This is supposed to be a follow up to this post.

I'll try to sketch the playstyle of each clan, considering the main points from the previous post (Rings, Characters, Conflict Cards, Path to Victory and Game Length). Again, this is just speculation for the sake of fun. If that's your kind of thing, take it as a thought exercise. I am in no way certain this will end up being accurate.

Furthermore, I think most of the Clans will truly come into their own only after the end of the first cycle: the slots in the Core set are often not enough to fully develop the main theme of a faction, let alone developing all of their subthemes as well.

One final caveat: I am not considering "splashing", since we know way too few cards to even start discussing that, but that will likely play a major role in determining how a Clan will play out.

Edit: As Mig el Pig noted in a post below, I forgot to mention an important element: the Strongholds. The ones we know so far (Crane, Lion) reinforce the respective Clans' strengths, the other ones are completely unknown.

Crane Clan

What we know so far: The Crane clan seems to benefit from really high political stats across most of their characters, while they seem to have few characters with good military stats. In addition to this, they seem to be well-suited to a Honor win, due to their general theme of honoring characters. Their conflict cards build up on said theme, and are rather cheap with an average cost around 1. They have very solid low cost characters and a couple of very powerful 3-cost ones (Kakita Asami, Doji Challenger).

Conclusions: I think they will play as a rather swarmy faction, with a host of low-cost characters, constantly entering and leaving play, and a few pivotal mid-cost ones. Crane will probably use their "honorable nature" as a means to influence their opponent's bidding, potentially limiting their card draw and making them more predictable in duels. Their favored Rings will probably be Fire and Earth in most matchups: the first one will be critical, ensuring they'll be able to keep their high-glory characters relevant; the second one to bolster their card control strategy. The Crane will probably come into their own in the midgame, in which they will be able to leverage their ability to threaten both a Conflict win via political strength and a Honor win, while also having built up a strong board position through honored characters and possibly reaping the rewards for having set up a strong duelist.

Crab Clan

What we know so far: What is certain is that the Crab will have a strong holding theme with a military focus. Further speculation suggests that they might focus on a few high-cost characters. While that is not confirmed, it would seem to play well with their holding theme, allowing them to make use of province slots very efficiently. The introductory blurb also states that they will be at their best when defending and reacting to their opponent's aggression.

Conclusions: Compared to the Crane, for which we have so much information, it's very difficult to make speculations. I think it's a reasonable assumption that they will want a couple holdings out at any time, making their provinces harder to break. They'll probably be a very attritious Clan well suited to mid-length games: early on they will purchase less characters than their opponent (probably with a high-low distribution: a 0-1 cost and 3-4 cost), counting on their holdings to keep at bay those attacks they won't be able to repel, whereas in the subsequent rounds they should enjoy an advanatage by having invested more fate into higher-cost characters. Their opponent might be able to break 1-2 Provinces early, but after that the Crab should be able to stabilise and make their stand at the remaining ones, taking particular care in protecting those provinces with their Holdings. As for the Rings, Water seems particularly useful for Crab to be able to exploit their high-cost characters more than once in a given round, possibly for defense too. Finally, Crab conflict cards will probably be inexpensive, seeing as they will probably want to invest many additional fate tokens into valuable characters.

Dragon Clan

What we know so far: The Dragon clan will focus on attachments, played on a few elite characters, if the introductory blurb is to be trusted. We have also seen a good number of powerful low-cost characters, and we have been informed that they will interact with Fate tokens on unclaimed Rings. Finally, they will be able to compete well both in Military and Political conflicts, making them a flexible clan.

Conclusions: the Dragon seems to share some mechanics with the Crab. Whereas the Crab will probably rely more on high-cost characters, thus being more fate-intensive, the Dragon clan will probably make use of attachments, a more card-intensive playstyle. Thus this clan's strenght might be based upon powering up low-cost efficient characters with attachments, providing a good investment option for extra fate. What perplexes me though is that low-cost characters (2 and lower) are vulnerable to a plethora of card effects: losing a powered up character to an Assassination, for example, might be a crushing blow. What Dragon's best options for "attachment carriers" will be remains to be seen. Anyway, Dragon too will probably want a few Holdings in play, at least after the first few rounds needed to set up. Unlike the Crab though, they will be able to make use of Dueling characters - possibly the best in the game. That, and the fact that the Dragon clan might be able to convincingly threaten two provinces due to their flexibility, makes me think they will be more a long-term inclined clan. Being able to break two provinces for two rounds in a row after performing small scale aggression for the rest of the game would fit with their theme of a sudden burst of activity after a long period of calm. As for the Rings, they should be one of the Clans being able to get the most out of the Ring of Water, while also rating the Earth one very highly due to their card-intensive long-term oriented playstyle. One final thing to consider is whether or not we'll see readying effects: so far we have seen plenty of bowing effects, but even a single readying effect (not conditional as Ready for Battle) might make the Dragon's (and Crab's) strategy a lot more effective.

Lion Clan

What we know so far: With the clan preview coming in a couple of days, we will probably get many answers. As of now, we know the Clan will focus on a Military swarm theme, with an additional honor subtheme. We also know that they will have only a few important political characters, which will likely end up sticking around for a few rounds.

Conclusions: Everything seems to point to a pure swarm style, even the Lion Holding spoiled so far (Staging Ground, which allows you to turn up two facedown dynasty cards). They will probably invest most of their fate on characters, filling the board with cheap bodies backed up by a few stronger ones (in this regard they will probably be the Crane's military counterpart, but swarming even more than them); if all their political characters will be as strong as the Lion's Pride Brawler they might very well be worth a hefty fate investment. They will probably play as a rush faction with their peak of strength around round 3-4, and a smattering of honor to keep their opponent cautious with the conflict bids or as fallback plan if something goes wrong. Conflict cards-wise, cheap utility tricks, such as Good Omen and Ready for Battle, will probably be their best choices. As for the Rings, I don't think there will be one that will be much more useful for the Lion compared to the rest of the clans; the Ring of Fire (honor) and Ring of Earth (cheap cards) could probably be their favored options.

Phoenix Clan

What we know so far: They will be able to manipulate the Rings and the type of the conflicts. They dislike overt military aggression, thus suggesting they will have low military offensive power, and they make opposing military conflicts less effective. They will be able to use their characters to trigger effects without committing to conflicts. Among the cards revealed so far, we have three characters interacting with the Rings and another one ( Shiba Peacemaker - 1 cost 4/1 cannot attack ) suggesting a defensive playstyle.

Conclusions: I don't have anything solid to provide ground for any. The only thing I'm fairly certain of (from a gut feeling) is that the Phoenix clan will be responsible for most of the games ending in round 7 or beyond - they will probably play the (very) long game, hindering their opponent while they will most likely seek an honor win. They will probably attempt to build up their board with many low-cost characters with mediocre stats but great abilities and strong synergy so, compared to other clans, my feeling is that they won't have as many medium-high costers around. As for the conflict cards, I expect theirs to be more expensive than average, with many nasty tricks. The Ring of Earth will probably be their #1 choice, especially given the synergy with the Solemn Scholar (which can bow an attacker if you have claimed the RoE). The fact their characters won't need to partecipate into conflicts quite as often as those from the other clans might make them more resilient to enemy effects.

Scorpion Clan

What we know so far: They will want to draw many Conflict cards, having more powerful than average ones. They will have a "dishonor your opponent" theme. We know only a handful of Scorpion cards, of which only two are characters. One of the spoiled cards, City of Lies, suggests they will indeed focus heavily on playing conflict cards. The remaining are two very powerful and expensive events.

Conclusions: Whereas Phoenix will probably play "honor control", Scorpion will probably have a "dishonor control" playstyle. Scorpion too will probably play many low cost characters with strong abilities, with their theme revolving around honor/dishonor. They will probably have cards/effects that force their opponent to suffer honor losses as well as dishonoring characters, also using that as a form of control upon their opponent's card draw: keeping the opponent close to the honor loss threshold will force them to bid more conservatively. A card such as Blackmail makes investing in 2-cost characters very dangerous, while I can Swim means your opponent will have to constantly fight to keep their key characters neutral or honored, regardless of their glory value. As for which kind of game the Scorpion clan will prefer, I would expect them to push for a Conflict win, mostly via political, during the midgame. The Ring of Fire will probably be hotly contested in games involving the Scorpion.

Unicorn Clan

What we know so far: Able to move characters in and out of conflicts, probably military focused. Prefer acting first, stronger when they attack. Among the characters spoiled, there is one with Glory 2 and one with Glory 3, which suggests honoring might be very important for this clan.

Conclusions: To me the Unicorn is the "pure rush" clan. We don't have many characters spoiled so far, but half of them have both high military and political skills. The high Glory stats found on those characters will make it very easy to turn them into monsters capable of threatening more than a single province, with their mobility adding a flexibility that will make it very hard for their opponent to stop them from breaking through. The newly-spoiled Battle Maiden also seems to encourage a rush style, allowing the player to burn non-immediately useful cards to gain a significant buff. They will probably make use of their ability to move in and out of conflicts in a similiar way to how other clans will use their conflict cards: forcing overcommits on their opponent's part or snatching a win where the defenses were unprepared for an attack, thus balancing the inherent disadvantage in having to commit your forces first as the attacker. Their favored Rings will most likely be Fire and Water, with both giving them very significant benefits.

I'm looking for crab to have a dishonor sub-theme. Likely through dishonoring those who attack them. Why would anyone attack the wall and/or it's defenders? You'll let the Shadowlands in!

I'm actually looking at Crab to possibly have an honor running theme similar to the Night's Watch wall deck. Something like a holding with the reaction after the regroup phase (or whatever its called) begins gain 2 honor if this province is not broken. That way they can actually gain honor by defending.

18 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

I'm actually looking at Crab to possibly have an honor running theme similar to the Night's Watch wall deck. Something like a holding with the reaction after the regroup phase (or whatever its called) begins gain 2 honor if this province is not broken. That way they can actually gain honor by defending.

Crab aren't exactly known as honor runners. They are actually the second lowest on the honor scale. (Lion/Crane/Phoenix - Dragon - (Fox) - Unicorn - Crab - Scorpion/Mantis - Ronin and way behind them Spider.

Although I can see them getting punish mechanics like the Night Watch.

Regarding Clan play styles: I agree in general, especially the strength of the Earth Ring, which is rather similar then Air except it's effect is immediate. We also don't know the strength of the Water Ring yet. It's strength will depend a lot on when you can initiate it's effect.

One card you haven't considerd in your description of the Clans is the stronghold. Although so far we've only seen the Lion and Crane ones it's these cards that will determine the clans for a long time. It's the one thing you'll always have from the start and throughout the game. The Lion stronghold screams Mil, Swarm and attack while the Crane one whispers: Step up to us in court you better be good.

The other (starting) stronholds will be similair. Basic, direct and a good indication what the Clan stands for.

For example Crab: bow during a conflict to give a defending personality +2/3 force. Unicorn: Bow to move a personality into a conflict. etc

1 minute ago, Mig el Pig said:

Crab aren't exactly known as honor runners. They are actually the second lowest on the honor scale. (Lion/Crane/Phoenix - Dragon - (Fox) - Unicorn - Crab - Scorpion/Mantis - Ronin and way behind them Spider.

Except when they actually had three different honor running strongholds during their run with AEG (Great Walls of Kaiu, Carpenter Castle, and Original Yasuki Palace).

Personally I feel the game mechanics will allow the style of play to be dictated by the players. To me it looks like all win cons will be open to all clans. While some clans may have strengths in certain conflict types and/or win conditions, the players should be able to decide how versatile their decks are.

This it one game where I could see the old "rock, paper, scissors" method of creating parity will be thrown out the window. The concept of "metagame" could very well be completely removed as well since the game mechanics, in theory, should allow players to adapt within a game, as long as they built their deck in a way to do so.

Of course this is assuming the card pool is deep enough to do this, but, that appears to be the intent. That no clan is limited in the types of win conditions or styles of play they wish to pursue. Some styles and/or win cons may not favor a particular clan but I get the feeling nothing will be impossible. Good play should allow your Scorpion deck to take an honor victory sometimes, or result in a Lion player dishonoring a Crane, or a Phoenix player going all out province destruction.....etc.

The mechanics appear to allow players the freedom to break from the typical themes of each clan. Figuring out how committed your opponent is to one style of play and knowing how your deck can combat that will be more important than staying in theme for your clan.

The only prediction I would be comfortable with at this time would be to expect a high amount of aggressive decks early on in the game. That could be aggression towards any of the win cons. This should eventually decrease as more of us get comfortable with the game. While some of us are L5R veterans with 20+ years of L5R experience and others have played lists of similar LCGs, none of us have actually played this game. So it's likely we will go through a phase, early on in the game, where aggressive decks with a single minded approach have some success as that tends to be true with most games. In time I expect we will see more well rounded decks and play.

2 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

Except when they actually had three different honor running strongholds during their run with AEG (Great Walls of Kaiu, Carpenter Castle, and Original Yasuki Palace).

3 out of 26 strongholds qualifies for me as aren't exactly known as. Heck even Crane had some military attacking strongholds.

I also skipped gold edition for the most parts so I didn't see much Kaiu or Yasuki Palace. Isn't the strength of the Yasuki one that it's extra gold allows it to do a lot of diffrent strategies (or was it specificly for a Honour strat?)

28 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

Except when they actually had three different honor running strongholds during their run with AEG (Great Walls of Kaiu, Carpenter Castle, and Original Yasuki Palace).

Is true but at the time of AEG they did this to attract players to buy the new boosters, so they lived creating new styles of decks for the clans, it was so to the end, even had Deck Lion dishonored, which had nothing to do with The clan theme.

Of course this should happen as they are casting new cards, but at the beginning they should follow the themes of each clan, in which case the Crab should stay away from the honor for now.

2 hours ago, Mig el Pig said:

One card you haven't considerd in your description of the Clans is the stronghold. Although so far we've only seen the Lion and Crane ones it's these cards that will determine the clans for a long time. It's the one thing you'll always have from the start and throughout the game. The Lion stronghold screams Mil, Swarm and attack while the Crane one whispers: Step up to us in court you better be good.

You make many good points. You're also right I forgot to mention that we had no information regarding the majority of the strongholds, I'll modify to OP to mention that - thanks!

That being said, if the other strongholds will be similiar to the Crane and Lion ones, I expect them to simply reinforce the main theme of the faction. If that were the case, they won't give any indication regarding an aspect of the playstyle we don't know yet. I'd be very curious to know the Phoenix one though.

2 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

This it one game where I could see the old "rock, paper, scissors" method of creating parity will be thrown out the window. The concept of "metagame" could very well be completely removed as well since the game mechanics, in theory, should allow players to adapt within a game, as long as they built their deck in a way to do so.

I hate "rock, paper, scissors" and meta cards with a passion, so I couldn't hope for anything better than this.

However, I think each clan is designed to have their own peculiarity so, while each of them will probably have more than one option for their game plan, I expect them to excel in a specific aspect of the game.

As for early game predictions, my feel is that Crane and Lion will be the easiest clans to play. Crab, Unicorn and Dragon will probably be mid-difficulty, Phoenix and Scorpion will be the most difficult to play. So yes, I too think swarmy decks will have an edge early, especially since it seems to me that 1-cost characters with high stats (the ones I called workhorses in the other post) will be critical in having success, especially early on. I expect the factions with the best low costers to perform very well in the initial meta.

I think that crab might have some sort of control aspect to it. Otherwise playing defenseivly would be hard. One of my favorite aspects of crab that always seemed overlooked was crabs playing by there own rules. Such as using force in a duel and one of the tetsubo equipment cards given a bonus when the character it was on dueled. I can totally see a crab card that lets you use military to defend a political battle.

I think the Crab clan is a difficult one, game design-wise. For example, if you give them easy access to honor win (as some posters above mentioned), all their strategy becomes: "turtle, turtle and turtle some more" - which clearly wouldn't be good for the game, since it would be a highly non-interactive experience.

It's possible they'll get some sort of control (most clans probably will), but I wouldn't be a fan if they were to get a lot. On the other hand, I really really like the idea of them being able to make use of their Mil strength even in non-Mil situations. For example, I think the Lion's Pride Brawler could have slotted in nicely as a Crab card with a few adjustments.

3 minutes ago, Eu8L1ch said:

I think the Crab clan is a difficult one, game design-wise. For example, if you give them easy access to honor win (as some posters above mentioned), all their strategy becomes: "turtle, turtle and turtle some more" - which clearly wouldn't be good for the game, since it would be a highly non-interactive experience.

It's possible they'll get some sort of control (most clans probably will), but I wouldn't be a fan if they were to get a lot. On the other hand, I really really like the idea of them being able to make use of their Mil strength even in non-Mil situations. For example, I think the Lion's Pride Brawler could have slotted in nicely as a Crab card with a few adjustments.

Turtling wouldn't necessarily be non-interactive. Look at Nights Watch wall decks in AGOT. They get their "honor" by defending challenges. Forcing them to actually be there and interacting. There are ways they can be defensive without being old school Kaiu Walls decks

8 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

Turtling wouldn't necessarily be non-interactive. Look at Nights Watch wall decks in AGOT. They get their "honor" by defending challenges. Forcing them to actually be there and interacting. There are ways they can be defensive without being old school Kaiu Walls decks

One of the most common compliants about The Wall decks is that they are non interactive.

1 minute ago, JRosen9 said:

Turtling wouldn't necessarily be non-interactive. Look at Nights Watch wall decks in AGOT. They get their "honor" by defending challenges. Forcing them to actually be there and interacting. There are ways they can be defensive without being old school Kaiu Walls decks

I am not familiar with GoT, especially the 2nd edition, so I can't comment on that.

As a general principle, the point of a strong defense is to be a deterrent to attacks and/or to repel them when they occur. Giving Crab the ability to win without going on the offensive would remove the need for them to step out of their "comfort zone". Also, non-interactive here should not be intended in the narrow sense that you're not interacting with your opponent, but rather that the amount of interactions is limited (I only attack, you only defend). It could even become completely non-interactive if their opponent is playing a honor-running Clan (such as the Phoenix, if speculation is correct), since trying to break a Crab stronghold would be way too tough and punishing for them to attempt.

Perhaps non-interaction is the wrong way of thinking. Anti-interaction is how I think of it. To use Magic colors, is scorpion is black control that gives negative 1 tokens then crab is blue counterspell and negation. From the few crab cards I remember we have a card that lets me kill one of my guys to kill one of yours(ok that one is more of a black card) one that ignores effects that would move it, and one that lets you draw 2 pick 1. This all feel like the kind of stuff in a control deck built to negate actions buy your opponent and they have said that the crab will have a reactive style so the idea of countering your opponents cards and actions is the obvious path.

Sorry for engaging in a bit of threadcromancy, but I was curious about the conclusions we're drawing about the Scorpion. Much of the speculation I've seen so far seems to be based around the idea that Scorpion will be threatening their opponents with a Dishonor loss, but I don't see where this idea comes from, other than extrapolating from the CCG. We've been told that Scorpion will want lots of cards in their hand, and we've seen effects based on them bidding high, so I would think it more likely that the Scorpion will themselves be hovering around the low-honor zone, with most of their dishonoring of opponents being the opposing characters; not players. This will simultaneously slow down honor gains and hinder conflict wins (unless the opponent has a lot of 0-glory characters).

Perhaps some players will act rashly and end up dropping too far in honor against Scorpion, but I think the vast majority of the games will be the Scorpion merely leveraging their own dishonorable tactics for great gain.

I think that exactly will be the primary theme of the Scorpion clan in the core set considering what we've seen spoiled so far. They plan to be behind in the honor game, behind after the dynasty phase yet still win because they have a strong conflict deck. That would cash in on the whole "I Can Swim" philosophy. As I discussed in another thread if the plan is to always be behind in honor and draw heavy from the conflict deck then you are working directly against a dishonor win condition. So the two are pretty much mutually exclusive.

I cast my vote now I just gotta wait a couple weeks to see how well I did

2 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Sorry for engaging in a bit of threadcromancy, but I was curious about the conclusions we're drawing about the Scorpion. Much of the speculation I've seen so far seems to be based around the idea that Scorpion will be threatening their opponents with a Dishonor loss, but I don't see where this idea comes from, other than extrapolating from the CCG. We've been told that Scorpion will want lots of cards in their hand, and we've seen effects based on them bidding high, so I would think it more likely that the Scorpion will themselves be hovering around the low-honor zone, with most of their dishonoring of opponents being the opposing characters; not players. This will simultaneously slow down honor gains and hinder conflict wins (unless the opponent has a lot of 0-glory characters).

Perhaps some players will act rashly and end up dropping too far in honor against Scorpion, but I think the vast majority of the games will be the Scorpion merely leveraging their own dishonorable tactics for great gain.

Don't worry, the thread is fine with being resurrected

Scorpion were a bit of an enigma for me when I wrote this, and they still are to an extent. I think your question is more than reasonable.

The basis for the conclusions I've expressed in the OP come mostly from trying to evaluate the "Fate-spending pattern" of the various Clans combined with their use of "Dynasty slots". Scorpion will probably spend a lot of Fate on Conflict cards, meaning they will have less to spend on Dynasty; this in turn means they might want to make good use of Holdings - since they likely wouldn't play all four characters every round anyway. If you take a look at the card number distribution for them, they have at least 3 events with a cost of 2 or higher (2 of which have already been revealed): that is a unique thing, even the Phoenix which will likely go higher on conflict cards has just a single event costing 2.

Now, what's the point of drawing more and more cards when you already have 10 cards in hand that are so expensive that you'll never be able to play all of them? My assumption thus is that Scorpion will not want to draw 5 every round - that might not even be doable, if your opponent is bidding more conservatively.

Another point: due to how dishonor works, you need only a handful of abilties that remove honor for a dishonor strategy to become a real threat. Crab only has 3 cards, but those 3 cards go quite a long way towards the objective. We don't know yet what Scorpion have to deal with dishonor. It's true that the only hint we've had from FFG is that they will dishonor characters, not that they will make the opposing player lose honor directly, but dishonored chars still lose you 1 honor, so it's not like the two are not linked. Will we see Scorpion cards causing honor losses for their opponents? I don't know, but I think we will.

In my opinion, Scorpion will be fine with drawing an average amount of cards initially, building up a hand of cards. Then, unlike some other Clans like Dragon, which tend to burn through them, they will play few but very powerful and expensive events with Fate saved from the Dynasty phase. Being able to play on dishonor will probably depend on the match up, but in general I think Scorpion will try to bring the other player to playing a game with smaller hands. One of their events ('I can Swim') relies on their bid being higher than their opponent's, and we have already seen a card ('Bayushi Manipulator') that deals with that: I think it's a reasonable assumption to make that there will be more cards like 'I can swim', so that at specific times Scorpion will want to be certain they bid higher than their opponents; if true, the best way to achieve this is making it so that your opponent will be inclined to bid less than you. That, in turn, can be achieved only if you bid lower than them, because otherwise they have no reason to bid a low amount (honor exchanges durign the draw phase are the most significant ones). I imagine games with Scorpion will see both clans relatively close to 0 honor, with the relative positions switching multiple times over the course of a game, and with the bids during the Draw phase being very important. The reason why I think the Scorpion will not try to pursue a dishonor win, preferring to cash in a honor advantage for cards, is that they will probably have many effects that rely on you being more dishonorable than your opponent, so that if you can't finish them via dishonor you're better off giving some of that honor back to use nasty tricks instead.

Of course I might be totally wrong, but there's "my vote"!

Unicorn are the ones I'm most curious about at this stage. We've heard that they are closer to Lion swarm than dragon super units in their approach, so it will be interesting to see how they might get the edge over the incredibly swarmy Lion.

I have a sneaking suspicion that their stronghold may be a complete reversal of the Crab one, so blanket pumps for all attackers. Need more pony previews.

On 22/07/2017 at 9:50 AM, Fumo said:

Unicorn are the ones I'm most curious about at this stage. We've heard that they are closer to Lion swarm than dragon super units in their approach, so it will be interesting to see how they might get the edge over the incredibly swarmy Lion.

I have a sneaking suspicion that their stronghold may be a complete reversal of the Crab one, so blanket pumps for all attackers. Need more pony previews.

I expect Unicorn will bounce into, and out of conflicts (primarily military).

Consider the ability to retreat 'out' of a conflict. Or 'if you lose a Mil conflict this character is participating in: ready this character' type of effects. Or 'when this character is bowed, ready another friendly character'.

That sort of thing.

So Lion will have strength and in numbers but more of a 'one shot' approach with Unicorn having weaker characters but again in numbers and much more able to 're-attack'.

I'd like to see the Unicorn be able to handle both Mil and Pol conflicts equally well, like the Dragon can. This game doesn't need yet another Military-dominated clan.

2 hours ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

I'd like to see the Unicorn be able to handle both Mil and Pol conflicts equally well, like the Dragon can. This game doesn't need yet another Military-dominated clan.

Well, the Bronies are one of THE military clans. As such, I don't think you'll get your wish in this case. ?

I'm expecting them to have a lot of tempo disruption and acceleration (way of the Unicorn, breakthrough, and their province all seem hyper aggressive), which will probably set them apart from Lion. It will just be interesting to see how they compete when they are probably going to struggle to keep up with the lion is terms of military skill and/or honour.

Agree that it would be nice to see them being semi capable in political conflicts, but I'm guessing the clans are pegged at different points on a sort of military-to-political continuum and unicorn are probably closer to the military end (I'm guessing it's Lion-Crab-Unicorn-Dragon-Scorpion-Phoenix-Crane).

3 hours ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Well, the Unicorn are one of THE military clans. As such, I don't think you'll get your wish in this case. ?

While you are right in saying our military strength is nigh unmatched, we enjoy competence in the courts due to the finesse and honor of our Battle Maidens.

4 minutes ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

While you are right in saying our military strength is nigh unmatched, we enjoy competence in the courts due to the finesse and honor of our Battle Maidens.

You left out beauty. ?