1 hour ago, Daigotsu Steve said:

That's a bit before my time, but I think it's cause I'm hoping that there is some Scorpion discard shenanigans that are splashable so I can go in on some hand control crap straight out the box. Or maybe it's because my old ideas have me thinking that the Dragon clan isn't really a 'control' clan, and yet they have some pretty nice ways of screwing with the other guy. And if the Dragon get toys like that, what are the REAL control monsters gonna look like...

I agree 100% I see the stuff that Crane and Dragon got for messing with people, and become really anxious to see the toys the Scorpion clan are going to get! However... that said, and with all of my anticipation, I really believe (and kinda hope) that Scorpion is the very last clan spoiled. I think it is very fitting for Scorpion to be last, because it should be the one that takes everything you thought you knew and turns it on it's head. I may be disappointed when the time comes, but sometimes ya gotta believe :\

14 minutes ago, WHW said:

Oh, Master of Spear has really funny interaction with Mirumoto Prodigy, functioning basically like an alternative to Admit Defeat.

Good God that's an expensive combo.

I think GotA, Honored Blade, and Ready for Battle use up most of your influence rather nicely. Maybe with some Sashimono too.

3 hours ago, Bayushi Bajie said:

Yokuni is really a Scorpion Ninja.

Was gonna say that I think it's awesome Yokuni has the old Ninja Shapeshifter ability and we know he had a thing for the scorpion ladies (at least in Old5R)

Also, the dual bushi/shugenja traits gives me hope that this guy is Kami Togashi

11 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

Good God that's an expensive combo.

I think GotA, Honored Blade, and Ready for Battle use up most of your influence rather nicely. Maybe with some Sashimono too.

I said funny, not good :D. Imagine the look at their face!

I'm iffy on the Honored Blade. On the one hand, it makes Niten Master easier to trigger...on the other, mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Though I guess Counter-Attack Dragon can both go the "I spend almost no Fate on my people, investing in the reusable attachments instead" and "invest in both, because during your attack, I just put 543534534534 fate on that unclaimed ring and guess what ring I'm attacking when my turn comes"

Doomed Shugenja looks like it was tailor-made for Turbo Dragon 0 Fate Attach 2x Ancestral Attachment Smash A Province Then Die play. 1 for 3 / 3 is not *terrible*, 3 for 7 /3 or 3 / 7 or even 9/5 5/9 if you bow the stronghold is suddenly quite a explosive threat. Obviously balanced by the fact that you need matching Ancestral Attachments for this to happen, though.

14 hours ago, Mr Omura said:

Also, I feel this is the weakest art we've seen thus far

Unfortunately I have to agree; I'm pretty disappointed overall. I feel it's noticeably weaker than what we've seen on Crane and Lion cards.

I think part of it stems from the fact that some art is reused (it feels like Dragon got more cards which reuse old L5R art compared to Crane and Lion, but I might be wrong, I didn't try to count all of them). The other thing that rubs me the wrong way is: if you're reusing Mirumoto Kenzo (and not just him of course, merely an example) anyway why not just call him that? The generic names for half the cards are probably my biggest gripe with NL5R so far. I understand that you want to avoid the situation where several copies of the same character are in play simultaneously for flavor reasons (and all named characters are unique I'm pretty sure) but this can happen anyway in a mirror match, and you'll run into other situation that don't make sense, for example using characters which died in the official storyline. Why deny them that little bit of extra personality?

To return to art for one more second: I complained about old art but I think Kitsuki Investigator is new (or is it? I don't recall having seen it before) and that's probably my least favorite card so far. Unlike you I like Mountain's Anvil Castle's art but it is pretty silly for a number of reasons. What I really dislike though is that the card which I like the most from this week's preview (art-wise) - Restoration of Balance - feels extremely weak.

Now I don't want to comment on alleged balance issues until I'll play the game some more - with the entire card pool. I don't have a full grasp on what's strong and what isn't right now and I don't want to make some premature judgment. But I really don't see how Restoration of Balance could be useful. There are lots of things that make it pretty bad. 4 cards is still quite a bit. The cards aren't chosen by you, or even chosen randomly - your opponent picks whatever he doesn't need at the moment. The syngery with Kitsuki's Investigator is simply awful. And it's extremely easy to play around, too - just keep your hand to 4 cards, or at least 4 cards you'd like to keep. I have a hard time believing this could be useful. At the same time I'm sure the game has been playtested a lot so again, maybe I'm just not seeing the full picture here and there's something that makes Restoration of Balance better than it seems at first glance.

Moving on, I'm a bit surprised Hitomi didn't make the core set. It's interesting that almost none of the characters mentioned in Dragon Clan's story from last week (a really great piece! I deeply regret not having said that in the topic dedicated to it) did.

Last and least, it's somewhat amusing that Agasha Swordsmith (aargh, why not Agasha Kojiro, or Agasha Testurou, or Agasha Masanobu, or...) can search for any attachment - he can pick up a tattoo just fine.

Ah, and a small PS regarding Mirumoto 'Ninten Master' Kenzo - yes, right now we don't have many weapons around so it's hard to make good use of him (shame he can't unbow on any attachment, would make Kitsuki's Method that much better) but the card pool will grow. Give it some time. I understand being concerned about how usable he'll be with core set cards alone but I assume we plan to stick around a bit longer, don't we?

I like generic names because I feel that "Seeker of Enlightenment" has more personality than "Mirumoto Bob#43425". They also help characterize the Clan they appear in, giving it waaaaaaaay more personality and flavor. Remember, this game is supposed to be newbie-friendly too. Seeing "Kitsuki Bob" doesn't help characterize Kitsuki Family as much as "Kitsuki Investigator", nor does "Agasha Jane" help make the point that "Agasha Swordsmith" make.

The only issue I have with generic names is that sometimes you can forget which Clan they belong to. Like someone will mention Brash Samurai and you'll think, 'was that a Lion card?'.

I prefer that issue to looking hearing about Mirumoto #342, Mirumoto Bob, and thinking "uh, who was he again" :P.

2 hours ago, Nanashi said:

Now I don't want to comment on alleged balance issues until I'll play the game some more - with the entire card pool. I don't have a full grasp on what's strong and what isn't right now and I don't want to make some premature judgment. But I really don't see how Restoration of Balance could be useful. There are lots of things that make it pretty bad. 4 cards is still quite a bit. The cards aren't chosen by you, or even chosen randomly - your opponent picks whatever he doesn't need at the moment. The syngery with Kitsuki's Investigator is simply awful. And it's extremely easy to play around, too - just keep your hand to 4 cards, or at least 4 cards you'd like to keep. I have a hard time believing this could be useful. At the same time I'm sure the game has been playtested a lot so again, maybe I'm just not seeing the full picture here and there's something that makes Restoration of Balance better than it seems at first glance.?

Keep in mind that there is no maximum hand size, and drawing multiple cards per turn is a thing in this version. Especially against a clan like Scorpion, which will likely be bidding high and drawing more cards more often, I could easily see 4 being less than half of their hand. Having them discard down to 4 forces them to get rid of a lot of cards in their hand, then, but doesn't outright cripple them (something the developers seem very keen to avoid, and for good reason I say!)

Some of my initial thoughts (preface: I haven't played the game):

1. While Yokuni had greater raw stats when compared to Toturi (SCC) and Hoturi (Imperial), his personal honour was lower. I know glory is not a direct rip of honour from O5R, but it's the closest thing to it from my understanding. As a result, his glory seems out of place. That said, I really the change in his ability from being a strait reverse-tactician ranged attack, to the complex ninja shapeshifter ability it is now. Excellent change. This ability mimics what the Dragon already do, but it can also change to strengthen them where they are weak. How strong is it when a champion card effectively discourages players to play certain characters because they provide a greater advantage to the Dragon than they do their own clan? i.e. Border Rider. Amazing card.

2. Kitsuki Investigator - Mechanically, the best Dragon card, IMO. Decent stats dispersion with a major ability. There should be no surprises with this character on the board. Further, KI can simultaneously weaken your opponent's best options. The best Dragon character, IMO.

General Musings:

1. Fate Manipulation - How appropriate. A good sub-theme that promotes their story focus (destiny/fate) and their in-game focus (bigger characters).

2. Powerful Effects via Attachments - There is a hesitance to embrace this type of deck building, but with the way it is presented here, this method seems to be completely viable. Yes, these 'tall' units are more susceptible to bow/kill/send home/other effects. On the other hand, Dragon's intention to retain characters and remove fate from yours, means that they will reduce your advantage of speed through consistency. They can out wait you and out build you. This fact, along with the fact that characters do not die based on losing conflicts, means that clan X is going to be facing a stacked character in nearly every battle. That seems difficult to manage.

Overall, I like what FFG has done here. As a former Phoenix player, I am also interested in seeing how stacking units works for them because I think they will 'build tall' instead of swarm as well.

If you are going Voltron, you should start growing attachment to your attachments, because they are replayable and will probably see play every turn, while characters may as well die every turn. It caught me by surprise. Dragon is probably a Clan where I want to focus on drawing the smallest characters possible and just turn them into dreadnaughts, let them die, and replay the attachments on someone else next turn.

I guess the biggest threat to this strategy is Earth Ring and discard effects, because they can bury your Ancestral tech forever.

2 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

The only issue I have with generic names is that sometimes you can forget which Clan they belong to. Like someone will mention Brash Samurai and you'll think, 'was that a Lion card?'.

I do think it works better when the generics have a family name in their title. It tells you a bit about the family's identity as well. I'm guessing they wanted to break up all the cards with family names by throwing some more unique titles in there. I could probably still guess the faction for cards like Seeker of Enlightenment and Honored General. Brash Samurai is probably skirting the edge. It does sounds almost too generic. Luckily so far it's in the minority of the already spoiled cards.

6 hours ago, BordOne said:

If you mulligan every single card from both dynasty flips and conflict draw you get around 36% chance of having Niten Master and at least one weapon in starting hand with 6 weapons in your deck. If you have 9 by borrowing from some other clan you get 42%. Not disagreeing just adding some numbers.

That being said I don't think you will be aggresively mulliganing for this combo.

But this isn't really the relevant number. The relevant number is just the chance of getting a weapon given that Niten master is up. That is 75% assuming you mulligan all 4 cards if there is no weapon in your first draw.

3 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

But this isn't really the relevant number. The relevant number is just the chance of getting a weapon given that Niten master is up. That is 75% assuming you mulligan all 4 cards if there is no weapon in your first draw.

That's precisely why I said I don't think you will be mulliganing for that combo.

I was responding to a post talking about how often you can get both of them during mulligan, not one talking about whats the chance of getting weapon if you flip niten master.

I know the core Dragon looks a little janky but after a few card packs and whenever we get their deluxe expansion I'm sure we'll see a better bigger picture, as will be the case with many of the clans who's themes were diverse in 05R.

8 hours ago, WHW said:

Thoughts about splashing Lion into Dragon? Guidance of the Ancestors would give you 9 reusable attachements - Kitsuki Method (+2 Pol, 1 Fate), Ancestral Daisho (+2 Mil, 1 Fate) and 2 GotA (+1 Pol +1 Mil, 1 Fate). If you go the "pimp my 0 Fate Turbo Dragon, smash something, and then reuse it", it allows you basically turn any of your characters into a +3 / +3 for a Price of 3 Fate. Sounds like a nice way to turn those low Fate cost characters into threats.

The question is, what else would you spend influence on? 3 x Ready for Battle?

Oh, Master of Spear has really funny interaction with Mirumoto Prodigy, functioning basically like an alternative to Admit Defeat.

Sashimono

What are your thoughts on Sashimono vs Ready for Battle?

Just now, WHW said:

What are your thoughts on Sashimono vs Ready for Battle?

Both are very good cards and you should probably run both them?

With 3x GotA you only have 6 Influence left, so with 3x Ready for Battle you get only one Sashimono, which...I guess is okay? You could go for 3x GotA, 2x Sashimono, and 1x Ready...

2 hours ago, phillos said:

I do think it works better when the generics have a family name in their title. It tells you a bit about the family's identity as well. I'm guessing they wanted to break up all the cards with family names by throwing some more unique titles in there. I could probably still guess the faction for cards like Seeker of Enlightenment and Honored General. Brash Samurai is probably skirting the edge. It does sounds almost too generic. Luckily so far it's in the minority of the already spoiled cards.

I would have preferred a compromise with names with titles like

"Mirumoto Kazue,

Ninten Master"

But that has clunkiness / card real estate issues.

1 minute ago, WHW said:

With 3x GotA you only have 6 Influence left, so with 3x Ready for Battle you get only one Sashimono, which...I guess is okay? You could go for 3x GotA, 2x Sashimono, and 1x Ready...

Guidance is unnecessary. 3x Ready for Battle 3x Honored Blade 2x Sashimono is a really solid packed based on the minimal testing from last night.

Even if Daimyo's Favor ends up being 1 cost that's still probably the best attachment Dragon can have oddly enough.

Why would you take Honored Blade over GotA? GotA is +1/+1 and can be reused over and over again, while Honored Blade is one shot thing. And oh wow, I was super sure that Sashimono is 3 influence, this makes everything easier, don't mind me :D.

2 minutes ago, WHW said:

Why would you take Honored Blade over GotA? GotA is +1/+1 and can be reused over and over again, while Honored Blade is one shot thing. And oh wow, I was super sure that Sashimono is 3 influence, this makes everything easier, don't mind me :D.

1 Fate for +1/+1 honestly isn't that great. It is nice that it can be played from the discard pile, but in general there are plenty of attachments you could play as well as other cards you would rather pay 1 for.

In general, there are so many attachments to play that you don't really need to worry about having to bring one back from the discard as well.

1. Ancestral Daisho (Weapon)
2. Kitsuki's Method
3. Way of the Dragon
4. Daimyo's Favor
5. Fine Katana (Weapon)
6. Ornate Fan
7. Tattooed Wanderer
8. Kazue (though I haven't really seen her played as an attachment yet)

Those are all of the attachments Dragon can run natively. Once you have the one Daisho or Kitsuki's Method out you basically have them for the rest of the game barring your opponent playing Let Go or some other effect we haven't seen yet. Guidance just doesn't have enough bang for the buck in my opinion compared to Honored Blade because most often you need a bigger buff to win 1 specific conflict. Additionally, the Honor gain from Honored Blade can allow you to draw extra cards.

Honored Blade is also a weapon for the purposes of Niten Master.

Obviously at 1 inf each you're free to mix and match, I just know from my experience the best use of Guidance the Ancestors is as a card discarded due to Night Raid.

4 hours ago, Anemura said:

Some of my initial thoughts (preface: I haven't played the game):

1. While Yokuni had greater raw stats when compared to Toturi (SCC) and Hoturi (Imperial), his personal honour was lower. I know glory is not a direct rip of honour from O5R, but it's the closest thing to it from my understanding. As a result, his glory seems out of place. That said, I really the change in his ability from being a strait reverse-tactician ranged attack, to the complex ninja shapeshifter ability it is now. Excellent change. This ability mimics what the Dragon already do, but it can also change to strengthen them where they are weak. How strong is it when a champion card effectively discourages players to play certain characters because they provide a greater advantage to the Dragon than they do their own clan? i.e. Border Rider. Amazing card.

2. Kitsuki Investigator - Mechanically, the best Dragon card, IMO. Decent stats dispersion with a major ability. There should be no surprises with this character on the board. Further, KI can simultaneously weaken your opponent's best options. The best Dragon character, IMO.

General Musings:

1. Fate Manipulation - How appropriate. A good sub-theme that promotes their story focus (destiny/fate) and their in-game focus (bigger characters).

2. Powerful Effects via Attachments - There is a hesitance to embrace this type of deck building, but with the way it is presented here, this method seems to be completely viable. Yes, these 'tall' units are more susceptible to bow/kill/send home/other effects. On the other hand, Dragon's intention to retain characters and remove fate from yours, means that they will reduce your advantage of speed through consistency. They can out wait you and out build you. This fact, along with the fact that characters do not die based on losing conflicts, means that clan X is going to be facing a stacked character in nearly every battle. That seems difficult to manage.

Overall, I like what FFG has done here. As a former Phoenix player, I am also interested in seeing how stacking units works for them because I think they will 'build tall' instead of swarm as well.

Glory is different then honor, and really I think this game did it well - because your Glory is a measure of how much you can gain when honored, but also how much you can lose when dishonored. Clan Champion of the Dragon is certainly as high a glory as any other clan champion and no one would say he is not as honorable as any other champion, so the 3 is fitting to match Crane and Lion. I imagine the Phoenix will also have 3 glory. The difference between the honorable Crane and Lion compared to the honorable Dragon is their ability to actually honor the character... A Lion and Crane deck could easily see their champion as a 9/6 or 6/9, where Dragon see their champion as 5/5. They may have to choose between trying to honor him or simply playing an attachment, and may take the attachment.

Remember that Glory is also the penalty. If he was a 2 Glory then his stats would be a minimum of 3/3, where Lion and Crane would be 0/3 or 3/0 dishonored. That is a pretty big difference...

I assume Scorpion would be the only champion who would have just 2 glory, and he may be 4/4 because of it... Just to ensure he doesn't actually benefit too much from having low glory.