Kiramode and I are so excited for this game and cannot wait to play it. So we made some proxies and tried out some decks that we cobbled together from exposed previews. We recorded 2 games, alternating decks between Lion and Crane. I want to record some commentary over the videos so people know what is going on in the game and our thought process as we tried it out.

Any recommendations for the video before I upload? They are about 1 hour each game. Is music or background noise distracting or preferred? We are mostly interested in the strategy of this game so our focus is on game mechanics. I am sure we made some mistakes so you guys can go crazy go nuts in the comments.

There's also some sloppy play. By the time we proxy the Dragon stuff that comes out next week our actions will be tighter.

I'd be super interested to watch the games. IMO commentary from both of you over the games would be sweet, depending on if the video is from a neutral or a player perspective.

Regarding the sloppiness I think that's to be expected lol. Would be more surprised if there wasn't any.

Why can't Fantasy Flight drop the rule book, already?! I want to know what I am doing wrong. The biggest rule conundrum we have now is whether we can pay for a cost to trigger an effect or if the action cannot even start if only one part of the effect can resolve.

We will probably talk mostly about our play decisions and if we like the cards that take up space in the deck or not. I am not promising a PG vocabulary. This will be a candid evisceration of paper tactics and sloppy strategy. Maybe we should get drunk and try to slobberknocker our way through the disaster!

Of all the playthroughs I've watched on YouTube so far, Imperial Advisor has the best. Good running commentary with little dead air; plenty of mentions of card effects instead of trusting the viewer to have 2 decks of unreleased cards memorized by name/image alone, and a very friendly, casual, non-competitive vibe.

I think music or effects would be distracting.

Do it! The more gameplay videos the community has, the more reliably we can predict strenghts and weaknesses of a given card and the more insight we have when talking about balance in general.

I am kind of regretting now that me and my friends were nerdy enough to play with full on proxies instead of printed ones.

Personally i prefer no music in commentary video

Here is it, episode one. Please help us pick our name from the 10 choices in the description. Any suggestions are welcome.

And the second game.

Thanks for the video. You guys look like new players still figuring out the cards but right now everybody does so I don't see the problem there.

I don't know if it is clear but Kitsu Spiritcaller can summon a card even though she doesn't participate in the conflict(if you know than my bad). Also a couple of funny mistakes like not attacking with toturi in military that you guys figured out yourselves.

In my playgroup we had the same impression - Lion clan seemed to be slightly weaker than Crane. However we changed our deck a bit and after that it started to do a lot better. I advise you to try the "courtier" version of the Lion deck.

In conflict splash: 2x Voice of honor, 3x Steward of law, 3x Duelist training. Also put in 3x For Shame - that is a key card, right now the most powerful neutral. Get rid of Master of the spear whom is pretty weak. Also add couple of banzais and fine katanas which i assume you already did.

In dynasty max out on: Ikoma prodigy, Venerable Historian, Lions pride brawler and Ikoma Eiji. We also added 2 Otomo Courtiers.

This type of Lion deck has a bit more control than usual Lion, and looks a lot better in political. It feels to me it is better than phoenix splash which doesn't provide much of value against Crane(pacifism is especially weak).

If you guys want give it a try. I imagine soon the Dragon splash might be good for lion too.

I initially had the Seward of Law in the Lion deck along with the Duelist Training and the deck kind of fell on its face. The Phoenix one fared better just because the conflict girl is a Shugenja which means you can now put in Cloud the Mind. Lions don't have quite enough Courtiers for For Shame, but I did slip in some Omotos for that. They're generally bad, but you kind of need someone to trigger the card so they're there.

I wish you were allowed to mess with the dynasty decks more. Not being able to splash anything means you have no real options. You have to play pretty much every card and only get two splash options(I don't count the Ronin because he's trash).

Lions just need more cards. Right now the deck wants to do two different things and generally does neither of them well. You can't hit your big guys often enough to make the recursion tricks operate at full capacity and you typically don't get a dynasty flop full of weenies to execute a full on swarm strategy.

39 minutes ago, kiramode said:

I initially had the Seward of Law in the Lion deck along with the Duelist Training and the deck kind of fell on its face. The Phoenix one fared better just because the conflict girl is a Shugenja which means you can now put in Cloud the Mind. Lions don't have quite enough Courtiers for For Shame, but I did slip in some Omotos for that. They're generally bad, but you kind of need someone to trigger the card so they're there.

I wish you were allowed to mess with the dynasty decks more. Not being able to splash anything means you have no real options. You have to play pretty much every card and only get two splash options(I don't count the Ronin because he's trash).

Lions just need more cards. Right now the deck wants to do two different things and generally does neither of them well. You can't hit your big guys often enough to make the recursion tricks operate at full capacity and you typically don't get a dynasty flop full of weenies to execute a full on swarm strategy.

I encourage you to play it again. Steward of the Law is there mainly to increase the amount of courtiers. I don't know why Duelist training felt weak for you, it is a very strong card against crane since your military is higher on average which means it is usually a free tap in any kind of conflict, very good as political defence. Also don't forget about voice of honors.

I also don't know how you can feel that Lions don't have enough courtiers to run For Shame but you attempt to play Cloud the Mind with 1 in faction shugenja

If you max out on courtiers you get 19 of them total which is nearly half of dynasty deck. Flipping 3-4 dynasty cards and drawing 2 conlfict card on average you should always be able to play for shame. If I were you i would cut Cloud the Mind and phoenix completly - you have 9 shugenjas and 3 spells it is pretty inconsistent compared to courtiers(and cloud the mind is not even that strong). Phoenix splash just doesn't pack enough of a punch yet.

I would also advise you to instead of focusing on "strategy" focus on the game boardstate. During dynasty phase you should be already thinking about conflicts. I agree though that recursion theme doesn't always work so well yet.

I encourage you to try the deck I proposed if you have time. Playing once or twice should be enough to get used to it.

edit: oh yeah forgot about your rules mistake: For Greater Glory works only on bushi so it doesn't add fate to Kitsu Spiritcaller.

The problem with Duelist Training when I've tried playing is that it's really expensive. I generally would prefer to spend the mana on almost anything else. So it often just sits there. As for the Cloud of mind thing; it's easier to get conflict cards than dynasty cards, so you can pull her(the phoenix girl) more often. I also went 3x of the Mystic. The political value is also important because Lion sucks at that.

I run for shame in every deck, but it seems just way easier to trigger in crane because almost all of your relevant guys are courtiers wheras in Lion only the Brawler is. The other courtiers in Lion can be good, but are more conditional.

10 minutes ago, kiramode said:

The problem with Duelist Training when I've tried playing is that it's really expensive. I generally would prefer to spend the mana on almost anything else. So it often just sits there. As for the Cloud of mind thing; it's easier to get conflict cards than dynasty cards, so you can pull her(the phoenix girl) more often. I also went 3x of the Mystic. The political value is also important because Lion sucks at that.

I run for shame in every deck, but it seems just way easier to trigger in crane because almost all of your relevant guys are courtiers wheras in Lion only the Brawler is. The other courtiers in Lion can be good, but are more conditional.

`1 fate for bowing 1 or more characters(since it sticks around) doesn't really look so bad for me. It is much better than 1 fate blank target character in my opinion.

You can pull steward of the law as often as you can pull the phoenix shugenja from the conflict deck tho. And having 2 political for 2 fate is worse than what you can do with duelist training.

Ikoma Eiji is also relevant but yeah i see your point. Again if you go full courtiers you still get a lot of them, enough to play for shame consistently. If I were running normal lion list i wouldn't go for shame probably but with crane splash its a must.

And I don't know where the obsession with Cloud the Mind comes from Is it because of Milk of the Poppy? I can assure you that because of lack of renown keyword and having the fate mechanic in this game this effect is much weaker, at least in the pool of the cards revealed up to date.

You have to run a full Courtier package in Lion because there's literally no other deck building options, but you don't always play them.

As for Cloud of Mind, I've lost too many games to Doji Challengers and Gift Givers to not run it. I don't think it's as important against Lion most of the time. Lion is already kind of gimped on combat tricks, so I don't want to lose to on board abilities as well. The thinking is that I don't have to choose between For Shame and Cloud the Mind, you play both.

Thanks for making the videos! I had a few questions about the proxies you used. What kind of paper did you use for the cards? Also, where did you get the templates to print them? I am new to doing stuff like proxying and need a little help haha.

The paper is standard office 20 pound white with a cheap color printer. Kira pulled the images off the files that someone posted in another link on this forum. He put as many would fit on a page and then cut them up with scissors. We used assorted sleeves to hold them on top of old VS cards as backs.

There are some great programs that you can Google if you want to create cards from templates using your own images. They all start with Magic as the base template.

Just now, Badmojojojo said:

The paper is standard office 20 pound white with a cheap color printer. Kira pulled the images off the files that someone posted in another link on this forum. He put as many would fit on a page and then cut them up with scissors. We used assorted sleeves to hold them on top of old VS cards as backs.

There are some great programs that you can Google if you want to create cards from templates using your own images. They all start with Magic as the base template.

Thanks for the help!

I primarily pull images from here:

http://l5r.gamepedia.com/Core_Set

You copy the picture and then paste it onto a blank powerpoint document. From there you right click the picture in powerpoint and adjust sizing. A side window opens up with a bunch of different options. I just go to the option for height and width and make it so the long side is 3.4 inches. When cutting with scissors I try to stay as close to the lines as possible, but there's naturally some white around the card images. So 3.4 typically works best. I think the short side ends up being 2.44(it auto adjusts). After making one picture the correct size I then copy&paste that picture 5 times to create two full playsets. From there you position the cards on the slide so that they don't touch and have enough room for you to cut.

I should mention that when you print, make sure that powerpoint doesn't auto shrink to fit page. That's the default setting and if you don't eliminate that option it will print shrunken images. You can also use Word or Publisher. I also limit it to one card playset per page, but you can easily fit more if you want to maximize paper space.

Note that if you don't have access to a color printer, just print black and white. Color printing at kinkos is not cheap.

55 minutes ago, kiramode said:

I primarily pull images from here:

http://l5r.gamepedia.com/Core_Set

You copy the picture and then paste it onto a blank powerpoint document. From there you right click the picture in powerpoint and adjust sizing. A side window opens up with a bunch of different options. I just go to the option for height and width and make it so the long side is 3.4 inches. When cutting with scissors I try to stay as close to the lines as possible, but there's naturally some white around the card images. So 3.4 typically works best. I think the short side ends up being 2.44(it auto adjusts). After making one picture the correct size I then copy&paste that picture 5 times to create two full playsets. From there you position the cards on the slide so that they don't touch and have enough room for you to cut.

I should mention that when you print, make sure that powerpoint doesn't auto shrink to fit page. That's the default setting and if you don't eliminate that option it will print shrunken images. You can also use Word or Publisher. I also limit it to one card playset per page, but you can easily fit more if you want to maximize paper space.

Note that if you don't have access to a color printer, just print black and white. Color printing at kinkos is not cheap.

That helps a lot! Now to get some others interested in this game

Saw the first video today... first impression is: uauh its a really fast game isnt it? Three turns played...

I personally dont like that, mainly because a good or bad draw in one or both decks can define your options.

Did you have the impression that the games were too random?

48 minutes ago, Koriume said:

Saw the first video today... first impression is: uauh its a really fast game isnt it? Three turns played...

I personally dont like that, mainly because a good or bad draw in one or both decks can define your options.

Did you have the impression that the games were too random?

From my experience the main part where luck shows up is in province flips and dynasty flips. The conflict decks are quite consistent because you can draw loads of cards every game and usually find the answers you need provided you know what you're looking for.

Dynasty flips are pretty annoying. At least for Lion. Crane guys all kind of do the same stuff and playing one of over the other doesn't really do much. You can largely say the same thing about lion, but the lions are dependent on getting certain flop textures. ie; sometimes they need all the weenies and sometimes they need big bodies. A flip of all weenies or all big dudes(or sometimes 3-1 in some direction) can be crippling for the turn. Crane just about never runs into that problem. And even if Crane does have questionable dynasty flip texture; they have enough conflict tricks to keep them afloat.

The province flips feel too swingy to me. Maybe that's inexperience, maybe it's the mechanics. But flipping provinces decides way more games than you'd think. In particular Elemental Fury and Shameful Display. In every game a player will make an attack almost exclusively to win a ring and/or prevent an opponent from winning said ring on their next attack. If on the attack Elemental Fury flips; that often times decides the game right there. As for Shameful Display, the effect is insanely powerful, but the downside is that it does nothing if you have no defenders and they attack with one guy. So it becomes a card that if you happen to attack into it when your opponent has a defender you're in deep ***** and if you happen to attack into it when your opponent has no guys to defend it's a blank 3 health province. There's some level of ability to play around shameful display with the Steward of Law, but for the most part it's not something you can control.

Games are quite short. I'm not sure we've ever had a game last more than 5 rounds. You mess up one deployment or conflict and it's probably game. Right now both players make a good deal of mistakes(elongating games) but going forward as skill levels rise the games will almost always be decided midway through round 2.

1 hour ago, Koriume said:

Saw the first video today... first impression is: uauh its a really fast game isnt it? Three turns played...

I personally dont like that, mainly because a good or bad draw in one or both decks can define your options.

Did you have the impression that the games were too random?

I think the game length will stabilize once you get used to the game. Successfully defending will be key to winning in L5R, I imagine.

Regarding the two games posted, we did take our time on turns so it felt long on time, but yes, the average is 3 turns because both decks favor attacking. If Crane gets the right combo of cards they can win on turn 2!

Other clans might want to defend such as Crab based on how FFG loads up the core set. Defending is definitely a disadvantage, though simply because you do not gain the ring effects. Those can mean more than breaking a Province sometimes.

We played 3 more games last night: Lion vs Crane, Crane vs Lion, and Lion vs Lion. It felt VERY random to me. By turn two I conceded each game. Lion is heavily dependant on Conflict deck draws/cards, yet it does not want to use the bid system to draw many cards because it wants to maitain a higher honor count.

I feel like the winner out of all the dozens of games we played between these two clans is decided by who breaks two provinces first and who has the better hand of conflict cards. I have seen large and small army board presences win. Each individual encounter is crucial. Losing just one attack could decide a game.

Is that a card kingdom life counter? Are you guys Washington based?

21 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Is that a card kingdom life counter? Are you guys Washington based?

Yeah, Badmojojo uses a Card Kingdom life counter. We're both in the Seattle area.