The reshuffle honour loss seems like it might become a legit dishonour tactic eventually (which is good because some strange people seem to enjoy milling the other guy to death), but first and foremost I'd hazard a guess that the design intent was simply to stop games dragging on forever. Although it also fits quite nicely with the mono no aware angle (your time has passed, your clan falls by the wayside).

On dishonour itself being a reliable win condition, is it really necessary? Now that we have political and military conflicts rather than just military focused battles of force, those clans (Crane, Scorpion, whoever else) that are generally seen as masters of the court can demonstrate that by breaking provinces politically. The things those clans do to reach those goals will just look very different. Crane for example doesn't have to honour out to win, but can gain and spend honour pretty freely in order to ensure that they always have the upper hand in conflicts. Scorpion on the underhand, are presumably going to focus more on making life and decision points very hard for their opponent, and backing them into a corner before stripping them of their lands.

On the whole, this seems like a much more flavourful and interesting mechanical interpretation of honour than we ever had in Old5R.

10 hours ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Remember that drawing Conflict cards results in you having less Honour and your opponent having more Honour. Every Conflict card should be read as having the additional implicit game text "Give your opponent 1 Honour."

This is why Levy is a null card: it literally does nothing. You gave your opponent 1 Honour when you drew it, and then they gave that Honour back when you played it. As long as both of you have enough of an Honour buffer that you can afford this, Levy is meaningless.

It's also harmless. If you put three copies of Levy in your deck then your deck essentially only has 37 cards in it. This is exciting for anyone who likes building slender decks.

I don't think that quite works - You only 'pay' the cost of the honour 'if' you exceed your opponents bid. So, provided you're not bidding higher Levy still has notable value: it exacerbates your opponents honour loss for both bidding / drawing high and spending excessive Fate. Fate and Honour reflect opportunities to play or draw cards.

Conservative play (low honour bids, saving Fate) is a risky stratagem as it reduces your potential options to change the board state. Crab probably prefers this from an opponent.

Unrestrained play (high honour bids, spending a lot of Fate) increases your options to change the board state in your favour BUT, over extend and there are a number of cards (inc Levy) that will exact a further toll.

Levy is a poor stratagem in most cases if you are the unrestrained player - it's value diminishes. As a conservative (and probably defensive) player it coerces your opponent to also be conservative.