It appeared to some L5R enthusiasts that Crane and Phoenix players had a bit of a hard time in the last few years. Emperor edition was a tough one for Crane. Perhaps this was partly because duels were simply not that deadly compared to all the other powerful kill actions, or the presence of so many cards that delayed the effects of the duels. After that, in Ivory, Phoenix was under pressure. Maybe the departure of most of the inquisitors contributed to this. They only seemed to return in large numbers shortly before the game was put on hold. Maybe there was some other reason.

But according to what has been revealed so far, the LCG should be good for the fans of non-military L5R. Tired of cavalry running around your defenders? Now it appears they can usually only attack the province that has been declared as the target. Tired of being locked down when a military deck has destroyed most of your provinces? Now broken provinces can still hold cards. Tired of not having enough force to actually break your opponent's provinces? Now you can use your political might to do it instead. Tired of that super unit that you cannot seem to deal with? Hold it off for a few rounds and it will expire from lack of fate.

Both Crane and Phoenix had a lot of success in Ivory/20F.

Crane was probably the strongest clan in Ivory, winning a bunch of Koteis before the Akagi Sensei errata and winning Gen Con afterwards. They were still pretty good in 20F. Most of this was as a military deck, granted. Crane honor could compete, but it was slower than Phoenix honor and weaker than Crane military so there wasn't much incentive to play it.

Phoenix was quite possibly the strongest clan in 20 Festivals. They were very successful during the Kotei season and had three very different honor decks in the top 8 of the last world championships.

As far as how the mechanics are shaping up for the two clans in the LCG, I think the Crane cards fully revealed so far are pretty solid. Very efficient for their stats, and a strong unique. Phoenix, I think could end up in a tougher spot. We haven't seen many of their cards, but their mechanics are described as very different from the other clans and initially that could mean they end up either very weak or very strong until the developers get more of a handle on it.

Good point, I played Akagi Crane successfully in Ivory. Phoenix did get better in 20F but they were quite weak in Ivory before the Inquisitors returned. I guess we will have to wait and see the cards. However, the overall game mechanics of the LCG seem to give more to honor decks than to military decks. Our local play group used to be overwhelmingly military in the CCG. Will be interesting to see what happens next.

I'm patiently waiting to find out if spells and magic are going to be good this time around. Not holding my breath, but who knows.

Thematically, I like this pacifism theme for the Phoenix, but we'll have to wait and see how or if that translates to a victory condition.

I just wonder if it will become a thing again that people play oni and ogres out of Crane boxes...

But I can fly.

I'm pretty apprehensive for the Phoenix right now. From the two personalities shown, they want you to either a. in specific element conflict or b. have a specific ring claimed. "a" isn't so bad, but a good player could potentially play around it. "b" is problematic because those types of personalities really want you to win that first conflict as the attacker to get the most possible mileage. If that first conflict goes awry, you suddenly have a mediocre personality. Phoenix might be the most skill intensive of the clans.

The caveat is that we've only seen two cards and maybe there's more tools to help the clan out with their theme. A philosophy that lets them switch out a claimed ring would be very helpful either to get them that necessary element or to possibly control the other player.

I do find it weird that the political arena works the same way as a military battle but it helps simplify game mechanics while still keeping politics and military separate.

A lot of these changes I have mixed feelings on and I see good and bad in a lot of them.

47 minutes ago, TechnoGolem said:

I do find it weird that the political arena works the same way as a military battle but it helps simplify game mechanics while still keeping politics and military separate.

A lot of these changes I have mixed feelings on and I see good and bad in a lot of them.

I guess some decks will focus on both military and political now, because you can declare more attacks per turn that way. On the other hand, your army's total military or political strength may then be lower than a player who focused on only one of these. A lot may come down to timing: If a player goes first and assigns all their military strength, and many of those units get bowed by battle actions then it may be difficult to defend against even a weak military attack later in the same turn.

9 minutes ago, Eye of Night said:

I guess some decks will focus on both military and political now, because you can declare more attacks per turn that way. On the other hand, your army's total military or political strength may then be lower than a player who focused on only one of these. A lot may come down to timing: If a player goes first and assigns all their military strength, and many of those units get bowed by battle actions then it may be difficult to defend against even a weak military attack later in the same turn.

I always wondered this but why would you want to solely focus on either military or political in the lcg?

5 minutes ago, Kubernes said:

I always wondered this but why would you want to solely focus on either military or political in the lcg?

Maybe it would be a good idea to have a focus on either military or political, with a back-up in the other in case you are able to score some easy hits against undefended provinces? It will be interesting to see if any decks go 50/50 military/political.

"Phoenix and Crane.........mmmmmm tastes like chicken"

- Ogre Bushi

7 hours ago, Eye of Night said:

After that, in Ivory, Phoenix was under pressure. Maybe the departure of most of the inquisitors contributed to this.

I would argue that the HARD nerf of both in-Clan shugenja and spells (after being insanely good in Emperor) coming at the same time was the real culprit there.

As has been said, 20F gave Phoenix a LOT of toys to play with, but the Ivory environment was both boring and objectively awful... Rae-Sensei, whose ability could be BONKERS with the right spell support, didn't get it until right before cycling out of legality...

1 hour ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

As has been said, 20F gave Phoenix a LOT of toys to play with, but the Ivory environment was both boring and objectively awful... Rae-Sensei, whose ability could be BONKERS with the right spell support, didn't get it until right before cycling out of legality...

True, Rae Sensei was, briefly, very strong. One of the players from Singapore showed me how deadly it was.

6 hours ago, Kubernes said:

I'm pretty apprehensive for the Phoenix right now. From the two personalities shown, they want you to either a. in specific element conflict or b. have a specific ring claimed. "a" isn't so bad, but a good player could potentially play around it. "b" is problematic because those types of personalities really want you to win that first conflict as the attacker to get the most possible mileage. If that first conflict goes awry, you suddenly have a mediocre personality.

So much this. They tried the same sort of things with elemental keywords back in the day and the conditionals on all the abilities and bonuses just made a lot of Phoenix personalities basically useless in most situations.

I like the elemental interaction themes in theory, but in practice I would rather have personalities that are good at all times.

Eh, it wouldn't feel like a Phoenix deck if it weren't burdened with too many moving parts...

7 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Eh, it wouldn't feel like a Phoenix deck if it weren't burdened with too many moving parts...

You speak the truth.

In my honest opion so far the Phoenix seem to be trading in flexibility for strength. This might be a liability but remember you also take away flexibility from your opponent. I want fire to honor my charactes but with Masahiro-Sama on the board this could cost me a personality. If i didn't manage to take away Earth from the phoenix player attacking into 2 Scholar's might be so inneffective I better not attack at all.

Everyone plays for the Rings but Phoenix raise the stakes.

3 hours ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

You speak the truth.

A clan that keeps having its decks "burdened by too many moving parts"?

That sounds strangely familiar...

9 minutes ago, Togashi Gao Shan said:

A clan that keeps having its decks "burdened by too many moving parts"?

That sounds strangely familiar...

A Phoenix problem, a Scorpion problem, and depending on the arc a Dragon problem.
Knowing that if you wanted to crunch provinces with Fire Chickens or Scorpion, you'd need to do about twice as much as a Lion or Crab or Unicorn just to keep up? Never resolved, and never felt great to play.

1 hour ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

A Phoenix problem, a Scorpion problem, and depending on the arc a Dragon problem.
Knowing that if you wanted to crunch provinces with Fire Chickens or Scorpion, you'd need to do about twice as much as a Lion or Crab or Unicorn just to keep up? Never resolved, and never felt great to play.

But fun when it worked

The nonsense I managed to get up to with a Darkest Magics deck by -chi token shuffling was awesome fun.

Hm, if there are Black Scrolls, they can't have a -1 chi for straightening drawback. What about "Forced Reaction at the start of the Reprieve phase, remove 1 Fate from the attached character."

Not that I plan to play corrupt Phoenix competitively: Corrupt is fun casually, but you need to go Pure for tourneys.

Phoenix was a victim of environment in Ivory. The cards they had access to were some of the best in the environment. However, Phoenix was weak to two things:

Going second, which made the lion matchup near-impossible and the matchup with crane at best a 50/50 coin flip.

Unsettling Gathering, which took arguably their best cards away, at nominal cost.

If you go back and look, probably 40%-50% of the meta was Crane or Lion, and they were oftentimes the ones winning the most. As a Phoenix player, the more you won, the more likely you were to face your bad matchups. However. That was true for almost every single clan.

I think post-Akagi Sensei errata, several big dumb force decks made things a bit harder for Crane, and people also started to figure out that Unicorn was a good "goes second" matchup against Crane. High level, the big, big problem with early Ivory is that "goes first" was way too much of an advantage.

Source: Top 8 at 2014 Greeley Kotei. Went to 3 Kotei total. Lost all but 1 game to Lion / Crane. Won all but one game against the rest of the field.

From what I can see, it seems that clans like the Phoenix and Dragon will be a bit more complex, mechanically, than some other clans, but with a potential for very big payoffs. Most of us who already have clans selected will probably just stick with our favorites no matter how they work, but for new players, this may present a good spectrum of complexity, especially for those not already experienced in such games. I just hope they don't make it so complex as to weaken Phoenix' chances of winning altogether and drive newbies away from trying the clan.

I really like the unique mechanics of both the Dragon & Phoenix and how they interact with the Rings but do not need to take specific actions or build specific one-trick decks in order to gain access to said rings.

My concern is that Dragon seem to be able to access and use the rings whether they are claimed or unclaimed, whereas the revealed Phoenix require either you to be a specific ring conflict or being in the possession of a ring already...which can be easily played against by a smart play, by taking the rings you'd likely be targeting first if they dump a lot of their honour in the early rounds to gain initiative.

I'm looking forward to seeing spells/kiho and how they interact as well as a wider sample base of Phoenix personalities.

2 minutes ago, AsakoDaihmon said:

I really like the unique mechanics of both the Dragon & Phoenix and how they interact with the Rings but do not need to take specific actions or build specific one-trick decks in order to gain access to said rings.

My concern is that Dragon seem to be able to access and use the rings whether they are claimed or unclaimed, whereas the revealed Phoenix require either you to be a specific ring conflict or being in the possession of a ring already...which can be easily played against by a smart play, by taking the rings you'd likely be targeting first if they dump a lot of their honour in the early rounds to gain initiative.

I'm looking forward to seeing spells/kiho and how they interact as well as a wider sample base of Phoenix personalities.

My speculation assumes all abilities can be used from home and while bowed (see Shinjo Outrider and Border Rider) and that speculation currently extends to Phoenix personalities that require control of certain rings. The requirement of controlling a ring before activating an ability seems steep if they also must be unbowed and in conflict. I don't know for sure, though.

That said, the Phoenix have an ability to switch rings around - in order to grab or protect ones they might want - and that seems unique to them.

I will say that the pacifism of the Phoenix is clear. They don't get super charged until some rings are claimed, so they want to hold off on attacks until their opponent brings one up. The phoenix hopefully win that conflict and turn on their abilities for the counterattack.