7 hours ago, Anemura said:

Can you elaborate? Of the 13 games I have seen online, only 1 was an honour victory.

Traditionally, Crane and Phoenix were the clans most associated with honour victories, so I'm quite curious if winning the game in this fashion is viable.

It's very interesting to see the different interpretations concerning cards, playstyles, etc occurring right now.

From my personal experience of a couple dozen games I'm seeing (dis)honor victories about 25-33% of the time. I tend to play quite moderately and try to be as opportunistic as possible with attacks and defenses. When playing against hyper aggressive opponents it's very common to win or lose the game with them at 1-4 honor to begin the final turn. We see some good examples of opportunistic play in the first game when I'm Crane (which is probably my best Clan right now) followed up by some terrible examples when I'm Dragon late in the game!

Honor is all about control, people view it as a suboptimal wincon because it has a low net victory rate right now - I think that's a fallacy. It's not meant as a primary wincon, the devs have said that (first L5RLive). What honor does is dictate how your opponent plays the game. Unless they get a 2-0 blowout province advantage in the first turn they need to adjust their bids and tactics to a slower game.

For example, I've seen this pretty commonly in dishonor wins:

Turn 1 bids: Opponent 4, Honor Crane 1. Crane gains 3 honor, opponent loses 3 taking most Clans down to 8.

Turn 1 conflicts: Crane gets fire or air OR both - if honor stolen via air and dishonor placed upon fateless opponent this places the opponent down to 7, 6 if you got both

Turn 1 end of turn: 2-1 province advantage to aggressor

Turn 2 bids: Opponent 2-3, Honor Crane 1. Opponent down to 6, 5 or 4 depending on events of turn 1 (best I've done is 3 here due to a turn 1 Asami, technically you could win with dishonor on turn 1, though that's highly unlikely and would almost require help from your opponent)

Turns 2-3: Those last 4-5 honor are not easy to take, for sure. From here it's all about survival for Crane and slowly whittling away the opponent. A couple games have ended on turn 2 either with a dishonor win for me or a military victory for the opponent. Oftentimes the opponent will bid low, even 1 at the start of turn 2 and start altering their playstyle. If you can survive past turn 2-3 then you'll likely win - and in those turns survival should be your only goal.

Let's say it's turn 2 still and they're at 5 honor to your 18. We start to see the controlling effects of (dis)honor victory :
1) Your opponent needs to decide if they bid high one last time for the all-in hurrah or needs to start bidding low. Either way you've directly influenced/controlled their bid (generally into the second option)

3) Every Duel becomes a Sophie's choice, doubly important if you can position Kaezin or a Duelist's Trained character onto that 3rd province before it breaks - They have to decide if they break the province (most decide choose this option) and lose 1-3 more honor or let you win the duel and lose tempo.

4) For Shame! becomes huge. Dishonor loses them stats AND an honor at the end of the turn. Bowing takes them out of the fight completely (unless they're Ready For Battle)

5) Spies at Court becomes gold, as does the Earth Ring. As the Crane player you now want to bleed their options and make it so they can't draw cards without losing

6) The fight for Air ring, and to a lesser extent Fire become the game. Period. No longer can your opponent choose to Void your Hotaru, they're at 4 honor.

7) Your opponent knows they're on a clock and has to punch through before you bleed them dry either by honor vamping with Air Ring and Asami or the province victory (as every decent deck needs to be able to threaten a province victory. That becomes much easier if they have no options to bolster their defense).

8) Crane bow tech becomes absolutely brutal due to limited resources in hand and the innate loss of tempo.

Now, that was a bit of a long write-up and the honor side is the opposite - see Croy's post for that info. Of course this is a hypothetical and every game plays out differently, but the point being if someone is bidding high you either make them win very fast or you prolong the game and bleed them out of honor or provinces. I'm sitting at about 67% win rate in the scenario outlined above - there ARE times where I lose turn 3 because of it, and I'm fine with that.

The worst thing to do when going for an honor or dishonor victory though is losing focus. A single high bid can cost you the game, as the last honor is the hardest to take or gain - this isn't to say you should never bid higher than 1, but you better have a dang good reason for doing so when you have an opponent locked down like that.

In all honesty, I was looking forward to playing longer games rather than shorter, over by Turn 3 games with FFG's L5R. I don't know but I foolishly hoped for a drawn out, back and forth slug fest, with cards raining down onto the table and leaving play when they run out of Fate. Something that required 'more' thought, more in depth, evolving strategy, greater interaction between both players as the game continues toward the 5th or the 6th Turn, and maybe beyond.... Might have been the card gaming 'romantic' in me. ?

I hope I'm not the only one with these thoughts.

6 minutes ago, LordBlunt said:

In all honesty, I was looking forward to playing longer games rather than shorter, over by Turn 3 games with FFG's L5R. I don't know but I foolishly hoped for a drawn out, back and forth slug fest, with cards raining down onto the table and leaving play when they run out of Fate. Something that required 'more' thought, more in depth, evolving strategy, greater interaction between both players as the game continues toward the 5th or the 6th Turn, and maybe beyond.... Might have been the card gaming 'romantic' in me. ?

I hope I'm not the only one with these thoughts.

This happens a lot in my honor game

The more the cardpool will grow, the more you'll have successful defenses and the more the game will last.

Or it'll be more difficult to defend because offense will grow more powerful with each Dynasty pack.

Personally, I think it'll be the former.

2 hours ago, Reiga said:

It's not meant as a primary wincon, the devs have said that (first L5RLive). What honor does is dictate how your opponent plays the game. Unless they get a 2-0 blowout province advantage in the first turn they need to adjust their bids and tactics to a slower game.

Appreciate the write up. This particular part caught my eye: the developers have said that honour is not meant to be a primary win condition? That's news to me. I re-watched the first L5RLive and there's no order of priority given to the separate win conditions. When they were speaking about honour and dishonour, it seemed like they would be treated as equal paths to victory... Perhaps it was some other video?

Old5r was predominately about military victories. Honour and dishonour victories were sporadic throughout. I think it was in large part due to the great loss of tempo associated with losing provinces and/or armies. They never could find a balance, IMO. It's why I was hoping that both victory conditions would be given more focus with FFG.

Right now, I think honour is tied to cycling characters instead of retaining them, bidding low on card draws and focusing on the ring of fire and air to the exclusion of others (perhaps water sometimes to bow out the opposing board). Those are caveats that hinder honour running compared to province breaking. Those restrictions do not exist for province breaking decks. And so, it's not as apparent what advantages are granted to the honour running player that chooses to narrow focus in this way?

Granted, if the game slows down, honour running could become more of a focus. But can an honour running player win in the usual 3-4 turns it takes to end 'most' games? I haven't seen this from the games I have watched.

4 hours ago, LordBlunt said:

In all honesty, I was looking forward to playing longer games rather than shorter, over by Turn 3 games with FFG's L5R. I don't know but I foolishly hoped for a drawn out, back and forth slug fest, with cards raining down onto the table and leaving play when they run out of Fate. Something that required 'more' thought, more in depth, evolving strategy, greater interaction between both players as the game continues toward the 5th or the 6th Turn, and maybe beyond.... Might have been the card gaming 'romantic' in me. ?

I hope I'm not the only one with these thoughts.

Games are typically over in about 4 turns, in my experience, but that doesn't mean there isn't thought required or depth, strategy etc. It is a very involved game and there are multiple crucial decision points that can define the entire game. And 4 turns usually takes about 40 to 50 minutes anyway, so it's not like they're short ventures.

I remember my first game played I was Lion vs Crane. My opponent was first player. I got all 3 Obstinate Recruits out on turn 1 (Saw two Staging Grounds and kept flipping into them! haha), a Spirit Caller and Matsu Beiona and he got Kakita Asami and a Doji Whisperer. Since Lion has higher honor than Crane starting out, I bid 1. He bid 1 as well. So, sitting at 12 to 11, he did a political conflict with Asami, who he honored with Way of the Crane. It was originally an air conflict, but I was able to change it to Earth because of Elemental Fury.

I thought, if I defend with both Beiona and the Spirit Caller, that would be my 5 to his 5, he'll be unable to trigger Asami's ability. I'd still lose, but my Obstinate Recruits would survive

I knew he had the Crane box to bow Beiona, but I had 2 Ready for Battles in hand, so I felt comfortable that he'd be unable to move the meter to get me below 5.

Well, he had the Crane box and 2 For Shames!

I stopped the first For Shame bow and the Crane box bow but the 2nd For Shame! got me and then he was able to use her ability, making it 12 to 11 in his favor, all three obstinate recruits disappeared and my entire turn was wasted (and he got a free Fire Conflict with the Doji Whisperer and a Fine Katana).

If I had kept the Asami ability from triggering, I would have declared a military conflict with 2 of the recruits to crack pretty much any province with Ring of Water, unbow the Spiritcaller and then do a political conflict, possibly break another province (depending on what he did with his Whisperer.)

But that second, unlikely for Shame! (but, to be fair, just as unlikely as my second Ready for Battle), basically created a 1 to 2 province swing that I was unable to recover from.

My friends who were watching urged me to just cut my losses and let the obstinate recruits go away, but I was, perhaps foolishly, confident that I was able to prevent any honor loss.

This is a game defined, arguably even more than other games, by learning from the many many mistakes you'll make when learning the game. The constantly changing board state makes for a game dynamic that I've truly never experienced before. It can be both frustrating and exhilarating but, overall, always interesting.

2 hours ago, Anemura said:

Appreciate the write up. This particular part caught my eye: the developers have said that honour is not meant to be a primary win condition

I'd have to go back and watch again but they said something like "honor decks can't expect to ignore conflicts, every deck must participate in conflicts"

5 hours ago, LordBlunt said:

In all honesty, I was looking forward to playing longer games rather than shorter, over by Turn 3 games with FFG's L5R. I don't know but I foolishly hoped for a drawn out, back and forth slug fest, with cards raining down onto the table and leaving play when they run out of Fate. Something that required 'more' thought, more in depth, evolving strategy, greater interaction between both players as the game continues toward the 5th or the 6th Turn, and maybe beyond.... Might have been the card gaming 'romantic' in me. ?

I hope I'm not the only one with these thoughts.

I gave the 3 turn example specifically because there's been a lot of "draw 5 every time and you auto win on turn 3-4!" type discussion lately.

Like Croy said, the honor side takes a loooot longer for the most part. Usually 6+ turns in my experience, though I've seen it as fast as 4 from Lion.

14 hours ago, Reiga said:

I'd have to go back and watch again but they said something like "honor decks can't expect to ignore conflicts, every deck must participate in conflicts"

I think I remember hearing this as well, but my point about honour being a primary win condition was more about speed than having it become a game of solitaire. I expected conflict interaction in all decks. In fact, I was looking forward to it (too many games played as an honour runner sitting back). That said, I was also expecting honour and dishonour to be just as fast and game threatening as province breaking, but I am not seeing that in the 13 games I have watched.

In your game of Dragon vs. Lion, I saw how much more difficult it was for Croy to get from 20/21 honour to 25 honour. The mind math was reminiscent of Old5R dishonour. I guess I was expecting honour running to be more straight forward and faster than it is...?

1 hour ago, Anemura said:

I think I remember hearing this as well, but my point about honour being a primary win condition was more about speed than having it become a game of solitaire. I expected conflict interaction in all decks. In fact, I was looking forward to it (too many games played as an honour runner sitting back). That said, I was also expecting honour and dishonour to be just as fast and game threatening as province breaking, but I am not seeing that in the 13 games I have watched.

In your game of Dragon vs. Lion, I saw how much more difficult it was for Croy to get from 20/21 honour to 25 honour. The mind math was reminiscent of Old5R dishonour. I guess I was expecting honour running to be more straight forward and faster than it is...?

In fairness it was slow because bidding is hard.

Games in person are generally a lot faster, but there's a TON of opportunity for analysis paralysis

On 7/5/2017 at 9:08 AM, Reiga said:

I'd have to go back and watch again but they said something like "honor decks can't expect to ignore conflicts, every deck must participate in conflicts"

Well, "honor not being a primary win condition" and "honor decks need to participate in conflicts to win with honor" aren't exactly the same notion.

"Play with myself" honor decks seem to be a thing of the past, surely. But the design intention is probably not to make honor not a viable or primary deck building strategy as more cards come out. Those decks will just need to participate in conflicts in order to win in such a way.

Which seems reasonable to me.

The question I had is, if honor is primarily gained through winning the Ring of Air, Fire and things like Honored Blade, what will they have to do to make honoring out to 25 actually more efficient than just taking 4 provinces with the same deck.

It's something I'm interested to see developed as the dynasty packs and deluxe boxes are released over time.

On ‎7‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 3:38 AM, LordBlunt said:

In all honesty, I was looking forward to playing longer games rather than shorter, over by Turn 3 games with FFG's L5R. I don't know but I foolishly hoped for a drawn out, back and forth slug fest, with cards raining down onto the table and leaving play when they run out of Fate. Something that required 'more' thought, more in depth, evolving strategy, greater interaction between both players as the game continues toward the 5th or the 6th Turn, and maybe beyond.... Might have been the card gaming 'romantic' in me. ?

I hope I'm not the only one with these thoughts.

I too enjoy longer games, but keep in mind two things:

1. There's no longer any 1-3 turn build-up. Both decks are going right out of the gate.

2. The way turns are structured now allows for a lot more tactical interaction. 1 LCG turn does not equal 1 CCG turn.

I'm not saying we can't want more turns, but let's not be too hasty to say that the LCG games will be too short!

On ‎7‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 6:17 AM, Anemura said:

...

Old5r was predominately about military victories. Honour and dishonour victories were sporadic throughout.

...

I can only speak to Ivory/20F, but honor victories definitely seemed pretty common for certain clans. My Lion deck was built specifically for military, not honor, and I still ended up hitting 40 as often as I ended up taking 4 provinces! Some games, I'd intentionally not use an action that would gain me more honor just because I wanted to give the military more of a chance to work properly!

13 hours ago, Anemura said:

I think I remember hearing this as well, but my point about honour being a primary win condition was more about speed than having it become a game of solitaire. I expected conflict interaction in all decks. In fact, I was looking forward to it (too many games played as an honour runner sitting back). That said, I was also expecting honour and dishonour to be just as fast and game threatening as province breaking, but I am not seeing that in the 13 games I have watched.

In your game of Dragon vs. Lion, I saw how much more difficult it was for Croy to get from 20/21 honour to 25 honour. The mind math was reminiscent of Old5R dishonour. I guess I was expecting honour running to be more straight forward and faster than it is...?

I'm not sure the two approaches are as disconnected as you think. If the honor decks are as quick as the military decks, but at the cost of not being able to defend against them (being totally devoted to honor), then we're back to a "you try your win condition and I'll try mine" race. If the honor decks are as quick as military decks but can also defend against them, then honor decks become too powerful, and only the players dedicated to other clans would play anything else.

The solution FFG seems to have gone with is to make honor/dishonor decks take longer to play, but allow them more interaction to slow down the military decks to a similar tempo. Maybe this will change in future expansions, but I don't see this as a bad approach.

13 hours ago, JJ48 said:

I can only speak to Ivory/20F, but honor victories definitely seemed pretty common for certain clans. My Lion deck was built specifically for military, not honor, and I still ended up hitting 40 as often as I ended up taking 4 provinces! Some games, I'd intentionally not use an action that would gain me more honor just because I wanted to give the military more of a chance to work properly!

I'm not sure the two approaches are as disconnected as you think. If the honor decks are as quick as the military decks, but at the cost of not being able to defend against them (being totally devoted to honor), then we're back to a "you try your win condition and I'll try mine" race. If the honor decks are as quick as military decks but can also defend against them, then honor decks become too powerful, and only the players dedicated to other clans would play anything else.

The solution FFG seems to have gone with is to make honor/dishonor decks take longer to play, but allow them more interaction to slow down the military decks to a similar tempo. Maybe this will change in future expansions, but I don't see this as a bad approach.

My experiences date back to just before the CCG was sold to WotC. So about early-mid 1997. A time when decks were streamlined for a single purpose, honour or military.

With the way the LCG is structured, if honour decks are as fast as PB (province breaking) decks, it's at the expense of the versatility afforded to PB decks. Consider: The honour deck has to focus on the ring of air and the ring of fire, has to exploit Mono No Aware by cycling characters instead of retaining them, has to invest in honouring those characters before they leave play, has to consistently bid low for card draw and has to defend in a game where attacking seems to be favoured. Focus on honour running already costs said player in many areas. To have it be inherently slower than province breaking on top of these restrictions means it's a clearly inferior victory condition, in my estimation.

Are honour running decks slowing province breaking decks to a similar tempo? Or, is honour running only relevant when the ability to trade provinces by both players has stagnated/stalemated? The games show the latter, IMO. The initial intent of both players is to break provinces. A stalemate occurs when neither player can gain enough of a MIL/POL advantage to continue breaking provinces. It's only then when a consideration to honour run seems viable.

I don't think we have seen enough of the cards to infer what FFG's approach to honour running will be, but in judging the support for honour running to this point, there's little incentive to honour run rather than break provinces. I'd actually like to see a game where a player's primary intent is to honour run, and break provinces second. That would be an interesting way to gauge just how effective honour running would be.

11 hours ago, Anemura said:

My experiences date back to just before the CCG was sold to WotC. So about early-mid 1997. A time when decks were streamlined for a single purpose, honour or military.

With the way the LCG is structured, if honour decks are as fast as PB (province breaking) decks, it's at the expense of the versatility afforded to PB decks. Consider: The honour deck has to focus on the ring of air and the ring of fire, has to exploit Mono No Aware by cycling characters instead of retaining them, has to invest in honouring those characters before they leave play, has to consistently bid low for card draw and has to defend in a game where attacking seems to be favoured. Focus on honour running already costs said player in many areas. To have it be inherently slower than province breaking on top of these restrictions means it's a clearly inferior victory condition, in my estimation.

Are honour running decks slowing province breaking decks to a similar tempo? Or, is honour running only relevant when the ability to trade provinces by both players has stagnated/stalemated? The games show the latter, IMO. The initial intent of both players is to break provinces. A stalemate occurs when neither player can gain enough of a MIL/POL advantage to continue breaking provinces. It's only then when a consideration to honour run seems viable.

I don't think we have seen enough of the cards to infer what FFG's approach to honour running will be, but in judging the support for honour running to this point, there's little incentive to honour run rather than break provinces. I'd actually like to see a game where a player's primary intent is to honour run, and break provinces second. That would be an interesting way to gauge just how effective honour running would be.

How are you focusing on the rings of Air and Fire if you are only defending and not attacking? And wouldn't honoring your characters also be an investment in their military/political ability, as well? I can understand that card draw may be an issue (and personally I expect we'll see at least a little card draw based on high honor before too many expansions get released), but overall this sounds like trying to play a CCG-style Honor deck in a system that wasn't meant for it (please forgive me if I'm wrong about that).

For one thing, you seem to list "cycling characters instead of retaining them" as a "cost". But isn't this just trading one advantage for another? You don't have characters sticking around, but you can recruit more each turn (or play more cards from hand, if available). Having more characters means you can participate in more conflicts, especially since you only need to focus on beating the enemy, not breaking the province (so you don't need to send quite as many characters to each conflict). And of course, if you get a particularly good character, you can always choose to spend fate on it anyway.

Personally, while I hope some of the bumps get smoothed out for the sake of honor runners (low card draw probably being the biggest of these), I sincerely hope it never becomes "I have this strategy and I just do it every game". Choosing which rings to go for should involve both what's best for and what's worst for your opponent. Honoring characters should, if possible, be done at a time when it can both help you gain an honor and help win a conflict. Sometimes, bidding high may even be necessary to get you those couple extra cards that make the difference. Too often, matches under the CCG were won or lost in deck-building; you simply put the right cards in, and the deck either worked or it didn't. With the LCG, I expect adaptability to play a much larger role. Yes, each deck will still have its overall strategy and theme, but being able to recognize when to switch it up (when to, for instance, switch to province-breaking or choose a different ring) will be key.

10 hours ago, JJ48 said:

How are you focusing on the rings of Air and Fire if you are only defending and not attacking? And wouldn't honoring your characters also be an investment in their military/political ability, as well? I can understand that card draw may be an issue (and personally I expect we'll see at least a little card draw based on high honor before too many expansions get released), but overall this sounds like trying to play a CCG-style Honor deck in a system that wasn't meant for it (please forgive me if I'm wrong about that).

For one thing, you seem to list "cycling characters instead of retaining them" as a "cost". But isn't this just trading one advantage for another? You don't have characters sticking around, but you can recruit more each turn (or play more cards from hand, if available). Having more characters means you can participate in more conflicts, especially since you only need to focus on beating the enemy, not breaking the province (so you don't need to send quite as many characters to each conflict). And of course, if you get a particularly good character, you can always choose to spend fate on it anyway.

Personally, while I hope some of the bumps get smoothed out for the sake of honor runners (low card draw probably being the biggest of these), I sincerely hope it never becomes "I have this strategy and I just do it every game". Choosing which rings to go for should involve both what's best for and what's worst for your opponent. Honoring characters should, if possible, be done at a time when it can both help you gain an honor and help win a conflict. Sometimes, bidding high may even be necessary to get you those couple extra cards that make the difference. Too often, matches under the CCG were won or lost in deck-building; you simply put the right cards in, and the deck either worked or it didn't. With the LCG, I expect adaptability to play a much larger role. Yes, each deck will still have its overall strategy and theme, but being able to recognize when to switch it up (when to, for instance, switch to province-breaking or choose a different ring) will be key.

There is no focus on just defending. The Ring of Air and the Ring of Fire will be a clear focus for an honour runner because he/she will want to gain honour from province breaks and from honouring their characters before departure.

Honouring characters would be an investment in Military/Political ability, yes, but honour running encourages the cycling of said characters. Province breaking (PB) decks encourage character retention as well as buffs (Honouring). This is a key distinction because it is more fate intensive to constantly replenish a board with new characters than it is to retain existing characters. For example, it costs 4 fate to retain a 3 fate cost character for 2 turns. It costs 6 fate to buy two 3 cost characters over two turns. And so, focusing on cycling characters appears to be more fate intensive in terms of maintaining an equal board state to the PB player.

On "I have this strategy and I just do it every game" - Actually, it's actually crucial that this is a thing. Strategies are built upon win conditions. If we find that Honour and Dishonour are less viable than PB, then players will narrow their deck building focus to win by PB. That is just something that will happen naturally. It happened in Old5r, FWIW. Most decks were primarily Military decks in Old5r... That's why having Honour and Dishonour as viable win conditions (viable = able to occur as frequently as province breaking) is absolutely critical to the LCG. It varies the field, and so allows for more design possibilities. Players will want to make decks that win by 3 conditions instead of just 1 condition.

17 hours ago, Anemura said:

On "I have this strategy and I just do it every game" - Actually, it's actually crucial that this is a thing. Strategies are built upon win conditions. If we find that Honour and Dishonour are less viable than PB, then players will narrow their deck building focus to win by PB. That is just something that will happen naturally. It happened in Old5r, FWIW. Most decks were primarily Military decks in Old5r... That's why having Honour and Dishonour as viable win conditions (viable = able to occur as frequently as province breaking) is absolutely critical to the LCG. It varies the field, and so allows for more design possibilities. Players will want to make decks that win by 3 conditions instead of just 1 condition.

I'm a little confused. You make it sound like you're disagreeing with what I said, but then you back it up with statements that are pretty much in line with what I said. I agree that decks should shoot for variety and be able to take advantage of various win conditions rather than simply playing the exact same way every game. However, this works both ways. If decks shouldn't be exclusively conflict-driven, they probably also shouldn't be exclusively honor-driven.

Actually, it may be a bit of poetic justice if honor decks end up slowing things down a bit, seeing as how honor decks in the CCG tended to speed the game up by setting a clock to race against.

Also, at least in my area during Ivory/20F, most decks were military not because honor decks weren't viable; but because honor decks were boring. Whenever people did play honor decks, they almost always won easily, which was no fun for the person playing the deck nor the person playing against it. As a result, people played military so they could actually have a game of interesting interactions rather than playing two-person solitaire.

1 hour ago, JJ48 said:

I'm a little confused. You make it sound like you're disagreeing with what I said, but then you back it up with statements that are pretty much in line with what I said. I agree that decks should shoot for variety and be able to take advantage of various win conditions rather than simply playing the exact same way every game. However, this works both ways. If decks shouldn't be exclusively conflict-driven, they probably also shouldn't be exclusively honor-driven.

Actually, it may be a bit of poetic justice if honor decks end up slowing things down a bit, seeing as how honor decks in the CCG tended to speed the game up by setting a clock to race against.

Also, at least in my area during Ivory/20F, most decks were military not because honor decks weren't viable; but because honor decks were boring. Whenever people did play honor decks, they almost always won easily, which was no fun for the person playing the deck nor the person playing against it. As a result, people played military so they could actually have a game of interesting interactions rather than playing two-person solitaire.

To clarify: I would like honour decks in the LCG to be just as strong as province breaking decks and dishonour decks. Each condition should be as good as the other. That's my main point. I do not want honour and dishonour to be treated as 'fall back' conditions to stalled province breaking. This is what we are seeing right now in youtube/twitch games.

Every deck should have a primary win condition: honour, dishonour or province breaking. Those are the three win conditions put forth by FFG. The confusion revolves around the words/phrases you have put forth such as "exclusively", "play the same way every time out", "shoot for a variety of win conditions". Since honour is built into the base card draw, the rings and the effects of mono no aware on honoured characters, decks are not going to be exclusively Province Breakers. Honour and Dishonour are involved throughout regardless. Second, a province breaking deck "plays the same way every time out" in its attempt to break provinces, no? Or, are you thinking of switch decks in Old5R? Lastly, we are speaking about "shooting for a variety of win conditions" from two perspectives. You are advocating that a single deck be able to fall back to honour/dishonour depending upon gameplay. Even if province breaking is the primary focus of said deck... This is what is actually happening now in game play. I'm fine with this. What I am looking for are decks that have honour running as a primary focus. Where province breaking is treated as a secondary concern, much like how honour is treated as a secondary concern to PB decks. This is the difference in what we are discussing.

To clarify this even a step further, I'll use your quote: "If decks shouldn't be exclusively conflict-driven, they probably also shouldn't be exclusively honor-driven." In LCG, an honour runner can be just as conflict driven as a pure province breaker (in theory). Reason: The rings of air and fire are vitally important to an honour runner. And so, honour running is not inherently conflict averse, it wants conflict. Anti-conflict is a hold over from the perception of honour running in Old5R. No, what I am advocating is the reduced need to actually break the province rather than to just get _only_ the rings -- because to the honour runner, his/her victory condition is still being fully served if he/she gets rings but doesn't crack the province.

About "poetic justice re: honour": In my play experience, the 'tempo setter' was always the military deck, not the honour deck. A common misconception is that honour runners set too fast a clock for military decks to match, but nothing in Old5R was as devastating as losing provinces and entire defending armies. Board state swung heavily towards military decks for that reason. Too much, IMO. That's why in tournaments the field was primarily military decks. It's why the majority of Kotei winners played military. Sure, once in a while you would see a dishonour deck win (looking at you Eugene Earnshaw), or an honour deck (mostly Crane and Phoenix), but this was not the norm. Again, this is based upon what I have seen transpire since Imperial. In Old5R, elite honour and dishonour decks were few and far between. This is what I'm hoping changes with FFG.

FWIW I think honor/dishonor should be at about 15%. The game should be about defending and breaking provinces primarily. But there should be enough of a threat to get to the secondary win conditions that people take them seriously.

The danger of having secondary win conditions being too viable is that they warp gameplay. You'll have situations where players are playing fundamentally different games. In spurts that's okay. But if players are consistently playing two separate games it becomes a problem.

3 hours ago, kiramode said:

FWIW I think honor/dishonor should be at about 15%. The game should be about defending and breaking provinces primarily. But there should be enough of a threat to get to the secondary win conditions that people take them seriously.

The danger of having secondary win conditions being too viable is that they warp gameplay. You'll have situations where players are playing fundamentally different games. In spurts that's okay. But if players are consistently playing two separate games it becomes a problem.

Based on your play experience, do you believe that honour/dishonour are enough of a threat so as to be taken seriously? From the games I have watched, Honour only really becomes a concern when certain players are at 3-4 honour (dishonour out condition). Otherwise, players are maximizing card draw at the expense of honour whenever they get the chance. They are also devaluing the Ring of Air. Thoughts?

The issue with making honour/dishonour a secondary win condition is that it limits deck design. It will follow the same path as Old5R, where the majority of decks will be province breakers. Until enough good secondary Honour/Dishonour cards are introduced into the environment to see a Honour/Dishonour spike in Kotei decks, only to once again fade away once Province Breaking becomes the norm again.

In my opinion, Honour and Dishonour should be good enough objectives where it is not imperative to break provinces. Winning conflicts to get Rings is still very important, as is defending conflicts to retain your own provinces. The difference is really just in the extreme. It's a trade off between the extra 3-5 Military/Politics to break or the same resources allocated to bumping Honour instead. This should be a function of player choice, not game limitation, IMO.

As an aside: What are your thoughts on Shiba Peacemaker? What do you evaluate his utility to be? Good card/Bad Card in this environment etc...?

10 minutes ago, Anemura said:

Based on your play experience, do you believe that honour/dishonour are enough of a threat so as to be taken seriously? From the games I have watched, Honour only really becomes a concern when certain players are at 3-4 honour (dishonour out condition). Otherwise, players are maximizing card draw at the expense of honour whenever they get the chance. They are also devaluing the Ring of Air. Thoughts?

The issue with making honour/dishonour a secondary win condition is that it limits deck design. It will follow the same path as Old5R, where the majority of decks will be province breakers. Until enough good secondary Honour/Dishonour cards are introduced into the environment to see a Honour/Dishonour spike in Kotei decks, only to once again fade away once military becomes the norm again.

In my opinion, Honour and Dishonour should be good enough objectives where it is not imperative to break provinces. Winning conflicts to get Rings is still very important, as is defending conflicts to retain your own provinces. The difference is really just in the extreme. It's a trade off between the extra 3-5 Military/Politics to break or the same resources allocated to bumping Honour instead. This should be a function of player choice, not game limitation, IMO.

As an aside: What are your thoughts on Shiba Peacemaker? What do you evaluate his utility to be? Good card/Bad Card in this environment etc...?

What environment are you talking about? If you mean the core environment at release, I'd say he'll probably be useful but it's a bit early to tell without seeing the rest of the cards. If you mean the environment of only cards that have been spoiled so far, I'd say he's absolutely useless without a Phoenix stronghold to play him out of.

I get that people are anxious to try the game and started playing as soon as we got enough of the rules and cards spoiled to try things out. That's great, and I'm glad that these people are sharing their experiences with the community. However, there's a limit to how useful trying to analyze the overall environment can be when we're still missing so much information.

I'm not just talking about what cards you can splash in, either. Just knowing that you may be playing any clan can alter how you build your deck, as opposed to knowing your opponents' choices are limited. This, in turn, also alters how your opponents' decks are built. Even if it's only a few cards, it can be enough to hopelessly skew any analysis of the meta that we attempt at this point.

I guess what I'm saying is, if people want to play the game with the limited card pool we have, that's fine; but just keep in mind that most of the conclusions we can draw are little more than conjecture at this point.