Wanted to make a thread for discussion of the Scorpion personalities and how the Scorpion Deck will/should/could play as we get more and more information. I think it'd be cool if fans other clans did something similar for their favourite clan. I'll try to remember to update this as we get more info.

Characters

Bayushi Manipulator - 1/1/1 for 1 Fate. Allows you to add 1 to your honor bid after dials are revealed.
Young Rumormonger - 2/2/1 for 2. Redirect an honor or dishonor effect.

Holdings

City of Lies - Reduces the cost of the next event you play by 1.

Conflict

Blackmail - 3 Fate. Take control of a character with a fate cost of 2 or less for the rest of the conflict, as long as you have less honor then your opponent.
I Can Swim - discard a dishonored character during a conflict if the bid on your honor dial is higher

Mechanics

So far we've been given this information about how the Scorpion will play - While playing the Scorpion Clan, you’ll want to make high honor bids in order to draw extra cards and surprise your opponents with potent tricks and traps. Yet you must always maintain your deepest loyalty, lest you lose all honor and the game. Dishonor is also a powerful tool when turned against your foes to keep their skill low and their hopes of beating you in conflict even lower. - It would seem that betting high during the draw phase will be important to the Scorpion. As the write up says, drawing more cards gives you more tricks to pull on your opponent, it also powers at least one Event we've seen of theirs, and one of their characters lets you bet a little lower then maybe you'd like to help save some honor when you don't have to spend it.

I've seen some people wonder how this is going to work with a Dishonor victory since it also means a Scorpion play will likely be giving honor to their opponents every turn. I don't think aiming for a Dishonor or Honor victory is intended to "be a thing" (think of Milling in Magic - its always a way to win, but most decks aren't built for it, and at times its not even possible too even if you want too) . I think Honor and Dishonor are there to restrict the Card Draw element of the game and to be taken advantage of when the opportunity presents itself. (This, of course, baring any game effects or rules we've yet to see). I think the Scorpion Dishonor "theme" will be represented by their ability to dishonor characters as a form of control, and their ability to do this will be greater then any other clans. A dishonored character subtracts their glory from their military and political scores, this seems like a strong control mechanic. Dishonoring 2 or 3 characters before resolution could cut an armies "force" by half or more.

We've also been told that there will be Conflict Characters, character cards that go in the conflict deck and can be played during conflicts to surprise your opponents. I think this is the perfect way to include the Shosuro Ninja. Showing up to help swing a big battle, or a political disagreement are both in character for the Ninja.


Overall

It looks like the Scorpion Clan deck will feature a mix of Bayushi Bushi and Courtiers. I think the Samurai will end up defending more then attacking, though when the board state in their favor they should be more then capable of breaking a province (its not like the Scorpion army is weak). However their true strength will be in political conflicts and controlling the board to create opportunities for their samurai. Ninja popping into conflicts from the conflict deck (I'm sure there will be a couple Ninja characters in the dynasty deck as well) will make their decks unpredictable. We've yet to see a Soshi or Yogo Shugenja (they would be air), Bitter Lies Swordsmen, or Kuroiban - no idea if they'll be represented or how.

Isn't it a bit too early to start this discussion with just 5 cards revealed...

Also you forgot to change the names from Dragon to Scorpion after the copy paste...

10 minutes ago, C3gorach said:

Isn't it a bit too early to start this discussion with just 5 cards revealed...

Also you forgot to change the names from Dragon to Scorpion after the copy paste...

thats why it will, ideally, be added too as we get more info.

And it wasn't a copy and paste. if you open a second window, what you ahve typed int he first appears in the second. Neat.

I like this.

5 hours ago, Jedi samurai said:

Characters

Bayushi Manipulator - 1/1/1 for 1 Fate. Allows you to add 1 to your honor bid after dials are revealed.
I Can Swim - discard a dishonored character during a conflict if the bid on your honor dial is higher

It's not clear yet, but I wonder if Bayushi Manipulator works with duels as well. We know that duels use the honor dial, but don't know what the exact wording is.

For I Can Swim, it really makes me wonder if honor dials are chosen, and then sit there until something else uses them. It would mean that there could be things that turn the dials outside of the bidding process, or if it could also be checked after a winning duel. It would be funny if we ended up being a clan who wanted to duel (intended or not).

1 hour ago, Kiseki said:

It's not clear yet, but I wonder if Bayushi Manipulator works with duels as well. We know that duels use the honor dial, but don't know what the exact wording is.

There's no reason he wouldn't. You use the honor dial in a duel. You will be revealing the honor dial when you resolve the duel. He triggers when you reveal honor dials. Go ahead and use him. Just remember it's only once per turn.

12 hours ago, Jedi samurai said:

I've seen some people wonder how this is going to work with a Dishonor victory since it also means a Scorpion play will likely be giving honor to their opponents every turn. I don't think aiming for a Dishonor or Honor victory is intended to "be a thing" (think of Milling in Magic - its always a way to win, but most decks aren't built for it, and at times its not even possible too even if you want too) . I think Honor and Dishonor are there to restrict the Card Draw element of the game and to be taken advantage of when the opportunity presents itself. (This, of course, baring any game effects or rules we've yet to see). I think the Scorpion Dishonor "theme" will be represented by their ability to dishonor characters as a form of control, and their ability to do this will be greater then any other clans. A dishonored character subtracts their glory from their military and political scores, this seems like a strong control mechanic. Dishonoring 2 or 3 characters before resolution could cut an armies "force" by half or more.

I think this is going to be the heart of the clan and thematically it fits. Scorpion upsetting - or dishonor possibly representative of a poison - a key personality during battle so much that they make a critical error. There is a certain precision that is indicative of the clan in the ideas outlined. I love it.

10 hours ago, Kiseki said:

It's not clear yet, but I wonder if Bayushi Manipulator works with duels as well. We know that duels use the honor dial, but don't know what the exact wording is.

For I Can Swim, it really makes me wonder if honor dials are chosen, and then sit there until something else uses them. It would mean that there could be things that turn the dials outside of the bidding process, or if it could also be checked after a winning duel. It would be funny if we ended up being a clan who wanted to duel (intended or not).

I assume so.

The question is how good the Scorpion will be at dueling.

I had a similar discussion with some friends yesterday.

We doubt Scorpion is going to be defensive dishonor/non-interactive control right out the gate. Instead, they will use their tricks to keep stats low and break opposing provinces to win. Young Rumormonger seems frighteningly efficient at making/keeping important characters dishonored. This will certainly have an effect on an opponent's decisions, something most Scorpion players I've met enjoy. Purchase priorities might change when facing Scorpion, favoring low glory characters.

17 hours ago, Jedi samurai said:

I don't think aiming for a Dishonor or Honor victory is intended to "be a thing" (think of Milling in Magic - its always a way to win, but most decks aren't built for it, and at times its not even possible too even if you want too) . I think Honor and Dishonor are there to restrict the Card Draw element of the game and to be taken advantage of when the opportunity presents itself. (This, of course, baring any game effects or rules we've yet to see).

I hope we eventually get honor/dishonor as outright victory conditions on their own rather than ways to support a province breaking strategy, which is the way it seems headed for now. That being said using the air ring alone would get Lion to 24 honor in 6 turns, which is within the expected duration of a game.

The game looks strategically deep already but I think loosing the multiple victory condition would really hurt it.

23 minutes ago, Doji Tori said:

...using the air ring alone would get Lion to 24 honor in 6 turns, which is within the expected duration of a game.

When you take into account the fact that one must also bid honor to draw cards (and bid consistently low yourself), you could end it even faster.

2 hours ago, Doji Tori said:

I hope we eventually get honor/dishonor as outright victory conditions on their own rather than ways to support a province breaking strategy, which is the way it seems headed for now. That being said using the air ring alone would get Lion to 24 honor in 6 turns, which is within the expected duration of a game.

The game looks strategically deep already but I think loosing the multiple victory condition would really hurt it.

I've a couple thoughts here. I think on the one hand, there will be many decks that aren't honor/dishonor decks which will now be forced to consider honor to ensure they don't cause themselves to lose or hand their opponents a win (since the spread is now much narrower).

On the other hand, honor decks will no longer have an easy ride, since many of the honor gains are dependent on the opponent, who now has some options to at least slow them down. And there will be ways to gain honor (the Ring of Air and making a character Honored before they leave play come to mind), but they will likely be conflict-centric, which will give your opponent a chance to react. I don't think honor decks will necessarily need to focus on breaking provinces, but they will need to care about conflicts, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

In Old L5R, most honor decks I saw were basically just "sit back and watch" decks where I'd have to race to build up my forces in time to take four provinces before they'd honor out. Usually, I'd manage a province a turn, and if they successfully defended once, they'd win (in one case, the guy even won before I had enough force to even threaten one of his provinces, though I'm sure this was more due to my deck failing than any fault of his deck). It was very frustrating to play against, as swarms tended to take too long to build up and massive units would just get sent home or dueled to death ("Come One at a Time").

Under New L5R, it looks like everyone will at least care about winning conflicts, even if not everyone is actually trying to break provinces. Honestly, I hope that Military and Political conflicts feel different from each other, but I definitely don't want any more "let me run out the clock while doing everything I can to avoid actually interacting with you" decks.

10 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I've a couple thoughts here. I think on the one hand, there will be many decks that aren't honor/dishonor decks which will now be forced to consider honor to ensure they don't cause themselves to lose or hand their opponents a win (since the spread is now much narrower).

On the other hand, honor decks will no longer have an easy ride, since many of the honor gains are dependent on the opponent, who now has some options to at least slow them down. And there will be ways to gain honor (the Ring of Air and making a character Honored before they leave play come to mind), but they will likely be conflict-centric, which will give your opponent a chance to react. I don't think honor decks will necessarily need to focus on breaking provinces, but they will need to care about conflicts, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

In Old L5R, most honor decks I saw were basically just "sit back and watch" decks where I'd have to race to build up my forces in time to take four provinces before they'd honor out. Usually, I'd manage a province a turn, and if they successfully defended once, they'd win (in one case, the guy even won before I had enough force to even threaten one of his provinces, though I'm sure this was more to my deck failing than any fault of his deck). It was very frustrating to play against, as swarms tended to take too long to build up and massive units would just get sent home or dueled to death ("Come One at a Time").

Under New L5R, it looks like everyone will at least care about winning conflicts, even if not everyone is actually trying to break provinces. Honestly, I hope that Military and Political conflicts feel different from each other, but I definitely don't want any more "let me run out the clock while doing everything I can to avoid actually interacting with you" decks.

That's more or less what I'm hoping for. I expect most honor gain effects to require playing during a conflict, or maybe to control an specific ring for Phoenix honor.

But I hope that using conflicts to gain the ring and action benefits, in hopes of honor winning, rather than destroying provinces, is viable. To put it another way, threatening to destroy your opponents provinces if they focus to much in avoiding your honor gains, rather than having it always be the other way around.

3 minutes ago, Doji Tori said:

That's more or less what I'm hoping for. I expect most honor gain effects to require playing during a conflict, or maybe to control an specific ring for Phoenix honor.

But I hope that using conflicts to gain the ring and action benefits, in hopes of honor winning, rather than destroying provinces, is viable. To put it another way, threatening to destroy your opponents provinces if they focus to much in avoiding your honor gains, rather than having it always be the other way around.

My hope (though keep in mind that this isn't really based on anything I've actually read) is that Military conflict actions will focus more on stat pumps to break provinces, whereas Political conflict actions will focus more on honor/dishonor. Both types of conflicts could accomplish both things, of course, but each would have a tendency towards one or the other. I could be wrong about this, but it would be the easiest way I can think of to keep Military and Political from just being the exact same thing with different stats. I guess time will tell.

7 hours ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

I had a similar discussion with some friends yesterday.

We doubt Scorpion is going to be defensive dishonor/non-interactive control right out the gate. Instead, they will use their tricks to keep stats low and break opposing provinces to win. Young Rumormonger seems frighteningly efficient at making/keeping important characters dishonored. This will certainly have an effect on an opponent's decisions, something most Scorpion players I've met enjoy. Purchase priorities might change when facing Scorpion, favoring low glory characters.

Yeah, I'm not quite sure dishonor (as the victory condition) will be that good out of the gate either. I think the whole dishonor thing will be more about staying just under the opponent rather for card effects/abilities. With the manipulator, you can simply bid low(er) and adjust your bid after the reveal. Working in their favor might be the discard idea from Spies at Court. What they need now is a good, cheaper personality that has a discard effect.

Oh, and to favor that earth ring!

10 hours ago, JJ48 said:

My hope (though keep in mind that this isn't really based on anything I've actually read) is that Military conflict actions will focus more on stat pumps to break provinces, whereas Political conflict actions will focus more on honor/dishonor. Both types of conflicts could accomplish both things, of course, but each would have a tendency towards one or the other. I could be wrong about this, but it would be the easiest way I can think of to keep Military and Political from just being the exact same thing with different stats. I guess time will tell.

(Dis)Honoring personalities is a kind of force pump/reduction. That another cool thing about this rules: you can probably prevent your opponent from winning a MIL conflict with political actions, and the opposite is also true.

For us players coming from AGoT, the Scorpion pretty much remind me of the Targaryen. And I'm not speaking solely from the looks department (red/black), but from the mechanical one too; Targ's signature theme is the de-buff/kill of the "Burn" mechanic and, so far, dishnonor looks like revolving around those themes too. De-buff personalities and, quite possibly, kill them with cards such as I Can Swim. Granted, kill effects are much more potent in AGoT, since that game is largely based on killing characters and preventing your opponent from playing additional copies if the killed character is unique, but the concept looks somewhat the same.

All the better for me, since I already play(ed) Targ in AGoT and, almost invariably, Scorpion in the L5R RPG.

19 hours ago, Doji Tori said:

I hope we eventually get honor/dishonor as outright victory conditions on their own rather than ways to support a province breaking strategy, which is the way it seems headed for now. That being said using the air ring alone would get Lion to 24 honor in 6 turns, which is within the expected duration of a game.

The game looks strategically deep already but I think loosing the multiple victory condition would really hurt it.

I think that both honor and dishonor will be live victory conditions out of the gate -- people will win by both pretty commonly in the base set. What will be different is that, I believe, there will be no decks that win exclusively by those win conditions.

That is because I think that a key aspect of the new game is that winning conflicts will be important to every deck. There will probably NOT be decks that will be designed to not fight conflicts at all. Victory, regardless of win condition, will be tied to winning at least some of the conflicts. As a consequence of this, every deck will have tools to potentially break provinces. And given the ebb and flow of the game, sometimes that will lead to any deck winning via province breaking on some occasions.

The flip side of that will be that EVERY deck might well win sometimes via honor or dishonor. Consider: against scorpion, they might well drop themselves to 1 or 2 honor by the mid-late game, especially if they are losing and desperate for card draw. If someone gets down to 1 honor, all it takes is winning one air conflict and you dishonor them out. Every turn has the potential for an 8 point honor swing, more if people are fighting duels, and 2 of the rings, that everybody can use, cause honor gains and/or losses.

I think HOW you win for every deck wil be somewhat flexible. Some decks will be more likely to win than others by honor/dishonor. But every deck will sometimes win by breaking provinces, and every deck will sometimes win by honor and by dishonor too. That's my impression, anyway.

12 hours ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

I think that both honor and dishonor will be live victory conditions out of the gate -- people will win by both pretty commonly in the base set. What will be different is that, I believe, there will be no decks that win exclusively by those win conditions.

That is because I think that a key aspect of the new game is that winning conflicts will be important to every deck. There will probably NOT be decks that will be designed to not fight conflicts at all. Victory, regardless of win condition, will be tied to winning at least some of the conflicts. As a consequence of this, every deck will have tools to potentially break provinces. And given the ebb and flow of the game, sometimes that will lead to any deck winning via province breaking on some occasions.

The flip side of that will be that EVERY deck might well win sometimes via honor or dishonor. Consider: against scorpion, they might well drop themselves to 1 or 2 honor by the mid-late game, especially if they are losing and desperate for card draw. If someone gets down to 1 honor, all it takes is winning one air conflict and you dishonor them out. Every turn has the potential for an 8 point honor swing, more if people are fighting duels, and 2 of the rings, that everybody can use, cause honor gains and/or losses.

I think HOW you win for every deck wil be somewhat flexible. Some decks will be more likely to win than others by honor/dishonor. But every deck will sometimes win by breaking provinces, and every deck will sometimes win by honor and by dishonor too. That's my impression, anyway.

Yes, for now, winning conflicts seems to be central to every deck. It's most likely the correct way to look at each of the cards and how they help or hinder the conflict phase.

At the very least, an honor/dishonor player is going for that Air ring just for that honor. Pending on the situation, Earth might be taken as often, as stripping cards from an opponent leaves fewer options and an increased chance of them bidding higher.