Just now, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Turn that frown upside down!!?

Unicorn ? spoils this week!!

I still don't have my likes back.

but yes...Wednesday can't come soon enough.

Just now, RandomJC said:

I still don't have my likes back.

but yes...Wednesday can't come soon enough.

Maybe they've slipped a new Scorpion spoiler somewhere?

Just now, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Maybe they've slipped a new Scorpion spoiler somewhere?

That requires me to care about Scorpion.

2 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

That requires me to care about Scorpion.

You should. They're sneaky

48 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

You should. They're sneaky

Nah. You can not like them while simultaneously not underestimating their sneakiness. It works!

2 hours ago, Shu2jack said:

I don't believe you get fate for defending a province of the element you choose. I believe you get fate for defending the ring you choose. So your opponent could attack your Earth stronghold all day and not give you any fate as long as they don't declare a Earth conflict.

A valiant effort at keeping the thread on topic. Your struggle against impossible odds show that you, sir, are a true Crab.

1 minute ago, Fumi said:

A valiant effort at keeping the thread on topic. Your struggle against impossible odds show that you, sir, are a true Crab.

I built this thread. I will defend this thread's purpose.

Though I must admit, nailing some people up is seeming more and more reasonable.

3 minutes ago, Shu2jack said:

I built this thread. I will defend this thread's purpose.

Though I must admit, nailing some people up is seeming more and more reasonable.

Who, us???

7 minutes ago, Shu2jack said:

I built this thread. I will defend this thread's purpose.

Though I must admit, nailing some people up is seeming more and more reasonable.

52 minutes ago, Isawa Kioshi said:

Nah. You can not like them while simultaneously not underestimating their sneakiness. It works!

Except if you are the dragon.

2 hours ago, Shu2jack said:

I don't believe you get fate for defending a province of the element you choose. I believe you get fate for defending the ring you choose. So your opponent could attack your Earth stronghold all day and not give you any fate as long as they don't declare a Earth conflict.

To clarify, Keeper roles grants 1 fate for successful defense in conflicts of your role's element's ring. Seeker roles grant 1 fate when one of your provinces with your role's element is revealed.

14 hours ago, Zesu Shadaban said:

To clarify, Keeper roles grants 1 fate for successful defense in conflicts of your role's element's ring. Seeker roles grant 1 fate when one of your provinces with your role's element is revealed.

Unless I'm missing something, that makes Keeper much better for fate-gain than Seeker is.

The Seeker card can give you 2 extra Fate, unless there's some way of turning provinces back upside down. The Keeper could possibly give you 1 Fate every turn, especially if you take the Keeper of a ring which the opponent needs (for example Fire for a Lion deck.)

If the game is longer than 2 turns, Keeper pulls ahead.

6 minutes ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

If the game is longer than 2 turns, Keeper pulls ahead.

That assumes 2 things:

1. The opponent attacks on that ring every single turn.
2. You can successfully defend those attacks every single turn.

The first might happen in some games, but not all (some games your opponent wants the ring, some games they don't a flying **** about it). The second is wishful thinking. So there's no way you'll get a fate every turn with Keeper. By contrast, you can count on your opponent attacking your provinces.

33 minutes ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Unless I'm missing something, that makes Keeper much better for fate-gain than Seeker is.

The Seeker card can give you 2 extra Fate, unless there's some way of turning provinces back upside down. The Keeper could possibly give you 1 Fate every turn, especially if you take the Keeper of a ring which the opponent needs (for example Fire for a Lion deck.)

If the game is longer than 2 turns, Keeper pulls ahead.

If a ring is important to me, I at least try to attack in a way where I win the conflict. It is unlikely that I won't be able to do so every single turn.

51 minutes ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Unless I'm missing something, that makes Keeper much better for fate-gain than Seeker is.

The Seeker card can give you 2 extra Fate, unless there's some way of turning provinces back upside down. The Keeper could possibly give you 1 Fate every turn, especially if you take the Keeper of a ring which the opponent needs (for example Fire for a Lion deck.)

If the game is longer than 2 turns, Keeper pulls ahead.

Seeker gives less, but more reliable fate. If you're running the two provinces of the ring type you've chosen, you're getting at least 1 fate per game, maybe 2 if they run into both of them. Or they never reveal more than 3 of your provinces, in which case you're probably doing pretty good anyway.

Keeper has the potential to give you more fate, but if your opponent only declares that ring type to win (or doesn't declare it at all), you could get no fate.

Of course, if your opponent is careless and keeps losing conflicts they initiate with that ring type, then you could gain more than the 1 to 2 fate Seeker gives you.

In my opinion, Keeper will probably end up becoming more of a denial effect than a fate gaining effect. If you are the keeper of the void, for example, your opponent will be less likely to do a Void challenge with a 1 or 2 cost character just to bow out your characters (to stop you from doing future attacks) if that could possibly result in you gaining a fate.

It seems like it'll make your opponent either avoid the ring or only do the ring when they're willing to dedicate a sizable force to attacking, whether that be a clan champ or 2 characters or what have you.

Either way, it seems like it will be an effective way of protecting the ring you value most, assuming it's a highly contested ring.

Based on the games I've played (upwards of 10-15 games now), Void and Fire are hotly contested rings, with Earth and Water being somewhat contested and Air being entirely dependent on the match up. Some games, notably ones where neither person is trying to honor out or dishonor out their opponent, it won't be uncommon to see the Ring of Air sitting with 2 or 3 fate before it's taken purely for economy. In other games, where a player is trying to pressure honor or dishonor, the ring of air suddenly becomes very contested as a means of controlling that honor differential.

I think Keeper of Void and Keeper of Fire will be universally good, as removing fate and honoring/dishonoring characters is never a bad thing. Keeper of Earth and Water will be less so, but still impactful because conditional bow/ready actions as well as card draw and discard are undeniably strong effects, but aren't as powerful in terms of immediate impact on the board as Void and Fire, and Keeper of Air will be good for honor decks but mostly not necessary except in honor/dishonor mirror matches, as the non honor player will probably still not care about Ring of Air, since Ring of Fire has such a similar impact (make an honor runner lose an honor) while also damaging a character on the board.

Keeper of Air may be good for dishonor decks, like Crab and (presumably) Scorpion, but even still I think it'd be a second or third choice after Void and Fire (and possibly Earth for Crab).

Seeker, on the other hand, will be almost entirely dependent on what provinces are in that ring type. Right now, I think Earth is the strongest (based on your match up, put the Earth province that is better against your opponent, ancestral lands vs Crane, Entrenched Position against Lion, under your stronghold. After that, it may depend on your clan. Phoenix will love Seeker of Void, to run both Shameful and Kuroi Mori. Crane and Scorpion probably loves Seeker of Air in order to run their specific province + a fate producing province (or whatever the other one does). Lion and Unicorn can run either Elemental Fury or Rally to the Cause etc.

I do think right now Seeker of Fire is just bad. Even Dragon, whose province is Fire, likely wouldn't care to run a second Fire province, as Night Raid is typically 1 maybe 2 cards removed from your opponent's hand (not great) or removing a fate from an attacking character of which there is no guarantee that the attackers will even have fate (Meditations on the Tao) which hasn't play tested well for me and my group so far.

Maybe some fire provinces will come out in the near future that will change that. That said, with 3 roles that will be unclaimed after Gencon (10 roles, only 7 clans), I think Seeker of Fire will definitely be among those 3. It'll be interesting to see what roles are not selected.

I think that the majority of the clans would like the Seeker that matches the type of their clan province. There might be an exception in Dragon, but even there I think they would be ok with it.

The two clans that miss out on this want the Keeper that covers the Ring that they care the most about. Truthfully, I think that the 3 Influence provided by a Keeper is way more important than the occasional incidental fate gain during the game. Based on what little Scorpion information we have, I think I would rather have a Keeper (which one is incidental) than a Seeker. While I am not 100% sure, I would think that Dragon would feel the same way.

So, given these criteria, I think the optimum Seeker / Keeper for each clan would be....

Crab - Seeker of Earth (duh)
Phoenix - Seeker of Void (even bigger duh)
Lion - Seeker of Water
Crane - Seeker of Air
Unicorn - ??? - Depends on the type of Endless Plains, as well as their play style. I don't think we know enough about them yet to have any constructive idea.
Scorpion - Keeper of Anything, with Earth, Fire, or Void being the prime candidates
Dragon - Keeper of Anything, with Earth, Water, and Void being the prime candidates

I just slowly came to realize, that nothing says seekers have to pick two DIFFERENT provinces. Can just double up a really good province, and lull your opponent into a false sense of security when swinging at your SH.

6 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

I just slowly came to realize, that nothing says seekers have to pick two DIFFERENT provinces. Can just double up a really good province, and lull your opponent into a false sense of security when swinging at your SH.

From the Learn to Play document's Deck Customization Rules:

Quote

A player’s set of provinces must include exactly 5 provinces, consisting of exactly 1 province associated with each ring. (Each province has a ring symbol in the lower right corner of the card to indicate its association.) Each province must be in-clan or be neutral. No more than one copy of each province, by title, may be included in a player’s province set.

Just now, Zesu Shadaban said:

From the Learn to Play document's Deck Customization Rules:

shoulda just made them unique then...

2 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

shoulda just made them unique then...

Or make it a deck-building rule. It doesn't really matter which one it is.

Although I agree that putting the Unique symbol would have worked, I understand the will to not add a symbol on every card of that type. Making a rule about it makes it easier to remember. You don't have to check the card every time you build a deck if you know the rules.

3 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

shoulda just made them unique then...

But why are the strongholds unique!

5 minutes ago, Mirith said:

But why are the strongholds unique!

Technically they're not, you just only select one stronghold for your deck.

EDIT: I guess they are...they're just special.

11 minutes ago, Ser Nakata said:

Or make it a deck-building rule. It doesn't really matter which one it is.

Although I agree that putting the Unique symbol would have worked, I understand the will to not add a symbol on every card of that type. Making a rule about it makes it easier to remember. You don't have to check the card every time you build a deck if you know the rules.

Unique to me just makes a good signifier, and since provinces are always in play, it makes sense not to have more than one. Just feels like unique would have made more sense to me.

But such is life.

3 hours ago, Yogo Gohei said:

I think that the majority of the clans would like the Seeker that matches the type of their clan province. There might be an exception in Dragon, but even there I think they would be ok with it.

The two clans that miss out on this want the Keeper that covers the Ring that they care the most about. Truthfully, I think that the 3 Influence provided by a Keeper is way more important than the occasional incidental fate gain during the game. Based on what little Scorpion information we have, I think I would rather have a Keeper (which one is incidental) than a Seeker. While I am not 100% sure, I would think that Dragon would feel the same way.

So, given these criteria, I think the optimum Seeker / Keeper for each clan would be....

Crab - Seeker of Earth (duh)
Phoenix - Seeker of Void (even bigger duh)
Lion - Seeker of Water
Crane - Seeker of Air
Unicorn - ??? - Depends on the type of Endless Plains, as well as their play style. I don't think we know enough about them yet to have any constructive idea.
Scorpion - Keeper of Anything, with Earth, Fire, or Void being the prime candidates
Dragon - Keeper of Anything, with Earth, Water, and Void being the prime candidates

I think Crab would love a keeper role as well, as they seem inclined to win on defense. Probably Fire or Void.

But, I reiterate, I think the attractiveness of the keeper role is still unknown as we don't know what the initiate does yet.

45 minutes ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

I think Crab would love a keeper role as well, as they seem inclined to win on defense. Probably Fire or Void.

But, I reiterate, I think the attractiveness of the keeper role is still unknown as we don't know what the initiate does yet.

The problem is, that crab is really weak at pol, so it's really difficult to defend it.