What are everyone's guesses for the first new factions we'll see? FFG is known for exampsions, and in 40k Conquest there were seven factions in the base set and two deluxe expansions that each added a new faction (Tyranids and Necrons). Blood Bowl Team Manager came with four teams, had two expansions that each added three teams.


As such, I highly suspect we'll see additional factions added to Rokugan. I think we'll be most likely to see deluxe expansions that add:

-Yoritomo's Alliance
-Naga


At least these factions sort of work along the basic trappings of the Great Clans, with some concern for honor and politics. I think the game will work best if the zanier factions, like Yogo Junzo's Army (Shadowlands) and the Nezumi and the Brotherhood are left out, as they just always felt very divergent to the basic principles of the game (and with some of FFG's new mechanic may not work as well), since to what if any extent, could any of them participate in a Political conflict? "The great lord Fu Leng humbly submits to your gloriousness, Hantei the XXXIV" jabbered the swollen, saliva-coated jowls of Oni no Tsuburu. And I would be fine with this, I think making the Shadowlands (via Yogo Junzo's army) a playable faction was a terrible mistake by AEG for a variety of balance and game mechanic reasons, plus cards that had been costed as high-cost things for normal factions (like Moto Tsume) were totally bonkers once YJA's could bring them into play with none of the honor requirements or penalties. And from a fluff perspective, the Spider becoming a Great Clan was what basically finished off my already waning affection for the world of Rokugan.

Brace yourselves for the retcon removal of Yoritomo.

7 minutes ago, Nickciufi said:

Brace yourselves for the retcon removal of Yoritomo.

Just so long as they still have Tsuruchi...

16 minutes ago, Nickciufi said:

Brace yourselves for the retcon removal of Yoritomo.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Mantis never become a Great Clan this time around (and I think they worked better as an Alliance anyhow), but I'd bet anything FFG is not crazy enough to remove one of the most popular fan-favorite characters of L5R. Aramasu was also a poorly explored but fantastic character that embraced what made Yoritomo's Alliance so great (their shirking of usual bloodlines and legacies as a means of merit), so hopefully he gets a chance to actually shine as an awesome Champion in a few years (as opposed to getting chumped immediately by stupid Kitao and then stupid Kumiko).

In that general vein, here's hoping that the further the story gets from The Second Day of Thunder, the more FFG explores their own world and departs from that of AEG's. After the Clan War, I felt like none of the L5R story arcs were all that great, with Hidden Emperor and the Shadow War and the Spirit Wars being "meh," Gold was pretty nice as a return to something that felt sort of like the start of Imperial Edition, then the Reign of Blood and the Spider Clan and Orochis and Ivory Kingdoms and all that jazz started to feel less and less like Rokugan.

I wouldn't be surprised at FFG put out Yoritomo's Alliance, and set up a path for the player base to remake the Mantis. They are doing some sort of fan influence on the story.

4 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I wouldn't be surprised if the Mantis never become a Great Clan this time around (and I think they worked better as an Alliance anyhow), but I'd bet anything FFG is not crazy enough to remove one of the most popular fan-favorite characters of L5R. Aramasu was also a poorly explored but fantastic character that embraced what made Yoritomo's Alliance so great (their shirking of usual bloodlines and legacies as a means of merit), so hopefully he gets a chance to actually shine as an awesome Champion in a few years (as opposed to getting chumped immediately by stupid Kitao and then stupid Kumiko).

Hm...now I'm thinking it may be interesting if FFG starts by printing Mantis cards, but no Mantis stronghold. They wouldn't be Neutral, so you'd need to use Influence to be able to field them, which could fit well thematically with them hiring themselves out as mercenaries. Then, if they eventually did introduce a Mantis stronghold, there could already be Mantis cards to support it, rather than Mantis having too significantly fewer cards than the other clans. I doubt they'll be in the base set, but it does open the possibility that we could see Mantis appear even before a Deluxe Box dedicated to them...

3 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

I wouldn't be surprised at FFG put out Yoritomo's Alliance, and set up a path for the player base to remake the Mantis. They are doing some sort of fan influence on the story.

I think we'll see a resolution to the Second Day of Thunder much like AEG's: whichever Clan wins Gencon or Worlds or something will have their Thunderer be the one that defeats Fu Leng (though probably won't become Emperor). I think having a character from a Clan as Emperor rarely did the story any favors. Maybe as Shogun or something. I almost hope Lion win it again, just for the lolz of a very similar beginning story arc.

1 minute ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I think we'll see a resolution to the Second Day of Thunder much like AEG's: whichever Clan wins Gencon or Worlds or something will have their Thunderer be the one that defeats Fu Leng (though probably won't become Emperor). I think having a character from a Clan as Emperor rarely did the story any favors. Maybe as Shogun or something. I almost hope Lion win it again, just for the lolz of a very similar beginning story arc.

I don't think we'll see a Second Day of Thunder or a Scorpion Coup.

Just now, JJ48 said:

Hm...now I'm thinking it may be interesting if FFG starts by printing Mantis cards, but no Mantis stronghold. They wouldn't be Neutral, so you'd need to use Influence to be able to field them, which could fit well thematically with them hiring themselves out as mercenaries. Then, if they eventually did introduce a Mantis stronghold, there could already be Mantis cards to support it, rather than Mantis having too significantly fewer cards than the other clans. I doubt they'll be in the base set, but it does open the possibility that we could see Mantis appear even before a Deluxe Box dedicated to them...

This is exactly how AEG rolled out all of their other factions. Scorpion had two Bayushi "Scorpion Clan" personalities in Imperial, there were two Naga personalities in Imperial, and then in the Shadowlands set both Scorpion and Naga were given strongholds. Mantis and minor clan personalities and monk personalities all existed before Yoritomo's Alliance and the Brotherhood strongholds, etc. Even when Gold came out, Mantis got two personalities a couple sets before they got an actual Gold-Legal stronghold.

Spirit Army or Yogo Junzo's Army, somehow.

Just now, RandomJC said:

I don't think we'll see a Second Day of Thunder or a Scorpion Coup.

If that were the case, I think we'd have seen a greatly reduced presence of the Shadowlands in Rokugan if the focus was supposed to be primarily on the Clans and their own conflicts. But I think FFG's stuff so far has pretty much kept the Crab in that role of maintaining the wall that keeps the growing and increasingly tenacious forces of the Shadowlands at bay. I do think, in a lot of ways, the story of the Clans and their Conflicts would have been much better without the perpetual "BIG BADDY' that always came and united them (the Shadowlands, the Shadow, the Spirits, the Bloodspeakers, the Ivory Kingdoms, etc), as that storyline got very old very fast.

27 minutes ago, Nickciufi said:

Brace yourselves for the retcon removal of Yoritomo.

Is it fair to call it a retcon when they are resetting the entire story, though?

27 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I think the game will work best if the zanier factions, like Yogo Junzo's Army (Shadowlands) and the Nezumi and the Brotherhood are left out, as they just always felt very divergent to the basic principles of the game (and with some of FFG's new mechanic may not work as well), since to what if any extent, could any of them participate in a Political conflict? "The great lord Fu Leng humbly submits to your gloriousness, Hantei the XXXIV" jabbered the swollen, saliva-coated jowls of Oni no Tsuburu. And I would be fine with this, I think making the Shadowlands (via Yogo Junzo's army) a playable faction was a terrible mistake by AEG for a variety of balance and game mechanic reasons, plus cards that had been costed as high-cost things for normal factions (like Moto Tsume) were totally bonkers once YJA's could bring them into play with none of the honor requirements or penalties.

I think at some point the villians need to become playable. As can be seen from the destroyer arc, the story lost its appeal to many people when it was this faceless enemy. As far as zani things. Oni no Pekkle and other shadowlands infiltrators show how you can do political with the shadowlands. Daigotsu himself was very political and manipulative. Further, as I mentioned on one of the other threads, you don't have to make shadowlands immune to honor. You can have them lose at 0 and win at 25 just like everyone else. Thematically when the shadowlands hit 0 honor it represents the threat becoming so paramount that the clans band together and eliminate you and when the shadowlands hit 25 honor it isn't that they won by honor, but more you made the empire see your opponent as more disgraceful then the shadowlands.

2 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

I think at some point the villians need to become playable. As can be seen from the destroyer arc, the story lost its appeal to many people when it was this faceless enemy. As far as zani things. Oni no Pekkle and other shadowlands infiltrators show how you can do political with the shadowlands. Daigotsu himself was very political and manipulative. Further, as I mentioned on one of the other threads, you don't have to make shadowlands immune to honor. You can have them lose at 0 and win at 25 just like everyone else. Thematically when the shadowlands hit 0 honor it represents the threat becoming so paramount that the clans band together and eliminate you and when the shadowlands hit 25 honor it isn't that they won by honor, but more you made the empire see your opponent as more disgraceful then the shadowlands.

In some ways, I think the Shadowlands as an actual opponent may work better in a multiplayer, special-rules format like the Siege boxes AEG did. I'm not sure if I would prefer they be playable or have it be an "everyone vs the game mechanics" situation, though. (FFG has enough experience with co-op LCGs that I think they could to the latter quite effectively.)

6 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

If that were the case, I think we'd have seen a greatly reduced presence of the Shadowlands in Rokugan if the focus was supposed to be primarily on the Clans and their own conflicts. But I think FFG's stuff so far has pretty much kept the Crab in that role of maintaining the wall that keeps the growing and increasingly tenacious forces of the Shadowlands at bay. I do think, in a lot of ways, the story of the Clans and their Conflicts would have been much better without the perpetual "BIG BADDY' that always came and united them (the Shadowlands, the Shadow, the Spirits, the Bloodspeakers, the Ivory Kingdoms, etc), as that storyline got very old very fast.

Well, that is the Crab Clan's thing. The Wall. But then again, even if the Shadowlands is a huge presence it doesn't mean Day of Thunder. At that point what is the point of rebooting the story line. You could have just jumped ahead a few centuries, kept the old canon intact as an ancient history and continue on from there.

1 minute ago, JRosen9 said:

Daigotsu himself was very political and manipulative.

I know he was an incredibly popular fan-favorite, so I'm sure I'm in the minority, but for me Daigotsu was one of the worst things to happen to the LR5 story and blurred the lines between Pure Evil (Shadowlands) and Honorable (Great Clans) far too much and in a way that felt implausible...after all the Shadowlands had done how could any of the Great Clans ever tolerate them in that way? It also undermined the corruptive power and seduction of the Taint, since more and more Tainted Samurai really weren't any different than most other samurai living in the Provinces. This culminated in the "Spider Clan," which is when I pulled the rip-cord and bailed out of the game.

I think in a lot of settings, not having the "Big Baddies" as a playable faction can actually be a really good thing for gameplay balance. I'm not sure Middle-Earth the CCG became a better or more interesting game when it became possible to play as Ringwraiths, Fallen Wizards, the Balrog, or Sauron himself. Though it certainly became a much more complicated game. This may be especially true in a player-driven story world. You don't always need to put an asterik on what happens if a player playing Faction X wins. "The winning player's Faction will have a hero from their Clan become the Emerald Champion. Unless a Shadowlands/Nezumi player wins, in which case, uhh.... [some hand-waving]."

An observation:

Judging by the Rokugan map released by FFG, the bottom corner in the south-east clearly has the Mantis mon labeled over the islands. Going by that I would say it safe to assume the release of the Mantis clan in upcoming releases.

Furthermore, other Mons are also depicted on the lands of Rokugan, which again would lead me to believe that more releases (Clans) will eventually be had, albeit way down the road... correct?

13 minutes ago, LordBlunt said:

Judging by the Rokugan map released by FFG, the bottom corner in the south-east clearly has the Mantis mon labeled over the islands. Going by that I would say it safe to assume the release of the Mantis clan in upcoming releases.

Show me this map.

16 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Show me this map.

My apologies. I honestly thought that it was on FFG's site.

Here it is, through Bazleebub's site. Listed in the Introduction to the Background for New Players

http://imperialadvisor.com/wp/

Those other mons are the Minor Clans. The only one which ever really had its own faction was Mantis, although a number of other minors joined in with it. Some of them only ever showed up as unaligned cards, or maybe cards allied to a Great Clan.

This doesn't give any guarantee on Mantis comeback.

1 hour ago, JJ48 said:

Just so long as they still have Tsuruchi...

Mukami gets no love.

1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

As such, I highly suspect we'll see additional factions added to Rokugan. I think we'll be most likely to see deluxe expansions that add:

-Yoritomo's Alliance
-Naga

I highly doubt the Naga will be making an appearance as a faction any time soon.

As for Yoritomo's Alliance? I'd more expect a Minor Clan Alliance meta-faction considering how popular many of the minor clans were/are.

I could see the Spider Clan replacing the Yogo Junzo's Army/Shadowlands Horde as a long term evil faction.

26 minutes ago, LordBlunt said:

My apologies. I honestly thought that it was on FFG's site.

Here it is, through Bazleebub's site. Listed in the Introduction to the Background for New Players

http://imperialadvisor.com/wp/

That actually looks to be a fairly old art piece (WotC era?) rather than a FFG piece.

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

What are everyone's guesses for the first new factions we'll see? FFG is known for exampsions, and in 40k Conquest there were seven factions in the base set and two deluxe expansions that each added a new faction (Tyranids and Necrons). Blood Bowl Team Manager came with four teams, had two expansions that each added three teams.

Blood Bowl Team Manager is just a typical card game, with a one-off. Adding more "factions" in something like that has essentially nothing to do with adding a new faction in something like an LCG, where you have to continuously release new cards to support all of the existing and any new factions.

Based on the information we have so far, the past history of LCGs does not indicate that more factions will be forthcoming. AGOT2E hasn't added a new faction. Conquest was basically announced as having two more factions waiting in the wing. Star Wars hasn't added any more (or, if you take the position that Scum and Smugglers were added later, then that game was also announced as having two more factions waiting in the wing). Netrunner hasn't added any real factions, and the mini-factions they added (I think still confined to a few cards each in one deluxe expansion) didn't come for years. Call of Cthulhu added one more faction after about a decade, IIRC.

That doesn't necessarily mean there won't be more factions, but based on past history they don't come on a reasonable time frame unless announced before the game launches.

If we saw a new faction, I would still guess Shadowlands. I agree that Shadowlands does not mesh well with some of the central mechanics of the game, but I do think that they will want to depict the Shadowlands on cards when the plot gets moving. That could be in some way other than adding a new faction, but I think the possibility of a Shadowlands faction is greater than the other possibilities.

1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I think in a lot of settings, not having the "Big Baddies" as a playable faction can actually be a really good thing for gameplay balance. I'm not sure Middle-Earth the CCG became a better or more interesting game when it became possible to play as Ringwraiths, Fallen Wizards, the Balrog, or Sauron himself. Though it certainly became a much more complicated game. This may be especially true in a player-driven story world.

The difference is no matter how many times you play Middle-Earth CCG, the story doesn't change. Frodo still makes it to the mountain and throws the ring in the volcano. L5R having the game affect the story matters. With the Destroyer war, who cares what the tournament results are because Kali-ma will be defeated. Go back to the 2nd Day of Thunder and there is actually (albeit a small one) a chance for the clans to lose and evil to win.

1 hour ago, LordBlunt said:

My apologies. I honestly thought that it was on FFG's site.

Here it is, through Bazleebub's site. Listed in the Introduction to the Background for New Players

http://imperialadvisor.com/wp/

That map is not released by FFG and has no bearing on anything.

I welcome any and all Minor Clans they decide to add. Even if they're just Unaligned individual personalities we can spam.