2 hours ago, JJ48 said:

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the "sacrifice playstyle" by thinking too much of the CCG. In the CCG, personalities stayed around forever unless destroyed by a card effect, so killing off one of your own guys would be a big deal. In the LCG, however, every single character will leave play, if given enough time. This is true for every single clan in the game. The difference is that the Crab can get one more use out of these guys before they leave.

Will there be some decks relying on swarming small guys and discarding as many as possible every turn? Probably. However, we need to consider that there are other ways to use this mechanic as well.

I think by now most people know that nothing is permanent in the game. Yes, you could sacrifice him to one of the cards but he, like the Bear, are personalities you don't really want to do it with (normally). He's the kind of Crab that wants you to invest in and to keep around for as long as possible to 'cash in' on his ability.

Primarily, the ideal situation to sacrifice someone is when they have no fate on them, they are bowed, and have no more uses on their abilities. Additionally, lower cost personalities are preferred simply because of the small investment of fate.

3 hours ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

In a game with inevitably small boards, I feel like Covert is going to be incredibly powerful. I know the comparison is stealth in Game of Thrones, but considering characters in Thrones stick to the board until they are killed, either by claim, effect or plot reset, stealthing one character typically just meant you'd just use another smaller character to defend, to keep it from being unopposed.

Granted, I've only played with Covert a couple of times (Tattooed Wanderer, specifically), but it was as impactful as I thought it would be. Early game, sure, because there are typically only 2 or 3 guys on the board on each side, but late game when you have 5 or 6 it didn't seem as great. The big thing is that Covert doesn't bow like Lion's Pride Brawler or Doji Challenger, so you know they're coming back at you. It's very much like a pro-active "send home" ability, like Strength in Numbers, which has been decent but not great in my Lion games. I'll need to get some more games in, to be sure, I'm just not as blown away with the ability as I thought I would be.

That said, I really like the character. The Covert really helps on defense as he can't be Coverted (?) himself, and this guy would be very useful for defending Pol. And who doesn't like free fate?! "What's that, you have a holding on the board? Looks like it needs some repairing. Don't worry, I took care of it for you, the bill is in the mail. Ka-ching!"

4 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

Granted, I've only played with Covert a couple of times (Tattooed Wanderer, specifically), but it was as impactful as I thought it would be. Early game, sure, because there are typically only 2 or 3 guys on the board on each side, but late game when you have 5 or 6 it didn't seem as great. The big thing is that Covert doesn't bow like Lion's Pride Brawler or Doji Challenger, so you know they're coming back at you. It's very much like a pro-active "send home" ability, like Strength in Numbers, which has been decent but not great in my Lion games. I'll need to get some more games in, to be sure, I'm just not as blown away with the ability as I thought I would be.

That said, I really like the character. The Covert really helps on defense as he can't be Coverted (?) himself, and this guy would be very useful for defending Pol. And who doesn't like free fate?! "What's that, you have a holding on the board? Looks like it needs some repairing. Don't worry, I took care of it for you, the bill is in the mail. Ka-ching!"

I've only played 5 games so far, but I've never seen 6 characters on the board at the same time except for like Obstinate Recruits stacking up .

The average board, in my experience, is between 2 and 4 characters. And in those scenarios, I could definitely see covert being extremely relevant.

But yes, if you're consistently reaching 5 or 6 person boards, covert's value does go way down.

The fate production is amazing though :D.

2 hours ago, Kubernes said:

I think by now most people know that nothing is permanent in the game. Yes, you could sacrifice him to one of the cards but he, like the Bear, are personalities you don't really want to do it with (normally). He's the kind of Crab that wants you to invest in and to keep around for as long as possible to 'cash in' on his ability.

Primarily, the ideal situation to sacrifice someone is when they have no fate on them, they are bowed, and have no more uses on their abilities. Additionally, lower cost personalities are preferred simply because of the small investment of fate.

I guess my point was that many people are commenting as if the only way to use sacrificing is to have your entire deck focused on swarming and sacrificing as many characters as you can every turn, and I was trying to counter there's actually quite a bit more variety to it, especially with the transient nature of the LCG characters.

Yes, people know, intellectually, that nothing is permanent in the game, but I still get the feeling that many of them aren't considering that fully when it comes to how that affects strategy and tactics.

16 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I guess my point was that many people are commenting as if the only way to use sacrificing is to have your entire deck focused on swarming and sacrificing as many characters as you can every turn, and I was trying to counter there's actually quite a bit more variety to it, especially with the transient nature of the LCG characters.

Yes, people know, intellectually, that nothing is permanent in the game, but I still get the feeling that many of them aren't considering that fully when it comes to how that affects strategy and tactics.

A swarm based could work if it primarily focuses on the cheap sacrifice cards (Way card, Funeral Pyre). However, most of the good sacrifice cards, aside from the two already mentioned, cost 3 or more fate and force that balanced strategy that you're referring to.

Still, I need to print up the cards to start play testing both strategies.

On 7/12/2017 at 8:19 PM, Kubernes said:

It seems weird that he has covert with that picture and engineer trait.

How so?

15 minutes ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

How so?

I think they are implying that he doesn't look like a ninja.

I think that a great way to keep someone out of a battle is to have an explosion or seige weapon go off somewhere other than where you are attacking. While the a clan champion checks it out the real fight starts.

13 minutes ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

How so?

Because they don't really look like they mix in the picture. Even a change like switching out the scrolls for more like blueprints (more realistically some that looks like blueprints on a scroll rather than scribbles) could work. You could pretty use this art work for some like an Ikoma scholar/historian, a random imperial, and so on.

All I'm getting at is that art could have used a bit more focus.

22 minutes ago, Kubernes said:

Because they don't really look like they mix in the picture. Even a change like switching out the scrolls for more like blueprints (more realistically some that looks like blueprints on a scroll rather than scribbles) could work. You could pretty use this art work for some like an Ikoma scholar/historian, a random imperial, and so on.

All I'm getting at is that art could have used a bit more focus.

I suppose that makes sense. Oddly enough, though, my only complaint about the art was that, as the great scholar of anime and manga that I am, I was hoping that such a cute name like Shuichi would go on a more bishōnen character. But then I guess prettyboy types aren't really in the Crab Clan style guide.

2 hours ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

I suppose that makes sense. Oddly enough, though, my only complaint about the art was that, as the great scholar of anime and manga that I am, I was hoping that such a cute name like Shuichi would go on a more bishōnen character. But then I guess prettyboy types aren't really in the Crab Clan style guide.

Yeah, no pretty-boys here in Crab-Town.

2 hours ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

I suppose that makes sense. Oddly enough, though, my only complaint about the art was that, as the great scholar of anime and manga that I am, I was hoping that such a cute name like Shuichi would go on a more bishōnen character. But then I guess prettyboy types aren't really in the Crab Clan style guide.

No pretty boys in Crablands, only muscled grizzly men with an odd habit of forgetting to put shirts on.

and side burns. Can't forget about sideburns.

http://www.imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=3194,#hashid=29349ad576598fc1bcd3dab2d82c2f07,#cardcount=2

I guess Sukune will have to be our pretty boy. At least until we get (if?) Yasuki Hachi.

1 hour ago, Bayushi Bajie said:

No pretty boys in Crablands, only muscled grizzly men with an odd habit of forgetting to put shirts on.

and side burns. Can't forget about sideburns.

As long as the women don't have sideburns too, I'm okay with it.

1 hour ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

As long as the women don't have sideburns too, I'm okay with it.

Yasuki Makoto and Hida Eijiko might give those Crane a run for their koku.

I could go for some Makoto.

Yasuki women love those pipes.

Its pipe or tetsubo with Crabwomen. No time for inbetweens.

4 minutes ago, Bayushi Bajie said:

Its pipe or tetsubo with Crabwomen. No time for inbetweens.

You forgot my personal favorite, Crab ladies with big-a$$ hammers.

12 hours ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Yeah, no pretty-boys here in Crab-Town.

Your argument would have been stronger if Bayushi Bajie hadn't immediately followed it with a picture of a hot Crab boy.

(I hope they reuse that art. Borderlands Defender and Hiruma Yojimbo deserve to have some cute company in their deck.)

16 hours ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Yeah, no pretty-boys here in Crab-Town.

Excuse me? Maybe you're forgetting...

4 hours ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Your argument would have been stronger if Bayushi Bajie hadn't immediately followed it with a picture of a hot Crab boy.

(I hope they reuse that art. Borderlands Defender and Hiruma Yojimbo deserve to have some cute company in their deck.)

Being slighty...Crablike.. in the reals, I'm no judge of 'male hotness' either objectively or subjectively.

44 minutes ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

Excuse me? Maybe you're forgetting...

All I can think of when I see this card, was that it was chosen for a story prize.

49 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

All I can think of when I see this card, was that it was chosen for a story prize.

There were definitely elephants in the Ivory Kingdoms, and I am sure that the Crab would have put them to work in war.

22 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

There were definitely elephants in the Ivory Kingdoms, and I am sure that the Crab would have put them to work in war.

That they did.

And it was cool

It just brings up 'unfond' memories of the previous tourney prize paradigm.

Though the Kotei fiction he was in wasn't unentertaining, I would have preferred more Kuni Renyu and less of the 'elephant' or 'MutantCrabGuy'