One on One

While conflicts represent forces meeting on the field of battle or in court, sometimes things get a little more personal, and a duel occurs. Dueling in Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game works much like an honor bid. A duel will be initiated through a card ability, like the Crane Clan’s Kakita Kaezin (Core Set, 49). And will let players know both what type of duel is occurring (military or political), who is participating in the duel, and what the effects are. Then, players will use their honor dials to bid honor and add them to the appropriate skill value of their character participating in the duel. The player who bids more pays the difference to the character who bids less, and whomever has the highest combined skill wins the duel.

The effects of duels can be powerful, while Kakita Kaezin can remove all characters not involved in the duel from a conflict, Duelist Training (Core Set, 142) allows any of your characters to challenge foes to a duel, with the loser becoming bowed. This can be the perfect way to defend your provinces from attack.

With dueling we are provided a mechanic that impacts honor, similar to card draw. Its essentially a win-win scenario for achieving an honor victory as you either gain honor, or achieve the dueling effect you wanted. It fits in well with the theme of dueling in Rokugan and Crane have amazing support for it as a tool towards victory.

Did you notice that Duelist Training (Core Set, 142) is a call back to CCG dueling mechanic?

And with 1 Influence, you may see it in Dragon decks that have to get their duel on.

So, the winner effectively chooses to discard cards instead of giving their honor to the loser which is another win-win for the Crane (give me or honor or discard) while the Crane get to keep their honor if they so choose at the cost of discard.

People have been focusing a little too much on how one "wins" the duel. As a mechanic, it seems very powerful, while at the same time it no longer has the drawback of requiring you to build your deck in a particular way.

Yeah man, this feels like strictly a much better mechanic than the old one, where there wasn't really a point in duelling unless you went all in. Which few did and it seemed like even fewer actually liked. Great mechanic, definitely going to see duels as a regular thing in game, possibly across clans and in places you'd never expect, which is the best part.

It's actually not bad from a flavor standpoint, either: If I challenge you and win, I have proven that my cause was just. If I challenge you and lose, my cause was unjust but you're still honorless scum for cheating.

1 minute ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

It's actually not bad from a flavor standpoint, either: If I challenge you and win, I have proven that my cause was just. If I challenge you and lose, my cause was unjust but you're still honorless scum for cheating.

Its not cheating, losing duels is not dishonorable. Unless they reveal cards which change duels (which I loathed in Old5R).

Also if you challenge a character, and defeat them despite being the superior duelist, you honor your opponent's clan and memory for them earning a good death (they gain honor).

2 minutes ago, kpsmith said:

Its not cheating, losing duels is not dishonorable. Unless they reveal cards which change duels (which I loathed in Old5R).

I meant that it costs honor to make sure you win at any cost.

I don't wish to be a 'Debby Downer' today, but I just don't see the need for dueling altogether.

From all that we have seen so far, in my mind there are plenty of ways that a player can gain Honor, lose Honor, force inclusion/exclusion of Honor through characters and cards that I just... keep scratching my head as to why dueling is being included in this version.

Im not aiming of starting a fracas concerning this matter, and I'm not trolling. I'm just not sold on this mechanic, given all that we have been given to look at.

I am hoping I'm not the only one here who feels this way. ?

Also if you challenge a character, and defeat them despite being the superior duelist, you honor your opponent's clan and memory for them earning a good death (they gain honor).

Reminds me of how Mirumoto Satsu lost his duel against Hida Yakamo on purpose so he wouldn't ruin the prophecy of the Second Day of Thunder. Losing was the honorable thing to do...

8 minutes ago, LordBlunt said:

I don't wish to be a 'Debby Downer' today, but I just don't see the need for dueling altogether.

From all that we have seen so far, in my mind there are plenty of ways that a player can gain Honor, lose Honor, force inclusion/exclusion of Honor through characters and cards that I just... keep scratching my head as to why dueling is being included in this version.

Im not aiming of starting a fracas concerning this matter, and I'm not trolling. I'm just not sold on this mechanic, given all that we have been given to look at.

I am hoping I'm not the only one here who feels this way. ?

I respect your point of view.

I think the reason it is included is that it is such an iconic part of samurai/warrior culture in general.

The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, where this game derives it's name from, was basically a manual on dueling/destroying your enemies.

Mechanically the game probably gains nothing from duels, but thematically I think it does.

Also, didn't Hantei become emperor because he defeated his siblings in duels? Don't have my Dawn of the Empire fiction handy...

Maybe I've missed it, but in the case of a tie, do both players win, or lose?

4 minutes ago, agarrett said:

Maybe I've missed it, but in the case of a tie, do both players win, or lose?

I don't think we know yet. Assumption is challenger wins, because attacker wins, but I don't think it has been clarified.

This is a good question for Friday.

17 minutes ago, HirumaShigure said:

Also, didn't Hantei become emperor because he defeated his siblings in duels? Don't have my Dawn of the Empire fiction handy...

In the AEG timeline, yes. We still don't know how it went down in the FFG timeline.

6 minutes ago, Mirith said:

I don't think we know yet. Assumption is challenger wins, because attacker wins, but I don't think it has been clarified.

This is a good question for Friday.

For simplicity's sake I really hope it works that way, even though I've always liked the mental picture of a duel ending with both combatants striking each other down simultaneously.

I like that dueling is no longer, "I have a dueling deck, so I auto-kill anyone I want". There's actual give-and-take, and a real chance of winning or losing a duel.

23 minutes ago, HirumaShigure said:

Also, didn't Hantei become emperor because he defeated his siblings in duels? Don't have my Dawn of the Empire fiction handy...

Technically yes.......but, had everyone just listened to Togashi and obstained because the outcome was pre-determined.....

Togashi - "Fine, nobody listen to me, and have your stupid duel. I'm taking my swords and going home.....and by home I mean up to some really hard to reach mountain of solitude, where I can pout, er um I mean where I can contemplate, yeah contemplate, that's it. Jerks"

40 minutes ago, LordBlunt said:

From all that we have seen so far, in my mind there are plenty of ways that a player can gain Honor, lose Honor, force inclusion/exclusion of Honor through characters and cards that I just... keep scratching my head as to why dueling is being included in this version.

A repeatable action that can bow opponent characters and maybe make them lose honor/cards (or you use it to discard useless cards). Nope. No idea why we need that kind of stuff.

3 hours ago, Coyote Walks said:

Did you notice that Duelist Training (Core Set, 142) is a call back to CCG dueling mechanic?

And with 1 Influence, you may see it in Dragon decks that have to get their duel on.

hopefully one lesson FFG learned from AEG is to give all clans access to dueling and not making it exclusively a Crane/Dragon thing.

1 minute ago, Jedi samurai said:

hopefully one lesson FFG learned from AEG is to give all clans access to dueling and making it exclusively a Crane/Dragon thing.

They already have by eliminating special dueling stats and focus values.

2 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

They already have by eliminating special dueling stats and focus values.

but we've seen characters with duelist on them - depending on what does for them, if a clan has no duelists they it might not be viable for them at all.

Just now, Jedi samurai said:

but we've seen characters with duelist on them - depending on what does for them, if a clan has no duelists they it might not be viable for them at all.

Traditionally, traits (like Duelist) in FFG's games don't do anything without a card that targets such a Trait.

8 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Traditionally, traits (like Duelist) in FFG's games don't do anything without a card that targets such a Trait.

I realize that.

But if only 2 clans can play events that create duels, then not much has changed.