10 hours ago, Sparks Duh said:

Right... I'm not talking regular store tournament nights. I'm referring more to major Kotei level and above tournaments.

I wasn't either. During the regionals season you could do three of them in one month easily. Stores even more so. Nationals were often too much of an Investment but t was also possible to attend 2 of them in a month last year. It's ofc different if you don't live in Europe. =/

16 minutes ago, MrMenthe said:

I wasn't either. During the regionals season you could do three of them in one month easily. Stores even more so. Nationals were often too much of an Investment but t was also possible to attend 2 of them in a month last year. It's ofc different if you don't live in Europe. =/

Yep, i agree. AFAIK Europe had plenty of A:NR Regionals/Nationals. Some countries had even 2-3 Regionals (Kotei level) per season. And Sparks if you live fe in Germany tourneys in Austria, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Czech Fepublic etc. are just in car range depends on region you live.

Yes, there were years when from Belgium, we attended Kotei in Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, the UK and one year we even went to Hungary.

IIRC, each year there was one Kotei in the Benelux, two in France, 2 in the UK, 1 in Ireland, 2 in Germany, etc.

3 hours ago, MrMenthe said:

I wasn't either. During the regionals season you could do three of them in one month easily. Stores even more so. Nationals were often too much of an Investment but t was also possible to attend 2 of them in a month last year. It's ofc different if you don't live in Europe. =/

Well isn't it nice to live in that area then.

I just know in my area, major tourneys are few and far between. And I live 4 hours away from FFG headquarters.

That's population density for you.

On 11/04/2017 at 5:06 PM, Sparks Duh said:

I just know in my area, major tourneys are few and far between. And I live 4 hours away from FFG headquarters.

Oh man that's sucks :-/

At least you will be able to go easily to the world's championship. I never was able to attend the ANR ones, that's way too expensive. :-(

Sigh, location can really ruin a game for you. I currently live in a small town with the nearest game store being 50+ miles away. Due to life, it can be very difficult to get down there more than once twice a month. I find most game stores have one or two games that the player base focuses on and few of them are willing to invest in something new.

This is a big part of the reason I hope they offer some kind of solo variant. At least that way I can have an easier time getting to play the game. Not to mention it isn't very fun playing a game against someone using decks you built. You know them far better than they do and their interest in the game tends to be low.

If after the army makes us move (wife and I) that we will at least have each other to play l5r with, but I truly hope it comes out prior to the move that way I can give it a good try if we get moved into the middle of nowhere.

Us LCG fans are a thirsty and demanding bunch, so a gap of even just 3-4 months can make the game seem stale: I remember in Conquest there was a gap of several months between the end of the first cycle (Warlord) and the release of the first deluxe (The Great Devourer), and a surprising number of people decided to quit the game during that intervening period - although the uncertainty around the timescales didn't help. So for many of us the prospect of waiting 3-4 months between each new release would not be popular at all.

A 20-card monthly expansion pack can still shake up the meta as much as a Deluxe Expansion.

Unlike some posters on here I much prefer the LCG model to CCGs (having tried - but regretted - dabbling in SW Destiny). But what I would say in agreement with some on here is that sometimes the release schedule of LCGs can be a bit too fast-paced, and you sometimes wish you had a bit of a breather in which to actually enjoy your cards a bit more. And also, I'm not exactly old but I'm not getting any younger: I find that my brain can cope with about 2 cycles, after which my ability to rapidly assimilate new cards goes drastically downhill, but there are younger players out there who can seemingly absorb new packs every month indefinitely without breaking their stride.

Anyway, I digress. I like the LCG model, and would be happy for monthly expansion packs and am accepting that like it or not we'll probably be getting only biannual faction-based expansions - but if this is the case then I think anyone who insists on 100% loyalty to one faction alone is going to have their patience tested to the limit...

1 hour ago, Caldera said:

Us LCG fans are a thirsty and demanding bunch, so a gap of even just 3-4 months can make the game seem stale: I remember in Conquest there was a gap of several months between the end of the first cycle (Warlord) and the release of the first deluxe (The Great Devourer), and a surprising number of people decided to quit the game during that intervening period - although the uncertainty around the timescales didn't help. So for many of us the prospect of waiting 3-4 months between each new release would not be popular at all.

That is only because you are used to only getting 20 cards per month. The environment won't get stale at all. CCGs have been releasing their expansions like this for 20+ years. Sure, if the expansions only had 20 cards releasing every 3-4 months, then it would most certainly get stale, but that isn't what I'm talking about. You gotta stop thinking like an old person.

2 hours ago, Sparks Duh said:

That is only because you are used to only getting 20 cards per month. The environment won't get stale at all. CCGs have been releasing their expansions like this for 20+ years. Sure, if the expansions only had 20 cards releasing every 3-4 months, then it would most certainly get stale, but that isn't what I'm talking about. You gotta stop thinking like an old person.

To be fair, it depends on what gets released. 20 Cards per month can get stale, if none of the cards are good for you (either no support for your deck type, or nothing good). 150 cards can get stale for the same reason. I vaguely remember some expansions in L5R where my tourney deck only changed a card or two because my particular deck didn't get anything good, and I was just adjusting to the meta.

I would like to point out that while I don't agree with your statement about the data pack size/timing being an issue, I don't disagree that the larger packs can have a more interesting impact on the game at times. Though it really comes down to how much they shake stuff up. My experience from Netrunner was that it generally didn't shake stuff up very often, or if it did, it was a single card that did it, in which case it wouldn't matter how the data pack got released. Or it happened when they released new Stronghold equivalents in the deluxe packs, allowing for new deck types.

PS: From a purely monetary/logistical standpoint, I love the LCG model. When they released TSE and Forgotten Legacy as a single set, that was when both me and my other friends were happiest with buying the cards that way and would have preferred they always did that. We much rather avoiding the random pack stuff. I have boxes of cards that will never see play. In general, it is less costly to the dedicated player, and while I can afford it, I don't like it.

I started playing L5R during the "Rolling Thunder" phase of AEG, so we got small expansions every month all during Hidden Emperor. For a while all their ccg lines were like that: Doomtown, Dune, etc. They abandoned it after about a year (Dune never did see a "normal" expansion) so it must not have worked very well as a ccg release schedule.

Poor Dune ccg. You think teaching L5R to new players is complicated? Pshaw.

10 hours ago, Sparks Duh said:

That is only because you are used to only getting 20 cards per month.

Fair point. Although I would add that sometimes an LCG can be so addictive that even monthly releases seem too slow: No sooner has a pack been spoiled, within barely a fortnight you are sat in your office surreptitiously checking your phone every hour or so in the desperate hope of finding a grainy, light-flooded image of a card from the next pack (usually with half of the text obscured).

So yeah, if they shifted to a release schedule of one bigger pack every quarter then eventually players would adjust their expectations accordingly...either that, or start demanding Deluxe Expansions every month ?

13 hours ago, Caldera said:

Fair point. Although I would add that sometimes an LCG can be so addictive that even monthly releases seem too slow: No sooner has a pack been spoiled, within barely a fortnight you are sat in your office surreptitiously checking your phone every hour or so in the desperate hope of finding a grainy, light-flooded image of a card from the next pack (usually with half of the text obscured).

CCG players at least were informed which specifically day they should abuse F5 to see their clan cards. Maybe expansions were released every 3-4 months, but when previews hit, they were one month long (150+ cards). We even had locally a really enthiusastic admins that allowed us to discuss about every single card of expansion:

http://www.chikan.pl/index.php?board=154.0

On 13/4/2017 at 2:56 PM, Sparks Duh said:

That is only because you are used to only getting 20 cards per month. The environment won't get stale at all. CCGs have been releasing their expansions like this for 20+ years. Sure, if the expansions only had 20 cards releasing every 3-4 months, then it would most certainly get stale, but that isn't what I'm talking about. You gotta stop thinking like an old person.

In all fairness, your own position regarding this matter could be construed as you just being used to getting bigger releases every 3-4 months.

3 hours ago, Mon no Oni said:

In all fairness, your own position regarding this matter could be construed as you just being used to getting bigger releases every 3-4 months.

Not at all. My position is that the environment won't get stale with quarterly releases. It has nothing to do with whether I'm used to it or not.

The poster I was quoting said he thought the environment would get stale, but I only reminded him that he's used to only getting 20 cards in expansions. I may be used to getting quarterly expansions, but that's how I know the environment won't get stale.

1 hour ago, Sparks Duh said:

Not at all. My position is that the environment won't get stale with quarterly releases. It has nothing to do with whether I'm used to it or not.

The poster I was quoting said he thought the environment would get stale, but I only reminded him that he's used to only getting 20 cards in expansions. I may be used to getting quarterly expansions, but that's how I know the environment won't get stale.

Calling BS. Between the release of Twenty Festivals and until the sale on 2015-09-11, Phoenix honor basically hadn't changed and was one of the most popular decks. Neither had the more dominant military decks, Crane and Unicorn. If that's not a stale environment, I don't know what is.

The advantage of more frequent releases is there is a greater chance of finding a deck that disrupts the prior status quo so that you only hear one month of complaining about a deck instead of three or more.

1 hour ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Calling BS. Between the release of Twenty Festivals and until the sale on 2015-09-11, Phoenix honor basically hadn't changed and was one of the most popular decks. Neither had the more dominant military decks, Crane and Unicorn. If that's not a stale environment, I don't know what is.

The advantage of more frequent releases is there is a greater chance of finding a deck that disrupts the prior status quo so that you only hear one month of complaining about a deck instead of three or more.

You can call bs all you like. Saying one faction's single deck type didn't change equals to the environment getting stale is stupid.

1 minute ago, Sparks Duh said:

You can call bs all you like. Saying one faction's single deck type didn't change equals to the environment getting stale is stupid.

When its the arc-defining dominant deck and a massive percentage of the field you do. You just want to ignore the facts.

1 hour ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Calling BS. Between the release of Twenty Festivals and until the sale on 2015-09-11, Phoenix honor basically hadn't changed and was one of the most popular decks.

Anyway ThA brought Rhetorician, Accepting the Choice, An Honoured Guest and Secret Alliances that opened another different honor build: mixed shugenja/unaligned_courtiers that fe also reached Top8 at Gencon. Variation of this was also possible in Lion that gave me 7-0 (king of swiss) in first after ThA SnM tourney (52 players). Anyway in same tourney Top 4 looked like: Spider duel/swarm, Lion big attachments, Dragon enlightenment and Crab dishonor.

ThA with Accepting the Choice and Walking the Water moved Dragon enlightenment to T1 that fe later reached 3rd place at Euros or won a tourney i mentioned above.

ThA brought Yajinden Sensei and Ruby Ascendance that probably gave a possibility to Mark to win his Kotei with Spider (which was rather one of the weakest clan in base 20F environment).

ThA brought Price of Shame that was a really battle nice anti-honor meta and appeaed in many military decks later.

29 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

When its the arc-defining dominant deck and a massive percentage of the field you do. You just want to ignore the facts.

Yeah it didn't define my kotei win either. I pretty much demolished that deck with spider easily. I think you are just out of touch with meta.

43 minutes ago, kempy said:

Anyway ThA brought Rhetorician, Accepting the Choice, An Honoured Guest and Secret Alliances that opened another different honor build: mixed shugenja/unaligned_courtiers that fe also reached Top8 at Gencon.

At GenCon 2015 Phoenix was already playing the Unaligned Courtiers to go with Honored Sensei; Accepting and Honored Guest just accelerated those decks but did not fundamentally change the way they were played . IIRC the Gen Con 2015 Top 8 was Crane Mantis Phoenix Phoenix Lion Unicorn Dragon Scorpion (at least the first 5 are correct), at one of the most well-attended World Championships in recent history.

Re: Yajinden Sensei - I lost to Mark in the T4 at that Kotei, so I remember it well.

Re: Sun and Moon tournaments: I've always seen S&M tournaments to be less serious than face-to-face tournaments so any results from those were considered with skepticism. Nobody took enlightenment seriously until after the sale when Gunnar and a few others did very well with his list.

45 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Yeah it didn't define my kotei win either. I pretty much demolished that deck with spider easily. I think you are just out of touch with meta.

And I beat a Spider deck in a pickup game. A single data point is not relevant.

18 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

And I beat a Spider deck in a pickup game. A single data point is not relevant.

Yeah you're right. YOU'RE single data point IS irrelevant.

33 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

At GenCon 2015 Phoenix was already playing the Unaligned Courtiers to go with Honored Sensei; Accepting and Honored Guest just accelerated those decks but did not fundamentally change the way they were played . IIRC the Gen Con 2015 Top 8 was Crane Mantis Phoenix Phoenix Lion Unicorn Dragon Scorpion (at least the first 5 are correct), at one of the most well-attended World Championships in recent history.

http://www.chikan.pl/index.php?topic=8742.msg117474#msg117474 - Gencon 2015 top8

I hope you also remember that Phoenix took only 4 wins in Spring 2015 Kotei Season. Even if first month of this season was Ivory Strict (reszt was in 20F Arc), it shows that Phoenix honor build wasn't enough strong. In reverse, ThA just boosted it to another level.

33 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Re: Sun and Moon tournaments: I've always seen S&M tournaments to be less serious than face-to-face tournaments so any results from those were considered with skepticism. Nobody took enlightenment seriously until after the sale when Gunnar and a few others did very well with his list.

Sparks' marketing skills helped to pick SnM tourneys in the middle of 2015 to really good numbers. This tourney i was talking about took place in July and was last big test before Gencon/Euros. If you check names in Tops, especially Top8 you'll there weren't any accidental players. Also, UnTap and SnM gave rare possibility to confrontation between Euro and NA players. And this enlightenment deck that won was piloted by Gunnar himself.

http://www.chikan.pl/index.php?topic=8709.msg117030#msg117030

5 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Yeah you're right. YOU'RE single data point IS irrelevant.

*your