I plan to buy 3 Core edition boxes so I can make a deck or three out of it.

5 hours ago, SavageTofu said:

Didn't Netrunner similarly have problems like this?

I expect this to happen. I imagine it's going to take a year before there are enough cards released where balance will be possible. I expect much complaining all along the way...

Hopefully, Dragon gets all thee OP stuff. ?

The issue is, FFG develops way ahead and can balance only between cycles. Lannis were op like 2 first cycles? And those chapter packs in the first cycle only strenghten them.

They need to focus and balance cycles well.

17 hours ago, Mirith said:

Wasn't Weylin pretty strong for a while too? But yeah, Criminal dominated for a while.

Out of the core it was weyland (easier for the corp to money up and no meat DMG prevention), then it was HB and after that NBN.

Runner wise, out of the core Crim was good and skyrocketed with Andromeda but Noise was also super oppressive after a couple of packs. Shaper went god shortly after their big box.

Early ANR wasn't that bad (took a long time to have a viable Jinteki deck tho).

19 hours ago, Nagori-A-Go-Go said:

I will be getting three boxes despite only having one person to play against.

Always look on the bright side of life. Having other people, even a single one, to share the things you like is awesome.

The more they have revealed of New L5r the more I like...

do you guys think the defender will have priority for actions first? It makes sense, thee attacker gets the fate from the ring. It would seem like if attacker had first action, you would just kill whatever defender and more easily taking the province... thus snowballing...

i don't remember reading anything... my memory can be selective, though...

Just now, SavageTofu said:

do you guys think the defender will have priority for actions first? It makes sense, thee attacker gets the fate from the ring. It would seem like if attacker had first action, you would just kill whatever defender and more easily taking the province... thus snowballing...

It's new base set. There will be Sneak Attack. XD

35 minutes ago, kempy said:

It's new base set. There will be Sneak Attack. XD

I hope not. This would be an auto-include in every deck, and that would be stupid.

7 minutes ago, Ser Nakata said:

I hope not. This would be an auto-include in every deck, and that would be stupid.

No, because it will be loyal to Lion only.

Or will cost 4.

Or will allow to play action from the table only.

Or whatever.

Black Moon Games in Lebanon NH and Rutland VT has been taking pre-orders for a couple of weeks via a thread on their FB group. It has been wonderful seeing the amount of interest from existing L5R players, people returning to the game, and those who are fans of FFG games but haven't tried Five Rings before.

1 hour ago, SavageTofu said:

The more they have revealed of New L5r the more I like...

do you guys think the defender will have priority for actions first? It makes sense, thee attacker gets the fate from the ring. It would seem like if attacker had first action, you would just kill whatever defender and more easily taking the province... thus snowballing...

i don't remember reading anything... my memory can be selective, though...

I hope that defender gets the priority. Attacker has enough bonuses as it is (wins ties, can use ring powers...).

Guess I am really curious about the dueling and spell cards, we havent seen any of those.
It is very interesting to even speculate how such could work/look like in this enviroment.

Indeed! That this game takes off the most important thing in my gaming life right now. I'm especially looking forward to learning the multiplayer rules they have surely cooked up and are clearly being hush-hush about in the interest of saving the best for last.

7 hours ago, SavageTofu said:

The more they have revealed of New L5r the more I like...

do you guys think the defender will have priority for actions first? It makes sense, thee attacker gets the fate from the ring. It would seem like if attacker had first action, you would just kill whatever defender and more easily taking the province... thus snowballing...

i don't remember reading anything... my memory can be selective, though...

I seem to remember one of the articles saying the person with the first person button acts first (which changes round to round, unless you're Unicorn). I could totally be misremembering that, but I'll try to hunt it down.

8 hours ago, SavageTofu said:

The more they have revealed of New L5r the more I like...

do you guys think the defender will have priority for actions first? It makes sense, thee attacker gets the fate from the ring. It would seem like if attacker had first action, you would just kill whatever defender and more easily taking the province... thus snowballing...

i don't remember reading anything... my memory can be selective, though...

Finally found it...

In this scenario, the Crab player has declared a military Air conflict against the Lion Player, who has chosen to send a Steadfast Samurai to defend his province. Seeing that the Steadfast Samurai has a higher military skill than the Eager Scout and thus would win the conflict, the Lion player chooses to pass during his action window. However, the Crab player uses his action window to attach Jade Tetsubo to the Scout, paying two fate and giving him +3 Military Skill. The Lion Player would then have another opportunity to play a conflict card, with the action window bouncing back and forth between the two players until they both consecutively pass

It's in the initial update where the crab eager scout initiates an attack. Looks from this that the lion defender has first action window but chooses to pass. That's when the crab takes up his tetsubo and proceeds to beat face!!

The good old times...

Good old? I was playing two of those cards a week ago in the BigDeck World Championship

The only reason Lanni was head and shoulders above other Factions in AGoT2E was because their shtick was based around economy. The core-only environment of the game is heavily dependent on getting economy rolling early because the pool of characters is packed with high cost "main" characters and not enough econ to roll them out smoothly. Lannisters got two characters that provided extra economy, one of them cheap and the other expensive and became the best **** card in the core. Because there was only a soft reset plot (Wildfire Assault) and not a hard reset (Valar Morghulis) in the core, games quickly snowballed into who got their big guns first. When one of the best cards in the game also provides economy, is a large wall you can use to defend with, and has a keyword that helps you get closer to winning each time it participates in a battle and you win, you get a massive advantage. Yes, there were cards in the core to get around him, and to deal with him, but not enough of them to be efficient or consistent to that end.

On the flip side, the NW faction was virtually garbage coming out of the gate. They were underpowered, underfunded from an economy standpoint, and relegated to a banner faction. However over the last two full cycles, and with their deluxe box now available, they have a plethora of different deck styles to go with some of which can be annoyingly competitive.

So, if you stick with it long enough, each faction/clan will have it's day in the sun. I would suspect the same with L5R. That said, depending on which clan is "your clan", you could be waiting a while. My suggestion, have a back up clan or just suck it up buttercup... you decide. If you're a casual gamer you're either going to play the game with your clan because you enjoy it or you're not going to play the game at all. If you are a hardcore tournament player that only cares about winning, clan loyalty will not be difficult to give up, because deep in your heart you knew from the start, this is a whole new L5R and what's past is past. But if you're that purist, the one who will never play anything but "his clan" at a tournament, then you cannot piss and moan when you are at a disadvantage for the first year and a half the game is out... be warned, it will not be balanced. It never is. And it's not the end of the world.

On 5/8/2017 at 2:03 AM, Shikaku said:

My suggestion, have a back up clan or just suck it up buttercup... you decide. If you're a casual gamer you're either going to play the game with your clan because you enjoy it or you're not going to play the game at all. If you are a hardcore tournament player that only cares about winning, clan loyalty will not be difficult to give up, because deep in your heart you knew from the start, this is a whole new L5R and what's past is past. But if you're that purist, the one who will never play anything but "his clan" at a tournament, then you cannot piss and moan when you are at a disadvantage for the first year and a half the game is out... be warned, it will not be balanced. It never is. And it's not the end of the world.

Savage.

On 5/8/2017 at 0:03 AM, Shikaku said:

So, if you stick with it long enough, each faction/clan will have it's day in the sun. I would suspect the same with L5R. That said, depending on which clan is "your clan", you could be waiting a while. My suggestion, have a back up clan or just suck it up buttercup... you decide. If you're a casual gamer you're either going to play the game with your clan because you enjoy it or you're not going to play the game at all. If you are a hardcore tournament player that only cares about winning, clan loyalty will not be difficult to give up, because deep in your heart you knew from the start, this is a whole new L5R and what's past is past. But if you're that purist, the one who will never play anything but "his clan" at a tournament, then you cannot piss and moan when you are at a disadvantage for the first year and a half the game is out... be warned, it will not be balanced. It never is. And it's not the end of the world.

Very well said.

However, I don't believe that it would be possible to fully balance out every single Great Clan due to the number of cards and combinations that can be put together with Neutral cards and, eventually, the Allied cards that a Player can add to his/her deck through Influence. (am thinking that Influence is the mechanism that will allow the combination of cards from other Clans being included into one's given deck)

Almost every single card game that I have gamed has never, ever approached full parity within its gaming structure. I don't expect to see L5R LCG be any different, even though the great majority of players would love for that to occur.

35 minutes ago, LordBlunt said:

Very well said.

However, I don't believe that it would be possible to fully balance out every single Great Clan due to the number of cards and combinations that can be put together with Neutral cards and, eventually, the Allied cards that a Player can add to his/her deck through Influence. (am thinking that Influence is the mechanism that will allow the combination of cards from other Clans being included into one's given deck)

Almost every single card game that I have gamed has never, ever approached full parity within its gaming structure. I don't expect to see L5R LCG be any different, even though the great majority of players would love for that to occur.

I don't think slight imbalances are themselves issues. There will always be people who remain dedicated to a particular clan no matter what, and some people who always try to play the absolute strongest deck no matter what. This was true in the CCG and I expect it will remain true in the LCG.

What I see as the issue is the people in-between. In the CCG, many of your less-hardcore players would still stick to just a couple clans, simply because the cost of supporting all clans was too great. With the LCG, everyone will have easy access to all cards. If there are only small differences in power, I could see one clan having a slight advantage, but people still playing a variety. If the difference is too great, though, we could have times when almost everyone switches to one particular deck until a new meta arises, which could be detrimental to the game and possibly even require erratas.

I guess my point is, while it's not feasible to keep every clan perfectly equal (at least, not without making them all the same), I hope that the power levels are at least in the same ballpark, and that the play styles are different and interesting enough to reward playing decks even if they're not the most powerful at any given time.

Once upon a time, there was a sweet card game called WWE Raw Deal. It was based around wrestling, and each person's deck represented a "Superstar". They had a rule called the "diversity rule", where only the top Superstar of each superstar could make the top X cut. This led to people naturally filtering down and playing less-played Superstars.

What if L5R had a "diversity rule", where the top finisher in each clan automatically made the top 8 / 16 cut? Do you think that would keep people from stacking up on fotm decks?

@Nickciufi

sure, a Diversity Rule would certainly allow Players who play a favored Clan to reach the higher tiers in a tournament setting. That in and of itself would not mitigate the central issue of UN-balanced decks or "weak" decks.... Players would continue to gravitate toward the easier deck to win with at a tournament, which is a factor that continues to stymie player growth with a given Family/Clan/Sect/Group/etc.

just an opinion from a player who plays in tournament settings but not with the mentality of "Winning At All Costs!"

Fun fact: I'm still the lifetime World #1 at Raw Deal

Diversity worked in Raw Deal because of the massive amount of Superstars to choose from - a minimum of six were added each expansion. I seem to recall UFS also using a similar system. For game with single-digit options for playable factions, it's not really an option.

What about specific prizes for highest finisher within a clan? It would be nice to encourage some of the clan loyalty elements from the CCG, since the LCG format seems to run slightly contrary to it.

Top of Clan prizes have a long and proud history in L5R...I'm sure we'll see that carry forward.