I think two of the Deluxes will be Mantis and Spider. Might not be the first Deluxe's they do though.

We'll most likely see some new factions in the future, to take advantage of the upcoming story lines. I would also like to see some neutral or clan strongholds eventually to take advantage of some of the traits (i.e. Brotherhood of Shinsei for monk trait, Imperial stronghold for the imperial trait, and so on).

3 hours ago, JRosen9 said:

I think at some point the villians need to become playable.

1

I think they already are. I would much rather see the world were the clans never unite against the "Big Bad" because there is no "Big Bad. At the beginning of the game, each clan had the capability to be the villains and the heroes, sometimes at the same time with the same characters.

By making the "Villan" playable, I think you strip away the complexity of the clans and leave them in the back seat to their own story.

3 hours ago, JRosen9 said:

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.

What were the conditions for the Clans to lose? I thought, as how the Storyline Tournament was set-up, it was merely to see which Clan's Thunderer was ultimately successful in killing the possessed Hantei the XXXIV, which ultimately turned out to be won, unsurprisingly, by Lion thus putting their Thunderer, Toturi, onto the throne. As far as I recall, AEG never said "and if the tournament ends this way, we'll have a 1,000 Years of Darkness!" I thought it was a forgone conclusion at that point that the Thunderers would win, it was just a matter of seeing which ones would live, which would die, and who would take the throne?

As @Kubernes post above has shown me, it seems FFG's forums have the Spider Mon available as an avatar picture. Not sure what, if anything, that means for FFG's eventual stance on the Shadowlands and the Spider Clan.

7 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

As @Kubernes post above has shown me, it seems FFG's forums have the Spider Mon available as an avatar picture. Not sure what, if anything, that means for FFG's eventual stance on the Shadowlands and the Spider Clan.

I wouldn't read into this. These were put up within a couple days of the sale announcement and haven't been changed. At the time it's unlikely they had any concrete plans in place.

1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

What were the conditions for the Clans to lose? I thought, as how the Storyline Tournament was set-up, it was merely to see which Clan's Thunderer was ultimately successful in killing the possessed Hantei the XXXIV, which ultimately turned out to be won, unsurprisingly, by Lion thus putting their Thunderer, Toturi, onto the throne. As far as I recall, AEG never said "and if the tournament ends this way, we'll have a 1,000 Years of Darkness!" I thought it was a forgone conclusion at that point that the Thunderers would win, it was just a matter of seeing which ones would live, which would die, and who would take the throne?

If a Shadowlands player had won the tournament, then Fu Leng would have defeated the Seven Thunders. That was the only official lose condition for the Empire.

I like the idea of Yoritomo and Tsuruchi (and Toku even) being unaligned "surprise!" cards that can be included in any deck at the cost of influence. Yoritomo as a mercenary wrecking machine seems fun and still true to character. I also hope the story revolves around the waxing and waning Imperial ambitions of the big Seven and less upon surviving the next great evil.

Just to follow up on my earlier postings.

I googled L5R maps and this is what I kept on finding. The specific map that I was referring to that can be found in Bezzleebub's site I just haven't been able to find. While there must be an existing map that either came out under the RPG rulebook, or in a free standing supplement some time after, I have yet to find through my limited searching. Again, merely guessing now as I had honestly believed that that map was the "current" map.

Here are a few of the maps that are from previous editions-

This last one is the most similar looking map that I could find that has much in common with what I posted above.

Just a note, that first map is of the Colonies, not Rokugan.

35 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Just a note, that first map is of the Colonies, not Rokugan.

I see. Again, quite neat to have from my perspective.

A point of interest for some of us who would like to add some parameters to the Rukogan world (and amateur Rokugan cartographers) would be the scale in the second map that I posted. It has a listing in miles. The scale can be clearly seen at the bottom right, roughly centered.

I have not come across another map that has a posted scale of distance in any of the other maps.

As much as I think Shadowlands as a faction is fine, having it merely as a trait also has a number of interesting story interactions. Seeing someone like Isawa Tadaka, tainted out of hubris perhaps but also a desire to save the Empire, put into a Shadowlands deck makes the taint seem very black and white; evil or good. Not everyone who is tainted should be a willing pawn of Jigoku.

Leaving Shadowlands as a trait and not a faction lets it also manifest as a disease, burden, or punishment for an otherwise good character to endure, which I think makes for some good storytelling. What is the curse of the taint without the hope of redemption?

5 hours ago, LordBlunt said:

I see. Again, quite neat to have from my perspective.

A point of interest for some of us who would like to add some parameters to the Rukogan world (and amateur Rokugan cartographers) would be the scale in the second map that I posted. It has a listing in miles. The scale can be clearly seen at the bottom right, roughly centered.

I have not come across another map that has a posted scale of distance in any of the other maps.

That's because all maps of Rokugan are inaccurate. Hantei (the First) had a map drawn, with early iron age technology, and decreed that this was the map of his Empire. Now, because the first Emperor had said it was accurate, no-one else was willing to said it needed corrected. Thus we get to the situation where a Samurai arrives after 3 days of travel, down a route which the map says is 10 miles.

"Why did you take so long, samurai?"

"Because I had to stop and pray at the shrines to my ancestors as I passed them on the road, tono."

"Of course, I understand."

This explains why the Daidoji maps were so valuable. The Doji shamed those who went against the emperor. The Kakita cut them down. And the Daidoji were the only ones who went to war using accurate maps.

Well, the Daidoji did have very detailed maps of their own territory. But it's not like everyone in Rokugan is an idiot. They all knew that there were inaccuracies in official maps and would have accurate ones of their own. They just had to officially say that the official maps were accurate.

1 hour ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

That's because all maps of Rokugan are inaccurate.

I don't think this should be a matter of consideration for the official "meta" maps.

Also, IIRC, the very first map of Rokugan from Hantei I was dead-on accurate because he had it drawn from his memory as he had seen in from Tengoku. You can't really get any more accurate than that. The clans messed it up latter when the ultra-accurate maps made warring a little too easy.

Yes, but what I put it is the official AEG reason why the 'meta' maps are IC and different in each edition of the RPG (and the d20 one, and the original CCG rulebook).

21 hours 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.

Crane and Phoenix are in the core set. How many more playable villains do you need?

18 hours ago, Kubernes said:

We'll most likely see some new factions in the future, to take advantage of the upcoming story lines. I would also like to see some neutral or clan strongholds eventually to take advantage of some of the traits (i.e. Brotherhood of Shinsei for monk trait, Imperial stronghold for the imperial trait, and so on).

I like the idea of neutral strongholds in general, and it also gave me an idea for how FFG could possibly implement two-clan decks if they want to (whether or not they ever want to do such a thing is a different question). Hmm, I'll pick Unicorn and Crane as examples since the Unicorn storyline mentions an ancient treaty with the Crane being honored. So if FFG was designing a neutral stronghold that would allow a Unicorn+Crane deck, they could create a neutral stronghold with something like 20-25 Influence, and an ability like "If cards from the Unicorn or Crane clans are added to this deck via Influence, each such card costs 1 less Influence than normal, to a minimum of 0." And maybe it would allow up to 10 Destiny cards from each of the two clans, but the remaining 20-25 Destiny cards would have to be neutral cards.

I don't actually expect this to happen anytime soon, since there's LOTS of design space to explore in single-clan decks. But the Influence system, as we currently theorize that it works, would allow for that kind of dual-clan deck design as well.

L5R noob here, so sorry if they've already done something like this, but I think it'd be interesting if they added a Shadowlands-aligned faction, and many people KNEW they were Shadowlands-aligned, but no one could prove it. I know the Spider were Shadowlands-aligned, but from what I read they got a place in the Empire because they helped kill Kali-Ma or something (so if I'm wrong and they WERE a secret, sorry for the redundancy). Flavorfully this could explain why a Shadowlands faction could participate in Honor and Dishonor victories. The faction winning an Honor victory would be flavored as them making their masquerade unassailable--they are only "Honorable" in appearance, but because of this no one would suspect that they are really aligned with the Shadowlands. Them winning a Dishonor victory would be explained as them discrediting their opponents so badly that no one will believe their opponents' accusations that they are in league with the forces of darkness. This faction losing to a Dishonor would, of course, mean they were so obviously evil that the masquerade kind of fell apart. Maybe for mechanics they could have units with very powerful abilities that cause them to lose a lot of honor. So in each game, this faction would have to chose between maintaining their masquerade or going all-out and using their l33t M4h0 skillz.

But yeah, I don't know, maybe that's what the Spider or someone else were or something. Either way, I think this'd be a cool way to incorporate an "evil" faction without breaking the flavor by having the Shadowlands be officially accepted.

19 hours ago, Fumo said:

Crane and Phoenix are in the core set. How many more playable villains do you need?

Hey, just because so many interesting and / or powerful villains come from those clans...

Seriously though: Asako Kinuye, Asahina Yajinden, etc.

It's not like the other clans have never been the bad guys, though. Hitomi was a half-crazy, manipulated by Kokujin (also Dragon) villain until the story was changed by the efforts of a lot of pure-playing Dragon clan players. Oni-no-Kyoso was originally created / summoned by a Dragon, as well. Then there was the whole Dark Oracle of Fire thing...

Crab were pretty villainous during the Clan War, at first. Kisada let himself be manipulated into using the Shadowlands to help conquer Rokuhan 'for the greater good', Yakomo was a **** a lot of the time, etc.

And then there's Unicorn. they also tried to conquer the Empire, and while you can see the reasoning the Khan had for it, it was still villainous.

I'm one of those people who mostly hated the Spider as a 'clan'. The Empress granting them great Clan status was one of the silliest things to ever happen in the game's story (and that's saying a lot). They were clumsily forced into the game, and even when they were 'hidden', they diluted the 'faction that is part of Rokugan society, but are also villains' that was always the Scorpion's thing.

4 hours ago, Togashi Gao Shan said:

I'm one of those people who mostly hated the Spider as a 'clan'. The Empress granting them great Clan status was one of the silliest things to ever happen in the game's story (and that's saying a lot). They were clumsily forced into the game, and even when they were 'hidden', they diluted the 'faction that is part of Rokugan society, but are also villains' that was always the Scorpion's thing.

The Scorpion had been killing their "Villain" cred for a while by over focusing on the "doing it for the Empire" spiel. They ended up becoming a clan of antiheroes rather than villains. Pretty much every "villainous" Scorpion action in the story ended up raising the question of "Will stopping this plot hurt the Empire in the long run?" rather than "We need to stop this Scorpion plot to save the Empire. How do we do it?"

Both the Crab and the Scorpion gave up their (anti)villain roles in order to be antiheroes. The Spider needed to be added in order to have an actual Samurai villain faction.

Also, there could be more than one villain factions if they represent different approaches to villainy. Kinda like the whole Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic Evil axis. It could also present some nice villain-on-villain action.

I hope they keep the number of factions in check. 7 is already a lot for any card game. 8 would be good, maybe 9 (Shadowlands and Mantis get my vote), but O5R had WAY too many (13 at once in Hidden Emperror). Too many factions means you'll get fewer cards for your chosen faction in any given set. I'd rather see the focus on fewer factions with more variety in strategy.

On 5/10/2017 at 4:57 PM, slowreflex said:

I think two of the Deluxes will be Mantis and Spider. Might not be the first Deluxe's they do though.

I really hope they don't include Spider clan. A shadowlands faction, sure, but I absolutely hated the Spider story-wise.