3 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

Something something, you can't have it both ways.

Huh? I never said I wanted two different ways? This statement makes no sense whatsoever.

6 hours ago, Ser Nakata said:

... this game should be about samourai (in the broader sense, that is Bushi, Shugenja and Courtier, etc.) fighting for their Empire and their Clan.

5 hours ago, Sparks Duh said:

So you don't even realize this includes the spider, not excludes them, right?...

2 hours ago, Mirith said:

To be fair, their "Fighting for their empire" was dedicated to subverting the accepted norm...

45 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

I never said otherwise.

Can't fight for and oppose. Is what I meant.

He used weasel words like "Fight for their empire", which is not the same empire as everyone else. Admittedly, this above is why I always thought the spider were a somewhat implausible story idea. I have no issue with Shadowlands, but the Spider were the sort of thing that the other clans should have come down on hard and wiped out, given the culture and philosophical differences. If they had been maintained as a "shadow" sort of enemy, infiltrating, etc, I would have been much more okay with it, but they don't make sense as a recognized Great Clan.

15 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

Can't fight for and oppose. Is what I meant.

I still fail to see how I'm wanting it two different ways. It doesn't matter how or why the spider were fighting for their empire and clan. They were fighting for their empire and clan. Stop trying to make arguments that aren't even there. Every clan was fighting for their empire and clan. And the spider had Bushi, Shugenja, and Courtiers. Just like every other clan.

28 minutes ago, Mirith said:

He used weasel words like "Fight for their empire", which is not the same empire as everyone else. Admittedly, this above is why I always thought the spider were a somewhat implausible story idea. I have no issue with Shadowlands, but the Spider were the sort of thing that the other clans should have come down on hard and wiped out, given the culture and philosophical differences. If they had been maintained as a "shadow" sort of enemy, infiltrating, etc, I would have been much more okay with it, but they don't make sense as a recognized Great Clan.

I missed that and thought he was speaking clearly.

20 hours ago, FunTimeTeddy said:

My hope is that new cards/sets (deluxe or other) continually shake up the environment and stimulate creativity. I don't care whether your clan or mine ends up on top.

We agree on creativity and constant shake-ups. The issue for me isn't which clan is on top, however, it is why they are on top. If the answer is that they're nearly alone at the top for several months because they have 30 more different cards available to them than the other clans, then I do care.

And maybe for AGOT this isn't as big of a deal. In AGOT you have house loyalists, but something tells me (mostly people standing on chairs shouting at the top of their lungs) that the L5R community won't be as laid back about their clan being the underdog for over a full year while they wait to get their shiny new toys like all the rest of the clans.

5 minutes ago, Muktidata said:

And maybe for AGOT this isn't as big of a deal. In AGOT you have house loyalists, but something tells me (mostly people standing on chairs shouting at the top of their lungs) that the L5R community won't be as laid back about their clan being the underdog for over a full year while they wait to get their shiny new toys like all the rest of the clans.

If they will keep AGoT mid-cycle Deluxes tempo it will take nearly 2 years to bring deluxe to last 7th clan.

I do wonder what percentage of the playerbase will have old school players. This will bother ffg-ers much less than l5r-ers. And if the l5r-ers are a small portion then ffg may take the "shut up and wait" route.

Not that I think it's a good idea in either case.

13 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

I do wonder what percentage of the playerbase will have old school players. This will bother ffg-ers much less than l5r-ers. And if the l5r-ers are a small portion then ffg may take the "shut up and wait" route.

Not that I think it's a good idea in either case.

I imagine the die-hard faction loyalty will carry over via both the world and community. Even now any casual FFG enthusiast or curious forum pedestrian would notice the clan loyalty like a thumb in their eye and I imagine people will continue to follow that to some extent. Though the release schedule could cause you to get bored with your smaller card pool in the beginning and tempt a lot of loyalists to sleeve up another clan.

2 minutes ago, Muktidata said:

I imagine the die-hard faction loyalty will carry over via both the world and community. Even now any casual FFG enthusiast or curious forum pedestrian would notice the clan loyalty like a thumb in their eye and I imagine people will continue to follow that to some extent. Though the release schedule could cause you to get bored with your smaller card pool in the beginning and tempt a lot of loyalists to sleeve up another clan.

Ick. I play with red cards in red sleeves on a red mat. Another color would RUIN that.

11 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

Ick. I play with red cards in red sleeves on a red mat. Another color would RUIN that.

So, goblins?

37 minutes ago, kempy said:

If they will keep AGoT mid-cycle Deluxes tempo it will take nearly 2 years to bring deluxe to last 7th clan.

They could also do something like Netrunner, where they did 2 factions per deluxe set, but that was one per each side. But they have changed their schedule in AGoT v2 than what Netrunner was doing when I stopped.

40 minutes ago, Mirith said:

So, goblins?

The only goblin I play is Festering Goblin in my janky mono black onslaught zombie popper deck. Because I got out of magic before edh was a thing.

=)

34 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

The only goblin I play is Festering Goblin in my janky mono black onslaught zombie popper deck. Because I got out of magic before edh was a thing.

=)

So Lannister?

7 hours ago, kempy said:

It's not.

But L5R CCG history knows many high-level (Worlds, Euros, NA Champs) tournament surprises, when underdogs took 1st places (Ornatov's TFT, faceless Imperial honor, Madness variations and many more).

I agree with you for the most part, but just to be pedantic, Ornatov didn't win with TFT - that was Danny Walker, from the PNW playgroup. Ornatov won for Spider with Swarm and Roby Swann, also part of that playgroup, won with Breeder. They had an excellent run at taking down GenCon until Tim Wells came along and broke it

1 hour ago, Hinomura said:

Ornatov didn't win with TFT - that was Danny Walker

Yep. But wasn't it Ornatov's build?

It's a deck we all worked on together, although my contributions were limited to 'this is awesome' and 'we should find space for Ring of Water'.

I'm curious, since I've been unable to find one, is there a list online somewhere of the winning clan at the Gencon championships every year, along with the story implications of the win? It seems given the nature of the internet that it should exist somewhere. Something like:

1996 - Crab - Hida Yakamo gets the Ancestral Sword of the Hantei

1997 - Lion - Toturi slays Fu Leng and becomes emperor.

etc.

3 minutes ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

I'm curious, since I've been unable to find one, is there a list online somewhere of the winning clan at the Gencon championships every year, along with the story implications of the win? It seems given the nature of the internet that it should exist somewhere. Something like:

1996 - Crab - Hida Yakamo gets the Ancestral Sword of the Hantei

1997 - Lion - Toturi slays Fu Leng and becomes emperor.

etc.

http://www.jadehand.com/tourneys/ maybe this will help a bit but this stopped in 2012.

36 minutes ago, kempy said:

http://www.jadehand.com/tourneys/ maybe this will help a bit but this stopped in 2012.

Wow, that is very thorough. Thanks for the link!

Lannister were dominant even before their deluxe box. This was because they have the 2 best characters in the game, and got several more strong characters over the 1st cycle. The Lannister box did little to make them more popular, half of it was janky Clansmen cards.

9 hours ago, Radix2309 said:

Lannister were dominant even before their deluxe box. This was because they have the 2 best characters in the game, and got several more strong characters over the 1st cycle. The Lannister box did little to make them more popular, half of it was janky Clansmen cards.

These janky clansmen stuff made another high competerive lannister build btw. One of our ex-L5R guys proved it with reaching strict tops of Stahleck and winning 60+ tourney few weeks ago.

11 hours ago, kempy said:

These janky clansmen stuff made another high competerive lannister build btw. One of our ex-L5R guys proved it with reaching strict tops of Stahleck and winning 60+ tourney few weeks ago.

Good to know. The decks playing Lannister still haven't gone up though. They have only been going down as other factions get good cards.

On 3/30/2017 at 8:00 AM, TheHobgoblyn said:

Actually, there were a lot of times when the CCG tournament seasons were completely dominated by one or two clans. There were always a couple factions that were basically so busted that they didn't have a very fair shot of winning.

But L5R isn't like Magic where you can get off infinite combos or do infinite damage or gain infinite life or draw and play nearly your entire deck from a single two-card combo. And there have always been some pretty good counter cards for whatever your opponent is doing. So L5R was only able to become so particularly imbalanced at any given time. You might have certain factions with decks that generally win 3/4ths of the time while other factions seemed to only be able to win 1/4th of the time, but that is about as extreme as it gets.

It certainly was never quite to the level where all top 4 of all tournaments were the same faction in any given season.

Moto Chagatai xp 4 remembers otherwise

1 hour ago, Click5 said:

Moto Chagatai xp 4 remembers otherwise

Show me any high level L5R tournament (even in chagatronic 2008-2009 season) where places 1-4 are scored by same clan. Good luck.

14 minutes ago, kempy said:

Show me any high level L5R tournament (even in chagatronic 2008-2009 season) where places 1-4 are scored by same clan. Good luck.

I believe I remember top 4 of Ann Arbors IVE kotei of around 50 people being 3 crane.

Crane were real good start of IVE