Latest game - Crab vs Lion

Our latest game testing the Crab vs the Lion. Andy is playing for the first time taking Lion, while Eoin played his Crab dishonor deck. Justin, Baz and Colm comment and watch.

Obviously we're playing with a limited card pool and incomplete rules at this stage - so forgive errors in strategy as well as rules interpretation. But it's a great opportunity to discuss the cards and gameplay in action.

Previous Games

Dragon v Crane

Lion v Crane

Testing out the Crane

First Look at Gameplay

Very well done.

Not easy playing it without the release of all the cards, but it'll help to see the interactions of players and cards.

Thanks a bunch! This really helps.

Just reminding me I need to make a proxy decks and test it out. Maybe it's time for me to get desktop simulator finally.

Analysis Paralysis is the first word I thought of when watching this, when the constantly moving camera wasn't giving me some small motion sickness.

First attack of the first game of new5r... Everyone to the left most province. *lip quiver*

It should be noted that dynasty decks will be all one clan and neutrals, and the conflict deck will be all one clan and neutrals, with the possibility of up to 10 influence worth of cards from 1 other clan. That said, you only have so many revealed cards so far so you made due with what you had. Some interactions will never happen so for the purposes of going through turns to get the basic mechanics of how it works, this does the job.

Mulligans probably happen before you flip your dynasty over on turn one... otherwise your opponent would know what is in your deck and what to mulligan for...

You lose 1 honor for a dishonored character leaving play (recent L5R Live broadcast, IIRC)

Also pretty sure you can choose any unclaimed ring when you attack on your turn, including ones that have been chosen previously but were returned to the unclaimed pool. I see no reason you couldn't. The only restrictions are must be unclaimed ring, can only declare 1 political and 1 military conflict, and can only declare at unbroken provinces.

On turn 2 the player who bid 1 did not draw his card.

Pro Tip: The Red and Blue on the rings match the Red and Blue on the skills on the personalities. So when declaring you will want to use the corresponding side of the ring.

Also, remember discard characters without fate first, then pull fate off of remaining characters during the Fate Phase.

In turn 3 you can only bring Dynasty cards out during the dynasty phase, pretty sure this was a mistake simply because the draw step was initially missed.

"Water is a lot better than I thought it was..." quote of the game.

Overall well done.

One error I saw:

When your 2-Glory dishonored character left play, you lost 2 honor. I'm fairly certain you only lose 1 honor for a dishonored character leaving play. You only gain 1 honor when an honored character leaves play, regardless of their Glory, so a dishonored character leaving has the opposite effect.

3 hours ago, Shikaku said:

Also pretty sure you can choose any unclaimed ring when you attack on your turn, including ones that have been chosen previously but were returned to the unclaimed pool. I see no reason you couldn't. The only restrictions are must be unclaimed ring, can only declare 1 political and 1 military conflict, and can only declare at unbroken provinces.

With have been revealed until now, it's looks more likely that after a battle, a ring will always be claimed, be it by the defender or the attacker. Then, if it has been claimed by the attacker, its effects are triggered. So, I don't think you'll be able to have multiple battles with the same ring during a turn.

1 hour ago, KerenRhys said:

With have been revealed until now, it's looks more likely that after a battle, a ring will always be claimed, be it by the defender or the attacker. Then, if it has been claimed by the attacker, its effects are triggered. So, I don't think you'll be able to have multiple battles with the same ring during a turn.

We already know of at least one card (Mori Kuroi) that can replace the ring you're fighting over, so that would be the most obvious case. You declare an attack against Phoenix for Air ring. He replaces air with fire, and the winner of the battle then claims the fire ring. Next battle could then be fought over the air ring, since it's still unclaimed.

Sure, but it's not what I was arguing against and you still don't fight for the same rings twice in the same turn.

1 hour ago, KerenRhys said:

Sure, but it's not what I was arguing against and you still don't fight for the same rings twice in the same turn.

Maybe, but how would that work?

If the attacker chooses air, and then the defender switches it to Water, who 'claims'? the Air ring? It seems to me it would probably just go back in the 'stack' of unclaimed Rings.

5 hours ago, KerenRhys said:

With have been revealed until now, it's looks more likely that after a battle, a ring will always be claimed, be it by the defender or the attacker. Then, if it has been claimed by the attacker, its effects are triggered. So, I don't think you'll be able to have multiple battles with the same ring during a turn.

Usually, yes. But in the match simulation they had a situation in which by the conflict resolution neither the attacker nor the defender had characters on their side and so they returned the ring to the unclaimed pool, but did not allow a second attack of that ring to be declared. Now, it's all uncertain at this point but I agree with Shikaku that if the ring was unclaimed there are no rules preventing you from declaring for it (there are no "1 ring per conflict rules" only unclaimed rules AFAIK). On the other hand, I imagine there could easily be a rulling stating who claims the ring in a situation like that.

Is this module available for download in TTS? I jumped on and searched and couldn't find it, but it's likely I'm blind.

This was really great, thanks for posting.

This seems to be more fun to play than old5r even with the gimped card pool. Everything seem to flow so nicely with the new mechanics.

While we didn't really see honor matter much in this game, I can envision its potential as a fun game mechanic when we have access to all the cards. I imagine decks will be built and played to operate at the margins of the honor continuum, by disregarding it entirely or by targeting it as a secondary win condition.

I tried watching it but I couldn't finish it. There is something really weird about trying to watch people play a game when so many of the rules are not known.

I loved the other videos you guys have done and would gladly watch you play the game once the rules and cards are known.

Love to see another game with all these new crane spoils. Though it may be horribly onesided.

3 hours ago, RandomJC said:

Love to see another game with all these new crane spoils. Though it may be horribly onesided.

I think it will potentially be more balanced now. In the first game it was heavy on boosting military power, and the Crane spoils since then have been primarily political focused. This could provide more balance between military and political in the game.

15 minutes ago, HidaYama said:

I think it will potentially be more balanced now. In the first game it was heavy on boosting military power, and the Crane spoils since then have been primarily political focused. This could provide more balance between military and political in the game.

True, but with the Crane spoils you can a more well oiled deck, which, theoretically, be better that a deck cobbled together by disparate spoiled cards from other factions.

So play Crane vs Crane mirror with different splashed clans.

Oh, that'd be fun! I just wish we had 2 more neutral provinces!

We jumped in to play another game last night. We put the Crane deck up against the combined forces of the other clans to see how it fared. Interestingly it wasn't quite as one sided as I expected - but its a sample size of 1 so take it with a healthy pinch of salt.

Thank you for this!

1 minute ago, RandomJC said:

Thank you for this!

No problem it's rather long, and a little bit more thrown together at the last minute than our other videos but thought people would be interested none the less.

Just now, cobrophy said:

No problem it's rather long, and a little bit more thrown together at the last minute than our other videos but thought people would be interested none the less.

I don't have people around me to proxy/play so I can only get my fix with this. lol

18 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

I don't have people around me to proxy/play so I can only get my fix with this. lol

One thing it would great to get some opinions on is what the best way to view these games is. Do people prefer the first person view playing the game - or the spectator view where you can see both hands.

The other thing I could do is mute myself from the guys and give more of a commentary.

Finally in terms of what I show - should I be showing cards more, hands more, etc. What sort of camera angles views work best?