10 hours ago, Shu2jack said:

One area for consideration I was thinking about....with the Lion's focus on playing a lot of cards from their dynasty deck they will probably not be passing first very often. This will be giving their opponents extra fate more often than not.

Will the extra fate almost every turn for their opponent be a big hindrance? Will a Lion player have to make up for it by using some of their men to politically attack provinces for any fate on a ring?

This is one of the things that makes Staging Ground less good than people thought -- the extra fate from passing first is quite impactful, and Staging ground sacrifices that.

Overall, people have been tunneling a bit too much on Lion's swarm ability. It does not work the way it did in old5r or any other game really, because of the fate mechanic. Bringing out swarms of guys fast doesn't do much to help you, especially if you can't threaten both political and military province breaks (which Lion generally can't).

The swarm aspect is more after a few turns of set up. And it means Lion's FINAL attack is basically unstoppable, barring a super buff Kaizen or something similar that could deal with a whole army.

29 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

This is one of the things that makes Staging Ground less good than people thought -- the extra fate from passing first is quite impactful, and Staging ground sacrifices that.

Overall, people have been tunneling a bit too much on Lion's swarm ability. It does not work the way it did in old5r or any other game really, because of the fate mechanic. Bringing out swarms of guys fast doesn't do much to help you, especially if you can't threaten both political and military province breaks (which Lion generally can't).

The swarm aspect is more after a few turns of set up. And it means Lion's FINAL attack is basically unstoppable, barring a super buff Kaizen or something similar that could deal with a whole army.

After some playtesting the Lion in general seem to be pretty weak. We have only Crane right now to compare to, but why play a clan that is good 1/4th of the time when you can play one good all of the time? Almost all of their tricks are limited to military/attacking only, whereas Crane always have some way of interacting. You also need to watch your honor all the time in a way probably no other clan will have to, with Crane being much more liberal with their honor and at the same time having easier time generating it.

Maybe they will look better when we know more matchups but if the rest of the clans are more on the balanced side I feel Lion might be the worst clan out of the box.

Then again we didn't figure out everything yet, there may be a very powerful way to run the clan and ofc I know how it looks coming from a Lion aligned player. Also the Crane matchup might skew our view.

42 minutes ago, BordOne said:

After some playtesting the Lion in general seem to be pretty weak. We have only Crane right now to compare to, but why play a clan that is good 1/4th of the time when you can play one good all of the time? Almost all of their tricks are limited to military/attacking only, whereas Crane always have some way of interacting. You also need to watch your honor all the time in a way probably no other clan will have to, with Crane being much more liberal with their honor and at the same time having easier time generating it.

Maybe they will look better when we know more matchups but if the rest of the clans are more on the balanced side I feel Lion might be the worst clan out of the box.

Then again we didn't figure out everything yet, there may be a very powerful way to run the clan and ofc I know how it looks coming from a Lion aligned player. Also the Crane matchup might skew our view.

I bet Kaezin really hurts Lion, and covers for Cran's MIL weakness well. Crane are able to produce honor which threatens the Lion. Against other clans like Crab, Dragon, or Phoenix it won't be as much of an issue. Even though the other clans are honorable, the Crane focus on building honor while the other clans are likely to just have it... so to speak.

20 minutes ago, shosuko said:

I bet Kaezin really hurts Lion, and covers for Cran's MIL weakness well. Crane are able to produce honor which threatens the Lion. Against other clans like Crab, Dragon, or Phoenix it won't be as much of an issue. Even though the other clans are honorable, the Crane focus on building honor while the other clans are likely to just have it... so to speak.

Kaezin is pretty strong. What really surprised me about him is how good he is just at getting honor from your opponent. You can go into a confict and straight up lose the duel just to get some honor. He doesn't get bowed after it so he is ready to hop into another conflict immediately.

Also in between Way of the Cranes, Brash Samurais, Savy Politicians and generally more balanced characters the Crane always seem to have more raw stats on the board, pretty interesting situation to be in when you are supposedly playing against swarm deck.

I can see Lion being better in other matchups maybe aside from Scorpion. What really worries me is how little control they have on anything that isn't "military attacking".

edit: Its not even a worry it is more of a dissatisfaction. It is very binary, you just attack military knowing you will win and then you try to cut your losses as much as u can for the rest of conflicts.

36 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Kaezin is pretty strong. What really surprised me about him is how good he is just at getting honor from your opponent. You can go into a confict and straight up lose the duel just to get some honor. He doesn't get bowed after it so he is ready to hop into another conflict immediately.

Also in between Way of the Cranes, Brash Samurais, Savy Politicians and generally more balanced characters the Crane always seem to have more raw stats on the board, pretty interesting situation to be in when you are supposedly playing against swarm deck.

I can see Lion being better in other matchups maybe aside from Scorpion. What really worries me is how little control they have on anything that isn't "military attacking".

edit: Its not even a worry it is more of a dissatisfaction. It is very binary, you just attack military knowing you will win and then you try to cut your losses as much as u can for the rest of conflicts.

Kaizen should bow after the conflict. I think both attackers and defenders bow at the end now.

30 minutes ago, MoZi said:

Kaizen should bow after the conflict. I think both attackers and defenders bow at the end now.

If he loses the duel he is immediately send home and doesn't stick until the battle resolution.

4 hours ago, BordOne said:

After some playtesting the Lion in general seem to be pretty weak. We have only Crane right now to compare to, but why play a clan that is good 1/4th of the time when you can play one good all of the time? Almost all of their tricks are limited to military/attacking only, whereas Crane always have some way of interacting. You also need to watch your honor all the time in a way probably no other clan will have to, with Crane being much more liberal with their honor and at the same time having easier time generating it.

Maybe they will look better when we know more matchups but if the rest of the clans are more on the balanced side I feel Lion might be the worst clan out of the box.

Then again we didn't figure out everything yet, there may be a very powerful way to run the clan and ofc I know how it looks coming from a Lion aligned player. Also the Crane matchup might skew our view.

Curious as to your experience using Guest of Honour? Did you find the Event cancellation helpful?

GoH is a card that should get stronger the more events that get added to the overall card pool. Perhaps not as powerful now, but good potential.

Also, did you find that Crane were more often ahead in honour than not? Thx.

2 hours ago, Anemura said:

Curious as to your experience using Guest of Honour? Did you find the Event cancellation helpful?

GoH is a card that should get stronger the more events that get added to the overall card pool. Perhaps not as powerful now, but good potential.

Also, did you find that Crane were more often ahead in honour than not? Thx.

Guest of Honour is okish against Lion purely for the fact that she has 4 in politics. Her ability is not that useful since she won't be defending against military where most of the(to be honest nearly all) events of the Lion come in play. If you have the feeling the opponent has For Greater Glory you can still use her to defend I guess which could deny a lot of faith. Also you can use her in your own water challenge when you want to bow enemy character to make sure they cannot use Ready for Battle. Overall against Lion she is pretty meh compared to Asahina Storyteller who has better military, 2 glory and is a shugenja. I can see her being good in event heavy matchups tho.

Yes Crane have no problem to stay ahead in honor against Lion. We didn't use Ikoma Prodigy but I don't think it would change much.

Way of the Crane comboed up with Savy Politician and Brash Samurais gives you pretty good honor supply already. Kakita Kaezin and duelist training also can get you a lot of it.

And then comes Kakita Asami whom is just plainly stupid in this matchup. She generates 2 point honor swing each time she uses her ability(essentialy a free ring of air) and makes it impossible to catch up.

Lion with their Honored Blades don't really stand much of a chance against that. Obviously they also have Honored Generals, Historians and Akodo Gunso to gain honor but all of them are either conditional or expensive characters that you want to keep for longer. Over 5 games we have played faction vs faction there was 1 where Lion stayed ahead in honor consistently for majority of the game. That being said our lists weren't optimized.

4 hours ago, BordOne said:

Yes Crane have no problem to stay ahead in honor against Lion. We didn't use Ikoma Prodigy but I don't think it would change much.

Funnily enough, I've played two games so far and the Lion has been very far ahead in honour both times, even to the point of threatening honour victory. This was mainly due to the Crane conflict deck being pretty sub-par and having to dig for cards with higher bids. If you don't find Way of the Crane, the deck really struggles.

15 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

Funnily enough, I've played two games so far and the Lion has been very far ahead in honour both times, even to the point of threatening honour victory. This was mainly due to the Crane conflict deck being pretty sub-par and having to dig for cards with higher bids. If you don't find Way of the Crane, the deck really struggles.

Hmm that is interesting. I agree with you that Way of the Crane is crucial, that's why you should always mulligan for it aggresively. However the rest of their conflict deck is nothing to scoff at. I feel the Crane might have bid too high when he didn't have Kakita Asami in play, or any other dynasty character that can honor itself. Also did you play with For Shame in Crane deck or maybe added some Lion cards or just put all crane cards in?

In our games the closest we ever were to honor victory was 19 or 20 points. It sounds like the Crane player just didn't mulligan correctly or maybe had very unlucky draws.

Did you exchange decks or each person played two games with the same one?

The biggest thing I noticed from my 3 games last night was more how easy it can be for Crane to make a solid Military challenge even with low or 0 Mil skill characters because they have 0 in that spot instead of a null value. Between Banzai, Honored Blade, and Fine Katana there are just a lot of ways to pump up a 0 Mil skill character fairly easily. This means that it is quite reasonable for Crane to break two Provinces on turn even without the right Dynasty flop of cards, where Lion it becomes a little trickier with the card pool they have right now.

Still, the Lion courtiers are pretty good and the Lion Conflict cards are really really good, outside of maybe Master of the Spear.

Obviously all of this is subject to change as the actual rules and more neutral cards trickle out etc.

8 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Hmm that is interesting. I agree with you that Way of the Crane is crucial, that's why you should always mulligan for it aggresively. However the rest of their conflict deck is nothing to scoff at. I feel the Crane might have bid too high when he didn't have Kakita Asami in play, or any other dynasty character that can honor itself. Also did you play with For Shame in Crane deck or maybe added some Lion cards or just put all crane cards in?

In our games the closest we ever were to honor victory was 19 or 20 points. It sounds like the Crane player just didn't mulligan correctly or maybe had very unlucky draws.

Did you exchange decks or each person played two games with the same one?

We didn't mulligan, I wasn't aware of the mulligan rule. That being said, it's only 3 cards in the deck, even with mulligans, you're chances of seeing it still aren't that fantastic. There's 3 For Shame in the deck, that card is amazing, easily one of the best cards in the deck. I'd say that there are only about 11 cards in my Crane conflict that are truly useful at this point; 3 Way of Crane, 3 For Shame, 3 Voice of Honor, and 2 Fine Katana. I've found every other card to be extremely situational or costly.

1 minute ago, Casanunda said:

We didn't mulligan, I wasn't aware of the mulligan rule. That being said, it's only 3 cards in the deck, even with mulligans, you're chances of seeing it still aren't that fantastic. There's 3 For Shame in the deck, that card is amazing, easily one of the best cards in the deck. I'd say that there are only about 11 cards in my Crane conflict that are truly useful at this point; 3 Way of Crane, 3 For Shame, 3 Voice of Honor, and 2 Fine Katana. I've found every other card to be extremely situational or costly.

Are you not running Banzai or Admit Defeat?

7 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

We didn't mulligan, I wasn't aware of the mulligan rule. That being said, it's only 3 cards in the deck, even with mulligans, you're chances of seeing it still aren't that fantastic. There's 3 For Shame in the deck, that card is amazing, easily one of the best cards in the deck. I'd say that there are only about 11 cards in my Crane conflict that are truly useful at this point; 3 Way of Crane, 3 For Shame, 3 Voice of Honor, and 2 Fine Katana. I've found every other card to be extremely situational or costly.

Well if you mulligan 4 cards away you double your chances of getting Way of the Crane. To me sounds pretty good.

I encourage you to play a bit more with Noble Sacrifice maybe you can find a hidden gem here, that is if you complete a fire challenge of course

Admit defeat also often proves itself to be useful.

Also do you play with the no defenders lose 1 honor rule? I saw some speculations about that and we play our games like that.

Also Lion conflict deck I would argue is much weaker than Cranes conflict deck.

edit: Forgot to remind you about banzai!

No Banzai, no, and that's a mistake. I sort of wanted to try one deck with Fine Katana, the other with Banzai, but admittedly I should have just thrown it in the Crane deck anyways. Admit Defeat is situational, and if the Lion is aware of its existence, then its hard to actually play. Plus they have Ready for Battle. The 1 fate cost is kinda killer, that card should REALLY cost zero. That seems to be one of my beefs, it seems like most of the Crane cards cost 1 or more, there are very few zero cost cards. Note that every single card I listed previously had zero fate cost.

3 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

No Banzai, no, and that's a mistake. I sort of wanted to try one deck with Fine Katana, the other with Banzai, but admittedly I should have just thrown it in the Crane deck anyways. Admit Defeat is situational, and if the Lion is aware of its existence, then its hard to actually play. Plus they have Ready for Battle. The 1 fate cost is kinda killer, that card should REALLY cost zero. That seems to be one of my beefs, it seems like most of the Crane cards cost 1 or more, there are very few zero cost cards. Note that every single card I listed previously had zero fate cost.

Ok I see your problem, you might just be going too wide in dynasty phase and not passsing early enough.

Admit defeat for 0 would be definitely too strong.

Also you should play with 3 banzai and 3 katana

1 minute ago, BordOne said:

Ok I see your problem, you might just be going too wide in dynasty phase and not passsing early enough

Nope, Lion rarely gets that fate for passing first in the games I've played. Staging ground, wooo!

2 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Admit defeat for 0 would be definitely too strong

Why? Compare to For Shame, which either bows or dishonors for zero, can be played offensively and defensively, and doesn't require only a single participant on the other side. I'd much rather pull that card.

7 minutes ago, BordOne said:

I encourage you to play a bit more with Noble Sacrifice maybe you can find a hidden gem here, that is if you complete a fire challenge of course

Again, very situational, and not that great against Lion. When the stars align, sure, it can be great, but in many cases it's a dead card.

8 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Also do you play with the no defenders lose 1 honor rule? I saw some speculations about that and we play our games like that

No, not confirmed, so not playing with it.

I'm gathering some card ratings from discussions with those I've played with, but I'll probably wait until I've played a couple more times before posting. So far I think we all agree that Lion has the better conflict deck in this matchup.

6 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Ok I see your problem, you might just be going too wide in dynasty phase and not passsing early enough.

Admit defeat for 0 would be definitely too strong.

Also you should play with 3 banzai and 3 katana

We tried a Crane deck with the Lion's Honored Blades and it has proven amazing, even when you just give it to a political only personality. Where it really shines though is when you give it to a mixed/military personality cause then you can instantly threaten double break plus free honor. Brash Samurai is amazing as a solo attacker with Honored Blade.

9 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

Nope, Lion rarely gets that fate for passing first in the games I've played. Staging ground, wooo!

Why? Compare to For Shame, which either bows or dishonors for zero, can be played offensively and defensively, and doesn't require only a single participant on the other side. I'd much rather pull that card.

Again, very situational, and not that great against Lion. When the stars align, sure, it can be great, but in many cases it's a dead card.

No, not confirmed, so not playing with it.

I'm gathering some card ratings from discussions with those I've played with, but I'll probably wait until I've played a couple more times before posting. So far I think we all agree that Lion has the better conflict deck in this matchup.

1. Good

2. For Shame requiers a keyword. Also it gives your opponent a choice and he will always choose a better option.

3. I would argue against lion its not very situational at all. You will nearly always have a honored character and winning political fire is not problematic at all. But yes it is not a card that you will be able to play in every situation. Doesn't mean it's weak at all. Toturi was killed twice by it in our games. And again you say Crane events are weak and situational but Lion doesn't run anything close to impactful.

4. May explain why Lion was winning on honor.

4 minutes ago, blackheartz said:

We tried a Crane deck with the Lion's Honored Blades and it has proven amazing, even when you just give it to a political only personality. Where it really shines though is when you give it to a mixed/military personality cause then you can instantly threaten double break plus free honor. Brash Samurai is amazing as a solo attacker with Honored Blade.

Yup honored blade as splash is very good too. It is so depressing for Lion that they can't borrow any honor generation from crane :<

Also in our games, Lion most of the time managed to stay ahead in honor by a very small margin like 2 or 3, except from when crane started to roll with Savy Politician and Lady Kakita. Things would get ridiculous then.

Actually both of the Kakita siblings are amazing in this match up. Kaezin most of the time was at higher military power than any Lion card except Toturi and Honored General.

5 minutes ago, blackheartz said:

Also in our games, Lion most of the time managed to stay ahead in honor by a very small margin like 2 or 3, except from when crane started to roll with Savy Politician and Lady Kakita. Things would get ridiculous then.

Actually both of the Kakita siblings are amazing in this match up. Kaezin most of the time was at higher military power than any Lion card except Toturi and Honored General.

Yup my experience exactly. Kaezin is so annoying and always matching my 4 card characters in strength. You can play mind games with him pretty well too.

When Asami hits the table it is not possible to gain honor advantage ever.

I ran lion last night and I liked it a lot.

I even had a political game going. Ended up trouncing my opponent playing Toturi three times thanks to shinono, the don't bow at resolution.

21 minutes ago, BordOne said:

When Asami hits the table it is not possible to gain honor advantage ever

Unless she gets bowed by Lion's Pride Brawler ;). I find it amusing that even Hotaru can be intimidated by her. Great target for Honored Blade, too.

38 minutes ago, BordOne said:

For Shame requiers a keyword. Also it gives your opponent a choice and he will always choose a better option.

Requires a keyword, yes, but one that you happen to have quite a few of. Still, it is a restriction, to be sure. Both choices generally suck with that card; a lot of times it can boil down to either losing 3 strength for the current battle, or 2 strength + dishonour (less strength and honour down the road). Blech.

46 minutes ago, blackheartz said:

We tried a Crane deck with the Lion's Honored Blades and it has proven amazing, even when you just give it to a political only personality. Where it really shines though is when you give it to a mixed/military personality cause then you can instantly threaten double break plus free honor. Brash Samurai is amazing as a solo attacker with Honored Blade.

Totally agree, it seems like a strong splash. I'm also looking forward to trying Duelist Training in Lion, it would be great card to use in political conflicts.

12 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

Unless she gets bowed by Lion's Pride Brawler ;). I find it amusing that even Hotaru can be intimidated by her. Great target for Honored Blade, too.

Requires a keyword, yes, but one that you happen to have quite a few of. Still, it is a restriction, to be sure. Both choices generally suck with that card; a lot of times it can boil down to either losing 3 strength for the current battle, or 2 strength + dishonour (less strength and honour down the road). Blech.

Totally agree, it seems like a strong splash. I'm also looking forward to trying Duelist Training in Lion, it would be great card to use in political conflicts.

1. Welp Lion's Pride Brawler ability is one of the few that actually carry any impact in Lion. You can always stand her with water ring. In our group Crain splashed Ready for Battle and seemed to have it in hand more often than Lion did.

2. It might be a keyword that Crane doesn't have problem getting. Other factions don't have such a luxury.