1 hour ago, kempy said:

There were enough cards that affected Holdings (destroying, weakening, taking control) and really strong or vital Holdings that were left in Province for buying next round were also a high priority target of attack to ultimate destruction (discarding after taking down Province).

Plenty of Holdings had various abilities on them and they shined in midgame when pure gold production wasn't so important. They just increased your Open/Battle possibilities. And even in early games there were important decision to use them (often by bowing or sacrificing) or spend their gold production later this turn.

As someone who played mostly aggressive military decks or combo decks......I rarely saw a game in which a holding mattered for anything outside of gold production. And while their were cards that specifically destroyed holdings......they were rather inefficient when you could, as you mentioned, attack a province with a holding in it.

Imo, holdings now seem to matter more as they are no longer tied to economy. At the tail end of L5R's CCG run there we're a a lot more holdings with utility abilities in them, which I liked quite a but, but generally speaking all that mattered was nailing down the best gold scheme. Now that holdings are no longer shackled by design they seem way more interesting.

12 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I rarely saw a game in which a holding mattered for anything outside of gold production.

281 non-gold-producing holdings in the Oracle of the Void!

Plus, there were a large number of holdings that provided much more than gold... I can remember Yotsu Dojo which was abused by certain Crane Harrier decks back in Lotus era...

25 minutes ago, barrufet said:

281 non-gold-producing holdings in the Oracle of the Void!

Plus, there were a large number of holdings that provided much more than gold... I can remember Yotsu Dojo which was abused by certain Crane Harrier decks back in Lotus era...

Geez, this Holding was also a part of honor switch engine in Ratling deck that won Worlds in Lotus.

PS. Just checked my Modern TFT deck, 9 out of 22 Holdings contain abilities, card draw, attach transfer, straightening, movement, kill, force manipulation - there's everything here.

Yes I always wondered why they kept the gold production on the holding. A stable gold curve would have been much more fun imo.

Well, and now FFG is doing this. The complete fate production is guided by the stronghold and holdings provide pure utility.

23 minutes ago, Yandia said:

Yes I always wondered why they kept the gold production on the holding. A stable gold curve would have been much more fun imo.

I think opposite. Gold/resource systems open many possibilities in deck building and game play.

Anyway, it's compleely different philosophy of game design. In both games they are completely different type of cards that share same name.

3 hours ago, barrufet said:

281 non-gold-producing holdings in the Oracle of the Void!

Plus, there were a large number of holdings that provided much more than gold... I can remember Yotsu Dojo which was abused by certain Crane Harrier decks back in Lotus era...

Don't forget Governor's Courts which, unless you had a bunch of excess Courtiers, were often used for their ability to kneel a character or gain honor rather than their gold production.

I remember getting a few of those out and just torturing my opponent with them haha.

Hawks & Falcons sprang immediately to my mind. Then Master Smith. Not to mention Den of Spies.

Some very interesting thoughts here, as well as a load of stuff I hadn't considered. Thanks!

2 hours ago, kempy said:

I think opposite. Gold/resource systems open many possibilities in deck building and game play.

Well, yes a solid resource system like in Magic: The Gathering would have been great as well, unfortunately the gold system never really came close... So I always wondered why bother.

In honesty we should not really be comparing 'holdings' in the current lcg to 'holdings' in the ccg. Both are serving very different purposes. Maybe fortifications? The new holdings are not quite events, not quite fortifications, maybe regions?

I think the closest analogue would be the regions that didn't allow their province to refill. Except you can choose to discard these holdings if you would rather open the province back up.

Can someone throw in a proof that holdings will block province flow?

All I could find is the following lines in the Crafting a Dinasty article:

"In addition to character cards, holdings can also be placed on province cards from the dynasty deck, representing lands, structures, fortifications, and other locations. These cards are not played to the home area and instead provide powerful abilities and bonus strength to their relevant provinces. While holdings can provide boosts, it is important to note that the more holdings you include in a deck, the less characters will be placed on provinces, limiting your options during the dynasty phase"

I find this could be misjudged as some explanation of the blocking issue, but I think it means that, the more holdings you throw in your deck, the less characters you will find there, and you can even find yourself showing 4 holdings in a row and messing with a no-character turn.

Something tells me that, if holdings were to be blocking next turn´ dinasty card, they probably would have mentioned it in that same article in a clear and plain wording...

I would have done it anyway...

It was either mentioned in the ama or the facebook live event.

6 minutes ago, Koriume said:

Can someone throw in a proof that holdings will block province flow?

All I could find is the following lines in the Crafting a Dinasty article:

"In addition to character cards, holdings can also be placed on province cards from the dynasty deck, representing lands, structures, fortifications, and other locations. These cards are not played to the home area and instead provide powerful abilities and bonus strength to their relevant provinces. While holdings can provide boosts, it is important to note that the more holdings you include in a deck, the less characters will be placed on provinces, limiting your options during the dynasty phase"

I find this could be misjudged as some explanation of the blocking issue, but I think it means that, the more holdings you throw in your deck, the less characters you will find there, and you can even find yourself showing 4 holdings in a row and messing with a no-character turn.

Something tells me that, if holdings were to be blocking next turn´ dinasty card, they probably would have mentioned it in that same article in a clear and plain wording...

I would have done it anyway...

"In addition to character cards, holdings can also be placed on province cards from the dynasty deck, representing lands, structures, fortifications, and other locations. These cards are not played to the home area and instead provide powerful abilities and bonus strength to their relevant provinces. While holdings can provide boosts, it is important to note that the more holdings you include in a deck, the less characters will be placed on provinces, limiting your options during the dynasty phase. However, certain clans do specialize in defending these holdings—the mighty Crab don't just strengthen their provinces with holdings like Borderlands Fortifications ( Core Set, 36), but gain bonuses from just having them in play from cards like Shrewd Yasuki (Core Set, 29)."

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/4/26/crafting-a-dynasty/

This is what I was able to find. I feel like they would have mentioned if you re-filled over the holding but kept it active.

Especially in the context of Borderlands Fortifications, that can switch with other cards in provinces. If, for instance, you did attach the holding to the province and then refilled that province with another dynasty card, how would you switch the holding with a character? The character presumably could not attach to the province.

28 minutes ago, Koriume said:

Can someone throw in a proof that holdings will block province flow?

I think it was said at some moment during the interview Team Covenant did to the game designer team. I'm afraid I don't remember at which moment during the interview it was or who was making the statement... my bad

1 hour ago, barrufet said:

I think it was said at some moment during the interview Team Covenant did to the game designer team. I'm afraid I don't remember at which moment during the interview it was or who was making the statement... my bad

I had watched that 3 times, and find not the time to do so yet once more again. But Looking at the cards I start to think this might actually be the case. I thought in the interview with Team Covenant that they talked about holdings could block the card flow in the old CCG, especially when you already have lost provinces.

What convinced me in the end was the Crab holding: https://l5r.gamepedia.com/Borderlands_Fortifications since that allows the player to move it to the province that comes under attack.

And overall the holdings seem strong, the Phoenix and the Crane one both generate some dard draw which is always huge, so I can understand that paying the price of one less active province is to be paid for that.

Don't waste your time watching various videos; it was said by one of the designers on the L5R Discord. AFAIK, it was never mentioned in any of the official promotion pieces.

3 minutes ago, Drudenfusz said:

I had watched that 3 times, and find not the time to do so yet once more again. But Looking at the cards I start to think this might actually be the case. I thought in the interview with Team Covenant that they talked about holdings could block the card flow in the old CCG, especially when you already have lost provinces.

What convinced me in the end was the Crab holding: https://l5r.gamepedia.com/Borderlands_Fortifications since that allows the player to move it to the province that comes under attack.

And overall the holdings seem strong, the Phoenix and the Crane one both generate some dard draw which is always huge, so I can understand that paying the price of one less active province is to be paid for that.

Nicely said.

I dont see how the crab holding would work if the province was refilled... it would cause a double face down card issue in the province it was leaving.

I agree now.

13 hours ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

Don't waste your time watching various videos; it was said by one of the designers on the L5R Discord. AFAIK, it was never mentioned in any of the official promotion pieces.

Yeah. it was definitely confirmed by a designer on Discord. I wish I could find the Reddit thread that quoted it (and confirmed he is indeed a designer).

15 hours ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

Don't waste your time watching various videos; it was said by one of the designers on the L5R Discord. AFAIK, it was never mentioned in any of the official promotion pieces.

You're absolutely right. My most sincere apologies for confounding people and leading them to watch endless repetitions of the design team videos. Not seeking redemption for myself but in order to show my apologies are actually sincere I'll say that I have watched the videos several times myself to catch the moment where someone was stating that holdings were blocking provinces. Obviously I couldn't find the statement in the videos... so I went back and pulling Reiu-sama's thread I think I ended up reconstructing the whole story of the thing. The following quotes come from the thread "Dinasty Article is up". Although is not oficial-oficial, I think this is proof enough for whoever want to take it as actual proof. The relevant quotes from the aforementioned thread are below:

On 26/04/2017 at 5:31 PM, Danwarr said:

Some clarification on this would be nice, but a safe/nice assumption would be that Holdings do not limit future cards being placed on that Province. I just find it hard to believe that FFG would limit your play based on a random draw of cards because you have no control over where the Holdings go. Theoretically you could lock all of your Provinces in the blocking scenario.

On 26/04/2017 at 5:49 PM, Danwarr said:

So Brad Andres (or someone claiming to be Brad) just confirmed that Holdings eat Province slots for Dynasty cards on the L5R Discord. So that's certainly interesting.

On 26/04/2017 at 6:00 PM, Danwarr said:

https://discord.gg/apanDPW

On 26/04/2017 at 6:13 PM, Danwarr said:

Brad Andres, DarbimusPrime, was in the L5R Discord.

On 26/04/2017 at 6:19 PM, cielago said:

the channel is affiliated with the subreddit, and if we find thats happening, we'd definitely do that. i'm taking steps to verify that the DarbimusPrime on the discord is real

On 26/04/2017 at 7:05 PM, cielago said:

confirmed that the DarbimusPrime on discord is Brad Andres

I think a couple of 'extreme' strategies will evolve around holdings.

One will be to use a number of them, leaving perhaps one or two provinces to bring characters into play. This strategy will probably involve putting a good qty of Fate onto those characters, who will act as strong long term blockers (backed by tougher provinces). It's possible that with enough Conflict deck characters a robust defence could be enabled.

The alternate strategy is to have few, if any, holdings. This favours a stratagem of swarming your foe offensively with lots of low cost, synergetic, characters. Your provinces will be weaker, so this is something of a 'glass cannon' option.

Most decks will fall somewhere mid way - distinct holdings that support a specific tactic but not a excessive number.

1 hour ago, Tam Palso said:

I think a couple of 'extreme' strategies will evolve around holdings.

One will be to use a number of them, leaving perhaps one or two provinces to bring characters into play. This strategy will probably involve putting a good qty of Fate onto those characters, who will act as strong long term blockers (backed by tougher provinces). It's possible that with enough Conflict deck characters a robust defence could be enabled.

The alternate strategy is to have few, if any, holdings. This favours a stratagem of swarming your foe offensively with lots of low cost, synergetic, characters. Your provinces will be weaker, so this is something of a 'glass cannon' option.

Most decks will fall somewhere mid way - distinct holdings that support a specific tactic but not a excessive number.

Indeed. That characters can be brought in from the hand, and the hand can be buffed by up to 5 cards a turn, is, as they say, a Game Changer.

Personally, I actually really quite like defensive strategies, so I'm looking forward to what the Crab cook up regarding their Yasuki/Builder stuff.

New holdings feel like old events but with the potential for them to stick around. Broken provinces force us to discard them, so then they truly do become old events. Any strategy based around holdings should embrace this temporal nature. I think that we'll end up running about 2-3 per deck like old events and I have been evaluating them as if they were old events. An exception may be Crab? Not enough info.