Ok so a newbie question - I don't know anything about l5r. I was thinking about getting into it to play competetive but then I noticed the play time. This is what scared me off from agot - 1 really bad starting hand and you have no chance to win the round (that's why I loved Magic's bo3 format). Any ideas on how it will work?

The playtime on FFG lcg is often a bit exaggerated.

ANR is said to take 30-60 min while tournaments game last more between 20 - 40. 60 Mon games are really an exception

The original L5R tournament games were 1 and done, because it took about 45 - 90 minutes for a game. However, seeing as how the early rounds tend to be Swiss, there was less chance of wiping in the first game from bad luck.

One thing to note is that they have done a lot to remove the things that can go wrong

• Resource drought? It's all on the Stronghold
• Wrong Conflict cards? You can draw as many as 5 a turn
• Wrong Dynasty cards? The very end of oL5R introduced Cycling, which was basically a free mulligan for that, so I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar.

14 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

The original L5R tournament games were 1 and done, because it took about 45 - 90 minutes for a game.

I don't know what L5R game you were playing, but most games I played took 20-30 minutes.

Honor/dishonor decks drag out the games. Sometimes people prefer to save their personalities for one big battle.

1 hour ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

The original L5R tournament games were 1 and done, because it took about 45 - 90 minutes for a game. However, seeing as how the early rounds tend to be Swiss, there was less chance of wiping in the first game from bad luck.

I hope they keep the "1 and done" and I'll be able to happily skip this whole thing and save some money

I just hate the experience that some games give - you get bad early game for whatever reason (luck/bad decision) and then you are stuck losing for 40 minutes (or 2 hours in case of Warhammer Fantasy Battle back in the day).

The length of old tournaments is what turned me off of them - I played in War in the Heavens at Gen Con in '99 and seven games took 13 hours. (Went 4-3! Woo! Average!) I have better things to do with my entire day than that.

Considering one and done matches is pretty much a FFG OP standard I'd expect that to remain with probably 60 minute time limit.

6 hours ago, Sparks Duh said:

I don't know what L5R game you were playing, but most games I played took 20-30 minutes.

The thing I most hated about tournaments was the short game time. My casual games usually took closer to an hour, which was far more enjoyable.

I expect tournament rounds to be 45-60 minutes.