The possibility of following a different path is there: A Thousand Years of Darkness and Uji making his way to 'this' reality through the realm of dreams show that alternative universes are a thing supported in canon, and this could be a new starting point.

1 hour ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

This is kind of what I'm thinking they might do. There is precedent; there were plenty of characters killed off in certain arcs but their cards remained legal. I could definitely see lots of out of era or dead personalities remain as playable cards even as the story "moves on." In fact, if they want to get the nostalgia factor going I would think it best to print loved but out of era personalities from the game's history even if they never appear in the story. It worked with Dawn of the Empire.

Of course, we don't know what kind of story impact players can have yet. They could, for example, basically re-tell Clan Wars and have the Second Day of Thunder end up with Toturi on the throne no matter what but give us a bunch of story prizes relating to other points (though admittedly that is not as exciting.)

And maybe the impact you will have on the story is only according to your faction. I mean you could win for Lion with a deck full of "dead" characters in the story. I don't think the characters sseing play during the game will impact the story, unless it's some very important tournament where a crucial point of the story is at stake.

But even AEG didn't do that that often. I remember the time with the Corruption of the Air Dragon with Temples of the Phoenix but I don't recall many other occurrences like this one.

1 hour ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

The marketing guy said that he played the game and he mentioned he was playing Crane and fighting Dragon. And mentioned Lion, Unicorn and I think Crab being in the game.

So sounds like clans as factions as usual, which is somewhat heartening.

5 hours ago, Barbacuo said:

If you scale down the deck, you should also scale down every other aspect, like life points/honor, province resistence, etc, unless you make a "creature" heavy game, which in the end is not that fun (as HS demonstrated).

I found the gameplay of hearthstone to be fun, so I don't know what lack of fun you think it demonstrated.

I also don't see why scaling down the deck size necessitates scaling down everything else. Or even anything else, really, except maybe the amount of draw effects.

If you have fewer cards, effects must be more powerful, or the final objective easier to achieve, or you'll find yourself in the middle of a match with no cards to play. And the fun part of a card game is playing cards.

HearthStone has gone to problematic states where people only spammed creatures, like with aggro decks or tempo decks, leading to uninteractive an repetitive games. These kind of decks have always existed, and that's ok, but their counter part are control and combo decks, which rely on playing spell-like cards in a consistent way and a 2-copy limit is way very inconsistent unless you quickly draw all your deck, which will ran you out of cards.

7 hours ago, Barbacuo said:

But issues that could be perceived negatively by the community, might be fixed with enough time. And they won't have it. They'll throw their biggest printed run LCG into the wild without previous feedback.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that FFG will place much greater weight on the feedback of its playtesters, who have the whole game at their disposal well in advance of release, than on the feedback of fans in the wild who only have a random fact here and a detail there. And if they let themselves run around trying to fix everything that gets "perceived negatively by the community" . . . yikes. Game design by committee really doesn't end well.

Also -- have they really been in the habit of getting community feedback of the type you're referencing with any of their previous games? Doesn't sound like it to me, with the way everyone talks about how tight-lipped FFG is until close to release.

On 3/14/2017 at 9:25 PM, Mon no Oni said:

Anybody recognized the artist of the box art?

It looks like Mario Wibisono to me.

http://mariowibisono.deviantart.com/gallery/6095321/Legend-of-the-Five-Rings

5 hours ago, Barbacuo said:

If you have fewer cards, effects must be more powerful, or the final objective easier to achieve, or you'll find yourself in the middle of a match with no cards to play. And the fun part of a card game is playing cards.

Or you could just make players reshuffle when they run out of cards rather than lose.

Or pay x honor each time they reshuffle. Or whatever cost.

41 minutes ago, BD Flory said:

Or you could just make players reshuffle when they run out of cards rather than lose.

Or pay x honor each time they reshuffle. Or whatever cost.

Reshuffling a small deck is a nice idea, but don't think it fits the standard LCG mechanics, like losing by decking or milling your opponent. IIRC the only LCG were you reshuffle your deck is AH, and that game is closer to a board game RPG than a card game where crippling enemy resorces is important.

5 hours ago, Kinzen said:

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that FFG will place much greater weight on the feedback of its playtesters, who have the whole game at their disposal well in advance of release, than on the feedback of fans in the wild who only have a random fact here and a detail there. And if they let themselves run around trying to fix everything that gets "perceived negatively by the community" . . . yikes. Game design by committee really doesn't end well.

Also -- have they really been in the habit of getting community feedback of the type you're referencing with any of their previous games? Doesn't sound like it to me, with the way everyone talks about how tight-lipped FFG is until close to release.

Look what happened to SW LCG, it changed from a co-op game to a versus game because of the feedback. Maybe they should have glimpsed the alpha version of the game at last year's GenCon.

That was a different time, a different FFG. They no longer bring alpha builds of games to Gencon. Part of it is they have grown so much, another part is that they have a LOT of experience at this now.

11 hours ago, Barbacuo said:

If you have fewer cards, effects must be more powerful, or the final objective easier to achieve, or you'll find yourself in the middle of a match with no cards to play. And the fun part of a card game is playing cards.

HearthStone has gone to problematic states where people only spammed creatures, like with aggro decks or tempo decks, leading to uninteractive an repetitive games. These kind of decks have always existed, and that's ok, but their counter part are control and combo decks, which rely on playing spell-like cards in a consistent way and a 2-copy limit is way very inconsistent unless you quickly draw all your deck, which will ran you out of cards.

Back in Clan wars the decks where originally 30/30. can't remember when and why they changed it to 40/40.

I always thought this was a bad change and that the game worked better at 30/30

They changed it because it was imbalanced as all get out in 30/30. Lion Blitz decks were consistently taking T2 provinces with the 9 stronghold-cost guys they had. Happened sometime around Forbidden Knowledge, if memory serves. They also printed Refugees for the first time around then, as well.

3 hours ago, Nickciufi said:

They changed it because it was imbalanced as all get out in 30/30. Lion Blitz decks were consistently taking T2 provinces with the 9 stronghold-cost guys they had. Happened sometime around Forbidden Knowledge, if memory serves. They also printed Refugees for the first time around then, as well.

L5R was 30/30 through the Day of Thunder. And speaking as an old school Lion player who played since Imperial, it wasn't Gohei, Kaoku, and Yojo you had to worry about (Agetoki did all the heavy lifting anyway). It was the fact that the Events, as always in the early days of L5R, did all the work at zero cost. Desperate Measures, Evil Feeds -- you could lose two provinces before the game begins if you were up against Lion. As well as nonsense like Inheritance and Imperial Gift to get your Sword (or more likely Lion Armor) into play on the cheap, and Unexpected Allies dropping in random buddies like Void Dragon or Mr. Akuma into play as well.

So here's for example Lion Gencon winner from 1997 look like.

I'd like to refer to LBS again. In that game there were two discard piles: Discard and Buried. When you ran out of cards in your deck, you shuffled your discard pile into a new draw pile, but the Buried pile was mostly off-limits. Some powerful cards were buried when they were used, but most were discarded. Units destroyed in battle were Buried. It seemed like a good mechanic to me.

I'm also reminded of the quickest game of L5R that I ever heard. It was Lion v Scorpion.

Turn 1 event phase:

Lion: Desperate Measures - I'll destroy this province, destroy your rightmost province.

Scorpion: Okay, Kharma - destroy your rightmost province.

Lion: Evil Feeds upon itself - destroy your rightmost province.

Scorpion: Okay, Kharma - destroy your rightmost province.

Lion: The Return of Fu Leng - I'll forfeit my right to an honour victory.

Scorpion: Okay, I won't forfeit my right for an honour victory, so will destroy my rightmost province. Kharma - destroy your last province. I make that the win.

That sounds...terrible.

Oo what a game.

27 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I'd like to refer to LBS again. In that game there were two discard piles: Discard and Buried. When you ran out of cards in your deck, you shuffled your discard pile into a new draw pile, but the Buried pile was mostly off-limits. Some powerful cards were buried when they were used, but most were discarded. Units destroyed in battle were Buried. It seemed like a good mechanic to me.

AEG used that mechanic again with Doomtown. Given how battles work in that game (poker hands with stud and draw bonuses), it's entirely possible to cycle through your deck during one.

2 hours ago, Gaffa said:

L5R was 30/30 through the Day of Thunder. And speaking as an old school Lion player who played since Imperial, it wasn't Gohei, Kaoku, and Yojo you had to worry about (Agetoki did all the heavy lifting anyway). It was the fact that the Events, as always in the early days of L5R, did all the work at zero cost. Desperate Measures, Evil Feeds -- you could lose two provinces before the game begins if you were up against Lion. As well as nonsense like Inheritance and Imperial Gift to get your Sword (or more likely Lion Armor) into play on the cheap, and Unexpected Allies dropping in random buddies like Void Dragon or Mr. Akuma into play as well.

That would explain it I quit just after the clan wars arc ended due to all the changes they made.

Was that about the time wizards bought the game?

2 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I'm also reminded of the quickest game of L5R that I ever heard. It was Lion v Scorpion.

I wonder how Return of Fu Leng (3rd Event in a row) resolved after 2 Provinces were destroyed by Kharmas?

Anyway fastest loose i heard of at Kotei level was just searching for non included Gifts and Favours.

On ‎3‎/‎16‎/‎2017 at 6:55 AM, Ser Nakata said:

Starting the game pre-Scorpion-Clan Coup would be interesting.

The Core Set would be Rokugan with 7 great clans.

First Cycle could be Scorpion Clan Coup and its resolution with the Second Day of Thunder.

First Deluxe Could be Mantis, as the Minor Clan Alliance was born in that time frame.

Second Cycle would be... Hidden Emperor? (As long as no one mention rolling thunder )

Second Deluxe couldn't be Spider, though, as it's way too early for them to appear, but maybe Naga, or one of the existing factions (Hidden Scorpions)?

Ooh, I like this idea! We could once again include Tsuruchi himself!

13 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

Back in Clan wars the decks where originally 30/30. can't remember when and why they changed it to 40/40.

I always thought this was a bad change and that the game worked better at 30/30

There was an Imperial Assembly vote to change the deck sizes. The change was widely regarded to favor honor running decks over lean military juggernauts. For example, an early Unicorn econ was 3 each of Small Farm, Stables, Diamond Mine, and Doji Plains for a total of 12 cards. Of course we had at least Inheritance/Imp. Gift as events. The rest (16) was pure facepunch. After the 40/40 change, Doji Plains was unreliable and we needed to up our holding count. Less focused facepunching meant honor decks had a chance to get rolling. It also made gold floods more common and that problem persisted throughout the game's life.

One of the first decks I built after the change was an honor running Crab deck. It was considered silly that Crab honor functioned at all. Still, 40/40 improved deck variety, slowed the game a bit, and lowered the odds of Evil Feeds blowouts. The good outweighed the bad, even if some of the bad became irrelevant (Evil Feeds,) so we got used to it. A return to 30/30 always seemed possible to me, though, after taking away the broken stuff.

On Thursday, March 16, 2017 at 3:59 PM, Barbacuo said:

Reshuffling a small deck is a nice idea, but don't think it fits the standard LCG mechanics, like losing by decking or milling your opponent. IIRC the only LCG were you reshuffle your deck is AH, and that game is closer to a board game RPG than a card game where crippling enemy resorces is important.

AGoT uses a dead pile, as did AEG's L5R. Other games have used the ideas in combination to recycle decks without returning dead characters.

I'm more in the camp of, "L5R will change to suit FFG, not the reverse," but reshuffling a deck, and mechanics to more permanently remove cards than simple discard, are both ideas FFG has used in their LCGs. It wouldn't be much of a departure.

7 hours ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

There was an Imperial Assembly vote to change the deck sizes. The change was widely regarded to favor honor running decks over lean military juggernauts. For example, an early Unicorn econ was 3 each of Small Farm, Stables, Diamond Mine, and Doji Plains for a total of 12 cards. Of course we had at least Inheritance/Imp. Gift as events. The rest (16) was pure facepunch. After the 40/40 change, Doji Plains was unreliable and we needed to up our holding count. Less focused facepunching meant honor decks had a chance to get rolling. It also made gold floods more common and that problem persisted throughout the game's life.

One of the first decks I built after the change was an honor running Crab deck. It was considered silly that Crab honor functioned at all. Still, 40/40 improved deck variety, slowed the game a bit, and lowered the odds of Evil Feeds blowouts. The good outweighed the bad, even if some of the bad became irrelevant (Evil Feeds,) so we got used to it. A return to 30/30 always seemed possible to me, though, after taking away the broken stuff.

no kidding? an IA vote? FASCINATING! i had no idea that they did that. thats super interesting. i wouldn't have guessed theyd put a mechanical change that dramatic in the hands of the players. thanks for the history lesson!

Another piece of artwork from GAMA thanks to /u/kolat_infromant