Hello there!

A long time ago (some twelve years ago) I fell into this game because of the collapse of my old card game. I eventually would fall out of love with the game because I got tired of the chase of buying booster packs and trying to keep up.

I immediately fell for the Phoenix Clan. I always felt like I was the down on my luck clan because I could rarely win. I didn't really understand how to build decks or play looking back. Playing the Pokemon TCG again this year after 20 years off of that train, I've learned that the way I wanted the game to play and the way it was played didn't line up. So I imagine the same was true in L5R.

If I had a chance, my preference would be Bat Clan and the Naga. The Naga were all but destroyed ("Sleeping") when I joined at the start of Diamond edition. The Bat Clan never got to be a full thing, but it always was cute to see the baby Bat Clan member in what I want to say was called Test of Enlightenment. Seeing as everything is now restarting, I imagine I won't have a chance to visit either of those or the burning sands for quite sometime.

Much older now, I am almost 30 and feel the sway of Scorpion and Crane. In general, I'm a bit more flexible and want to learn more about the facitons this time and not simply being a diehard fantatic for a faction because that's who I chose and I'm sticking with it.

Long story short, we are now here. The game has changed ownership and moved over to another company. I don't know if any of the team from the old game is passing over. I looked at a bunch of the content that was available, but am still digging through things for information.

I think my main question is related to the fact that I don't want to get my hopes up. It looks like with this being an LCG I should be able to just buy 1 of each set and get a playset of all the cards. I'm left with two questions.

The first and the major one, is do we know if a player will need to buy more than one core set to have a full play set? This ended up being what emptied my coffers when trying to start the GOT LCG, and I never got into it. With a late 2017 release, I assume that I won't get an answer to this until the set is released to GenConers.

The second is based on the card previews so far, does it seem likely that there will be able to be clan loyalty for players?

And as a Sub-question, if I can be loyal to a clan, will there be neutral cards I'll need multiple playsets of should I want to maintain more than one deck (My partner would likely play using a deck I build for her).

Also shout out to my man Isawa Sezaru.

And apologies for my rambling nature of this text. I didn't spend any time editing it.

You will need 3 cores for a full playset. After that, you can buy only 1 of each released set and you'll have a full playset.

As for clan loyalty I don't know and no one does. I feel old players will be clan loyal while new ones won't.

13 minutes ago, titanmatrix said:

Long story short, we are now here. The game has changed ownership and moved over to another company. I don't know if any of the team from the old game is passing over. I looked at a bunch of the content that was available, but am still digging through things for information.

I think my main question is related to the fact that I don't want to get my hopes up. It looks like with this being an LCG I should be able to just buy 1 of each set and get a playset of all the cards. I'm left with two questions.

The first and the major one, is do we know if a player will need to buy more than one core set to have a full play set? This ended up being what emptied my coffers when trying to start the GOT LCG, and I never got into it. With a late 2017 release, I assume that I won't get an answer to this until the set is released to GenConers.

The second is based on the card previews so far, does it seem likely that there will be able to be clan loyalty for players?

And as a Sub-question, if I can be loyal to a clan, will there be neutral cards I'll need multiple playsets of should I want to maintain more than one deck (My partner would likely play using a deck I build for her).

Also shout out to my man Isawa Sezaru.

And apologies for my rambling nature of this text. I didn't spend any time editing it.

Players need to buy THREE Core Sets to have a complete play set, or card swap with others and focus on a single faction.

Clan loyalty will always be encouraged (You declare your Clan and get a promo for that Clan at the GenCon kickoff) but due to the LCG model hardcore players will have full playsets of all Clans.

Finally, there's almost always some staple neutrals you don't mind having extras of.

Don't let the fact that you will need 3 core sets deter you though. That is 120 dollars and you have the entire playset. For that price in a CCG, you get a box of boosters...

8 hours ago, Daigotsu Kai'Sen said:

Don't let the fact that you will need 3 core sets deter you though. That is 120 dollars and you have the entire playset. For that price in a CCG, you get a box of boosters...

And if there's a local scene you can surely get a full set of a clan or two out of two cores, I've even seen it done with one.

Our LCG scene is pretty strong and the local group usually buys 2 cores each and then goes in jointly on X more cores to complete faction playsets (of course there's many who just buy 3 cores too).

I'm a Diceroller not a Cardflopper. The only L5R cards I ever bought was a Crab starter and 2 boosters.......back in Pearl edition.

I gonna have to grab myself at least one core this time arouund and check it out

on the plus side, I think I pulled Yakamo out of one of those boosters.

If you think the upfront cost will be an issue then set aside $15 a month starting now. I will be just like buying a Dynasty pack a month until the release. This will save you enough to buy all three cores you need for a play set.

This also assumes that your FLGS does not have deals on LCG cores like mine does to encourage new players. 20% off the cores is a nice discount.

I think at this point I might consider picking up one core set when the time comes and see how our household feels. Three coresets though, that's intense and off-putting. 120 dollars as a base for any game is pretty insane, as a board game player.

I doubt I'll really get into the game if this is the case. My money is at a premium given how many hobbies I have.

35 minutes ago, titanmatrix said:

I think at this point I might consider picking up one core set when the time comes and see how our household feels. Three coresets though, that's intense and off-putting. 120 dollars as a base for any game is pretty insane, as a board game player.

I doubt I'll really get into the game if this is the case. My money is at a premium given how many hobbies I have.

Three cores is really only necessary if you absolutely need a full playset or are really competitive. I would expect that you can get a couple perfectly fun decks (though maybe not quite tournament-legal) from a single core, and the more dynasty packs get released, the less you'll need those extra two cores.

Note Core sets are not going to actually cost $40 (US) each. That is just MSRP. With only a mild effort, you can at least get them for less than $35 (US), and they are sure to drop to $30 (US) after a little while.

This does assume the US. I don't know about outside of the US, but I figure prices will be similar.

54 minutes ago, titanmatrix said:

I think at this point I might consider picking up one core set when the time comes and see how our household feels. Three coresets though, that's intense and off-putting. 120 dollars as a base for any game is pretty insane, as a board game player.

Price points for most of the big box games from all distributors have been at $100+ for years now, and if you can pick up a good large box game at less than $70 you're doing pretty good on your scrounging rolls (there's still plenty of great board games priced less than $50, but they're the smaller boxes with a lot less physical stuff in them). Just looking through The Hotness on BoardGameGeek shows an eyeballed average of $80 for current games full of stuff (which LCGs, being boxes full of a lot of high-quality printed paper, definitely qualify as). Then there's the Kickstarted monster hits like Gloomhaven ($140), and Kingdom Death: Monster ($200, or $500, and up up up up up up).

But you're missing three points it seems:

1. You don't need 3 cores to play the game. That just gives you a full playset. 1 core can allow you and a friend of family member to play the game and enjoy it, but without much opportunity to deck build.

2. It's a collectable card game (even if they put "living" in front of that). You don't buy into this game without knowing there's going to be an ongoing price tag attached to it if you want to follow it (which, of course, you don't. You can happily play the game forever with just one core set). All future releases will have full playsets, but assuming you pick up the six expansion packs in the first cycle, that will run you $90 (plus tax) total. After that will be their first clan-specific deluxe, which will be $30 (more or less), and then the second cycle ($90 for six packs over six months). The tail end of LCG buy-in always adds up to be much more than the initial front investment if you choose to follow the game. One side-effect of this is if you refuse to buy multiple cores, you still end up being able to deck build a fine deck as more expansions come out and add more cards to your pool.

3. $120 for a core set playset is cheap. And I say that in this case in that FFG has kept the price point for their LCG core sets at $40 MSRP for something like 15 years or more; they're actually printing the core sets as loss leaders at this point. Keeping the buy in for the game line at the same price has been a major point of their marketing strategy, and they've definitely not followed the trends from all other major game companies in raising their prices to match inflation and increased costs of production (paper costs, for instance, have nearly quadrupled in the past 15 years from a printing standpoint). You are paying 2005 prices for a complete playset. Back in 2005, board games that now cost $80 were going for about $40 (compare the parts-intensive 2005 classic Twilight Struggle with 2016's new fan favorite Scythe). And for any contemporary collectable card game (Magic, Yu-GiOh, etc.), you sure as heck aren't getting a complete playset from the factory for $120.

The main thing is though, it's not $120 for the base game. The game is perfectly playable with one core set. All their LCGs are. Your deck building options are limited, but the game is there, the rules work, play and have fun! Go try your one playset, see what you think about it. That sounds like a great idea.