Hello,

As I analyze the gameplay previews, I pick-up on two, distinct thoughts that I would like to share with the community and hope for a continued discussion.

First, the re-design appears to play in an empahtically asymmetrical fashion, resulting in gameplay feeling like a disparate race rather than a one-on-one battle.

The re-designers have decreased the distance for an honor victory and a dis-honor loss. As opposed to the CCG, which required the player to reach farther distances for honor and dis-honor, the LCG may cause players to create decks that operate solely to speed to a victory condition, creating gameplay like a drag race.

Upon reflection, it seems possible for players to have a sub-optimal, gaming experience due to complete isolation in card play. For example, a defensive-minded military deck cannot create much of a thematic storyline with an honor deck which never plans to declare meaningful conflicts.

Second, the re-designers have seen fit to take a card game which involves bowing cards and quick-playing from the hand, and have modified the player experience by adding several pieces of board-game-like elements such as dials, tokens, and labels, creating something of a hybrid. Upon learning that the game's, namesake rings will sit upon the playing table collecting fate tokens for the victorius to plunder, I felt disheartened that these gameplay additions may potentially hamper the elegance of bowing cards on the table, allowing the artwork to evoke theme, causing the potential to indirectly cause more player mistakes due to obscured information, and alter the playing state so much that players leave the table feeling like they have just moved enough cardboard around to equate to a European, economics game.

I have such hopes for this LCG; however, I wish that the re-desingers had created more of a player-versus-player, struggle gameplay space for me as I fear the game's meta will rest with which option reaches its victory condition the fastest and most routinely.

I would happily walk away from each game as the losing player if it meant that the cards would provide my opponent and me the opportunity to create stylized battles in our imaginations.

I fear that I will sit down one day and have an asymetrical, gameplay experience with a stranger, which remains at the mechanical-level rather than trigger my visual imagination.

I greatly appreciate your reflections and further thoughts on my working analysis of the game.

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I wish that the re-desingers had created more of a combat-necessary, gameplay space

If you've seen the Team Covenant interview, the designers pretty much stated their goal was to create a game full of fun fights not just one big swingy one like in the CCG. From everything we've seen, participating in the Conflict phase and being able to win Rings is absolutely critical to any strategy.

I'm sort of confused as to how you seem think otherwise.

Right now there is too much of the card pool which is unknown to jump to many conclusions.

From what we've seen though, every clan is going to want to participate in battles, likely both offensively and defensively, and we've seen tools across the board that indicate that. It's unclear if honor and dishonor victories will be something to build a deck around or to capitalize on opportunistically. I'd say that either is fairly likely to be possible.

I hope that you'll stick around and give the game a shot when we get a little more info. I understand the apprehension, but it's way too early to give you any firm answers contrary to your initial impressions.

Yes, the game will provide a tactical and thematic experience when certain deck pairings match up. I feel most concerned that the re-designers will release cards which greatly increase the ability to gain or reduce honor, which may result in mis-match games.

For example thematically, imagine paying $20 to see a feature film which depicts ruthless ninjas attacking pacifist, Enlightenment-seeking monks.

For example mechanically, imagine an opponent who never attacks or defends, which shuts down the opportunity for you to play a portion of your conflict cards. Throughout the game, you watch your opponent activate cards that raise her honor or lowers yours, creating a time bomb that you lack the ability to interact with.

Just now, terryfuller said:

Yes, the game will provide a tactical and thematic experience when certain deck pairings match up. I feel most concerned that the re-designers will release cards which greatly increase the ability to gain or reduce honor, which may result in mis-match games. For example thematically, imagine paying $20 to see a feature film which depicts ruthless ninjas attacking pacifist monks, hoping for enlightenment.

We just have no way of knowing yet. To be fair though, in many matches of old L5R there were two competing games of solitaire happening in alternate turns. Dishonor vs honor? Dishonor vs immune factions? Enlightenment vs honor? Enlightenment vs dishonor? Each of those matches was basically two different games happening unless one player could force the other to play against their deck's intended design.

With the previewed mechanics and based on things that have been teased out of the devs, both players are playing the same game, just some prefer military and others prefer politics. The honor and dishonor victories almost seem to exist as failsafes rather than as a focus for a deck. But again: we don't know for sure.

Just for the record, the only pacifists in this setting also have access to magic that lets them blow things up or turn entire armies into a field of flowers, so... ninjas versus pacifist enlightenment-seekers could actually be a pretty kickin' film.

As for your mechanical concerns, the CCG did that with a vengeance. I still have hateful flashbacks to playing against late-Samurai Crane Honor decks....

21 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Just for the record, the only pacifists in this setting also have access to magic that lets them blow things up or turn entire armies into a field of flowers, so... ninjas versus pacifist enlightenment-seekers could actually be a pretty kickin' film.

As for your mechanical concerns, the CCG did that with a vengeance. I still have hateful flashbacks to playing against late-Samurai Crane Honor decks....

Yes. This asimetrical experience was one of the big flaws, in my opinion, of the CCG. I have seen Crane vs Unicorn games that simply could have been played in differente rooms.

I definitely would be disappointed if this was repeated on the LCG. But what I have seen so far makes me think they are at least trying to avoid it. Two of the first things we learned are that they modified the effects of winning/losing a battle, with the intention of preventing the one decision effect, and the fate rule that tries to avoid the snowball effect.

I share terryfuller concern, but so far I am glad to see the designers are aware of these issues and worked to avoid them. Have they succeded? we will only know when we play it.

56 minutes ago, Kiseki said:

I hope that you'll stick around and give the game a shot when we get a little more info. I understand the apprehension, but it's way to early to give you any firm answers contrary to your initial impressions.

Yes, thank you for your point that the re-designers have yet to fully reveal the gameplay.

And heck-yes, I will play this game. I can picture myself using my Crab deck to throw Crane players to the ground, making them feel the dirt on their hands and face, destroying anarchistic, perverts playing Scorpion because they like looking at and talking about the women's bodies on their cards, completly shutting-down loser, Unicorn players that run away every chance they get, and weak, Lion players that don't have any characters with any real power other than their screams, and feel sorry for Dragon players that get visibly angry at their conflict decks because they have yet to draw enough weapons to power-up their Kensai. I will find those opponents and represent my clan.

17 minutes ago, terryfuller said:

I'll just note that the distances between honor and dishonor victory conditions mean nothing without having knowing how easy it is to move the game along those scales.

It's conceivable that hitting 25 honor in this iteration takes more time/resources than it took to reach 40 in the CCG. Likewise, they could have made the threshold for honor victories 200 honor and the game could be over in two conflicts if it's common for card effects to net the player 100 honor at a time.

Suffice to say, I'd wait until more of the game is spoiled before worrying too much about anything. There just simply isn't enough information to make any reasonable conclusions.

I'll even take it a step further and suggest that worrying about it all the way until release may likely solidify your negative disposition towards the game and make it subsequently less enjoyable. Maybe try focusing on more positive aspects of the game in the meantime that you do enjoy - art, flavor text, etc.

On the note of the rings although my meta was small and young I still find that I have never seen someone play a ring card let alone win by enlightenment. Now, the namesake rings of the game have an active roll in all games. You can talk about how elegant they were but that makes it more of a decoration than a game mechanic if they aren't used.

I don't really know were to start.......

From what we've seen so far I'm honestly shocked and confused as to how the OPor anyone else would come to these conclusions after what we've seen so far.

While the distance from 12 to 25 is clearly shorter the distance from 7 to 40, the rate at which honor is gained is significantly reduced by a number of factors.

1. There are fewer opportunities to gain honor. In the old game you could buy a guy, gain 4 honor, then follow it up by flipping an event that just gained you 2 more honor while searching and drawing a card that gained you 4 more honor then playing other cards outside of combat to gain 3 honor, which includes just bowing some holdings for 1-3 honor, then had opportunities to gain 5 more in combat....that's a 16+ point honor gain in one turn and puts you half way to victory. While the base math shows a smaller number to reach, you have fewer opportunities to do so. You don't gain honor just buy purchasing people now. You have to honor them first maybe by winning a ring that can be contested in conflicts or by wining another contested ring that gains honor. There will likely be more ways to gain honor but for the most part..........

2. Honor is contested and built into the rules that way. In the old game the only way to control someone else's honor was to specifically include cards that caused honor loss or removed honor creating cards for your opponent. Some decks/clans were better than others at this while some didn't even have an option. this lead to cycles in the game where certain archetypes were too dominant because the rate at which honor could be gained could not be kept in check, or on the other side could not be gained quickly enough. It was just a complete nightmare to balance 4 win conditions that were essentially constructed in a way that they had very little interaction with each other. Speaking of noninteravtice, does anyone remember any enlightenment victory being interactive? Thought not. Now if you don't want your opponent to run away with and honor victory you have some built in way to prevent it........don't bid high honor for cards! Every deck has some built in honor meta. In addition to this....

3. The mechanics force interaction via the conflict phase. While there might be opportunities before conflict to do stuff besides purchase characters the game largely revolves around engaging in conflicts in order to advance your win condition. There is no more "defensive honor" or "limited phase control." Sure some clans may get defensive bonuses ie Crab, but they will be generally have to be in a conflict to make use of them. Since each turn is shared and both players get the opportunity to attack and defend if both pass their opportunity to attack then it's just a game of fate decay and honor bidding. It forces action because nobody wants to spend an hour doing that. Archtypes are now fewer and more easily defined as military, political, or balanced as they all have the same win conditions that are linked by the mechanics. The player can change their strategy mid game which makes this far deeper strategically than the old game ever was. Not only do you have more decisions to make you have to time them correctly because....

4. Nothing lasts forever now. Fate decay will prevent most of the problems of the game stagnating into an arms race. In the old game people were quite literally racing one another with little to no interaction until.there was one key battle to decide things. There will be times where you opponent might have a better board position but that can change rather quickly from turn to turn. You can fight harder to take the ring that remove a fate token so your opponent doesn't have that character they planned on having for an extra turn, or your can focus on defense for a turn putting extra fate on unclaimed rings to get more fate when you have the initiative and can put it to later use.

I'm short, the new game is specifically designed to do the things you say you want. What exactly is it that makes you think it will be otherwise?

Completely agree with Ishi-sama. With with we have seen so far this looks like a very interactive game where both players can try and disrupt the others plans.

1 hour ago, Cold Iron1 said:

I have never seen someone play a ring card

Really? When did you play? I can kind of understand this if you only played early on (before you could use a ring's action by discarding it), but at least in the last few arcs I think most decks had at least one.

9 minutes ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

Really? When did you play? I can kind of understand this if you only played early on (before you could use a ring's action by discarding it), but at least in the last few arcs I think most decks had at least one.

Yeah, AFAIR at least since Samurai Rings were in nearly all decks.

It is true that with the goalposts being closer the effects need to be different. Breach of etiquette and Yobanjin alliance can't be reprinted as they are.

However I would like to point out Breach of etiquette is a better example of non-interactive gameplay than anything we have seen in Nu5R at the moment.

I also don't see how you can assume this is less interactive. Since every clan can use and is expected to use conflicts they can print less 'go away' type cards. Some will exist but not to the level a ccg crane defensive honor runner needed. Since characters will be frequently disappearing there is no reason not to put the ones about to disappear into battle.

the one thing ffg have really doubled Down on is ensuring the game will be highly interactive...

7 hours ago, terryfuller said:

First, the re-design appears to play in an empahtically asymmetrical fashion, resulting in gameplay feeling like a disparate race rather than a one-on-one battle.

The re-designers have decreased the distance for an honor victory and a dis-honor loss. As opposed to the CCG, which required the player to reach farther distances for honor and dis-honor, the LCG may cause players to create decks that operate solely to speed to a victory condition, creating gameplay like a drag race.

Upon reflection, it seems possible for players to have a sub-optimal, gaming experience due to complete isolation in card play. For example, a defensive-minded military deck cannot create much of a thematic storyline with an honor deck which never plans to declare meaningful conflicts.

Oddly enough, this is exactly the complaint many had concerning Old L5R. Honor decks pretty much just sat back and did everything they could to avoid any actual conflicts, while Military decks had to race to get enough people out that they couldn't all be sent home. If you had Honor vs Honor, or Honor vs Enlightenment, both sides pretty much just did their own thing until eventually someone won. In the new system, even honor gains seem to be mostly driven by actions played during conflicts or Rings won from conflicts, so everyone has incentive to actually be involved.

7 hours ago, terryfuller said:

Second, the re-designers have seen fit to take a card game which involves bowing cards and quick-playing from the hand, and have modified the player experience by adding several pieces of board-game-like elements such as dials, tokens, and labels, creating something of a hybrid. Upon learning that the game's, namesake rings will sit upon the playing table collecting fate tokens for the victorius to plunder, I felt disheartened that these gameplay additions may potentially hamper the elegance of bowing cards on the table, allowing the artwork to evoke theme, causing the potential to indirectly cause more player mistakes due to obscured information, and alter the playing state so much that players leave the table feeling like they have just moved enough cardboard around to equate to a European, economics game.

I have such hopes for this LCG; however, I wish that the re-desingers had created more of a player-versus-player, struggle gameplay space for me as I fear the game's meta will rest with which option reaches its victory condition the fastest and most routinely.

I think the criticism against tokens is a bit misplaced, as many, many card games use tokens of some sort. Why, even Old L5R had its share of tokens! (Tsuruchi, Inexperienced; Stones of Purity; Bookkeeper; all sorts of Scorpion poison tricks; etc.) In fact, these could lead to even more confusion, as our tokens had to be whatever we had on hand, and not necessarily specific to the effect! ("Tsuruchi has two of one type of token and one of another on him. Which were arrows and which were poison, again?") If anything, having some specifically defined tokens will clarify, not obscure! Not to mention, most people I knew used dials to track honor, with the only difference being that you had to buy it separately rather than it being included in the box (though, I could still see there being a market for higher-quality dials!).

Overall, I understand a bit of skepticism towards the game, considering how much they're changing. However, all the points you make could also be leveled at the CCG, and in some cases (lack of interaction between some deck types, for instance) FFG has made it clear that they explicitly tried to correct it in their version!

5 hours ago, Cold Iron1 said:

On the note of the rings although my meta was small and young I still find that I have never seen someone play a ring card let alone win by enlightenment. Now, the namesake rings of the game have an active roll in all games. You can talk about how elegant they were but that makes it more of a decoration than a game mechanic if they aren't used.

I've played and played against Enlightenment decks in Ivory/20F, and while they could be quite fun to play, they were not much fun to play against. It pretty much came down to either your deck working, in which case you'd win regardless of what the opponent's deck was; or your deck not working, in which case you'd lose no matter what your opponent's deck was. I do like that now the titular Five Rings are an integral part of every game.

4 hours ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

Really? When did you play? I can kind of understand this if you only played early on (before you could use a ring's action by discarding it), but at least in the last few arcs I think most decks had at least one.

Yeah, in Ivory/20F, pretty much everyone had the Ring of Void, at the very least!

5 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Speaking of noninteravtice, does anyone remember any enlightenment victory being interactive? Thought not.

I remember it. Back with the original ring text, to win by enlightenment you had to:

Defend a province (Earth) - Interactive. Also a PITA if your opponent was running non-military.

Play three spells/kihos in one turn (Air)- non interactive

Win a duel against an opponent with higher Chi (Fire) - interactive, also tricky if you were the one declaring the duel as your opponent would just strike and win.

In a battle, destroy a terrain and play a new terrain then win the battle (Water) - interactive, and also a royal pain and waste of cards. Often you were destroying your own terrain.

Empty your hand (Void) - generally noninteractive, but see Earth and Air which usually took up a decent chunk of the deck.

There were some cards that let you alter or mess with these requirements. I have no defense against the claims that Enlightenment was playing its own, weird subgame, because it often was. But early on that subgame was very interactive.

56 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Yeah, in Ivory/20F, pretty much everyone had the Ring of Void, at the very least!

Really? I was never crazy about that Ring. Earth and Air were far more beneficial.

19 minutes ago, Ryric said:

I remember it. Back with the original ring text, to win by enlightenment you had to:

Defend a province (Earth) - Interactive. Also a PITA if your opponent was running non-military.

Play three spells/kihos in one turn (Air)- non interactive

Win a duel against an opponent with higher Chi (Fire) - interactive, also tricky if you were the one declaring the duel as your opponent would just strike and win.

In a battle, destroy a terrain and play a new terrain then win the battle (Water) - interactive, and also a royal pain and waste of cards. Often you were destroying your own terrain.

Empty your hand (Void) - generally noninteractive, but see Earth and Air which usually took up a decent chunk of the deck.

There were some cards that let you alter or mess with these requirements. I have no defense against the claims that Enlightenment was playing its own, weird subgame, because it often was. But early on that subgame was very interactive.

For me, the thing about it in Ivory/20F was that Dragon could start with a Ring in play (20% of their win condition, right there!) and had numerous cards that made it much easier. The Duelist keyword meant you could just challenge someone with equal Chi and have a good chance of winning, and there were cards that would force the opponent to attack. I played one game where the guy started with the Ring of Fire in play, got Air and Void into play before I even had a personality on the table, and then was just waiting for me to get a personality into play so he could force him to attack and earn his last two Rings.

1 minute ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Really? I was never crazy about that Ring. Earth and Air were far more beneficial.

I think part of its popularity is that there wasn't really much of a requirement for it, so it could go into any deck. Once in play, it also had a pretty decent effect (more card draw is always rather nice), and if you didn't feel like sacrificing the cards in your hand, there was nothing forcing you.

I've looked at pictures of the later Rings. Some of them were much, much easier to get into play than the original versions. I generally had to dedicate half of my Fate deck just to getting out Water back in the day.

The stronghold that let you start with a Ring in play was originally a Monk stronghold, and it could also be used to make nasty military decks because the Ring of Water turned all your attackers into cavalry, effectively.

34 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Really? I was never crazy about that Ring. Earth and Air were far more beneficial.

Ring of void basically read as "Your deck has 39 cards."

Since you did only draw one Fate card each round thinning your fate deck was very important for a consistent strategy. Every card with draw a card on it helped.

14 minutes ago, Yandia said:

Ring of void basically read as "Your deck has 39 cards."

Since you did only draw one Fate card each round thinning your fate deck was very important for a consistent strategy. Every card with draw a card on it helped.

But if you check 20F decklists more people tend to run RoE or RoA as Kakito Shiro said. There was enough other card draw effects (especially Holdings, some staple Invest cards or tutors), that RotV didn't fit. If it would be Open action (like in Onyx ) it could help, but if you drew it at the end of the turn it was dead card for a while.

On the other hand RotV was fe staple in Samurai and often followed RoW.

10 minutes ago, kempy said:

But if you check 20F decklists more people tend to run RoE or RoA as Kakito Shiro said. There was enough other card draw effects (especially Holdings and some staple Invest cards), that RotV didn't fit. If it would be Open action (like it would have been in Onyx, had Onyx ever reached the point of playability ) it could help, but if you drew it at the end of the turn it was dead card for a while.

On the other hand RotV was fe staple in Samurai and often followed RoW.

(FIFY)

For some decks, sure, but how many Mantis decks, for instance, could realistically even get the Ring of Air into play? My point was that the Ring of the Void could fit in pretty much any deck, whereas the others were much more specialized. Hence why my play group, at least, tended to use it the most.