And , speak of the devil, another Dishonor card from http://www.crabclan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=9846

This theme may yet work!

1 hour ago, sickqt said:

A bit surprised as to all the negative feelings about the crab cards. My initial impression after looking through all the cards, is that possibly they have the most options, and are the most powerful currently with what we have seen. I definitely wont be playing them myself, but I am the most afraid of playing against them currently, they seem quite oppressive.

Honestly, of the four clans revealed so far, I'm most interested in trying Crab. Between sacrificing characters and focusing on defense, it sounds like the main trick to playing a Crab deck will be timing; knowing when to put extra fate on a character and when to plan to sacrifice him; knowing when to switch to attacking; etc.

I've been interested in all the clans as they've been revealed, but this is the first clan that makes me think I could be comfortable playing them until the Tsuruchi family is reintroduced.

Unless I'm missing something, Levy is a dead card.

Let's say you draw 3 cards (one of which is Levy) and your opponent draws 2. This means you give your opponent 1 Honour. When you play Levy they just give that one Honour back, and then you both have 2 cards. It's exactly equivalent to you just having drawn 2 cards in the first place.

As for Fate, I can't see your opponent being willing to give you Fate unless they're down to their last point of Honour. A 2-point Fate swing is just too big to allow.

23 hours ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

Overall, I'm pleased.

Hida Tomonatsu gives me pause though. How often are you simultaneously winning a conflict on defense with this character and also trapping a worthwhile character (I.E. a 2 to 5 cost character with fate on them) in the conflict? Doing this to a character with no fate (or even 1 fate).

Playing Night's Watch in Thrones, I've learned that people don't generally declare attacks they don't expect to win. Sure, there are some triggers available that can help here, such as conflict characters that can blank abilities or boost strength...but still. Makes me nervous.

A lot of conditions to meet in order for Tomonatsu to be worthwhile, especially considering her mediocre stats. If she were a 4/3 or even a 3/3, I could overlook that you may never trigger her ability but, well, let's just say she doesn't exactly meet the Doji Challenger bar of 3 cost characters. Unfortunately, it looks like very few characters will in this game haha.

I share your hesitation, but as this card is so thematic (she could be the most charismatic character in the 4 stories so far), I am searching some ideas that support the use of her.

You could open a topic for her. We can find some insteresting discussion. Here is what I thought of:

1.- This character can be used as an economic asset: use her as many turns as you need (probably 1 is the optimal) and then discard her against a fate-heavy enemy character. Seems a good trick, specially vs Dragon.

2.- If that is not the case, she may have modified your opponents decissions, simply by appearing in your province: she can prevent your opponent from loading fate on his chars, fearing an economic loss. That´s a good asset even without paying for her.

3.- I suppose Reprieve will be overwhelmed by sacrifice, but what if not?

4.- She has the potential to combine with cards that are boosted or triggered by sacrifice. Not Vengeful Bereseker, that´ is clear, but maybe some other we have not seen yet. This can balance the cost and eventual condition of her ability.

5.- In the right circumstances, she can prevent probing attacks. I don´t know if that is a playable tactic in this game (we have seen like 50% of the cards...), but if it is, she can punish for it. This is not a very solid point, I admit.

I hope she is playable. What a good card if only she had cost 2...

3 minutes ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Unless I'm missing something, Levy is a dead card.

Let's say you draw 3 cards (one of which is Levy) and your opponent draws 2. This means you give your opponent 1 Honour. When you play Levy they just give that one Honour back, and then you both have 2 cards. It's exactly equivalent to you just having drawn 2 cards in the first place.

As for Fate, I can't see your opponent being willing to give you Fate unless they're down to their last point of Honour. A 2-point Fate swing is just too big to allow.

Or you could look at it as a way to freely cycle more cards, and get to the more important ones, and levy being a means to equalize the negative impact of you drawing more than your opponent. That being said, your opponent getting to choose means they will always choose the one that helps you less, they sure wont give you an honor if you are really low and they are attempting to go the dishonor route, etc.

5 minutes ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Unless I'm missing something, Levy is a dead card.

Let's say you draw 3 cards (one of which is Levy) and your opponent draws 2. This means you give your opponent 1 Honour. When you play Levy they just give that one Honour back, and then you both have 2 cards. It's exactly equivalent to you just having drawn 2 cards in the first place.

As for Fate, I can't see your opponent being willing to give you Fate unless they're down to their last point of Honour. A 2-point Fate swing is just too big to allow.

When compared to just the initial card draw mechanic, yes, it is theoretically a dead draw. But Crab already have 3 additional ways available to them to draw cards that we've seen so far. Funeral Pyre, Shrewd Yasuki and Imperial Storehouse. So I don't think comparing 1 honor exchanged to 1 card draw as being exactly equivalent.

On top of that, if dishonor is going to be a thing for Crab, this is definitely a "rock and a hard place" decision that leads to the opportunity for play mistakes and the like. It also limits your opponent's draw prior to the draw mechanic, which will likely pay dividends in the long run, as it artificially restricts your opponent's hand.

Worst case scenario, it's a free Ring of Air trigger, which doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.

And, as you said, a 2 fate swing is a big deal.

1 minute ago, sickqt said:

Or you could look at it as a way to freely cycle more cards, and get to the more important ones, and levy being a means to equalize the negative impact of you drawing more than your opponent. That being said, your opponent getting to choose means they will always choose the one that helps you less, they sure wont give you an honor if you are really low and they are attempting to go the dishonor route, etc.

Yes. Also, until you play it, it's one more card in your hand that your opponent has to guess about. Anything that throws off your opponent even a little bit will find a place in decks, I'm guessing.

37 minutes ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Unless I'm missing something, Levy is a dead card.

Let's say you draw 3 cards (one of which is Levy) and your opponent draws 2. This means you give your opponent 1 Honour. When you play Levy they just give that one Honour back, and then you both have 2 cards. It's exactly equivalent to you just having drawn 2 cards in the first place.

As for Fate, I can't see your opponent being willing to give you Fate unless they're down to their last point of Honour. A 2-point Fate swing is just too big to allow.

I think you're right - you can consider this like a "bid of 0" situation, where your opponent can at best net 1 card draw more than you and give you 1 honor for it. I think early game people will choose to lose honor instead of fate, but it's these small ticks that can create an honor leverage when other cards like Watch Commander and Intimidating Hida land. The strength mainly depends on the viability of a dishonor victory for Crab, if the threat of honor loss isn't there, then they will just give you an honor and not think about it... If there are 1-2 more cards that can blind-side the opponent with honor loss that we haven't seen yet, then these troublesome honor-loss cards could be the staging ground for a defensive dishonor deck.

I'm hoping the Scorpion or Phoenix get a card that reads something like, "Your opponent draws the top card of they Dynasty deck. Your opponent discards that card and searches their deck for all copies of that card and discards the copies. Would make Hida Tomonatsu amazing. Maybe make it a Void Spell - cut them from the Celestial Order. Or maybe the Scorpion are doing a fine job of removing a threat from the shadows.

A dead card is not the same as a card that replaces itself: a dead card is a card that cannot be played or does nothing useful. Levy is not a dead card: at worst it can replace itself, and if either player is close to 25 or 0 than the honor transfer will mean more than just the ability to draw a card.

2 hours ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Unless I'm missing something, Levy is a dead card.

Let's say you draw 3 cards (one of which is Levy) and your opponent draws 2. This means you give your opponent 1 Honour. When you play Levy they just give that one Honour back, and then you both have 2 cards. It's exactly equivalent to you just having drawn 2 cards in the first place.

As for Fate, I can't see your opponent being willing to give you Fate unless they're down to their last point of Honour. A 2-point Fate swing is just too big to allow.

Drop this on a fateless opponent and force them to lose 1 honor. Crane just needs that Honored courtier to go away before she wins via honor, Levy will take care of that. Your opponent at 3 honor and no fate..drop 3 and win.

also if you playing dishonor, I'm pretty sure you'd want to draw 1 every turn.

Also to highlight Joe's previous point Crab have several ways to draw a card outside of spending honor in the core set. Therefore it's not a fair statement to say 1 honor = 1 card in all situations. Also as a disruption tactic (even if it is as simple as saying 1 honor = 1 card) to mess with the economy of the game unexpectedly mid conflict still throws your opponent's plans into disarray. This is why I'm usually opposed to using such simple distilled heuristics for evaluating card value. It always ignores the situational cost (or benefit) which is not insignificant. I'm fairly certain when they design these cards they probably have some function as a starting point to guess a card's cost versus benefit, but at the end of the day cards are shaped by the empirical data they gather from play testing. To do it any other way would be to either risk making a very boring mechanical game or risk ignoring the situational benefits of cards and create exploitable situations, which were easily avoidable. Therefore it may seem like a card is falling outside of the expected curve, but that might just be because the curve shouldn't be thought of as a single two dimensional function.

There's also the psychological impact of the card to be considered. Your opponent may know full well that you just paid him honor for drawing more cards, but you can bet he's not going to be happy to be paying you back that honor, or having to choose to give you a free fate in order to keep the honor. Also, as someone mentioned in another thread, it can leave a bitter taste in your opponent's mouth when they're forced to make this kind of choice. No, it's not going to win you the game on its own...but at 0 fate cost, it would be horribly broken if it did.

I can imagine that you could easily create situations where you force which one they give you. After all if they have spent all there fate which can be easy when they play a champ then they are forced to give you the honor. If you create a array of honor loss affects, which seem like it would be easy, and play it early then they might be forced to hand over the fate. Also I can see crab as being one of they clans made to bid low for honor. Not to mention it can act as a threat to force your opponent to not spend all of there fate. Not to mention with some of the effects the crane and lion have that are tied to being more honorable it acts as another form of disruption.

People might complain about negative play experience but counter and control decks have been part of Magic: the gathering since the beginning and they are not going away any time soon so don't be surprised when a form of NPE show up. Heck, I would say most of the clans have a negative thing they do. After all there were the old crane bully dueling. And I can remember some Lion mechanics that created the circular logic buff of I have more force so Im more honorable, and because Im more honorable I have more force. If I remember correctly I had to face a single lion personality that had +honor to its force and not much I could do to it. The point is that all card games will have NPE unless it co-op or something really basic like star realms.

I can imagine that you could easily create situations where you force which one they give you. After all if they have spent all there fate which can be easy when they play a champ then they are forced to give you the honor. If you create a array of honor loss affects, which seem like it would be easy, and play it early then they might be forced to hand over the fate. Also I can see crab as being one of they clans made to bid low for honor. Not to mention it can act as a threat to force your opponent to not spend all of there fate. Not to mention with some of the effects the crane and lion have that are tied to being more honorable it acts as another form of disruption.

People might complain about negative play experience but counter and control decks have been part of Magic: the gathering since the beginning and they are not going away any time soon so don't be surprised when a form of NPE show up. Heck, I would say most of the clans have a negative thing they do. After all there were the old crane bully dueling. And I can remember some Lion mechanics that created the circular logic buff of I have more force so Im more honorable, and because Im more honorable I have more force. If I remember correctly I had to face a single lion personality that had +honor to its force and not much I could do to it. The point is that all card games will have NPE unless it co-op or something really basic like star realms.

1 hour ago, phillos said:

Also to highlight Joe's previous point Crab have several ways to draw a card outside of spending honor in the core set. Therefore it's not a fair statement to say 1 honor = 1 card in all situations. Also as a disruption tactic (even if it is as simple as saying 1 honor = 1 card) to mess with the economy of the game unexpectedly mid conflict still throws your opponent's plans into disarray. This is why I'm usually opposed to using such simple distilled heuristics for evaluating card value. It always ignores the situational cost (or benefit) which is not insignificant. I'm fairly certain when they design these cards they probably have some function as a starting point to guess a card's cost versus benefit, but at the end of the day cards are shaped by the empirical data they gather from play testing. To do it any other way would be to either risk making a very boring mechanical game or risk ignoring the situational benefits of cards and create exploitable situations, which were easily avoidable. Therefore it may seem like a card is falling outside of the expected curve, but that might just be because the curve shouldn't be thought of as a single two dimensional function.

I agree that these heuristics tend to encourage a reductionist philosophy, but they are certainly not useless. A certain "baseline" for comparison is always useful. However, after employing the baseline, it's up to the player to evaluate the card in context of how it could be used situationally, how it interacts with other cards, etc. I don't particularly like efficiency arguments (like the one @kirumode has posted in his playthrough threads), but they at least form a basis for future arguments.

In the context of this card, I think the heuristic argument holds to a certain degree. The card does not net you much in a vacuum. Even if it does cost zero, so does Fine Katana, and that card helps you win conflicts. This card does not. I think it's time will come, but I'm not sure if core set decks will do it justice. I'm still very happy that it exists, as it makes dishonor as a strategy much more viable down the road.

Who knows, I'm probably out to lunch. I'll playtest tonight and report back ;).

Fair enough. A starting point is one thing, but sometimes I see people dismiss cards out of hand using methods similar to that so I just wanted to call attention to it. To be clear I don't think you can just throw Levy in a deck and expect it to be good. I think you need to be pressuring dishonor for it to actually have good value. I'll be more interested to see what the last three factions can give us to help with our existing dishonor theme.

Levy's effectiveness will hinge on board state. Paying a card and 0 fate to steal 1 honor is trash. But paying a card and 0 fate to pick up one fate from the pool is fantastic.

If both players are high bidding or both players are low bidding at the same rates leaving both at 10ish honor this is the last card you want to see. But if you're consistently bidding a little lower and can actually threaten a dishonor victory your opponent will likely just give you a fate.

Tough to say how good this will be in practice. It's probably never going to get you a dishonor victory because if you're ever sniffing it you'll only ever get fate. It's never going to be a reliable resource engine because you have to underbid quite substantially to get this to the point where it becomes a reliable resource. At that point you're trading one type of resource(cards) for another(fate).

But it could be a great feeler card. Like you play the card to see what type of opponent you're up against. If a person gives you an honor they probably are more concerned about board position and are likely to bid relatively high throughout the game. They already lost 1 honor; maybe you try to take the rest. If a player gives you fate they're probably overly protective of their honor pool and going for the honor win would be a fool's errand. So you bid higher throughout the game and bank on card advantage to get you to victory.

Ok, after two games (losses vs Crane, Dragon), here's the impressions so far. Full disclaimer here: these are only initial impressions, take everything with a heavy dose of salt, this could easily change quickly, especially since I didn't play Hida Guardian (which is amazing!).

Overall, not great, but the deck is far from tuned at this point (don't panic!). Extremely annoying defensively because of the stronghold ability (which is actually pretty good) and cards like the Yojimbo, but I had a hard time mustering a worthwhile attack. However, I will say that the dishonor theme worked out better than expected; had my opponent sweating in both games, especially the first.

Standouts:

• Both holdings. Funeral Pyre is awesome, especially with conflict dudes who come in for one conflict then bow. The fortification really makes your provinces resilient.
• Hiruma Yojimbo. Great value body for defense.
• Intimidating Hida. Coupled with the other dishonor cards and good stats, this guy felt good to play.
• Watch Commander. This card is for real. The first one I played ended up costing my opponent 4 honor over a few turns. This is Let Go on sight.
• Reprieve. It's just a great versatile way of keeping bodies around.
• Hiruma Ambusher. Loved him. Drop him for +3 in the conflict (1 from stronghold), blank an ability (I did Kakita Asami, the Dragon duelist, and Niten Adept, among others), then sac him to the Pyre.
• Jade Testubo. Take that, Hotaru! Knocked off a bunch of fate with this card.

Not-so-standouts:

• Vengeful Berserker. Just couldn't seem to get small bodies to line up at the right times. Has potential, but I'd rather play Intimidating Hida in most cases.
• Hida Tomomatsu. I just couldn't figure out what to do with her. I had better defenders and she's meh on attack.
• Way of the Crab. It's really situational, and I just couldn't get it to go off, it's not hard to play around. Give me Lion or Crane over this card any day.
• The Mountain Does Not Fall. I thought it would be better, since I'm a fan of Indomitable Will, but that card just works so much better for Dragon with its massive Voltrons.
• Hida Kasada. Yep, I went there. The ability wasn't relevant on any of the 3 turns that I had him out. Stupid covert.

I didn't get to play a lot of cards, so omission means little here; these are just the ones I was able to play in the circumstances. Kaiu Shuichi didn't even hit the table, boo!

I'm not sure what you mean by relevant - but the ability works whether Kisada is in the conflict or not. The first conflict of the turn his ability will always work, and it only turns off if you lose.

11 minutes ago, shosuko said:

I'm not sure what you mean by relevant - but the ability works whether Kisada is in the conflict or not. The first conflict of the turn his ability will always work, and it only turns off if you lose.

Not relevant in that it didn't really affect the game state much; one turn my opponent just used the Crane province in the first conflict, which I promptly lost. Against Dragon, a covert challenge that I had no prayer of winning went through undefended, so it wasn't relevant there either. I can't recall exactly what happened in the third turn, but my opponent had something silly they could waste to work around it.

9 hours ago, Casanunda said:

Not relevant in that it didn't really affect the game state much; one turn my opponent just used the Crane province in the first conflict, which I promptly lost. Against Dragon, a covert challenge that I had no prayer of winning went through undefended, so it wasn't relevant there either. I can't recall exactly what happened in the third turn, but my opponent had something silly they could waste to work around it.

Okay, that's what I thought you meant. Thanks for clearing that up.

22 hours ago, Casanunda said:

I agree that these heuristics tend to encourage a reductionist philosophy, but they are certainly not useless. A certain "baseline" for comparison is always useful. However, after employing the baseline, it's up to the player to evaluate the card in context of how it could be used situationally, how it interacts with other cards, etc. I don't particularly like efficiency arguments (like the one @kirumode has posted in his playthrough threads), but they at least form a basis for future arguments.

In the context of this card, I think the heuristic argument holds to a certain degree. The card does not net you much in a vacuum. Even if it does cost zero, so does Fine Katana, and that card helps you win conflicts. This card does not. I think it's time will come, but I'm not sure if core set decks will do it justice. I'm still very happy that it exists, as it makes dishonor as a strategy much more viable down the road.

You have some good points, especially since I hate reductionist philosophies.

Considering Levy, however, even if it does not net you a 0 advantage, it changes the board state without you having to achieve any specific conditions. The point is that sometimes you can get an advantage even in situations in which you're not netting any ("False Trade"). If we find out Crab is favored when playing with smaller hands (which might totally be the case, especially against clans with powerful tricks like Crane or reliant on attachments such as Dragon) this card is going to be good. What it does require is that you work towards it by bidding low (and possibly using other cards that force honor losses as well), since otherwise it's just a tempo hit (you have a card in hand that does nothing for the round).

Another example, for those who are familiar with it, would be a Kith Choke strategy in Warhammer Conquest: since she gets a free unit every round, the less units there are on the board, the more impactful that free unit is - thus a card which equally shrinks the board is actually advantageous for her.

So, after seeing the new neutral cards from the video, I'm far less enamored with Levy haha.

3 hours ago, Eu8L1ch said:

You have some good points, especially since I hate reductionist philosophies.

Considering Levy, however, even if it does not net you a 0 advantage, it changes the board state without you having to achieve any specific conditions. The point is that sometimes you can get an advantage even in situations in which you're not netting any ("False Trade"). If we find out Crab is favored when playing with smaller hands (which might totally be the case, especially against clans with powerful tricks like Crane or reliant on attachments such as Dragon) this card is going to be good. What it does require is that you work towards it by bidding low (and possibly using other cards that force honor losses as well), since otherwise it's just a tempo hit (you have a card in hand that does nothing for the round).

Another example, for those who are familiar with it, would be a Kith Choke strategy in Warhammer Conquest: since she gets a free unit every round, the less units there are on the board, the more impactful that free unit is - thus a card which equally shrinks the board is actually advantageous for her.

This is my general thinking on Crab. Their card draw effects aren't particularly powerful if both players are drawing 5 per turn. But if you can drag the game into the mud where both players are only drawing 1 then they have the best draw engines in the game(right now).

Also; unlike Crane and Lion they can really punish you for losing honor. If I bid 5 and Lion/Crane bid 1 I'm okay giving up 4 honor and then bidding low until my opponent has their backs against the wall and needs to start bidding higher. At that point I can bid high again. I'm never in any real danger by giving up a measly 4 honor. And the 4 extra conflict cards can be game ending. But giving up 4 honor against Crab has real consequences. They have the capabilities to actually burn you down to 0 honor. Everything kind of has to fall correctly, but the threat is real.

That threat will likely be enough to have people play the low bidding game from the jump creating a game environment which is in your favor.