6 minutes ago, I Fight Dragons said:

She has very solid stats at 3/3/2 and the best ability we've seen printed on a character that costs 3 so far. Everything is subject to change as more of the card pool is revealed, like how initially we were lukewarm on Artisan Academy and in this episode mention that it's now a much better card with the Lion ally to give Crane a very low cost curve in the conflict deck. The statement was largely a reflection of our experience with her with what we've seen so far and she seems like that won't change as more stuff is revealed, but we'll be more clear about this in the future.

I would argue that Lion Prides Brawler ability is on similar power level or even slightly more powerful(it might look slightly weaker now because of how many Ready for battles everybody runs). Doji Challenger is obviously overstatted though.

59 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

I enjoy your episodes, but one thing irked me several times in this last one. The several references to Doji Challenger as the best 3 drop in the game. With less than 28% of the 3 drops previewed, I don't think that statement can be currently made.

Also, where did you see the rumor that ancestral lands would give 5 political? I find that hard to believe as that makes that province a 10 strength province in political matchups as it already has 5 base province strength.

It's been a discussion on the Discord for weeks that Ancestral Lands is either a 1, 3, or 5 bonus to political. I'm in the boat of 1, because it seems the most reasonable but some vocal members are adamant it is a 5. It's all a great mystery!

15 hours ago, JRosen9 said:

I enjoy your episodes, but one thing irked me several times in this last one. The several references to Doji Challenger as the best 3 drop in the game. With less than 28% of the 3 drops previewed, I don't think that statement can be currently made.

Most of the time when we are talking about cards, we are evaluating them in the context of the currently revealed cards. Doji Challenger, as of right now, is probably the best 3 drop in the game simply because of her versatility in addition to her fantastic ability. Lion's Pride Brawler would easily take that spot from her if LPB had 3 Political strength. However, because LPD is at 2 Pol it makes her super susceptible to the Crane Stronghold ability. LPB is about on the same level as, if not better than, Doji Challenger if the Lion player is attacking first.

I've added episode 4 to the OP. Give it a listen because the Dragon clan sure are an interesting bunch.

Episode 4: Mountain Monk Investment Bank ( Video ) In Episode 4, we briefly discuss games we've been playing and Alex's first adventures with the tabletop RPG then kick off into another clan card analysis. This time, we travel to the northern mountains and explore what secrets the Dragon clan bring to the playing field. We finally get a good pacing on card reviews as this time we finish in just over 2 hours. As always, we hope you enjoy the show!

Episode 5 Added to the OP.

Episode 5: Crab90X ( Video ) Welcome to Crab90X, the free workout to get your Crab deck to be as SWOLE and JACKED as possible, as quickly as possible! In Episode 5, Travis, Dan and Alex are joined by returning episode 1 host, Zach Cherry. They discuss Zach's first game of the L5R LCG, new cards from the L5R livestream, and then cover the Crab cards we know about it in our usual round table style. Enjoy the show and CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAB on!

Is this podcast 2 hours and 45 minutes long? XD

You crazy, Travis!

3 hours ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

Is this podcast 2 hours and 45 minutes long? XD

You crazy, Travis!

Yeah all of our podcast tend to run a bit long.

4 hours ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

Is this podcast 2 hours and 45 minutes long? XD

You crazy, Travis!

Too many cards, so much to say! I would blame FFG for giving us so many spoilers but... I don't want to.

Phoenix episode is up:

Episode 6: My Clan Champion Cannot be this Cute - The Fire Chickens are here! In episode 6 Travis, Dan, and Gentry talk about community run events at Gencon, Travis rants about the Dragon alliance, and then they talk about the Phoenix clan cards in depth. We hope you enjoy the show and learn a thing or two about our scholarly fire birds.

Video version

Added our last episode before gencon to the OP, focusing on the Unicorn cards revealed last week.

Episode 7: Clippity Cloppity ( Video )- In episode 7 of the Winter Court Podcast Alex, Dan, and Travis continue the search for Zach; but in the meantime they discuss Dan's experience with an actual core set, the gencon story prize, and review the cards that have been revealed for everyone's favorite Gaijin gatherers: the Unicorn clan. As ever, enjoy the show and if you find Zach, please send him back to us for a reward.

Episode 8 has been added.

Episode 8: The Kiku Matsuri - In Episode 8 of The Winter Court Podcast, we mix things up as Travis and Alex are joined live on stream by the winner of the gencon tournament, Matthew Legare aka Reiga. Together they discuss the events at gencon, the first dynasty pack Tears of Amaterasu, and answer viewer questions about the game and its future. This is our first time doing something live and on stream, so be sure to let us know if you'd like to experience more of this in the future and we hope you enjoy the show as always.

For future podcast and game streams, you can follow Travis on Twitch at: www.twitch.tv/travisfightsdragons/

I'm really glad that you guys are up on clan loyalty and hatamoto now. It's hard to describe why the team atmosphere is a very positive thing for competitive card games. You kind of gotta see it in action. Also promoting hatamoto gives your top performers a real tangible role in the community, which is a cool reward.

On the topic of the clan roles I hope you guys can step away and look at the big picture. I see a lot of people talk about how they hate that some stranger is going to restrict your deck building options, but I think this is exactly what the LCG format needed. I'm not sure how many of you guys on the Winter Court podcast were players of long lived LCGs like Netrunner or AGOT 1.0, but staleness in the card pool is a real thing as time goes on. We've been lobbying hard for FFG to aggressively cycle L5R. If they are reluctant to do that then this is the next best thing. It's effectively a soft cycle every year. Also it's a cycle that the community has control over, which is even more interesting. I heard you guys say that you wish they did this next cycle because you want to see the card pool grow more early, but we are talking about being locked out of 1 card per faction. Just 1 card this cycle. If they release the same number of seeker/keeper cards each cycle they spread out this fluctuating card pool, which is good because:

1. The decision will ramp in significance. This way we have a bit of a learning curve for the community.

2. that will matter once we reach the actual card cycle dates and parts of the card pool drop out (including these keeper/seeker cards).

In my mind the great thing about this is it further pushes the idea of community building and clan loyalty because as you guys state you will want to discuss what the optimal decisions are before entering Worlds.

If these plans are effective then this is exactly the type of thing that would breed loyalty to the game and help inject excitement as time goes on and the game starts to age. For LCGs they needed to do something like this to stop people from jumping ship after the 4th or 5th cycle to play the new hot game, which has been a problem for LCGs. That's compounded by the barrier of entry for new players once you reach that stage in an LCG's card pool. They still haven't said if they are doing anything to promoting new player adoptions rates. If they plan to do nothing then I think they need to do anything in their power to promote a game that retains it's audience. I think one of the major reasons L5R is a long lived franchise is because of stuff like clan loyalty and impactful community decisions as tournament prizes. So it makes sense that they are leaning hard into it right now.

You make some good points in favor of the role specific cards. More than anything, I know that I personally want to see how it ends up playing out as it could go either way. The main downside to printing these role specific cards in my eyes is it slows down the growth of the card pool. I would think that ideally right after the core set, the first cycle is used primarily as a springboard to expand the card pool tremendously. That said, it's only 16 cards out of 120 that are going to be role specific so maybe it's not a big enough chunk to disable deck diversity after the first cycle. I do hope they are still releasing new strongholds this cycle as well to promote different styles of deck.

I definitely hope we get to see some new strongholds in the first cycle. That would help a great deal in creating a more diverse deck space.

It's hard to see the forest from the trees at this point but in my experience after the first cycle and a half we are usually in a pretty reasonable state for the card pool. By the fourth cycle people started talking about staleness in the card pool. If they slow that growth down slightly for the option to place more of an emphasis on a soft cycle card pool I think it's worth it in the long run to incur a slow down. I think FFG needs to think about the long term here. Also keep in mind that it's 16 cards of which half of them will be playable in any given faction. So in reality it's only 8 cards right now that we are fretting over here. What I think will be very significant to the discussion here is will they be doing a deluxe box during the first cycle or between the first and second cycle. Also will that deluxe be a new faction or will it divide it's contents among all the existing factions (or a subset of the existing factions). If so that definitely will jump up the growth in the short term.

Episode 9 has been added to the listing. Thanks for listening, guys

Masked Swimming Lessons - In Episode 9 of the Winter Court Podcast, the usual crew is joined by Gencon finalist and Scorpion player Mat Frye. Together we discuss what we'd like to see from FFG about rotation and ban lists now that Netrunner is officially rotating by the World Championships. The crew then goes into the last core set clan review, the Scorpion Clan. The masked "villains" of Rokugan seem to be a powerful force to be reckoned with so we hope you enjoy our critical look at what they are all about.