16 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

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.

Hmm did you have Ikoma Eiji in play? We didn't draw him very much I wonder if he works well

3 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Hmm did you have Ikoma Eiji in play? We didn't draw him very much I wonder if he works well

I didn't get a chance. Resources went elsewhere, but I had spiritcaller out and pulled in a Tutori from my discard.

I also think lion are a strong clan with low card draw. I was incredibly effective at attack and defense and I only drew one card each round, to the point I usually only had one card in hand most the time.

Only time I drew more was when I knew I'd be taking my final swing.

While I fully understand the desire to play test games with what is available now, I would caution everyone on drawing any conclusions about.......anything really. While two clans have indeed been nearly fully spoiled it's not enough to fairly assess which clan is better at anything when matching them up against on another. As it stands now I would say the card pool favors Crane for there being more to help them match the military might of the Lion, whereas there is less political support for the Lion to try and match the Crane politically, at this time.

Play, have fun, get familiar with the mechanics and making decisions.....But for Fu Leng's sake let's not start arguing with only a handful of games and an incomplete set of cards to back us up?

I lost almost every conflict on defense, but he only broke one province.

3 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

While I fully understand the desire to play test games with what is available now, I would caution everyone on drawing any conclusions about.......anything really. While two clans have indeed been nearly fully spoiled it's not enough to fairly assess which clan is better at anything when matching them up against on another. As it stands now I would say the card pool favors Crane for there being more to help them match the military might of the Lion, whereas there is less political support for the Lion to try and match the Crane politically, at this time.

Play, have fun, get familiar with the mechanics and making decisions.....But for Fu Leng's sake let's not start arguing with only a handful of games and an incomplete set of cards to back us up?

Can I still hate Crane? I just suck with that play style.

11 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

I didn't get a chance. Resources went elsewhere, but I had spiritcaller out and pulled in a Tutori from my discard.

I also think lion are a strong clan with low card draw. I was incredibly effective at attack and defense and I only drew one card each round, to the point I usually only had one card in hand most the time.

Only time I drew more was when I knew I'd be taking my final swing.

Hm strong on defence that is new to me, I can't manage defending in between Way of the Cranes, For Shames and Admit defeats.

Was it mainly spirit caller proving herself useful?

8 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

While I fully understand the desire to play test games with what is available now, I would caution everyone on drawing any conclusions about.......anything really. While two clans have indeed been nearly fully spoiled it's not enough to fairly assess which clan is better at anything when matching them up against on another. As it stands now I would say the card pool favors Crane for there being more to help them match the military might of the Lion, whereas there is less political support for the Lion to try and match the Crane politically, at this time.

Play, have fun, get familiar with the mechanics and making decisions.....But for Fu Leng's sake let's not start arguing with only a handful of games and an incomplete set of cards to back us up?

Welp the only statement on balance I uttered was that Crane seems to be stronger right now. It is more like sharing experiences than talking about balance

15 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

Can I still hate Crane? I just suck with that play style.

I would expect nothing less.

As far as playstyle, I think you're going to be surprised at how flexible each clan is, once we have.the full card pool.

13 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

While I fully understand the desire to play test games with what is available now, I would caution everyone on drawing any conclusions about.......anything really. While two clans have indeed been nearly fully spoiled it's not enough to fairly assess which clan is better at anything when matching them up against on another. As it stands now I would say the card pool favors Crane for there being more to help them match the military might of the Lion, whereas there is less political support for the Lion to try and match the Crane politically, at this time.

Couldn't agree more, this is what might be the main factor for those decreeing that Crane > Lion right now, there are very few neutrals to help in political. Personally I think they are quite balanced, I had fun playing with both, even though I lost both times. The 2nd game literally came down to one strength to break my stronghold; after playing a bunch of cards and abilities, he was up by 5 (needed 6 to break) and we suddenly remembered the Crane stronghold ability to bow my Steadfast Samurai for the win. I totally would have stomped his stronghold using military the next round, so it was literally down to one strength to decide the game. Awesome :).

15 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Hm strong on defence that is new to me, I can't manage defending in between Way of the Cranes, For Shames and Admit defeats.

Was it mainly spirit caller proving herself useful?

Welp the only statement on balance I uttered was that Crane seems to be stronger right now. It is more like sharing experiences than talking about balance

I wasn't trying to single you or anyone else out. Probably more of a reminder to myself to not jump in. Lol

35 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

While I fully understand the desire to play test games with what is available now, I would caution everyone on drawing any conclusions about.......anything really. While two clans have indeed been nearly fully spoiled it's not enough to fairly assess which clan is better at anything when matching them up against on another. As it stands now I would say the card pool favors Crane for there being more to help them match the military might of the Lion, whereas there is less political support for the Lion to try and match the Crane politically, at this time.

Play, have fun, get familiar with the mechanics and making decisions.....But for Fu Leng's sake let's not start arguing with only a handful of games and an incomplete set of cards to back us up?

Oh I understand perfectly where you are coming from and I agree with you. We do not try to reach conclusions about a clan's strength, we just want to get a feel for the game right now.

Another thing I want to mention is that my lion opponent was running Fallen in Battle and that is a real terror against them. It made me hesitant to defend with a Brash Samurai for the honoring part more than once.

Just now, Ishi Tonu said:

I wasn't trying to single you or anyone else out. Probably more of a reminder to myself to not jump in. Lol

It's okay just wanted to assure you

29 minutes ago, BordOne said:

Hmm did you have Ikoma Eiji in play? We didn't draw him very much I wonder if he works well

Amazing if you honour him with fire; 6 political ftw! And if I lose poli, welcome back, Lion's Pride Brawler!

1 minute ago, Casanunda said:

Amazing if you honour him with fire; 6 political ftw! And if I lose poli, welcome back, Lion's Pride Brawler!

Yeah it's a shame he didn't pop up more in my games. I just noticed you can get 2 characters per turn from his reaction.

12 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I would expect nothing less.

As far as playstyle, I think you're going to be surprised at how flexible each clan is, once we have.the full card pool.

I believe you are right. The Lion seem a very good splash for Crane offering them 3 staples they love to play (Honored Blade[+mil str & honor], Ready for Battle[even more protection for your guys] and Guidance of the ancestors[recurring card so helps with preserving honor]) while Crane seem like a mediocre splash for Lion with the revealed card pool.

1 minute ago, blackheartz said:

I believe you are right. The Lion seem a very good splash for Crane offering them 3 staples they love to play (Honored Blade[+mil str & honor], Ready for Battle[even more protection for your guys] and Guidance of the ancestors[recuring card so helps with preserving honor]) while Crane seem like a mediocre splash for Lion with the revealed card pool.

If only Height of Fashion was one influence xD

48 minutes ago, blackheartz said:

I believe you are right. The Lion seem a very good splash for Crane offering them 3 staples they love to play (Honored Blade[+mil str & honor], Ready for Battle[even more protection for your guys] and Guidance of the ancestors[recurring card so helps with preserving honor]) while Crane seem like a mediocre splash for Lion with the revealed card pool.

Voice of Honor and Steward of Law are both legit. Steward solves a lot of problems for Lion. Drop it before attack if you suspect Shameful Display will ruin your day. Drop it as a surprise to make For Shame! a bow effect. Drop it in your opponent's Fire challenge to prevent a key dishonor. Drop it if you're short on a MIL attack before you bow the stronghold.

2 minutes ago, williamobrien said:

Voice of Honor and Steward of Law are both legit. Steward solves a lot of problems for Lion. Drop it before attack if you suspect Shameful Display will ruin your day. Drop it as a surprise to make For Shame! a bow effect. Drop it in your opponent's Fire challenge to prevent a key dishonor. Drop it if you're short on a MIL attack before you bow the stronghold.

Voice of honor is good, but useless in Crane match up most of the time. I was thinking about Steward of Law, and maxing out on courtiers in general in Lion just so you get to play For Shame somewhat consistently. I duno he might be useful need more testing.

7 hours ago, williamobrien said:

Voice of Honor and Steward of Law are both legit. Steward solves a lot of problems for Lion. Drop it before attack if you suspect Shameful Display will ruin your day. Drop it as a surprise to make For Shame! a bow effect. Drop it in your opponent's Fire challenge to prevent a key dishonor. Drop it if you're short on a MIL attack before you bow the stronghold.

Do we have confirmation that Steward of Law and For Shame! synergize to make For Shame! an automatic bow? This is my first FFG game, so I'm unfamiliar with how they handle selecting effects that cannot be resolved.

7 hours ago, BordOne said:

Voice of honor is good, but useless in Crane match up most of the time. I was thinking about Steward of Law, and maxing out on courtiers in general in Lion just so you get to play For Shame somewhat consistently. I duno he might be useful need more testing.

I don't really have problem playing Voice of Honor. If you are playing Ikoma Prodigy and not using a rumor-only rule that makes undefended attacks cause an honor, Lion doesn't have that much problem staying ahead early, and that keeps Venerable Historian active. Even if the rule exists, it would work both ways and Lion plays more bodies. Bid one on the early turns, and Crane has a hard time getting ahead on honor w/o Asami (even she can be stuffed a bit if Historian gets honored first, and takes multiple uses to overcome a Prodigy or honored guy dying). Between Gunso and Historian, Crane only really gets ahead on honored people if they get Hotaru or Savvy Politician, and even then it only lasts a little while. A lot of the time it's been who goes first and grabs Fire, or who has the Historian or Gunso or Brash Samurai. Overall, it's been playable about half the time for me, which is more than enough given it's power level and the strength it should have against other clans.

Running a lot of Courtiers is completely essential, I think. For Shame is one of the only effective 2-way battle actions. Ikoma Prodigy is efficient-ish and keeps some of your best cards running, Venerable Historian is amazing, and Ikoma Eiji is a complete monster. Add Kitsu Spiritcaller and you have a good amount of POL heavy characters to work alongside the military guys like Brawler and Master of the Spear who have reasonable POL skill. With Eiji and the Kitsu you aren't even really sacrificing MIL power. So you really only are running 6 guys who don't help your primary skill, and one of them can occasionally solo a province, which seems pretty good. I also run 2x Otomo Courtier just because I want another 1 cost guy rather than the 4-cost Honored General or 3-cost Matsu Beiona.

Due to the almost complete lack of revealed POL boosts compared to MIL boosts, it's a lot harder to recover from surprises when making a POL conflict. Height of Fashion not being playable mid-conflict is a big deal. If Crane doesn't over-commit to a POL conflict, and the province flips as Shameful Display or Pilgrimage, they get stuffed really easy. Their out against Pilgrimage + Historian/Eiji/Spiritcaller is Admit Defeat, and that only works if there isn't another guy there or the Lion doesn't have Ready for Battle. For Shame will work if they have a Courtier, but Crane's best attackers are the non-courtiers like Hotaru and Doji Challenger. Even if you have a courtier and 5+ total strength and For Shame, you need the Lion to not have their own For Shame or Ready for Battle (or active Voice of Honor). Essentially, it takes some work and some luck to overcome what is actually a pretty common occurrence. In particular, Ikoma Eiji + Pilgrimage/Shameful can be a complete nightmare. It warps the turn entirely.

Meanwhile, if Pilgrimage flips in a MIL conflict the Lion just bows their stronghold and maybe plays Way of the Lion/Banzai/Fine Katana/etc. Shameful Display doesn't really stuff military much at all since most of the Lion scrubs have 1 or 0 Glory and the province strength is so low. It's a big deal against Toturi though, which is another reason why I like Steward of Law.

Maybe there will be good mid-Conflict POL boosts revealed later on and this point is moot, but you would think Crane would have gotten one. The idea that MIL conflicts are different in that you have more ability to add skill on demand makes sense to me.

TLDR - I've found Crane bounces on POL challenges more often than Lion bounces on MIL challenges due to Pilgrimage and Shameful Display, given a similar level of investment.

EDIT - I forgot Duelist Training as an out against Pilgrimage, but it's still stuffed by Ready for Battle and you don't really want to get stuck playing it on Savvy Politician or Doji Whisperer. Overall point is the same.

4 minutes ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

Do we have confirmation that Steward of Law and For Shame! synergize to make For Shame! an automatic bow? This is my first FFG game, so I'm unfamiliar with how they handle selecting effects that cannot be resolved.

We don't. I would say it probably does, since "your opponent must select one - dishonor the character or bow it" and "characters cannot become dishonored" tells me that they cannot select dishonor and so must select bow. But I've found from GoT/LotR that FFG card isn't really all that great at card templating/ruling so it's very possible that they rule otherwise. That would make the combo useless and hurt Steward quite a bit, but it's probably still pretty good just for its use as dishonor protection and the occasional 2 strength military pump / 1 strength POL pump on demand. He's Toturi's best friend.

@williamobrienI like your optimisim when it comes to Voice of Honor but crane have much more ways to stay ahead than Savvy politician and Hotaru. Just flipping Asami means you won't get your free historian. Similarly just getting Way of the Crane means you won't get Voice of Honor this turn nearly 100% of the time.

That being said I didn't play with Ikoma Prodigy, maybe she changes a lot.

The problem with Courtiers in Lion is that if you run Otomo Courtiers and Stewards of law to compensate you only get 4 courtiers that can participate in two challenges and 2 that can only participate in political. However I admit I want to try out list with 6 courtiers.

I didn't have much chance to play with Eiji but I belive he can be a beast. Master of the spear seems very weak to me though.

Again Ilike your optimism, I shall play more and try out the courtiers.

Edit: Did your opponent splash Ready for Battle? Mine always seems to have it when I finally get to use my shiny new Lions Pride Brawler. It could also own your defense plan with for shame.

2 hours ago, williamobrien said:

We don't. I would say it probably does, since "your opponent must select one - dishonor the character or bow it" and "characters cannot become dishonored" tells me that they cannot select dishonor and so must select bow. But I've found from GoT/LotR that FFG card isn't really all that great at card templating/ruling so it's very possible that they rule otherwise. That would make the combo useless and hurt Steward quite a bit, but it's probably still pretty good just for its use as dishonor protection and the occasional 2 strength military pump / 1 strength POL pump on demand. He's Toturi's best friend.

LOTR started a long time ago by a different designer and there are a lot of cards that required errata but Arkham LCG is templated VERY well. FFG learned from their mistakes and had a lot more foresight going in to Arkham. I'm not sure who is lead on L5R, but if FFG is good at learning from their mistakes with previous games - AGOT - then L5R should be much better from the start as well.

Though I've not played any LCGs before my image of FFG was that they seem like the type to get their templating and such down rather well. It's heartening to hear that their more recent LCGs appear to be more consistent in terms of card wordings and rulings.

While I can easily see how @williamobrien's interpretation in this instance is probably correct (i.e. if you can't dishonor a character then you must bow one), the wording on the cards is such that I could also see a ruling saying that players can "choose" options that they know in advance will fail.

Maybe this is a good question for the next L5R live? (Though I don't think I've heard an announcement for the next one yet...)

1 hour ago, BordOne said:

@williamobrienI like your optimisim when it comes to Voice of Honor but crane have much more ways to stay ahead than Savvy politician and Hotaru. Just flipping Asami means you won't get your free historian. Similarly just getting Way of the Crane means you won't get Voice of Honor this turn nearly 100% of the time.

That being said I didn't play with Ikoma Prodigy, maybe she changes a lot.

The problem with Courtiers in Lion is that if you run Otomo Courtiers and Stewards of law to compensate you only get 4 courtiers that can participate in two challenges and 2 that can only participate in political. However I admit I want to try out list with 6 courtiers.

I didn't have much chance to play with Eiji but I belive he can be a beast. Master of the spear seems very weak to me though.

Again Ilike your optimism, I shall play more and try out the courtiers.

Edit: Did your opponent splash Ready for Battle? Mine always seems to have it when I finally get to use my shiny new Lions Pride Brawler. It could also own your defense plan with for shame.

I've played around a dozen games. Lion has lost 3 of them. Like I said, it's about 50/50 on whether I can play Voice of Honor. Maybe a little less. That's fine. Most conflict cards are only useful around that much anyway. It's probably much more playable against other clans so it's worth having a match-up where it's only pretty good.

Asami can't stop Historian from Honoring on turn 1, and in fact has a hard time even using the ability that early if Historian is out (Asami presumably getting at least one fate on her, meaning she's more likely to be attacking alone on turn 1 where she has lower strength than the historian without an extra card). One Ikoma Prodigy puts Lion ahead by two, which means Obstinate Recruit can survive one Asami activation and one honor on top of that keeps Historian active. Even if Asami really gets going, it's not the end of the world. I had one game where Crane got an early Asami active for three turns and a big honor lead and then got blown out by a double Lion's Pride Brawler + Ring of Water turn anyway.

The lack of MIL skill on Courtiers only really matters if the Crane player hits them with Doji Challenger in a MIL challenge. Otherwise, you're going to need someone to participate in POL challenges anyway. You shouldn't just ignore it. You still end up with around 30 dynasty guys who contribute in some way to MIL.

Don't forget that Brawler is Courtier too, so she can play For Shame! So with two Otomos it's 14 dynasty Courtiers (3x Brawler, Eiji, Historian, Prodigy) and 3 conflict. 5 are - MIL and 3 are 0 (I've actually taken a MIL province with Prodigy though).

Master of the Spear is basically never actually purchased, but it's a great guy to bring out for free with the Spiritcaller or Eiji and you don't have Brawler. He's also hilarious against Kaizen. You do have to sequence his action correctly though. I lost a game today where I messed up with him. Probably the first mid-cost guy to get trimmed once something good comes in the expansions, but I think he's better than Beiona (who is terrible with the resurrect people) and it's gotta cost 3 or less for Eiji.

Crane deck is using Ready for Battle and Stand Your Ground, plus one Guidance from the Ancestors. They are no more likely to draw them than the Lion is, unless they decide to bid higher and give Lion's dynasty cards more leeway. Their holding does help, but Lion also has a draw 3 province so it mostly evens out.

3 hours ago, williamobrien said:

We don't. I would say it probably does, since "your opponent must select one - dishonor the character or bow it" and "characters cannot become dishonored" tells me that they cannot select dishonor and so must select bow.

Even every other LCG is an indication, this is exactly how this will work. If you can not choose one option, you MUST choose the other.

1 hour ago, BordOne said:

Just flipping Asami means you won't get your free historian.

Not if Lion goes first. Going first seems to be a pretty big deal in this game, which makes me very excited for Way of the Unicorn! (see mon to the left)