2 hours ago, twinstarbmc said:

Like "Shameful Display"? Unless it's the city of gratuitous public makeouts...

I wanna live there.

2 hours ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

More than anything, I find it odd that a Shameful Display would occur each time a conflict occurs in that province, like there's something in the water there or whatnot.

I tend to look at it as although the art depicts a very specific act, Rokugan is a land where all actions have consequences. In any given conflict some actions will be perceived as honorable while others are perceived as dishonorable. Not that Rokugan is freaktown.....although....I could be down for that too. I'm.due for my midlife crisis any day now

4 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

3 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Or like Defend the Wall or Elemental Fury, or The Art of Peace? Why no outrage over all these when they were spoiled?

Eh, I'm not outraged, I just think its odd to assign a category name to a game element , and then not fit the fiction to that category. It's like if they named a category of cards "characters" then proceeded to make those cards pieces of equipment that you attach to another category of cards called "lands", which are the people you control and play the game with.

There's no rage there, just a mild middle-aged confusion. Which is how I spend most of my days, y'know.

3 hours ago, twinstarbmc said:

I should have mentioned, besides a vague general feeling of "Hey, that's not a place..." I honestly don't care, doesn't bother me. I think there's enough misplaced rage going on as it is. We don't need more.

Yeah, fair enough. Though as I said, there's no rage anywhere. I'm 40 years old, I don't listen to Rage Against The Machine any more. I prefer my card game discussions set to the soothing tones of Birdie and Ed Sheeran.

3 hours ago, twinstarbmc said:

"DON'T.
DO.
THE THING."

"..."

"DON'T."

"..."

"Pretty please?"

"..."

"..."

"We did the thing."

"Don't make me turn this army around!"

"Just wait until your Daimyo gets home. Then you'll be sorry."

6 hours ago, Prepare for War said:

Does it bother anyone else that a card type "Province" can include things which conceptually are not Provinces?

You could look at it as some sort of province event. Like you are attacking province X but as your army approaches it is attacked by a night raid or during your approach one of the younger members of your army commits a shameful display of one kind or another.

Thematically it could work, the physical card represents the province while the content of the card represents the event.

It's not a bad card, but I feel like you're going to get 1~2 cards from it. Still, it looks good enough for the core set to see usage. People have said it would be good against Lion swarm but I'd rather use it against an Honor deck like the Crane where you can get more mileage out of it.

I find this to be a good under-the-stronghold card. Other provinces would be nice to hit, but you want to make sure this baby goes off (if it gets down to that).

If (when) a gaijin invasion angle comes around, I'm going to use a Sharpie to rename this card Knight Raid.

15 hours ago, Lprogrammed said:

You could look at it as some sort of province event. Like you are attacking province X but as your army approaches it is attacked by a night raid or during your approach one of the younger members of your army commits a shameful display of one kind or another.

Thematically it could work, the physical card represents the province while the content of the card represents the event.

The back of the card has this "mysterious paper wall" pattern IIRC. Of course you won't be able to admire this art in official play, but in casual games I think it could help to convey the idea you're suggesting.

Like, I think we all kind of understand that the events represent things occurring during the conflict at the province; it's just that it's weird that the card type is "province" while a lot of the card names don't fit this description. Perhaps they will be more of an exception than the rule and we'll be seeing more stuff like City of Lies and other "province-y" names once the full contents of the Core Set are known.

I think it's interesting that provinces, as a general rule, can add an element of confusion and/or change to the game either as actions or on reveal.

Province selection is likely to be a important part of considering both your strategy and that of your opponents. Do you chose provinces that have synergies with your dynasty and conflict decks, or provinces that might hamper your opponents strategy?

I have a slight worry here about the "hidden trap" mechanic, in that it does sometimes introduce a high level of variance to a game.

Netrunner (which I admit I've not played much) springs to mind, with its facedown agendas leading to increased variance in the game.

Of course "poker" elements are always going to add a little of this, though they'll still be skill in knowing the meta and the cardpool, reading an opponent's deck to see what they're likely to have hidden, and judging the tells and psychology of an opponent. That's why I'm still okay with this mechanic in principle.

It'll all be down to the execution - I hope that like with this Province, they'll always be the opportunity to mitigate randomness with scouting. The last thing we want to say is a later Province with a flipped effect that rewards big commitments ("destroy each attacker if there are two or fewer characters attacking" or some such crap) that then makes it a coin flip of luck whether attacking big or small is the right decision. Likewise, if the emergent game has too much pace and rush-aggression to allow for scouting, that'd up the variance too.

Curious how to see how this pans out, both in the cardpool, and in emergent play.