to consider this balancing.

14 minutes ago, Mirith said:

You say this, but the one issue I've had with the FFG's LCG model (at least as of 1-2 years ago) is that it takes a while for cards to no longer be valid, and the core set is always valid. When cards are valid for either 7 years or forever (Netrunner and AGoT v1's policy as of a few years back), you always have to balance around them. So immediately combos might not be valid, but maybe in 3 years, they will want to change stuff up and then what will you do? If they went down this road, you'd either be stuck with the same clan alliances forever, or you'd still have to consider this balancing.

My main experience with LCGs has been co-op ones (Lord of the Rings and Arkham Horror), which don't have legality cycles to my knowledge. Are these cycles pretty standard to the competitive LCGs? How confident can we be that they will be in L5R?

The theoretical validity limit is 3-4 years (1 pack/month means 2 cycles/year, and rotation kicks in when the 8th cycle begins). It's still theoretical because Netrunner (the oldest still-running game subject to rotation) has yet to be affected (the current cycle is the 7th, so rotation should kick in in a few months). Taking delays into account gives a more realistic estimate of 5 years (the Genesis cycle started in 2012).

@JJ48 Back when they announced their plan for rotation, they explicitly excluded coop games from it. They also excluded Call of Cthulhu, which was dying, and AGoT, which was so far past the point where rotation should kick in they preferred to reboot it.

In this form this long rotation system is just a joke.

25 minutes ago, Mirith said:

You say this, but the one issue I've had with the FFG's LCG model (at least as of 1-2 years ago) is that it takes a while for cards to no longer be valid, and the core set is always valid. When cards are valid for either 7 years or forever (Netrunner and AGoT v1's policy as of a few years back), you always have to balance around them. So immediately combos might not be valid, but maybe in 3 years, they will want to change stuff up and then what will you do? If they went down this road, you'd either be stuck with the same clan alliances forever, or you'd still have to consider this balancing.

I hand't realized that the rotation would be that long. I agree that a shifting alliance wheel is unworkable if cards have a 7 year lifespan.

38 minutes ago, Fumi said:

I hand't realized that the rotation would be that long. I agree that a shifting alliance wheel is unworkable if cards have a 7 year lifespan.

Though to be fair, we don't know their release cycle, but if I remember Netrunner right, it was 1/month for 6 months (with a big pack at the beginning), and then they took a few months off (possibly 6 months, maybe I'm remembering that wrong, but the initial schedule was like this). It also may have changed since I played, AGoT2 looks like it is 2 major cycles per year, and they may be intending something different with L5R.

In part, the 7 year thing is part of why I stopped playing Netrunner, amongst other more relevant reasons, but it was probably the biggest issue I had with the game. But the environment was getting pretty convoluted around year 3 or 4 and needed a reset. However, I expect FFG will learn from previous games and take this into account.

I believe under no delays a rotation is a 5 year thing.

44 minutes ago, Mirith said:

However, I expect FFG will learn from previous games and take this into account.

They said in the video that was taken at GAMA that l5r will use the same rotation cycle and won't be different.

So hopefully they change it as a whole. It's just too long.

2 hours ago, Mirith said:

You say this, but the one issue I've had with the FFG's LCG model (at least as of 1-2 years ago) is that it takes a while for cards to no longer be valid, and the core set is always valid .

Now that I think about it, the core set always being valid poses a bit of a problem for L5R. Having timeless personalities would be really odd, lore-wise. But having core sets expire could be rough on hobby stores, and also be potentially off-putting for new players. ("I bought this boxed set and it's going to expire in 3 months? Screw this.")

Anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this problem?

26 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

They said in the video that was taken at GAMA that l5r will use the same rotation cycle and won't be different.

So hopefully they change it as a whole. It's just too long.

I don't think he was necessarily saying that he hopes the cycle will be different, but rather that he hopes FFG has learned how to make the cycles work a bit smoother so they don't start getting too messed up a couple years in.

5 minutes ago, Fumi said:

Now that I think about it, the core set always being valid poses a bit of a problem for L5R. Having timeless personalities would be really odd, lore-wise. But having core sets expire could be rough on hobby stores, and also be potentially off-putting for new players. ("I bought this boxed set and it's going to expire in 3 months? Screw this.")

Anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this problem?

Well, Siege: Clan War had a lot of 20F-legal personalities without them necessarily still being alive in the later timeframe. I imagine they'd probably pick more iconic characters whose legacy one could reasonably expect to live on long after the hero himself has passed.

--Double Post--

So if you win a battle with Matsu X and Akodo Y, it's not necessarily X and Y there in a literal sense, it could just be a couple of generic samurai following in the tradition of their more famous predecessors?

I suppose that could work, though it seems a tad unsatisfying.

The only way I could see a 5-7-year rotation cycle with monthly released expansion boosters working is if there was a strong tendency towards banning specific cards that had unintended effects. I think it has been demonstrated all too well that power creeps into a game and you soon get turn 3 wins and only 2 viable decks.

That being said... a much, MUCH longer rotation cycle than AEG used means that we would have time to see things that wouldn't make it into the game in the shorter rotations. Instead of a Clan playing one way all the time, other ways of playing the same faction could be more fully developed. There would be enough time to introduce Shadowlands and Naga/Ratlings and Shadow Ninja and Imperial/Ronin factions into the game and keep them in the game long enough to feel like they are part of it and not a "we put out a stronghold, but there were never enough legal cards to support it."

It would basically be like L5R Modern is right now at the end of a long rotation.

How does AGoT Handle this? Is Ned Stark in the core set? Is this why there is now AGoT v2? I don't pay attention to the game.

That being said, given the whole story-driven aspect of L5R, it makes it a whole lot more awkward lore wise. But I hadn't really thought about it from that standpoint.

My issue more stems from saying blanket statements that sound like "These cards are perfect and timeless". Okay, a bit of hyperbole, but I think having "permanent" cards leads to a more restricted design space and prevents the evolution of a game. I think being able to change the 'core set' without forcing significant resets is a good policy. Some cards don't change, but some cards need to.

1 minute ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

The only way I could see a 5-7-year rotation cycle with monthly released expansion boosters working is if there was a strong tendency towards banning specific cards that had unintended effects. I think it has been demonstrated all too well that power creeps into a game and you soon get turn 3 wins and only 2 viable decks.

That being said... a much, MUCH longer rotation cycle than AEG used means that we would have time to see things that wouldn't make it into the game in the shorter rotations. Instead of a Clan playing one way all the time, other ways of playing the same faction could be more fully developed. There would be enough time to introduce Shadowlands and Naga/Ratlings and Shadow Ninja and Imperial/Ronin factions into the game and keep them in the game long enough to feel like they are part of it and not a "we put out a stronghold, but there were never enough legal cards to support it."

It would basically be like L5R Modern is right now at the end of a long rotation.

I think you are right, and they definitely made some efforts in expanding the various Netrunner faction playstyles to mixed result, and some of the new Runner or Corp cards didn't get real support until a few data packs after their initial release. However, as far as I can tell, FFG never banned any cards in Netrunner, though they did increase the influence cost on a handful of them to restrict their use (Influence is the out of faction deck construction resource for those who didn't play).

Though there is something to be said of a flat reset at times. Sometimes things just get out of hand. Though that doesn't always work out either.