6 minutes ago, profparm said:

My guess is that Dragon and Crab are both independent of the rest of the empire so 3 & 4, then phoenix is angry at unicorn magic so those 2 are at odds, playing off each other as 5 & 6 similar to lion/crane, and scorpion is 7th when we find out what manipulations throughout all the other plots are their doing, hopefully machinations of others they're trying to stop, and maybe a little bit of Hotaru stealing the show.

They can put Hotaru in the Crab fic. "Hotaru attemps to put the moves on O-ushi...and gets a hammer in the face." See? win-win for everyone.

4 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Someone asked about it and was told "No". Of course they also said Arasou was the Lion Clan Champion, so anything can happen it seems.

It's a shame if it's not. Thats a great art piece.

43 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

These two are actually the worst strongholds I ever played. The ratling stronghold let you play with cards out of either player's discard pile. If I remember correctly, both of these strongholds were legal at the same time so you either ran one of those or just lost to them.

I still remember Ninja Faceless deck. Even in the Strongholds combined games (don´´ t remember the name) it was almost impossible to beat.

26 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Someone asked about it and was told "No". Of course they also said Arasou was the Lion Clan Champion, so anything can happen it seems.

Maybe that was card art for Hida Yoritoko?

2 minutes ago, Kiseki said:

Maybe that was card art for Hida Yoritoko?

hopefully we'll find out soon. I'm intensely curious.

3 hours ago, Kiseki said:

Maybe that was card art for Hida Yoritoko?

I'm going for the technically true path. That's not Hid O-Ushi, she hasn't yet earned her nickname, that's Hida Ushiko.

For new folks;

Her nickname is funny becouse O-ushi means 'ox'

just in case you were interested.

5 hours ago, JRosen9 said:

I voted crab just because I think we would see a lot more new mechanics then we have with dragon. With crab we should see a lot more holding interaction as well as some way to maybe win defensively.

On top of that, we would see what a lower honor stronghold might look like. How will they balance it out? Perhaps just a stronger action, or what I expect, higher influence value? Potentially more strength to the province as well

3 hours ago, hidasaurus said:

On top of that, we would see what a lower honor stronghold might look like. How will they balance it out? Perhaps just a stronger action, or what I expect, higher influence value? Potentially more strength to the province as well

I don't see influence as a balancing factor as you're still limited to one clan and there's only do much you may want to bring in as it squeezes your stuff out. Province strength is another non balancer as it only applies to the end game with the final battle. That really just leaves fate, but that could be very unbalanced rather quickly if low honor clans have higher economy.

I want to see more holding related stuff :3. I think it could lead to the most interesting meta shifts and variants in deck types. I don't see currently what's wrong with just running almost 38-40 peeps dynasty side. Really interested to see if he game is gonna allow for some different styles right off the bat.

42 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

I don't see influence as a balancing factor as you're still limited to one clan and there's only do much you may want to bring in as it squeezes your stuff out. Province strength is another non balancer as it only applies to the end game with the final battle. That really just leaves fate, but that could be very unbalanced rather quickly if low honor clans have higher economy.

I don't see how opening up more options or more potential combos from having higher influence couldnt help balance. Especially as the card pool grows. On it's own I don't think it will make up for the lower honor, but it's a start. And I agree with the rest you share.

Having lower honor really puts you at a disadvantage in this game. Except maybe you could argue it doesnt hurt scorpion or any clan going dishonor for that matter. But will limit victory conditions dor clans like crab. There has to be something to help balance strongholds and counter that disadvantage and I am curious what that will be.

9 hours ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Someone asked about it and was told "No". Of course they also said Arasou was the Lion Clan Champion, so anything can happen it seems.

Well...he was...

8 hours ago, JRosen9 said:

I don't see influence as a balancing factor as you're still limited to one clan and there's only do much you may want to bring in as it squeezes your stuff out. Province strength is another non balancer as it only applies to the end game with the final battle. That really just leaves fate, but that could be very unbalanced rather quickly if low honor clans have higher economy.

The Crab have the Yasuki family, which are great at commerce. That money is used to upkeep the wall and pay for the army. I could see the crab having 1 or 2 higher than the average fate per round to show in the cards the Yasuki family prowess, but 2 fate extra could be very unbalanced. I would lean more towards 1 extra fate.

29 minutes ago, HidaYama said:

The Crab have the Yasuki family, which are great at commerce. That money is used to upkeep the wall and pay for the army. I could see the crab having 1 or 2 higher than the average fate per round to show in the cards the Yasuki family prowess, but 2 fate extra could be very unbalanced. I would lean more towards 1 extra fate.

I would be surprised if anyone has a different fate generation on their Stronghold. I would concur with JRosen9 - even one extra fate (a 14% higher fate production) would be likely be significantly unbalancing.

1 minute ago, Daramere said:

I would be surprised if anyone has a different fate generation on their Stronghold. I would concur with JRosen9 - even one extra fate (a 14% higher fate production) would be likely be significantly unbalancing.

When offset with the lower honor, I believe the 14% higher rate of fate production will not be too unbalanced. FFG has already shown the willingness to have a one fate increased production with the Unicorn thru the Way of the Unicorn card. By being the first player to act they can grab an unclaimed ring and get that additional fate(s). If they are willing to accept that for the Unicorn, they could accept it for the low honor clans.

Except that the Unicorn has to get their cards (3/40) so it's far to be as assured as a sure stronghold additional fate. And even if the Unicorn stay as the first player, they are not assured to get that free fate. So, a bonus fate on stronghold is far far stronger than Way of the Unicorn.

I don't think the other stronghold values will be used to balance the lower starting honor. It will either be in the strength of the ability or simply in the general design of the clan to work with less honor.

17 hours ago, Kiseki said:

Khol Wall comes to mind. It gave Unicorn free flips when they flipped regions and they could burn through a dynasty deck crazy fast. It was in the same environment as Chagatai too.

One of the ratling strongholds, I think it was Warrens of the One Tribe, had some pretty environment deforming effects too.

I'm sure there were others in other arcs, but I remember those two getting a lot of hate.

In the offenders list, and before those 2 you gave, in gold/pre-gold, there were Kosaten Shiro and Shrine of the Spirits at least.

It'll be interesting to see how they balance honor on a clan stronghold. They definitely can't dip as low as they did in the AEG version. I think no clan could possibly have a starting honor lower than 6, as anything else could mean the clan could essentially never bid for 5 cards (a 5 to 1 turn 1 card draw and then 1 dishonor ability would end the game practically before it could ever begin.)

FFG really did design themselves into a corner by making the honor range 0 to 25 instead of -20 to 40.

If I were to make predictions, I would say the clans, from highest starting honor to lowest would be:

1. Lion (12 confirmed)

2. Crane (11 confirmed)

3. Phoenix (10 to 11 estimated)

4. Dragon (9 estimated)

5. Unicorn (8 estimated)

6. Crab (7 estimated)

7. Scorpion (6 estimated)

The wildcard, in my opinion, is Scorpion. In the AEG version of the game, they were always the lowest non Spider clan starting honor. And they often didn't mind going negative if it meant getting their opponent to -20 quicker.

But with the adjusted rules, they have a lot less slack to lose honor and drag their opponent down with them. For that reason, I suspect playing Scorpion will be a delicate balancing act between going just far enough to win, but not too far such that you lose yourself.

With Starting Honour no longer deciding who goes first, overlapping values matter a lot less. There's little reason for them to do a 6 point spread when there are (so far) no mechanical reasons to start a Clan 6 points behind another.

I honestly would expect a spread of +/- 11 (Honorable Clans - Lion, Crane, Phoenix), +/- 10 (Medium Honor Clans - Unicorn, Dragon, Crab), and +/- 9 for Scorpion.

It's the final Countdown!

Still no clear victor, it will be down to a few votes.

6 minutes ago, HidaYama said:

It's the final Countdown!

Not really, in the sense that there is no number we're counting down to. We can't predict when they will release the article. It's been all over the clock previously. But yeah, any moment now...

EDIT: never mind; I realize now you clearly meant the vote itself

3 minutes ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

Not really, in the sense that there is no number we're counting down to. We can't predict when they will release the article. It's been all over the clock previously. But yeah, any moment now...

EDIT: never mind; I realize now you clearly meant the vote itself

I'm just waiting for the "Lion Clan article will be delayed a week" tweet.

Just now, RandomJC said:

I'm just waiting for the "Lion Clan article will be delayed a week" tweet.

"Lion Clan article stolen by shinobi in the night; no duplicate exists so we're moving right on to the next clan."