1) There is a lot of talk about old L5R and people being loyal to their clan. This seems very interesting to me, but also feels a bit "casual". What I mean by that is that isn't a competitive player going to play whatever is best is the meta at the time, regardless of clan (my assumption here is that you can't have a 100% clan balanced meta)? Similarly, in old L5R was being clan neutral looked down upon?

2) What are your predictions on clan popularities given what you know about the old and new game? What % do you think will be each clan and how many neutral? I tried to find an old clan popularity pie chart for reference, but my Google skills let me down...

1) The reason so many people had clan loyalty in the CCG was because different major tournaments had storyline prizes. If you were playing Lion and won one of these tournaments, you can direct the story with that clan. It didn't even matter to s Lion player if Lion wasn't that competitive. They wanted to win for their clan! Also, in big tournaments, top of clan prizes were usually rewarded. So even if you didn't win the tourney, but placed higher than all other Lion players, you would walk away with some kind of reward, at least. The comradery between players of the same clan was second to none. You could see people meeting for the first time and because they both played the same clan, would almost immediately 'friend' each other. Go to lunch together. Talk about their decks and/or strategy. Everyone wanted to help their fellow clan players to achieve victory in order to impact the story for their clan.

2) I have to believe that FFG will want to push for clan loyalty in the newl5r. I think it will be difficult because, unlike the CCG, you get a play set of every card in the LCG format. Therefore it's easier to just jump in to whatever clan you think would be the best chance for you to win any given tournament. In the CCG, you could go in together with a bunch of friends and buy booster boxes and split up the cards based on who played what clan. A lot of time, people would just give you cards to fill out your deck. We will lose this aspect going forward with the LCG model, unfortunately. But I strongly believe that FFG knows that clan loyalty is a big part of the L5R community and will try and push for that in some way.

24 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

2) I have to believe that FFG will want to push for clan loyalty in the newl5r. I think it will be difficult because, unlike the CCG, you get a play set of every card in the LCG format. Therefore it's easier to just jump in to whatever clan you think would be the best chance for you to win any given tournament. In the CCG, you could go in together with a bunch of friends and buy booster boxes and split up the cards based on who played what clan. A lot of time, people would just give you cards to fill out your deck. We will lose this aspect going forward with the LCG model, unfortunately. But I strongly believe that FFG knows that clan loyalty is a big part of the L5R community and will try and push for that in some way.

That's a good point. In LCGs everyone usually has all cards (takes some time for newer players once it's been out for awhile obviously). Also, if the assumption that the bamboo allows cross-clan cards in your decks is correct (which it probably is), then you will probably want all cards anyway for the most flexibility.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. If someone is a Lion player and they know that going to the World Championships that Lion has the least chance to win based on the current balance/meta, I can see that being difficult for people based on human nature. I'd really love it if every clan had an equal chance of winning, but I'm a bit pessimistic after what happened with Netrunner in the last Worlds (basically, there was very little diversity in faction usage).

There have been players who played whatever they thought gives them the highest chances to win, but I think that most people prefered also to stay with a clan that reinforced their play preference. What I mean is that I for example don't like being aggressive which goes well hand in hand of the cultured manner of the Crane and the playstyle of honour running. While people who prefer to have more control on the board often felt drawn to the underhanded Scorpion and thier control fro the shadows, and so on. So the clan flavour and the playstyle often walked hand in hand and that made it easy for people to stich with the clan that they could identify with on a philosophical level as well as one how they prefer to play.

18 minutes ago, Drudenfusz said:

There have been players who played whatever they thought gives them the highest chances to win, but I think that most people prefered also to stay with a clan that reinforced their play preference. What I mean is that I for example don't like being aggressive which goes well hand in hand of the cultured manner of the Crane and the playstyle of honour running. While people who prefer to have more control on the board often felt drawn to the underhanded Scorpion and thier control fro the shadows, and so on. So the clan flavour and the playstyle often walked hand in hand and that made it easy for people to stich with the clan that they could identify with on a philosophical level as well as one how they prefer to play.

Sure, and I'm probably the same way. I get the most fun out of building and playing decks that I just happen to feel like playing. There is definitely a theme to the sort of decks I play. For MTG, I've been the same colors and type of deck for years. I've also never won any MTG tournament, though I still have fun playing. As I've not played L5R before, I still need to figure out which clan matches me the most. I was just curious in how many people are likely to be clan-specific vs clan-neutral. 50/50? I don't know.

If we use the Timmy/Johny/Spike spectrum , I'd say I'm mostly a Johny. I'd say Timmy's are 50/50 on clan loyalty, Johny's 90/10, and Spike's 10/90 (just my unfounded approximations!).

A pure Spike would be 0/100 as you explained in your first post - he'd play whatever necessary to maximize his chances of winning no matter the clan.

That said - and to answer your first question from the OP - only the rarest of persons are pure 100% spikes, normally everyone has either weak or strong tendencies towards the other classes.

On top of that there was no "pro scene" in L5R where you could live from playing alone. So there was less need to make ur living by winning stuff, thus less 24/7 testing/building etc. (although alot of the good player came bootcamped alot as well).

If it was looked down upon to have no clan loyalty? It depended mostly on your playgroup - and I guess the time you played in:

E.g. in the 90ies there was no internet for netdecking nor huge.sized tournaments (well, kinda like MTG in the beginning as well), so your playgroup and perhaps those in your proximity shaped if its cool to be clan loyal or not. Also it was not uncommon that you had 1 guys/girl for each clan only in your playgroup, to share costs of cards and making trading cards more easy. Unlike MTG you could really specialize well into collecting all cards from a clan quite cheaply.

All the stuff you hear around clan loyalty etc formed and reached a high in the 2000ies, when Kotei's (comparable to like national championships outside the US, interstate champ. in the US) started to meld the players from all over the country together. There you'd meet "other crab clan players" all of a sudden and could whine with them about the imbalanceness of Crane , thus you sharing a common topic to talk about easily . As mentioned above, certain clans also corresponded to certain playstyles for the first ~12-15 years, so ppl loving the same clan also loved the same playstyle and not just the flavor.

Thats abit simplified , but I hope I could show the points why people were clan loyal and organized (on top of the obvious "I like the flavor") sufficiently.

At 2nd question:

I guess time will tell and also the game that FFG will produce. Theres more netdecking than ever, so I'd expect more "I play the best deck" ppl than ever.

Also, during the time of oldl5r where the DT started to implement more keyword relevant playing, clan loyalty (esp of newer players) faded imho. People played e.g. a magistrate deck (dishonoring ppl, then punishing them for it), which could be played out of Dragon, Phx, Crane or Scoprion. Ofc some clans used that to win by honor, some by dishonor, so the intent of the decks changed, but you could then easily make decks for 4 clans from your cardpool.

As clans became more interchangable in a gameplay-sense, they lost abit of their importance and their identity. So if FFG rather sticks to closely set definitions what a clan can/should do, we'll get a stronger clan loyalty. If the colors of your dynasty cards are interchangable, we'll get a weaker one.

My 2 cents, in the end, time will tell :-)

22 minutes ago, Talaris1 said:

A pure Spike would be 0/100 as you explained in your first post - he'd play whatever necessary to maximize his chances of winning no matter the clan.

That said - and to answer your first question from the OP - only the rarest of persons are pure 100% spikes, normally everyone has either weak or strong tendencies towards the other classes.

On top of that there was no "pro scene" in L5R where you could live from playing alone. So there was less need to make ur living by winning stuff, thus less 24/7 testing/building etc. (although alot of the good player came bootcamped alot as well).

If it was looked down upon to have no clan loyalty? It depended mostly on your playgroup - and I guess the time you played in:

E.g. in the 90ies there was no internet for netdecking nor huge.sized tournaments (well, kinda like MTG in the beginning as well), so your playgroup and perhaps those in your proximity shaped if its cool to be clan loyal or not. Also it was not uncommon that you had 1 guys/girl for each clan only in your playgroup, to share costs of cards and making trading cards more easy. Unlike MTG you could really specialize well into collecting all cards from a clan quite cheaply.

All the stuff you hear around clan loyalty etc formed and reached a high in the 2000ies, when Kotei's (comparable to like national championships outside the US, interstate champ. in the US) started to meld the players from all over the country together. There you'd meet "other crab clan players" all of a sudden and could whine with them about the imbalanceness of Crane , thus you sharing a common topic to talk about easily . As mentioned above, certain clans also corresponded to certain playstyles for the first ~12-15 years, so ppl loving the same clan also loved the same playstyle and not just the flavor.

Thats abit simplified , but I hope I could show the points why people were clan loyal and organized (on top of the obvious "I like the flavor") sufficiently.

At 2nd question:

I guess time will tell and also the game that FFG will produce. Theres more netdecking than ever, so I'd expect more "I play the best deck" ppl than ever.

Also, during the time of oldl5r where the DT started to implement more keyword relevant playing, clan loyalty (esp of newer players) faded imho. People played e.g. a magistrate deck (dishonoring ppl, then punishing them for it), which could be played out of Dragon, Phx, Crane or Scoprion. Ofc some clans used that to win by honor, some by dishonor, so the intent of the decks changed, but you could then easily make decks for 4 clans from your cardpool.

As clans became more interchangable in a gameplay-sense, they lost abit of their importance and their identity. So if FFG rather sticks to closely set definitions what a clan can/should do, we'll get a stronger clan loyalty. If the colors of your dynasty cards are interchangable, we'll get a weaker one.

My 2 cents, in the end, time will tell :-)

To add to what Talaris1 had said, I started playing as lion because I was drawn to the idea of being the most honorable clan. I always managed to put together an honor deck, with my favorite being a pure paragon deck using Shamate Keep. However, in the most recent editions of the CCG, lion became almost exclusively military, making it harder to achieve an honor victory. So, I started playing crane.

If there is a reasonable was to achieve victory through honor as lion, I will play it in a heartbeat, even if I frequently lose. Conversely, if there is insufficient support for such a deck, I will play crane.

Some people would also have a backup clan, where if they didn't like the current metagame for their favorite clan they would switch to their second favorite.

From what I could tell, pure Spikes were rare. The game's emphasis on lore and roleplaying appealed a lot to Johnnies, and I think most players had at least a little Johnny in them.

3 hours ago, slowreflex said:

1) There is a lot of talk about old L5R and people being loyal to their clan. This seems very interesting to me, but also feels a bit "casual". What I mean by that is that isn't a competitive player going to play whatever is best is the meta at the time, regardless of clan (my assumption here is that you can't have a 100% clan balanced meta)? Similarly, in old L5R was being clan neutral looked down upon?

2) What are your predictions on clan popularities given what you know about the old and new game? What % do you think will be each clan and how many neutral? I tried to find an old clan popularity pie chart for reference, but my Google skills let me down...

ad 1) That was always a big discussion for the game. Interestingly enough I would say about 50% of the TOP players were incredibly loyal. The game was also complex enough that if you knew your clan perfectly, you could win against some insane odds. But you also had the usual "I will play whatever is strongest right now" people, as always. I think I met maybe a handful of "clan neutral" players in my time, it was very rare.

ad 2) The clans used to be relatively balanced player wise. For new players it really depends on which clan is "easier" to get into. Neutral probably very few.

When the prizes were largely clan-focused, there was... less impetus to just switch to a "good" Clan.

And sometimes, even if you did, you took pains to make your true loyalties apparent in how you went about making your choices.

(And of course, for many of us, it was irrelevant, 'cause contrary to how it might have sometimes seemed, winning a kotei event, let alone a major championship was by no means a cakewalk right up until the end- I never did- my best record in actual daylong competition was 3-2- beat three locals, lost to a local on a die roll, and lost to a guy who came from out of town to stomp all over our hick playgroup... only to lose to another guy who'd done the same thing.)

The flipside of clan loyalty was utterly DESPISING some others- my main deck choice would be Phoenix, but you might have gotten me to try a Scorpion, Dragon, or Lion deck under the right circumstances... but if the only way to win would be to play as Crane or Mantis? I just wouldn't show up.

Also, even in the most degenerate of arcs, the meta quickly turned on top decks- if you packed the right meta, in theory, you could pull off the upset.

And yes, there were absolutely periods of total impotence for the decks of several Clans- the release of Ivory Edition was incredibly rough for Spider and Phoenix- but where the latter had at least generated enough headaches that the nerfing wasn't out of left field, the poor Spider just sucked after not quite cutting the mustard in the prior edition. For the most part, people tried to make them work- I basically sat out Ivory Edition because Phoenix were borderline unplayable for a bit there.

19 minutes ago, Fumi said:

Some people would also have a backup clan, where if they didn't like the current metagame for their favorite clan they would switch to their second favorite.

From what I could tell, pure Spikes were rare. The game's emphasis on lore and roleplaying appealed a lot to Johnnies, and I think most players had at least a little Johnny in them.

I'm one of those people!

I have always had two clans. Scorpion is what I started with and I just love their flavour and how they play, courtly intrigue and ninjas are cool too!

Unicorn became an interest when I acquired an unhealthy fascination with Genghis Khan in my teens and started noticing Unicorn personalities linked to Genghis like Moto Yesugai and then later Moto Kubulai , Moto Ogedai , Moto Taidjut , and last but not least the main man Moto Chagatai .

4 hours ago, slowreflex said:

1) There is a lot of talk about old L5R and people being loyal to their clan. This seems very interesting to me, but also feels a bit "casual". What I mean by that is that isn't a competitive player going to play whatever is best is the meta at the time, regardless of clan (my assumption here is that you can't have a 100% clan balanced meta)? Similarly, in old L5R was being clan neutral looked down upon?

2) What are your predictions on clan popularities given what you know about the old and new game? What % do you think will be each clan and how many neutral? I tried to find an old clan popularity pie chart for reference, but my Google skills let me down...

1) There those who want to win no matter what and those who want to win under specific colours. That will never change. Numbers will depend on how FFG does things and which kind of people are attracted to play. In our group, you could play anything you wanted whenever you wanted. One day Crane and the next Ninja? Sure, if you are having fun, do it. Not that there was not clan loyalty but being able to experiment (know your enemy?) and to have fun, was more important. At some point or another up to Gold, I played every single faction at least once. But most of my games always were Mantis (pre-Hidden Emperor) or Unicorn (post-Hidden Emperor).

2) Crane, Lion and Scorpion will be super popular? You know: Honor, Militar, Dishonor. At least this time Unicorn will not get that much Ancestral Hate For Cavalry?

Clan loyalty is entirely dependent on how strong an individual clan deck can actually be. If you can only do so well with mono-Clan decks, then you'll probably see Clan loyalty fall to the wayside outside of extremely casual play.

I think it will come down to 2 things :

• How much FFG support clan loyalty through tournament kit / storyline interaction.
• How much players will take the matter into their own hands.

Regarding ANR (I don't really know for sure about other games), the community took care of itself with really little help from FFG. Sure we could buy kits but that's pretty much it. Hell if not for some players we wouldn't have a decent FAQ, online deckbuilder or (ofc) a way to play the game online.

I don't think we'll get a lot of help from FFG but I think that the community can take good care of itself and push in favor of clan loyalty if we so choose.

I don't think it being LCG will change people going in on sets and splitting it by the clan they play. You and a couple buddies could go in on 3 core sets and split it up by clans you each want to play, no different.than in the CCG. There might be a little less of it due to the fact the expansions are $15 and you get a full playset.

2 minutes ago, SlackerHacker said:

I don't think it being LCG will change people going in on sets and splitting it by the clan they play. You and a couple buddies could go in on 3 core sets and split it up by clans you each want to play, no different.than in the CCG. There might be a little less of it due to the fact the expansions are $15 and you get a full playset.

If they indeed go the "influence" route à la ANR it can be difficult to split 3 Core set. If one Crane card prove to be a staple in all political decks for example and that multiple players want it. =/

1 minute ago, MrMenthe said:

If they indeed go the "influence" route à la ANR it can be difficult to split 3 Core set. If one Crane card prove to be a staple in all political decks for example and that multiple players want it. =/

Sure, that could happen. I guess we'll wait and see but I think people will still be able pool money and split sets to keep costs down.

3 minutes ago, MrMenthe said:

If they indeed go the "influence" route à la ANR it can be difficult to split 3 Core set. If one Crane card prove to be a staple in all political decks for example and that multiple players want it. =/

I hope that if the game goes the influence way, that the core set contains every such card at least twice, so two people sharing three boxes can still get all the cards they need.

3 minutes ago, SlackerHacker said:

Sure, that could happen. I guess we'll wait and see but I think people will still be able pool money and split sets to keep costs down.

I will do it with my significant other, but more than 2 players / 3 Core set will probably be too much. ^^

1 minute ago, Drudenfusz said:

I hope that if the game goes the influence way, that the core set contains every such card at least twice, so two people sharing three boxes can still get all the cards they need.

That would be awsome !

Just now, MrMenthe said:

I will do it with my significant other, but more than 2 players / 3 Core set will probably be too much. ^^

Probably, but I think it would work fine for two people to split 3 core sets as long as they don't want to play the same clan or style of deck.

You'd have the same issue though when splitting booster boxes up, there would likely be cards more than one person would want.

Another factor that we shouldn't forget about would be story prizes. If FFG keeps the same or atleast takes up a similar style as to how AEG went about it, clan loyalty quickly becomes interesting. Because it is not just about you specifically winning the tournament but how your clan fared overall. So another player of your clan would help you as a matter of course. I joined in very late to the old card game. I started with Twenty festivals and when it really became interesting for me it was already surprisingly over. I only played in one tournament, but the people were all incredibly nice. I got advice left and right, how to improve my deck, got lots of cards just handed to me. It was a great experience and this wasn't just because it was the last "bigger" tournament in my country. That had always been like that.

And I have to agree with others, many people had two clans. I didn't really have much in the way of cards for dragon, so I just went with lion, whose mechanics, I just loved to death.^^

One thing that would sometimes happen is if you couldn't plan on winning with your clan, you might play a deck of your clan's enemy and load it with shadowlands cards, maho, etc to "corrupt" the win. That way if you won and it was incorporated into the storyline you might corrupt a character in that clan or otherwise taint the victory for them.

7 hours ago, Drudenfusz said:

There have been players who played whatever they thought gives them the highest chances to win, but I think that most people prefered also to stay with a clan that reinforced their play preference. What I mean is that I for example don't like being aggressive which goes well hand in hand of the cultured manner of the Crane and the playstyle of honour running. While people who prefer to have more control on the board often felt drawn to the underhanded Scorpion and thier control fro the shadows, and so on. So the clan flavour and the playstyle often walked hand in hand and that made it easy for people to stich with the clan that they could identify with on a philosophical level as well as one how they prefer to play.

This, full stop.

The game has always been really good about integrating strategy and identity; If you like fast, aggressive decks, I would wager you would like a clan that is really gung-ho about Samurai culture, like the Lion, or another proud warrior clan like the Unicorn. Etc, etc.

Note that sometimes, not only does it properly integrate strategy and identity, it runs even deeper . Case in point, The Honorable Dragon Campaign.

A few core sets ago, the design team decided that as a major story decision, the Dragon clan would be offered greater powers in exchange for the possibility of allowing corruption into the clan or into certain characters; most of the Dragon's major power cards that arc were keeping with that theme. The Dragon clan community decided, more or less as a whole, that such things weren't what the clan represented. The enacted The Honorable Dragon campaign and subsequently made decks that refused to utilize the more powerful (but more corrupt) cards. In a tangible way, it weakened the clan; but the players' loyalty ran deep, and instead of choosing the what would have been obviously better for them in the Meta, the player base instead chose a path that was weaker, but truer to the 'clan vision', as it were.

How cool is that? I think it's testament to the unique clan identities and integration between identity and mechanic that allows for neat stuff like that, which in turn, I think engenders loyalty to your clan.

7 hours ago, slowreflex said:

1) There is a lot of talk about old L5R and people being loyal to their clan. This seems very interesting to me, but also feels a bit "casual". What I mean by that is that isn't a competitive player going to play whatever is best is the meta at the time, regardless of clan (my assumption here is that you can't have a 100% clan balanced meta)? Similarly, in old L5R was being clan neutral looked down upon?

2) What are your predictions on clan popularities given what you know about the old and new game? What % do you think will be each clan and how many neutral? I tried to find an old clan popularity pie chart for reference, but my Google skills let me down...

I could see decent representation of all the clans in the game and I can see clan loyalty being a great holdover from the ccg. Sure, some people will flip flop between the top decks but that might be a small number of players. Game balance could also help representation too.

Predications of popularity with the revealed cards and story tidbits (could potentially change)

1~3: Lion/Scorpion/Crane - Characters alone will propel the Lion and Scorpion into the top spots. Shoju and Kachiko are a powerhouse tag team and Toturi and Tsuko can really push the Lion. The Crane always seem to be rather popular through time and the fact that they have shown a good balance of military and political characters doesn't hurt them either.

4~5: Phoenix/Dragon - I always saw these two as very midrange clans and I can see it happening here as well. They will be solid clans (Dragons seem to really want to push the balance aspect even though Attachments can easily create card disadvantage) but I'm just not sure if it will be enough to push them into that top tier status. Story tidbits for the two are rather boring too.

6~7: Crab/Unicorn: The Crab might suffer from the defensive nature that was hinted at, with only its clan champion giving it a boost. The Unicorn have two great potential characters though and may actually supplant either the Phoenix or Dragon. The playstyle of the Unicorn is geared towards aggressive but I see more people going to the Lion than the Unicorn.

This list isn't to discredit or shame clans, as I have a fondness for them in one way or another. The spread will probably be far closer together than the AGoT one. I'll presented here for reference. I also don't have a percentage because of the lack of info on the game.

1 hour ago, Drudenfusz said:

I hope that if the game goes the influence way, that the core set contains every such card at least twice, so two people sharing three boxes can still get all the cards they need.

It won't. 3 cards max per deck. They've said you need three core sets to have a full play set, so this means there will be some cards in the Core Set that you only have one of. These are also likely to be desirable cards.

58 minutes ago, VivalaHell said:

Another factor that we shouldn't forget about would be story prizes. If FFG keeps the same or atleast takes up a similar style as to how AEG went about it, clan loyalty quickly becomes interesting. Because it is not just about you specifically winning the tournament but how your clan fared overall. So another player of your clan would help you as a matter of course. I joined in very late to the old card game. I started with Twenty festivals and when it really became interesting for me it was already surprisingly over. I only played in one tournament, but the people were all incredibly nice. I got advice left and right, how to improve my deck, got lots of cards just handed to me. It was a great experience and this wasn't just because it was the last "bigger" tournament in my country. That had always been like that.

And I have to agree with others, many people had two clans. I didn't really have much in the way of cards for dragon, so I just went with lion, whose mechanics, I just loved to death.^^

So, I haven't played L5R before and don't know how it worked. When people impacted the story by winning was it the clan that did best that impacted it or the sole winner of the day? i.e. Could an clan-neutral player that happened to win with a Lion deck that day then decide to do something mean to Lions because they just felt like it? Or was it an agreement amongst the clan that ranked highest together?