So currently, without any dueling cards, it makes more sense to loose duels for the honor then to sacrifice honor for the win.

still one of the weirdest systems. I hope the Crane article shows at least one Dueling card.

Without the dueling cards, it's hard to make a judgement one way or the other.

My guess is that there will be honor gains to offset the loss. It might not be worth bidding 5 every time, but the winner might gain 3 honor plus added effects (gain of 1 or 2 honor after the bid most likely). Honestly I'd much prefer this to all duels being outright kill duels.

17 minutes ago, Shiba Mako said:

So currently, without any dueling cards, it makes more sense to loose duels for the honor then to sacrifice honor for the win.

still one of the weirdest systems. I hope the Crane article shows at least one Dueling card.

Without dueling cards there are not duels so... er... yeah? Maybe?

Duels will be there to discard people, bow it, dishonor it,... if those effects are not worth a minor honor lose, what is the point of duels? And many people still assume duels between equals or close ones. I do not remember the ccg Crane ever playing fair duels against my Unicorns.

1 minute ago, Wintersong said:

Without dueling cards there are not duels so... er... yeah? Maybe?

Duels will be there to discard people, bow it, dishonor it,... if those effects are not worth a minor honor lose, what is the point of duels? And many people still assume duels between equals or close ones. I do not remember the ccg Crane ever playing fair duels against my Unicorns.

Any Duel I fought with a Crane...

Looking to L5R tradition, it wouldn't really be in the spirit of dueling if there weren't something that drove fans nuts about it.

54 minutes ago, Shiba Mako said:

So currently, without any dueling cards, it makes more sense to loose duels for the honor then to sacrifice honor for the win.

I am not sure this will work. Assuming I have someone with lower skill that I use to duel your superior personality, there is still a bluffing element about it and either personality could win. If I use a person with higher skill to duel your inferior personality, I can be sure to win if I bid enough honor so maybe the opponent will only bid 1 (is it possible to bid zero?) and if I bid 1 then I still win the duel.

Dueling has always been high cost. In Ivory and after that, I needed to build my deck with as many 4 FV cards as possible. Usually, I had six dueling cards that were 2 FV (the lethal duels) and all other cards in the deck were 4 FV. This was a major constraint on deck building. I simply could not use cards like Legion of the Khan because then I would be losing my own duels. Spending a card to kill your own personality was the quickest way to lose the game and always provoked much laughter from my opponent.

Now, that constraint is removed. I am free to use any new cards that may be as good as Legion of the Khan was. So I guess the honor loss that now applies to dueling is compensation for removing the constraints on deck construction.

7 minutes ago, Eye of Night said:

I am not sure this will work. Assuming I have someone with lower skill that I use to duel your superior personality, there is still a bluffing element about it and either personality could win. If I use a person with higher skill to duel your inferior personality, I can be sure to win if I bid enough honor so maybe the opponent will only bid 1 (is it possible to bid zero?) and if I bid 1 then I still win the duel.

Dueling has always been high cost. In Ivory and after that, I needed to build my deck with as many 4 FV cards as possible. Usually, I had six dueling cards that were 2 FV (the lethal duels) and all other cards in the deck were 4 FV. This was a major constraint on deck building. I simply could not use cards like Legion of the Khan because then I would be losing my own duels. Spending a card to kill your own personality was the quickest way to lose the game and always provoked much laughter from my opponent.

Now, that constraint is removed. I am free to use any new cards that may be as good as Legion of the Khan was. So I guess the honor loss that now applies to dueling is compensation for removing the constraints on deck construction.

The only problem with that is skill, since it's still used along with the bid. Unless the two involved in the duel are relatively equal, the higher skill player doesn't really need to bid high and is relatively 'safe'. Add in the whole honor exchange thing and duels might end up being relatively uneventful.

With honor and dishonor being a big part of the game I don't really see how this rendition of dueling cannot enhance the game and give people who like dueling what they have always wanted.......which for dueling to be relevant.

Just the bidding of a duel now has the potential to push someone roughly 25% of the way towards an honor victory or an honor loss....and that's not taking into consideration what the effects of the card are that creates the duel in the first place.

Just a basic "loser is bowed" duel could present the challenged character's player with some difficult decisions. Will I lose the battle if I don't win the duel? Will the extra honor get my opponent close enough to win on honor? Is my opponent low on honor and can I afford to lose the duel to push their honor lower to limit future honor bids? Etc.

Personally I'm already way more excited about this method of dueling than anything I experienced in Old5R.

26 minutes ago, Kubernes said:

The only problem with that is skill, since it's still used along with the bid. Unless the two involved in the duel are relatively equal, the higher skill player doesn't really need to bid high and is relatively 'safe'. Add in the whole honor exchange thing and duels might end up being relatively uneventful.

This was exactly my thought as well. Nobody is going to initiate a Duel they probably cannot win, so what is likely going to happen is higher skill characters are just going to be used to bully lower value characters for whatever benefits. Mechanically it just seems really weak and uninteresting. It's basically just a Psi-game from ANR which I don't know if anyone actually enjoyed, even those of us who played Caprice a lot.

However, without knowing what the specific Duel cards are, it's still hard to fully evaluate the system.

Duels will have large effects. They must to counterbalance the ability to backfire.

43 minutes ago, BayushiCroy said:

Duels will have large effects. They must to counterbalance the ability to backfire.

Duels won't backfire because nobody's going to use them. =)

49 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

It's basically just a Psi-game from ANR which I don't know if anyone actually enjoyed, even those of us who played Caprice a lot.

I know quite a lot of people, including myself, who find the mechanic interesting.

2 minutes ago, MrMenthe said:

I know quite a lot of people, including myself, who find the mechanic interesting.

Really? How much competitive Netrunner did you play? As far as I can remember is was pretty much widely panned as almost being unfair in most situations.

Now, it personally never bothered me but I also didn't always find it that engaging.

Just now, Danwarr said:

Really? How much competitive Netrunner did you play? As far as I can remember is was pretty much widely panned as almost being unfair in most situations. Now, it personally never bothered me but I also didn't always find it that engaging.

In the 2016 comp season I did 3 regional top 4 and did quite well during the French National (5th after Swiss rounds, 7th after cut), I also organised the Belgian national. Been playing since the JH pack and stopped with the Sifr one.

I'm fairly competitive.

7 minutes ago, MrMenthe said:

In the 2016 comp season I did 3 regional top 4 and did quite well during the French National (5th after Swiss rounds, 7th after cut), I also organised the Belgian national. Been playing since the JH pack and stopped with the Sifr one.

I'm fairly competitive.

So then you are acutely aware of exactly how disliked Caprice was in the format. I say this a person who played a lot of Classic RP and helped develop Foodcoats.

22 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

So then you are acutely aware of exactly how disliked Caprice was in the format. I say this a person who played a lot of Classic RP and helped develop Foodcoats.

I know that it was disliked by a lot of people but I also know lots of competitive players in Belgium and around who liked the psi mechanic. Some of them disliked Caprice as a card, but psi game is much more than Caprice.

FoodCoat was a really nice archetype btw, with really fun match-ups. It was a pleasure to play against a well piloted FC.

I'm so out of the ANR loop that I just assumed Foodcoat was the Snuggie for tourneygoers who forget to grab a meal in-between rounds.

Dueling as it stands seems to be a glorified "seppuku to steal honor".....until late game when my opponent may be feeling the sting of honor loss. I want to see what tricks the duelist trait and Crane cards bring to the table before I make a final judgment. If Bayushi Manipulator is any indication, there is design space to play in.

Suppose a conflict card is: Fight a duel between two characters participating in this military conflict. Winner gains 5 honor, loser is discarded. The old Iaijutsu duel. In that case, everyone would always bid 5, because the rewards more than offset the loss.

Now, suppose it was the same but without the honor gain. Honor decks would not play it, because they can't risk losing the honor and dont have high military skill guys, probably. It maybe gets played in Lion, since it's free kill if you play force pump first and bully duel.

something like: 'Fight a duel between two characters participating in this military conflict using printed military skill, +2 for duelists. The winner gains 1 honor, the loser is discarded.' Maybe that would be a duel that the traditional dueling clans would use.

I think the duels might rely also on other cards, I mean I can image holdings like an iaijutsu dojo which give duelists a bonus or maybe there will be conflict cards that one can play as a reaction to beef up the duel stat after revealing the numbers on the honor dial.

1 hour ago, Kakita Onimaru said:

Dueling as it stands seems to be a glorified "seppuku to steal honor".....until late game when my opponent may be feeling the sting of honor loss. I want to see what tricks the duelist trait and Crane cards bring to the table before I make a final judgment. If Bayushi Manipulator is any indication, there is design space to play in.

Yes, I was also wondering about Bayushi Manipulator https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/4/26/crafting-a-dynasty/

It seems to be the ultimate card for gaining honor in the draw phase and also in duels. I hope the other clans also get such assistance or Scorpion will become the best dueling clan.

2 hours ago, Kakita Onimaru said:

Dueling as it stands seems to be a glorified "seppuku to steal honor".....until late game when my opponent may be feeling the sting of honor loss. I want to see what tricks the duelist trait and Crane cards bring to the table before I make a final judgment. If Bayushi Manipulator is any indication, there is design space to play in.

There definitely is design space to play in. However, will the allowance of being to ally with one other Clan offset a given Clan's weaknesses?

(ex: I build a Crab deck and throw in Crane cards for support, in order to shore up my Political weaknesses. Will that be enough for my deck to be competitive against "Tier 1" decks?)

EDITED.

2 hours ago, Drudenfusz said:

I think the duels might rely also on other cards, I mean I can image holdings like an iaijutsu dojo which give duelists a bonus or maybe there will be conflict cards that one can play as a reaction to beef up the duel stat after revealing the numbers o the honor dial.

I believe you must choose between 1 - 5 on your dial. You cannot choose 0, if I understood it clearly.

Your point stands, however.

1 minute ago, LordBlunt said:

I believe you must choose between 1 - 5 on your dial. You cannot choose 0, if I understood it clearly.

Your point stands, however.

That was a typo, I edited my post, I didn't tried to say one can choose a zero there.