6 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

What, then, would be the difference between a 0 Influence clan card and a Neutral card? I agree with Smobey's first assessment: a Clan card with no Influence marks on it cannot be played out of Clan.

Again, I'm just betting here, but I'll make a stab at it. Assume that you may only ally with 1 clan, and may include your stronghold's influence of cards from that clan. In that case, the difference between 0 influence and neutral is clear. You can include the neutral cards regardless. You can include the 0 influence card for 'free,' but only if you have allied with that clan.

12 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

What, then, would be the difference between a 0 Influence clan card and a Neutral card? I agree with Smobey's first assessment: a Clan card with no Influence marks on it cannot be played out of Clan.

Ok... So your conclusion is that cards with zero influence value on neutral cards are free to use while clan cards with zero influence value are unable to be used? What kind of sense does that make? Zero influence costs should mean zero influence costs straight across the board, right? If you look at the neutral cards and then look at other cards with zero influence cost, they should be identical in how to put them in to your deck.

12 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Well sure, but wouldn't it make more sense that if a card wasn't meant to be influenced that it would have like an infinity symbol or a dash or some such to let you know it can't? Having no influence cost seems like it's free to play to me.

Fair point . My guess is that neutral cards will be the ones that have '0 influence' and the clan colored cards will alternate between an influence cost and outright not playable outside of clan. If this is the way it's going to be a reminding symbol could have been nice indeed.

31 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Ok... So your conclusion is that cards with zero influence value on neutral cards are free to use while clan cards with zero influence value are unable to be used? What kind of sense does that make? Zero influence costs should mean zero influence costs straight across the board, right? If you look at the neutral cards and then look at other cards with zero influence cost, they should be identical in how to put them in to your deck.

My conclusion is in line with the way it works in Netrunner...

Just now, Tonbo Karasu said:

My conclusion is in line with the way it works in Netrunner...

I suppose that's fair. It still seems like any card with zero influence would be free to play whether or not it is zero influence on a neutral or any card. Zero influence is zero influence... *Shrug*

1 hour ago, Sparks Duh said:

I suppose that's fair. It still seems like any card with zero influence would be free to play whether or not it is zero influence on a neutral or any card. Zero influence is zero influence... *Shrug*

In Netrunner, a card without Influence is different than a card with 0 Influence. 0 Influence cards can be included in any deck at, obviously, 0 Influence costs. Cards with no Influence costs can only be included in their native faction (because no other faction can legally include them).

Given the only conflict cards we've seen so far with no Influence in the new L5R are the Way of the Clans Events, which I'd presume of any of the conflict cards FFG would want to be Clan-loyal, it would appear that the L5R Influence rules will work like Netrunner's.

6 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

In Netrunner, a card without Influence is different than a card with 0 Influence. 0 Influence cards can be included in any deck at, obviously, 0 Influence costs. Cards with no Influence costs can only be included in their native faction (because no other faction can legally include them).

Given the only conflict cards we've seen so far with no Influence in the new L5R are the Way of the Clans Events, which I'd presume of any of the conflict cards FFG would want to be Clan-loyal, it would appear that the L5R Influence rules will work like Netrunner's.

This makes no sense at all. The neutral cards (looking at Assassination) have the same exact influence value on the bottom of their cards as the 'way of' cards. NOTHING! There is no zero or anything. The bottom of both types of cards are blank. Why would one card mean one thing and another mean something different?

Precisely because they're Neutral cards, and all Neutral cards can be included in any deck. Since there's no need to look at their Influence line, they have no Influence stats.

The fact that the "Way of the (Clan)" cards have no Influence markers is what persuades me that the "No influence markers on a Clan card = can't buy it with Influence" theory is correct. I can see where you're coming from with how that means that there are different rules for Neutral cards than for Clan cards, and how that's confusing. Fair enough, but here's a data point: I'm a newbie to L5R, and of FFG's LCGs I have only ever played the Lord of the Rings card game, which doesn't have any such Influence rule. In LotR, you're allowed to include any card in your deck, and there's nothing like an Influence rule. (Whether it's wise to include any card in your deck is a different question, of course). But having learned that there is apparently an Influence rule in L5R, I didn't find it confusing at all that Neutral cards don't care about Influence, but Clan cards do.

Now, whether other newbies will be like me and grasp it immediately, or whether the lack of a "Can't pay for this with influence" symbol on Clan cards like "Way of the (Clan)" will confuse other people, I can't tell. But I, for one, won't be confused by it at all -- so if your concern is for newbie confusion, hopefully this helps you lay that concern to rest.

13 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

This makes no sense at all. The neutral cards (looking at Assassination) have the same exact influence value on the bottom of their cards as the 'way of' cards. NOTHING! There is no zero or anything. The bottom of both types of cards are blank. Why would one card mean one thing and another mean something different?

Neutral cards, by default and by definition of Influence in the rules, can go into any faction's deck. That's why they're neutral, and thus don't need any Influence score, although Netrunner has added Influence costs to very potent neutral cards (so that it will always cost you Influence regardless of faction if you want to use it).

Faction-aligned cards without any Influence (the faction Agendas in Netrunner) cannot be included in other factions, because they don't have an Influence score. So you can never include an out-of-faction aligned card; they just don't use the Influence system.

We don't have the rules for L5R Influence yet, but from the faction-aligned conflict cards we've seen, the only ones with no Influence costs are the Way of Clans Philosophies, which would seem to be very appropriate to not be able to use in another clan's deck. You want to play Way of the Lion? Play Lion.

16 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

This makes no sense at all. The neutral cards (looking at Assassination) have the same exact influence value on the bottom of their cards as the 'way of' cards. NOTHING! There is no zero or anything. The bottom of both types of cards are blank. Why would one card mean one thing and another mean something different?

Well, neutral cards may be considered "in-faction" for all clans, meaning that it would make perfect sense for them to be blank regardless of which reading is correct. If we see any neutral cards that do have an influence value, then we'd be able to determine the rules a bit more definitively.

That being said, I suspect that a blank influence value means "null" rather than "0", and that we simply won't see many, if any, 0-influence cards (because we don't want people necessarily making their entire deck with other clans' cards).

Just now, Gaffa said:

Neutral cards, by default and by definition of Influence in the rules, can go into any faction's deck. That's why they're neutral, and thus don't need any Influence score, although Netrunner has added Influence costs to very potent neutral cards (so that it will always cost you Influence regardless of faction if you want to use it).

Faction-aligned cards without any Influence (the faction Agendas in Netrunner) cannot be included in other factions, because they don't have an Influence score. So you can never include an out-of-faction aligned card; they just don't use the Influence system.

We don't have the rules for L5R Influence yet, but from the faction-aligned conflict cards we've seen, the only ones with no Influence costs are the Way of Clans Philosophies, which would seem to be very appropriate to not be able to use in another clan's deck. You want to play Way of the Lion? Play Lion.

Ok, but it still seems very unintuitive to have cards with the same influence cost mean different things. No influence costs should mean the same thing no matter what card it's on.

Just now, JJ48 said:

That being said, I suspect that a blank influence value means "null" rather than "0"

So no neutral cards can be included in decks?

2 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

So no neutral cards can be included in decks?

No neutral card can be included in a deck for which it is cross-clan, I would assume. However, I would also assume that neutral cards are considered in-faction for all clans, and therefore there should be no logical restriction against them.

(Provided, of course, we are not using some hypothetical stronghold that treats neutral cards as cross-clan.)

5 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

So no neutral cards can be included in decks?

There's a difference between a null set and an empty set. Zero is not non-existant. Having no Influence cost is different than having 0 Influence cost.

6 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

There's a difference between a null set and an empty set. Zero is not non-existant.

Stupid internet... Read response below. lol

3 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

There's a difference between a null set and an empty set. Zero is not non-existant. Having no Influence cost is different than having 0 Influence cost.

I know this. I'm not disputing this at all. Why is this even mentioned?

I'm saying that the 'way of' cards have identical values as the neutral cards. There is absolutely no difference between the two on the cards themselves. If, instead, they had 0 at the bottom of both cards, it would literally be the same exact thing. One card doesn't have something different than the other. They are both identical... so why aren't they identical in deck construction?

3 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

I know this. I'm not disputing this at all. Why is this even mentioned?

I'm saying that the 'way of' cards have identical values as the neutral cards. There is absolutely no difference between the two on the cards themselves. If, instead, they had 0 at the bottom of both cards, it would literally be the same exact thing. One card doesn't have something different than the other. They are both identical... so why aren't they identical in deck construction?

Strictly speaking, one card has a clan watermark while the other one doesn't.

6 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

I know this. I'm not disputing this at all. Why is this even mentioned?

I'm saying that the 'way of' cards have identical values as the neutral cards. There is absolutely no difference between the two on the cards themselves. If, instead, they had 0 at the bottom of both cards, it would literally be the same exact thing. One card doesn't have something different than the other. They are both identical... so why aren't they identical in deck construction?

Because one is in-faction, and one is neutral.

Given the exact same situation occurs in Netrunner, and it does seem thematically appropriate that the Way of the Clans events probably should only be in their home Clan's decks, it's a reasonable conclusion from the cards we have so far.

1 minute ago, Gaffa said:

Because one is in-faction, and one is neutral.

Given the exact same situation occurs in Netrunner, and it does seem thematically appropriate that the Way of the Clans events probably should only be in their home Clan's decks, it's a reasonable conclusion from the cards we have so far.

I get that. Really, I do. But this goes back to my other response about making something different for the in-clan only cards. When both cards have the same value, they should have the same value. It really is unintuitive to have the same exact values mean two different things.

3 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

I know this. I'm not disputing this at all. Why is this even mentioned?

I'm saying that the 'way of' cards have identical values as the neutral cards. There is absolutely no difference between the two on the cards themselves. If, instead, they had 0 at the bottom of both cards, it would literally be the same exact thing. One card doesn't have something different than the other. They are both identical... so why aren't they identical in deck construction?

As we have not seen the deckbuilding rules yet, we can only speculate, but one way to look at it may be that each stronghold represents a faction of clan + neutral. So someone with a Lion stronghold is actually playing a Lion/Neutral deck, while someone with a Dragon stronghold is actually playing Dragon/Neutral. When selecting cards, one would need to first check clan alignment. A Lion card fits into Lion/Neutral. A Neutral card fits into Lion/Neutral. A Crab card does not fit into Lion/Neutral, and therefore influence would have to be checked. If the Crab card had no influence, then it could not be played in that deck. This does not apply to Neutral cards, because no Neutral card could ever possibly fail the Lion/Neutral check!

If there were some stronghold that did not consider Neutral cards part of its faction (say, "Castle of the Ultra-Snobby Courtiers" or something), then Neutral cards could not be included unless they had influence (so as far as we've seen, no Neutral cards could be included).

1 minute ago, JJ48 said:

As we have not seen the deckbuilding rules yet, we can only speculate, but one way to look at it may be that each stronghold represents a faction of clan + neutral. So someone with a Lion stronghold is actually playing a Lion/Neutral deck, while someone with a Dragon stronghold is actually playing Dragon/Neutral. When selecting cards, one would need to first check clan alignment. A Lion card fits into Lion/Neutral. A Neutral card fits into Lion/Neutral. A Crab card does not fit into Lion/Neutral, and therefore influence would have to be checked. If the Crab card had no influence, then it could not be played in that deck. This does not apply to Neutral cards, because no Neutral card could ever possibly fail the Lion/Neutral check!

If there were some stronghold that did not consider Neutral cards part of its faction (say, "Castle of the Ultra-Snobby Courtiers" or something), then Neutral cards could not be included unless they had influence (so as far as we've seen, no Neutral cards could be included).

So if that's the case, then Lion/Nuetral decks wouldn't have to pay for influenced neutral cards (if there are any). Because, like all the lion cards that have influence, get ignored, right?

Just now, Sparks Duh said:

So if that's the case, then Lion/Nuetral decks wouldn't have to pay for influenced neutral cards (if there are any). Because, like all the lion cards that have influence, get ignored, right?

If my scenario reflects reality, then that is correct. Have we seen any Neutral cards with influence yet? Because that would be a major point against my speculation.

Just now, JJ48 said:

If my scenario reflects reality, then that is correct. Have we seen any Neutral cards with influence yet? Because that would be a major point against my speculation.

We haven't. After all, at this point, all we have is speculation. Just typing out my thoughts, really.

The "Way of" cards could possibly be played in other clan decks, however I suspect they would be rather ineffective as they also specifically target they clan they are for.

As printed, those cards have built in wording to discourage people from playing them out of clan. All the other clan tagged conflict cards have bamboo pips. No neutral cards with bamboo pips yet either. I think the rules on including out of clan characters in your dynasty deck will determine what the rules for influences ends up looking like. From what we've seen so far they could just allow you to play out of clan cards with 0 influence on them........because why would you ever want to?

*edit*

Nevermind. I missed Way of the Unicorn and that clearly doesn't have anything clan specific in the text of the cards. I suppose it will be similar to ANR. Let me make sure I understand how this would translate to L5R if it were directly ported from ANR.

I can include in clan cards with bamboo pips and they will not count towards my influence limit.

I can include out of clan cards with bamboo pips and they will counts towards my influence limit.

I cannot include out of clan cards without bamboo pips.

I can include neutral cards without bamboo pips.

I can include neutral cards with bamboo pips (if any) which will count towards my influence limit.

Is that correct as it pertains to ANR?